collegiate diversion

It’s so much like being horribly disfigured. I don’t want people to look at me when I am like this, and if there was a way to get back to the way everything was before, I would. SO look how pitifully I am holding on, dragging it all around. Not him, but just, that opportunity that maybe he could admit he didn’t use me, I wasn’t this shameful piece that was thrown away. I am so ashamed by everything he did to me, sodomizing my soul and breaking my back in ways I didn’t know a human life form could break, well, anyone.

And I have to think why, why did I let him do this to me? I want to be new again. “I want to be a little baby.” I want to be everything!

And I am entirely stubborn for letting him get the best of me, for all these years, I know that now. And I still can’t let him go. It’s not really Him though, like he is some higher power, some religion I am not worthy of. It’s something I use to think, horribly.

I see my mistakes now. I can’t just let him wreck everything, and I can’t just keep seeking what I want from him. The damage is done, and he refuses to undo any of it. So what does this mean? Plastic surgery, entire rethinkage in the recovery ward of romance and pure existence. Maybe? It could work. It’s in my being to be healed. I can be whichever figure I like, but surely no one can judge me for looking like this, and trying to find the perfect mirror that could mirror back that perfect image back at me.

That is love isn’t it? The mirror that shows you who you are? The act of reflection? I cannot love, at least not for now. I do not want to see the image I have become.

It all makes sense in this way, monster. I cannot blame my creator for being the Frankesteinish beast. I suppose I can just move along henceforth and be known as the kind giant, the gentle giant, the one that everyone thinks he is.

It doesn’t matter what anyone sees when they look in the mirror for me. In him, I only see the worst in myself, and his self. We said that so often, and laughed at the enigmatic energy of our youthful love and lust: “we bring out the worst in each other for sure.”

There must be a more KIND mirror that will tell me something about being the fairest, or anything, above them all.

But in disfigurement, I am exuberantly lost. And I lust over that which has been lost. I will make her face whole again. If I can.

I can only try.

College student. Never got up the courage to major in music, let alone audition, or push herself to do any sort of training as a youngster, back when the kids were mean and their parents drove them to gymnastics to be the next Nastia-superstar-superfreak-contorionist-Kid at the Olympics.

Go Nastia, go.

Yeah, but where are all you mean kids now? You’re at fucking college now. I mean, we were at best “impaired” but maybe she had a point when she said

“Sam, you’ve actually always been this hard on yourself.” That’s pretty true, but I can’t remember. Don’t really remember the mean kids.

So, rockstar-ship. Myspace? Self release? Personal record label? Find some chicks in Athens, make beautiful sand-love on a beach somewhere with sandpaper guitar, drink in the horizon, and play for the Greeks.

Yeah, big following in Greece. I see it all now. For me, I mean. Was that not clear? For ME.

I saw my personal rockstar, or maybe that’s what I call him in my head, on the street last night. Or at least, he would like to think of himself as a rockstar. Someone better get this abuser of the legal system some knee-pads for the BonJovi concert, or that’s something to the effect that he friend said.

He said, she said, curtain.

We were in the city, leaving a show at 1AM, and yeah, I saw the schedule, saw his band playing that night too. When we first walked past the bar to get to BeatCircus, I saw him on stage from the street, back to us and tuning his guitar, looking actually even more rugged than I can remember.

Like that goddamned magazine I read way back when. “Rugged, handsome Boston native.” Oh god, why did I agree to go out with him before reading the article?! Mistake Samantha, stupid.

Very un-rockstar like. Of me, I mean.

I think he and I had it sort of worked out. You be the rockstar Steely Dan, and I’ll be the amateur RollingStone journalist, covering the story and taking your wise advise on men and the bizzzzz.

Bzzzzzzxzzzzz, rockstars blow.

So we were all walking, great show, and I was fantasizing about switching it up and becoming a rockstar, doing the dream and becoming what I had just seen. We pass your bar, the one where you apparently control the gigs, where you still won’t book me.

And, yeah, fuck you Samuel, if that’s your real name. I’m so glad at how I so cleverly missed you. Until the puff of smoke and your stupid, very starving-artist poise against the building.

We locked eyes then, on the pavement where we originally met. Irony. Clever. Blame the fucking sidewalk. Yeah, think I will. The sidewalk leads right to where we parked, it’s cracking from the blistering cold, ad you just have to be smoking here.

Lock eyes, and for one split-second, you are so not the rockstar anymore. You’ve got the courage to play in front of a mostly-empty and hateful bar, but you can’t even acknowledge me. Like you ever had the courage.

I was your biggest fan man, just like Stan, and you totally let me go. And I’ve totally let you go. Who is the rockstar now?

Learning from my mistakes (and trying not to regret it)

I did it because I thought he would love me.

It was a long shot, all seven minutes I knew him before we kissed at the new year, all several hours we had sat listening to the band play and him walking me to my car to hug me goodbye, all seven years I loved him in school not telling him how I really felt until he had to leave the country.

And too many more stupid mistakes to tell.

Unwilling and unable to separate them (reality) from my self (and fantasy), I think I’ve got a sort of problem.

And I’ve sort of got the solution now too: just be belligerently bitter and untrusting of any guy that I meet. That way they’ll never know me, never like me, never talk to me. Thank god, it’s all so sad and brilliant and classy.

Here we go. For example, on this one night it was storming out and no one had returned my calls. It made sense, no one wants to walk to Collegetown in the blisteringly cold Ithaca snow. But I promised myself that Thursday I would make it to Jazz Night.

So many things have happened at the cafe, and so many things haven’t. Bad memories, great memories, unfulfilled dreams for real, unexpected phone calls from lovers, and strange and concluding arguments.

Like one no one in the band got back to me about my demo I had given them.
Like that guy who grabbed my waists a lot when I told him I was waiting for someone across the sea.
Like when he called from across the sea and I took it outside.
Like when she showed her nipples to everyone and we fought.

But when I went stag I didn’t expect anything to happen, or anyone to be there, or anything to happen that I would regret.

There were so few people there, but when I met this guy Ryan, I totally shot him down, to an extent, you know, following the new routine and philosophy. Attractive, flirty, energetic young male = asshole already who I won’t waste my time with now. I was so insulted by his attempts that I wrote this in my book when I sat down with my tea:

Dec. 11, 2008

It didn’t occur to me until afterwards that the guy was hitting on me. Maybe I really have changed. We locked eyes as soon as I walked up to the café – and I smiled welcomingly because I thought I knew him, just from that energy.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, like an idiot, “I don’t know you.” Like an idiot again.
“I’m Ryan,” and he shook my hand. “Now you do.”
He said his friends were going across the street, $5 cover for supposed “amazing” jazz.
“Eh, kind of out of my price range right now.”
“Oh, but it’s so worth it!” woah, surprising.
His friends discussed the move across the street a little more and I looked at the ground, feeling his eyes on the top of my head, melting the falling snow.
“I think I’m going to go inside for a while, I promised some people I’d meet them here,” I lied, totally.
“Oh, well, if you change your mind, I’ll be over there, okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging him off quickly and bolting inside. I just wanted to get away from him. Not because I was put-off by him really, I just didn’t really care. And it was freezing out.
“I’ll see you over there!” he shouted. Not in an annoying or creepy way, in a really nice way. Inviting, like his eyes…I guess…
HIS ARROGANCE didn’t bother me until I sat down with my rooibus. And it upset me. A lot. At least enough to write all of this down. Oh god, shit. Maybe I have changed.

CHANGE FOR BITTERNESS, HURRAH!

I sat there by myself for the rest of the night and never made it across the street. How could I? Everything just felt so artificial. Except for the paintings on the wall, there were beautiful. These doves on lithographs over bizarre fabric patterns and pressed gold and blues. They were gorgeous work really.

I wanted to cry for not having anyone there to tell about them.

And I could forgive myself for all of it, the coldness outside, the coldness inside, the cold I eventually got from the cold walk and coldly losing everything, until THIS had to happen:

Finals week we showed our packaged stories for our News Reporting class. And this group of girls covered the art at the ABC café, and the beautiful paintings on the wall. They spoke to the artist, with beautiful eyes. His name is Ryan.

AHHHHH. I felt like such an idiot after that, thought about what I had wrote in my book that night a little more, giggled about it to a friend who had covered the story and then sent a sad and sorry email.

HEY RYAN! DON’T KNOW IF YOU REMEMBER ME, I’M THAT SAD AND SORRY GIRL SAMANTHA WHO DIDN’T TAKE YOUR INVITE FOR ACROSS THE STREET. I’M SORRY FOR BEING SO GODDAMNED COLD TO YOU. GOING THROUGH A TRANSITIONAL PHASE AND ALL. ANYWAY, LOVE YOUR ARTWORK, DIDN’T REALIZE YOU DID ALL THOSE. THEY WERE BEATIFUL AND MADE ME CRY. SO, I’M AT THE ABC A LOT, ESPECIALLY ON THURSDAYS. MAYBE I’LL SEE YOU THERE?!!?!?!? OKAYYYY? PLEASE RYAN. THINK ABOUT IT! BYE!!!!

Well, I didn’t exactly say it like that, I like to think I’m a little but more reserved and cool then that.
But then again, maybe I’m not.

He still hasn’t responded.

Oh god, I am so STUPID STUPID STUPID.

When I was a kid, I read nature magazines, cover to cover, stenciling the wilds of the Amazons and the Sierras. In this one issue, I remembered the factoid: scorpions survive, on average, over 120 years because they take such small and short and gaspy breaths.

So of course, me, still terrified of death and dreaming of forever, I attempted the scorpion way. After about 45 minutes, I started to hyperventilate and caved on my bedroom floor, breathing deep and violently, horrified at what I could not achieve.

“I am going to die,” I thought.

I am somewhat more composed now but, if life is a measure of the breaths we take, or whatever that saying says, “the moments that take your breath away,” bullshit like that…

I SHOULD LIVE FOREVER.

In the Scorpion-philosophy, I have gasped so many times that I must be some product of longevity. For how many times you have made me gasp, in excitement, in happiness, in ecstasy, in sadness, in pain, in complete and utter loneliness, my gasps measure all those endeavors.

It has led me all to this, and so little more:
1. Gasping is the prologue to the major meltdown.
2. And my life has gasped through for what feels like an eternity.
3. Or the eternity that pales in the shadow of yours and mine and love.

But, I suppose my life has only been about a sixth of what the scorpion endures. So shouldn’t the scorpion be so jealous of me? Why was I so hard on myself at 7-years old? Horrified that I had failed the living? The scorpion will have pain for so much longer than I could ever possibly want.

I will rot in the dirt while he scales the ground, skittering and skirting in life’s worst.

No.

I don’t really know why this hit me today but here it goes: NO. I really am envious. Rather, I do think it is all so hard.

A scorpion doesn’t have the emotional pain that comes so naturally to humans, it doesn’t have the stress, and the anguish, the happiness and greatness that hopefully comes before that.

Being a human is so hard.

The scorpion doesn’t wait for you to call, sitting on a bathroom floor, crying and overanalyzing, shrieking and dying and wondering if for years the tattoo of your name will ever leave brain and tongue and champagne bottles on the bottom shelf.

In conclusion, inconclusively, I should be thankful for my species, and grateful to be a part, but suddenly the lows have outweighed the highs, and oh god, how I would love to be a scorpion.

And to have never known you.

Just to be one happy poisonous insect on the eternal horizon of everything and nothing.

How does one define themselves? Retro, vintage, preppy, of the indie-rock persuasion…How does one define themselves with others? Boyfriend, girlfriend, brother, sister, tool, asshole, lover, bitch…How does one articulate emotion? Lost, happy, confuse, spent, well-off.

It’s better than nothing, I guess.

I’m getting too caught up in the labels. Not like my friend, who digs the stitched crocodile and polo guy, the American Eagle, the Versace, “I’m a” routine, including the all generic Conservative, Catholic, etc.

If I attempted to define myself, I’m sure I would be just as equally bored as before I set out. That damned quest for the perfect words.

The perfect words?

“You seemed so fucking perfect and everybody loves you but you screwed up so horribly when you played me and left the country, stringing me up in a way that I thought 4 months apart would mean little in the land of ‘thank god you are home!’ ”

You’re a real jerk, you know? And those are the perfect words. thx very much.

“If you meant to make it about selfish sex and romantic dates with no connection, you should have said so. Don’t fuck me up, make me think that my seven years of crushing on you has come to the perfect close.”

IF everyone wants to be so goddamned articulate, we should start communicating?

Like this guy the other night, with the meal he cooked, and the champagne left over and movie and his arms and the steel stud in his face…he should have said something more than just leaving me with that ambiguous good-bye kiss.

“Fair well darling girl, you’re sexy as fuck and I’ll call you.”

(sigh) OR, or something more realistic like: “That was great, thanks, but I’m cool with leaving it at that.”

I mean, just say something! Instead of not calling the next day. And remaining silent, leaving me to my own devices. Oh you 26 year-old frat boy, you know the drill.

I hated when I told my mother I met him, and she said “Is he as incredible as that other guy?” Fail, and Ma, of course not.

~~~

I’ve come to embrace the phone because now look!, the humans are forced to communicate! But it’s shocking how little we say and how closed-off we still remain. I guess we’re just evolving at getting very good at this esoteric, ambiguous, secretive and alone thing.

Check.

My EX hardly said anything, in the 3 months of summer loving. Well, I guess, not really loving. I said a lot, and he absolutely nothing.

If there is a game between the sexes, I must be losing. I talk to much. I’m too intimidating, I got it, I got it, I got it.

But why won’t you just tell me that? Rather than leave me to my own devices to over analyzing and critique just why the fuck I am not worth your time.