Eugenics Begins With You!

This universe would run a whole hell of a lot smoother if I was God...

I'm just sayin.

Solar

I'm considering tossing a few poems on here - not mine... I stopped writing poetry after I left puberty... which, judging by my sad little legs was about fifteen minutes ago. 

I've been reading more and more poetry lately.  Nothing contemporary, don't worry.  Just the older stuff I adore.  Here's the inaugural poem:

Solar

Suspended lion face
Spilling at the centre
Of an unfurnished sky
How still you stand,
And how unaided
Single stalkless flower
You pour unrecompensed.

The eye sees you
Simplified by distance
Into an origin,
Your petalled head of flames
Continuously exploding.
Heat is the echo of your
Gold.

Coined there among
Lonely horizontals
You exist openly.
Our needs hourly
Climb and return like angels.
Unclosing like a hand,
You give for ever.

                        - Philip Larkin

iCrush

So I'm in my underwear.  The temperature outside has rendered any article of clothing I own an actual threat to my physical wellbeing.  This afternoon I drew a big cool bath and floated in it like a basking shark.  I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin... I want to peel it all off and dance around in my bones.

I've been listening to a lot of Tom Waits lately - must give him credit for the bones line - one of my favorite lyrics of all time.  Also, sorry for the tub-centric imagery of my pasty ass.

I've been up all night trying to make a mix cd for the girl I'm kinda pseudo-seeing.  She's harrowing.  She's 29 and a social worker, and her eyes are so big and round that I actually want to get her genetically tested to see if any part of her is amphibian.  Believe it or not... that was a compliment. 

She's lovely.  She moves with elegance.  She speaks deliberately, but her voice is lilting and musical.  She's confidant and yet very vulnerable.  She's got a past.  She's got dark hair.  She smokes.  She loves Philip Larkin.  Basically - she's pretty much the kind of girl who I'm apt to really dig on... or rather, I would have... a million years ago... back when I was a passionate person when it came to my romantic relationships.  Back when I really felt things for others - and when I hadn't constructed such a strong, robotic countermeasure - ask Jamie about that.  I stopped really feeling a few years ago - and now (and I'm not chalking this up to the girl, though she's probably a part of it) the impulse is starting to well up in me... and this is all going to end badly, I just know it. 

It's the little things that are doing it, I think.  The little brushes of hands, the little physical intimacies - they speak to something larger, even if I don't know what that is... and would, honestly, rather not think about it...

But we all know how impossible it is for Angie not to think about something.  So let's do it right...

I've come in contact (metaphorical contact, in this context, I'm not being dirty) with a lot of different women in the last six months or so... and it's been like a masters course in body language.  I'm not exactly bilingual yet - but I can muddle my way around town.  I've always been observant of little things like that - the way someone's fingers move when they lie, the arc of someone's brow when something you say really moves them, how someone's eyes seem to dance in their sockets when you've hurt them.  The face really gives so much away if you know how to read it.  The body, too.  We can't keep a secret even if we try - the way we move betrays what we're saying, what we're not saying... and it does it in whispers.  And I love that.

That's what I've always hated it when women come on too strong.  There have been a few who've done that - one in particular who, when I met with her, grappled onto me like a moray eel.  She laughed at everything I said, even when I wasn't attempting to be funny.  I felt so... used.  Actually, not used.  I felt like vapor.  Like I wasn't even there.  Like I didn't matter.  Like I could have been anybody.  I was basically a receptacle for her attention - and, quite frankly, that just doesn't do it for me.  I need to be finessed.  I need to know I matter.

I'm no stranger to flirtation - I love it, actually - I'd flirt with a bowl of hot fruit if it's in the right lighting.  I flirt with men, even though I'm not attracted to them.  It's the ham in me.  It's the boozy little bimbo that wants to be adored.  We've all got one inside us... mine just happens to be holding a megaphone and wielding a flare gun... especially when pretty girls are around.  I can flirt pretty well (weather permitting) most of the time - whenever it doesn't really matter beyond the parameters of that flirtation.  Casual flirtation.  It's a contract really - a mutual agreement:  We're going to talk like characters do in movies for a while.  We're going to create our own little parallel universe - one where everything everyone says is pithy and sharp.  We're going to paw at one another with our words... and feign genuine interest - even marinate in the sexual tension, dip our fingers into the idea of it... but only have a taste... a theoretical done.  When we're done, when we leave the universe - we go back to go to our separate rooms and go on about our business.  It's all ego stroking.  Casual flirtation means that I can pretend to be someone else - someone witty and urbane - I can emphasize my good qualities and not the bad - the pasty, love-handled, neurotic, self-absorbed, terrified little stoat side of me.  Everyone gets to pretend to be everything they wish they were - and douse themselves in the attention and the wine and the glimmer.  But it doesn't really mean anything.  It's like playing paintball - you're shooting at each other, but nobody's going to have their head torn open.  You're only playing with paint.

But there's another kind of flirtation - the kind that the Moray eel inflicted on me a few weeks ago.  That flirtation isn't casual at all - it's a subterfuge.  Casual flirtation is a shared lie - the eel's flirtation was one-sided.  Because I could have been anybody that night.  I could have said anything to her, and she'd have laughed.  Because she wanted to see me with my clothes off that night - and she'd have laughed at anything I said in order to do it.  "You are who I want you to be," she was saying, essentially.  That's what her body was saying, anyway.  And I can't stand that at all.  There's no intimacy there - even when the eel writhed up to me and licked my ear as she whispered into it (seriously, she licked my goddamn ear in the corner of the bar - I was disgusted) I was a million miles away from her.

I don't have that distance from this girl.  Quite the contrary - there's something going on there - we've discussed this... we're so present when we're near one another that it's jarring.  We don't really know anything about each other yet - but there's this hum between us... electric... it feels like the walls might burst into flames if we stay in one room for too long.  So one would think that, stuffed full of piping hot intimacy (or whatever the hell it is), I'd be happy as a clam to have her haunting around in my brains.  But I'm not.  And I am.  And I'm not.  And, as if the heat wasn't enough... I've got this parade going on in my head tonight... and it's keeping me up.

So I'm sitting here, dicking around with this damn playlist on iTunes - all for a mix cd that I'm not going to give her anyway.  Because I'm not making this for her, really.  I'm making it for me.  Because I need to figure out what I'm thinking - feeling.  It's been a while since I've really done that: Really felt something.  Even something as nascent and as ultimately trivial as this.  It's a crush - that's all.  But oh sweet Jebus, what a crush.

I want this music to say something to me - to clear the air a bit - to drown out the hum.  I hate the idea of using music with lyrics - partly because I don't want someone else to speak for me, and that I think most song lyrics are trash (Tom Waits' "take off your skin, and dance around in your bones" notwithstanding).  But mainly because I prefer instrumental music.  Strange as it may be, considering that I'm attempting to be a writer, I feel like sound communicates my feelings better than words ever could.  Words are too particular.  They're concepts we approximate through scribbles.  Well I can't be precise at all right now... because I don't know what the hell I feel.  So how the hell can I use lyrics?  I feel scared and excited and sad and happy all at once.  I think about this girl, and then I think about why I'm thinking about the girl, and I think about how I'm thinking about how I'm thinking about the girl... and my brain devours itself.  There aren't really any words that can express something as muddled as this.  The only thing I can think of that can is the cello - so I pile on the Zoe Keating.

I've got a wide variety of artists in there - from Django Reinhardt to Mogwai to Miles Davis to The Four Tops (you can never go wrong with the Four Tops - like, ever - even the lyrics work).  I just keep adding and subtracting and clicking and clicking and clicking... changing the order over and over and over again.  Because, for as much as I'm elated by the time we've spent together - for as drunk as I am on the intimacy that I'm experiencing... and dizzy over how naturally it's come about... I'm freaked the hell out.  As quirky and charming as I can be in a casual flirt - I'm lost in the din of whatever the fuck this is.  I've got no bearings.  I'm just feeling - and I hate it when I do that.  My brain's somewhere in there - but older, emotional parts in me are starting to come out of hibernation... and I don't quite know how to reconcile myself to them just yet.

I'm a person who craves intimacy... but absolutely refuses to be vulnerable.  Not when it counts.  Not when I stand to lose.  So what does that make me?  I'm afraid that it makes me the eel - that I'm crushing at this girl rather than with her.  That I'm using her to play towards the things I want to feel... but am not really able to step outside of the lie. 

Actually - that's a lie.  I'm not afraid that I'm doing that.  I'm afraid not to.  I'm afraid to come back to Earth - to the real.  I'm afraid of what she'll see when the fog passes - what she'll hear when the hum goes away.  I'm afraid of being rejected... and that's such a whiny, pedestrian fear that I want to puke. 

It's not even like I want to be in a relationship - I don't.  I just got out of one.  I'm happy being alone for now.  It won't last forever - but for right now I'm enjoying the freedom of it.  The loneliness - the empty bed - I even like that. 

But I'm feeling something now.  And I haven't really felt anything passionate in a long time.  I probably don't even feel this much, really.  I'm just remembering how to do it, is all.  It's like I'm stepping into the sunlight (the goddamn, hot sunlight) after years in the dark... and my eyes are burning in the adjustment.

I'm rambling.

I do that.

I'll stop.

I've got a playlist to obsess over.  Here's hoping I don't fuck it or anything else up.

Kisses and Knifes

So a few days ago my pod-mate Jamie (we were both genetically manufactured in the same line) said something goofy to me.  "Andrew," she said, "I just worry about you."  So many people are worried about me.  Boners. I'm fine!  "Why are you worried about me, Jamie?"  "Well," she pauses and exhales, her face smeared with a girly marmalade of concern (huh?), "I just think you get too logical sometimes.  Like, you're all logic - not enough heart.  I worry that you'll think too much when you meet someone, and that'll get in the way of you actually allowing yourself to really like them."

Jamie and I have been doing relationship talk lately... it's been like a Babysitters Club adventure over here over the past few days, thanks to the arrival of Jamie's new tortuous boy-crush.  It's all very wine-saturated and maudlin.  I enjoy it.  But her warning bespoke a tiny misunderstanding of my personality... one I absolutely don't blame her for.  She and I are still in the oveture of our friendship - actually, it's more like we're still tuning our instruments to one another.  She's seen quite a handful of my facets... but she's yet to see my goopy, giddy, "I've got a big fat crush" girly side yet.  So I don't blame her at all for thinking that I'm a robot - I've been acting like a robot.  It's my default mode when there isn't someone I'm a quivering pile of flan over. 

The thing is that she's such a complete nutball romantic that I've got to compensate.  I've got to be Spock... because she's Bones McCoying it all over the place... flouncing around like a giddy butterfly.  Again - that's not a criticism.  It's adorable, actually.  But I, being the counter-balancing bonerkiller I am, have to take the opposing side.  I'm an adjuster.  I tinker.  I compensate.  Someone gets too romantic, I kick in the logic.  Someone's being too logical, I start spraying feelings like a marshmallo cobra.  (what the fuck is up with these metaphors?  And yes, I know, that last one was a simile)

Anyway, I'll cut to the chase - because really none of this is what I really want to talk about. 

I went on a date tonight... and it went really really well.  I've got no idea what I'm looking for from a romantic parter at this point in time.  I'm still adjusting to Earth's atmosphere after my four-year lunar expedition... and I don't know if I want to jump into anything serious just yet.  Not like that's even on the table at this point.  Damn the perpetual motion of an excited mind!  Bah.  Anyway.  I went out with this girl, and she's fucking lovely, and she layed one on me at the end of the date (I know, gross, right?) and I'm all flickers and flits over here.  It's that old familiar feeling... the "uh oh" feeling you get when you're excited about someone.  Hooray to that.  Regardless of where this thing with the girl goes, Jamie's going to get to see my softer facets... so that'll be something.

But again - that's really not what I'm writing about.  I'm just prefacing everything because, if I write an extra-long blog, I'll feel better about not working on my final manuscript.  I've been a bit of a slackatron lately.  Tut tut.  Whatever.

So the girl and I are standing outside this bar in Philly, smoking cigarettes.  She had rolled her own cigarette with my tobacco while I went to go contract hepetitis (see: pee in the bathroom).  There was something about that I really liked.  She just started using my stuff.  It wasn't rude - I know it could seem that way by my description of it - but it wasn't.  She wasn't annexing my stuff.  It spoke towards an intimacy.  A level of comfort.  The girl : my tobacco :: Elaine : Jerry's refrigerator.  I like that very very much. 

So we're out smoking our cigarettes, and it's clear that someone's going to have to make a move... and the tension of the moment is getting higher and higher - but not in a horrible way.  In a nice way.  And just as I was about to say something undoubtedly stupid, these two black dudes pass behind us.  One tall, big beard, goofy stocking on his head.  The other shorter, glasses, red long-sleeve shirt - looks like a character in a Spike Lee movie about how white people ruin everything.

I hear the shorter guy's voice before I see him - to the girl: "Yo baby, wassup? You got a fuckin' fine ass - and I gotta big fuckin dick," he points to his pants... in case either of us were confused.  Then he gestures towards me, "bigger than this guy's dick - yo baby..." and he continued to ramble on in stereotypical black ignorance.  Go ahead and yell at me for that last description - we all know it exists.  There's stereotypical white ignorance, too.  I'm an equal opportunity observer of how fucking paltry some people insist on being.  Anyway. 

I wasn't going to argue with the guy - since he was such a sterotype, I was sure he probably did have a bigger dick than I did... I saw no need in engaging in that debate.  I just waved as he and his friend walked backwards across the street, shouting and jeering at us like two chittering weasels.  He almost got hit by a car - and then he stepped into a giant puddle, ruining his shoes - and then he bumped into a street light.  It was a bad exit for Redshirt.

I totally kept my cool.  Wasn't really affected by it at all, surprisingly.  Other guys would have thrown down, called him a pussy, battered his chest.  I didn't.  Why?  Because a. I don't want to get my ass handed to me by two black dudes who are looking to beat up someone white, and b. beause it doesn't really solve anything.  Any macho nonsense I'd have done in that instance would have been to preserve my own ego - not defend the girl... who had absolutely no problem taking care of herself.  I'm a grownup, I guess. 

I turn back to the girl, who's smiling bewilderdly at them, and I say, "This is really embarassing... I used to date that guy."  And then she laughed and touched my arm and fell into me.  I win.

So we make plans to go out again - she grabs my hand and squeezes it - and then we walk away.  And this is where I get to the real meat of my story.

I'm a giddy motherfucker on my walk back to my car.  I'm all electric and shimmery from the kiss - and I'm glowing a bit from the drinks I had had back at the bar.  I'm tromping down the street when, lo and behold, who do I come across?  The two black guys.

"Yo! Gay dude! Come here!" redshirt calls.  And what do I do?  Do I smile and keep walking?  Do I put my head down and bustle past?  Nope.  I look at him and say, "Hey!  I know you!  I got a kiss because of you!"

He laughs... and walks over to me.  His friend looks nervous.  I smile at him.  He says, "sup?"  I say, "not much."  Redshirt pats me on the shoulder, his face expressionless and cold which surprises me.  Don't bullies tend to look angry?  I haven't been bullied in probably 20 years.  If that.  Come to think of it - I don't think I was ever bullied.  Made fun of, sure.  But nobody's ever beat me up before.  Not since I kicked Joey Hubbard's ass in the second grade - and then wept like a seagull after I got in trouble for it.  I'm just incapable of ever looking cool.  But still - don't bullies have an emotional stake in their bullying?  Not this guy.  He's ice.  I'm not even human to this guy - I might as well be a tv screen or a traffic jam - something you talk at rather than to.

"Check it, son" he says, "where's that girl?"  "Oh she's gone, man... probably driving home by now."  "Damn dude, I was gonna fuck her..."  "Oh, yeah?  I'm sorry you missed your opportunity.  I'd have told her to stick around if I knew you'd be walking back that way."  He pauses, puzzled.

I'm no stranger to dickhead men acting like dickheads.  It's what they do.  They're dickheads.  And, for whatever reason, I - not being a dickhead - seem to have a magnetic field around me which attracts them.  Maybe it's because I'm sensitive.  Maybe I do look gay, as my afro-american chum had pointed out.  Whatever.  Either way, I've become quite gifted in dealing with people like this.  I'm not going to be able to out-tough the guy - and I see nothing to be gained in doing so.  My tactic, when some neandertal insists on legitmizing forced sterilization like this, is to simply agree with them. 

Bullying is a contract.  The bully posits the insult: "You're a faggot."  Now, if everyone's playing by the rules, the target is supposed to react negatively to that, and then (if he's a real man) throw it back at the bully: "I disagree.  I think it more apt that you're the faggot in this scenario."  This puts the onus back on the bully, who will often respond by pushing the target away and saying something like, "Come here and say that to my face!"  And the dance commences.

I don't do that.  I just agree.  Agreeing breaks the contract.  Agreeing : a bully :: standing still : a T-rex.  They can't see you - it dazes them.  So I agree.  I agree, and then I ask questions.  Questions that make no sense.  "Oh, are you wearing red because it's Earth Day?"  "Did you ever try to brush your teeth with a carrot?"  Shit like that.

So redshirt continues:  "Yeah, check it gayboy... my man Black here," he gestures to his bored-looking friend, and I interrupt.  "Your name is Black?"  The bearded guy nods, "Yeah..."  "Well," I say pensively, "that's convenient."  Black laughs.  Redshirt gets frustrated.

"Yo man, ma nigga Black an' me... we gon fuck you.  It's gon' be him and me an we gon' fuck you... we gon' fuck you wit three dicks - "

"You're going to fuck me with three dicks?"

"Yeah..."

"Where's the third dick coming from?"

"We gon' get one of our homies -"

"But where does the third one go?"

Redshirt stops.

"Man, you fucked up."

"Well, not yet, I'm not... no."

"Yo man... why don't you buy me an ma nigga Black here a few drinks?"

"Well, technically... since you're the one fucking me, shouldn't you buy me drinks?"

Redshirt stops again.  He starts to feel around in his pockets.  "Yo, Black... where's ma 'straight?"

I stop at this.  What does 'straight mean? my brain asks.  Is this about me being gay again?  Probably not... he's looking in his pockets for something.  Straight... straight... what's a straight?  Could he mean a knife?  Straight, as in straight-razor?

Suddenly the possibility dawns on me that I might actually get stabbed by this idiot.  Either stabbed, or at least cut up a little.  And as curious as I was to figure out what he meant by it... I didn't particularly feel like sticking around to find out.

"Listen, man," I say calmly, "I gotta go.  Good luck with... well... your life."  And I turn around and walk away.  I don't look back.

Needless to say - I didn't get stabbed.  I didn't get pushed or punched or even spit on.  Redshirt called something out to me, but I didn't really hear it.  I was too confused.  And a little scared.  But more the former.  Assuming that straight really did mean knife... and assuming further that this imbecile really did mean to do me physical harm... I was left with only one question:  Why?

Not just why would he want to stab me.  I can piece that together - I'm infuriating. 

And not the why of him wanting to make a fool out of me in front of the girl - I'm standing there with a willowy, pretty girl who's about 80% eyes, and he's standing next to a guy with a redundant name.  That makes sense, too. 

Not the why of what I perceive to be his animosity towards my race - I'm used to that.  Some black guys are like this, I've noticed - they act as though white guys are beneath them... they're weak, nerdy, gay.  It's one of those popular, socially acceptable racial sterotypes that black comedians use to get chuckles.  "White guys are like this..."  I'd get offended by that... but I'm not allowed - white people I didn't know used to own black people who weren't him... so there can be no logic in the world.  Besides, I've got more important things to think about... like... thoughts.  I'll leave Redshirt to wade through that ignorance all by himself.

The why that I couldn't escape - and the why I'm still thinking about now (hence this absurdly long post) is why I didn't react with greater emotion.  Was I scared?  Sure.  Kinda.  A part of me was.  The italicized words in my brain that decrypted Redshirt's euphemism.  That was probably fear.  Or maybe just self-preservation.

It was fear/self-preservation that made me stop talking to them and walk away.  But I didn't run.  I didn't even walk briskly.  I just strolled away.

Why did I do that?

Was that ego?  Was I being a fancier, smarter, more dapper version of that idiot black guy by not running?  Maybe it was ego that made me talk to him in the first place.

But I didn't talk to him.  He talked to me.  I just responded.  So... still... what was that?

What should I have done?  Should I have put my head down and walked on by? 

I think about this now - about the fact that, if you'll excuse the slightly hysterical thought experiment, I could have been knifed and left bleeding in the street tonight - and my mind takes me back to Jamie.  Back to her fears about my feelings.  Or my lack of feelings.  Or how all my feelings are woven together by the cold cords of logic.

Nothing of what transpired between me and Redshirt was rational - certainly.  The logical thing to do would have been to calculate the situation, and take the path of least resistance out of it - translation: walk on past.  But I didn't do that.  I coldly engaged in discussion.  So I made an emotional decision... and carried it out emotionlessly.

What does that say about me?  Am I like that with all of my emotional dealings?  Am I like that as a friend or a son or a lover?

That can't be - because the girl swooned at my affection... and I swooned at hers in return.

I could do this all night - pull myself apart and examine the bits.  Paw and scratch at the mineutae and look for a greater understanding of how I am - who I am.  I've already spent a good deal of time doing this - and it seems so futile.  It's such a waste of time, really.  I feel bad for those of you who've read this far... because I've got no answer here.  No answer to a silly question.

I guess it just tickles my brain, is all, the question of what I really am.  I ask that question all the time - and everything I do is subject for examination.  Am I a robot?  Am I Spock?  Or am I McCoy?  Can I be both, maybe?  Wouldn't that make me Kirk?  Trapped, shirtlessly, in between two total extremes?

I can't help but wonder if that cold emotion I experienced tonight is my median hum - if that's how I engage with the world.  And that's got me scared.  Far more scared than I was when G-street wanted to gut me on 13th Street.  Jamie might be right.  Maybe I am too cold.

I don't know.  I'm writing just to avoid having to take my socks off at this point.

Whatever.

What's the moral?  I don't think there is one.

Black guys are assholes?  Nah, that's not true.  Not fair or nice, either.

I'm a robot?  No, that's not it either.  Maybe I'm kindof a robot.  Maybe I'm Data - to keep this Star Trek thing running along - I'm a robot who wants to be human... and through my attempts at humanity, I expose the deepest ligaments of that humanity.  That's a pretty lofty resolution - even by my standards.

I've got to stop this somehow.  How can I do it?

Fuck it - I'll stop it with this.

I really really liked kissing that girl.

There.

That's emotional enough for me.

I gotta book comin' out:

Today.  My car.

Man on radio (regarding the Somali pirate teenager we're trying to... well... trying to try):

"The boy's mother claims him to be sixteen - the American government says he's at least eighteen... so the question becomes, how do you tell the age of this pirate?"

Me:

"You cut his peg-leg in half and count the rings..."

And then I laughed to myself for about ten minutes.

Someone come over here and kill me.

Cracking an egg of knowledge and making some truth omlettes:

1.  Claire Danes got pretty:  I don't know how or when it happened, but it did, and now I've got a crush on her. 

2.  I should have studied linguistics:  I had a date-thing with this Greek girl on Friday, and she's getting her Master's in linguistics.  We talked about all sorts of things that cracked my head open and kissed my brains, and I understood practically none of it... and I love that.  Also, she's got the hottest accent in the whole frakking world. 

3.  I should have been a playwrite in the 1950s:  I saw "Waiting for Godot" last week... and I basically wish I was Samuel Beckett.  Only not quite so... Irish?  "Nothing to be done."  Oh god, what a great play.

4.  My neighborhood is too close to Camden:  I'm no stranger to noise coming through my front window.  In the last year and a half that I've lived in this apartment, I've overheard scores of Camden children scream horrible things at one another, "Yo, Tre', I'm gon' fuck yo momma, yo'" (they're such eloquent chaps), throw chinese food at each other's faces, compare penis sizes (like, really, that happened in the alley outside my bedroom window - two thugatronic thugsters whipped out their wieners and compared them.  I heard this.  Really), and so on and so on.  But not until 1:30 this morning did I get to witness an actual attempted stabbing.  By a wild-haired older black lady in a nightgown, no less.  It was like watching an episode of Cops.  When I moved to Collingswood, I had done so with the expectation that I'd be greeted by the neighborhood welcoming party - two gay dudes, both named Brad, and a surly-looking lesbian named Chuck.  They'd hand me a cookie bouquet and sing a tune from Brigadoon, and then invite me over for chamagne cocktails.  This is my gay-neighbor fantasy.  Chuck the lesbian would have probably hung out in the driveway, working on her charger.  Yes, I realize that this is probably offensive... but let me have my gay stereotype fantasy.  Because I'm currently drowning in a black stereotype nightmare.

5.  I can pretty much bullshit my way through anything:  I can't tell if that's a good thing or not.  To test this - I'm applying for a position teaching pre-Medieval lit at a philly university this upcoming Fall.  I've got noooooooooo clue about any of it.  Ordinarily my professionalism would get in the way of such misadventure (yes, I do have a scrap of professionalism in me somewhere... squeezed in between lust and outrage, probably), but to be honest with you, the economy is butt-romancing my teaching prospects... so I'll take what I can get.  Anything so that I don't have to go back to CCC, which was a rusty old dullard factory.

6.  I'm good at making new friends, and revitalizing old ones:  What's weirdest about transitioning from one lifestyle to another, is that you start to remember old skills that fell by the wayside.  I'm actually kindof a charming motherfucker sometimes.  Most of the time I'm a big lump with an attitude like a box full of badgers... but when I'm on... motherfucker I'm a pip.

Nothing to be done...

I forgot how awful funerals were.

A friend of mine died a few days ago.  Well, maybe not friend.  I don't know what she was.  She was someone who meant something to me for a brief moment of time - a crush or a fascination - something innocent and dirty all at once.

She died in a car accident a week ago - a truck smashed into her car at 70 miles an hour.  I've heard conflicting reports about how she died - "at the scene" and "instantly."  I prefer to think of it as "instantly."

I drove to the funeral home this morning and stood among a throng of mourners.  Family members wept into handkerchiefs, friends leaned their heads together and cried softly to one another.  Old men in black silently directed them all, and as I watched them, all I could think of were cowboys - mirthless and silent, almost surly in their professionalism, sitting astride their horses driving a lowing herd.

I knew Amy for a brief time in college - and in that time she was bright and vibrant and lovely - her hair always moving, caught by the wind, even when there was no wind at all.  This morning, when I looked down into her coffin, she was drained and waxen - her skin shimmering slightly like a polished apple.  Her hair was dim and dull - yellow rather than gold.

I shook her husband's hand - they were recently married - and I said something to him that I can't remember now.  I think it was about my condolences... but for all I know, I could have been commenting on the carpet.  He looked lost - bewildered - like a little boy.  And it broke my fucking heart.

A year ago, while amidst preparations for a book that I'm not writing anymore (big surprise), I surrounded myself with books about embalming and the funeral industry.  I know the restorative process step-by-step.  And it's grim.  Looking at Amy this morning, I could see every single stitch, every glob of glue.  I'd like nothing more than to unsee that.

I'm at work now - moments before class - and I've got to go stand in front of a room full of immortal teenagers.  We're going over the Romantics - the topic will be death, as usual.  They'll all bridle and scoff, like they always do.  I'll probably spend the rest of my afternoon quietly reading... maybe writing.

I think about my students, and then I think about Amy's students.  She was a middle school teacher.  I saw a lot of them today - scrawny, awkward pre-teens, all of them clutching tight to their shattered-looking mothers.  Amy might have been their first experience with death.  It makes me sad to think that about her - that her life could be reduced down to an event like that in another's.  But maybe that's all we ever really are - just events in the lives of those who come in contact with us.

I don't know.  I have to go teach. 

So it goes.

I'm sitting in a cafe...

and at the table across from mine is, perhaps, the most unattractive woman I have ever seen in my life.  She looks like a man.  Now I know what you're thinking - geez, that's kindof a lazy description, isn't it?  Ordinarily, I'd agree.  But here's the thing.  This woman looks like a goddamn man... there's no other way to describe it.  She's got this horribly thick neck... like a can of paint.  Her posture is slouched and casual like a man's.  She's got broad, sloped shoulders, and her biceps are uncomfortably meaty.  Not in that grandma-flab way that affects most women... nor does it look like she works out... she's just full.  Muscular.  Masculine.

Even her expressions are masculine.

She's a dude.  But she isn't.  And that's pissing me off.  Because I have no doubt that this person is a woman... but sweet Christ it looks otherwise.  She's a big, full-bodied paradox.

She kinda looks like Bill O'Reilly.

...

She just burped.

Really.

I've gotta get the hell out of here.

How many times can you listen to Kids by MGMT before your brain turns into mush?

Ugh.  Can't sleep. 

Fire inspector is coming by tomorrow, along with my landlady... and I've got a pile of empty cans of diet coke hiding around this place.  A few beer bottles, too.  I feel like a crazy junkman.

So I've got nothing to say, really.  I'm super-disgustingly busy with school and work lately.

School is going really well.  Handed in my penultimate packet.  One more and I'm done - MFA in hand... off to... death in anonymity.  Actually, that's not really true - I'm getting better and better.  That's not ego... anyone who knows me knows that I have no ego about what I write.  But I'm starting to realize that I've got at least some skill... so it's only a matter of time before I start publishing things.  And what a fun day that will be.  Totally gonna shake my penis at traffic when I get my first acceptance letter.

So what's new otherwise?  A bunch of stuff.  Jamie and I are long lost siblings.  I ate Vietnamese food for the first time (and it was a symphony of taste, winging itself amid the cavern of my mouth like on dulcet, gossamer filaments of gleaming glee - what the fuck am I talking about? I'm so tired).  Jamie and I made friends with a fop and a lioness, and I adore them both.  I was invited to join a baseball team called the "Dandyfops" for which I believe I am entirely qualified.  I'm still captain datatron from the planet date on the outer-spiral arm of the date galaxy.  I'm planning on reconnecting with two former-girlfriend-related friends, now that I've realized that my exgirlfriend's feelings on the matter aren't worth even a scrap of my respect.  Being lied to for months will do that to you.  What a waste of my fucking time.  Really.

Slag.

So what else?  I've replayed that same Kids song, again.  Stop me.  Come over here and clip off my fingers and stop me.

Oh... speaking of kids.  I'll talk about my students.

You know what's weird?  When you realize that there really is a line between generations... and that you're standing on it.

Today I asked my students how many of them ever kept a journal, either currently or in the past.  None of them.  How many wrote poetry when they were sad?  None.  Made collages or drew in sketchbooks or built little shrines to their music idols?  None.

So how did you express or explore what you were feeling?

"We didn't."

What did you do when you were sad, then?  I asked.

"Partied."

With each passing week, my class comes to better understand that the one constant thread throughout all of British literature (and indeed of all art, when you get right down to it) is the chronicaling of the human condition.  The exploration of what it is to be a member of this confused, often lovely but ultimately fucked species.  "Everything's about death!" one of my students said to me the other day.

"Exactly," I said.

Is it just a product of their youth that death is such a foreign concept?  It wasn't for me.  Of course, I had a personal experience with it when I was younger... but that hardly makes me special.  A few of them have had to have lost a grandparent... maybe a friend to alcohol poisoning or suicide... fuck, a goldfish.  I'm not saying I want them all to become morbid little dirge machines or anything... but it's as if they ignore the concept altogether.

I don't want to call them shallow - because that's cruel, and I actually really adore every one of them - this is a really good class this semester.  It's nothing personal at all.  I think it's generational.  When I think back to high school - and not only for me, but for pretty much everyone - it was all about angst.  Nothing defines a generation quite like an album called, "Nevermind," - a title which always bespoke a desire to be understood, strangled by the cynical belief that nobody will even bother to listen.  I spent so many years feeling tortured and alienated and alone and weird and scared... and sure, it was all absurd and totally 16 of me... but when I look back on it, I think it helped develop me into an emotionally healthy person.  Well... as emotionally healthy as I can be.

"Is there something wrong with happiness?" one of my students (who's nowhere near as smart as she thinks she is) asked me the other day.  "What's wrong with only being hapy?"

"Nothing at all - but there's more to life than happiness," I said.  "Why?"  "Because it won't last," I said.  "That isn't to say that you shouldn't cling to it when it comes - drink it up - suck the marrow out of it (I actually talk like that, I know, I'm obnoxious)... but to intentionally blind yourself to 50% of what life is (sorrow, loss, mortality, alienation, etc.) is not only to set yourself up for a fall - since happiness fades into sorrow, and sorrow lifts back to happiness and on and on... but also to deny yourself a fundamental element to what it is to be human.  As awful as sorrow is... it is distinctly human.  Why deny yourself the right to hurt?  Hurting is part of being alive - best to understand it."  Obviously that wasn't verbatim.

My students think I'm a big, black poison cloud of death.  My ex-gf told me once that she thought I was an unhappy person - little did she know.  A week ago my mentor asked me if I'm in some kind of emotional crisis - though in that case it was a bad sample, she's a California granola dryad yogi who, I think, thinks everyone is a little nuts - and I'm a pushy loudmouth from New Jersey who cackles as he cries.  It's sweet that she thought I needed help, though - even if it speaks to a complete misunderstanding of my personality.

Why is a fascination with sorrow necessarily a sign of unhappiness?  I'm much happier now that I have been for a really really long time, actually.  But because I try to show teenagers the marriage of gain and loss, of life and death, bliss and sorrow... that makes me a downer?  It's not even like it's me!  Bitch, that's English literature.  Don't hate the player.  That's what art is (was, rather - before it became about what it is to be a gay, Dutch-African, transgendered, Green Communist, Vegan, Republican, Widow reformed-drug addict woman - ugh... I'm so tired of particulars... give me back my forms - give me back my Romantics). 

It's the excitement I show, I think.  I get really animated in class.  "Why do you like death so much?" one of my students asked.  "Because it's the one thing we've all got in common," I said.

Does finding beauty in tragedy make me an unhappy person?  I don't think so.  Does loving minor chords over major chords mean that I'm in some kind of emotional crisis?  Hardly.  Christ... I just watched an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation with Jamie tonight, after we spent hours laying around on the couch, talking about girls and boys and stuff.  That's pretty damn chipper if you ask me.

It frightens me to talk to my students.  What kind of adults will they become if all they're drawn to is happiness?  Of what value is it when not pressed up against sorrow for comparison?  Jewelers rest their diamonds on sheets of black velvet for a reason - the juxtaposition conjurs their luster.  It makes them shine that much brighter.  Why am I the only person who understands this?

Maybe it's cultural.  Maybe it just comes down to the fact that I'm a contrarian, and I live in a culture where the primary goal is to feel good.  "Feel good!  Here, have a TV show about an unremarkable starlet who binges on cocaine and kamakizes!" says America.  "Eat shit and die - I'm going to feel sadness to feel good... and then watch star trek and look at pictures of puppies on the internet for three hours," I say.

What are we doing to our kids - always pulling them out of the shade to bask endlessly in the sun?  What kind of person does that make? 

A boring one.  That's what.

Sorry

To those of you who have emailed or otherwise mentioned to me that you'd like me to post more.  I'm up to my anus in my final manuscript for school, and have lost all interest in writing much of anything as a result.  I'm a busy little badger, and I'm frequently too exhausted to write much of anything on here, let alone in my own essays... which is trouble when you're trying to get an MFA in creative nonfiction.

So I'll be back - be patient.  I'm amazed that so many of you actually give a shit about what I have to say on here.

I'll give you a taste of something I want to blog about in the future though... the fact that I'm irritated with how Scientology is treated by the media.  Not because I'm interested in Scientology, or lend any intellectual weight to it whatsoever - I don't.  I've read L. Ron Hubbard's science fiction - he was a terribly shitty writer, so I can't imagine he's much of a Messiah.  It's because I can't get around the cognitive dissonance produced when people of one psychopathic, absurd cult criticize the moral, intellectual or factual relevance of another.  Christians have no right criticizing anyone for their absurd beliefs. 

Aliens blown out of a volcano by salvos of nuclear bombs is no more or less stupid than a 2000 year old story about a 32 year old virgin who walked on water, raised the dead, and was then metaphorically devoured by his friends... all to forgive people who don't even exist yet for the sins they haven't yet committed.

A cult's a cult's a cult.  The only difference I see between the major religions and Scientology is popular opinion.  So knock it off.  People who worship in glass churches...

Hey... look at that... I did write a blog!  Kindof a tiny little crappy one... but I think that's what most bloggers do - jot down a few ideas... rather than scripting out rambling missives like I tend to do.

Well screw them.  I'm more interesting. 

Yeah.

In Xenu's name...

a.