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.

angry

there's no denying it. i'm a dirt-worshipping tree-hugger. i've seen the video of crazy hippies crying and praying in the forest to logged trees and it did make me chuckle. there's a kind of extremely lame and obnoxious hippie out there that everyone has probably come in contact with. i don't really fit in there.

my job is making me vegetarian again, slowly. i've never seen so much dead meat in my life. sometimes in the walk-in cooler there's giant ribs stacked to the ceiling. when you work in a pretty well-known rib place there's gonna be meat everywhere. i don't know the quality of life of the animals before they come to us. the boss buys pretty quality/expensive stuff but i'm not sure if that means anything. i've enjoyed eating meat for most of my life. i don't hate people who do. right now, for me, i can't do it without being disgusted. last month i had food poisoning, which probably has part to do with it. my stomach is still sensitive and most food turns me off. i get hungry but every little thing turns me off. ehhhh.

my sister is having a baby. my cousin is getting married. my other cousin is having another baby. i don't quite feel like a mutant, accepting that i'm in no place to be married or have a kid right now, but it does widen the gap of me vs. family. or, people i'm related to. i have trouble using the word family. there's no bad feelings, i just cannot get close to people. sometimes i feel a hum when i'm with my parents or sister, knowing we have the same blood. i just cannot get close to people. most people. even those i date. sometimes i end up looking at them like i don't even know who they are. but that's a story for another day.
tomorrow is my 27th birthday. so i've been alive for 27 years, entering my twenty eighth year of livin'. i get strange and down during this time of the summer, trying to ignore that as in this fairly new relationship.
he asks me what i want for my birthday.
i don't want a computer, camera, clothes, stuff. there was a point, even like four years ago, where i'd like something brand spanking new. a new tech thing. something to make me feel cool and more in tune with city-living. i watched mtv religiously as a teenager and felt totally inadequate all the time. it's taken a while but i just. don't. care. anymore.
if a guy would surprise me with a shopping spree i'd probably dump his ass pretty fast.
not trying to "hate" on people, women, people who care about cute shoes or whatever new apple product there is. but if they're drowning in shallow treats to ignore the deeper, more natural ache they feel, trying to fill a void with stuff...i can't be down with that. and i don't know how to fill that void. i have a huge hole blasted through the middle of myself. but clothes, expensive haircuts, and cameras only remind me of the natural resources abused to get them. labor, oil, dyes, chemicals. it makes me feel dirty. i'm trying to get by in the city knowing that everything i touch and use daily, someone/thing else has suffered as a result of.

i don't really want anything for my birthday, but i love the dude for wanting to please me. i wonder if he's been on edge since the coke fiasco. fiasco meaning i left a party when there was a chance it was around and when he came home hours later admitting he'd done it, sweating and slurring and breathing too shallow/fast, i snapped.
make no joke about it, i hate coke with a passion. i can't explain why. i think it's dirty, gross, and people who do it are lame hipsters or bloated scumbags. i've also had friends/dated people who do it. while it makes me uncomfortable, everyone is their own person. gotta just let them live. i take prescriptions to keep from having a nervous breakdown and blowing my head off and some people might think that makes me weak. some people hate prescription meds because of how they're tossed around like candy and can just make people worse. but i won't date someone who does coke all the time. nuh uh. on a rare occasion i get wasted, want to party and go balls-out. but doing that often, even every weekend just screams "i have issues". i can't respect people who do that. i'm not in a place right now where i get drunk many times a week. maybe the time will come again. but right now i just can't handle that kind of destruction, or in someone i date.
so the coke thing only happened once.

right now just trying to figure shit out. i'm 27, unskilled and morose. i like teeth. i'd go to dental school. i also have a need to help right now. i'd like to take this fall and go down to the gulf and help, doing whatever. i'm also interested in WOOFING.
though that doesn't pay...and i'm not sure it should.

ah, i feel better from just writing things down. thanks, blog.

mud

wrasslin'
no?
ok.

new

http://laurabm.carbonmade.com/

trying to start this. tough as i don't have a computer of my own.

wuv

box 5

i think this month is trying to kill me. at least it's an interesting ride. the first of the month was the cobra skulls show. it was a possibility that one of the bands needed a place to crash and as i live close to the beat kitchen, sure. turns out they didn't but as i was one of the last few people at the bar waiting for them, neil hennessey was around too. i've never talked to the guy so i figured why not? it was nice. nothing flirtatious about it. i was sober at that point. talked about some historical chicago stuff. when that bar closed we went over to blue light, which is open until 5 on sat. good god. i can never remember which one gets really clubby after two, underbar or blue light. err, it's blue light. it was practically impossible to have a conversation. we were at the bar, he had a stool and i didn't and as more people packed in i got elbowed to standing inbetween his knees, blushing and fumbling for words. he's obviously a fucking babe but i didn't want him to think i was just trying for a hook up. it's surprising to meet someone so normal, not pretentious at all. god knows i'd been here 2 months without a friend and enjoyed the chatting.

there comes a point when you've been hanging out and drinking and laughing and get the long smile and pause...and the next few hours could go one way or another. after jogging in the rain towards my house i panicked, commented that he lived the other way, and we split.

in a perfect world, ahh.

well, a few days after that i heard about this free JBTV show and i'd never heard dead to me so i figured why not? afterwards chicken chased me down the block asking for a light and why i was "leaving so soon". as the show was over what else would i be doing? we didn't hang out that night but he was texting me like crazy and i just ate it up. i like agressive dudes. the texts slowed down after a week or so but i was pretty sure there'd be an interesting encounter at the sub. dude seemed so into me before, so briefly.

so, i was totally wrong. not only did we not hang out but he seemed replused by me. he said hi once but then ran away, then if i saw him in the club he looked right through me. so obviously i didn't approach him again. and man, that's one of the worst feelings. that hot feeling on the back of your neck, embarrassed and stupid. i don't know what happened but he changed his mind about me fast, and that's ok...i just wish i knew before the show so i didn't feel so stupid and ashamed during. the sets were great but my night was totally ruined. afterwards i went down to the bar just in case, so i would know for sure. i also felt like fighting. just ended up getting hit on by a bouncer. then while i was biking home some drunk dude outside a bar started yelling how he hated bikers and throwing shit at me. i just cried the whole ride home.

i know dudes in bands can be flakey but this put me over the edge. too bad they're not all hennessey. that's all i have to say about that.

i got a job this month, have been hanging out with people, things are going ok. i guess you could say the long-distance relationship i was in hanging by it's last thread just snapped. right before i moved to chicago i started something up with a friend of mine. we never settled anything, just talked on the phone every night, knowing it would dissapate soon enough. and it did. aside from that relationship i hardly remember what i was like in boston. things done changed.

i'm just an angry person now. i know that. boston was so pretty and there were hippies and things in jp had a flow. here it's all litter and people are cruel. things are ugly. this is the right place for me right now, making me tough.

gustave

this is how my cat sleeps. flat on his back with a smile on his face sometimes, leg twitching. he has half a tail, four fingers of a stub that wags like a dog. at a certain time of the night he gets his "friskies" where he runs up and down the hallway attacking anything that moves, like my leg.
i still don't have a job and only slightly worried about it. been drinking stale beer in the middle of the day, not showering and eating a lot of corn dogs. i don't think brendan kelly eats corn dogs (often) but other than that he's probably doing the same things. wah wahhh. no, seriously, that guy is married with two dogs and two kids. i only have to support my hand-rolling american spirit smoke habit. i'm most likely going to end up working for a strip club, not as a dancer, entertainer or even a topless waitress. no, really, i tried out for this job. promoting the club. and maybe waitressing. that means i get to wear a lot of make-up, should start wearing a bra (nooo!), and deal with the horny underbelly of the city. uhm, yes? i cannot work in a cubicle. yes, i want to go to dental school eventually but somehow that feels different. will find out this week. should be interesting.
gotta get some fucking food.