infinite

magritte

i feel nothing today. thought i had the blues first, but has changed into total blankness. this whole week has been a shit show.
last weekend i slapped a guy in the face because i was so tired of the way men act...even if they are trying to be gentlemen and you can see through the sheer shade of it. i conveyed to this fellow that i thought his cousin was a typical man thinking only with his goodie bag and since he is a punker he thinks he can do whatever he wants to women without consequence. or something like that. i was pretty sauced, but everyone else was too- so hopefully it didn't sound like total garbage. now everyone knows there's nothing a dude loves more than some broad telling the entire male population off through him like he's the messenger. his comeback was to just throw compliments on me and try to get in my shit, even suggesting that we hook up to remedy the situation. i was beyond put off and later interrupted him making out with some idiot to give him the palm of my hand to the face. it felt incredibly good because i get very passionate and sometimes violent when i drink. there's so much sexual frustration and shit beneath the surface that i have to vent somehow. fighting, fucking, breaking shit. all the same.
other than that the house party was lame but i was just willing to follow the posse to whatever adventure the night brought on.
sunday was a day of fasting which is always terrible. monday was hospital stuff with no conclusion. wednesday i went back to work and had a terrible anxiety attack, had to leave work and had vertigo. joe was t-boned by a car as he was biking to get my prescription. thursday we fought.

last night i talked to chicken, he approached me in a doorway in a friendly matter. we chatted and hugged it out. peace. toby thought i would try to fight him given my recent attitude and the fact that i HOLD GRUDGES FOREVER, but not to worry. i wasn't going to fight a soul. i felt oddly sad all night. talking to marti made me super sad, like running and jumping to catch a balloon that is floating higher and further away. that's all i could think of. sad at a punk show with familiar faces? sad bar-hopping and making peace with people? maybe not even sad. i don't know. i feel nothing.
i don't have the energy to draw or paint or sew, nor the attention span to watch a movie, nor the energy to bike. it's so beautiful outside.
joe is working all the time. i'm afraid we're living like brother and sister now and it can only end badly.

last night neil hennessey was at the show. i'm fascinated by this person. i can't figure him out. i can't crack this nut. he pretty much stood alone all night, just drinking a beer. he'll talk to people but when there's nothing to say he just stands alone. he doesn't need the comfort of a group at a show, to be standing in a posse for support. the few conversations we've had, or, probably the only extended one totally threw me for a loop. i dunno. i like to know what people are about.

now i've gotten too sleepy to type

i have bored myself to tears, you know, if i could actually make water come out.

i detest being tied down in any way. in the make-believe world i live in i can leave any time i want, magically come up with money and get around, some romantic hippie roaming rambling bullshit. working for months and them possibly driving or taking the train twice a year has poisoned my brain with this idea. i am free. i don't like to live in the same room, date the same man, work the same job, bike the same street every day.
i know i am batshit crazy and hide it very well, and normalcy and being secure is a good thing. but i like to think that the early death of my brother has fucked up my entire life and i will use it as an excuse to be a total fuck-up and to act out at numerous times. that's immature, but i use it. i have. i stopped eating in college until my fair-weather friends carried me to the ER. i broke everything and stabbed myself and stayed in the psycho ward a few years ago. i drank and drove, acted like a selfish brat, fucked any stupid asshole with a tattoo (though still not as many people as some totally normal girlfriends of mine) and blamed it all on things that happened when i was a teenager.
using the same things as an excuse to not grow up, not take responsibility. i'm ashamed of myself but mostly ashamed my life hasn't been that terrible and i am still a stupid brat taking advantage of it. so many people have it so much worse.
i don't know where i am going and afraid that nothing will ever satisfy me. i can move to every shitty city in this country and onwards and date every kind of man (and really leading on and hurting some of them in the process) and work every kind of job and play every kind of role and change my wardrobe however many times but nothing will ever fit.
i dream of being able to fly multiple times a month, lately so vivid that i can see geese flying below me, the sun shining on their backs as they flap their wings. pretending to be content as different people could go on for so long. a deep unsettling is growing inside me as the years go on and still nothing feels quite correct. the pieces won't fit. lately when i drink i just hit a wall where i want to smash everything and pick fights just to feel something. i don't feel anything.

things aren't terrible, they are just normal. i'm just so bored. just wasting oxygen.

what an asshole i am

shit's been interesting lately. i work two part time jobs because i'm a college dropout and can't decide what i want to "do" with my life. i'd go to dental school but am just living paycheck to paycheck right now...like the past ten years. but it could be worse. i'm not totally unhappy. pretty content, actually.
i have either crohns disease or colitis. similar things. everything i consume gives me discomfort, the end result is not eating much. i've become sort of obsessed with food and losing weight (not trying to, just how it is catching me off guard). my highest weight in boston was 165, which wasn't too large as i'm pretty tall, now down to 135-140. seems like a pretty dull disease but at the worst a colon removal happens. god.
joe moved to logan square and his cat died the same day, which has shattered him. his free time leads to him being blasted. he chugs from bottles of vodka. chugs! obviously i'm concerned for his health and state of mind, but when he tries to become amorous or talk about serious things and his eyes are out of focus and he has marble mouth and looks all bloated i just become angry. he's already been to rehab and would never go back. it's such a turn-off. i do not like drunks. i get blasted sometimes, lately only when at gingerman with a girlfriend when chris mccaughan is bartending because he makes me so fucking nervous i can't handle it. but i can't understand being drunk every night. i can't do it. i wanna help joe.
another anniversary of my brother's death has come and gone. giant blizzard, boring. need a new bike. it's been about a year since i moved to chicago. def. did the right thing at the time. how long i'll stay here i don't know. i like to move around. but things are getting so interesting...
i dunno. gotta go get my bike and check out my art show (that feels fucking weird to say even though it's not the first time). some extra cash would be good. L and L tonight after work. i'll smell like hickory smoke, tastycakes.

Jaimie

August 2009 I think was my friend Coco's birthday. The Jeanie Johnston pub in JP had karaoke and I was there with Abby and co. Coco was dating this guy named Andy, who was a punker, a nice guy. One of his friends sitting with him was this tall skinny guy with glasses and boat shoes. His legs were crossed and he did something kind of effeminate with his hands so I took him for gay. But he was cute and kept looking at me. Who could resist manic panic red hair after, all. Before I left he tried to get me to do a duet. I don't remember how we got together after that but we had a date at James' Gate and he told me all about how he currently was in a death metal band and in the past had done the whole hippie co-op thing. He'd also roadied for Against Me a long, long time ago, shit like that. Now he had a 9-5 job for blue collar job rights, wore a tie, had a dog, etc.
oh look, i found a picture
He actually owned a house. We watched family guy and had pizza, beer, and the only time I've ever done karaoke -"Talk dirty to me" by Poison. He went to Chicago on business while we were seeing each other and mentioned beforehand that he had a female friend there whom he'd probably sleep with on the trip. You know, just letting me know beforehand. His dog was tiny, but very protective and bit my naked thigh once in bed. He could only sleep comfortably with a pillow over his head.
Once after a night of partying we got breakfast at a cafe near my house. The next day over the phone he admitted that while sober he didn't have anything to talk about with me and pretty much ended the relationship. It made me extremely sour. He also drove drunk. Whatever.

cont...

So yeah. The Captain was kind of crazy. He had a free bird tattoo on his neck. Also, a tattoo of a pin-up girl with small pox and a giant labia for a head. Abby told me that probably wasn't dating material. He always talked about the tattoos he'd give me-for free, after hours, but it never happened. It annoyed me when he'd try to pressure-"When am I gonna get to tattoo you??" and I'd reply "I dunno, when ARE you?" because we both knew he wouldn't. I gave him an awesome drawing once which I was hesitant about because in the past I'd given other people drawings and the relationship ended soon after. Same curse here. I don't know why, it just always happens.
Some time late last year or early this year he was over at my place and got too rough. Biting or choking and I wasn't into it so he hit me across the face. And then when I freaked out he wouldn't leave. He stopped but wouldn't leave, tried talking or pretending to be sorry. I don't think he was, just that it was cold out and too late to catch a train back to Salem so staying at my place was easier. And as I was breathing fire he attempted to calm me down so it wouldn't be quite so awkward to stay. I've never felt so powerless. I just wanted to be alone and here the dude wouldn't even get out of my bed.
The last time I saw him was days before moving to Chicago. I had a bundle of foreign coins and was on Commonwealth ave, trading them in for american cash, strutting down the sidewalk, happy to be done at my job, possibly even whistling when I saw him coming down the street. He looked older for some reason, pale, dressed all in black with black hair, like a vampire. We were civil. The only thought in my mind was that he looked like the antichrist, but he'd probably like that.

There was a gap between the Captain and Kyle #2 last year when I briefly dated Jaimie. It was only for a month or so, Sept I think. Trying to count backwards here.
Kyle #2-winter 2010,
Jaimie-fall 2009,
Captain-spring/summer 2009,
David -briefly spring 2009,
Adam-fall 2008.

Exey

I dated the Captain in 2009. At the time I had pink hair and was still upset over being dumped a few months earlier by Adam, the prettiest guy I ever dated. I was living with Abby and her geriatric cat Ophie, who was in love with me. Her other geriatric cat Qipu had just passed away and she wanted to get a tattoo to remember him. Qipu's ashes were in a box on top of Abby's trophy for taint licking in her bedroom. We went to the best tattoo shop in Boston, just down the street from where we lived. I'd been there before but the Captain was a newish employee. About my height, mid-30s, jet black pompadour, covered in tattoos. Neck, hands, fingers, the works. While Abby was being worked on by another employee the Captain and I half-chatted and flirted. I don't really know how to flirt, by the way. Sometimes I try too hard or vice versa but this was nice and even. It was one of those magical times when you just know something's going to happen. My friend Coco also worked at the shop and warned me that he was okay but she was unsure of his attitude towards women. I also heard him talking to a friend while at the shop about some younger girl and wasn't being too polite...though his mocking of her fake Coach bag tipped me off that she was probably the kind of girl I'd openly mock as well. He was aggressive and alive. I liked it.
Later in the week we had a drink at the Brendan Behan pub and while I told myself to take this one slow I also knew it wasn't going to happen. Captain was his real name, he changed it from Robert or something a while ago. He was from Virginia or Kentucky but was obsessed with Halloween and while on a trip to Salem, Mass decided he wanted to live there. Something told me he had issues which made up and moving easy. I knew exactly how that was, after all. We left the bar and went to a hotel, partied like rock stars...and that's pretty much how the relationship went. It wasn't all sex. Like I said he was obsessed with Halloween and the devil and gore which drove me wild. His apartment in Salem was two floors of creepy shit with blood paintings and a cemetery in the backyard (not uncommon in Salem). We watched more horror movies than you can shake a stick at, had expensive dinners, licked each other's tattoos, explored Boston, loved Skynyrd.
Captain talked so fast you could hardly get a word in and when he asked things about me I had short answers but he didn't really listen. He just waited for his turn to talk. He was so crazy and exciting it was fun for a while. I couldn't really call him a real boyfriend but was okay with what it was. After a while the sex became too rough. He'd roll over and sleep with his back to me and when I tried to spoon him he farted. I became annoyed with staring at his tattooed butt while he slept. I became annoyed with his lewd jokes and nose picking and trying to go down on me if I had my period or had just taken a dump. Sometimes you just don't want it. We saw each other once a week or so.
I moved into a different house in the same neighborhood and my bedroom window opened onto a back porch on the second floor. Captain would knock on the window after midnight and crawl inside. It was June and so fucking hot, 100 or hotter for days and days with no air. His sweaty body in my bed became too much. Pretty soon his attitude towards women became all too clear. Not a woman hater but certainly a sadist. Too rough, too much pain. The Captain had a kid back south but clearly just needed to be selfish and was like a big kid. I couldn't handle it.

finish later

ex numero uno (going backwards)

kyle #2

two summers ago when i returned to work from the hospital there had been some new hires. one was a very young massart student. tall and lanky and dark curly hair. i had a small crush on him but everyone did then. very harmless. like a boy scout. i thought nothing of it. too young. i had been in the hospital over my infatuation with a thirty-seven year old man so it was nothing. i was surprised i found someone younger than me attractive at all. early in our friendship he saw me vomit behind a tree after leaping out of our co-worker's car. the winter after that he was in france and it was only when he was gone that the idea of possibly even started to show up in my mind. when he came back with giant curly hair i shrieked and fawned over him, only half-seriously. he was so nice and normal, completely untouched by popular culture. like he grew up without a tv and was home-schooled or something...but not in that creepy/socially retarded way.
our friendship grew over 2009 as i was fucking around with whoever but when the fall came i realized that i genuinely LIKED him. i couldn't think of a thing i didn't like. working saturdays was so awesome, looked forward to it all week. sometimes i'd say something coy or tried to get it out there without being too direct, but any half-assed attempts to show anything were politely shot down. i'm sure he saw me as 1)his boss, 2)too old, 3)risque. because all three were true. his arms were thin but kind of muscle-y. his white tshirts were so innocently transparent that i'd have to look away. there was a halloween party at my house and he came and stayed later than anyone. we sat in my room drinking and tattooing. i'd been bugging him for a while to tattoo me and that night when we sat cross-legged on the floor across from each other and he held my wrist up on his knee with both hands to tattoo it i felt "the feeling". not in a sexual way, but in a way that my heart started pounding in my chest and i couldn't breathe. so pure. like in a movie. i couldn't believe i hadn't felt it before.
we'd hang out a lot more. i got him into the cure and depeche mode. we'd hang out alone, watching movies and shit. sometimes he'd just fuck around with instruments and i'd lay around and watch. i drew him a picture, which is a huge thing for me. it was like crazy best friend shit. when we'd sit on the couch or floor and he'd tattoo my wrist i'd ever so slightly stroke the palm of his hand. when we started to go to the symphony i think i caught him looking at me a certain way. still nothing happened.
i think in january i slept on the couch at his place and we both lay awake in the dark in different places, considering. talking about it later, oh yes, it was too strange, we couldn't be like that, let's not talk about it again, silly. then one night we were laying side by side on my bed on our stomachs like a couple of kids looking at my old foreign coin collection listening to sigur ros or something, half-drunk, and he slung his arm over my back. i think i made a sound like "huuuuuhhhh......." and he pulled me into spooning, teasing that in the past i'd casually mentioned that spooning at any time would be acceptable. i think doves flew out of my chest.
just spooning that night, that was all. soon after that the same thing happened at his house, but i turned on my stomach and kept my face close to his, half-mashed in the pillow, staring at him until he kissed me. sex came within days, i believe. at my house, almost naked, i was terribly hilarious. on top of him, about to shimmy my underpants off(or down around the ankles would have worked, too) i got very serious and confessed that i had a secret, that i wasn't...all...woman...down there. and i think he was going to just roll with it. of course it was a hilarious lie. i am a terrible bitch.
the sex wasn't bad at all. i'd suspected he was a virgin before, but then changed my mind. he'd just been burned badly in the past and hadn't touched a girl in years. sex face to face with someone for the first time, someone who'd been like your best friend was almost too much, i really enjoyed being on our sides, hearing him breathe behind me like i've never heard him breathe before, hands on my hips, pushing against me. i lived on the top floor of a veggie co-op on a hillside in jp, a hippie/gay/dominican-populated area in boston. my bed (a hand-me-down futon, possibly just a mattress on the floor at that time) was under the window with just a solid view of the moon, nothing in the way.
no one at work suspected a thing. my last night in boston we went to a raw restaurant for dinner with the coop, i became ill with nerves. spent the night in intervals of restless sleep and vomiting. he tried to comfort me. in the morning we went to pick up the rental car, packed it and said goodbye outside his house. we said we loved each other, which was true. i cried while driving. for a long time i knew i'd move to chicago. what happened was terrible timing but i wonder if it really was. if it had happened sooner i may not have moved...and it was my time to move. we may have had a long and messy breakup. this way there wasn't a chance. for two months we talked on the phone every night, phone sex sometimes which i'd never done before. i saw him during a layover he had at midway at the end of march, just hugging for twenty minutes. after that, sometime in april? he told me it was too difficult. we didn't have a plan, you know, just this surprise thing that happened right before i moved. he said he couldn't come visit me in chicago as a lover. i hung up and we haven't talked since then. he graduated college and moved to providence, doesn't have a friend there. much like the boat i was in when i moved here. it hurt to ignore him knowing he was so alone and how hard it is as i'd just done it and he had been there for me, on the phone every night. we've written letters twice though. i want to stay his friend even if it hurts, we'd been friends long before the little romantic blip at the end. he's just a fantastic person, doesn't even know the meaning of a one night stand. so different from any other guy i've met. i'm sure when he does date again it'll be someone really awesome, some innocent girl who doesn't wear makeup and would rather make stained glass than go to bars. i sincerely hope he's happy whatever he's doing.