*the cold
*endlessly getting soaked
*unsafely riding my bike without my glasses because they’re so covered in droplets as to be un-useable
*cold toilet seats
*spending all my money on heating billz yet still being cold all the fucking time.
yet, it’s here. it’s SEPTEMBER. boo! well, i haven’t turned on my furnace yet and i’d like to wait at least another month. i turned it on halfway through october last year but that’s only because i got sick.
travelling last week has made me want to go everywhere. i’ve got a few schemes hatching, but realistically, they probably won’t go anywhere. i want to go places.
got a letter from prison from a felon whom i am close with–a dude from a wealthy supportive family. he traveled the world on his parents’ dime before he was locked up. now he’s in prison & has been for years, for crimes that were 100% his choice to commit–not things he was forced into, as so many people behind bars are. and when he sends me a letter complaining about how he’s stuck in america forever because he’s a felon & most countries don’t allow amerikan felons to visit, i just get angry. i’m not behind bars but i’m not free either. none of us are. i’ve never really left amerika and i hardly even leave pittsburgh and obviously i am not gonna send a letter into prison about how oppressed and un-free i am but i don’t know, it just really pissed me off.
i heard my boss talking shit on me this morning so now i’m on strike. not officially, of course, just in a passive-aggressive way, because as tempting as it was to charge in and yell, “oh yeah? well FUCK YOU” and storm out, i can’t do that.
so i’m still here. thinking about disgusting orange jell-o desserts, about portland oregon, about zines, about people i know who used to be exciting and who are now boring. i’m taking a slide into the boring side of life, myself, and am shocked at how…pleasant it is. WTF? i don’t want to lose my grip on the world or on life. but i am tired of fighting, at the same time. pretty much everyone i know who has gotten boring is just tired of fighting. and i can hardly blame them, even though i miss their old selves.
i really really want to finish the first draft of my nov before the year is up. i need to write about 40 more pages. i’m not inspired at all. but i’ve decided to sit down with it an hour per day, monday through friday. it’s like homework. i was never any good at doing homework. still, it needs to be done. i have things to say that need to get out there & it’s not gonna happen unless i get some real work done. do i have anything else to say? i started this novel in the summer of 2006, that sweaty hopeless summer in philly. it was four pages, written mainly to piss off my girlfriend-at-the-time (it was a cautionary tale about an out-of-control compost pile!) and now it’s about 180 pages. and i just have to keep on going. finishing things is hard, but if i don’t finish then all this work will have been for nothing. i’m tired of that.
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, ne'er-do-wells, pittsburgh, wingnuts, work
…and any advice would be appreciated. it’s irrelevant whether you’re a friend or just a stranger who’s stumbled across this blog. i realize it’s not the kind of situation most people would have dealt with, but you never know.
so, for those of you who don’t know, i work at a small, eccentric law firm. i was out of the office buying candy for my boss (as he’s a do-whatever-the-hell-i-want senior citizen, he subsists largely on boxes of good & plenty). when i came back, the office felt strangely tense, and i heard my boss say to the law clerk, “ask [ocean] what she thinks! she’ll know what to do?”
so i went into the conference room and asked what was up. “tim _______ called. he’s thinking of committing suicide. i think it’s a great idea!” he said, casually. tim is this client of ours. with his twin brother, we’ve represented them in their father’s estate.
tim is in his late 30’s, mentally ill, physically ill, on disability, very few social skillz, no known friends, no known lovers, no hobbies. both of his parents, who cared for him his whole life, are dead. he has nobody except his twin brother, who he argues with endlessly. he hears voices. he thinks everyone is out to get him. he’s been institutionalized countless times, to no avail.
so, tim is coming in next week to chat about suicide with my boss, who seems to think the whole thing is rather amusing. he’s got a pretty caustic sense of humor, so i don’t know if he’s just saying that behind closed doors. (adding to the complicatedness of this situation, one of our other clients DID kill himself 2 weeks ago–the son of one of my boss’ close friends. i was the one who had to break the news to him.) i don’t know if he will be more sympathetic when this client is actually in the office. i sure hope so.
but somehow i feel like this is gonna fall on me, because i’m the only one in the office with a shred of fucking empathy. how do i convince this man not to kill himself? is that even a good idea, if he truly feels like he has nothing to live for? i have talked people out of killing themselves before, but they were people i loved deeply, who had other stuff going for them. i don’t love this man, although i do find him mildly amusing & endearing in a strange way. but seriously, seriously, what do i do?
and hardly slept last night but i want to post anyway. because i’m so angry about the fact that a man who hates women randomly shot up a fitness club around here. do any of you non-pittsburghers even know that that happened? did it make the news at all?
why did my dad call me to see if i was okay when those three cops were killed? (yeah, the cops were killed about a mile from my home, and this gym is pretty far away– it isn’t even technically in pittsburgh, but he doesn’t know that) but not now–i mean, i’m a woman. blatant misogyny like this is a threat TO MY LIFE, it’s a threat to the lives of all women. but oh, who cares? nobody’s going to throw a benefit concert for the families of these three women, even though one was a single mother with a fifteen-year-old son. they threw a benefit concert for the families of those cops, even though the pension for an officer killed in the line of duty is HUGE. but women getting murdered is just business as usual.
so fucked up. i could go on and on, but hopefully most of you understand the full ramifications of this and i don’t have to explain. adding insult to injury, the articles about these women in memoriam all go on and on and on about their bright smiles, their consideration for others, their subservience. when surely, surely, they did something else with their lives besides fucking smile. but who’ll remember now?
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, ne'er-do-wells, pittsburgh, wingnuts, work
okay, before i forget, i want to start this off with the funniest personal ad i’ve seen in a while. it was culled from “out”, not the glossy mag but the pittsburgh gay bar rag. i actually tore it out & tried to scan it in but it, being newsprint, scanned terribly so i’ll just have to re-type:
“preferred tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired, but open, submissive, accomodating white males seeking erotic discipline relationship. and, keyboard players seeking unique lounge act. call (412) xxx-xxxx”
if that’s up anyone’s particular alley, call me and i will supply the number! ha ha ha. people are so strange and interesting sometimes.
anyway. this weekend was weird. after a month or two or a year of manic activity i flipped the calendar to august, nothing written down save sheena’s birthday and “check on garlic” (i have garlic drying in my kitchen). so, i celebrated by sleeping a lot. in a slow motion daze all weekend, which i haven’t snapped out of yet.
ray & i went to the needle exchange in oakland (no, he’s not an IV drug user, he needs syringes for a medical purpose) and it was a really strange and unexpected experience. i’ve been to a lot of odd places in my life but never a needle exchange. there was a man working there with the strangest hair i’ve ever seen–a pregnant junkie asked him if it was “a clown toupee” but he grabbed it and pulled on it hard. “nope! it’s my hair!” he said, cheerfully.
when we approached the building ray said that it looked scary and spooky. i thought he was being silly. but while i was waiting around for ray i asked a worker if they had a bathroom. “we do, but you’re not going to like it,” she warned me. she then led me to a solitary confinement cell. “sorry,” she said, “this used to be a juvenile hall….” it’s weird, considering all the thousands of hours i’ve spent doing solidarity work with prisoners, i’ve never been inside a real jail cell. i couldn’t go into this one. i touched the door handle and shuddered. “i’ll just hold it,” i told her.
i spent the rest of the waiting around time looking at the cinderblocks and feeling the weight of all the lives ruined in this building. i am not sensitive to ghosts but i felt them. i felt all the tears shed and all the misery. nothing could bring me back to my safe present–not book ‘em, not dinner, not a warm bath, not hot buttsex. i strained some muscles at the front of my thigh during the latter and i think some harsh memories were stored there because after that i was just completely dead to the world, just mired in this deep deep sadness that had nothing to do with my present reality.
today at work, my boss asked the young law clerk if he’d found our former client, who we haven’t heard from in a year or so. “i thought he was dead!” young law clerk said. “i have no reason to believe he is dead,” (note: he has been insisting this man is dead for about 2 months) my boss replied. “he’s just….morose. like [ocean] gets sometimes. or like how i get sometimes. he’s morose. he doesn’t want to talk to anyone. we just have to find him, that’s all. he’s out there, somewhere.”
like, seriously. this morning i was changing shirts, so i could go to work. took off my glasses. put them somewhere. wandered into the bathroom in search of my bra. put it on, put on cleaner less stinky shirt, found hoodie on the floor. no more glasses! where are my glasses? where the fuck did i put my glasses? fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
fortunately i am one step ahead of myself. and although i couldn’t remember where i’d placed my glasses 30 seconds before, i did remember where i put my old pair when i moved into this house six months ago, just in case something like this happened. they were waiting for me, patiently. they’re light & small. they make me look boring. i cut my hair so that it looked good with my big old glasses, and with these small subtle ones it looks fucking stupid. i feel crazy. i feel stupid. i feel like a goddamn dumbass.
i am working entirely too much and it’s making me nuts. i’m sure the ungodly amounts of sugar i have been consuming lately isn’t helping much either. saturday i finally get a day off, and i will hopefully be springboarding onto a new adventure.
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, ne'er-do-wells | Tags: gratitude, thankfulness, work
i’m at work right now & there has been a big family bitchfest going on all day for the people i work for. lots of pointless bitching & adult-babiness delivered in a shrill voice that makes me want to crawl under my desk and hide. they tried to drag me into it at one point, but i hid in the bathroom until the fighting momentarily died down, and then went back into the conference room with my little notebook like nothing had happened. i’m very good at hiding.
god, families are so fucked up! i am feeling very triggered and nervous right now & i just want to go home but i need the $, plus it would be kind of awkward if i told my boss, “your daughter’s insanity makes me really nervous because i was raised by a pair of insane people and i haven’t quite worked out my issues with that, so i think i, like, need to go home and breathe deeply for a while and drink some stress relief tea & remind myself over & over again that i live somewhere safe now. okay?”
on a lighter note, thanksgiving was really good. i got super stressed & depressed the day before, but everything worked out fine. most of the food turned out well, people brought tasty shit, everyone i invited more or less got along, many laughs were had, colleen discovered a new hairstyle for me, and i had a lot of good conversations and generally felt the love. the day before thanksgiving i was super bummed about how different everything is this year, but the actual act of thanksgiving itself reminded me of all the new roads that are opening, that continue to open as we speak. reminded me of the amazingness i am capable of & the splendid people that i’ve met this year. & for real i am thankful, for so much. i don’t need a fucking holiday to remind me. i have two things to remind me every day to be thankful. one is that i saw one of my best friends die a lengthy, slow and terrible death. the most vital woman i ever knew; i saw her strength and will to live get sucked out week by week until there wasn’t anything left. thing number two is that i work with prisoners. i write to them and i work with a whole bunch of people on pre-release. & those two things shape me & remind me on even the suckiest most horrible days that my life & freedom are such a precious fucking gift & i have no right to waste them.
and with that, back to work…
i finally got sick from the endless cold in my house, so i guess it’s time to bite the bullet & turn the fucking heat on. i’m nervous about gas bills, but what the fuck ever, i guess. lately everyone who comes over has commented on how it’s weird that i’m one of the coldest people they know & one of the last to turn on the heat. i like to say, in response to that comment, that it’s because i’m tough. it’s all fake bravado, though–i don’t think i’m tough at all. i am a pretty cold person; i need a hoodie when it’s 70 degrees out; and my current 51-degree house is just killing me. really i don’t turn my heat on because a) i spent my formative years living with punks, who are perhaps the most anti-central-heating group of peeps on the planet and b) i still cling to the belief that got instilled in me that i don’t deserve nice things. but my body is rebelling; my body is saying, “no, you’re being fucking stupid, turn the goddamn heat on so we can both finally relax,” my body always knows somehow.
the cold crept in, underneath the piles of blankets, in through my sinus cavities, waking me up an hour before i even had to. laying in bed, listening to the horrible dogs bark & watching the gray light break through my window. still cold, even underneath four blankets, even though it’s theoretically not even really cold out, yet.
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, gayz, l'amour, ne'er-do-wells | Tags: celibacy, love, single
“When I realized I was into girls, it was scary to let go of all the things I was supposed to be and all the things I was supposed to want. It’s like you’re a character in this book that everyone around you is writing, and suddenly you have to say I’m sorry, but this role isn’t right for me.
And you have to start writing your own life and doing your own thing. That was hard enough. But that was nothing–nothing, I tell you–compared to the idea that I could let go of the desire to have a girlfriend. Maybe not forever. Maybe forever. Certainly for now. I wasn’t letting go of love or sex or the idea of companionship. I was just rejecting the package in which it was being sold to me. I was going to say it was okay to be alone, when it felt like everyone in the world was saying that it wasn’t okay to be alone, that I had to always want someone else, that the desire had to fuel me…Some people find happily ever after in being part of a couple, and to them I say, good for you. But that’s no reason we should all have to do it. That’s no reason that every goddamn song and story has to say we should.” -david levithan (writing from a queer teen girl perspective in the short story “miss lucy has a steamboat”)
recently i’ve had the revelation that dating people has never made me happy. it’s made me happy in the short-term moment, but never happy all around, the kind you can feel in yr bones. at this time two, three, four, and five years ago, i was madly in love with someone who was madly in love with me. we had good conversations, good sex, we hardly ever fought. she said so many things to me that i’d dreamed of for years. and i was fucking miserable. everything i did was laced with the undercurrent of her. why isn’t she calling me back? what if she’s dead? where is she? why won’t she ever come to new york? blah, blah, blah.
we lived far away from each other and didn’t really have anything in common besides the fact that we were both radical queers who loved each other (and i guess we both like books, bikes and booze, but to very different degrees & for very different reasons.) and i gave up my life. just threw it away for the first three years we were together. the last year and a half, i tried getting it back. i faked like i could be independent and do my own shit. and no matter how much fun i was having back in ny, it was completely ruined by this undercurrent of longing. i could never focus on anything but her.
and it’s not just with this girl. it’s with every girl. it’s with everyone. because nobody is ever enough. nobody ever can be. and perhaps this feeling could be summed up by another literary quote, this one from robert pinsky: “I woke up feeling so sad this morning/because I realized that you could not,/as much as I love you, dear heart,/cure my loneliness”
and, by letting this notion go, i feel so free. so much better than when i was trying to make something work that isn’t working. i don’t feel remarkably lonely or sexually frustrated. i feel calm, productive, fulfilled, and maybe even happy.
the main thing that makes me unhappy about this new situation is other people acting like i’m so crazy for not wanting to date anyone, like i am some kind of frigid depressing cat lady, sitting in front of the home shopping network and crying every night. when my life isn’t like that at all.
i still laugh the loudest even though i’m sober now, i ride hard, i love hard (platonically), i write my goddamn book (and i’ve written ninety usable pages–about 120 pages total, if you include stuff i’ve edited out–this year. i couldn’t have done that if my time & energy were wasted in the pursuit of someone else). i live my fucking life. & it’s mine now, all mine.
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, healthcare woes, ne'er-do-wells, wingnuts
i’ve decided it’s fall because i am tired of waiting. my goals for the fall are:
1. figure out what is going on with my heart (literally, my heart, not a metaphor for how i feel about relationships.)
2. get back into therapy
3. learn how to drive.
4. eat more s’mores.
i am doing well on #1 and #4. i have not even started #2 or #3. oh well. a beating heart is way more important than a driver’s license. i did not accomplish either of my goals for the summer, which were “get rid of backne” and “stop being embarrassing.” i think i am a lot less embarrassing, but that’s just because i quit drinking, not because i fundamentally changed. quitting drinking, incidentally, is great. it’s changed my life for the better for sure. quitting coffee has been atrocious, but i have no choice. i didn’t accomplish much of anything this summer. i hardly made out at all, i didn’t do a lot of fun stuff. i had a few good days & nights, i read a lot of good books & hopefully wrote a good book. mostly i was just aimless and depressed and/or despondent.
on a lighter note, i would like to share some highlights from my favorite police blotter of all time:
6:07 p.m., Columbia — A woman on the 21800 block of Sawmill Flat Road
was angry because her 2-year-old daughter returned home from a weekend with her father and had a “mullet” haircut.
1:46 p.m., Valley Springs — Nearby residents were “unappreciative” of a
male sitting on the hood of a vehicle and playing a guitar at Messing Road and Highway 12.
7:21 a.m., Lake Don Pedro — A man said he was kidnapped from Fremont and
brought to Fleming Meadows on Bonds Flat Road. He then said he voluntarily came up but he felt lured there under false pretenses.
Midnight, Columbia — A woman on the 10900 block of Green Street said she
swallowed gum and was very nervous about the situation.
11:55 a.m., Tuolumne area — A woman on the 15100 block of Mountain Lily
Road said she was selling her couch online and received eight $100 bills from “Bruse Willis.” The money was determined to be counterfeit.
6:20 p.m., Big Oak Flat area — A woman said her ex-girlfriend’s mother
threatened to have her killed following an argument on the 17500 block of Highway 120 over exercise equipment.
1:39 p.m., information report — A caller left a voicemail saying she received a piece of metal that looked like a quarter sometime over the past two weeks and did not know where, or when, she received the piece of metal.
i love this. i’ve been to this region before (rural tuloumne county, ca) and it is every bit as wacky as the police reports make it out to be.
Filed under: destroy that tape loop, ne'er-do-wells | Tags: alcohol, massage, randomness, sobriety
lately i’ve been thinking about how much i want to go to massage school, and maybe try & open up something similar to working class acupuncture in portland, or, but do it here in pittsburgh. that would involve lots of money (way less than most massage schools, but still, at least 5 g’s) , a two-year commitment to a school i am skeptical of, keeping the faith that my limp wrists will not die on me completely, and a very long commitment to pittsburgh. it’s something i think is really important, & something i really want to do, provided i can find some co-conspirators. i feel like the reason why i haven’t done more cool shit with my life yet is because i lack people that i can work well with who want similar things. you know? even little shit like traveling i almost never do, and i don’t really know why.
something else, totally unrelated, that i want is more friends who were raised by crazy drunk families who aren’t crazy drunk messes themselves. i want to talk about the very real sense of abandonment you can have when yr trying to sober up, like how you can feel that you’ve failed yr family by not being a total mess. when you know you’re fucking lucky to not have that gene that makes you ruin your whole goddamn life, but at the same time, you can tell they resent you, and that they don’t understand that you aren’t like them. & there is a cameraderie in their drunkenness that you’re left out of.
like, the last two times i stayed with my fam for an extended period of time (winter & summer ‘07) i was encouraged to drink until i passed out, i never got yelled at for lazing about the house when i had a hangover or drinking until i puked. but there were several times when shit hit the fan when i a) cooked vegetables b) spent hours writing c) cut my hair. like, what the fuck, right? but then i thought about it more and i realized that in their own fucked up way, they want me to be a part of their world. & it saddens them that i’m not. & in their own weird way they’re trying to include me.
i don’t really have anyone to talk to about this; most of my friends who are from alcoholic homes are either drunk-ass messes themselves, or else i don’t really get to talk to them anymore. and i’m trying to sober up lately, because my body just can’t take anymore abuse, and it’s not terribly hard usually, but it’s bringing up all this weird shit. i drank a little last night and i woke up at 6am in a panic searching for my birth certificate. what?
on a wholly different note, i also want to go west again, really badly. i also want to visit ray in baltimore & see the american visionary art museum, and i want to see chicago and minneapolis for the first time because everyone keeps saying that i’ll like them, and i want to go back to the desert even though i don’t really know anyone there.
there is this withered bowl of vegetables that i cooked last saturday. i ate the whole skilletful, except for one mouthful. potatoes, thyme, onions, beans. kale&tomatoes fresh from the garden. it was delicious. but i just can’t eat that last mouthful, and i can’t throw it away, either.
