Pagination

It's cold here and I feel displaced. I'm starting to believe that I'm incapable of having fun. I have achieved an all-time low productivity rate. When was the last time I produced something? Paige can't remember the last time she committed to anything, the last time I was faced with responsibility. I miss driving, I'm sick of walking. Liquor doesn't get me drunk, Scotland doesn't smoke weed from the ground. Everything is surface, surface, surface. I'm the only one who tells funny jokes. Show me something with a soul. Why does the thought of going to bed with an attractive stranger make me sick? I am more old fashioned than my vulgar humor suggests. No one is vulgar here. New York is the only truly vulgar place. New York is vulgar in its sincerity. I weep for New York because it weeps for no one. Jesus Christ on Ice. This is a scary time to be turning into an adult. I need Jared, because Jared is something real. Our bodies under the covers, in the dark, are real, and they are comforting, and they are consolation, and pressed together, naked, everything is alright, and no one is going bankrupt, and no one is murdering his brother, and no one is buying me a drink with the hope of getting under the covers and playing human. I am not where I'm supposed to be and I know it. I should be in America, because America is frightened. America is real. In America, people clean their pantries. In America, people stand still at concerts. In America, people are alone.

I need to see a familiar face.

Yesterday was Jared’s and my half-year anniversary, a small but significant feat for a couple who have just endured the most wonderful six months of their lives, and who will probably not make it another six as a result of their lives moving (literally) in drastically different directions. I spent the majority of the morning with Lisa (Jared, still enveloped by his seemingly endless list of things to do before Nantucket, was unavailable), whose presence I was graced with late Saturday night when stumbled into my house fresh from a Bastille Day celebration and bearing herbal refreshments, which we proceeded to enjoy before settling into my mom’s bed to watch infomercials until four in the morning. Of course we slept until about noon, a feat I only seem to accomplish when accompanied by Lisa the Cat—my competitive spirit yearns to out-sleep her, despite the fact that, deep down, I’m well aware that I’m playing a loser’s game. So I got up and made myself some eggs. I hadn’t made eggs in some time, since Easter, when Jared, Fraser, and I made the most elaborate of brunches for my family. As I was tossing the scrambled bits around in the pan, careful to preserve just the right amount of milky goo so as not to overcook, I remembered how at Easter, we, novices to the sport of mass egg-cooking, overcooked all the eggs. Later on at dinner, Jared shared with me that he had remembered the same thing upon cooking his own eggs that morning.
The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. I nursed a sore lump on my forehead—the aftermath of Bailey Miller’s rash decision to take a manic whack at his bright green ball during our mini-golf expedition earlier the night before. Lisa and I visited the mall. I set a plastic paratrooper off the roof of the parking garage. I was hoping he’d land heroically on top of a passing SUV, but he instead plummeted to his demise on the sidewalk. After the mall, we went to Jared’s house and played a lousy game of Super Mario in the den while his dad sat on the computer looking through pictures that Jared’s younger sister, Molly, had emailed him from camp. She is too old for camp. Jared’s dad commented on how all the pictures were more or less the same--a group of six or more girls in matching outfits being pulled by some invisible, great gravitational force to the center of the picture. They all looked so happy. Jared noted that his dad was still compelled to look at all of them. Apparently Molly is homesick.
Later on Jared and I dined at Tolima, a small restaurant nestled next to the Chatham movie theatre that seems more like one of those simulated Top Chef restaurants than an actual one. Reservations and upscale attire are recommended, yet they provide paper napkins for your lap, and none of the silverware matches. It’s fantastic. We ate well, and it was nice to sit and talk. Afterwards we went back to my house and grilled bananas to accompany vanilla ice cream. It was a good day. I feel like I’m getting closer to settling back into myself again. No more of this floating around bull shit.

Today was overwhelming. On the way to school I witnessed a terrible accident right in front of me, on Western Avenue. I won't go into details (saving the extensive account for a story), but, after having the front of her car taken off, a Catholic school girl jumped out of her vehicle only to be launched up into the back windshield of the same reckless driver that hit her in the first place. All while her fender lay, in shambles, three feet from my car. Think about that.

School was frustrating. I sat down in the student center to an ignorant junior voicing his crude apathy in regards to the torturous treatment of baby cows just as long as his palette was pleased--of course I had to retaliate. I mean, I'm no vegan--I eat veal--but his words were just so offensive, so disrespectful to the kind world I strive to be a part of, that it just left me enraged and embarrassed to be of the same species as this kid. I tell you, I try to accept people for what they are, and for the most part I've really grown to embrace the vices of those around me (as well as myself), but this was just too much; this was utterly unkind.

After that kind of morning I was desperate for some center, some grounding force, so I went up to Dr. Sherman's room to see if he wanted to meditate. I don't know him that intimately--I don't even think we'd ever shared anything that constituted as a legitimate conversation until today--but I knew that he'd spent last summer in India, and the "please remove your shoes" sign pinned to his door always just seemed so inviting, so I gave it a shot and it was pretty great. I had always tried to meditate on my own, but his instruction was really helpful. He told me that I should always lay my right palm on top of my left, breathe solely through my nose, and to try and match the length of my inhales with the length of my exhales. He told me to allow whatever thoughts that appeared to pass freely from my mind. To envision warm water pouring over my head and trickling down my back..

After school my grades came. Two C's from Paul Fisher. Great. Fucking C's? I don't get C's. And at a time like this? Oh God, I don't deserve to go to Bard. Of course, I was reminded of this adamantly by my mother, in hysterics. I cried so hard I threw up. I am a failure. A said failure who fell asleep in a fetal position on the bathroom floor, only to wake up to her mother screaming some more, this time not in response to her Fallen Daughter, but at the sight of thick black smoke rising up from behind the hill. She ran outside frantically. Apparently the house adjacent to our property had completely burned down, leaving the remains to initiate a wild inferno that blazed tremendously throughout the woods. The people weren't even home. Imagine coming home to that.

Of course I was not given the satisfaction of dwelling on an agony worse than mine, as, caught in the throws of hysterics, I had developed a mind-numbing migraine that left me moaning in anguish, debating whether to go to the hospital or not. Oh, the prospect of a morphine drip is a tempting one, especially after a day like today. I try to be a good person, but I am so overwhelmed. I don't like feeling sorry for myself, but I've just been so sad. I don't think I could think straight to save my life. Hell, it was like pulling nails out of concrete just to organize my thoughts enough to write this. I'm just ready for things to start working out. I want the warm water to pour.