baddest

forcing myself to write dumb poop every day so i'm less useless

[veryverybad]

talked to a guy dressed in a pierrot le fou costume for a long time and then he just left w/o saying a thing and the whole situation just re enforced how everyone is just a poor imitation of you, simon

[veryverybad]

but my attempts had already been hopeless: an approximation. in unfilmed lamplight reality, he'd been tense over our proximity on the bench, then softened, legs crossed, as he saw peeking my total lack of guile. in a sense, its own guise. i'd been practicing gazing at him for just slightly longer than necessary. it may have worked. looking back at the frost-edged end of march, i'd sat in the center of my room over him, on the floor, holding my knees and wanting to carve out my own heart. excavation wishes are not the same as death wishes and are a peculiar kind of want, i think rarer.  it was the first time in a few years that i'd felt it, and its sharp bloom in my gut was unwelcome and seemed unmerited. there was an imbalance in the levels that i knew him intimately and the levels that left me floor sitting and in tears -- i knew it at the time, i remember apprehending it, in my room, self-conscious of my dramatics but doing my best to assure myself of their validity. the way you feel is fine and right. wanting to tear out your blaring heart is fine and right. i was so self-conscious, i had fallen over. i was stuck, am stuck, imbalanced, practicing uselessly eye contact and hoping i don't drink too much and kiss him. i am in front of his dorm; fuck dorms. we are on the sidewalk; i hate sidewalks. i am clutching the sleeve of his coat, he is teetering, i am teetering, it is ohio in the winter, it is ohio in the spring, we're in new york, sweating, belted into sandals, it's almost the fourth of july. i keep back-looking.

[veryverybad]

today simon told me that he thinks that flowers grow better when you play them music. last summer, he kept a marijuana plant -- just one, this is how he put it -- and played guitar to it and talked to it and gave it little kisses -- this is what he said. at the end of the summer he threw it into the woods. i told him about prayer plants, how their leaves are shaped like hands and flip upright when night falls. "i like that," he said, "that's nice." after he told me his story about the marijuana plant, he packed up his things and left to go to class. i felt suddenly as if i had to lie down. it is suddenly exhausting to want someone so much; it's exhausting to learn that this -- this -- is what i want. i deal only in absurdities. i keep thinking about a moment in our conversation when we made overlong eye contact. i guess i noticed he was still looking at me, or that, again and again, i was the one who would look away, so i tried not, and it was overlong. after he left for class, i stared at my knees and tried to breathe evenly. 

it was ten days ago that i kissed him last, outside his dorm. i sort of intended to do it but also i think i expected that i'd chicken out. we were drunk and talking about owls, and then he said that he had to go to bed. i said no. i think i said that it wasn't necessary, that the subject of owls hadn't been exhausted, and so i listed off all the types of owls that i knew and he laughed in shock that my list was so long. we got stuck on burrowing owls. i explained that they were tiny and made burrows in the ground. he said, 'burrowing barrowing borrowing," i think, i don't remember, and it was then that i kissed him. suddenly i was just there, just that close. i felt his lips tense with surprise. i think my eyes flew open. i drew back, and he tucked a piece of my hair back into place, and then he said, "oh, no, have i been giving you signs again?"

"yes," i said, "but it doesn't matter."

it gets hazy: i remember the kisses but not the dialogue that connected them, not well enough to make this into a scene. i know i said then, after a pause, "i'm sorry, it's just that last time i asked you and it didn't go well, so i wasn't going to ask you again."

"asked me what?"

"if i could kiss you."

i remember it was shortly after this moment that he gave me one deep kiss, a real one. it felt like he attacked me with it, and when it was over i reeled a little, i was dizzy. i caught my breath and looked at him through my eyelashes. my stupid, stupid body.

i know later he stared for many long seconds at my lips. 

"this is odd, though, don't you think?" he said to me, "it's odd."

"yes, i agree, it's 100% odd," i said. i paused and continued more shyly, "but also it seems like the right thing to do."

he asked me to explain.

i said something like, "i mean, why have a normal conversation when you can have a conversation with kissing? i'm just trying to have the full social experience here."

he said something like, "that's interesting -- i've had conversation for the sake of kissing but never kissing for the sake of conversation."

"but i don't kiss my friends; i have my friends for talking and not kissing." or something. 

"you don't kiss your friends? i've kissed literally all of my friends. i don't have a friend i haven't kissed." i wasn't lying. he was shocked at me.

and all this time i was kissing him. i couldn't help it. i didn't mean to try to kiss him over and over again but then i guess i turned it into a flirting thing, or something. my drunk self is audacious. he looked away and i bent my head in and kissed him. he started giggling through another kiss and i said, "are you laughing at me? what's so funny?" i tried to kiss him again and he turned his head away, and i said, jokingly, "no? okay," then when he turned his head back i kissed him more fully on the mouth. 

"you're persistent," he said.

"yeah," i said quietly, nodding, looking at him.

finally he told me, "i've got to go to bed. i'm drunk, and i don't know how i'd feel about this in the morning if anything else happened, and i think i've got to go to bed."

"obviously," i replied. "i'm trying to be respectful of you."

as he was turning i think i looked at him like i wanted to kiss him again, and he said, "oh okay," and kissed me.

i biked home thinking, "oh my god. oh my fucking god. oh no."

i've spent ten days shivering.

[veryverybad]

literally everything i care about is interconnected

[veryverybad]

woof

[veryverybad]

"unpublishable"

[veryverybad]

oh right

[veryverybad]

LOL YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE

[veryverybad]

tuesday, 4/16/13

i got drunk again. at least i feel as if i am budgeting my time well -- one skill i have learned after four years and drudgery. i don't quite know how it happened, because somehow i drank only two dranks and the first was weak but i've had a lot of practice writing here whilst drunk and this ranks in the top five in terms of difficulty typing. nevertheless i have a good eye for editing. the library and any other building on campus is quavering in heat and brightness right now, certainly, but the outside is a shade of fog and breeze that is beautiful. i tracked through watery grass and thought, 'this is how it looks when my contacts are fucked up! note to self, this is an easy enough to understand description for anyone who asks about vision." lamplights glowed blurrily. i spent a lot of today unable to do work and stressed about simon, and then suddenly i sequestered myself and was able to do work and then had dinner with simon, so i am lighter of foot (a flu symptom). my toolbelt's complete. i wrote a lot of sad and upsetting simon-explicit things and then told him that i would give him one of the books of my capstone that i'm making, so, i continue to dig my grave. i don't know exactly how i feel, not yet. some things i would like to remember are how flattered he looked when i told him i'd give him a book and when he laughed with surprise at my art joke -- my joke that the teacher of my art history class actually inspired me, and though i thought i wouldn't care, in truth "i really like looking at pictures of jesus, now." whatever, it doesn't matter, i'm once again taking stock in his overlong stares, shoveling crumby crummy dirt for my cold body to lie in.

[veryverybad]

monday, 4/15/13

i did homework all day and then grew sad, knew that either a very bad or very good way to fix it was to go home and drink beers in bed, so i did, i took the plunge, i risked it. i'm not not drunk now, but at least i've effectively distracted myself from the literal cavern i am about to spelunk in my capstone -- "let's just enforce depression as a permanent state of being, why don't we, and it'll be academic, we'll receive credits," says my brain -- and from the number of times simon looked at me today (many) versus the number of times he spoke to me (zero). i have no tools to move forward from this point. my hands are grasping at dry shadowed air; my fingers close around nothing but dead space. i've developed an eye twitch, in any case, from the stress i'm dealing my body. the pressure i'm putting on myself, that wakes me early and often through the night. maybe my mattress is tilted, i think regularly while pressing my face indenting thin pillow. as i walked home early tonight, the back way, in the orange lamp light, i said to myself, "maybe i should finish my capstone this week, just so it's done and out of the way," and then i laughed hard and cried a couple tears and went in my house and took all my clothes off. there's a routine for my meltdowns.

[veryverybad]

sunday, 4/14/13

the space that i'm currently in is not conducive to narration. the space that i'm physically in is conducive to sleep. i'm writing the diary section of my capstone and i'd like to use the excuse that i expended all my fun and funny and ~heartwarming~ on that earlier today but really i'm just tired and a little sad and everything's a little useless and scary. i don't know how i got in the mess i'm in. things were going really well. i can't even trust my gut on it -- i mean, friday night increased the odds of kissing simon again to the highest they've been since it happened, but it still feels fake. a dumb dream, an ill-advised hope. any lightness in my step is actually a flu symptom.

[veryverybad]

saturday, 4/13/13

i wish i'd spent a little bit less of college being nice to everyone and a little bit more of it trying to find people i could actually relate to; point in case, tonight. i felt obligated to spend time with this girl from freshman yr, which involved me going to everything she wanted to go to, regardless of my lack of enthusiasm, without a say, and being too polite and just too fucking obligated to say 'peace, i'm going to this other party, not your fucking lame one,' or, 'peace, i'm going to bed now.' but she was drunker than me and i couldn't desert her. my thighs will thaw in bed. i'm not having sex with simon at the moment but i wouldn't have been anyway. april 13th, it's icy. i bought a pack of cigarettes today but i haven't smoked any. "it's a social thing, okay, not an alone thing, okay, not unless you're sad or stressed," i chastised myself, cutting through wet grass and holding my elbows, walking home and speaking aloud.

[veryverybad]

friday, 4/12/13

jesus, well, all bets are off. i guess. i went to a party tonight and simon was there: i took my time in going up to him, had one false start as he was going outside to smoke with a friend, then talked to him for i think what was over an hour (drunk time is hard to gauge) in this corner, orbiting around each other as the crowd jostled us, migrating inches or feet to the side without knowing. eventually we realized the party was emptying -- "i've gotta get out of here," he said, and i said, "me too, there's nothing left for me here" -- and we walked out together. he slurred his words and wasn't 100% steady but otherwise he's a perfect drunk and never easy to argue with. it was actually wonderful. fuck, fuck, fuck me it was actually wonderful; our conversation was so good and so fun and both of us laughed a lot and he gave me sidelong glances that spelled out "you're cute," if i'm right, and i know i'm right because i'm good at "signals" and i touched his arm, like, way more than i had to but i really wasn't trying i am just the worst, the number one worst. we ended up at the entrance to his dorm. i could transcribe pieces of our conversation because they're still echoing in my head but i don't think i will, other than when he was texting with the top edge of his beer can lodged in his mouth and i said, "do you want me to hold that? are you okay? that looks dangerous," and he declined and i said, "well i know you chipped your tooth," and instantly he protested, was embarrassed, maybe, said "you know too much about me!" "you told me!" i said. "i wish i were amorphous," he said, "i wish i'd been born this way." where was i, the steps to his dorm. i won't transcribe any more pieces because it'll only hurt later, and i don't think i want to use any in my story. if i can't use it what's the point, it'll only make it harder. on the steps of his dorm he said, "how did we get here?how does this keep happening?"

i shrugged. "i was just walking."

"i know," he said, smiling, believing me.

we talked a few minutes more and then he said he was going to bed. i said "good idea" but i only meant sleep, and he said, "i think so," but maybe he meant sleep vs. making out. either way he said, "good talking," and then we lingered and looked at each other and i almost kissed him and i know he knew it but i didn't. i decided not to. i think the reason, besides fear, was to attempt to make this almost-thing we have not so big and scary for him, to have at least one night together in which i don't hit on him in a major way, so there's some period of semi-normalcy, to let silt settle and the surface become clear, before i try again. was that dumb? i don't know, i don't know, i don't know. tonight it felt like he would've kissed back.

[veryverybad]

thursday, 4/11/13

i messed up, should've been in bed an hour ago. this diary's really going to shit, right? right. today i had a meeting that went miraculously well, i went to class and barely tugged my eyelids apart, i fell asleep for two hours in my own bed and woke up heavy-limbed. i went to the library; i mailed tax forms. i went to dinner and simon didn't even talk to me, didn't say more than hi, and all his friends were there so maybe that was why. i ate quickly. i had forgotten a book and i don't like looking at my laptop while i eat for aesthetic reasons, so i focused wholly on my shitty dining hall food and hydration, then walked back to the library with my eyes bowls of tears. when simon came back from dinner he sat with me and we talked a bit, thus marking the first time in many weeks when he's approached me and not vice versa. bravo, bravo. he was happy or at least energetic and within the space of "how are you?" i lost all my willpower to be distant with him. tonight the magazine accepted the poem i wrote about him -- or probably -- or it's complicated -- or my vote was the deciding one and it makes me feel guilty -- so everything will be weird. i embrace it. nothing could be weirder than everything right now. i'm going to wear blue and gold on my eyelids in order to let my freak flag fly. lately i've been dressing like a child, but in a sexy way, right? right. smoking cigarettes with emma under cover from the rain, the clouds of our two obscuring our faces wetly, i said, "i'm planning on sleeping with six people this weekend," and she said, "oh? who?" and i said, "nobody in particular, i'm just dreaming big."

[veryverybad]

wednesday, 4/10/13

i'm still working, so this is just a brief interlude, just to get something down. it's pouring and i'm sitting on my bed in front of my window, and it's been threatening to pour all day, and now the clouds have kicked open their drains. i tucked my grandmother's velvet coat into my backpack before walking (sidestepping worms) home from the library tonight, because it is my grandmother's coat, but as i zipped my backpack closed in the fluorescence and heat of the library, i thought, "everyone's assumptions about me are being confirmed." i almost wrote, "unfair assumptions," but then they couldn't have been confirmed in the same way, and i know i care about how i look and i know that's obvious in the way i present myself and in the looks i choose but i don't follow trends and i think of it as a creative project and i don't understand why it has to be something called "ridiculous." i don't know why even my friends have to remark on it with condescending edges to their upward tones. i'm the one not being fair, now, i'm thinking of a particular friend and his comment about my socks, about my jacket, that were actually mean because he's a mean boy and i've cut him out of my life at this point.

i thought, also, today, about writing a piece about the stupid way i function, about how when i dress in the morning i attempt to preserve a modicum of my repellent weirdness, at least, to be true to my repellent weird self, then ask myself, "will anyone want to fuck me?" and how when i glanced over the story i wrote on tuesday for the umpteenth time, i wondered, "will someone read this and want to fuck me?" will this comment i am about to make in class make anyone stop wanting to fuck me. does the way i fucking dart around the library, like a rabbit, with my thumbnail between my teeth, infantilize me or at least seem to invite more back-pats than hard-fucks?

today i had lunch with simon and felt good about it in the moment and shitty about it afterward. this evening when he reentered the library with his friend, the two of them looked at me in the exact same moment and i wish i didn't have a body. don't look at me. what's new, what's new. don't look at me, stay away from me. i'd like to be able to be friends with him and i think i've been doing an okay job but am i really so dumb that i'll keep it up even while it makes me feel awful and gutted, even as it becomes more and more apparent that he doesn't like me? when did i become so flattened and frail? when did i decide that i liked when people made me feel bad? that it was okay, i didn't blame them, they know not what they do, we're not contractually obliged in any case, what do i deserve in any case? that i could put up with it as long as they also let me waft the dust they kick up carefully under my nose? i tell myself lies that no one owes anyone anything; yet i keep giving anyone with a tilting glance anything of me, and they keep giving me nothing. this economy corrodes. 

[veryverybad]

fuck

[veryverybad]

tuesday, 4/9/13

i wrote the first thing i've been really proud of in a really long time today. looking over my notes in my pre-write, outline, textedit stage, i noticed i had written the words "maybe this is about vengeance," and it turned out it was, in an extreme and violent way i hadn't expected would come from my head, which usually produces magic, but i suppose it had been percolating; i suppose i am still raw-edged, around my fingers, that type. i don't mean magic as in artistry or skill, i mean it as in the straight-up fairy-tale shit. again, i am tired. my right eyelid has begun twitching, again. if mercury isn't in retrograde (it isn't), it should be. i can't account for it. my work is going perhaps better than it ever has this semester; i did it all outside, laptop propped and sitting on cold shaded concrete, watching the breeze track my cigarette smoke in curls across my lit-up document. more than once i have thought the thought that even if simon and i never kiss again, making art is more rewarding than sex could ever be, and this is a reassuring thought to store in my brain and also a surprising one, considering how lonely i am, for simon or for anyone else who might think my body is worth putting hands on. so what is the problem? why does my temple ache?