let's go terrapins, let's go, whoo whoo

death is feared not in the pauses and lonely moments but when the store is crowded with people, strollers, and movement. they are animals. and alas, i must be too. the exciting varieties of potato chips will not be eaten by us, but by people i do not even know with strong hearts and even stronger dicks. and goddamn, i want to eat chips forever.

jamie was home for so short a time - i saw her for a couple hours last night before she went to bed and then vamoosh, i wish she could have stayed longer. i had to work yesterday and today and she left this afternoon while i was at work, grinding my teeth, making a shit list of all the customers who were evil enough to support a business open on easter, making it profitable for mister gary cha to force me to come to work, and to not be able to hang out with my sister.

solidarity. workers are supposed to unite you stupid bourgeois motherfuckers.

a customer who i thought was hitting on me before made it obvious today. when we were done talking/ringing up his groceries, he asked me what my name was. i told him. he then said, "matthew," assuming that i also wanted to know what his name was. he winked at me as he was walking out the door. but i didn't want to know matthew's name. i didn't want to tell him mine.

and if we (you and i - not me and matthew, dear god no!) saw each other often, would you sleep with me? i think that may be all i really want. classic rock love songs on the way home from work, for some reason sounding not cheesy at all. but lovely lovely lovely. and the rest is up to you. you - you stupid motherfucker.

mary, mary, quite contrary

ty left his wallet in my car yesterday, and mary wanted to pick it up this morning. well, i get a call from her telling me that she is in jail and to just put the wallet in the mailbox of her old house, where new people are now living. i wanted to know the jail story, which i assume is probably highly exaggerated since mary is the drama queen of drama queens, but she real explain it later ("long story"), and tells me to bury the wallet some place where she can find it. bury it, she keeps on exclaiming. i finally am convinced to put it in her old house's mailbox even though i am sure that it is not going to work out well.

already running late for work, i go to her old house, and of course there are people in the front yard doing lawn work. totally a bad idea. i knew it would not work. so, i just leave it in my glove compartment at the metro station. at work, i leave a message on mary's machine detailing where it is. i just got off of work and it was (and is) still in the glove compartment. so, after i finish this i will give her a call.

today at work when we were closing, this super cute bike messenger boy asked me if we had any produce we were going to throw away. me and evelyn had already raided the produce, but i was going to find produce this boy could have even though this is grade a not allowed by yes, but no scary people were working who would yell at me. so, i gave him this huge box of bad onions and bad potatos that not even evelyn and i wanted. i gave him bad bananas and more onions and what i really wanted to give him was love love love and hugs. the onions would have to do since i was a wuss and he was most likely straight, but i could damn sure imbue those onions and potatos with all my offers of love since i couldn't give him any of that bob marley "goood, goood loving - i want to give you some good good loving." and bike messenger boy distributes food to 26 houses, he said. and boy oh boy do i want a boy to hug and make me feel loved.

"we have to stay to find out who the mystery cum-shooter is!"

so i said to mary, when she got anxy and grossed out and said that we should leave. and she had this morbid fear that she was going to get cum in her hair even though there was no one behind us to jizz in her hair. she was the only girl in the theater.

today, i visited mary's new apartment that she and ty are living in. it was ridicously huge. we then went to the most overpriced goodwill i have ever been to in my short, natural life. a couch was selling for 1,200 dollars. you could buy a new couch for much cheaper.

we then went back to mary's to get trivial pursuit and were headed to the barnside diner to play and eat, but we passed one of this country's few remaining porn theaters, only blocks from her apartment, and she very jokingly suggested we should go there. i made a sharp turn into the parking lot and we were there, both sort of nervous and scared about attending a porn movie, and all the possibly sleazy guys we would see jacking off. the movie didn't start for half an hour. we played trivial in the car while waiting and then went and bought tickets. or i bought a ticket. the sleazy old man who was hitting on mary told her that she got in for free.

and then we sat down to visons of x 2, which i consider a piece of high art. mary was sort of disgusted by it, and did not share the same opinion of it as me. we sat towards the back and talked throughout the whole movie, analyzing its merits and the hottness and techniques of its stars. people in the theater were playing musical chairs and kept switching seats and leaving and coming back and we still don't understand why.

the film itself was the best film i have seen so far this year. no joke. i have not seen a movie that has made me think so much in a while. the movie ripped off the genre parodying technique that scream employed to critique the standard practices and plots of horror films. this porn did this in the brief parts that gave the movie some plot between the long, boring fuck scenes. we missed the beginning of the movie, but when we came in, a mystery cum-shooter had just came on some naked girl on the kitchen counter and the people in the house were discussing who it could have been. there was the pizza boy who was the first suspect because he was a pizza boy and they are always popping up in pornos. and then there was a guy named "dick" who was the next suspect because obviously that is a porn name. and then there were occasional shots of a man in bed and the words, "sketchy character," would blink at the bottom of the screen. we stayed to find out who the mystery cum-shooter was and we never found out. the movie ended after a couple had had sex, and were lying in bed - the guy watching porn on tv. the woman said, "it's 4 am, why don't you turn that off, and go to bed." and he said something about wanting to see the end. and she said, "you know porns never have any closure." fade to black and then the credits abruptly started rolling. how awesome an ending is that? after we left the theater i tried to engage mary in a discussion about the meaning and the artistic merits of this film, but she was still grossed out and saw it as low-class trash. but man, i think it was so intelligent and that the long, cheesy, almost tedious sex scenes were part of the film's sendup of porn tactics. but mary thought i was just reading to much into what was a bad porno. maybe.

we then went to the library, so i could make copies of my tax forms. i then found some dvd's i wanted to check out. it was 8:59 and they were closing at 9, and i did not have a city of alexandria library card. i, at one point in time, had a fairfax library card, and i don't even have a virginia lisence anymore, i have a florida one, but the woman was real nice, and gave me a card because i made her laugh.

then we finally made it to barnside and played trivial. i won. then i took mary to pick up ty from his job. ty was weird and nice to me and told me that he wanted me to come hang out with them, because i told him i was going home to clean my room (which my mom told me to do today). and he seemed offended that i wasn't going to, and its so weird when someone is real nice to you that you think hates you and that you also think is sort of an asshole. he then told me about a guy he had a crush on. and what, is he showing a vulnerable side? how weird.

anyways, i finally left. and my mom has since told me that our relatives are no longer coming down tomorrow, so i do not have to clean my room tonight, and now i have three movies to choose from watching courtesy of the city of alexandria. the choices are: 2001: a space odyssey, lonesome dove, and rear window. all of them will probably put me to sleep since i am so tired right now but that is okay because falling asleep to a movie is quite possibly one of the most comforting feelings in the world.

oh- and tonight me and mary were driving up a hill a little after dusk, and as we got up it, holy fucking shit, look at that moon. it was the hugest i had ever seen - a little above the horizion, and it was like it is in silly movies where people kiss in front of a full moon. huge and yellow and terrifically humbling.

let me see that...

and oh god, i thought i would update now for no particular reason other than the fact that aaron mcgrudder is too on the mark. in "the boondocks," he gave sisqo the most embarassing black person of the year award - and right now i see why sisqo was granted that distinction. watching snl reruns on comedy central. sisqo's awfulness brought me out of what was otherwise a wonderful tired horniness, daydreaming about jimmy fallon, who was hillary swank in one skit and it was just too good an impression.

and i had a beer with pizza, which made me even more tired, and even more silly. i seriously made out with my wrist while watching jimmy fallon in a way too serious manner, that i now tell myself (and you, the reader) was all in jest. but the sad truth of the matter is that it was not in jest at all - i was that much wanting to make out with someone and that much horny and goddamn i want some action. some uh uh uh and some cock basically.

i went with my mom to visit my dad in the hospital tonight. he has been in there the last week while they adjust his medicine. his feet were so swollen, big like mine were when i got bitten by a spider my second year. today was foggy and rainy, and the weather is so fickle these early spring days. i really sort of love it. i waited in the car when my mom went into safeway to grab some groceries. parked under streetlamps. my feet were resting on the dashboard and weird, trippy shadows of the water dropping against and then moving down the windshield reflected on to my skin. on to my legs. drops of water touching me. but not my body. the lava lamp of my legs and regrowing leg hair and water movement and drop and drop and death and life.

if you do not have a dozen donuts, then you will not eat them all in one sitting

Do not mess with me people. At least not today. Or maybe, that is looking too far into the future. Let's make it: Do not mess with me right now. I am a mad machine, ready to take on the world. Also Known As (which is also known as AKA) Yes! Organic Market. That is going to be my world for eight hours today. I will scan groceries like you've never seen them scanned before. I will be the best goddamn cashier in the world, people.

I leave for work in t minus fifty minutes, and by god I just might get in an accident on the way there. Lookout cars, I am hyped up on way too many cups of extremely strong coffee on this most beautiful early spring morning that the gods have graced us with. The life force has returned and I was up bright and early this morning with a pretty little boner at a few minutes before nine, needing no assistance from such silly contraptions as alarm clocks. I was up on my own for the third day in a row, bright and goddamn mothefucking early. My body has joined the sleeping schedule of what I assume most peoples' bodies are in. Most good working peoples of the world bodies. I go to bed before midnight against my will. I cannot stay up to save my life and I wake up with the sun. How many gorgeous mornings have I missed during my lazy years at college. How many hazy mornings have passed me by? How many more will I allow to?

NONE!! God damn it! Shout it from the rafters at the top of your fucking lungs, wear those things paper thin until you're hoarse with the joy and the pleasure of life.

And, I thought that I would do a diary entry now before I leave for work since chances are that I will probably wipe out soon after coming home from work, curled in my bed under warm covers, wrapped around the arousing language of a one Mister Henry Miller, who by the way, I think I may be in love with. And so yes, yes, back to the diary - back to the boring documentation of what angela at one point in time (or actually if you had MTV, when they showed the reruns about ten times a day) referred to as: my so-called life.

The day-to-day life follows in what may or may not be a linear fashion. People, I am quite hyper right now, don't get too demanding and ask for coherency, otherwise I'm pulling the plug and getting ready for work, which by the way I have to do very shortly. These past few days have been of the good variety - of the fucking life is the most wonderful thing on earth and goddamn I'm going to die one day variety.

Maggie is working at Yes now. Which is the most wonderful and also the most hilirious thing in my life right now. How wild is that that we are both working at this tiny organic market not near either of our houses, far off in SE DC, in that most beautiful neighborhood of Eastern Market. She is a gorgeous soul, the carefree Maggie Ray who would dance at walls til kingdom come. We did no work when we worked together on Friday. We danced across the aisles to the easy listening songs we knew. Maggie, a little too carefree for my I got to get paid sensibilities. Singing while she's ringing up customers and getting down, jamming out to occasional stares. And maybe she can purify me. Make me more carefree - less inhibited by what I fear people might think. And I work with her again today and I am so excited. Someone must have told on us though because on Saturday morning I got reprimanded by John for "fooling around" with my "girlfriend". No, shes not, John. Okay well, "whatever she is," he said, stop fooling around. And ha!, Maggie is a girl and she gave me hugs and I'm a boy so obviously she is my girlfriend, you stupid terd. At least, there are still a couple people in this world who can not automatically tell that I am gay. That makes me happy. But, he's sort of a dumb guy anyways.

Yesterday, I saw two insanely gorgeous would-be photographs. As I was getting off the metro and crossing the street to Yes, a bright New Orleans type procession with bright umbrellas on a sunny day and priests in robes and parishoners with palms passed me in I guess a Palm Sunday procession. And it was a wild sight. And there were too many movie street scenes. Easten Market vendors with colorful fruit and veggies. A homeless man sat outside of Yes with three bright yellow daffodils in his hand offering them for sale. The colors. The colors. The stark contrast. It could not have been a more perfect picture had it been staged.

Blade 2 with Rebecca before she left for Harper's Ferry to be a farmer. The movie was silly and good and I fell asleep half way through. I told you I have a hard time staying up past midnight.

Too many boys/men in short umbros and adidas sandals coming into Yes yesterday giving me little boners. And okay, I am stereotypical gay boy, and think soccer players are so fucking hot.

Sujatha loves them goals, and said I need to have them, and was apalled when I said I was a lit. major just because, and no, I have no clue what I plan on doing with that. Don't you want to be successful, she asked. Is that what Led Zepplin meant in their "Immigrant Song"? God, that was un p.c. of me, but whatever, Sujatha fills all the cultural sterotypes I possess about Indians. She said "success" so weird and emphatically, tying my monetary accumualtion to "success"- in a way that scared me.

There's a Whitman College in Washington State, and no, it is not named after Walt, he told me after I excitedly accosted him about his sweatshirt.

And last night, there was an ad in the metro that said, "WHAT DO THE BEST MINDS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH NEED?
YOU!
To particpate in Studies at the National Institute of Health, call:
-1-800-411-1222"

And THE BEST MINDS brought up thoughts of Ginsberg, and of the best minds of his generation destroyed by things, and other lines I still don't fully understand, but maybe come closer to with each ad for research subjects I see. And, unfortunatly I could not help the best minds of my generation (not Ginsberg's) because I did not have any of the diseases or conditions that they were researching.

bonnie has never seen it

some people like lullabies. some like fairy tales to put them to sleep. others, hot sex. and while i would like hot sex to put me to sleep - it's just not happening these days (and to make myself seem real pathatic - these years i should say, it has been over a year now!) okay, the point of this is that i like watching the shining to put me to sleep. since i have come home from school, i have watched the movie at least ten times late at night and fell asleep half way through, cozying up to the creepy slow shots of the overlook hotel.

"you've had your whole fucking life to think things over, what's a few more minutes going to do you know?"

jack nicholson is quite possibly the coolest guy ever. sexy even.

it rained today. and the day before. and the day before that. and the day before that. it has been a gray week. i was running so behind for work today. on my way to the metro, driving down fort hunt road, i let out a ren scream of mad hysteria when i saw the squirrel when it was too late. it was in the middle of the road, still alive and maybe even rescuable. it looked so panicked and was full of motion yet static because it was stuck to the road where it was hit. and then i ran over it, and i kept screaming, fearing my own death in that squirrels, realzing the fragility of it all, and ahh!! i screamed and screamed. i got to the metro and there was no parking and i got stuck in the garage, unable to turn around, i let out another ren sceam and rammed my car into the temporary wall that was blocking me in until i was free. i did not have time to circle the lot forever, and i was already so so behind, so fuck it, i'll just drive to work.

work was so fun today until tonight, this customer said something like, "hey it's really hard when someone is begging for money right outside the door. i mean, i am asked eighty times a day for money, and i give some away, but it's really hard when they're right in front of your store..." and on and on, and i wanted to punch this white lady for suggesting that i should tell this homeless woman who had been standing in front of the store all night to scram. and whitman said something about "what howls restrained by decorum" - and god, how true, i wanted to scream at this woman for being such an asshole but needing my job, meekly said, "it's city property, you can't really do anything about it." and she told me that i could. and how sad, but she was right. there are laws that prevent homeless people from standing on the street. silly white women appearantly have more right to be on the street than these homeless people. and gary usually tells panhandlers to leave in front of his store, but he was gone for the day, and i was not about to. i then let out my aggresion by telling the young guy after her about it, and he was even more pissed than me. and we talked about that evil woman and he said mockinlgy that they [the homeless] shouldn't even be allowed to breath. i was just so hopping mad about this woman, and feeling my own complicity in ignoring the homeless population (so yes, to make myself feel better and rid myself of some of my guilt), i went outside and gave her some of my asian pears that were not sellable and that i had put in a bag with bad produce that i was going to bring home and eat. she seemd so happy that i wasn't coming out to ask to go stand someplace else and was actually giving her food. and i immeaditly felt better. homeless people serve well as feel better about yourself machines. insert food or money and you instantly feel like a good, benevolant person. like mother fucking teresa.

and then i watched the shining and exhausted from work, fell asleep about halfway through it and woke up during the screaming when jack sees the crumbling naked woman in the bathroom. and now, jack is chasing his family with an axe. and my mom commented on how she thinks its unhealthy to watch this movie so often - i guess thinking that i might be a serial killer. and maybe mom. maybe. anything i set my mind to, right?

good news

From: smallgirllover@hotmail.com
To: seniorcitizendiscount@hotmail.com
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2002 16:23:47

charlie,
i start training at yes! tomorrow at 430. Are you working? can you believe were going to work in the same place? how funny is this?
maggie

love me tender, love me true

i finally watched wild at heart today and it was so good. i love david lynch so much. nicholas cage can be cool. wizard of oz insanity.

now, however, i fear the blockbuster. the movie was due over a week ago. i dropped off my movie in the drop box, fearing that they would know that i had had the movie for so long. i am sort of afraid to even go inside to check how much my fines are going to be. oh, i guess i'll have to start going to power which is like ten minutes more a drive then the so so close blockbuster. blockbuster, can't we just let bygones be bygones so i can go in and use my rent one, get one free coupon?

tonight, i went to borders and bought the little prince, and stole the tropic of cancer, which i am about to start reading right now.

maggie doesn't have black hair

i woke up this morning. twice.

the first time was at seven o'clock, for my eight thirty dentist appointment. i honestly have not been to the dentist in probably two years. everytime i try to make an appointment they are always booked for months, at which time i will no longer be in virginia. so a week ago, i called to make an appoinment. they told me that they had an opening on monday morning or that the next opening was not until may. i took the monday one. i woke up, went in to the bathroom, looked into the mirror and debated whether or not to take a shower, whether or not to go to the dentist. sleep just felt so nice and it was just such a beautiful dreary, rainy morning - the perfect type for never getting out of bed. my bed was the coziest place on earth. thoughts of drilling, of cheeks spread wide, of gloved hands prying around my mouth, of spitting into that thing, of alligator clips and bibs. and then there was the alternative: my warm, cozy, dry bed, with a wet, wild, wild cat stevens world outside. i couldn't decide right then but i knew if i took a shower i would be awake, so i ate some breakfast first. a bowl of cereal and the morning paper. it was too beautiful a day to waste spending it any other place than in the comfort of my warm bed. so i called in sick to the dentist and hopped back into my bed and slept for about four more hours before waking up for the second time at eleven for work.

when i got to work, sujatha told me that someone had come to visit me this morning and that they left me a note. exciting!!! it was a good ol' fashioned note from rebecca that reminded me of so many good times - of ten thousand sloppy handwritten notes from rebecca on any loose peice of my paper in my room at new college. of fun times. of late night adventures. midnight bike rides.

today, i decided to document the music at work, it's a muzak station and is sort of high-art easy listening sometimes and other times just plain crap. i made a songlist, but of course, i somehow left this at work along with names of numerous cute boys that i wrote down after looking at their credit cards. but i remember the first and last song on my list. first was aimee mann's "save me." last was elton john's "your song." and between was lots of sound alike sades and frank sinatras and billie hollidays with occasional marvin gaye, beach boys, fleetwood mac, hall and oates, and lots of bad bad slow jammy stuff.

a man set off the sensor alarms as he walked out the door so i yelled at him to come back and he did. and then i looked in his bag but didn't see anything in it. and then he patted his leg and said it was his leg plate. for some reason, i did not think this was completely ridicolous and was like okay, but then gary came out at that moment and looked into his bag and saw tons of stuff. including the clock off our wall. how out of control is that? he stole a clock off a wall - i am not even that o.o.c. gary tried to make him stay and was holding on to him, but he escaped and took off down the street before we even had time to call the police. i think gary was mad at me for not helping catch the man when he ran away. i felt like i should have but i was ringing up customers and was sort of offput by the absurdity of the whole situation.

then i remembered that i was going to ask gary about this catherine girl. now did not seem like the best time, so i waited until it was too late until he was leaving when i asked him. and he was like oh yeah, i don't remember her last name, but she said she knew you. now i was even more intrigued and asked him if he remembered what she looked like. he said yeah. "Yeah". - what kind of fucking answer is that? - tell me what she looked like dude. so, i ask him if she had curly blonde hair thinking that it'd be the anna-maria catherine. and he was like, nope, black. black hair? what? who could this be?

after gary left, i snuck into his office to see if i could find the applications. i found them, but did not find a catherine anybody's application. i did however find an even more surprising application. one from a "Margaret Ray." maggie ray? now i was real confused and wondering if they were just confused about the name and the hair color or if a catherine from new college applied in addition to maggie ray. and i would be so excited if maggie ray worked there.

*******************
the foundry theater randomly shut down last week because loews didn't think it was profitable enough. i am steaming mad about this. the three dollar movie theater that showed hip, old movies is gone. i had meant to go see mullholland drive one more time there on the big screen but i kept putting it off. i had also been waiting for amelie to come there, but i guess now that's never going to happen. god, i hate loews. i hate it when movie theaters close. i really cannot think of anything sadder than a non-operating movie theater. there was a beautiful old movie theather that was vacant in laconia, new hampshire that i looked at just about every time i passed it with dreams of people sitting in there. vibrant life. the entire world shown to people on these screens and now they are just blank. seats empty. it's like a flat earth with beautiful things being thrown over the edge in fits of rage and an emptier and uglier world exists and something's missing. seeing a happy dog wag its tail and remembering that you used to have a dog and he used to be the most wonderful thing on earth, and you should get another one. hearing your mom talk about juicy lucy's and wishing you would have eaten them too, now they are nowhere to be found, gone with juicy lucy. on king street in old town, the movie theather is boarded and closed and for sale, and i fear that another magical place will be turned into a cvs or a starbucks, and we'll throw more stuff over the edge for no good reason. the biograph is now a cvs. the key that i went to a few times with sarah in high school is now something stupid. and now the last theater that i felt an emotional attachment to is also ka-poot. loews is bulding a twelve screen theater a few blocks away, but i know it is not going to be a three dollar theater because it is going to show new movies and all. and foundry - you are missed.

*******************
my nerve horoscope for the week is pretty exciting:
"You'll be hot shit this week. At least, you'll think you're hot shit, and really, isn't that half the battle?"

true that.

scuba diving in backyard pools

catherine who? what is her last name? john did not know. but he did know that she went to new college and that she applied for a job at yes. what did she look like? he did not know. i'm going to try to find out who this catherine girl is tomorrow when gary is there. i really hope it is not that anna-maria and catherine catherine.

today i was sneezing nonstop because of this spastic weather where it was t-shirt and flip flop weather two days ago, but cold, wet winter coat weather today.

i am so tired. i have been tired since i woke up at eight and tomorrow i have to wake up at seven. and i'm looking forward to tuesday when i will sleep in until a just plain gross hour like two or three.

i have a video from blockbuster that was due last monday before noon. i am going to have late fines like a motherfucker. i wonder if i can just create a new account. and i'm not returning the movie tomorrow morning either. it's wild at heart and if i am going to have to pay a million dollars in late fines for a movie, i goddamn well better have watched the fucking movie. too tired tonight to tackle that. whoo for alliteration.

my name is not benjamin, but:

plastics