I don’t look a day over 31!!!
Category Archives: Ah, Regrets
Happy National Bummer Day
Somehow I missed my eighth anniversary of my blog two days ago. I guess I was only thinking about it this morning, on the eighth anniversary of the National Bummer. I think this is a good sign. My blog is like a person that will always be around, unless it isn’t, and I can abuse it and take advantage of it terribly. Of course I would never treat a real person like this, but somehow this site has become corporeal for me, at least in my head–a collection of lips and assholes and squishy things and dead baby jokes and issues with comma placement. I imagine it as a seething mass in the sun like something in the corner of an unrealized Dali painting.
I will tell you, in year eight, the real reason I started my blog in the first place. I fell in love in 2001. Wrong time and wronger person. I don’t regret it. I would tell you that story, but it is like every time people fall in love. I realize now that this was a major nail in the coffin of my marriage. There were lots of nails before 2001, and I wasn’t always swinging the hammer. There were more nails after. Every day in a marriage is the Beginning of the End unless you can manage to shut the fuck up and go to sleep.
Being in love affects people in different ways, and it’s different every time, don’t you think? I fell in love and since it was so wrong it made me realize how lonely I was, in my marriage, and in my life. This is a cliche, I know, but sometimes we have to live them. Some of my most affecting moments have been cliches, because we have to step though the collection of human experiences, right?
I knew could use this as a confessional for all the horrible things I had done to those I loved, and those I did not, when what was behind the words was how desperately sad I was. Then I got less sad. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that will happen when you are 24. I kept going and then it was about my life, or a version of it anyhow. I was finding out things about myself and slicing away at all the layers. Unfortunately bullshit usually grows back almost as quickly as you can hack away at it.
Let’s have an exit interview or something, though no one is leaving.
What has happened in eight years? I suppose I could rattle off a summary or timeline of major events. I have gotten paid to write some, and in theory I am somewhat better now, but I’m not sure. It’s different. I have had low quiet battles with desperate scrabbling bitches, many of whom do not have websites anymore, through no effort of mine. Some people like me more and some people like me less, caused in large part by these words. I will leave it at: I am older.
What is this blog about? This blog is about being in love with words and yourself and other people, and also being very lonely, sometimes all at once. What I am learning is that, yes, we are always lonely, or at least alone, and it’s about how we deal with that. People leave us, feelings leave us, ultimately we are with ourselves. These words are part of me. This blog is about being with myself.
Is the author more or less of an asshole now? More, but I am better at hiding it and feigning remorse now. Also, slightly more reflective about things. The author is still smug about not carrying ads, though nowadays this is like being smug about not ever wearing pants. WELL DONE, EVERYONE KNOWS YOU’RE MENTAL AND NO ONE CARES.
What has this blog achieved for the writer? Catharsis. Paid work, sometimes. A skeleton for my crowded closet. Ego boosts and ego demolition. This blog has NOT gotten me laid. I hustle like a three legged donkey, I know. I am less lonely now, and more okay with times that I am. It is a little thread out into the universe of people all living their cliches, so thanks for that. Thanks for reading.
Say You Believe Just How Easy It Is To Please Me
Today I am wearing a flannel shirt I have had since high school. I had quite a few then, because remember grunge? That was awesome. I stole it from my stepfather’s closet. I remember walking into JC Penney’s and seeing the sign hanging over the teen section: GRUNGE. Pre-shredded for your convenience. This shirt is the only soldier left from what used to be a whole army of shredded/plaid/hideous clothes.
One time I was in the car with my mom and she looked back at me in the rear view mirror and narrowed her eyes. “You are always wearing flannel shirts now,” she observed. “Do you want people to think you’re a lesbian or something?” I looked down at my thrift store flannel, which was covered by a plaid men’s hunting coat that had a pink triangle button affixed to it.
“YES!” I thought to myself. “I must be doing something right!”
Later that winter I got drunk for the first time at a party somewhere in the suburbs of Chicago. I was spending the weekend at my grandparents’ house and my aunt was home from college and offered to take me to this party on the condition I could keep my fucking trap shut (I could). My aunt was only five years older than I was, the baby sister of my stepfather. She was like a cool older sister to me, and introduced me to concepts such as The Cure and giant 80s hair.
We climbed into her red Fiero and zoomed off to a house whose owners had foolishly left for the weekend, leaving their young adult children behind. As soon as we walked in, someone stuck a Lynchburg lemonade into my hand, which I quickly followed with five more. I sat around with my aunt’s friends, trying to be cool and maintain since they were all at least college-aged. I didn’t want to be the kid who party fouled and everyone hated. “She’s cool,” my aunt kept saying, which was part assurance to the other party goers and what I suspect was partly a reminder to me. Be cool.
My head started spinning and I blacked out. The last thing I remember was someone passing me some pot and taking a deep inhale, another first. My aunt watched me with a glazed smile on her face. I suspect it didn’t have much of an effect, considering how trashed I was and the fact that it was my first time. I didn’t cough like a noob though, since I was regularly nicking smokes out of my mother’s purse and was just a few months away from buying my own packs.
[Aside: A year or so prior I had alienated some of my friends during a casual conversation late at night at the park by admitting that I would try pot if it was offered to me. I had made early decisions about drugs I would try and drugs I would not try, and I was sticking to it. A couple of years later the girl who had slagged me the hardest ended up doing acid at school every day for a month until she got caught. Life is like this sometimes.]
When I came to, I was standing in the kitchen eating bread straight out of the bag. I was starved. “You drank too fast,” one of my aunt’s friends said. “Classic beginner’s mistake.”
“What happened?” I said.
“You threw up in the bushes and a little on the patio. Someone hosed it off already.” She stuck a glass of water in my hand.
“Ah,” I said, feeling partly ashamed for being a guest who puked and partly amazed that I had disappeared for a while. Where had I gone? What had I said? Was I nice? I had a scratch on my arm, presumably from the bushes.
“Where’s my aunt?” I said. I was told she was off with someone whose name I didn’t recognize. I suppose I could have been introduced to him. A small circle of college girls surrounded me there in the kitchen, sizing me up, looking at my hair and my clothes. I looked down to see I was still wearing my coat with my pink triangle on it. Closer in to Chicago, people actually knew what it meant.
“Your aunt’s slept with almost everyone here, you know,” one informed me out of the blue. I did not know that. “Including the women.”
After a couple of awkward starts with high school boys, my secret was that I was dating my first-ever woman. She had a job and a motorcycle and an apartment, all facts which never ceased to amaze me. I was astounded that I seemed to have something in common with my aunt, who wore at least two inches of makeup daily, a string of messy-haired boyfriends who were often on BMXes, slathered herself with baby oil and broiled herself outside in the summer in neon bikinis, and would never be caught dead in the dykey coat I was wearing. She was like the poster child for straight young women everywhere, or so I thought. Were there different ways to be gay? I had no idea. The women I had met through my girlfriend seemed decidedly more wash and wear.
Could I talk with her about any of this? I didn’t think so. My mother had already told me I would grow out of being gay and being an atheist. I knew that what I did and thought and felt was supposed to be a shameful secret, and should be kept from my stepfather at all costs. Would my aunt tell him? I didn’t know.
Later as I was alone sobering up and dozing on a couch an older guy who had been kind of macking on me all night came in and made half-assed attempts to fool around with me, which I found amusing and somewhat annoying. One of the women who had appointed themselves my protector in the mysterious absence of my aunt stuck her head into the living room.
“STEVE. She is fifteen!”
“Oh, whoops,” Steve said.
“How old are you?” I asked him.
“Twenty-three.”
“BYEEE,” I said.
My aunt reappeared around 4 a.m., cheery and without explanation.
“Heard you barfed,” she said. “Hang on, I have to get ready for the drive home.”
My aunt whipped out some coke and did a few lines in the bathroom. “Want some?” she said, holding out a little straw.
“No, thanks,” I said. So much no. Coke was on my No list. She drove me home as the sun rose, Violator banging out of the giant speakers behind the seats of the Fiero and my mind raced as I tried to fall asleep. I had smoked pot! Some guy had felt my jailbaity ass up! My aunt was a gay coke snorter with friends who evidently resented her! That party, like most in high school, was an accelerated education in how weird the adult world could be, and different ways to have a double life, something I was already refining.
Fresh to Death in spite of unpoppable collar.
P.wned
A couple of nights ago P. and I were squabbling over, I swear, the order eggs should go into the fridge and how to tell if they were older or newer. For some reason I was getting louder and louder until I was shouting! Over something SO STUPID! I took a breath and I heard a voice though the window from outdoors:
“HEY, WHO’S WINNING?”
It was our hobos who always wander the neighborhood, chatting to us and being friendly. I was so embarrassed my mouth snapped shut.
“Who does that? Who SHOUTS through WINDOWS like that?” I said a couple of minutes later.
“They are probably from the Midwest,” P. said.
It took a couple of seconds, then the ice burn sunk in. GOOD DAY SIR.
I See My Reputation Precedes Me
11:13 AM Ruby: Whats up?
 me: Helloo
 Ruby: good day to you!
 me: I met a hot guy!
Ruby: what is his disability?
 me: OH LOL
 Ruby: :-)
 me: WOW ice burn
 Awesome
This is basically the problem with opening up to people.
So it seems I am remiss in my comment approving duties. No Offenses! I just wandered off. I have been wanged by hormones.
Also it is important for you to know that I got my Hot Tip published in my local gay rag!! Lookit July 1! Hooray I finally saw something gross at a bus stop.
In Which I, Asshole, Gain Vengeance
I was having one of those periods where I felt like everything was slipping through my fingers—that I couldn’t get a hold on anything. I was working constantly, doing evictions and digging trenches. It was ungodly hot, even for Illinois in July, which was scrambling my brain further. I was living in my first apartment, which was cheap, and clean, but a hole, with neighbors who did not enjoy hearing KMFDM through the walls at midnight, oddly. My family wasn’t speaking to me and I was on shaky ground with my remaining friends, who were sort of horrified at what I seemed to be transforming into.
It’s funny how periods like that get burned into your mind. Some things are lost from then, thank god. But I can remember the exact layout of that apartment down to the fixtures and the pattern of the tiles. Makes sense, really, as I spent enough time on the tiles. Rice for breakfast, beer for dinner, sometimes the other way around. On payday there was sweet and sour chicken, Boone’s Farm, and a pack of Marlboro menthols, and for a few months this was all I wanted out of life.
This was the summer I was horribly, fatally afflicted with poison ivy, which I deservedly got fooling around on my live-in boyfriend in some unfamiliar woods. I think I have mentioned this before, but it is worth saying again, when I get poison ivy, it does not go away. EVER. Steroids will knock it out, as it turned out, but when you are scraping so hard it is a daunting thing to even think about seeing a doctor.
So I was vaguely out of it, covered in a rash and various swellings, and working in the sun every day. Finally I ponied up to see a doctor who took pity on me and cut his fee once I told him I had been afflicted for six weeks. He prescribed me some generic steroids and I was on the road to recovery. I slept without a fever for the first time in two weeks, which was heavenly in our 90-degree non-air conditioned apartment.
I had been spending a lot of time with one of my oldest friends, who was letting me couch surf at her house that winter once my parents kicked my useless ass out. I finished high school and got the apartment, and we still hung out a lot. She, my boyfriend, and I were a tight threesome, and often our other roommate would hang with us too, which was somewhat awkward because the two of them had dated and he had moved on and was entertaining female guests with power tools and vegetables.
I went out of town, abruptly, and when I returned the predictable happened, considering how sloppily and drunkenly we were leading our lives at the time. I put my things down in the room I shared with my boyfriend and found a woman’s ring on my bedside table. I picked it up; it was bits of shell set into a silver band and recognized it as one of the rings my old friend had been wearing in the past couple of weeks.
I slipped it onto my finger and it was tiny like she was; she had small bones, delicate tapering fingers, long limbs. I had spent my whole life feeling awkward and large around her. When we played, she always made me be the boy, which I didn’t mind. She was always the boss and got shirty if I tried to decide what we were going to do, play, eat. I have always been happiest as a follower.
The ring gave me a strange feeling as it sat on my pinky. I wasn’t angry or surprised. I just had a cold, sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach. All I could think was that I had known her since I was five and the sheets hadn’t even been changed. I saw her little freckled face in my mind with her braids, tan, eating ice cream and us running away from her annoying little sisters. Now her face was hard, angular, and her hair was short after her mother’s sudden aneurisms and death our senior year. She was sleeping with everyone and it never lasted longer than a couple of weeks, and my roommate told me why.
I knew this situation was coming to an end. I wasn’t getting anywhere and had to find another way. I left the ring on and it amused me somehow to wear it throughout the week as I threw people’s shit into garbage bags and got blisters on top of my blisters.
Friday was coming around again and payday was coinciding with yet another party. Sometimes it was one group of friends or another, but this time it was to be a mix. People I knew from high school came, my boyfriend’s friends came, and our roommate’s as well.
The party was in full swing and I was working on polishing off my second bottle of Boone’s Farm Sangria (sophisticated), had a stomach full of fluorescent sauce, and was sucking down cigarettes like there was no tomorrow. This was after my rapid fire series of unfortunate head injuries and I was often feeling a little off, especially while drinking. Did this stop me from drinking? It did not.
Finally my old friend had drifted over to the couch, next to me. It was a fine couch from our roommate’s parents’ basement and had scratchy upholstery that dusty rumpus room smell to it. He had drilled holes in the back of it and we had stuck the lawn decorations I had stolen from the neighborhood when I had gotten bored during a party we had thrown a few weeks ago. Plastic spinny daisies and flamingoes looked down on me where I was slumped, exhaling cloud after cloud of smoke.
As I was wondering if she had noticed her ring was missing, I was also noticing the corners were starting to bend. The spins were coming on and I knew I had about five minutes before I blew my stack, ten before I was face down somewhere.
“So,†I said, turning to her and slurring through the malt liquor to be heard over Lords of Acid. “Have you been looking for your missing ring?â€
“What?†she said in a genuinely confused way. No one was paying attention to us; people were shouting or laughing or dancing.
I put my cigarette in my mouth and held up my right hand. Her eyes widened. She knew the look on my face and that I was serious. My mouth started watering and the time to get up and hit the bathroom or the bushes would have been right then. I saw the window close in my mind.
“Oh,†she said, trying to emulate the expression of the remorseful. “Sorry.â€
“It’s okay, I know it won’t happen again.†I said, putting out my cigarette.
“Why’s that?†she said.
“Everyone knows you’re a lousy fuck.â€
I moved as if to get up and leaned over her lap, letting go two bottles of Boone’s farm and a takeout container of sweet and sour swimming in pink sauce into her lap. I was a horrible vomit waterfall. I could actually see the pineapple in her lap, on her skirt. I got up and staggered to the bedroom and closed the door. My sleep was uninterrupted and untroubled.
Heartbroke’d But Still Loc’d
Tonight is the end-of-the-year school picnic and do you even have to ask? Hells yes I am dreading the CRAP out of it. Awkward conversation with people I usually avoid? YEAH SIGN ME UP. But Strudel is singing and this is Franny’s last hurrah at the school, so I feel obligated.
Strudel has been positively Satanic lately. A couple of nights ago her father, who I am getting along very well with since I know you are wondering and who shall be henceforth referred to as P., ahem, put her to bed without reading to her since she was being crazy naughty. She was quite distraught and stood at the top of her stairs screaming down.
Eventually she climbed into bed, and all was well until about 2 a.m. when she woke up and began emitting an ear-piercing scream until I came in to see what the ruckus was.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
“I am still mad because Dad didn’t read to me!”
“What, you woke up and were so furious you had to scream? It is the middle of the night.”
She looked at me with Bambi eyes and a quivery lip. I actually understand waking up furious.
“All right, want to get into bed with me?” She nodded.
The next morning she was still sleeping when I left and I told P. what was going on. He talked to her later after I left.
“It is not nice for you to scream in the middle of the night like that and wake your mother up,” he said. “You should apologize to your mother when you see her tonight.”
“Well, you did not read to me,” she said. “So you should apologize to Mom for making me scream.”
OH SNAP. I got the evil twin.
Strudel is singing tonight for a moving on ceremony before the picnic. Will post video later. Also, on Friday I wrote about Literal Video and forgot to tell you. I am still getting back into this filthy habit.
Three things I am all about today:
Also sitting in my office in the dark with my hood up and listening to Chet Baker. EEEEMMOOOO
Nothing new here, just thought you should know what is on repeat. Have a good night. Ruby is getting me drunk at the picnic. I am unashamed. I will relate the inappropriate things I say later.
UPDATE! 8:24 p.m. A fun time was had by no one.
Strudel did not sing, and refused to stand with the other children, so there are no pictures.
Sample dialogue:
“SJ! I haven’t seen you in forever! You look–”
“Drunk?”
“I was going to say ‘great,’ but okay!”
I Have 33,996 Spam Comments and Am Waiting for Vodka and Tizer
Dear Goddam Diary,
Yesterday I felt SO funny because I have been wanged by my occasional inner ear vertigo and I got so desperately nauseous I took some Dramamine. You cannot spell Dramamine without DOOM or something, because it knocks me out every time. The struggle to stay awake on the bus and the resulting stoned feeling can only be compared to huffing glue out of empty Mountain Dew soda cans while no one is paying attention in the back of sixth period art, or SO I HEAR.
This made me think of my art class, of course, where I met one of my high school boyfriends in a haze of glue and bad thrift store polyester. The short version is that we had a great summer relationship and saw lots of concerts and ate a lot of fried meat. It is notable that this is the first summer I experienced vertigo, as well, which came after a quick secession of head injuries. Can’t complain, though really, because some people (me)Â think that uneven pupils are FASHION.
He moved away, and we broke up, and I carried on with my last year of high school, which involved continuing my mission to turn myself into a human pincushion. WHAT? It was the ’90s. In a previous episode I recounted my absolutely ignorant and boneheaded attempt at getting my nipple pierced. After this failed attempt I had my nose pierced by a proper shop in Colorado and knew what to look for after that–or so I thought.Â
I decided to go for the ultimate badass hard-to-the-core piercing. YES. I would get a hole popped in my junk drawer. I called up a local shop that was less scary crusty old tattooed dude, and more “hey we’re so hip” and made sure they did it properly with needles. Another bonus: unlike Chicago shops I knew they would not card me. I brought a friend with me for moral support, another lonely young punk who I would drive around with for hours, listening to Damaged and throwing bottles at people out the window.
We showed up at the appointed time and the shop looked clean and the hole-pokers were friendly. My friend sat with me by my head like I was having a baby on a bad TV show.
“Okay,” the dude said. “I have to tell you I’ve had training on this, but have not actually done this piercing.” I shrugged.
“Go for it,” I said.
In the end, it went well and was a really standard and good piercing which healed well. Months later I moved to Seattle, and was happy to have a fresh break. My ex-boyfriend who I had spent the previous summer with was making noises about moving to Seattle and getting back together, which horrified me. We parted on good terms, but I had lived through probably my worst year ever, and I wanted something new. My roommate, who had developed a friendship with him and what looked like a fatal crush on him, invited him to move in with the caveat he would sleep in her room. Fabulous! My ex-boyfriend, who was clingy and whiny on a GOOD day, was going to be underfoot constantly.
After kind of avoiding serious conversation for the first few days he finally cornered me late one night about getting back together. It was already midnight and I was sunburnt and wiped from sightseeing in Seattle in August, the only reasonable month here. What should have been a ten-minute conversation turned into one that lasted HOURS. I watched snails and slugs ooze across the sidewalk and up and down the walls outside our apartment and considered what a terrible metaphor it was for the conversation I was currently mired in. I could not be moved; no, I did not want to try dating again. I smoked constantly, incessantly, a habit I had not yet kicked and one he hated, to keep a barrier between the two of us.
He cried. He was always a crier, which, fine, but it was a little disconcerting sometimes. Once he had shown up at my house, completely unbidden, in full face Eric Draven makeup (I know, WAT). I look back now and realize he was kind of a proto emokid.
Finally, I had squashed any last hope he had about our reunion and rejected any limits he tried to set on my activities, dating or otherwise. He sniffled and said, “Well, can I ask you something at least?”
“What.” I was tired as fuck and thought I could hear the birds waking up.
“I…uh…I heard so much about your new piercing.”
“Yes?” I said, staring at him through a screen of angrily-exhaled smoke.
“Wellll, can I see it at least?”
My only answer was to grind out my last cigarette and bang back into the apartment.
Â
IN OTHER MF NEWS
Maybe I’m in your Really Simple Stalkzors, I dunno, but I am also resuming Blogher today at some point. The article is written, I just have to mark it up and publish it. I will link later, since friends who have my back more than I have my own (read: lazy) think I should pimp more.
Also on my list is NEW BANNER YEAH BOOOOY.
Squares Don’t Seem to Understand Why I Flip
Blossom Dearie died. Crap. I have been so about her lately. It kind of makes me want to check up on every other musician I have ever loved. I am kind of glad I couldn’t get to sleep, though I am going to feel like crap tomorrow. And guess what? I have been snookered into going to an AUCTION MEETING. Advisory only, I swear.
I am going to post pics tomorrow. Here’s a preview. It’s me running my fucking mouth because I can’t stop talking for 19 seconds.
Also, Franny finally learned to ride her bike before she turned twenty. Phew.
Dudes
I have two things to tell you. One, after months of jonesing, I am finally listening to my very own Blossom Dearie CD. It’s really the little things. She makes my brane melt a little.
TWO my boss called me a bad swear today. My boss is the IRL version of Steve Carrell. I am quite sinsur. Also my coworker told me today she’s packing a heater. I don’t want to know these things. No I do not.
Three. (Bonus Round) I also got a Diana Krall CD of standards that I somehow missed in the last couple of years. There is something about her now. Something disconcertingly Sinatralike. I love Sinatra, but I don’t know if I need another one in my life.
Four. Mr. Klassy is coming back! He is laying eggs! MR. KLASSY COME HOME. ALL IS FORGIVEN. I am going to drive to his farmhome on Saturday and get her. Apparently she was a bit of a pariah. Polishes are really mellow birds, so I am not too surprised in hindsight. I offered my friends my dudlike Buttercups, but shockingly they declined. The Buttercups are laying now and they make smallish white eggs. Anyone want some fucking buttercups?
FIVE I had to work up to Franny’s bedtime, so I said hi to her when I came home. She went all babymush on me and stuck her arms out and said MAMA. I said, “Come on kid,” and she climbed into my bed, where she is snoring right now. She was at her dad’s for a week after Xmas and that makes her all weird.
Six. Speaking of weird, the threads continue to unravel. Have you ever put on an outfit that you are pretty sure is a bad idea, but you really want to wear it so you do it anyway? Dig if you will the picture, of pants too large and a top slightly too small and socks that keep falling down. You are fidgeting at your pants to keep them up and OH the socks are itchy and what’s this? The bastardy shirt flips up over your muffintop. This is bad. Did your bra strap just break? What the fuck?
I am feeling a little bit like that about life lately. I get one goo ball up and five more fall down. All this preamble is to tell you that I lost it a little in a sad fashion in the store I work in. I have this history with dogs. We’ve never gotten along too well. I realized recently, now that I have been running, that the feeling of unease I get when a dog is coming is fear. Problem: there are approximately 4.9 dogs to every human in Seattle. People in Seattle deem it appropriate to bring dogs into GROCERY STORES here. So of course people bring dogs into the store where I work.
It was all over the place, too. I felt totally trapped. Non-swearing boss asked me if I was okay, because apparently I turned white and started shaking. I had to step outside. The best part was that the dog was one of those floor sweepers that weighed about five pounds. I am now afraid of things that weigh less than my own head. I am officially crackers.
There, I said it. I just became a Larry David character. I predict that Kleenex box hands are about a year out. Spazzychow out.