milk

Loneliness is waking up late, past noon, even without the fault of Daylight Savings time coming in to play, and walking to the grocery store because you don’t have any milk to pour on your cereal, and you are replaying the events of the night before, the things that led to the hangover, recalling the disinterest of two boys you had a crush on, and just feeling like shit, gray weather, and you have to walk past all these couples strolling down Grand Street on a Sunday afternoon in early spring arm in arm. Yes, that is what loneliness is.

I still feel like crap, am not all there, blew off an opportunity to make easy money that just required jacking off because of this hangover, because of this malaise, am wondering if I am capable of connecting to other human beings, pretty much knowing the answer to that question, and wondering why that is the case, why I will always be in that role of the person passing these couples, never in their position, seeing the dejected, disheveled person buying a small thing of milk. Not that that is what I desire, not at all, but their conditioned expressions of intimacy make me long for intimacy nonetheless, albeit in different forms, but I still would like to be close to another, to many human beings. Even the friendships I have now here in this town lack intimacy. There is this distance that does not seem to be able to crossed. I have lots of friendships on the most casual level, but no one I can really talk to on the phone for hours, no one I can even talk to in person for hours without my eyes wandering away from their story, or their eyes from mine.

And why is that I am listening to the Smiths in this mood? Why am I even asking that? Duh, because I am in this mood and I don’t know why but there are these songs, these recorded sounds I can put on and feel a little better about this melancholy. Anything is better with a soundtrack.

The events that I was replaying in my head as I went out for milk, they came in flashes of shame out of sequence – I don’t know how to recreate that:

It just really sucks when you like someone and they don’t like you. I mean, it sucks when people that you don’t like don’t like you. It is all the more painful, and all the more damaging to your ego, when it is someone that for whatever reasons you like. First off, I should explain the setting here, give your mind some details, just the most basic ones for you to imagine these scenes in. This is at my friend Daniel’s house, an extremely casual friend who is the perfect example of what I am talking about with my inability to connect with people. I only talk to him when I see him at bars and he every couple months has parties at his house that I attend and banter with him at. This is how so many of my friendships with people are. But yes, this is at his large apartment in Greenpoint. It is an orange party, where everyone was supposed to wear orange. I know most of his circle of friends and so it was nice to see them and say hi to them all and chat with them briefly over beers in an orange setting. I went there with Paul, who is a new friend and I don’t know if it will ever exceed those boundaries of a polite, casual friendship. I am sort of doubtful that it will. You know when you are first becoming friends with someone and you have yet to develop a level of rapport, of comfort. Conversations are sometimes strained and I think that we have different levels of seriousness, of humor, and if you are not aligned with someone in that respect, then all bets are off. That is something that can never be reconciled.

At the party, I see in a big, orange winter coat, Charlie, the boy I have written about in here, about my crush on him, the boy I have sent drunk Friendster messages to saying I wanted to make out. I am recalling some snippets of conversation exchanged with him and cringing. There were only snippets. Every time I tried to talk to him, and I tried so many times, it was always brief and he found polite and impolite ways of excusing himself after a few sentences. I was in a bouncy, giddy mood because two of my crushes were in the same room with me, and I did not expect to see either of them there and so I was bouncy and giddy and I bounced up to Charlie until he told me to stop. That’s the beginning of my separation from the human community, the first baby steps into this melancholy loneliness. Later our paths crossed again. I made my path intersect his path and we talked some more. “Sorry for harassing you on Friendster.” “No, don’t be sorry. I don’t mind being harassed online. I just don’t like being harassed in person.” The steps into that other world are no longer baby steps. I am taking giant leaps and bounds, looking back at that other world, wondering why I fail so miserably in it.

The other crush was a party crasher, did not know the people and so his entrance was totally surprising for me, especially since I had been nervously anticipating running into Matt, wondering what our first interaction would be like after that drunken sexual encounter of a week or so ago. After I gave him that blowjob, I played with that as the setup for a short story and the crux of the story being the two’s next encounter in public and how both of them were wondering if they should apologize and how both were hoping that the other wouldn’t apologize, that just by saying that, a simple “sorry about the other night,” that that would make the encounter into something shameful. The entire story, which, of course, never got written, was going to be this tension and guilt in between these two encounters. That they would bookend the story, but the whole story would be about the interpretation of events first solitary and scared about the next interaction with the other character from the story, worrying about how if they had a different reading of events, it could throw your story, your history into total flux.

That was all bullshit and invented melodrama, as pretty much everything I contrive tends to be. Our interaction was so anticlimactic after I had worked out this whole story setup in my head. He was totally wasted and giggly and not there and I talked to him about Singin’ in the Rain, which I had just watched. There was no mention of that night. Anytime I talked to him, I barely had his attention. You would never have known observing our conversation that at one time we were regular sex partners, and perhaps that is good. I don’t know. I still have a gigantic crush on him that I can’t conceal when he is near. I get so giddy and jump a lot, talk faster, get wide-eyed, and so happy.

And when I get green seeing these couples walk down the street, it is not because I want someone to hold my hand also, it is just because I want to be able to sustain that giddy, happy excited feeling I get when I see a crush. It is because way too often, the results aren’t a sustained happiness, but a crushed one, a fucking I am going to take my steel-toed Docs and jump up and down, fucking smash your happiness to pieces. Tell you to walk home without that feeling, take this pathetic feeling and wear that home, loser. It sucks so much how quickly your optimism, your happiness can fade, that you can approach a situation so happy and within moments have perplexed eyebrows as you see your train come to a crashing halt.

I bought some awful Japanese cigarettes on the way home last night because I wanted to do something, to exhaust myself physically. I smoked them against the cold wind blowing on me and sneaked into the McCarren pool park because everytime I had been there it had been magical and I think I was hoping that if I could enact the scene right, I would feel the role, that doing this act would make my night something magical. It kind of did but I think I was too aware of what I was aiming for to enjoy it. I am not sure Paul enjoyed it. He told me earlier in the night that he hates walking.

Today, after I went and got milk for my cereal, I ended up eating a bagel instead.