"here is no why"

just now, i decided to hunt for my dookie album, but while hunting came across the mellon collie album, and let out a big sigh so excited to encounter some friend from high school at the grocery store. wow, i haven't seen you in so long! how are things going? cool, i like the hair.

i whipped out disc one and fucked the computer with it, sliding billy's big cock into the moist, wet, waiting lips of the cd drive. and the computer moaned and as soon as i heard those opening piano chords, so did i. moaning, fuck yeah, whoo!! billy it has been far too long. the album is so so gorgeous, so much more so than i even think i realized in early high school.

billy corgan was one of my first boy crushes. now, he's seems a little too weird, the bald thing has lost its charm and now he just sort of looks like an old frumpy man. but mellon collie is still heavenly. lately i've been thinking about rock stars, and which ones i still have crushes on. many of them are holdovers from high school: 5. anthony kiedis 4. david bowie 3. tommy lee 2. bret michaels 1. dave navarro

i feel like i am not developing emotionally / intelletually / spiritually at all as of late. probably the last couple of months, i have felt this way. that i am perhaps i fear that i am ordinary, just like everyone in a process of devolution. before i thought that it was just stagnancy, but now i am pretty sure that stagnancy is death. constant movement and reaction seems like what life "is". perhaps that is too capitalist/industrialist an idea, that there needs to be constant progress and growth -- that good workers are constantly working. but, i guess i'm a bourgeois pig because i totally agree with that - that there constantly needs to be some dynamic energy. but there is none. i am idling in park, not moving in any direction. even moving in some wrong direction, like getting all excited about neo-nazism or something would be a better state to be in than my current one. like a creek can have sewage running through it and still be fine, but that's only if the creek is flowing, y'know? if the creek is not, if some fallen tree dams it up, than the creek is no longer a creek, it becomes a cesspool. just a big, stinky, stagnant pool of water that smells like shit. and that's me i guess, maybe. the spark is gone. i used to be so easily excitable, almost to the point of being a pollyanna, but lately i sleep until three, watch really crappy tv, play around online, and act so burdened when i have to read a book for my isp.

my mom came home from work tonight and asked me what i did today. i said nothing. you didn't leave the house all day? nope. are you going out tonight? nope. and that's when it hit me: what the fuck am i doing? i did not leave the house once today. i sat inside all day in various positons of repose on various pieces of furniture throughout the house. rebecca asked me if i wanted to go visit maggie ray at work. i said no. sarah called me about five times today, but thanks to caller id, i was able to be super lazy and avoid having to talk to her for hours, and invariably hang out with her. well after my mom alerted me to laziness, i was sort of regretting not doing anything with sarah or rebecca, but not even that much. i am zombie city.

when i was reading ulysses today, i came across an annotation in gifford's book that gave me pause:
9.233 (190.28). Socrates - (469-399 B.C.), the Greek teacher and philospher whose image dominates the dialogues of his student and disciple Plato. He insisted that virtue derives from knowledge and that knowledge was to be pursued through dialectic, in the tensions of dialogue among men.

so, my stagnancy can be attibuted to my lack of social interaction - my failure to engage "in the tensions of dialogue among men." but that, too, has its source - i have no desire, no motivation. to talk to people, or in the more broader sense - just no desire. and i'm remebering another billy, billie joe armstrong saying, "i've got no motivation / where is my motivation..." when i don't even feel like looking for a pair of shoes to check the mail, there is a problem. and i don't know what exactly the problem is, or how to correct it.

and for some non-sixteen-year-old-style-what's-wrong-with-me-thoughts: rebecca has decided that she is not going to go to ny. michael moore was a commentator on cnbc today and that made me happy. i saw blair witch 2 which was pretty goddamn horrible. i still have not found a place to live in ny. i am on page 255 of ulysses. tomorrow is for real going to be a marathon reading day. i masturbated on the bathroom floor this afternoon - for some reason finding comfort in sitting on the cold, one inch by one inch tiles. i drank two dr. peppers and am sort of starting to really like the taste. next thing you know, i'm going to be liking the taste of moutain dew. ish, yeah right, that will never happen. and i could say something about the weather, grounding my experiences within an environmental context, like a good writer, but i honestly have no idea what the weather was like today.

"when masturbation's lost its fun"

please just a little more time. a reprieve. it's all i ask. every morning i do this dance with my alarm clock. it doesn't have a snooze button. it's one of those tiny battery powered travel clocks. to set the alarm, you lift a little button, and to turn it off you push down on that same little button. to set the alarm, you adjust the alarm hand on the clock, which is so so temperamental. i wake up to my alarm, get my lazy ass out of bed, push down the button, and try moving the little hour hand forward just a little - not a lot, i don't want to oversleep. i lift the lever, hoping to go back to bed, but the stupid motherfucking thing starts beepa d beeping. god damn, so i push the button down and try moving it a hair forwards, then lift the button, and more beepa d beeing. fucking shit, i am getting more and more awake -- don't get too concerned about the alarm, you don't want to wake up. me and the alarm haggle over the conditions of my reprieve for a little while more. we come to an agreement and i snuggle back under my covers. mmm, sleep. beepity beep (repeat like 10 million times), and then the dance starts all over again. i get about four reprieves before finally waking up at one.

i eat oatmeal, read the paper for way too long, take a shower, and bolt out the door to head towards the kaiser offices in not so wonderful springfield, va for my 2:15 dermatolagist appointment. she gave my self-esteem a big boost by telling me how much worse the acne on my face has gotten, wrote me a prescription, and then i went and waited in the lobby/pharmacy for them to fill my prescription. reading old entertainment weeklys and watching fox news anchors attempt to discuss some school shooting somewhere that they had no details about yet. but that did not stop them from wildly speculating about the shooting. hey, who said you need facts for news? c'mon.

sort of real disgusted by the celeb worshipping rags surrounding me and the fox news beacon of light in the sky hanging over my head. a circle of tvs overhead surrounding the waiting area so everyone could have a good view. is this circle of tvs my halo or my crown of thorns? either way, it was not good, and i was all too glad when a pharmacist stammered like a teacher on the first day of school reading my name over the loudspeaker. mar ahh maurice ... keer .. queer-ohs your prescription is ready at window one. and so i go to window one and pick up my prescription.

i drove back home so happy because i rolled down my windows since it was in the fifties and sort of nice out. the cool fresh air felt so good, and made me flash a big cheesy grin the whole way home to the beautiful sky. besides rocking out like i was in a convertible in the middle of summer, i was mister karoake belting out tunes at the top of my lungs. india arie's "video" started playing. i cranked the shit up, so excited, and started singing along, dancing, feeling the sky whoosh in and out of my car, over my skin, and in and out of my lungs. dude, what a fucking gorgeous drive. Sometimes I comb my hair and sometimes I won’t / Depend of how the wind blows I might even paint my toes / It really just depends on whatever feels good in my soul / I’m not the average girl from your video / And I ain’t built like a supermodel / But I learned to love myself unconditionally, / Because I am a queen and la di da la di da i wish i knew the rest of the lyrics

then the next song on the station was crap, so i did a little flipping around, and what's this? wait, is it...? yes, fuck yeah, it's old green day. i sang along to "when i come around," and thought about how much i loved the dookie album when i was in eighth grade. i asked bonnie last semester if she thought that blink-182 was the current middle-schoolers version of green day - if it's their generations equivalent - hoping that she would say no, that green day is so much cooler than lame blink. but she didn't - she said that green day was just as bad. but motherfuck that shit, dookie is the motherfucking shit, yo! it so rocks. listening to "when i come around" brought up so many "fond" memories of eighth grade. middle school was the worst fucking two years of my life, so i feel weird about referring to it as "fond," but from the age of 20, a good safe distance away from the horrors of middle school and from being dawn weiner, i can say they are "fond," glossing over all the wedgies, over being called faggot far too many times a day (especially since at this point in time, i was still pretty asexual and thought of myself as straight). forgetting how much i used to dread changing in the locker room; forgetting about all the scary teachers and the even scarier classmates who seemed so much more physically developed and "cool." but the middle school i was recalling in the car was the after 2:40 middle school back at home, by myself, far away from any scary social situations, when i would not feel like shit; when i could daydream about what high school would be like; when i could at least exercise authority over my sister. this is when i still thought rock bands were cool; when i would listen to whole albums like dookie in one sitting again and again upstairs in my room, learning all the lyrics. so for two or three minutes today, i was still attending carl sandburg middle school - still a real quiet, geeky boy who hated middle school and found some outlet in the wannabe punk wails of billie joe armstrong. and, it was heaven. and i yelled and shouted along with billie boy at the top of my lungs into the wind.

post orgasm, the song is fading out, some radio station promo starts playing, and whoo whoo that felt god damn good, i should go home and listen to that album. and then another awesome song starts playing after the promo ends: tracy champan's "give me one reason," and so i did a really aggresive cover of the song still real pumped up from green day. dancing as best as i could while driving. or perhaps more accuartely, driving as best as i could while dancing. i yelled to the boyfriend that i do not have about how he needs to give me just one reason to stay here.

when i got home, i called some apartments, and thought that i should masturbate before my mom came home. and so i did. i then read some of ulysses. and then at ten, it was time for the brand new season of real world. so far, it actually seems like it might be a pretty cool season. the first episode was pretty entertaining. rebecca is looking at classified ads right now for a job in ny, and is very seriously considering going to ny. she is going to tell me tomorrow night. and so i have my fingers big time crossed.

oh and also today, i did a girlboy entry out of boredom and so here's the link.

a note

i recently got a new e-mail account because i seriously got about thirty junk mail messages a day in my old one. so no more ads for hot young sluts or how to enlarge my penis. but also, since the account will soon be dead, i couldn't decide if i wanted all my old saved e-mails to die with it. i couldn't decide and so thought that i would upload them to my diary and delete them later if i do decide to do so. but also, i posted these here because before i started this diary business, i wrote everyone really long e-mails that served the purpose that my diary now serves. now, i don't write as detailed letters, which is probably a bad thing. and, i was sort of wavering about doing this because i had concerns about upsetting the privacy of these correspondances. but, whatever it's my fucking diary, and i do it for my own benefit, so i am going to try to ignore that people might actually read these. but since someone might, please pardon the really bad writing and naivete.

but i don't want to be a high school greenpeace cheerleader

whoa, i had some really weird dreams last night. first off, i'm at some concert hearing some candyass rapper perform like nelly or ja rule, and then the sample that was being hooked was real weird. i finally wake up, realizing that i am not at some bobo concert but am in a dark bedroom at seven in the morning and that that weird hook was my alarm clock going off for about five minutes. it's so weird how sounds can incorporate their way into your dreams somehow. so, i get out of bed turn off my alarm clock and am totally awake but also totally not feeling like going to work at greenpeace. standing in the cold. harrassing total strangers. panhandling for a nonprofit. on my feet all day, i'll get hungry. and again, standing outside in the cold. it was not sounding pleasant to my weary body. i go out into the hall and see that my mom has already left for work - she'll never know. i curl back in my bed thinking about how glad i am that i will not be standing on the streets begging people for money. hopefully rebecca will not kill me for not showing up.

right before i woke up for the second time at noon, i had another real weird dream. i was at my high school, going around asking people for money for greenpeace. and somehow cheerleading was tied into this - to be on the squad, you had to get two people to donate money a day to greenpeace. and i didn't feel like fundraising, so i just decided to quit cheerleading. (yeah, i don't understand it, either). so, then there is a big performance at school in the hallway. everyone is crowded in the corridor, and the squad consists of three girls (two of them were elaine gleason and gretchen schaub -- two non-cheerleaders from my high school) and some boy that i can't remember. anyways, i don't even know why i am trying to tell this here, since the details are so foggy, but they get up there and the boy can't perform by himself for some reason. there needs to be two boys for the routine to work. so, they get me to do it even though i didn't fundraise and even though i am dressed in jeans, and they are all in their matching uniforms.

okay, enough freudian babble-- i woke up at noon, went downstairs, ate some oatmeal, signed on to the internet, and said goodbye to my sister. her friend picked her up, and she left to go back to school at william and mary. i did not have my bitch fighting partner today, so it was an even more boring day than usual. i planned on reading my isp all day and catching up since i am so behind on my isp schedule which has already been revised about eight times to take into account my lack of progress. my goal was to be done with the book by the eight. it is now almost the 15th, and my revised goal was to be half way done with the book by then. i am on page 169 out of 768 pages. so, in case you are not good with math, that is totally not even near half way, meaning i am the biggest slacker in the world. i am starting to really enjoy the book but have no motivation to read whatsoever. so, tomorrow is going to be my marathon reading day.

my laziness is kicking me in the ass in other ways. so, there's this house in brooklyn and they have two rooms for rent and they don't care if it's short term, and i talked to the guy for about a week over e-mail, and it sounded like a real rad place. he e-mails me his phone # on thursday nite and tells me to call if i am still interested. i was super lazy and did not call until sunday nite, at which point one of the rooms had already been rented. the room theif gave him a deposit on saturday for the room. so, if i would not have been such a bum about shit, i would already have a place to live in ny. but, instead i will now have to spend tomorrow playing around on the internet looking at classifieds for the millionth time.

i called my mom at work to tell her i overslept and missed work so she wouldn't flip out at me when she cam home - i told her that i called greenpeace (a lie) and that i would not be able to train until next monday. she sounded somewhat annoyed with my laziness but told me there was no point in me working for that short amount of time. woo-hoo!!!

i took a shower and then was so in love with the warmth of the water and was feeling goosebumps all over my skin from the water's comforting heat. so i decide to plug the bathtub and take a super hot bath, which felt so nice. just soaking in the hot water, thawing out, loving the feeling of heat surrounding my body, making me say relaxed ahh after ahh, without feeling like it's just something people say in the movies when they are taking a bath after a long day. it wasn't forced or done because it's what you're supposed to say, but the ahh's were just the only suitable verbal expression of my state of enjoyment. what else is there beside ahh, that is not corrupted by the baggage of defined meaning? nothing, and so i said ahh after ahh as i let my body sink into the hot pool of water. still feeling relaxed, i sat down to a leisurly lunch and read just about the entire washington post. the rest of my day was a fog of laziness that is not worth recalling.

later, rebecca called me to ask me where the hell i was today? did i miss work because i was watching tv or because i was sleeping until 3? she wasn't real mad, but sounded a little bit annoyed. and then we talked about her lack of plans for next semester since her farming thing feel through and since she is no longer going to africa. i suggested that she come live in ny with me and niki, and she said that she had been thinking about that. she doesn't seem that serious about it, but she is considering it, which is something -- enough to make me so so happy. and, so i am going to harrass and harrass her and hopefully convince her to go to ny. and then, ny will the best place on earth.

"this duck is inside a bottle, but how do you get the duck out without breaking the bottle or hurting the duck?"

nother lazy day. living the isp lifestyle to the fullest. sleeping away the day, staying awake all night, and doing little or no isp work. hells yeah.

my sister went to power video to rent some movies. while she was gone, my mom was talking to me about me moving to ny, and then real randomly asks, "so, do you think your sister's anorexic?", not knowing how else to bring it up, and saying it casually enough so that it would sound like she was joking. real weird. made me think that my sister actually might be. right before she had left for the video store, she ate a plate of white rice for dinner. last night, she refused to eat any of the pizza saying she hated cheese, and ate some of the crust and made herself a plate of rice. hmm, i told my mom that i didn't think so, but that she hasn't really been eating much. her meals have been spaghetti with salt and pepper -- not even any sauce. she eats bagels toasted plain without cream cheese. she did sort of get real defensive about a week ago when i was teasing her about starving herself, since i had only seem her eat mini carrots and plain bagels for about a week. as i kept talking to my mom, it was unravelling to me -- i had not really thought about it before, but she definitly is eating real weird.

i then felt really bad for teasing her about being fat. i am a horrible person, yes i know. she's not fat at all, she's 5'9'' and probably about 130 lbs. but whenever she makes fun of my piginess, i always shoot back: shut up i can eat whatever i want, i'm not a fat pig like you! and, this is one of my flaws - that i throw the word "fat" around like "the." when i'm upset with someone or something, i use the word fat as an adjective to add impact and exaggerate my anger. ex. this big, fat idiot at taco bell didn't give me the proper change. -- and i don't think anything of the word fat, but my sister tends to get pretty defensive about it. and my sister's not the only victim of my "fat" usage. appearantly, i called nora fat one time or a few times our first year, and i don't even remember it since it's a word that i don't take seriously, but she has never failed to remind me about it whenever i say she's being ridiculous for thinking she's fat. i feel like something similar happened with bonnie where i called her fatass or something real silly (and obviously not true) once and she took mucho mucho offense to it.

i think it's so horrible that that word can cause such emotional trauma, but i guess i need to accept that it does and stop using it so much. and so now my mom has me slightly worried about my sister, and sort of real angry that people do such dumb shit. making me feel fragile, holding my own stomach in pain, thinking about what anorexia must feel like. but, i don't know if she really does have some eating problem or if she really doesn't like any of the food we have in the house, which is something she always complains about. hopefully the latter. but, i felt real bad for my mom because i could tell that even though she tried to ask it like she wasn't serious, she totally was and is worried about my sister and can't really do much about it, except hope that she's not.

my sister came home with shrek, and i was like oh god, i am not watching this. i have been so adamantly opposed to watching this movie, even though so many people have told me it was real good. so, i'm playing around on the internet, refusing to watch the movie, and i catch a couple of the jokes, and i could not believe that this movie was actually good, and so i joined my sister in watching it. and it was actually really good, spoofing disney movies left and right, and having really positive messages.

then i read some more of ulysses until it was time for my date with jimmy fallon. i turned on the tv for snl, and watched it. dude, the shit was so bad tonight. i was so embarrased to be watching it with my sister because i was so offended by some of the skits. there was one good skit tonight (the wake up westfield skit), the rest were just dumb, dumb, and then dumb. tracey morgan was in this one, "shout out show," that was the closest thing to minstrelity i think i have ever seen on network tv. he played this stupid thugged out dj, hosting a shout out show on tv, with all these stupid callers being like, "i just wanted to give a shout out to the three women i'm pregnant with..." - "i just wanted to give a shout out to all the housekeeping workers i work with at ramada inn..." - all in super ignorant voices. i was so mad, i was really hating snl at that moment, and feeling so bad for tracey for having to perform in this piece of bullshit.

and then the last skit was the playboy station showing "burqua babes" or something real offensive, with horatio sanz, as some afghan man getting real hot and bothered by a woman removing her veil to show her face. i could not even believe it, i really wanted to throw shit at the tv. luckily jimmy was in none of the offensive skits, otherwise i might have had to end my crush on him for a lack of principles.

i'm feeling real speedy right now, i drank half a pot of super strong coffee at about five in the afternoon for some strange reason, and i am just real anxious about everything now. perhaps this is why i thought snl was so bad tonight, normally i think i'm sedate and somewhat tired and just watch unquestioningly. but not tonight.

i kind of really want to watch nixon right now, but it's a three hour movie which means it would not end until 6:00 which means i would not wake up til probably five in the afternoon tomorrow, which means i'd be up super late tomorrow night and would not get enough sleep to wake up to be at greenpeace by nine fifteen on monday morning. what is a boy to do?

i really want some bright yellow sweet corn on the cob dripping with butter. but we don't have any. or watermelon. that would be good right now too. i want snow. i want there to be snow so i could have a picnic in the snow. red and white checkered tablecloth laid out. there'd be a basket with corn on the cob in it, huge slices of watermelon, lots of mayonnaise salads (potato, egg, and cole slaw), really good bread, and fresh squeezed lemonade. and i could sit there with snowmen of my own making. they'd be fellow picnicers, not because of their conversation skills, but because they don't eat much and it'd be more apple pie for me. perhaps, i'd also invite jimmy fallon. he could provide the conversation. and i could impress him somehow. maybe i'd try dropping "insouciance" somewhere into the conversation. perhaps saying, jimmy, your insouciant air makes my day in a major way. perhaps saying real silly rhymes all the times, and that could be our continuing joke that we'd never tire of, annoying the snowmen to no end.

it is not miller time, and it is never going to be

beer is ishy. that is what i have to say about that. after waking up, i did not read my isp like i promised myself, instead i started reading the washington post and the washington citypaper. read both practically cover to cover. then my mom ordered some pizza, and me and my sister ate pizza and settled in to watch some real world new orleans. my sister is not nearly as sick as i am, and only watched about an hour of it. i, however, am still watching it as i write this.

danny is so dreamy. if this were any other season, i probably would have gone to bed already, but i have the biggest crush ever on danny. he is soo motherfucking cute. he makes my heart go pit a patter. he is THE cute, adorable gay boy. people think i am exaggerating when i say that i am a real world addict, but oh no, i do not lie about this. i probably have seen every episode of real world at least a few times. when they have marathons, i do not leave the house at all. i sit and watch what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. in the past thirty-six hours, i have watched at least ten hours of real world. real world is the best, and i've always wanted to go those open auditions that they have just because they seem really fun. i meant to go this year - it was in early december in orlando, but i forgot about it in my rush to get out of florida fury. oh well, there's always next year to show how pathatic i am.

but anyways, beer is ishy - let's get back to that. watching real world, i decide to eat some leftover pizza and -- oh, the dominos in virginia do not give you garlic sauce. when i ordered the pizza, i asked them to remember the garlic sauce, and they acted like i was from mars and said that they don't give garlic sauce. well motherfuck, the dominos in sarasota does. yet another reason that i am missing sarasota.

so i heat up some pizza and i see in the fridge that there is a case of beer, so i decide to have a beer with my pizza. i equate beer with manliness and my inability to drink it with my unmanliness. the scent of it invokes my gag reflex. i have been conditioned to associate that smell with throw-up. conditioned from my king cobra binge last spring semester, wherein i would drink three quarts of king cobra and puke my guts out all over the motherfucking place. only to repeat it the next time i got drunk. well my body eventually started revolting to the malt liquor scent and the beer scent. i can not get drunk off of beer, because i honestly can not drink more than one without wanting to gag. each wannabe gulp is a struggle and winds up only being a puny sip.

and so, this is why i am froo-froo drinks' #1 fan. i can drink hard liquor like no tomorrow, but beer just makes me want to hurl. this is probably why i am an arbor mist and wine fiend. but i always feel the need to try my luck at beer every so often, feeling that i need to be able to handle beer to be an adult american male -- that i am a pussy or something for not being able to drink beer. and yeah, i know i should be above trying to conform to some silly notion of gender roles, but i am so not, and i readily admit this. it is a problem. i am a gay male but i don't want to be a faggy gay male - one that can not even handle beer. it seems so eight year old girlish - tasting an uncle's beer at some family dinner and recoiling at the taste exclaiming ish! that is me, i say ish, and want to fucking gag, it is a concerted effort for me to drink the beer - my brain, my sense of smell, and my gag reflex all work in accordance for me to be able to down this stupid beer without throwing up.

anyways, i finished most of the beer before deciding i was being lame and would just need to learn to accept my froo-frooness. and then made myself comfortable in the couch, returned to my dr. pepper and contented myself to stare at danny, daydreaming about smooching cute boys on the tv.

this is why they call me lazy

i seriously just woke up ten minutes ago, and i was so excited, completely unaware that it was already three in the afternoon. i woke up on my own accord, really awake, and proud of myself that i am feeling up and ready to go before my alarm clock even goes off, which i set for ten thirty.

i lie in bed, thinking should i get up or just wait for my alarm clock to go off, it'll probably go off soon if the sun is already this bright. man, what a beautiful fucking morning. vibrant blue sky in partial view through the slits between my blinds. fuck it, why would i sit around in bed, being a lazy shit, sleeping through this beautiful day - waiting for my alarm clock to go off?

so, feeling real real proud of myself, i get out of bed, look at my alarm clock which is back by my door, and see that i have already somehow turned my alarm clock off and that it is three fucking ten. shit, what is wrong with me? how can i possibly sleep so much. i was going to wake up early today and do a bunch of isp reading. but that, as you can tell, did not happen. i am going to buckle down and start reading as soon as i finish writing this entry.

i did not fall asleep until about five last night. i watched real world reruns on mtv last night until about three. okay, i am big geek and am a real world addict - i have no shame in admitting it, and so when i was flipping through the channels and saw that they were showing real world miami, i stopped flipping through the channels in a heartbeat and settled in for some good old real world style bitch fights. they have not showed real world reruns in so long, i think they must have just started last night since the new season starts tuesday at ten. guess where i will be at that time? uh-huh, watching real motherfucking world chicago.

anyways, i watched real world for way too long before i finally forced myself to turn off the tv at threeish and go to motherfucking bed. i lie down in bed and cannot sleep to save my motherfucking life. so, i read a little bit of ulysses. and then i try going to bed again. i turn off the lights and lie in bed trying not to think, to just be a zombie. sleep. but, i could not stop thinking about shit.

first off, i started thinking about real world miami, which for some reason led me to think about florida in general and how much i am going to miss that state. why again, am i going to cold new york, if i could have stayed in relatively warm florida near the beach? then i started thinking about andrew and how much i still have a crush on him. thoughts of marky mark since i heard that he was back in sarasota. getting all giddy thinking about my crushes. and then, fuck shit, why am i going to ny - i won't even be in florida to have crushes on these people. i probably sound real lame for even thinking about these people that i will not see in forever. and then all this made me really miss sarasota - that my life will no longer be consumed by my marky mark crush, but that i also will not see so many other people that make me smile with delight by just their presence.

and then i started worrying about ny - about how i still have not found a place to live - how it's going to be cold - how i'm going to be living with niki and how we might end up strangling each other. but then i calmed down, thinking that i would also be in new york for god sakes. i'd be in close proximity to jimmy fucking fallon and that i was just needlessly worrying.

then i was remembering my interview at greenpeace. the hippy girl was reading my application, saying: okay maurice. i respond: uh, charlie, i go by charlie. and why the fuck did i say that? i am working there for two weeks, what the fuck does it matter what they call me? i feel like it made me seem real pathatic like the maestro demanding to be called the mastro in that seinfeld episode. my dad's name is also maurice, and so i've just always been called charlie, but i don't live at home anymore, is there any reason to embarrass myself and sound real petty by telling people that i want to be called charlie. i really don't fucking care what people call me, and so i think in ny, i'm not going to be a seventh grader on the first day of school telling people, "i go by charlie."

see, this is why i did not fall asleep until about five in the morning, which is probably the reason that i turned off my alarm clock without even fucking realizing it. okay, now i am off to do my isp.

a good day for no particular reason

a couple minutes before three, i walked into 530 7th street, SE - read a sign saying, "if you are here for an interview, go upstairs and enter the first room on the right, at the top of the stairs." i followed the sign's instructions and sat down in the last empty chair, and said hi to rebecca who was sitting across the room. some twenty-two year old greenpeace girl then told the five of us prospective employees, about greenpeace and about what the work involved. she said that the work was very similar to pirg's. i got very scared at this point, thinking that it would involve going door to door collecting money. which i did a few years ago for a day and it was the most horrible job i have ever had.

i think it's real funny how many people have done pirg. bonnie and katie did it in seattle, and maggie did it a couple months ago when she first got to dc. i have never meet anyone that liked working for pirg. everyone has pirg horror stories. and so, when this girl told us it was going to be like pirg, i started eyeing the door, thinking about how much i did not want to do this job. i had thought that the job might be pirg like, but i also thought that it might just be standing in public places collecting signatures.

she then interviewed each of us out in the hallway. when it was my time to step into the hall, i asked her what the work was, and she said that - thank god - the work was standing in public places like at metro stops and talking to people. whew! i can tolerate that, that actually sounds pretty fun. i then talked to her about yes! organic market since she shops there everyday, and we talked about the management there, and i told her how nice they are. she then asked me how long i was going to be here, since she saw that i went to school at new college. i lied big time to this really nice hippy girl, and felt no remorse. i told her that i was taking a semester off, and that i would be in the area for at least a couple of months.

this worried her and she asked me how long exactly. i told her that i was going to eventually move to ny, but the person i was going to live with is still in florida working out a bunch of stuff. so a couple of months, or a few.

she wanted me to make a commitment to greenpeace and asked if i could commit to working until april 1. i felt sort of bad, but i told her that it was most likely, but not positive, ninety percent. she said okay, but just tell me if something changes. i feel like she is going to kill me in two weeks when i will tell her that something has changed. i am trying to convince rebecca to tell them when i quit. i mean, it's not like they don't have a high turnover rate with people only working for a week, and deciding that they hate it. so i don't feel too bad.

on nine fifteen on monday morning, rebecca and i are to show up for our first day of greenpeace. after my hall interview with super nice hippy girl, we left the building and walked down 7th street towards the eastern market metro. rebecca said that she was going to yes, to buy some food. and for some reason, i chickened out and did not want to go. we stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes deciding if i would go or not. i wanted to say hi to the owner, but i didn't want to have to talk to any other employees for ten years in a forced so what have you been up to conversation. so i said bye to rebecca and descended the escalator into the station.

once the metro left l'enfant station, it came back above ground to cross the potomac river and enter the great state of virginia. and the rest of the ride home is all above ground, which is a lot more fun, because it gives your eyes a lot more candy to devour than the boring black tunnels. the sun was nearing the horizon, and the sky looked fucking beautiful. i can't decide which are my favorite type of sunsets. really bright colored summer sunsets. golden red fall sunsets. or really muted winter sunsets.

the sun was a white ball behind dense dense cloud coverage. the sky was super super light pastels, just a little off from white. the sun was still above the treetops. barren trees without any leaves, stretched out nude, branches moving with the sway of the chill breeze. rusted railroad tracks to my right running parrallel to the yellow line. a fence between the metro and the rail tracks, with rows of barbed wire at the fencetop. the sky looked even more beautiful as i passed the masonic memorial. the hill's grass was nowhere near green, it was the pale yellow color of dry hay. fields of hay blissfully unaware of white trails from planes slashing the sky. a little white ball of a sun demurely hiding behind the clouds. gray does not mean depressing. the gray sky was prozac, was ecstasy, was anything but depressing.

i got off the metro at huntington, and walked to my car still enamored with the sky. thinking that i am looking at a star. that i am the little prince. i am a cosmic boy, somehow holding my ground on this furiously spinning planet encircling this beautiful star, this setting sun, while massive grayish clouds seemingly sit stationary above me.

and i drove home, giddily biting my bottom lip, and glancing sideways at the sky every so often - truely happy for the first time in a long motherfucking time.

my name is divine, and i am the filthiest person in the world

today i woke up at three something. very gross, yes i know. tomorrow i promise to wake up earlier. i have to - i have an interview with greenpeace at three.

after waking up, taking a shower, and playing around online looking for an apartment, i realized that i should eat something so i wouldn't be hungry at pat buchanan's talk. i did not want a repeat of yesterday - so i decided i would leave at five to get there ealier and actually get a seat. i took some st. johns wort and kava kava so i wouldn't be such a grump today. and so i wouldn't be so damn tired, i made myself a pot of coffee. i pretended to be a barista and made myself some not even good coffee concoction. two big scoops of vanilla ice cream, some milk, some chocolate syrup, and half a pot of coffee all mixed together in a huge motherfucking cup filled to the brim. stirring it proved a little difficult, and i got crap all over the kitchen counter.

i heated up a plate of lasagna to accompany my coffee drink and sat down to eat it. my sister was sitting across from me and told me that i was digusting. a pig. gross. going to clog my arteries. so unhealthy. -- chewing with my mouth wide open, making exaggerated sounds of delight. my sister made a face of utter disgust. i decided to wash all this down with a plate of nachos and cheese, followed by some chocolate. my sister was disgusted to say the least, and not at all reticent about expressing her disgust. she told me how sick i was going to be. i ignored her, grabbed my coat, and left for the metro.

the power of influence. as soon as i started driving, i did feel sick. damn my sister. my stomach was in pain. the half pot of coffee was not settling so well with all the dairy products. there was lots of action going on in my stomach. i tried to ignore it, thinking that it would pass. a while later, riding on the metro, it had still not passed. bowel movement is a little too tame an expression. bowel dance party/street riot seems a little more accurate. oh dear god. well, just don't think about how much you have to go the bathroom because there is not one here on the metro car and i am going to get a fucking seat at this buchanan thing.

i do a pretty good job of forgetting about my stomach's moodiness, get off at metro center, and ascend the escalator to somewhere other than heaven. at least i hope. my ascent took me to the door of olsson's where scary pat buchanan fans were already waiting for their grand dragon's arrival.

not many people had shown up an hour early, and so i was able to grab three seats in the fifth row of just set-up folding chairs. i placed my coat on one chair and my hat on the other to save them. people kept filing in and soon most of the chairs were filled up. save, of course, for the two that i was saving for maggie and rebecca. scary people keep asking if someone's sitting in them. yes, they are, they just went to go get coffee. the scary people give me a disgruntled look and then when i refuse to bend, they move on to harrass the next person that is saving an empty chair for someone. god, i hope rebecca and maggie get here soon, people are starting to get real scary.

my prayers were answered, and rebecca enters the door. i yell her name, and she fills up one of the empty chairs. we gossip for a while, we both doubted that maggie was going to really bring an egg to throw at pat, and then as time wore on, we doubted that she would show up at all. we then talked about all the people in the room, trying to figure out how many of them actually liked pat. we guessed probably half of them. pat finally took the mike, and we saw that we had greatly underestimated. practically the enitre bookstore was hooting and hollering chanting go pat go!

we gave up our empty seat to some crotchety old man, pretty sure that maggie was not going to show. and then the spectacle started. pat, always the showman, did not let us down. he was discussing his new book, "the death of the west." redux version of his book's thesis: "our culture" (really his culture) is under seige from immigrants. he mourned the death of european / christian / white / patriarchal traditions, and blames it all on communists, feminists, and mexicans. it was real crazy stuff. but, pat is so yee-hah in some respects. one thing that i do like about pat is his personality. he is one firey old man, who is smart as hell, very articulate, and does not back down.

you would think that he might be slightly intimitaded about making such un p.c. talks in public. but he is tough as nails, takes the mike, and takes no shit from the people that try to call him a racist in the q & a session.

now the bad parts of pat: he is insane. he says the third world without quotations. he rails against mexican immigrants. he says western women need to have more babies, but feminism has screwed up society. he said that the third world's population (without quotations) would increase by some insane number in the next fifty years. too put this into terms that his xenophobic fans could understand, he said, "that's thirty to fifty more mexicos!"

he then gave his command for immigrants to assimilate or else. when his ancestors came to america, they didn't speak gaelic, they spoke english. but these mexicans, they come here and they speak spanish and they play soccer and they celebrate cinco de mayo. pat was pretty audacious - even more so than i expected. and another silly thing that he said was that gramsci's communist ideas killed off christianity and that's the reason america has run amok. but then, he also (this is the point i agreed with him on) cited the excesses of capitalism as another cause of "western culture's" decline. but, then he has to extend that thought by saying that the media's morally bankrupt images are to blame -- that there are too many ally mcbeal shows and not enough shows that depict a woman with five or six kids. i kid you not, he actually said this.

he then was defending western culture from a critic in the audience, by saying that western culture created human rights. something, i probably would have agreed with. but, then in the midst of his rant about the west creating human rights, he rhetorically asks, "who ended slavery?" needless, to say i was apalled, and was very curious to know, "who started slavery, and made an industry out of the slave trade?" this was one of the many moments where i thought that patty pat was being a little contradictory.

his talk ended and then the real fireworks started. pat critics thought that they would one-up pat and point out the lacunae in his argument. but they didn't, pat was smarter, and no one in the audience wanted to hear the critics. the audience overshouted the critics by booing. the first man to ask a question was a recent immigrant who was muslim, and still had a thick accent. pat did not really respond to the criticism - he just said something like: see you speak good english, i'm not talking about you, you have assimilated. then an african says something. then an af-am dude. then a woman. all sounded real lame even though they had vaild points - pat whooped ass. they all started out by stating their credentials. i am a recent african immigrant. i am an african-american. i am a woman. stating why they could disagree, saying it for their own ears, reasserting themselves, or at least trying to in this hostile environment.

one really cool mixed girl said "i am a hybrid and i love it." the evil audience shouted over her as she was trying to talk, demanding question! question! question! so many people would just state their thoughts and not ask a question. this girl was guilty of that too. she had the floor, was talking, rambling, working out her thoughts to herself along the way, trying to somehow connect with pat, declaring that she is hybrid and loves it. i really loved this girl since she was mixed too, and she was sort of voicing my own thoughts as well.

perhaps i should have actually read that bhaba essay for postcolonial lit. i really love hearing other people talk about the mixed experience because it's something that is not often talked about. people talk about blacks, whites, latinos, etc. as if there can be no overlap. but, here is not there or there. it's somewhere in between. and i am not motivated enough to write a mixed experience entry tonight, but that is another thing that is being added to my ridiculously long list of things to eventually get around to doing.

anyways, after the credits had rolled on the pat buchanan show, i boarded the metro to return home, and became increasingly aware of the fact that i had to go number two. okay, i'll be home soon, it's okay, just chill out, think non-feces centered thoughts. think about pat some more, and about that cute boy who was sitting ahead of us, who looked gay but cheered for pat and nodded his head in agreement throughout the talk. don't judge a book by its cover. don't assume that cute, hip looking people are not closet fasicts.

so i get home and make for the bathroom. release of something you've been holding back for so long. the longer you can hold it (urine, feces, semen, baseball cards, etc.) the more pleasurable the release. the toilet is my bo tree. it is my s and m chamber. it is my pot of gold at the end of the metro rainbow. my expelled crap will walk into your waters, cleanse itself of its sins, cleansing me in the process. fuck yeah, this feels so good. maybe it's cause i'm a gay male and am comfortable and aware of the possible pleasures of the anus and prostate. but yeah yeah yeah, i feel so good after taking a crap.

i wipe my ass and look down into the toilet, and wow, i guess my sister was right - i was sort of sick - my poop was basically liquid. the toilet is not filled with chunks of poop floating like dead fish in the toilet, but is just a brown, opaque soup -- looking very much like the coffee concoction i made and drank earlier. i am a conduit taking in and pooping out - a machine that eats, goes and sees pat, and then converts it into shit and shitty writing. the way of the world, i guess.

repeat of st. pete - maggie, rebecca, nader, and i in dc this time

at a little after six, i boarded the metro at huntington, sat down. two families going to the wizards game sat right ahead of me, even though this is the first stop and so the metro is still empty. i could no longer just stare ahead of me - where to place my eyes? - i don't want to look at anything, i just want to sit here and be transported to nader. i look out the window at the already dark alexandria, unable to discern what we were passing over - if it was good witches or bad witches. the little kid ahead of me kept turning around and staring at me. i did not want to make eye contact, interact, or be a social creature at all. i stared out the window, pretending to be unaware that this kid was staring at me. another family in the back of the metro, also going to the wizards game with a litter of screaming children. please shut your kids up. when did i turn into such an old man?

i am all too glad to get off at l'enfant and switch to the red line. as i am waiting for the train to come, i sit on a bench, again wondering where to direct my eyes. where do i normally look when i am waiting somewhere - why is this suddenly such a problem today - i've never had this concern before. i find myself staring ahead only to realize a woman is now there, maybe giving me a look that i am looking at her. look bitch, i am not, i'm fucking gay, please get that ugly sneer off your face, you're not even hot shit. avert my eyes to the right only to find a person there. to the left - but a person is there too. why am i that weird guy at the metro today, that you stand as far away from as possible and try to avoid eye contact with? maybe i should mutter stuff, too.

the train comes, i board and for some reason am still feeling really awkward and having trouble being normal. i get off at metro center at six thirty, thanking god to be away from the metro. olsson's is at the top of the escalator and i see a huge line of people right in the doorway. i stand in the throng of people and hear rebecca call my name. she has a seat on the side, surrounded by eight thousand people. some employee directs us throng of door people to go stand in the back of the store in the cd section. we follow our marching orders and slowly herd to the back of the store. wow, there are a lot more people here than i thought, this is insane, i thought if i got here half an hour early i would be able to get a seat. i am standing elbow to elbow in an aisle of cd's, with blues to my right, and new age and children's music to my left. waiting for nader to arrive, again in a crowded, social situation, i look at all the crappy new age cd's with disdain, occasionally making faces at rebecca who is all the way across the store.

i left about two feet between myself and the person ahead of me because god forbid i did not feel like having my nose on his neck. old lady behind me asks me if i am going to move up. i give her a look of something bordering shock and disgust. giving into the old bag, i move up so that i am now standing on the boy ahead of me's heels. from the back, this boy looks so much like jeff tonn, it is way too close a resemblance.

nader finally came and took the podium. standing probably ten feet behind him, i got a nice good look at his bald spot, and was sort of surprised/impressed by how tall he was. he seemed taller than me.

and then he started to talk. and i forgot that i was getting claustrophobic standing in this throng of people - my nerves were sedated by the energy of his voice and the eloquence of his thoughts. i love ralph, he's such a cute man and so righteous.

he talked about how to produce change in the political system, about the corruption of the current political system, and how it stifles our potential as humans -- about how we need a political system that will allow us to realize the potential of humanity. and by the potential of humanity, he didn't mean lots of industry or some capitalist notion of progress. he meant liberty and justice for all. he's so cool, everything he said was so on the nose, and i just wanted him to be god and fix everything.

i was not the only person who wanted him to serve as god, everyone that asked him a question wanted him for their god - to solve their problem - to tell them how to make things better. he said that for change to happen, people need to be indignant. he said that we are too comfortable to devote energy to affecting changes in our communities. the other thing, that he cited as a reason for the decline of civic action was the erosion of social networks. - that there are a million some progressives out there, but none of them talk to each other. -- but of course, it was far more eloquent from the lips of mister nader.

the talk was real awesome and made me feel bad for being so uninvolved with progressive causes. i love hearing politicians that hold really noble ideas about democracy's potential and can wax lyrically about it. bill bradley, and surprisingly alan keyes are two speakers whose words still resonate in my head a couple years after hearing them talk.

so, the talk ended and i found rebecca and maggie ray by the exit, and i was so excited to see both of them. we hung out in olsson's for a little while catching up on gossip, before being led by our stomachs in search of food. maggie and i were starving. during the talk, i seriously thought i was going to pass out from hunger, all i had eaten all day was a bowl of oatmeal.

so we wander down some street (14th?) downtown in search of food, and of course nothing is open since it is almost nine and downtown thrives only during business hours. even the subway was closed. we were motherfucking hungry, and we were going to keep walking until we found some food.

as we are walking, we pass bum after bum after bum. many of whom ask us for change. i hate having to do that just keep walking thing and ignore them. but, it has become routine to me doing it every time i leave the house. i used to have my catholic sense of charity when i was a kid and would always give homeless people money. but now, i treasure my dollars a lot more. i am agnostic boy who has thrown off the idea of guilt with joy. tossed it in the trash with notions of right and wrong. perhaps that was a mistake - when i had a moral sense of purpose, i think i was a "better" person.

but, now i can lie with ease, smiling, saying sorry, i don't have any money. meanwhile a wallet with cash in my back pocket. but have a good day, sorry. and i keep walking. but today, it wasn't so easy, nader's words were still on my brain, and i realized this is something i should be indignant about - the fact that there are people sleeping outside the metro when it is in the low-30's - teens with wind chill. but, i'm not - i have accepted it as an unalterable aspect of life, rather than demanding and working for change.

anyways, we finally find a restaurant that is open. bangkok one. blue and purple interior with mirrors on one side wall. one other person eating in the restaurant. it felt real weird. we sat in a booth. rebecca and i on one side. maggie on the other. behind maggie's back, the tv was on, showing larry king live and fergie was the guest. throughout dinner, i hardly particpated in the discussion at all. thinking about nader, staring at fergie, and feeling real weird about the swirling colors surrounding me. blue and purple everywhere one looked. the volume wasn't even on on the tv. but i still stared at it, vegging out, looking at fergie.

maggie brought me back to reality by asking me if i had any gossip, she wanted all the new college gossip since she doesn't get any. sadly, i could come up with no gossip, i told her that i'm real boring and don't ever really talk to people on campus and know nothing. i then told her some real boring gossip that everyone knows. i then asked her if she had any gossip, and she started telling us her gossip.

she's telling us about this person, and then about that person, until she tells us about andrew person. andrew has a boyfriend in ny, and he's going to probably live with him this summer.

what is wrong with me today? for some reason, i was so upset by this gossip. i did not want to have to make eye contact with maggie during this. when she said "andrew," my ears perked up and i tried to seem real disinterested. it wasn't working at all, i know i seemed so interested by this gossip, but luckily maggie had her face in her plate and was not looking.

[and i wasn't going to talk about this andrew thing, rather i was just going to e-mail my sadness to bonnie, but then i decided fuck that shit, this is my diary. i need to quit holding back certain things, and be brutally honest, however much of a loser it may make me seem. i have been selective with which of my insecurities i choose to display here, fearing that i may be percieved as a big, petty loser or as some evil person. but i'm going to quit holding back. today's resoultion: i will discuss sexual, bodily, competitive insecurities, etc. sometimes i don't talk about certain people, fearful that they may find out what i said, but fuck that shit, what the hell is the purpose of a diary?]

anyways, so back to andrew. maggie says: andrew has a [i'm still fine and real interested in the story] boyfriend [knife to the heart] that he's going to live with [what?] in ny [huh?] over the summer[dejected and blue like the interior of the restaurant]. and i covered up my feeling with a wow or something trite at the end of her gossip. what the hell, why does this bother me? i hooked up with andrew only a couple of times nearly a year ago. i'm not even going to be at new college next semester. what is wrong with you today, charlie?

i didn't really write too much about my andrew crush in here or talk to many people about it besides bonnie and becky. but, oh boy, he was one of my big time crushes all of last semester. i can scream to everyone about my crush on a straight boy because there's no embarrasment about rejection with that, but telling people about my andrew crush would be admitting to being rejected, which is a lot harder to do. but, all semester, i so wanted to hook up with andrew, and i made this painfully obvious to him just about everytime i talked to him, but he acted aloof. and i was left to go home alone feeling big time sad and rejected.

and i think that my sadness at maggie's gossip was not so much that andrew was taken, but that he had a boy and i did not. slight feelings of inferiority definitly. sad about my own single status. and i really wanted to just cry right then, but i looked at fergie and tried to ignore my sadness. thoughts of fergie. fergie bergie fergie.

we talked more and more, and ate and ate, making ourselves not hungry. paid the bill. maggie went to pee. and then the entrance of more washed up brits from the mid-90's: spice girls' "wannabe" started playing over the stereo system. "i'll tell you what i want what i really really want." but i won't because my name's not mel c, and i don't even fucking know what it is that i do want - what it is that would make me happy.

we rode on the metro home together until roslyn. maggie got off and left to go home. i got off and waited for my transfer. i stood there on the platform thinking i was going to fall - my sense of balance totally off. i seriously had no concept of gravity. the cavernous ceiling seemed walkable, and i thought i was going to fall on the platform - that i was standing sideways, trying to hold my balance, trying not to fall.