Feb 25, 2010

25 february

1998

I am listening to "Express Yourself." Today, Kari didn't eat with us yet again (surprise, surprise.) After school Stacie & I went to Brittany's. We were going to go to Record Exchange, but we didn't so we will go tomorrow. Also, Andrew called and his friend Jack really wants to go out with Fruit even though he's never met her. If she goes to teen night she'll meet him. Andrew said that I "looked really good on Friday." He then told me to laugh because I have a cute laugh. He told me I was cuter than Laura Ingalls. Then, very quickly he said, "wannagooutwithme?" and I said, "what?" and he said, "Nothing. That came out wrong, nevermind." Then I got really scared and gave the phone to Fruit, so then he asked her to ask me out for him. She told me and he kept calling to find out my answer. She told him I still kind of liked my ex and was in the process of getting over him, and that he should wait awhile before asking me out. She also said I didn't like being asked out over the phone. It sounded good enough, but I worried that he wouldn't want to be friends anymore. So I called him and he acted normal and said we would talk for a long time tomorrow. I think it's okay, but I wonder how long he'll stick around. I feel like I'm still getting to know him. I've only seen him 3 times. Maybe if I hung around him a bit more, I'd like him too. But not yet. What I need now is friends, not a boyfriend. He'll have to wait. He is very sweet, though. That would be cool if Fruit went out with Jack. That would be awesome. 



1999

I am watching Sailor Moon and Roseanne. Nadia has a really neat faux-fur coat. It was a boring day. I drew a picture of Sailor Jupiter. Britta and I still don't know what the plan is for tomorrow. I guess Bruce and Joe stole some beer for the kegger this weekend. But it's supposed to be alcohol-free! Oh my God. I talked to Brittany, nothing matters, we're getting along fine. Which ruins my plans for this weekend. I didn't want to do anything Saturday, but now I'm stuck.



2003

I guess if it doesn't kill us it will make us stronger. I wish my thoughts were clear. I should cut down on the smoking. I should promise to self not to purchase another sack for a week. Staying unstoned for a week. Imagine. This book is so stupid. Just filled with empty promises and broken dreams. Or broken promises and empty dreams. I promise all the time. I love doing art, I just love it. A sense of accomplishment. I'm not sad; I feel happy overall. The jason thing- it just causes me overloads of emotions and thoughts, and all I can think of now of course is that, and of course I'm thinking of it because everytime anything happens between us I constantly think of it after and I know not whether it's good or bad- is any of it good or bad? Which is which? I don't want to go to fibers. I don't want to go home. I want to sit on a couch and write all night with coffee. I'm- vacant. 

later...

And fibers and my incredibly itchy legs... And Matt's wonderful rendition of Last Caress- does he know yet that I'm in love with him. He should, as I am, as I undoubtedly will always be. We almost spent the night together once, you know. Once I know.

Alex. Alex, Alex, I love talking to him because he's the only one who can know my business. He's the only one who can know all my horrendous details and secrets and lies and etcetera. He is there and he doesn't really mind if I tell him.



2004

AAH I just touched Steve's little round butt through his black longunderwear and he pushed me off from hugging him IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME. 

MAN, 2:07 am, the next train will be arriving in 6 minutes SHOULD BE mind you. I'm waiting at the Western stop. It's cold again; I can see breath clouds even between breaths. I'm the only one in sight. Ah, a sign of life on the other side of the tracks. A man in a pink hat just dropped off a bomb. Steve insisted to us both that he probably will not engage in anything sexual with Cathy. I found out who Cathy is, she's this dumbass bitch (honesty, this isn't just jealous me speaking) who was with Andy at a party over July 4 with bad fashion and horrible acne. So what... I've got to reassure myself over & over again that yes, it's okay if Steve has sex or has a girlfriend or even falls in love. I don't think any of this will happen with this Cathy character (I'm going to drink so much fucking grapefruit juice when I get home), but I have to accept that Steve wants to get laid/ wants a banal girlfriend, whatever, so get used to it. Besides... we all know he loves me most. 

Lots of work to do and I = slacker so life sucks, is pointless, and upwards of whatever, nothing matters, everything does, and who could care anyway.



2005


finally... some good timing.


Today is a bluish day- not in color but in feeling. I'm wallowing in the destructive relationship/memory of ex best friends. Dissatisfied with present position, but definitely don't need to be thinking about it. Alex and I spend too much time together. Who else is there? I wear out everyone, and they me. A lot of work to do still... I'd rather spend the time alone (but I need Alex's help) or go to a place where there isn't anyone with whom I'm close. I'd like to go to a party- I'd like to get wasted- no, no... not to think about that. Blatant honesty? The diary full of it, right. So then- I admit loneliness. I miss Erwin. I miss Steve. I miss Jean. I miss Brittany. I miss Kari, Stacie, Britta, Tim... Nick and CJ, warm weather, tank tops and beer on porch, cigarettes under starlight, romance... I don't want to wallow. I have to take pictures tonight and get up early to develop them. I could take pictures then go to a party, I bet. And be lonesome. There must be someone who wants to see me tonight. Or I could stay by myself... either way when I get home I'm going to change clothes and hair makeup make dinner get drunk charge my phone go take pictures try to be nice as possible to Alex maybe call Kelly... It's early enough for all of this. I can't wallow. I can't get jealous and self-destructive and obsessed with this lacking. A day where things are uneven. Missteps. I can always just eat coconut sorbet.


Maybe this ortho tri cyclen in all its acne fighting greatness is fucking up my cycle of happiness and emotional stability. Is it worth it. I might be beautiful, but how can that matter if no one is there to like me?


I haven't cried in awhile, through all the madness, which one might call impressive. Tonight the world is busy disregarding itself and preparing to go out and party to make up for lost time. Consume consume consume and I just know how they feel at the moment and can't wait to join them.



2006

3:16 pm

Part of me honestly thinks if Charlie and I broke up I would stay in Europe and go to Dublin and be with Romain a little bit longer. I felt good in London with him, I felt great, actually. Walking with him all over the place or sitting with him in various cafés, I felt amazing. It felt like how London should feel, with him, knowing where to go. He has a good thing because he’s going around wherever he’d like to live and work. He isn’t in love, and he’s able to move around from person to person having valueless relationships that are never serious. He is okay with this, I think, though he expresses some distaste for the fact that he has never been involved in anything of consequence. It is so different from the way I am, and people like this are of course very frightening to me, because there’s no way to predict what they will do or how little they will feel. I feel very strongly toward him; I’m sure that I would be more upset about his being gone if I could be. But I can’t. I imagine something better than London, in Dublin, living and finding a job and being with this boy all the time; it sounds like a perfectly romantic adventure that I’ve always wanted, maybe will always want. This past couple of days made me feel like the last month never happened. February, January in London, nothing means anything except the few days, February 21 until February 24, 2006… These days are all I wanted from London, and I’m sure I’ll romanticize this until it’s dead, but I wont regress from it, I can only look forward to the next few weeks when I see Charlie again and my feelings can once again flame upwards. If I decided I’d like more to go to Dublin, I’d still have Charlie come to see me as planned, and then I’d move out of my house here and fly to Ireland where I’d meet Romain and I’d stay with him maybe for a few days and if all went well, longer, or maybe, yes I suppose I’d keep my room here and then when in Dublin I’d decide how long I’d stay, and perhaps I’d really be happy and I’d be inspired to find a job. And maybe I’d fall in love with R and forget Charlie entirely and then… what, if I was single I wouldn’t want to put myself in the same place, in the place of girlfriend, of relationship- and I don’t want it, and if I went there that’s what I’d be wanting. It’s a sweet thought, being able to make Europe work for me, to take advantage of my time here, of wanting to be here and even somewhere other than London, but as long as I’m with Charlie , I can’t. There’s no way I can be away from him for very long at all, he’s right, I need him, I need someone, I need to be needed. If there wasn’t him, there’d be someone else, and if I thought that someone else might be Romain, I’d be very wrong, too. I like my stupid french love affair because that’s all it is. Liaison amoureuse française stupide. It’s delicious but it’s just a chocolate croissant, buttery, thick, filling, decadent, and overall, very bad for me. And now I’m vegan again after for days eating only chocolate croissants.

After I talk to Charlie on Thursday, I come back into my bedroom where I left Eleneus . He is gone, but has obviously been drinking from a bottle of organic merlot that was sitting on the bedside table. I take a sip; it feels good so I take another. Eleneus returns and I relate the story to him. I tell him how Romain jokingly says just break up with your boyfriend. Eleneus tells me he doesn’t think I’d be so attractive if I didn’t have a boyfriend. We finish off the wine and both feel a bit drunk. He lays his head on my lap and tells anecdotes about how he loves eating pussy and I laugh at the ridiculousness of it and he starts to caress my foot, and I’m still talking about Charlie, or about Romain, or about how I want to see him and will see him in a few hours. He asks if having an affair makes me feel more sexy. No, I don’t think so, not I, but the world is so much more full of sex and innuendo and lustful caresses. He asks if drinking makes people more beautiful, and I say it depends, and he tells me that I look very beautiful then. He mentions wanting to kiss me. What? Eleneus, where is this coming from? It’s because of my affair, because I am an adulteress. It’s because I’m shameless now, the rules no longer apply. I am still off-limits, so I am still attractive. I still have the boyfriend, but I also have a lover whom I like very much; maybe it’s as though I have two. Somehow, he decides that he’d like to kiss me badly enough to make it happen. We both know it won't change anything between us, that we’ll kiss, why, kiss because we’re attracted to each other and want to know how the other kisses and what it will be like to have experienced that, if only that it’s brief and superficial. The kiss is good. It begins with some female vocals and ends in the happy-go-lucky c’est la vie of Devotchka. I open my eyes and remember I’m actually kissing Eleneus. I can’t see him; he’s wearing his hood. I put it to a stop. We laugh nervously, both flustered, and I’m thinking, I’ve just kissed Eleneus, the Eleneus, and now I’m late to meet my french lover. I have to go. He meets me at the door before I leave and kisses me “goodbye, dear.” I fumble with the lock and am down the street. Wow, of course, what can one say but that, not considering that at the moment my Charlie is laying in my bed in cold bright chicago morning crying about how I let him down. Not thinking about that at all. 

I wait at Liverpool Street Station. It’s very cold, but it’s no longer raining. There are many girls running about in cute boots. I wish mine are cuter. Maybe I won’t recognize him. Of course I’ll recognize him. Maybe I’m not on the right street, but I am. There he is with pink cheeks and lips and we stand and smile and regard one another and he puts his face close to mine and we touch noses and I point my face in his warm neck and smell him. We kiss. We go arm in arm and walk down the street and go the wrong way and turn around and head to Brick Lane. We walk and hold hands and it’s cold and I’m not paying attention to anything. We end in a coffeeshop in Brick Lane. It’s a good place, the coffee is perfect, real espresso, and it’s dark with sofas and reggae djs. We drink coffee and he rolls cigarettes to keep from touching me. We can’t really stop, we desire each other so fully and we smell the other's neck kiss behind the ears and it’s almost too much. I can’t help smiling until my face hurts, there’s nothing for me to do. Soon we get wine and a seat on a sofa where we sit as closely as possible and try to not kiss so much. He has no shame when it comes to publicly showing his desire, though I ask him what he thinks of couples making out in public and he tells me he hates it. I suggest David Wojnarowicz. The wine is sour but we drink it at the same time. We smoke a spliff and the music gets good. I lean into him and he tells me that the moment is just right, that it is the right place, the right time and I agree and relax, and close my eyes thinking, Romain, how am I here with you, how can I feel so good here with you. How is it that I haven’t felt like this so quickly with someone since too long…

Even with Charlie it took awhile to warm up. At first I was nervous, maybe because we were suddenly making out and I liked it without knowing if he was interested in me at all. I think it’s because he was so silent about his feelings, all except for the part when he’d said, “And where would you like to sleep?” and then we were in his bed in darkness kissing and the next day I knew I was happy, I knew I liked him and the following night after meeting the other Charlie, Charlie Williams, I knew it for sure. After we talked about it I guess it was very obvious, and by that time it was difficult to keep our hands off one another. I suppose with m it’s different because it’s unexpected, actually unwanted, dangerous, it’s simple desire turned need and there’s no way of avoiding the feelings. I could have decided to never see him again. I could have decided to not sleep in a bed with him, and I definitely could have not invited him to spend the night with me in my room. But inside… inside I felt I needed it. Yes, this is where desire goes, this is where it takes me. Part of me fell in love with him immediately. He’s a phantom, anyway, I’ll see what I like in his image, in his memory. He gave me a feeling of romance that I’ve had only little here, and not like that. 

We leave the coffeeshop and the music gets too loud and we can’t understand each other anymore. We walk to my house and it’s quiet except for our shoes on the pavement, and my bag’s hitting my back rhythmically. We keep time and begin to make music with our steps. He dances backwards, in front of me, and I leap forward, all in time. We clap patterns and the music is louder and we’re laughing, dancing around, stomping. I rub my boots and they make a long, plastic sound and it’s so beautiful and fun. This moment is straight out of Jean-Luc Godard. Most moments with him seem to be. I can’t think about this anymore! I feel too lonely and sad. I miss everything, and he is in Slovenia, “making love” and having all the pleasure he wants and will always get. Sometimes…

In my room we get almost naked. He admires my body which I feel strangely about, but he tells me he enjoys looking at me. I get very bored; I cannot get excited, I want to sleep, I remember the feeling of not being turned on. I only want him when we are dressed and it is impossible. As soon as we’re kissing and he’s taking off my shirt I am done with it. It means nothing more to me.

In the morning we lay in bed for awhile. He sleeps close, the way I like all wrapped around me like charlie does but so much smaller. We get up and I usher him out of the house and we see no one. We walk to Marina Café, a great place with bright orange seats and a van gogh on the wall. I eat disgusting, greasy veggie sausage with chips and he has an english breakfast. The coffee’s not bad. We smoke cigarettes and draw portraits of one another. “My Girl” comes on. It is our last date. We sing to the beach boys together and make out in front of the fat Irish woman who works there. It begins to get colder and darker. We have to stop. 

We come back to my house to drink terrible Turkish coffee which we don’t finish. We come to my room and I play him Godspeed and he laughs at the story. I make him come all over both of us. It is an erotic and satisfying goodbye. I lay with my hand between his legs, holding his ass, and the other clutching his softening penis. He says it seems like we’ve just made love. I agree. We get up and I walk him to the busstop. The 55 takes forever, but finally it comes. We joke more about when we get married for my french citizenship. We kiss and hug tightly and I walk away, oh so sad. Before I can indulge fully in my tears, I call Charlie . That’ll give me something to cry about.

He’s past sad, and now he’s angry. I have a lot of explaining to do. I owe him a lot. I’ve put him into a terrible position. I am crying so hard, and it’s working, because I miss Romain and I don’t want him to leave and I don’t want to be talking to Charlie so I tell him everything he wants so hear, how I’m sorry and regretful and I won’t do it again.

11:23 pm

I just want to speak french. It wouldn’t be so hard; I don’t want it to be like cello lessons, I want it to be true, to be real and unavoidable and yes I’ve never denied being a romantic and all I want is to speak french and to communicate with the next french lover that I have. No, I’ll never have another french lover, you will be it.

I can’t talk to him. No, I cannot call charlie. I feel stupid saying “my charlie ” anymore when I don’t feel it. He’s too far away. I could forget about him. I feel now that I am alone, that there is no one with whom I am in love, and actually, I miss only m who is in the arms of a beautiful Slav who is making him laugh and making him scream in ecstatic pain. And I will not see him again.
If I did see him, I wouldn’t want to leave. And if I did see him, I would have sex with him, and maybe it would be good, maybe it wouldn’t. And if it was good, I would love him more, and I would assume that he would love me. And if it was bad, I would be bored, or disappointed, or sad, and it would mean nothing. If we made bad love, I would still be alone. Isn’t it about the good love and only the good love? Whom do I trust? I have to smoke a joint now. I will never love m, even if I already do. I am a fool. (I hate my life; it’s so perfect) parfait, it is, free from any defect in quality it is; but isn’t a life always perfect, then? How else could I be to have a departed french lover and the most amazing person as love-of-my-life boyfriend??? Amour de ma vie… charlie… amour de ma vie… charlie... je pourrais oublier vous.



2008

Well, what can honestly be admitted but. I haven’t yet had the desire to write him a poem, to collage him a drawing. He suggested last night that we make art for each other. He hasn’t made a painting in months but won’t let it stop him. And then I think immediately before he says it, Yes, but I don’t want a bad painting. I want a beautiful painting loved and truly appreciated and if you can’t deliver, may as well not bother. Flattery is only worth a drop. A dime a dozen. 

I still have hangover breath and mention Aaron as I had a drink at his house after work. It was more like half a bottle of very dry chardonnay and a sip of something french, a liquor, as the evening designated. He said in that sexy low voice of his, not forced, not fronted: I would definitely invite you to stay, but I just started seeing this girl… and I said, feelings shared, not regrettable but just the way things go. Talking about our “types” over the course of the evening as I clench a left hand over the stem of a burgundy glass, snapping it effortlessly, and he mentions not liking masculine women, which turns me off. I ask if it’s masculine to carry gigantic bags of trash up some stairs to over by a tree? He laughs and looks down, blushed. 

Still, he is not mine. Type, that is. Favorite bartender, of course, and slight dream crush, most def. And his bedroom charms me to the bone. Wood and white and wine and paintings of birds.



2010

12:28 am

Oh the lost feeling! I realize I don’t want to write, well actually I really do, but I mostly want to talk, to talk more than anything about social constructions and patriarchy and television and about the looks one gives and the things one intends through body movement and flickering eyes. I’ll have to change the way everything moves then. 

If only time would stop for a spell… and I could let my brain drip out and relax, dead. And the dust would stop gathering, the ants wouldn’t move or walk on me through the night. Only for about two days. Why am I tired? Why does the phone ringing make me anxious?

I hope the kitty lives; she never eats or goes outside and rarely bathes sometimes doesn’t move for days. She is so tiny by now. Her fur is still velvet, but with an elderly stench to it. Ida sleeps on my copy of Colette.


(<3)