Pourquoi? / Why?
Even as he obsessively asks himself why he is not loved, the amorous subject lives in the belief that the loved object does love him but does not tell him so.

and

Jalousie / Jealousy
When jealous I suffer four times over: because I am jealous, because I blame myself for being so, because I fear that my jealousy will wound the other, because I allow myself to be the subject of a banality: I suffer from being excluded, from being aggressive, from being crazy, and from being common.

-- Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse (Fragments)

Oh, the streets of Rome are filled with rubble,
Ancient footprints are everywhere.
You can almost think that you're seein' double
On a cold, dark night on the Spanish Stairs.
Got to hurry on back to my hotel room,
Where I've got me a date with Botticelli's niece.
She promised that she'd be right there with me
When I paint my masterpiece.

Oh, the hours I've spent inside the Coliseum,
Dodging lions and wastin' time.
Oh, those mighty kings of the jungle, I could hardly stand to see 'em,
Yes, it sure has been a long, hard climb.
Train wheels runnin' through the back of my memory,
When I ran on the hilltop following a pack of wild geese.
Someday, everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody
When I paint my masterpiece.

Sailin' 'round the world in a dirty gondola.
Oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

I left Rome and landed in Brussels,
On a plane ride so bumpy that I almost cried.
Clergymen in uniform and young girls pullin' muscles,
Everyone was there to greet me when I stepped inside.
Newspapermen eating candy
Had to be held down by big police.
Someday, everything is gonna be diff'rent
When I paint my masterpiece.

When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal...

"Is your novel fiction, nonfiction, or thinly-disguised nonfiction?" Griffin asks me. Griffin is a writer. His book is going to be published by a major publisher next July. Griffin's book is apparently a work of thinly-disguised nonfiction using stories involving people from our shared hometown. In other words, pretty much exactly what I am writing about, whether I want to or not.

Griffin's got about ten years on me, though, and he's a boy, so i figure i still have a niche.

Anyway, I thought that was a pretty good question. Especially because I am not really writing much of anything these days. I sort of used this question as a chance to pick the brain of an Honest-To-God-Paid-And-Everything Published Author.

"Yeah. Thinly disguised nonfiction. That's what it is. My other stuff is pretty unrealistic, actually. Kind of fanciful. But when I'm trying to write this, it's, you know, different."

Griffin nods. "Everything else just isn't as interesting as real life."

You know, I think he might have a point there.

_____

It's two-thirty in the morning. We're making out in the car, pointlessly: it's not really going anywhere besides sloppy drunk kisses and abstract pawing. He pulls away from me for a moment and puts his hand to my face.

"I just don't want to lose this," he says, full of ultra-drunken sincerity, and pulls me close to him again before I have a chance to ask him what the hell he means.

A few moments later he pulls away again, this time to leave. "I seriously love you," he says.

A beat passes. Finally I manage to slur "I...seriously love you too." I can't help but feel like Faye Dunaway's Bukowski wench in Barfly. We smooch some more and I burp tequila into his mouth. Or him into mine. I don't even know anymore.

It's time to go.

"Do you have your keys?" I ask.

"No," he says, looking quite put out, then sees them, right in front of him, on the dashboard. "There they are." he says.

It's not until I get home that I wonder whether or not he didn't want to lose his keys or me.

You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it...

don't be my friend.

seriously. i am a shallow, jealous, vindictive bitch.

if you are my friend i will be jealous of all of your other friends, even if i ignore you for days/weeks at a time. i am a grudge-holding, awful kind of person. i am into petty, weak-minded things. i am into gossip. fuck, i am into big brother.

for real. all of my friends hate me because i love that show. because, you know, being interested in the low, weak-minded meanderings of captured humans is not a good sign in terms of one's intelligence. at all.

however, i am totally unashamed to admit that i am intrigued by the low, weak-minded meanderings of my fellow captured humans when placed in a backstabbing, social situation. i know i am poisioned because i always see things this way. i know i am destined for spinsterhood because i cannot appreciate simple love.

but do i fucking care? not quite yet. not quite yet, my dearies. oh, the filth that will be in my book. oh, the flaws of others that i have so gently exposed, by my mere existence. oh, what i could tell you, what i could show you, with these almond-shaped eyes and what i could tell with this poisoned tongue.

and i will, someday. but i will get money for it. for i have lived it, bitches, and i will get fucking paid.

A Scorpio’s mission is to discover the truth and awaken others to it. Scorpios are thus blessed with sharp minds, yet sharper instincts and still sharper tongues. As, however, there can be no truth without understanding and no understanding without compassion, the Scorpio personality itself is not in fact sharp but endlessly, vulnerably soft. Scorpios are determined. They normally get what they want – or at least what they think they want. The trouble is that at the heart of every Scorpio there’s an insatiable hunger for an impossible dream. Enough is never enough, and you had better get used to this if you want to get on with your Scorpio friend. Happily, that restlessness is the hardest thing to handle in a Scorpio. Their straight-talking honesty can also be controversial, which is why they are careful about who they allow to get close to them. Scorpios are sometimes accused of having an obsession with sex. Scorpios are passionate and they throw themselves into every experience. They simply want the most from life and take their pleasures as seriously as their commitments.

from jonathan cainer's website.

what is it that makes the strong love the weak?

more importantly, what makes the strong think they are stronger than the weak? what makes us define ourselves as apart from, above, better than?

when i see him throwing himself at a calvalcade of halter tops, with a barrier of friends who are so all-fucking-american it makes my head spin? what makes it hurt me, what makes it matter?

because i know i have shown him better and still he chooses less. he chooses less.

because i know he has hurt me and still i choose this. still this is my heart.

what the fuck is wrong with me? my mind says, i have no time for such trash. i have no time for those who are so weak of heart, so slippery of soul.

my heart says, but. but he knows. he knows better. you have seen better. my heart says, this is your fault. your fault because you have a dark spot in your soul. because you are not good enough. because there is someone better, more pure of heart, more more more.

in the end it doesn't matter. in the end what matters is this -- i am alone. i am alone.

what's up with the "everything was beautiful and nothing hurt" syndrome?

i feel like i've been broken up with en-masse. all my loves have flown.

you don't really mean it, of course. you're not really dumping me. yeah, you with your sparse new page design and string of meant-to-last-forever commandments. you'll come crawling back one of these days.

i'm not like you. i won't put on a fancy new outfit and use my words sparingly, although i wish i could. i'm more likely to hang from the rafters and threaten to slit my wrists. but i never actually do it.

anyway, i know i'm not perfect. i'll get alternately distant and paranoid for days at a time, cloyingly close or lighter than air. i'll bore you. i'll kick you when you're down. i know i don't always fulfill my side of the relationship.

but i love you. can't you see we were born to be together? can't you see that i understand you?! nobody else will love you like i do!!!

so please, spare me your suicides, i miss you, i know you are coming back and never really wanted to leave in the first place.

seriously.

(and be glad we're not really dating. you can't even imagine the shit i would pull.)

"not only are you an amazing girl, you're a model human being."

"make it happen for you."

"kiss me like the girl i don't deserve to kiss me kissing me...really."

= things that are too beautiful to be said to me, ever, that have been, in fact, said to me.

i went to berkfest. it was fun. we camped in a place called whoville. like the dr. seuss place. d. did not come, it was just me and katie. i sold his ticket right away for what he paid for it. i am a hero like that.

this morning he called and asked for my parents. because he wanted to bring them some avocados he haggled for at the "gringo" supermarket. while i was gone this afternoon he brought over a bunch of ripe avocados. i am going to make guacamole.

he also called this afternoon to ask me a question about the history of the jews in europe. to discuss it, really. and so we discussed. jewish bankers in renaissance italy, jewish merchants in modern-day society. how the jews have always been persecuted. how the jews have basically defined the concept of "community."

after this lively discussion i told him i was confused by this contact. i like talking to him, but i can't deal with the repercussions later. i thought the point was for us not to talk. at all. so what is this about? i am basically completely terrified of calling him unless i have a damned good reason, lest my intentions be misconstrued and later used against me. i told him we have to be equals, and it is not okay to break rules that he himself made when it's not the same for me.

he said he didn't mean that we couldn't talk at all. he said what he wanted was time apart. but it is okay if we talk sometimes.

i told him i just wanted him to think. think about what he was doing and why.

i didn't point out that maybe he's coming up with reasons to call me because he misses me.

he agreed. he agreed it isn't right and he should give the matter some thought. i sort of regretted this at first. then i read today's horoscope: how it is not harmony that is needed, but clarity:

Why do pirates traditionally fly a skull and crossbones from the mast of their ships? Because it brooks no argument. It is simultaneously a warning, a threat and a promise of unwavering intent. It says, don't argue. And it means it. As such it is, if nothing else, honest and unambiguous. You don't look at this symbol and say, "Hmmm... I wonder what this is trying to tell me?" That makes it preferable in many ways to a flag of convenience - or a disguise, affected in order to lull passing traffic into a sense of false security. It's not harmony you need now, it's clarity. Through that, all else will come.

in other words, faking that all is okay is not the route i should take this time. i should try to clarify the situation while i can. so i am. flying my pirate flag and all.

balm in gilead

i have nothing of import to say anymore. or if i do, i bite my tongue. i don't know just what the problem is. i have a million old stories to tell, a million things to say. anyone who knows me will tell you that i can never shut up, that i can never stop talking. i think it is because i am uncomfortable with silence. i'm not being dramatic or upset, only sporadic and silent. this too shall pass.

"someone in charge of time travel is really fucking with you. you should be in fifteenth-century venice."

how is it that he can so easily read my mind? how is it that a week and a half after giving me an unpleasant lecture, he can enter our friend's birthday party and casually strut across the floor to sit next to me? because, you see, i made a point of not acknowledging him first. then i thought, okay, how big of us. friendly conversation. we can do it.

and then i got into a conversation with someone else. and he did, too, discussing western civilization with ex-europeans. then i got up to get a beer and when i turned around at the keg who was behind me, ready to serve me my beer? and of course we ended up going out afterwards. his roommates wanted to leave, and he said "maybe i'll just stay with you."

how easily he slid into the front seat of my car, even though three other people were riding. how without explanation. because that is the spot of honor, and it belongs to the beloved.

we played a ridiculously long game of darts. i wanted to say "this had better be okay, why is this okay, is this okay?" but i didn't. i didn't have to. it just was okay and continued to be okay and although it may not be later i'm not playing that game anymore.

why did he seem so concerned when i threw up from skunky beer on the street, why did he put his hand on my back and hold my hair and give me an extra-soft, extra-warm hug when we parted ways?

all i know is that i wasn't even looking for balm in gilead and i found it. there was something so reassuring about that hug, and i can't quite explain it. the poet with the lack of words. it was more than he had to give. he was so fucking relieved to see me, and i him.

i wonder what will happen after this weekend and the one other late summer event where i know i will see him. what then? what will happen when there are no more mutual festivities, no points marked into the future where we intersect? i know they will exist, they have to exist, but what if they don't? what if?

sad but true update

i went to meet crush #1 and he was not there.

granted, i got there exactly on time and stuff, and it seemed like maybe i should have gotten there earlier, but after all the fucking asking he did last night -- no joke, reminding me like five times, including when i left -- you'd think he'd at least be there.

but he wasn't. and i know next time i see him there'll be some confusion, but i don't care. i refuse to yield. i refuse to wait for a boy for more than ten minutes in a public place. i refuse to accept i forgot.

katie said something about how it is necessary to play the game. i suck at it, but this kid is basically forcing me to do so. so far i am still in good standing. but i do not take getting stood up (!!!) lightly.

fucker.

i know i promised to finish my big brother post but i will later, as Actual Things have happened in my life:

1) my unemployment came through.

2) i got the tutoring job. now i get to read "word power" and give vocabulary tests and disseminate knowledge of roots and etymology and get paid for the fact. also, i MUST do like ten thousand SAT exams. for real. ha!

3) yesterday i saw crush #1, mvm, at the bar. those of you keeping score will remember that the last time i saw him was a few weeks after him being all up in my grill and then blowing me the fuck off. so the last time i saw him there were pictures taken. and i saw him last night and it was great. he was so cute. he told me there are doubles he wants me to have and that the pictures are good. he accidentally touched my boob. he got all blushy and giggly and silly and said his whole right hand was numb. he did bill cosby impressions. katie pointed out that he dances like a 50-year-old black man. he so does, but in the goofiest, cutest way possible. i asked him if his friend's band had played in our town lately, as i want to see them. then, he said, "actually, what are you doing tomorrow?" i feigned innocence and being totally unsure about the fact while he stated that tomorrow (today) his friends were playing before a nwk brz (minor league baseball team) game and since i had mentioned in the past wanting to attend both such festivities, why didn't i come along?

mwah! i know it is not a date but i am excited nonetheless. we will be with a bunch of his friends, just hanging out, etc. i hope they are the nice friends and not the ooky boys i don't like / slash / hooked up with when i was like twelve. nothing serious, but still.

anyway. i am supposed to meet him at 4:30 and i still have to shower, shave, and put my oh-so-nonchalant face on.

4) okay, amy was voted off bb3 and even though i would prefer her leaving to marcellas, i hate having to make that choice as i loved, LOVE, them, and yesterday and today i am wearing geisha red lipstick in honor of her.

voyeurism + summer tv = big brother 3
or, deconstructing my obsession

big brother 3 has got to be the most perfect show on tv, almost ever.

i'm serious.

first of all, almost everyone on the show is heinous in one way or another. and usually in multiple ways. or, they are completely devoid of flaws, which, as most clever, backbiting humans know is cause for alarm and suspicion and is a flaw in and of itself.

the people who are most perfect and likeable on big brother 3 are jason, danielle, and roddy.

jason is a 25-year-old Handsome Christian Virgin from the South. jason has an irksome soul patch and is a bit waify for my tastes, but he is a rumply, sweethearted and kind biscuit who has not descended into debauchery and frat-boy posturing after three weeks in the house. his control is admirable, as is his ability to stay on everyone's good side but have apparent allegiance to none.

which makes everyone think he's a secret evil genius and a threat, as his likeability seems to mark him a shoo-in for the win.

in fact, jason's only real, secret ally is danielle. at least this is what they claim. secretly. in last night's episode, danielle said that she and jason were bonded by their "love for the lord" and their "faith" and cautioned those watching that they'd "better watch out" for those who had god behind them.

this is somewhat believable, considering the way things are going.

i will finish this later.