(But written a few days later! Obviously...)
Stolen kisses and screwdrivers were what colored the night. He held my waist in the kitchen and I laced double and triple shots of vodka with cranberry juice. Brandi was there, and couldn’t understand why he didn’t respond to her sliding hands and pathetic whimpers.
"What should I do?" She whispered to me, in confidence.
I told her to forget about him and that he didn’t care about her. His anxious eyes darted rapidly, as he tried to read our lips from across the room. I smiled with a slur, and her smile was the same.
And then we were in his bedroom and he was kissing me again. Murmurs of laughter and the violent clacking of quarters against the coffee table muffled through the walls. I don"t remember what we fought about, only that I was miserable and confused. Did I love him? Could I love him? Did he love her? And if not, why was she there? And what about my sister... how much did she see? How much did she know? The panic began to ride the waves of alcohol, vehemently denying any relaxation that it might have brought and rising in my heart until it pumped so hard that I was sure I would die. The blood poured too fast through my veins and there was much too much of it. I could feel it sloshing against the walls of my body, and sure I would drown, I needed to release it. I reached for the razor blade that I had left there, months before, carefully hidden in my rusting Russian cigarette case inside his upper desk drawer. I needed that release in a way that I know most people will never even begin to understand. But he was fighting me, trying to pull it from my fist, and fearful that he would win before I would bleed, I began to squeeze it tighter in my palm, pressing my soft plump finger tips against the gleaming blade, not aware, in my drunkenness that it was too old, too dull and had sliced through my numbness too many times before to do any real damage.
He twisted my wrists back and forth, and I laughed beneath the rush of pain, until it became too much and my palm sprawled open. Ever the quick thinker, I dashed around him and into the bathroom, locking the door in relief, frantically grabbing at the blue Gilette on the sink’s edge. It wasn't as ideal as the blades that I usually buy, but I could figure out a way to make it work. And so I scraped it up and down my fingers, bits of flesh spraying against the wall, mixed with dripping blood and dripping tears. I spit him out onto the tiled walls and I spit out my heart in the dripping and sweet red waters that spilled from my palm and onto the crusted bathroom floor. Relieved and determined, I elbowed the door open with a drunken slam, wobbling into the kitchen, leaving a delicate trail of crimson droplets behind me.
And my mind slashed through the air that was suddenly so thick. The tangy rusted tap water blurred my eyes and then my sister was there, and her boyfriend. And I laughed, imagining my blood to be mixing with vodka and not water. And in a flash, they were gone. And between black holes, my sister's contorted face, twisted in pain hangs before my own. And then he was back and we were kissing in the elevator. I slid to the floor, purple with tears and insisted that I was not a tramp. But my chronology is wrong, still. And smiling Indian faces that I did not know, and the long and narrow smelling hallway. And my sister cried and I struck her with my words and my bloody fleshless fingers, and then we were back inside, where all was quiet. And who would be in his bed that night? The blue carpet stretched on endlessly, and I only knew that it couldn't be her. And the jagged patterns of the wooden bookshelf fell into the mirror, where I caught the reflection of my blackened mascara-streaked cheeks and burning pink eyes, as I spun around in endless circles in some imagined gypsy dance. And their anxiety was everywhere... they surrounded me like vultures... all of them against me! And I felt myself falling from hundreds of miles above. I knew it was coming, and anticipated it somewhat orgasmically.
"I am going to pass out now," I said.
I wondered what year it was. My face was scarcely two inches from a book. The book was blue and it matched the carpet. I counted that it was the third one on the shelf, and my head swayed dangerously closer and closer. But wait! It was the carpet, and my cheeks scraped against it in blackness. My mind had abandoned me when I needed it most; or rather, I had killed my own mind to numb my heart.
The next morning, I awoke to the hell of consequence.
Happy 1999.
Thursday, December 31, 1998
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
AIR7 Declares His Love
Oh God, the weirdest things have been happening! Yesterday I spent the whole day with AIR7. We went to the mall where I exchanged the watch that BigSis got me (it broke) and he got Brandi a Christmas present (a silver bracelet) and then we went to "Play it Again Sports" where he bought a golf club. Then we went to the bank and then drove to the city. I dropped him off at Haven and then went to my appointment with Dr. G. After that, I went back and cleaned my room for three hours and then AIR7 and I met to go out.
First we went to the Heights for dinner and then I walked him through the reenactment of "the arrest" night. Then we headed down to Cafe Wha. It was really crowded there, though, and I had to pea, so we went to a nearby bar called Off the Wagon. We were there until about 2:30 AM (on screwdrivers and Long Island iced teas).
Anyway, it gets king of blurry from here on in. We took a cab back and somehow it was worked out that AIR7 was coming back to my place. I think we were "comfortable" in the cab. Anyway, when he came up we fooled around for four hours straight and I gave him a blow job. It was so weird. He told me that he has been really, really in love with me for at least two months now, but that he couldn't say it. He said that he had dreamed so many times about being with me because he really loves me.
God, I don't know what to think... He asked me if I love him in that way too and I didn't really answer. I don't really want to think about it... He asked me if he kissed me in the morning if I would kiss back, and he regretted that I was drunk.
Anyway, we slept from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM and then fooled around for another hour (sober by now).
I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm getting myself into. We spent the rest of the day together and it was very "holding-hands"-ey. And we saw The Prince of Egypt, leaning with hands the whole time. When I finally drove him home, he gave me a kiss goodnight and then dashed out of the car.
I wonder if ti's really me, or if he just likes the idea of being the one who can make me happy. I"m really not sure what I think of any of it.
Oh well... I'm exhausted now, so I'll go to sleep.
Ironic life...
First we went to the Heights for dinner and then I walked him through the reenactment of "the arrest" night. Then we headed down to Cafe Wha. It was really crowded there, though, and I had to pea, so we went to a nearby bar called Off the Wagon. We were there until about 2:30 AM (on screwdrivers and Long Island iced teas).
Anyway, it gets king of blurry from here on in. We took a cab back and somehow it was worked out that AIR7 was coming back to my place. I think we were "comfortable" in the cab. Anyway, when he came up we fooled around for four hours straight and I gave him a blow job. It was so weird. He told me that he has been really, really in love with me for at least two months now, but that he couldn't say it. He said that he had dreamed so many times about being with me because he really loves me.
God, I don't know what to think... He asked me if I love him in that way too and I didn't really answer. I don't really want to think about it... He asked me if he kissed me in the morning if I would kiss back, and he regretted that I was drunk.
Anyway, we slept from 8:00 AM to 11:00 AM and then fooled around for another hour (sober by now).
I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm getting myself into. We spent the rest of the day together and it was very "holding-hands"-ey. And we saw The Prince of Egypt, leaning with hands the whole time. When I finally drove him home, he gave me a kiss goodnight and then dashed out of the car.
I wonder if ti's really me, or if he just likes the idea of being the one who can make me happy. I"m really not sure what I think of any of it.
Oh well... I'm exhausted now, so I'll go to sleep.
Ironic life...
Tuesday, December 15, 1998
Finals and the Fallout
Finals and the Fallout
God, it feels like it's been ages since I've written. SO much has happened...
The whole thing with the arrest has made me absolutely sick, although I am glad that my mom knows... I really don't need this crap right now though... Not in the middle of Finals.
I don't know... It's all going to be okay in the long run, I guess, but how could this have happened to me? It all seems so unreal... Where did I go in all of this? I just know that I will never be the same...
And my birthday in the middle of it all...
It was fun. We went out to some Thai restaurant in Chinatown that JKidd picked out. I had a good time. And yesterday I ate dinner at PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl's apartment. And then I went to GoldenFinch's recital and we watched Wings of the Dove. It was pretty good.
Scheisser emailed me on my birthday, but I emailed him back to leave me alone. Amac called me too and I forwarded her back thanking her. But then she forwarded me again, saying that she heard from D that I am having "issues." My mom better be keeping quiet about all of this!
I spent the evening butchering my leg today, and I don't even know why... It's like it's out of boredom already. I really have to make myself stop, but I can't think of anything until after Finals. Finals start on Thursday and I just have to concentrate on passing.
I wonder how this is all going to work out... I wonder what they will do to me if I fail (the school, I mean...) I just want this week to be over... The community service, the studying, the exams and everything. But I suppose that in only a week (and two days) it will be, and the time should not be so bad.
I am just so grateful for the good friends that I have around me. There are so many people that love me and who don't judge me-- AIR7, GodlenFinch, B, PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl, KSing, Anxious, Susanna, JKidd and then my family.
Amac is gone right now though. And VJ is being really weird too... I mean, I know that she's going through a lot of her own stuff, but she is so self absorbed. She knows that I missed the Opera Ensemble concert on Thursday and she saw me crying on Saturday and she never asked what was wrong. Also-- I told her about that stuff with ChoirMan all that time ago (thank God that seems to be back to normal, by the way) and she never once asked me if I were okay or anything about it...
I don't know... I have one semester, though, to pull myself together and prove to choir that I will make a good president. I have to remember to drop that check off tomorrow. Dr. G. is right, though... It is the worst to feel so lonely when there are people all around you.
I think I just need a boyfriend... Well, to lose a ton of weight and then get a boyfriend... My goal is to have it all off by March. I know I can do it by Spring break if I really try...
Anyway, tomorrow I have to spend the whole day studying. Oh, and I"m going to lunch with Christina from High School (I haven't seen her since June!). But I have to get to sleep now.
So...
Good night.
-h-
God, it feels like it's been ages since I've written. SO much has happened...
The whole thing with the arrest has made me absolutely sick, although I am glad that my mom knows... I really don't need this crap right now though... Not in the middle of Finals.
I don't know... It's all going to be okay in the long run, I guess, but how could this have happened to me? It all seems so unreal... Where did I go in all of this? I just know that I will never be the same...
And my birthday in the middle of it all...
It was fun. We went out to some Thai restaurant in Chinatown that JKidd picked out. I had a good time. And yesterday I ate dinner at PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl's apartment. And then I went to GoldenFinch's recital and we watched Wings of the Dove. It was pretty good.
Scheisser emailed me on my birthday, but I emailed him back to leave me alone. Amac called me too and I forwarded her back thanking her. But then she forwarded me again, saying that she heard from D that I am having "issues." My mom better be keeping quiet about all of this!
I spent the evening butchering my leg today, and I don't even know why... It's like it's out of boredom already. I really have to make myself stop, but I can't think of anything until after Finals. Finals start on Thursday and I just have to concentrate on passing.
I wonder how this is all going to work out... I wonder what they will do to me if I fail (the school, I mean...) I just want this week to be over... The community service, the studying, the exams and everything. But I suppose that in only a week (and two days) it will be, and the time should not be so bad.
I am just so grateful for the good friends that I have around me. There are so many people that love me and who don't judge me-- AIR7, GodlenFinch, B, PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl, KSing, Anxious, Susanna, JKidd and then my family.
Amac is gone right now though. And VJ is being really weird too... I mean, I know that she's going through a lot of her own stuff, but she is so self absorbed. She knows that I missed the Opera Ensemble concert on Thursday and she saw me crying on Saturday and she never asked what was wrong. Also-- I told her about that stuff with ChoirMan all that time ago (thank God that seems to be back to normal, by the way) and she never once asked me if I were okay or anything about it...
I don't know... I have one semester, though, to pull myself together and prove to choir that I will make a good president. I have to remember to drop that check off tomorrow. Dr. G. is right, though... It is the worst to feel so lonely when there are people all around you.
I think I just need a boyfriend... Well, to lose a ton of weight and then get a boyfriend... My goal is to have it all off by March. I know I can do it by Spring break if I really try...
Anyway, tomorrow I have to spend the whole day studying. Oh, and I"m going to lunch with Christina from High School (I haven't seen her since June!). But I have to get to sleep now.
So...
Good night.
-h-
Friday, December 11, 1998
Hyde Gets Arrested
Anyway, I am on my way back from 100 Centre Street where I just picked up my service dates. I can not believe what has happened to me... It all seems surreal and just unbelievable. I have to remember to write this all out after my Rigoletto paper.
Anyway, my head hurts too much to think, and all I want to do right now is go home.
*********************************
I wrote this a week or two later (and never finished it). I figured I'd post it here...
December 10, 1998
Poor poor Vicki! Her life is falling apart.
My eyes were glazed over in boredom, reflecting pools of the wavering red and blue images flickering on the screen in front of me. I propped my head higher up on my pillow... wasting time with "One Life to Live..." I had taped it earlier that day.
I wanted to burn the house down too. There was so much I wanted to say and absolutely no forum in which I could have said it... I needed to write a story and there was no plot I could think of that could ever be enough.
All Lindsay has ever wanted was to be part of Clint’s life.
"They did get married in a heck of a hurry. They didn't even know each other that well..."
Hmmm... I racked my brain for a plot, a story, a scenario... better yet, I convinced myself to sink into the dreamy memories of my own experience, forcing myself to think about something from my own life that I wanted to write about...A conversation, anything...how about something with you know who...The father she never had...the guy who would never save her...coke sessions with KSing…cutting my thumb at B's…watching my blood soak into the paper towel, seeing it turn red with my own brilliant color, spilling out of me and turning to a dead dried brown once kissed by the air.
"I thought you understood."
Why did I have the urge, so much, to say something?
"Well, they thought they had a lead on where Christian and Jessica are but it turned out they were wrong..."
We were always three kings... Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breaths a sigh of gathering gloom...heaving, sighing, bleeding, dying... locked in a stone cold tomb.
I really didn't want to be bothered with anything that night.
Why is Vicki always so damned perceptive? By the way, it was Dec. 9, 1998.
"Look, you and I have always made magic together, unfortunately we always made the same mistake of taking that magic to bed," said Max to Blair with a smile.
"She didn't say anything, I know it was her...When you’re a parent, you even know what your child’s silence sounds like," Vicki insisted.
"Part of destiny and fate is trusting it," Will explained, "but if you can't, you can trust me... you're not going to lose me."
I was so fucking bored that day.
"Just write your fucking paper, Hyde! Stop procrastinating and write your fucking Rigoletto paper!"
He looked disappointed in me even though I reassured him that I wasn't suicidal.
"Who the hell cuts themselves as high as their elbow if they’re trying to bleed to death?" I asked.
He shrugged. He didn't understand me. I was no longer the typical college kid that he had once been, a good little girl in a bad bit of trouble.
"Look, I don’t know..." he answered. "I just need you to sign this form saying you don't want to go to the hospital or nothing like that."
I signed. That was the last thing I needed after the this hell.
"All right, take her back in," he said.
I almost wished that I had tried to kill myself. At least I wouldn't be where I was now. The night stretched before my eyes and I couldn't imagine it ending. But where was my fear? Where was the raspy breath and pounding heart that was always my escape when things became too difficult to deal with? Why was I so unafraid and so at home here? Had I really become a criminal? Had I finally been raped, torn in black and white by the night, my innocence stolen? Or was I too naive and too innocent to even realize the kind of trouble I had gotten myself into?
There had been an impending feeling of doom all night, and not just because I like to romanticize about shit like that. I don’t know why I didn't listen to it, but then again, I'm not psychic, and if it had all been pulled off and I was home finishing my paper instead of here, behind bars, I would have shrugged off the whole terrible feeling as simple paranoia.
I heard the storm thrashing around outside the inn of the assassin. Gilda’s hand stood poised, about to knock on the door of her death and the Duke merrily dreamed of love in the room above. Rigoletto- the loving father and twisted bitter jester, the most noble and deepest of men and the most ridiculed and pitied deformity. The pages stood blinking on my computer screen, untouched for hours. I just couldn't focus... couldn't concentrate. It had all become so foreign to me…the discipline and the pride that I used to have in my schoolwork. I wound the phone wire around my fingers, hour after hour. laying on my stomach and laying on my back. I stamped my hundredth cigarette out against the cheap black plastic of my Rite-Aid ashtray and I rolled over again. Pointless. Pointless conversation after pointless conversation until I began to wander, searching for a means of procrastination for this procrastination. It would be my birthday on Saturday…I sighed, angry at my boredom and at the blinking red numbers on my clock. The later it got, the sooner I would really have to crack down on this damn paper.
Last week had been our choir concert. Afterwards there was fun like there hadn't been for months and KSing and I were doing that shit again. I still remember the rush and I long for it back. That ultimate and beautiful relief from the frowning demons inside me. Oh well... I rolled over again, propping my chin up on my wrist and trying to forget all that and focus on the phone. I wondered why I got a wrong number when I called that guy earlier. And if I couldn't get in touch with him, where the hell was I going to get some more stuff? Only for my birthday, of course... I guess I could check the streets just once... someone was out last week when KSing thought it would be impossible to buy, so why not now? Maybe I should go for a walk... just to see... and if there’s no one out, then it will be a nice study break and I'll come back and force myself to finish the paper later.
"Yeah, I’m going out for some... don't worry about it. I'll call you when I get back, all right?"
Energized, I crammed my credit card, drivers license, student ID, twenty bucks and my keys into my pocket, threw on my coat and headed for the door. The red, pink and blue Christmas lights twinkled back at me through the mirror, and the phone rang again. It reminded me of the song that Jessica had been singing to her unborn baby a few hours ago. Vicki used to sing it to Jessica when she was little too. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." That was my perfect 5th memory device. That was the song written to the same tune as "Ba Ba Black Sheep" and the alphabet. God, I loved those lights! It was 12:34. It was KSing. I told her I was on my way out.
"All right, be careful!" she warned me.
She actually warned me! Did she have a premonition too?
"Don't worry about it!" I reassured her.
I was used to walking around really late. I loved the urine filled mud and tar specked puddles of the New York City sidewalks and the orange pink light that bathed the city in ribbons of blood. I loved to feel my feet hard against the pavement, and as I pressed play on my small gray walk-man, the churning and angry sound of those car rides years ago began to bellow into my soul. I smiled sinisterly, on the edge, dangerous and mean. And then I laughed at myself for my own melodrama. But what would I be without such melodrama? I turned the key, clipped the blue plastic key ring onto my belt loop and headed out into hell.
The wind tore at my cheeks, but it made me smile. I have always loved that kind of pain, imagining the blood trickling down my rosy skin, exposed for too long. But my pleasure was tainted; I began to feel nervous, approaching Broadway. I felt unsafe…vulnerable. Where was the empowering menace that had just filled me moments before? Maybe I should have brought my mace…I saw a police car across the street. All right, at least the cops were out tonight. I was quick at the ATM and briskly walked to 110th street, pressing the crumpled twenties deeper into my pocket.
The housewife I will beat! I bash myself to sleep! I am a little shit! I slit my teenage wrists! Don’t mean a fuck to me!
He spit violently into my ears and I kept pace with the frenetic shouting.
But I was nervous again, and couldn't understand why. A man with glasses scurried along the street in front of me.
“He probably lives here on 110th,” I thought.
He was talking to a man with a maroon scarf. Both of them were carrying string instruments. There was a certain safety in the company of these musicians. I stayed close on their tail. Why was I so afraid tonight? I just didn't want to be seen walking alone.
I turned the corner onto Amsterdam. The two men had already said their good nights at the doorstep. Now I really had to keep my eyes opened. Where was “Victor?”
“Look for the Yankees hat,” I reminded myself.
“What’s up baby?”
I lifted my head, my eyes darting anxiously towards the street corner. It was him! I had found him already! I smiled. But then I drew closer. I really need to get to the fucking eye doctor already. I didn't know these two men and I regretted making eye contact and smiling at them at all. Didn't they know that I would never flirt with them, I was looking to buy, not to sell! I put on my most pissed off “don’t talk to me face,” and blew past them. I’m really good at looking angry and at blowing people off. It gives me a kind of rush to be rude to people. Is that sick?
I pounded onward, further into the night. When I passed SoHa, the bar we had been at last week, the bouncer was outside talking to some guy. I wondered if he remembered me. I had been looking for my friends that night and had had an extensive conversation with him about finding a pay-phone. I fumbled a wave, meeting his eyes, but he ignored me, shifting his gaze towards the ground, never pausing in his banter and thrusting his hands into his back pockets. His behavior seemed a little strange. Maybe he didn't remember me. But, ah! The power of hindsight!
God damn it, though, nobody was out tonight! My eyes scanned every corner. Couples were sitting on the stoop across the street; a homeless drunk was wildly dancing under the pink beaming lamps, waving his arms and tearing the sky; a Chinese man drew the rickety gate down on his restaurant window, arguing with a woman passing by. I guess it was going to be home from here. I had reached 105th street.
I glanced around again, nervously, unable to determine the rhythm of the night. I don’t usually like to walk down that far, but still… I lingered at a pay phone not really determined to give up. Should I go another block? I picked up the greasy receiver; the plastic felt cold in my hands. With nothing else to do, I dialed in to check my phone mail, knowing full well that I had already spent hours talking to each of my friends and that nobody would have left a message in the mere fifteen minutes I had been gone; but I did it anyway. I kept my eyes focused across the street. There was a group of guys hanging out over there. Should I cross? Whatever…I should just go back. I had to finish my paper anyway. There were no new messages, so I hung up the phone and swung north, strolling back towards campus.
“Your license has been suspended. Please step out of the car.”
Some guy had just gotten pulled over. I paused to watch, but didn't want to embarrass him. Actually, I didn't want to embarrass myself. I was sure that if I stood and stared, he would start to fling insults at me, as any good New Yorker should. Besides, it was getting late, and I was kind of cold. I kept walking.
“What’s up sweetheart? What are you looking for?”
There were three black men standing on the corner of 107th. Could this trip really have been worth it after all? I decided that it was worth a try.
“I’m looking for a guy named Victor.” I answered.
“What’s he look like baby?”
I described him…round face, my height, Yankees hat. Had they really seen him? Why was he pressing for all of these details? How big were his eyes? Was he really exactly my height or a little taller? Was this man flirting with me? Or was he trying to cut a deal?
“Why do you want Victor? I can get you what you want,” he said.
And he could. We began to walk down 107th street, side by side. Isn't there a Gershwin song with that name or something?
“I only have sixty,” I said.
I had planned on buying three bags: two for Saturday, one for later.
“I can get you what you want for a hundred…good stuff…pure stuff.”
“I've only got eighty max.”
Was that a mistake? I was supposed to save twenty. After all, I had just emptied out my bank account, and wouldn't have any more money until my mom’s check went through. I guess I could live off the money under my bed for a while and then replace it when there was more in my savings account.
“That’s fine…eighty…I’ll cut you a deal this time, you call me again. You got a pen so I can write you my number?”
I did. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled it out. It was a new blue pen, the kind I like to draw on my hands with.
“Wait here, I’ll go get it.”
He walked towards Broadway. I sat down on the crumbling gray steps of the brownstone where we had paused, gazing at the slick reflection of the street lights on the heap of garbage bags in front of me, passively watching the rats furrow and climb atop the great plastic mountain. They didn't scare me tonight, though. I wondered why I was so nervous about being out walking, when I was not fearful of or even mildly disgusted by the thick beady eyed rats that I usually dreaded. Their long and thin tails snaked around the small mounds, lashing against the sidewalk, like raw pink whips. A yellow cab drove by, slowly. The color of it’s paint was striking against the blackness of the night. The man behind the wheel was Indian. Our eyes met and I wondered if I had ever sat in his back seat, and if I ever would. How many strangers in this city had that man’s life crossed? It was strange that he drove so slowly. Maybe he lived nearby. What was taking him so long? I reached into my pocket and pulled out the eighty dollars. I wanted to make this as quick as possible. At last my guy rounded the corner; his arms swung gently as he sauntered down the dirty sidewalk.
“Check out the shit I got you.”
I opened the piece of foil.
“Careful!”
It was beautiful. A rock more precious than diamonds, or even the deadly emeralds of my dreams. I gingerly closed the foil back around it.
“Here,” I said, handing him the wad of bills.
“Put your money away!”
I blushed, folding it back into my fist. Why was I so stupid?
“We might have to start kissing or something,” he laughed.
I smiled. He offered me his hand and I pressed the twenties against his fingers. He pressed into my palm a white card.
“Lucky,” he said. “Beep me 'bout whatever you need.”
I got up, thrusting the small tin parcel into my right coin pocket. I adjusted my headphones.
Get your gun! Get your gun!
Finally relaxed, I headed towards Broadway. “Lucky” went back to wasting time on Amsterdam.
It was then that the nightmare truly began, splintering my universe into terrifying shards of mirrored glass, blistering with the colored lights of my paradise. The game would soon be over; I had exhausted every part of this world in which I was as bold and careless as the next, only to learn that I was perhaps ten times more bold and more careless than the next. Turning onto Broadway, Gilda’s fist met the door in solemn quarter notes. It was only moments before that door would open and she would lurch forward into agony, a knife in her chest, ripping her from her father’s embrace, fulfilling the destiny that Rigoletto had struggled so desperately to avoid. And it was only moments before the turning point in my own cursed drama. Did I live under a blessed star, as untouchable and impermeable as that of the Duke? Or were my pathetic cries for happiness to go as unheard as those of the hapless court jester?
I smiled apologetically at the officer; I smiled goodbye, somehow angry at myself for disappointing him like that, wishing with all my heart that my much admired scars hadn't been there for him to see, and regretting, for the first time, the freshly painted burning wounds on my ankle. Whatever….(the favorite word of escapists everywhere)…They led me back into the “female area” and thrust me into a holding cell filled with women whom I had been pressed up against on the subway countless times. I felt as if I would vomit, but even so, I hated these women infinitely less than I hated those who had placed the handcuffs on me. I was one of these women, and as I found a seat in the back of the cell on a narrow hard bench slick with ten thousand layers of gray paint, I closed my eyes, trying to fight off my tears, laced with the stench of crack and urine coming from the small toilet bowl to my right. I longed for the cold burning air of the streets outside.
I love the way that coldness feels when you inhale it sharply and quickly. You can burn you lungs that way, you know. I sucked in a short breath like that when she first approached me outside of Love’s on Broadway. But it was weird…I wasn’t afraid. Even when she pressed me against the wall and began to run her hands inside my pockets, I was filled more with disbelief than with the fear that had characterized the whole night up until that point.
Ah no! E impossibil! Per Verona e in via! Fu vision! And Rigoletto wept.
“Are you allowed to do this?” I demanded.
She ignored me.
"Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights or something?”
They couldn’t find it. She was getting frantic.
“Where’d she put it?”
I was alarmed. Someone had seen me!
“Right side.” came the response, whistling through the static receiver in her fist.
I knew it was only moments before she would find it. I waited. And I waited. And she found it.
“So…not so self righteous now, are you?”
I still thought that she was supposed to read me my rights. I could see nothing but the sidewalk, though, sparkling in all of its filthy majesty, whispering promises of eternal friendship and solidarity, like the fool’s gold that it was. I had hardly realized that she had snapped the handcuffs around my wrists when I began to feel that aching tender pull in my twisted arms that I had to bite my lip to suppress.
We turned around. Somewhere caught between eternity and the next second, PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl materialized, unannounced. It was like a dreaded talk show reunion with someone you would rather forget…There I was on national television, red-faced, ashamed and strangely calm, wondering if the audience would cheer or spit. I quickly bowed my head, ducking into the black Lincoln as fast as I could. Had they seen me? I was so consumed by the cameras that I hardly noticed the man seated to my left. His arms were awkwardly pulled behind him and he gazed, nervously, out the cold window. I could see the reflection of the restaurant across the street in the whites of his eyes, the number 107 branded on his forehead. They seemed almost blue, ghostly impostors, dancing and blinking on the awning, like my abandoned computer screen that I suddenly remembered passionately. My eyes followed as PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl continued past the car. Was that Joseph they were with? Regardless, I knew that I had been spotted. I was being hunted and frantically scurried about for a place to hide in the grove….all to no avail. PhysicsGirl was on top of me, musket pointed, rapidly tapping on the car window. Her knock was a nervous peck. It reminded me of those tiny sparrows you see pecking at the ground for no reason. The window slid down. I had been exposed, and now sat peering timidly against the warm and worn leather of the car seat.
I hated that ugly officer with her tight lips. She seemed like the kind of person who, out of some inborn sense of inferiority, makes it her special duty to humiliate others, punishing them for the way the world has always dicked her over… Quipping at me for her own mediocrity.
“Yeah?”
“Um, that’s our friend in there…”
Oh God! I wanted to die!
“Well ‘your friend’ just got arrested for buying cocaine!”
Oh God! I wanted to die again! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! I closed my eyes, surrounded by the thick red and gold velvet ribbons trickling from my hair, resting on my cheeks, my hands tangled in the endless layers of the white organza of my fantasy shroud.
“Were you waiting to meet her?”
I let the water carry my hair, bringing it up around my face like a gentle marigold halo.
“Oh God, no!” She backed away from the car door.
Good, let them go…I thought, grimacing against the thick swallows of the sea. I ran my tongue across my lips, tasting the salt. How long would take to drown this way? But then I remembered that I always float…even where others have drowned…my beautiful delicate organza stained by their deaths. God damn it! I opened my eyes. George stood three miles away through that glass. His eyes were sad and I cringed. But why was I more upset about disappointing him than I was scared about being arrested?
“Look, is there anything we can do? Where are you taking her?”
“No, not really… not unless you want to wait around for God knows how long. And even then, you won’t really get to see her!”
Jesus, how I hated this woman!
“But we’re taking her down to the precinct now…if you want to know. We’re taking her right now.”
I swallowed harder. Faster. Faster! God, it burned!
“Unless you want to take her stuff…Do you have any stuff?”
Was she talking to me? Somehow I couldn’t think clearly. What did she want me to answer? The driver turned around this time. This woman was even more hideous than her partner. Her eyes were a beady blue, but dull and lifeless. Her hair was yanked and knotted into a braid, growing thinner as it made its way down her back, like the tails on those scampering street rats. It was a coarse copper rope that reminded me of the old wad of Brillo sitting on the corner of the counter of our kitchen sink on Long Island.
“Um, yeah…my walk-man and um…a tape.”
I pulled the cassette from my pocket, my fingers catching on the tears inside the brown satin lining. Jekyll and Hyde….I wondered if anyone else recognized the irony in that…that is, until I realized that no one else knew Dr. Jekyll; he had become my secret. But who the hell was I kidding? Did I know Dr. Jekyll? I wondered if the night would have been different if I had been listening to that tape instead. I unwound the headphones from my neck. I hate the way that little black ring of rubber always falls off the ear piece. I didn’t want PhysicsGuy to lose it.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” I lip synched through the wall, my words smeared and pressed into the thick glass of the submarine, like smudged greased fingerprints. “I’m sorry…Listen, I’m so, so sorry!”
But what the fuck was I apologizing to him for? Come on, you don’t owe anyone anything! Ah, but no…I do…I owe them the world.
"Let's hear from, out next guest….Gilda, why’d you do it?”
Gilda tried to explain it.
“I loved him too much…and now I die for him…”
Somehow, I don’t think that her dad bought it.
The window was returned to its upright position; I glanced out one more time, sheepishly, into the night, and then my friends were gone.
Nothing happened, except a lot of static. I smiled at the man next door. It really wasn’t so bad…We all needed to lighten up a bit. Only the pained fold of my striped wrists, my painted fingers pressing into my veins, recalled the gravity of the situation. My neighbor seemed unfriendly and unconsolatory, silent and still but with a nervous energy that made my knees begin to shake as if by contagion, while his remained motionless.
Anyway, my head hurts too much to think, and all I want to do right now is go home.
*********************************
I wrote this a week or two later (and never finished it). I figured I'd post it here...
December 10, 1998
Poor poor Vicki! Her life is falling apart.
My eyes were glazed over in boredom, reflecting pools of the wavering red and blue images flickering on the screen in front of me. I propped my head higher up on my pillow... wasting time with "One Life to Live..." I had taped it earlier that day.
I wanted to burn the house down too. There was so much I wanted to say and absolutely no forum in which I could have said it... I needed to write a story and there was no plot I could think of that could ever be enough.
All Lindsay has ever wanted was to be part of Clint’s life.
"They did get married in a heck of a hurry. They didn't even know each other that well..."
Hmmm... I racked my brain for a plot, a story, a scenario... better yet, I convinced myself to sink into the dreamy memories of my own experience, forcing myself to think about something from my own life that I wanted to write about...A conversation, anything...how about something with you know who...The father she never had...the guy who would never save her...coke sessions with KSing…cutting my thumb at B's…watching my blood soak into the paper towel, seeing it turn red with my own brilliant color, spilling out of me and turning to a dead dried brown once kissed by the air.
"I thought you understood."
Why did I have the urge, so much, to say something?
"Well, they thought they had a lead on where Christian and Jessica are but it turned out they were wrong..."
We were always three kings... Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breaths a sigh of gathering gloom...heaving, sighing, bleeding, dying... locked in a stone cold tomb.
I really didn't want to be bothered with anything that night.
Why is Vicki always so damned perceptive? By the way, it was Dec. 9, 1998.
"Look, you and I have always made magic together, unfortunately we always made the same mistake of taking that magic to bed," said Max to Blair with a smile.
"She didn't say anything, I know it was her...When you’re a parent, you even know what your child’s silence sounds like," Vicki insisted.
"Part of destiny and fate is trusting it," Will explained, "but if you can't, you can trust me... you're not going to lose me."
I was so fucking bored that day.
"Just write your fucking paper, Hyde! Stop procrastinating and write your fucking Rigoletto paper!"
He looked disappointed in me even though I reassured him that I wasn't suicidal.
"Who the hell cuts themselves as high as their elbow if they’re trying to bleed to death?" I asked.
He shrugged. He didn't understand me. I was no longer the typical college kid that he had once been, a good little girl in a bad bit of trouble.
"Look, I don’t know..." he answered. "I just need you to sign this form saying you don't want to go to the hospital or nothing like that."
I signed. That was the last thing I needed after the this hell.
"All right, take her back in," he said.
I almost wished that I had tried to kill myself. At least I wouldn't be where I was now. The night stretched before my eyes and I couldn't imagine it ending. But where was my fear? Where was the raspy breath and pounding heart that was always my escape when things became too difficult to deal with? Why was I so unafraid and so at home here? Had I really become a criminal? Had I finally been raped, torn in black and white by the night, my innocence stolen? Or was I too naive and too innocent to even realize the kind of trouble I had gotten myself into?
There had been an impending feeling of doom all night, and not just because I like to romanticize about shit like that. I don’t know why I didn't listen to it, but then again, I'm not psychic, and if it had all been pulled off and I was home finishing my paper instead of here, behind bars, I would have shrugged off the whole terrible feeling as simple paranoia.
I heard the storm thrashing around outside the inn of the assassin. Gilda’s hand stood poised, about to knock on the door of her death and the Duke merrily dreamed of love in the room above. Rigoletto- the loving father and twisted bitter jester, the most noble and deepest of men and the most ridiculed and pitied deformity. The pages stood blinking on my computer screen, untouched for hours. I just couldn't focus... couldn't concentrate. It had all become so foreign to me…the discipline and the pride that I used to have in my schoolwork. I wound the phone wire around my fingers, hour after hour. laying on my stomach and laying on my back. I stamped my hundredth cigarette out against the cheap black plastic of my Rite-Aid ashtray and I rolled over again. Pointless. Pointless conversation after pointless conversation until I began to wander, searching for a means of procrastination for this procrastination. It would be my birthday on Saturday…I sighed, angry at my boredom and at the blinking red numbers on my clock. The later it got, the sooner I would really have to crack down on this damn paper.
Last week had been our choir concert. Afterwards there was fun like there hadn't been for months and KSing and I were doing that shit again. I still remember the rush and I long for it back. That ultimate and beautiful relief from the frowning demons inside me. Oh well... I rolled over again, propping my chin up on my wrist and trying to forget all that and focus on the phone. I wondered why I got a wrong number when I called that guy earlier. And if I couldn't get in touch with him, where the hell was I going to get some more stuff? Only for my birthday, of course... I guess I could check the streets just once... someone was out last week when KSing thought it would be impossible to buy, so why not now? Maybe I should go for a walk... just to see... and if there’s no one out, then it will be a nice study break and I'll come back and force myself to finish the paper later.
"Yeah, I’m going out for some... don't worry about it. I'll call you when I get back, all right?"
Energized, I crammed my credit card, drivers license, student ID, twenty bucks and my keys into my pocket, threw on my coat and headed for the door. The red, pink and blue Christmas lights twinkled back at me through the mirror, and the phone rang again. It reminded me of the song that Jessica had been singing to her unborn baby a few hours ago. Vicki used to sing it to Jessica when she was little too. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." That was my perfect 5th memory device. That was the song written to the same tune as "Ba Ba Black Sheep" and the alphabet. God, I loved those lights! It was 12:34. It was KSing. I told her I was on my way out.
"All right, be careful!" she warned me.
She actually warned me! Did she have a premonition too?
"Don't worry about it!" I reassured her.
I was used to walking around really late. I loved the urine filled mud and tar specked puddles of the New York City sidewalks and the orange pink light that bathed the city in ribbons of blood. I loved to feel my feet hard against the pavement, and as I pressed play on my small gray walk-man, the churning and angry sound of those car rides years ago began to bellow into my soul. I smiled sinisterly, on the edge, dangerous and mean. And then I laughed at myself for my own melodrama. But what would I be without such melodrama? I turned the key, clipped the blue plastic key ring onto my belt loop and headed out into hell.
The wind tore at my cheeks, but it made me smile. I have always loved that kind of pain, imagining the blood trickling down my rosy skin, exposed for too long. But my pleasure was tainted; I began to feel nervous, approaching Broadway. I felt unsafe…vulnerable. Where was the empowering menace that had just filled me moments before? Maybe I should have brought my mace…I saw a police car across the street. All right, at least the cops were out tonight. I was quick at the ATM and briskly walked to 110th street, pressing the crumpled twenties deeper into my pocket.
The housewife I will beat! I bash myself to sleep! I am a little shit! I slit my teenage wrists! Don’t mean a fuck to me!
He spit violently into my ears and I kept pace with the frenetic shouting.
But I was nervous again, and couldn't understand why. A man with glasses scurried along the street in front of me.
“He probably lives here on 110th,” I thought.
He was talking to a man with a maroon scarf. Both of them were carrying string instruments. There was a certain safety in the company of these musicians. I stayed close on their tail. Why was I so afraid tonight? I just didn't want to be seen walking alone.
I turned the corner onto Amsterdam. The two men had already said their good nights at the doorstep. Now I really had to keep my eyes opened. Where was “Victor?”
“Look for the Yankees hat,” I reminded myself.
“What’s up baby?”
I lifted my head, my eyes darting anxiously towards the street corner. It was him! I had found him already! I smiled. But then I drew closer. I really need to get to the fucking eye doctor already. I didn't know these two men and I regretted making eye contact and smiling at them at all. Didn't they know that I would never flirt with them, I was looking to buy, not to sell! I put on my most pissed off “don’t talk to me face,” and blew past them. I’m really good at looking angry and at blowing people off. It gives me a kind of rush to be rude to people. Is that sick?
I pounded onward, further into the night. When I passed SoHa, the bar we had been at last week, the bouncer was outside talking to some guy. I wondered if he remembered me. I had been looking for my friends that night and had had an extensive conversation with him about finding a pay-phone. I fumbled a wave, meeting his eyes, but he ignored me, shifting his gaze towards the ground, never pausing in his banter and thrusting his hands into his back pockets. His behavior seemed a little strange. Maybe he didn't remember me. But, ah! The power of hindsight!
God damn it, though, nobody was out tonight! My eyes scanned every corner. Couples were sitting on the stoop across the street; a homeless drunk was wildly dancing under the pink beaming lamps, waving his arms and tearing the sky; a Chinese man drew the rickety gate down on his restaurant window, arguing with a woman passing by. I guess it was going to be home from here. I had reached 105th street.
I glanced around again, nervously, unable to determine the rhythm of the night. I don’t usually like to walk down that far, but still… I lingered at a pay phone not really determined to give up. Should I go another block? I picked up the greasy receiver; the plastic felt cold in my hands. With nothing else to do, I dialed in to check my phone mail, knowing full well that I had already spent hours talking to each of my friends and that nobody would have left a message in the mere fifteen minutes I had been gone; but I did it anyway. I kept my eyes focused across the street. There was a group of guys hanging out over there. Should I cross? Whatever…I should just go back. I had to finish my paper anyway. There were no new messages, so I hung up the phone and swung north, strolling back towards campus.
“Your license has been suspended. Please step out of the car.”
Some guy had just gotten pulled over. I paused to watch, but didn't want to embarrass him. Actually, I didn't want to embarrass myself. I was sure that if I stood and stared, he would start to fling insults at me, as any good New Yorker should. Besides, it was getting late, and I was kind of cold. I kept walking.
“What’s up sweetheart? What are you looking for?”
There were three black men standing on the corner of 107th. Could this trip really have been worth it after all? I decided that it was worth a try.
“I’m looking for a guy named Victor.” I answered.
“What’s he look like baby?”
I described him…round face, my height, Yankees hat. Had they really seen him? Why was he pressing for all of these details? How big were his eyes? Was he really exactly my height or a little taller? Was this man flirting with me? Or was he trying to cut a deal?
“Why do you want Victor? I can get you what you want,” he said.
And he could. We began to walk down 107th street, side by side. Isn't there a Gershwin song with that name or something?
“I only have sixty,” I said.
I had planned on buying three bags: two for Saturday, one for later.
“I can get you what you want for a hundred…good stuff…pure stuff.”
“I've only got eighty max.”
Was that a mistake? I was supposed to save twenty. After all, I had just emptied out my bank account, and wouldn't have any more money until my mom’s check went through. I guess I could live off the money under my bed for a while and then replace it when there was more in my savings account.
“That’s fine…eighty…I’ll cut you a deal this time, you call me again. You got a pen so I can write you my number?”
I did. I reached into my coat pocket and pulled it out. It was a new blue pen, the kind I like to draw on my hands with.
“Wait here, I’ll go get it.”
He walked towards Broadway. I sat down on the crumbling gray steps of the brownstone where we had paused, gazing at the slick reflection of the street lights on the heap of garbage bags in front of me, passively watching the rats furrow and climb atop the great plastic mountain. They didn't scare me tonight, though. I wondered why I was so nervous about being out walking, when I was not fearful of or even mildly disgusted by the thick beady eyed rats that I usually dreaded. Their long and thin tails snaked around the small mounds, lashing against the sidewalk, like raw pink whips. A yellow cab drove by, slowly. The color of it’s paint was striking against the blackness of the night. The man behind the wheel was Indian. Our eyes met and I wondered if I had ever sat in his back seat, and if I ever would. How many strangers in this city had that man’s life crossed? It was strange that he drove so slowly. Maybe he lived nearby. What was taking him so long? I reached into my pocket and pulled out the eighty dollars. I wanted to make this as quick as possible. At last my guy rounded the corner; his arms swung gently as he sauntered down the dirty sidewalk.
“Check out the shit I got you.”
I opened the piece of foil.
“Careful!”
It was beautiful. A rock more precious than diamonds, or even the deadly emeralds of my dreams. I gingerly closed the foil back around it.
“Here,” I said, handing him the wad of bills.
“Put your money away!”
I blushed, folding it back into my fist. Why was I so stupid?
“We might have to start kissing or something,” he laughed.
I smiled. He offered me his hand and I pressed the twenties against his fingers. He pressed into my palm a white card.
“Lucky,” he said. “Beep me 'bout whatever you need.”
I got up, thrusting the small tin parcel into my right coin pocket. I adjusted my headphones.
Get your gun! Get your gun!
Finally relaxed, I headed towards Broadway. “Lucky” went back to wasting time on Amsterdam.
It was then that the nightmare truly began, splintering my universe into terrifying shards of mirrored glass, blistering with the colored lights of my paradise. The game would soon be over; I had exhausted every part of this world in which I was as bold and careless as the next, only to learn that I was perhaps ten times more bold and more careless than the next. Turning onto Broadway, Gilda’s fist met the door in solemn quarter notes. It was only moments before that door would open and she would lurch forward into agony, a knife in her chest, ripping her from her father’s embrace, fulfilling the destiny that Rigoletto had struggled so desperately to avoid. And it was only moments before the turning point in my own cursed drama. Did I live under a blessed star, as untouchable and impermeable as that of the Duke? Or were my pathetic cries for happiness to go as unheard as those of the hapless court jester?
I smiled apologetically at the officer; I smiled goodbye, somehow angry at myself for disappointing him like that, wishing with all my heart that my much admired scars hadn't been there for him to see, and regretting, for the first time, the freshly painted burning wounds on my ankle. Whatever….(the favorite word of escapists everywhere)…They led me back into the “female area” and thrust me into a holding cell filled with women whom I had been pressed up against on the subway countless times. I felt as if I would vomit, but even so, I hated these women infinitely less than I hated those who had placed the handcuffs on me. I was one of these women, and as I found a seat in the back of the cell on a narrow hard bench slick with ten thousand layers of gray paint, I closed my eyes, trying to fight off my tears, laced with the stench of crack and urine coming from the small toilet bowl to my right. I longed for the cold burning air of the streets outside.
I love the way that coldness feels when you inhale it sharply and quickly. You can burn you lungs that way, you know. I sucked in a short breath like that when she first approached me outside of Love’s on Broadway. But it was weird…I wasn’t afraid. Even when she pressed me against the wall and began to run her hands inside my pockets, I was filled more with disbelief than with the fear that had characterized the whole night up until that point.
Ah no! E impossibil! Per Verona e in via! Fu vision! And Rigoletto wept.
“Are you allowed to do this?” I demanded.
She ignored me.
"Aren’t you supposed to read me my rights or something?”
They couldn’t find it. She was getting frantic.
“Where’d she put it?”
I was alarmed. Someone had seen me!
“Right side.” came the response, whistling through the static receiver in her fist.
I knew it was only moments before she would find it. I waited. And I waited. And she found it.
“So…not so self righteous now, are you?”
I still thought that she was supposed to read me my rights. I could see nothing but the sidewalk, though, sparkling in all of its filthy majesty, whispering promises of eternal friendship and solidarity, like the fool’s gold that it was. I had hardly realized that she had snapped the handcuffs around my wrists when I began to feel that aching tender pull in my twisted arms that I had to bite my lip to suppress.
We turned around. Somewhere caught between eternity and the next second, PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl materialized, unannounced. It was like a dreaded talk show reunion with someone you would rather forget…There I was on national television, red-faced, ashamed and strangely calm, wondering if the audience would cheer or spit. I quickly bowed my head, ducking into the black Lincoln as fast as I could. Had they seen me? I was so consumed by the cameras that I hardly noticed the man seated to my left. His arms were awkwardly pulled behind him and he gazed, nervously, out the cold window. I could see the reflection of the restaurant across the street in the whites of his eyes, the number 107 branded on his forehead. They seemed almost blue, ghostly impostors, dancing and blinking on the awning, like my abandoned computer screen that I suddenly remembered passionately. My eyes followed as PhysicsGuy and PhysicsGirl continued past the car. Was that Joseph they were with? Regardless, I knew that I had been spotted. I was being hunted and frantically scurried about for a place to hide in the grove….all to no avail. PhysicsGirl was on top of me, musket pointed, rapidly tapping on the car window. Her knock was a nervous peck. It reminded me of those tiny sparrows you see pecking at the ground for no reason. The window slid down. I had been exposed, and now sat peering timidly against the warm and worn leather of the car seat.
I hated that ugly officer with her tight lips. She seemed like the kind of person who, out of some inborn sense of inferiority, makes it her special duty to humiliate others, punishing them for the way the world has always dicked her over… Quipping at me for her own mediocrity.
“Yeah?”
“Um, that’s our friend in there…”
Oh God! I wanted to die!
“Well ‘your friend’ just got arrested for buying cocaine!”
Oh God! I wanted to die again! Die! Die! Die! Die! Die! I closed my eyes, surrounded by the thick red and gold velvet ribbons trickling from my hair, resting on my cheeks, my hands tangled in the endless layers of the white organza of my fantasy shroud.
“Were you waiting to meet her?”
I let the water carry my hair, bringing it up around my face like a gentle marigold halo.
“Oh God, no!” She backed away from the car door.
Good, let them go…I thought, grimacing against the thick swallows of the sea. I ran my tongue across my lips, tasting the salt. How long would take to drown this way? But then I remembered that I always float…even where others have drowned…my beautiful delicate organza stained by their deaths. God damn it! I opened my eyes. George stood three miles away through that glass. His eyes were sad and I cringed. But why was I more upset about disappointing him than I was scared about being arrested?
“Look, is there anything we can do? Where are you taking her?”
“No, not really… not unless you want to wait around for God knows how long. And even then, you won’t really get to see her!”
Jesus, how I hated this woman!
“But we’re taking her down to the precinct now…if you want to know. We’re taking her right now.”
I swallowed harder. Faster. Faster! God, it burned!
“Unless you want to take her stuff…Do you have any stuff?”
Was she talking to me? Somehow I couldn’t think clearly. What did she want me to answer? The driver turned around this time. This woman was even more hideous than her partner. Her eyes were a beady blue, but dull and lifeless. Her hair was yanked and knotted into a braid, growing thinner as it made its way down her back, like the tails on those scampering street rats. It was a coarse copper rope that reminded me of the old wad of Brillo sitting on the corner of the counter of our kitchen sink on Long Island.
“Um, yeah…my walk-man and um…a tape.”
I pulled the cassette from my pocket, my fingers catching on the tears inside the brown satin lining. Jekyll and Hyde….I wondered if anyone else recognized the irony in that…that is, until I realized that no one else knew Dr. Jekyll; he had become my secret. But who the hell was I kidding? Did I know Dr. Jekyll? I wondered if the night would have been different if I had been listening to that tape instead. I unwound the headphones from my neck. I hate the way that little black ring of rubber always falls off the ear piece. I didn’t want PhysicsGuy to lose it.
“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” I lip synched through the wall, my words smeared and pressed into the thick glass of the submarine, like smudged greased fingerprints. “I’m sorry…Listen, I’m so, so sorry!”
But what the fuck was I apologizing to him for? Come on, you don’t owe anyone anything! Ah, but no…I do…I owe them the world.
"Let's hear from, out next guest….Gilda, why’d you do it?”
Gilda tried to explain it.
“I loved him too much…and now I die for him…”
Somehow, I don’t think that her dad bought it.
The window was returned to its upright position; I glanced out one more time, sheepishly, into the night, and then my friends were gone.
Nothing happened, except a lot of static. I smiled at the man next door. It really wasn’t so bad…We all needed to lighten up a bit. Only the pained fold of my striped wrists, my painted fingers pressing into my veins, recalled the gravity of the situation. My neighbor seemed unfriendly and unconsolatory, silent and still but with a nervous energy that made my knees begin to shake as if by contagion, while his remained motionless.
Tuesday, December 8, 1998
After the Concert
God, I'm exhausted! Sitting in Opera Ensemble, but at least my paper is turned in.
I was just going back through my old journal... I can't believe that someone else read it... I feel too vulnerable and I don't want to talk about any of that stuff with anyone else. I just can't wait until after my paper is in and this concert is over on Thursday. Nothing has really happened lately because I have been so, SO busy lately. Except that I had the best night after our concert the other day...
We went out to Symposium and Bro-in-Law came out! (as did Brandi) and we were there until 12:30 AM. Then, KSing, E-the-R, Clover, BH, JKidd and I went to SoHa and saw MSMGirl there. We were there until 3:00 AM, and then we went to 1020. Finally, KSing and I felt like being up to our old "antics," so we capped the nigh toff in her room and I didn't get him until 8:00 AM. I am thinking of buying some for my birthday, but I don't know...
I hate the lighting in this room though (in Philosophy Hall). And I am so tired and my hair is braided. I really want to go home and get in bed and just watch the tape of the soaps... Czardas just asked me what cat attacked me. Ha ha! Anyway, I feel more like drawing than writing, so I think I will...
I was just going back through my old journal... I can't believe that someone else read it... I feel too vulnerable and I don't want to talk about any of that stuff with anyone else. I just can't wait until after my paper is in and this concert is over on Thursday. Nothing has really happened lately because I have been so, SO busy lately. Except that I had the best night after our concert the other day...
We went out to Symposium and Bro-in-Law came out! (as did Brandi) and we were there until 12:30 AM. Then, KSing, E-the-R, Clover, BH, JKidd and I went to SoHa and saw MSMGirl there. We were there until 3:00 AM, and then we went to 1020. Finally, KSing and I felt like being up to our old "antics," so we capped the nigh toff in her room and I didn't get him until 8:00 AM. I am thinking of buying some for my birthday, but I don't know...
I hate the lighting in this room though (in Philosophy Hall). And I am so tired and my hair is braided. I really want to go home and get in bed and just watch the tape of the soaps... Czardas just asked me what cat attacked me. Ha ha! Anyway, I feel more like drawing than writing, so I think I will...
Friday, December 4, 1998
Juggling
Happy Birthday, Mom!!!
Anyway, I can't find the room where my Anthro movie is showing. I'm really hungry, extremely tired and have a ton of work to do today. I have to stop by student activities and get an E-form signed and pick up the tickets and money.
Anyway, it's December and almost 70-degrees for the past three days!
Last night was the Yule Log and then solo auditions. We went after (me, KSing, PhysicsGuy, Donald, ChoirMan and two girls from ChoirMan's high scholl). It was fun, but afterwards I went over to B's and by accident slashed my thumb open on a kitchen knife. I think I'll take a walk down to Rite Aid to get band aids but first I have to go over to "Student Activities."
Oh, by the way, I was talking to AIR7 last night and he told me that Scheisser feels really bad that I'm not talking to him, etc. But that is so typical! He doesn't feel bad about how much he hurt me-- he only feels bad that now he is left out. (He can't come to my concert on Saturday, etc.)
I still haven't spoken to Amac in a really long time... I wonder if she'll call me on my birthday. I am so annoyed with her though, and this has been going on for so long, that in a weird way I have begun to feel really detached and I don't even care anymore...
Anyway, I can't find the room where my Anthro movie is showing. I'm really hungry, extremely tired and have a ton of work to do today. I have to stop by student activities and get an E-form signed and pick up the tickets and money.
Anyway, it's December and almost 70-degrees for the past three days!
Last night was the Yule Log and then solo auditions. We went after (me, KSing, PhysicsGuy, Donald, ChoirMan and two girls from ChoirMan's high scholl). It was fun, but afterwards I went over to B's and by accident slashed my thumb open on a kitchen knife. I think I'll take a walk down to Rite Aid to get band aids but first I have to go over to "Student Activities."
Oh, by the way, I was talking to AIR7 last night and he told me that Scheisser feels really bad that I'm not talking to him, etc. But that is so typical! He doesn't feel bad about how much he hurt me-- he only feels bad that now he is left out. (He can't come to my concert on Saturday, etc.)
I still haven't spoken to Amac in a really long time... I wonder if she'll call me on my birthday. I am so annoyed with her though, and this has been going on for so long, that in a weird way I have begun to feel really detached and I don't even care anymore...
Wednesday, December 2, 1998
Theraputic Musings
Later, and in Choir (before rehearsal has started) and I want to remember to write about this afternoon later because I know, today, that we touched the core and all of this (all of this!) has been an exercise in burying that...
And I am soaked in gold (but powdered and painted) and hopefully, but next week, all will be natural again. (In that aspect anyway).
I have to remember to print my paper after this and I have to remember to call AIR7... The stench of powdered lilacs is going to my head and I want to remember everything that brought glass to my eyes and that clench on my throat and I have to close in a moment... So that's that for now.
I don't know why, but singing seems really tight and forced in my throat and it is not in my head and it is not floating at all and I wonder what is happening... I wonder if my chest is starting to shake again like Czardas said it was... I am going to practice more breathing exercises...
********************************
Anyway, now rehearsal has ended and we are sitting here doing solo auditions (Contessa is singing the Agnus Dei) and although my eyes are still watering from the horror earlier today, I am in an okay mood. Although I am filled with a petrifying premonition that my birthday is going to be a disaster. (God, I hope not!) I should send out those messages tonight00 but I still don't know what to do about B's concert being in the way.
She was right though... If I fix "it," in essence I fix everything... And it is totally all in my power... Why am I so afraid of letting it all go?
Why am I so afraid?
And I am soaked in gold (but powdered and painted) and hopefully, but next week, all will be natural again. (In that aspect anyway).
I have to remember to print my paper after this and I have to remember to call AIR7... The stench of powdered lilacs is going to my head and I want to remember everything that brought glass to my eyes and that clench on my throat and I have to close in a moment... So that's that for now.
I don't know why, but singing seems really tight and forced in my throat and it is not in my head and it is not floating at all and I wonder what is happening... I wonder if my chest is starting to shake again like Czardas said it was... I am going to practice more breathing exercises...
********************************
Anyway, now rehearsal has ended and we are sitting here doing solo auditions (Contessa is singing the Agnus Dei) and although my eyes are still watering from the horror earlier today, I am in an okay mood. Although I am filled with a petrifying premonition that my birthday is going to be a disaster. (God, I hope not!) I should send out those messages tonight00 but I still don't know what to do about B's concert being in the way.
She was right though... If I fix "it," in essence I fix everything... And it is totally all in my power... Why am I so afraid of letting it all go?
Why am I so afraid?
Burning at Both Ends
Well, back home (at school, I mean) and I feel a lot better... I have so much work, though. I was up until 4:00 AM last night doing a history paper. I have another one due Monday, a music paper due Tuesday, Yule Log tomorrow, the choir concert on Saturday, rehearsals for Opera Ensemble on Monday and Tuesday, the Alumni Club singing on Monday, GoldenFinch's concert on Tuesday and the Opera Ensemble concert on Thursday.
My mom is leaving for Paris tonight.
Anyway, I am in the taxi on my way to see Dr. G. I put up Christmas lights last night and B came over for a cigarette at 2:30 AM and told me they looked beautiful.
Alright... more later...
My mom is leaving for Paris tonight.
Anyway, I am in the taxi on my way to see Dr. G. I put up Christmas lights last night and B came over for a cigarette at 2:30 AM and told me they looked beautiful.
Alright... more later...
Tuesday, December 1, 1998
A Letter to PhysicsGuy
(I'm not sure if this letter was ever sent...)
Dear PhysicsGuy,
Well, you said that I should email you, so here it is... A terrible thing happened to me this morning; I turned my calendar over and discovered that one of my history papers is due on Thursday and I haven't even chosen a topic! Anyway, them my mom told me that she can't come on Saturday. She is going to Pairs tomorrow night and is staying through the weekend. She won an appeal for some Nazi wife-beating client of hers who is paying for his "dream team" of lawyers to visit Paris. I am really happy that she's going... She really deserves it. But it kind of sucks because she didn't come to the last concert either...
Oh, want to hear how weird Scheisser is? I called him today and his machine said "either I am on the other line or out of the office right now." I wonder who he was trying to impress... He has no other line and no office...
Things are so weird lately. First of all, today is my dad's birthday, so it is making me all reflective. I mean, I know that things are better, but I feel like a walking corpse. It's like Elvis Presley. (Remember my obsession?) In 1956 he was young, handsome and in control-- unstoppable and unmatched. But much like the Energizer bunny, he kept going and going, never outlasted, never gone, until he was sequined and bloated and one more white light in the Vegas skyline. Elvis was a walking corpse-- a legend already in America's memory-- an icon of the past, like General Custer, but before he had even died!
I don't know if this is making sense, but I feel like I have died and what I am now is not who I was, but it is not anything new either. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said "there never will be anything new and it sucks" and blah blah blah... If you asked me a month ago, I would have said "who needs anything new? I'll just float here in limbo and drug myself into happiness every day." And now, I feel better and I know that things will get better, but they're not better yet, and so I am in a kind of limbo between life and death. (Or death and the next life... to keep the metaphor more precise). It's just a really strange place to be.
I feel like I am floating... I am not swimming and I don't think I'll drown, but I am drifting on the death o the old, letting myself be held by the sea, licking my lips and saying "it's okay" when my eyes start to sting again.
This whole thing with Scheisser is really getting to me too... I just don't want to trust anyone anymore than they trust or need me... I think that true love is finding the person who needs you the most and you need them in the same way... that way everyone's needs are met and you are bound together by a suffocating web of dependence called love. I don't know if that sounds warped, but it's true... I am no longer worried about whether what I think is right or wrong or what I do is right or wrong. All I care about is freedom for thought and the kind of eternal rest of one's mind that means happiness.
I don't know if I told you that I read Crime and Punishment three times this summer and was identifying 100% with Raskolnikov, but that was what gave him his constant burning fever... it was his mind. It's not the idle mind, but the active mind that's a breeding ground for the devil and I want to swallow those words form myself that betray me and paint me thickly before my own eyes.
When I look back at the past year, all I see is streaming nights of running color and seamless smudges of time, burning holes into my eyes and clouding all of life's edges.
I just know that I have died and am waiting for what's next. The death was painful and I fought it at every turn and I still linger, a ghost, at home, but I sit here with a headache, a semester to salvage, an arm desecrated, and a lot of hope. I just want it to be the beginning again, and I am going to do it better this time.
Anyway, sorry for babbling for so long about all of this. I have to get started on my paper before Opera Ensemble rehearsal tonight. But I'll see you tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
Lots of love,
Hyde
Dear PhysicsGuy,
Well, you said that I should email you, so here it is... A terrible thing happened to me this morning; I turned my calendar over and discovered that one of my history papers is due on Thursday and I haven't even chosen a topic! Anyway, them my mom told me that she can't come on Saturday. She is going to Pairs tomorrow night and is staying through the weekend. She won an appeal for some Nazi wife-beating client of hers who is paying for his "dream team" of lawyers to visit Paris. I am really happy that she's going... She really deserves it. But it kind of sucks because she didn't come to the last concert either...
Oh, want to hear how weird Scheisser is? I called him today and his machine said "either I am on the other line or out of the office right now." I wonder who he was trying to impress... He has no other line and no office...
Things are so weird lately. First of all, today is my dad's birthday, so it is making me all reflective. I mean, I know that things are better, but I feel like a walking corpse. It's like Elvis Presley. (Remember my obsession?) In 1956 he was young, handsome and in control-- unstoppable and unmatched. But much like the Energizer bunny, he kept going and going, never outlasted, never gone, until he was sequined and bloated and one more white light in the Vegas skyline. Elvis was a walking corpse-- a legend already in America's memory-- an icon of the past, like General Custer, but before he had even died!
I don't know if this is making sense, but I feel like I have died and what I am now is not who I was, but it is not anything new either. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said "there never will be anything new and it sucks" and blah blah blah... If you asked me a month ago, I would have said "who needs anything new? I'll just float here in limbo and drug myself into happiness every day." And now, I feel better and I know that things will get better, but they're not better yet, and so I am in a kind of limbo between life and death. (Or death and the next life... to keep the metaphor more precise). It's just a really strange place to be.
I feel like I am floating... I am not swimming and I don't think I'll drown, but I am drifting on the death o the old, letting myself be held by the sea, licking my lips and saying "it's okay" when my eyes start to sting again.
This whole thing with Scheisser is really getting to me too... I just don't want to trust anyone anymore than they trust or need me... I think that true love is finding the person who needs you the most and you need them in the same way... that way everyone's needs are met and you are bound together by a suffocating web of dependence called love. I don't know if that sounds warped, but it's true... I am no longer worried about whether what I think is right or wrong or what I do is right or wrong. All I care about is freedom for thought and the kind of eternal rest of one's mind that means happiness.
I don't know if I told you that I read Crime and Punishment three times this summer and was identifying 100% with Raskolnikov, but that was what gave him his constant burning fever... it was his mind. It's not the idle mind, but the active mind that's a breeding ground for the devil and I want to swallow those words form myself that betray me and paint me thickly before my own eyes.
When I look back at the past year, all I see is streaming nights of running color and seamless smudges of time, burning holes into my eyes and clouding all of life's edges.
I just know that I have died and am waiting for what's next. The death was painful and I fought it at every turn and I still linger, a ghost, at home, but I sit here with a headache, a semester to salvage, an arm desecrated, and a lot of hope. I just want it to be the beginning again, and I am going to do it better this time.
Anyway, sorry for babbling for so long about all of this. I have to get started on my paper before Opera Ensemble rehearsal tonight. But I'll see you tomorrow.
Thanks for listening.
Lots of love,
Hyde
Saturday, November 28, 1998
Thanksgiving Weekend
Well, that was yesterday... I don't remember everything that the psychic said, except that I am lonely, will have interruptions in my life but will eventually be stable and successful. I should "focus my divine communication" and that I had a gift for understanding the world in a way that others can't. I don't know how much is true and how much is just sweeping generalization that everyone can apply to themselves!
Anyway, LilSis, Jar, JD, Jen, Aunt B and Uncle R went home this morning. Times have really changed... everyone has their own life now...
I went to buy some jewelry but I didn't want anyone to see me and then I saw Nanny and Judy at the counter, so I am hiding before I go to pay for what I picked out.
Maybe Dr. G read that dream about the emeralds... Maybe that's why she called me...
I still feel this tension-- like I have to get away fast. But then I remember that I am away and I wonder why that pressing and that choke have not freed me yet. I don't know why or where, but it's like-- I feel this primitive voice screaming "GO! GO! RUN! Change worlds NOW!" And I am desperately trying to ignore it because I don't understand it or what it is asking me to do.
I think I'll get up now to see if Nanny is still there.
**********************
Uh oh... She was there with five other people. I just walked by and the sales lady didn't see me... Maybe I shouldn't buy anything. Maybe it is all stupid. Why do I really want it anyway?
I am getting a really bad headache and I don't have any Advil with me, but God... it's going to be a bad one.
Maybe I should just go get my coat and take a walk by myself around the lake and write poetry. (God, I still haven't done that paper!) But I have been perfect with cigarettes this weekend! I just want to go to sleep... or to go away or something... I told you, I hear the call, but I don't understand the instinct of how to get rid of the urgency or the ache.
This woman next to me just borrowed a coin to scratch off a lotto ticket and she won $3. I hear my mom's voice, but she doesn't see me. I guess they have left the jewelers though, so I can go over in a few minutes. I will wait for them to disappear around the corner.
Anyway, LilSis, Jar, JD, Jen, Aunt B and Uncle R went home this morning. Times have really changed... everyone has their own life now...
I went to buy some jewelry but I didn't want anyone to see me and then I saw Nanny and Judy at the counter, so I am hiding before I go to pay for what I picked out.
Maybe Dr. G read that dream about the emeralds... Maybe that's why she called me...
I still feel this tension-- like I have to get away fast. But then I remember that I am away and I wonder why that pressing and that choke have not freed me yet. I don't know why or where, but it's like-- I feel this primitive voice screaming "GO! GO! RUN! Change worlds NOW!" And I am desperately trying to ignore it because I don't understand it or what it is asking me to do.
I think I'll get up now to see if Nanny is still there.
**********************
Uh oh... She was there with five other people. I just walked by and the sales lady didn't see me... Maybe I shouldn't buy anything. Maybe it is all stupid. Why do I really want it anyway?
I am getting a really bad headache and I don't have any Advil with me, but God... it's going to be a bad one.
Maybe I should just go get my coat and take a walk by myself around the lake and write poetry. (God, I still haven't done that paper!) But I have been perfect with cigarettes this weekend! I just want to go to sleep... or to go away or something... I told you, I hear the call, but I don't understand the instinct of how to get rid of the urgency or the ache.
This woman next to me just borrowed a coin to scratch off a lotto ticket and she won $3. I hear my mom's voice, but she doesn't see me. I guess they have left the jewelers though, so I can go over in a few minutes. I will wait for them to disappear around the corner.
Friday, November 27, 1998
Wednesday, November 25, 1998
Isolating
Happy Thanksgiving!!!
Anyway, I am surviving so far... I have been playing piano all day. It is so hard for me though, to have so much going on and not to be able to talk to my mom or anyone about it when all of it is spinning, spinning, spinning inside. I wonder what that phone call from Dr. G. meant... Does she think that I am even more crazy now and is trying to be nice about it? I don't know...
I am just feeling so suck of routine... I feel like I need some kind of a clean break form everything. But then I wonder if that would just be running away.
I just want to be myself again and read and love it and write music and poetry and feel good and productive and to have everyone that meets me admire me... I think I need that.
******************************
Anyway, later in the day (9:55 PM) and I am skipping out on the night club. BigSis and my mo just got into a fight in front of Aunt N about LilSis' "bad behavior" and my mom ended up crying. I really can't stand it when she cries... It's always a sign to me that things are "really bad."
I asked her about how I was when I was little, though, and she said that I didn't show a lot of anger or aggression and I didn't throw a lot of tantrums, but when I did they were disproportionately insane and I would cry uncontrollably and bang my head in public and stuff... I don't know... Will any of this ever make sense? What Dr. G. said about Olympic ice skating is right though-- you never win without falls along the way and you just have to be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off...
******************************
I just moved down to the lobby (by the piano). I don't know why I need to be by myself so much... I just don't have the energy to see the show and do that whole thing... I need time for my own thoughts and I'm not even sure where or what they are anymore. The curtains in here are painted in smokey shadows of pink and slashed with light, echoing (although not repeating) the stony tones of the nightscape of winter (sparkling pavements and frozen throats!) My right eye burns and I don't know why...
I keep thinking about that "Cassandra" theme... I am overwhelmed with the urge to create, but am utterly uninspired.Those things really develop when they start from nothing.
I finished that painting project with the wooden planks that Scheisser gave me... It came out really cool... I just have to attach the chains and have my stepfather connect it for me.
"Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his garments and not be burned?" (Proverbs, 6:27)
"The soul unto itself is an Imperial friend or the most agonizing spy an enemy could send." (Emily Dickinson)
Anyway, I am surviving so far... I have been playing piano all day. It is so hard for me though, to have so much going on and not to be able to talk to my mom or anyone about it when all of it is spinning, spinning, spinning inside. I wonder what that phone call from Dr. G. meant... Does she think that I am even more crazy now and is trying to be nice about it? I don't know...
I am just feeling so suck of routine... I feel like I need some kind of a clean break form everything. But then I wonder if that would just be running away.
I just want to be myself again and read and love it and write music and poetry and feel good and productive and to have everyone that meets me admire me... I think I need that.
******************************
Anyway, later in the day (9:55 PM) and I am skipping out on the night club. BigSis and my mo just got into a fight in front of Aunt N about LilSis' "bad behavior" and my mom ended up crying. I really can't stand it when she cries... It's always a sign to me that things are "really bad."
I asked her about how I was when I was little, though, and she said that I didn't show a lot of anger or aggression and I didn't throw a lot of tantrums, but when I did they were disproportionately insane and I would cry uncontrollably and bang my head in public and stuff... I don't know... Will any of this ever make sense? What Dr. G. said about Olympic ice skating is right though-- you never win without falls along the way and you just have to be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off...
******************************
I just moved down to the lobby (by the piano). I don't know why I need to be by myself so much... I just don't have the energy to see the show and do that whole thing... I need time for my own thoughts and I'm not even sure where or what they are anymore. The curtains in here are painted in smokey shadows of pink and slashed with light, echoing (although not repeating) the stony tones of the nightscape of winter (sparkling pavements and frozen throats!) My right eye burns and I don't know why...
I keep thinking about that "Cassandra" theme... I am overwhelmed with the urge to create, but am utterly uninspired.Those things really develop when they start from nothing.
I finished that painting project with the wooden planks that Scheisser gave me... It came out really cool... I just have to attach the chains and have my stepfather connect it for me.
"Can a man carry fire in his bosom and his garments and not be burned?" (Proverbs, 6:27)
"The soul unto itself is an Imperial friend or the most agonizing spy an enemy could send." (Emily Dickinson)
Tuesday, November 24, 1998
The Night I Discovered "Kettle One"
In a taxi on my way to meet Ally at the World Trade Center. I had my appointment with Dr. G today and she gave me back one of my journals with little notes stuck in it... It's so funny that she noticed that VJ told me I have "borderline personality disorder" and she asked me what I knew about it and the answer is absolutely nothing. That is, until two days ago... And VJ never really told me that directly anyway... She just referred to cutting yourself. Dr. G told me that it is really bad to do that and that I have to stop, but it's not as easy as all that... I guess she's right, though. I should at least try.
Tomorrow BigSis and Bro-in-Law are picking me up to go to the Catskills (K this year), but I'm really not up for it this year... I just have no energy-- things are finally beginning to sort themselves out enough that it seems weird to have to stuff them all back in... I don't know... Well, it's kind of hard to write in the care, so I will stop for a while.
**********************************
Anyway, I'm still in the taxi... I was just thinking about this thing with ChoirMan. I know that he says it was all me and Ray says that it made him uncomfortable, but that still doesn't sit right... I wrote him that letter apologizing and saying how weird I felt and how I never wanted it to happen again, but on Monday when I got out of the car at the gates, he got out of the car too, as if he wanted to kiss me, but didn't... I don't think that I am so bad at picking up signals that I am reading this wrong...
I don't know... this taxi ride is taking forever and I am getting really annoyed. Anyway, I will close for now.
Tomorrow BigSis and Bro-in-Law are picking me up to go to the Catskills (K this year), but I'm really not up for it this year... I just have no energy-- things are finally beginning to sort themselves out enough that it seems weird to have to stuff them all back in... I don't know... Well, it's kind of hard to write in the care, so I will stop for a while.
**********************************
Anyway, I'm still in the taxi... I was just thinking about this thing with ChoirMan. I know that he says it was all me and Ray says that it made him uncomfortable, but that still doesn't sit right... I wrote him that letter apologizing and saying how weird I felt and how I never wanted it to happen again, but on Monday when I got out of the car at the gates, he got out of the car too, as if he wanted to kiss me, but didn't... I don't think that I am so bad at picking up signals that I am reading this wrong...
I don't know... this taxi ride is taking forever and I am getting really annoyed. Anyway, I will close for now.
Monday, November 23, 1998
I Just Want to Get Better
Well, Wednesday sucks and Thursday was spent in tears, but I have decided that his is done. I was doing all this research on the Internet about Borderline Personality Disorder. It's creepy that I fit almost every symptom. I guess it would explain so much...
Anyway, I was supposed to go home this weekend, but I had to get out of the doctor's appointment because of the slashes on my arm, so I stuck around here. I hung out with Contessa on Friday and had a choir meeting at "Student Activities." Then I did some shipping, rented a movie and cleaned my room...
Saturday I slept most of the afternoon and then went out with some people in my suite for one of their birthdays.
Today I never even got out of bed, except for the fire drill and to pick up my food downstairs. I swear, I slept on and off for the whole day (it is 2:48 AM now and of course, I am wide awake.) But I feel really good... I didn't drink at all, and I think it's a kind of detox. I mean, emotionally I am still drained, but in a different kind of way.
I really feel a renewal coming... and not just because things are so bad and I've hit bottom, but it is just getting better.... it is. I am never going to call Scheisser and I am not going to get drunk (at least until after Thanksgiving). (Well, maybe just a little buzzed...)
I am so tempted to pour all of this out to my mom and I think that is a really good sign because that means my issues are fading int o"history" and are not as pressing and that they will be irrelevant one day and I will be able to tell her.
I just want to get better. I JUST WANT TO GET BETTER. I just want to get better.
I will prove to everyone that I am not dead. I am still as good as I used to be.... and I have redefined myself, and I have escaped the "one I was" and so now if I go back, I am not trapped there... I just can't let myself get trapped here either.
Whatever... I have to wake up in five hours and Ally is coming tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.
Anyway, I was supposed to go home this weekend, but I had to get out of the doctor's appointment because of the slashes on my arm, so I stuck around here. I hung out with Contessa on Friday and had a choir meeting at "Student Activities." Then I did some shipping, rented a movie and cleaned my room...
Saturday I slept most of the afternoon and then went out with some people in my suite for one of their birthdays.
Today I never even got out of bed, except for the fire drill and to pick up my food downstairs. I swear, I slept on and off for the whole day (it is 2:48 AM now and of course, I am wide awake.) But I feel really good... I didn't drink at all, and I think it's a kind of detox. I mean, emotionally I am still drained, but in a different kind of way.
I really feel a renewal coming... and not just because things are so bad and I've hit bottom, but it is just getting better.... it is. I am never going to call Scheisser and I am not going to get drunk (at least until after Thanksgiving). (Well, maybe just a little buzzed...)
I am so tempted to pour all of this out to my mom and I think that is a really good sign because that means my issues are fading int o"history" and are not as pressing and that they will be irrelevant one day and I will be able to tell her.
I just want to get better. I JUST WANT TO GET BETTER. I just want to get better.
I will prove to everyone that I am not dead. I am still as good as I used to be.... and I have redefined myself, and I have escaped the "one I was" and so now if I go back, I am not trapped there... I just can't let myself get trapped here either.
Whatever... I have to wake up in five hours and Ally is coming tomorrow, so I should try to get some sleep.
Thursday, November 19, 1998
Wanting to Run
This just sucks... I am so, so tired and emotionally drained and there is no one left and nobody trusts me... I am so sick of this and I want to pick up and run away. But where will I go? I don't even have the energy to move...
VJ and I are supposed to go see Elizabeth at the movies today...
VJ and I are supposed to go see Elizabeth at the movies today...
Wednesday, November 18, 1998
Angry
Okay. Twelve hours later and I have somewhat calmed down, although I can still not comprehend such a betrayal! He is a psychotic lunatic who can't let me have control over my own life. And I have to discredit him in every way possible... Basically, I hope he backs off after Dr. G tells him that I am OK and his help is unwanted and unnecessary.
But God, how I hate him!!! And God damn him for doing this to me. And AIR7 too... What a way to fuck things up!
I don't even want to think about it because I can't even process what I am feeling into any other emotion than anger and hatred and definitely not into words...
It is 3:48 PM and I am starving, but I have to wait two hours to go to dinner with VJ. Maybe I will go check my email... I have no clean socks, so I have no clue how I'm even going to wear my boots. Maybe I'll wear them without socks...
But God, how I hate him!!! And God damn him for doing this to me. And AIR7 too... What a way to fuck things up!
I don't even want to think about it because I can't even process what I am feeling into any other emotion than anger and hatred and definitely not into words...
It is 3:48 PM and I am starving, but I have to wait two hours to go to dinner with VJ. Maybe I will go check my email... I have no clean socks, so I have no clue how I'm even going to wear my boots. Maybe I'll wear them without socks...
To Trust or Not to Trust?
So, now I don't know what to think... I was so sure that he was a controlling asshole and now I don't know again... What if he really does care about me and I'm just overreacting? He was really nice at the end and said that now he trusts me and he will be there for me, but he also said that he didn't trust me or respect me before... Which means basically that I meant shit to him at all, without trust or respect. And therefore, that should negate him "caring about me" so much that he had to intervene, meaning that it was all an asshole control thing to do-- like VJ--- holding something that made her vulnerable in his possession and then watching her squirm... so is is an asshole... But maybe an asshole who cares about me...
Whatever. I knew he would convince me that he means well... Fuck. He almost convinced me. And God, I want to trust him and for him to be trustworthy, but I can't! I want to, I want to, I want to, but it is too risky... He is playing with the one part of me that I can't let anyone touch-- the facade. I have to hold this together somehow and trusting him just is not possible.
Hyde-- you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, YOU HATE HIM!!! And please, please, please, please, please don't forget it! You are safe now (besides figuring out what he said to her) and you can stay that way by staying away from him. You have to convince her that you are more credible than he is. That fucking asshole... Robbing me like this...
Why couldn't he trust me to begin with? Why couldn't he just give one the benefit of the doubt, or did he really value and respect me that little??? And if that is the case, I want to die for ever having been so stupid as to trust him... How many times has he made me cry, and has he made me panic.... And what am I? A toy or game to be laughed at? To amuse him? to give him his fucking high and then be dropped without a second though like he did to Anne and VJ? And I was not even supposed to be his girlfriend, but his friend...
And now I know that AIR7 hates me for doing this to him... And I deserve to be hated because even if Scheisser did this to me, I know that in some way I made him do it to me, and so, if AIR7 is hurt, it is I who hurt him and I hurt Scheisser and I hurt myself and so many other people and so I deserve all of the pain now. I deserve to suffer while he pulls the strings (but I can't handle it!)
And God, if only I could let myself trust him again... If only I had never been such a fucking fool dot trust him in the first place. That is probably my own fault and I should never have trusted him and I should never trust anyone again.
Now he feels better... Now that nothing has changed, but I have suffered and he can show me what he can do to me with just worlds... Oh God, he has won so thoroughly and he knew he would in the beginning... Why did I even bother fighting? All of this was unnecessary... I did not need his help-- and I think he knew it all alone.
(But what if he DOES care and he WAS trying to help and he cares a lot about me?)
Hyde, don't let yourself think that way. Remember that you hate him, you hate him and you have to. You have to hate him to save yourself!
You have to hate him to save yourself!
Whatever. I knew he would convince me that he means well... Fuck. He almost convinced me. And God, I want to trust him and for him to be trustworthy, but I can't! I want to, I want to, I want to, but it is too risky... He is playing with the one part of me that I can't let anyone touch-- the facade. I have to hold this together somehow and trusting him just is not possible.
Hyde-- you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, you hate him, YOU HATE HIM!!! And please, please, please, please, please don't forget it! You are safe now (besides figuring out what he said to her) and you can stay that way by staying away from him. You have to convince her that you are more credible than he is. That fucking asshole... Robbing me like this...
Why couldn't he trust me to begin with? Why couldn't he just give one the benefit of the doubt, or did he really value and respect me that little??? And if that is the case, I want to die for ever having been so stupid as to trust him... How many times has he made me cry, and has he made me panic.... And what am I? A toy or game to be laughed at? To amuse him? to give him his fucking high and then be dropped without a second though like he did to Anne and VJ? And I was not even supposed to be his girlfriend, but his friend...
And now I know that AIR7 hates me for doing this to him... And I deserve to be hated because even if Scheisser did this to me, I know that in some way I made him do it to me, and so, if AIR7 is hurt, it is I who hurt him and I hurt Scheisser and I hurt myself and so many other people and so I deserve all of the pain now. I deserve to suffer while he pulls the strings (but I can't handle it!)
And God, if only I could let myself trust him again... If only I had never been such a fucking fool dot trust him in the first place. That is probably my own fault and I should never have trusted him and I should never trust anyone again.
Now he feels better... Now that nothing has changed, but I have suffered and he can show me what he can do to me with just worlds... Oh God, he has won so thoroughly and he knew he would in the beginning... Why did I even bother fighting? All of this was unnecessary... I did not need his help-- and I think he knew it all alone.
(But what if he DOES care and he WAS trying to help and he cares a lot about me?)
Hyde, don't let yourself think that way. Remember that you hate him, you hate him and you have to. You have to hate him to save yourself!
You have to hate him to save yourself!
Tuesday, November 17, 1998
Betrayed
He is shit, he is is shit. I fucking hate him and I want him to die. He is such a worthless asshole. He is twisted and cruel and power hungry and domineering and I have NEVER felt such hatred before. That piece of shit, asshole moron who I want to stab over and over. That shithead. Fuck! He doesn't understand anything.
Monday, November 16, 1998
A Quickie
Okay. I just left Dr. G's and I can't believe that I left three of my journals there!
**************************
Okay. AT B's and shit! Remind me to write more later.... He will be back from the bathroom in a second... Oh! I hope I remember everything spilling through. Oh! And another reminder-- remember to transfer your phone mail onto a cassette tape.
**************************
Okay. AT B's and shit! Remind me to write more later.... He will be back from the bathroom in a second... Oh! I hope I remember everything spilling through. Oh! And another reminder-- remember to transfer your phone mail onto a cassette tape.
Back from Washington
Well, I'm back from DC and sitting in the BP (at Haven). I am not pissed anymore, but I still have to be careful... I know that he will take things into his own hands when he feels it is "appropriate," but that is a chance I just can not take...
Anyway, I just checked my messages and I got one from B and one from GoldenFinch, each equally bizarre and happy and in each of them they mentioned the other. I am pretty sure that they hooked up this weekend. And while I'm happy for them, I will feel kind of weird if that really happened... I mean, I don't want them to share information and I don't want to be the odd man out...
Oh well... I have to wait until tomorrow to hear the full story anyway.
I almost feel like everyone is lost, though, and slipping away more rapidly (special!). But AIR7 is right -- I can never be that to ChoirMan. How is it so easy for other people to deal with people and not care about them with their soul (Scheisser) and I am exhausted...
I just drove five hours back form Washington so I will sort all of this out tomorrow.
(Oh God... tomorrow night!)
Anyway, I just checked my messages and I got one from B and one from GoldenFinch, each equally bizarre and happy and in each of them they mentioned the other. I am pretty sure that they hooked up this weekend. And while I'm happy for them, I will feel kind of weird if that really happened... I mean, I don't want them to share information and I don't want to be the odd man out...
Oh well... I have to wait until tomorrow to hear the full story anyway.
I almost feel like everyone is lost, though, and slipping away more rapidly (special!). But AIR7 is right -- I can never be that to ChoirMan. How is it so easy for other people to deal with people and not care about them with their soul (Scheisser) and I am exhausted...
I just drove five hours back form Washington so I will sort all of this out tomorrow.
(Oh God... tomorrow night!)
Saturday, November 14, 1998
My Epiphany (in the National Gallery of Art)
The insanity of longing and the motion, motion of all of it! And how he was blessed with the gift of letting others see through his eyes! See the quivering of every moment and understand the pain that I have always understood but have never been able to adequately express.
And now I stare into the dead pale cheeks of the past-- hollow eyes and spun gray hair wrapped in rich fabrics of pink and white (although I have lost AIR7 and Scheisser) and the shadowed winds of the storm sweeping nature in to terror means nothing against their cold, plastic stares... These two women and her children (Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough) and the death against the memory of Van Gogh so poignantly teaches about vision and about how all of our truths create absolute truth.. that no one being can understand it and very few can even present their own piece of it, but all together convinces me that truth exists... in form less tangible than emotion and impenetrable by language an though.
Is that what they mean when they say "God?" Is that the presence I see etched into the sorrow of her blank stare and the glow of her white neck against the wind?
*********************************************
Okay, later and in the quiet darkness of gray and black, illuminated by reflections of bronze and rosy kisses of light spun with blue and broken by the black of winding tree limbs. Four small patches pressed into the wall and winding leaf motives (La la!) climb in swirls of smoke and fall simultaneously in gentle arches and crests. Shards of yellow and ribbons of pink, rocks of turquoise (Peter) and washes of blue... and I am so in love with color and I long to be locked in the same way, but I am reminded that I dream it and the pain that it causes then...
AIR7 and Scheisser are gone and I am supposed to meet them in half an hour...
But I stood in that room of fantasy and whispered (anachronistically against the glass)
"Look at yourself now, Hyde! Look at yourself now!"
And her hair falls in two great thick golden ropes and the blazing eye on that ceramic goose (powdered faces tuning brown) and Gabriel's feathers match those of the gold candle sticks (moulding like the Fleur de lys) and I wonder if anyone still knows that it's the symbol of annunciation... that Chinese fortune that says "the philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next" but it clearly works the other way too...
And that kiss keeps coming back to me (or should I say those "kisses") and I am really worried because I sense the start of something bad, and yet I can't (don't want to?) stop it... and these glowing images promise peace, but I can't reach out and take it... not yet... I'm not ready
(Open and read! Open and read!)
I am still sucking the sweet juice of that stolen pear, but with the fearful knowledge of that day in the garden. (The Christ child's sorrow!)
God, what am I going to do about him... about myself... everyone has given their warnings and yet the lion's teeth invite me still.
(They are all broken Cassandra's! Eyes stained with the blood to come!)
I think she will be my theme for now (Sweet Mary, I am sorry!) and Gabriel is brown now and the lights here brightly dim (My eyes burn from the bronze reflections!)
And all I need is "air, air, air!" (Thanks, Porfiry Petrovitch)
*****************
CASSANDRA
Screams but is not heard
Sees but can not explain
Warns but is ignored
Knows but is not believed
STABS BUT DOES NOT DIE!!!!
And now I stare into the dead pale cheeks of the past-- hollow eyes and spun gray hair wrapped in rich fabrics of pink and white (although I have lost AIR7 and Scheisser) and the shadowed winds of the storm sweeping nature in to terror means nothing against their cold, plastic stares... These two women and her children (Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough) and the death against the memory of Van Gogh so poignantly teaches about vision and about how all of our truths create absolute truth.. that no one being can understand it and very few can even present their own piece of it, but all together convinces me that truth exists... in form less tangible than emotion and impenetrable by language an though.
Is that what they mean when they say "God?" Is that the presence I see etched into the sorrow of her blank stare and the glow of her white neck against the wind?
*********************************************
Okay, later and in the quiet darkness of gray and black, illuminated by reflections of bronze and rosy kisses of light spun with blue and broken by the black of winding tree limbs. Four small patches pressed into the wall and winding leaf motives (La la!) climb in swirls of smoke and fall simultaneously in gentle arches and crests. Shards of yellow and ribbons of pink, rocks of turquoise (Peter) and washes of blue... and I am so in love with color and I long to be locked in the same way, but I am reminded that I dream it and the pain that it causes then...
AIR7 and Scheisser are gone and I am supposed to meet them in half an hour...
But I stood in that room of fantasy and whispered (anachronistically against the glass)
"Look at yourself now, Hyde! Look at yourself now!"
And her hair falls in two great thick golden ropes and the blazing eye on that ceramic goose (powdered faces tuning brown) and Gabriel's feathers match those of the gold candle sticks (moulding like the Fleur de lys) and I wonder if anyone still knows that it's the symbol of annunciation... that Chinese fortune that says "the philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next" but it clearly works the other way too...
And that kiss keeps coming back to me (or should I say those "kisses") and I am really worried because I sense the start of something bad, and yet I can't (don't want to?) stop it... and these glowing images promise peace, but I can't reach out and take it... not yet... I'm not ready
(Open and read! Open and read!)
I am still sucking the sweet juice of that stolen pear, but with the fearful knowledge of that day in the garden. (The Christ child's sorrow!)
God, what am I going to do about him... about myself... everyone has given their warnings and yet the lion's teeth invite me still.
(They are all broken Cassandra's! Eyes stained with the blood to come!)
I think she will be my theme for now (Sweet Mary, I am sorry!) and Gabriel is brown now and the lights here brightly dim (My eyes burn from the bronze reflections!)
And all I need is "air, air, air!" (Thanks, Porfiry Petrovitch)
*****************
CASSANDRA
Screams but is not heard
Sees but can not explain
Warns but is ignored
Knows but is not believed
STABS BUT DOES NOT DIE!!!!
Friday, November 13, 1998
People Pleasing
Plummeting on the LIRR back towards home. I have to pick up the car today to go to Washington. And although I haven't finished my old journal, I feel such a break in myself that i Had to start a new one. (I went in on Wednesday).
And the sky is streaked with the colors of my afternoon at the seaport; and my guilt sits at the bottom of my stomach like a rock.
VJ is in the hospital and I feel so terrible for her... nobody deserves that... but there is nothing I can do. I don't know...
And this whole thing with ChoirMan is really getting to me... PhysicsGuy is right and KSing is right, and I know that, but God, how I don't want them to be... And why should I subject myself to more disappointment? Isn't anything constant or unconditional? It's just so easy for me to fool myself and swim in hope.
And AIR7 told me: "this is where it stops! and that he's "coming down hard on me." But that is so foolish! I am drowning and desperately grasping at straws to keep my head above the water and he thinks that if he says to me "okay-- this time swim to shore; enough is enough," that I can say "okay" and just be better! I CAN'T do any better than I am doing at this moment, and try to understand why.
I think I know why about ChoirMan though; and I think that it holds true for everyone-- I want to please people so desperately and to be the person that everyone wants me to be... I can't tell my mom any of this because I want to be the best daughter possible...
And I hate myself for what I do to GoldenFinch because I want to be the best friend possible... And staying up for B until 6:00 AM when I had a fever... and taking Schiesser that angel food cake... and now this with ChoirMan...
It's like, if he couldn't deal with me before because I wasn't on his level, I have conformed to everything he could ask for and I have become what I had disdained... And it's not fair that he's that way... And that I am so easy to twist... And then I wonder where this comes from and I think maybe it comes from my dad...
He would come home drunk and we would pretend to be sleeping. Or he would ask "Who loves Daddy the best?" and I would should "Me! Me! ME!" whether I felt like it or not. I learned not to interrupt or ask questions. He was too drunk to make sense. And I learned when and how to play along with the whole game... And life became a series of situations that I had to respond to appropriately. And "appropriately" came to mean how others wanted me to be. (That day cleaning up after school with Mr. S.)
I don't know... I am so pissed at myself for just eating all that shit, but I have to put all of that aside for the weekend... Ia m just so grateful that KSing wasn't mad at me and that she understands... she is so smart about all of this... much smarter than I ma...
So, it will be weird now with AIR7 and Scheisser. I know that they can't understand that I really am okay and that what happened on Wednesday was normal... But the old me has now officially died and all that anyone can see is her charred remains wrapped in ribbons of lunacy (Don Quixote broken)... but the drive into the city will be nice, left with cigarettes, cassettes and the wind.
I ma so sorry that I missed B's birthday (well, it's tomorrow). I want to write him something beautiful so that he knows how much he means to me, but it is something that I can't articulate and besides, I would never even know where to begin.
And I wonder if ChoirMan will ever call me back about lunch this week and if he ever did read those letters.... The one from my journal might scare him and I wonder if he is already scared. I think in terms of that kind of fear, he is already more afraid of me than I am of him. But it's weird... I'm not scared of anyone anymore...
If this were last year, I suppose I would be worried that I called E-the-R on Wednesday, but I'm not... He doesn't worry me at all and I wonder what has changed about me... (Oh God, but I can see myself allowing it to happen again and again!) I must convince everyone that I ma fine and then fix this on my own... (and the trees tangle in colors of death outside the window-- ripping across the sky to the pumping of the railroad).
It's as if the world is a painting today,w ashed across with the muddied brown of spilled paintbrush water. The whole thing looks violently peaceful-- like the rainfall scene in Sense and Sensibility (GoldenFinch's favorite!)
Alright. I will pause for now...
And the sky is streaked with the colors of my afternoon at the seaport; and my guilt sits at the bottom of my stomach like a rock.
VJ is in the hospital and I feel so terrible for her... nobody deserves that... but there is nothing I can do. I don't know...
And this whole thing with ChoirMan is really getting to me... PhysicsGuy is right and KSing is right, and I know that, but God, how I don't want them to be... And why should I subject myself to more disappointment? Isn't anything constant or unconditional? It's just so easy for me to fool myself and swim in hope.
And AIR7 told me: "this is where it stops! and that he's "coming down hard on me." But that is so foolish! I am drowning and desperately grasping at straws to keep my head above the water and he thinks that if he says to me "okay-- this time swim to shore; enough is enough," that I can say "okay" and just be better! I CAN'T do any better than I am doing at this moment, and try to understand why.
I think I know why about ChoirMan though; and I think that it holds true for everyone-- I want to please people so desperately and to be the person that everyone wants me to be... I can't tell my mom any of this because I want to be the best daughter possible...
And I hate myself for what I do to GoldenFinch because I want to be the best friend possible... And staying up for B until 6:00 AM when I had a fever... and taking Schiesser that angel food cake... and now this with ChoirMan...
It's like, if he couldn't deal with me before because I wasn't on his level, I have conformed to everything he could ask for and I have become what I had disdained... And it's not fair that he's that way... And that I am so easy to twist... And then I wonder where this comes from and I think maybe it comes from my dad...
He would come home drunk and we would pretend to be sleeping. Or he would ask "Who loves Daddy the best?" and I would should "Me! Me! ME!" whether I felt like it or not. I learned not to interrupt or ask questions. He was too drunk to make sense. And I learned when and how to play along with the whole game... And life became a series of situations that I had to respond to appropriately. And "appropriately" came to mean how others wanted me to be. (That day cleaning up after school with Mr. S.)
I don't know... I am so pissed at myself for just eating all that shit, but I have to put all of that aside for the weekend... Ia m just so grateful that KSing wasn't mad at me and that she understands... she is so smart about all of this... much smarter than I ma...
So, it will be weird now with AIR7 and Scheisser. I know that they can't understand that I really am okay and that what happened on Wednesday was normal... But the old me has now officially died and all that anyone can see is her charred remains wrapped in ribbons of lunacy (Don Quixote broken)... but the drive into the city will be nice, left with cigarettes, cassettes and the wind.
I ma so sorry that I missed B's birthday (well, it's tomorrow). I want to write him something beautiful so that he knows how much he means to me, but it is something that I can't articulate and besides, I would never even know where to begin.
And I wonder if ChoirMan will ever call me back about lunch this week and if he ever did read those letters.... The one from my journal might scare him and I wonder if he is already scared. I think in terms of that kind of fear, he is already more afraid of me than I am of him. But it's weird... I'm not scared of anyone anymore...
If this were last year, I suppose I would be worried that I called E-the-R on Wednesday, but I'm not... He doesn't worry me at all and I wonder what has changed about me... (Oh God, but I can see myself allowing it to happen again and again!) I must convince everyone that I ma fine and then fix this on my own... (and the trees tangle in colors of death outside the window-- ripping across the sky to the pumping of the railroad).
It's as if the world is a painting today,w ashed across with the muddied brown of spilled paintbrush water. The whole thing looks violently peaceful-- like the rainfall scene in Sense and Sensibility (GoldenFinch's favorite!)
Alright. I will pause for now...
Thursday, November 12, 1998
A (cut-off) Apology
Okay, now you are officially getting your letter and I"m sorry it's not for the happiest occasion. About last night-- I just wanted to apologize and to tell you that I will do my best to avoid a similar situation at all costs. You should have had to be put through that ever and I feel so terrible about it. If I didn't feel that it was an emergency, I never would have called. I am doing my best to keep everything under control, but I have had a lot on my mind lately.
I bet you would never have guessed that I made it up for class, though! For some reason, I woke up at 7:30 AM, even without an alarm!
Anyway, about this weekend-- I can not keep the car past Monday morning, so unless you want to do late night shopping on Sunday night, I can't take you to the supermarket. I hope that it's not too much of a problem.
And about the other--
I bet you would never have guessed that I made it up for class, though! For some reason, I woke up at 7:30 AM, even without an alarm!
Anyway, about this weekend-- I can not keep the car past Monday morning, so unless you want to do late night shopping on Sunday night, I can't take you to the supermarket. I hope that it's not too much of a problem.
And about the other--
Tuesday, November 10, 1998
Tumbling
Oh God, I'm glad that this is ending soon because I am so dizzy... so dizzy! And I kissed ChoirMan last night (I mean really kissed!) and now I am so confused that I don't know what to do or where to go, and does this mean that I should stop writing to him? I am just so dizzy! (And after AIR7 on Friday...)
*****************
Okay, well, I just relocated from the music library to the hallway outside 814 Dodge (and God, I am so dizzy!) after fixing the email situation.
Isn't it funny that ChoirMan thinks I'm being hurt by S and vice versa? (God, it's spinning and I feel sick!) Why did he let that happen though? (And he said he's rather give than get, but so would I). Did he try? And did I? And was he serious? How can he really care about me when it's so clear that it's wrong and that it would confuse me. I don't know... I want to die.
I want to have dinner with AIR7 tonight and just get away form here. I want to get away, get away, get away from here!!! And what does KSing think of me now? (And it is officially hopeless with HIM). And I have such a terrible, nauseating headache. How could I have kissed him? And he said that he hasn't read any of those letters yet (except one) and I wonder why not and how he can be so incurious...
I want to vomit all of this out and die right now... I want to vomit it out and be dead NOW. I have already died in so many other ways and what is left is not worth anything... Not worth shit...
I am supposed to go to the doctor on Wednesday and I really don't want to go.
*****************
Okay, well, I just relocated from the music library to the hallway outside 814 Dodge (and God, I am so dizzy!) after fixing the email situation.
Isn't it funny that ChoirMan thinks I'm being hurt by S and vice versa? (God, it's spinning and I feel sick!) Why did he let that happen though? (And he said he's rather give than get, but so would I). Did he try? And did I? And was he serious? How can he really care about me when it's so clear that it's wrong and that it would confuse me. I don't know... I want to die.
I want to have dinner with AIR7 tonight and just get away form here. I want to get away, get away, get away from here!!! And what does KSing think of me now? (And it is officially hopeless with HIM). And I have such a terrible, nauseating headache. How could I have kissed him? And he said that he hasn't read any of those letters yet (except one) and I wonder why not and how he can be so incurious...
I want to vomit all of this out and die right now... I want to vomit it out and be dead NOW. I have already died in so many other ways and what is left is not worth anything... Not worth shit...
I am supposed to go to the doctor on Wednesday and I really don't want to go.
Friday, November 6, 1998
A Letter to my Mom
Dear Mom,
This letter may seem a little strange, but before you read any further, promise that you won't ask me any questions...
I have been upset for a really long time, as you probably know, but the way that I fix everything is to pretend that I'm not upset and that everything is perfect. This usually goes on until I have a breakdown every now and then and you never understand why I cry so much over such a little trigger. The thing is, I have gotten so used to pretending that I'm okay that it has become nearly impossible for me to articulate to anyone, especially the people closest to me, that I'm not.
I'm telling you that I'm not okay and I think I've been depressed for a long time. I think it is too big for me by myself right now, so I am asking for your help. But I don't want help directly. IT is too hard for me that way. I need to see someone to talk to while I can still keep up my old "self-defense" mechanisms for the moment.
I understand if it's a lot of money, but we have to find a way, even if I stop singing because this is robbing me of all of my life.
I love you so much!
H
This letter may seem a little strange, but before you read any further, promise that you won't ask me any questions...
I have been upset for a really long time, as you probably know, but the way that I fix everything is to pretend that I'm not upset and that everything is perfect. This usually goes on until I have a breakdown every now and then and you never understand why I cry so much over such a little trigger. The thing is, I have gotten so used to pretending that I'm okay that it has become nearly impossible for me to articulate to anyone, especially the people closest to me, that I'm not.
I'm telling you that I'm not okay and I think I've been depressed for a long time. I think it is too big for me by myself right now, so I am asking for your help. But I don't want help directly. IT is too hard for me that way. I need to see someone to talk to while I can still keep up my old "self-defense" mechanisms for the moment.
I understand if it's a lot of money, but we have to find a way, even if I stop singing because this is robbing me of all of my life.
I love you so much!
H
Thursday, November 5, 1998
I Need Help
And so it comes again, and this time completely out of control. And I am ready to leave, leave, leave and take the thousand dollars and go...
And I have nobody left and B hates me and GoldenFinch is scared and oh God, I am scared too... What am I doing and why do I feel this way?
I need help, I need help, I need help. I think it's time to ask for it.
And I have nobody left and B hates me and GoldenFinch is scared and oh God, I am scared too... What am I doing and why do I feel this way?
I need help, I need help, I need help. I think it's time to ask for it.
Tuesday, November 3, 1998
Blackout Bottom
Okay. I'm going to write for as long as my fingers will obey.
I am sitting here waiting for the shuttle, cast in the flavors of all of my terror and all of the sinister faces of this orange pink, pink orange (I bash myself to sleep). And the chaos of the softly turned cigarette butts wedged between the rocky symmetry of those waves of bricks reminds me of last October (See Me Now!) and of the irony of how things go around and around and around. (Did I talk to Scheisser about drugs? I don't remember.)
That is starting to piss me off, by the way-- all of this memory loss! And GoldenFinch said that I called her to plead last night and I remember neither the phone call nor the feeling. (Record me with your fist!)
God, it's cold out! In the low 40's. And my naked chest cries out... I'm back! I'm back! (Although it doesn't mean a fuck to anyone else!) But the cold bites me now and I press my cheeks against eh cutting prism ever harder. (Branded forever?) And so that's how he knows all those drinks...
The subway sweeps below and I balance between the bricks and the grate.
Oh, but today I went to A La Vielle Russie with GoldenFinch! And I saw a world, again, that I would die for and it shocked her and those beautiful crystallized truths shone in her eyes and I saw all of the perfection in enamel that people say can only come from God! Of all the places to find it... In enamel! But it was so beautiful and it was so perfect! And now I have to go pick up the remains of my heart in a backpack and never wonder again why I have no time (or money!). It is all there for the taking when I really want it.
Oh, but that trip would be so much fun! And spindle branches cover the trees and my stomach lurches through the width of the window. I love car windows at night and sip in the melon flavored traffic lights and I wonder if motion sickness is at all related to any kind of these other weird symptoms. (God, the bridge!)
But I spent way too much money yesterday... $80 on coke! But if I stop eating then I can save a lot of money that way... Two more days and I should be able to starve again.
Okay, well, the bus is shaky and I want to look out the window, so I will close for the moment...
*********************************
Anyway. later and in the computer lab waiting for Scheisser to finish typing. (I think he is on "spell-check.")
It really worries me, what KSing said about ChoirMan though... that things may be too much. Maybe his no reaction is like B's no reaction... fear or discomfort.
My foot just fell asleep and I am wondering if it's from the two days of being good. And Scheisser keeps switching off my Walkman. Alright. My headache is grounding everything (as usual)... The only constants are change and headaches.
And I wonder what that phone call meant. Oh well... we will see tomorrow.
-Must go!
*********************************
So, I am sitting here bored out of my fucking mind on the couch, but dread, dread, dread going home to do my chromatic homework. (It's 11:33 PM).
And sometimes I wonder about taking procrastination to a new level (and I feel likes shit doing this... YOU know what I mean) and understand what really demeaning behavior is... And now I have no way of getting home and I haven't' done my homework and that makes me feel even worse about everything else. (God, I wish I could read thoughts!)
And the skin on my hands is rosy and scrubbed (Kitty!) to its rawest form and I feel like I can't even write anymore because my mind is soft and blank and I am so bored but with so much energy and I remember nothing nothing nothing and God, how I remember nothing! And it scares me and I am really scared when I think about what this means and what is happening to my mind and what I will do if I lose myself to this thing, to alcohol, and commit the ultimate betrayal. (And I was just wondering about spelling!)
So I feel sick of myself right now and want to give myself away, but I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't and I don't know what will happen, except that I'm sitting here with this shit instead of doing homework and there is something really wrong with the way that this whole thing is going!
And I wish to be back in the museum, solidified, and with no obligation, no time, no anything because it's warped, warped, warped and then I wouldn't need it anyway. And so I feel it wash over all of me now. And I know... I know...
I am sitting here waiting for the shuttle, cast in the flavors of all of my terror and all of the sinister faces of this orange pink, pink orange (I bash myself to sleep). And the chaos of the softly turned cigarette butts wedged between the rocky symmetry of those waves of bricks reminds me of last October (See Me Now!) and of the irony of how things go around and around and around. (Did I talk to Scheisser about drugs? I don't remember.)
That is starting to piss me off, by the way-- all of this memory loss! And GoldenFinch said that I called her to plead last night and I remember neither the phone call nor the feeling. (Record me with your fist!)
God, it's cold out! In the low 40's. And my naked chest cries out... I'm back! I'm back! (Although it doesn't mean a fuck to anyone else!) But the cold bites me now and I press my cheeks against eh cutting prism ever harder. (Branded forever?) And so that's how he knows all those drinks...
The subway sweeps below and I balance between the bricks and the grate.
Oh, but today I went to A La Vielle Russie with GoldenFinch! And I saw a world, again, that I would die for and it shocked her and those beautiful crystallized truths shone in her eyes and I saw all of the perfection in enamel that people say can only come from God! Of all the places to find it... In enamel! But it was so beautiful and it was so perfect! And now I have to go pick up the remains of my heart in a backpack and never wonder again why I have no time (or money!). It is all there for the taking when I really want it.
Oh, but that trip would be so much fun! And spindle branches cover the trees and my stomach lurches through the width of the window. I love car windows at night and sip in the melon flavored traffic lights and I wonder if motion sickness is at all related to any kind of these other weird symptoms. (God, the bridge!)
But I spent way too much money yesterday... $80 on coke! But if I stop eating then I can save a lot of money that way... Two more days and I should be able to starve again.
Okay, well, the bus is shaky and I want to look out the window, so I will close for the moment...
*********************************
Anyway. later and in the computer lab waiting for Scheisser to finish typing. (I think he is on "spell-check.")
It really worries me, what KSing said about ChoirMan though... that things may be too much. Maybe his no reaction is like B's no reaction... fear or discomfort.
My foot just fell asleep and I am wondering if it's from the two days of being good. And Scheisser keeps switching off my Walkman. Alright. My headache is grounding everything (as usual)... The only constants are change and headaches.
And I wonder what that phone call meant. Oh well... we will see tomorrow.
-Must go!
*********************************
So, I am sitting here bored out of my fucking mind on the couch, but dread, dread, dread going home to do my chromatic homework. (It's 11:33 PM).
And sometimes I wonder about taking procrastination to a new level (and I feel likes shit doing this... YOU know what I mean) and understand what really demeaning behavior is... And now I have no way of getting home and I haven't' done my homework and that makes me feel even worse about everything else. (God, I wish I could read thoughts!)
And the skin on my hands is rosy and scrubbed (Kitty!) to its rawest form and I feel like I can't even write anymore because my mind is soft and blank and I am so bored but with so much energy and I remember nothing nothing nothing and God, how I remember nothing! And it scares me and I am really scared when I think about what this means and what is happening to my mind and what I will do if I lose myself to this thing, to alcohol, and commit the ultimate betrayal. (And I was just wondering about spelling!)
So I feel sick of myself right now and want to give myself away, but I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't and I don't know what will happen, except that I'm sitting here with this shit instead of doing homework and there is something really wrong with the way that this whole thing is going!
And I wish to be back in the museum, solidified, and with no obligation, no time, no anything because it's warped, warped, warped and then I wouldn't need it anyway. And so I feel it wash over all of me now. And I know... I know...
Sunday, November 1, 1998
Downtown on the Hudson
Waves of gray and greased black. Frozen fingertips and Jacques Brell. Even the clouds sputter across the sky in silent coughs, streaked with the yellow of light. Complexions are softly washed and the boats strike the sky with their puzzle-piece counterparts. (My hands colored with faded blood) And ripples of light quiver in the water below.
I lean my head against the iced rail, thick with layers of white paint and a ribbon of dust slashes the sky in two. (Suzanne). The spindles of the Brooklyn Bridge promise to sing like a harp against the gentle cries of these painted birds.
I, in gray too (and denim), grow twisted and cold, but the shuddering wind pleases me. (He himself was broken long before the sky would open).
And all I feel is peace, peace, peace. As if this is after the end and we, on the boat, are waiting to be carried to what's next. But I know what's next... it is only this.
Pink and gray pale faces. No time and no knowledge of anything except the bite of the wind and the ribbons in the sky... I will never understand the size of the sky and will never cease to be grateful for that infinite gulf that it makes me feel-- between my heart and the rest of my body.
And I try to drown out the drone of our tour guide, an irritant so recently added. But I think that I will close now to fall into this sleep and to press my face into the green and gray below.
*******************************
Later and in the subway--
Okay, that was really weird. I just got interrupted (now I'm on the 2/3 at Times Square). Anyway, when I walked into the subway at Wall Street, I was listening to Les Mis in French and singing to "On My Own" and I passed these two black guys. Anyway, one of them said hi to me and I said hi back and we were sitting on those benches in the subway station.
"Excuse me, can I hear your music?" he asked.
"Okay," I said.
"You can hear mine too," he offered.
So, we switched and then he started trying to talk to me in French. Well, we got on the subway. He's from Gabon in Central Africa. He said that he's only been here for three months and that he has only one friend and no family. He's trying to meet people.
Anyway, he gave me his number and asked me to call him and got off at 34th Street. Why do weird things like this always happen to me?
I lean my head against the iced rail, thick with layers of white paint and a ribbon of dust slashes the sky in two. (Suzanne). The spindles of the Brooklyn Bridge promise to sing like a harp against the gentle cries of these painted birds.
I, in gray too (and denim), grow twisted and cold, but the shuddering wind pleases me. (He himself was broken long before the sky would open).
And all I feel is peace, peace, peace. As if this is after the end and we, on the boat, are waiting to be carried to what's next. But I know what's next... it is only this.
Pink and gray pale faces. No time and no knowledge of anything except the bite of the wind and the ribbons in the sky... I will never understand the size of the sky and will never cease to be grateful for that infinite gulf that it makes me feel-- between my heart and the rest of my body.
And I try to drown out the drone of our tour guide, an irritant so recently added. But I think that I will close now to fall into this sleep and to press my face into the green and gray below.
*******************************
Later and in the subway--
Okay, that was really weird. I just got interrupted (now I'm on the 2/3 at Times Square). Anyway, when I walked into the subway at Wall Street, I was listening to Les Mis in French and singing to "On My Own" and I passed these two black guys. Anyway, one of them said hi to me and I said hi back and we were sitting on those benches in the subway station.
"Excuse me, can I hear your music?" he asked.
"Okay," I said.
"You can hear mine too," he offered.
So, we switched and then he started trying to talk to me in French. Well, we got on the subway. He's from Gabon in Central Africa. He said that he's only been here for three months and that he has only one friend and no family. He's trying to meet people.
Anyway, he gave me his number and asked me to call him and got off at 34th Street. Why do weird things like this always happen to me?
Friday, October 16, 1998
Double Exposure
So, on the LIRR (again and again and again) and I'm glad that the chaos of the past few days if finally growing somewhat calmer... And this weekend riding horses through autumn.
Today I got my hair cut and the guy cut off way too much.
But why, after all of this (freedom?) carelessness do I feel the clench again?!? Is it because I am going home? (Hello Jekyll!)
Last night we drove back from Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge and the skyline was so beautiful-- like the glowing eyes of spirits in blue and gold and purple.
A Rangers game must have just gotten out because this train is really crowded and half of the people are in jerseys.
I hope that it's not weird with AIR7 and Scheisser this weekend... It's weird that I haven't been home since Rosh Hashanah. (I'm burning in the shadows. I'm freezing in the sun.)
Once again, the orange stripes of night stain the ghostly sketches of life in this car and the blackness in my eyes flashes wildly, framed by the stained industrial yellow of these "caution lines." My hair holds golden drops of light, the empty windows of Hopper's heart until the lamps burn like glitter under a flame, melting in and out of their ebony surroundings, into my mouth and through my cheeks... Tiny glowing flames, suspended in mid-air... the teardrops of Saints. (The man was a hero!)
But this city is dead and not a single silhouette strikes my forehead. There are only the lifeless crowded ones floating in my own space, feeling the city as fast as the hum can carry us.
And the stretched black of the sky seems to have endless depth and I Feel as if I am dipping my arm into an endless glove, never to feel my fingers slide into their place, never to press the seams.
The car blurs and the double exposure of all this is like the center of a burn and the most delicious.
Flushing Main street.
Today I got my hair cut and the guy cut off way too much.
But why, after all of this (freedom?) carelessness do I feel the clench again?!? Is it because I am going home? (Hello Jekyll!)
Last night we drove back from Brooklyn over the Manhattan Bridge and the skyline was so beautiful-- like the glowing eyes of spirits in blue and gold and purple.
A Rangers game must have just gotten out because this train is really crowded and half of the people are in jerseys.
I hope that it's not weird with AIR7 and Scheisser this weekend... It's weird that I haven't been home since Rosh Hashanah. (I'm burning in the shadows. I'm freezing in the sun.)
Once again, the orange stripes of night stain the ghostly sketches of life in this car and the blackness in my eyes flashes wildly, framed by the stained industrial yellow of these "caution lines." My hair holds golden drops of light, the empty windows of Hopper's heart until the lamps burn like glitter under a flame, melting in and out of their ebony surroundings, into my mouth and through my cheeks... Tiny glowing flames, suspended in mid-air... the teardrops of Saints. (The man was a hero!)
But this city is dead and not a single silhouette strikes my forehead. There are only the lifeless crowded ones floating in my own space, feeling the city as fast as the hum can carry us.
And the stretched black of the sky seems to have endless depth and I Feel as if I am dipping my arm into an endless glove, never to feel my fingers slide into their place, never to press the seams.
The car blurs and the double exposure of all this is like the center of a burn and the most delicious.
Flushing Main street.
Wednesday, October 14, 1998
Sick Optimism
I wonder if things have EVER been this bad (although I know that they have). I'm sitting here on Riverside and the sun is dripping in streaks of gold and blinding orange (too full to see) and the silhouettes of the leaves form a gentle mesh against the sky, sighing and crumbling, in death, to cushion the sidewalk. (Fly away forever, angels. Spread your wings). My hair rests on my shoulders like red-golden straw...
But I want to die when I think about what I have to confront tonight (moonlight on your bed) and I don't' want to be friends anymore... I want ti to be all over (I can find no air. I can find no peace). My dreams are clouded and fragmented. (I can not see the leaves, I can not see the light...)
But life will go on... This time I know it will... That, you can count on.
******************************
Okay... ten minutes later and in Pertutti with a headache and Judy Collins. (The familiar waiter.) And I know that I have grown because all of this makes me unhappy tonight. I will just walk away (But God, I'm scared!). (Far away child...) And I wonder what will be... obviously they will never be the same, but better or worse? (They just dimmed the lights).
It is the most beautiful day out today, though... I want to make a trip down to Patelson's before my voice lesson on Friday, but I wonder if I'll have time.
My tea is here, so I'll close for now.
******************************
anticipation, anticipation, anticipation at 8:32 PM!
But I want to die when I think about what I have to confront tonight (moonlight on your bed) and I don't' want to be friends anymore... I want ti to be all over (I can find no air. I can find no peace). My dreams are clouded and fragmented. (I can not see the leaves, I can not see the light...)
But life will go on... This time I know it will... That, you can count on.
******************************
Okay... ten minutes later and in Pertutti with a headache and Judy Collins. (The familiar waiter.) And I know that I have grown because all of this makes me unhappy tonight. I will just walk away (But God, I'm scared!). (Far away child...) And I wonder what will be... obviously they will never be the same, but better or worse? (They just dimmed the lights).
It is the most beautiful day out today, though... I want to make a trip down to Patelson's before my voice lesson on Friday, but I wonder if I'll have time.
My tea is here, so I'll close for now.
******************************
anticipation, anticipation, anticipation at 8:32 PM!
I Have to Stop Drinking
Oh God, I want to die... How could I have let this happen (Is this becoming a pattern?). Monday night and the blood and tears at AIR7's and Scheisser's... And tonight we have to "talk it out..." I DON'T WANT to talk it out... This is my worst nightmare and will all have come true in a few hours...
Oh God! Just when I thought things were getting better. I have to stop drinking. I have to stop drinking.
What is happening to me?
Oh God! Just when I thought things were getting better. I have to stop drinking. I have to stop drinking.
What is happening to me?
Tuesday, October 13, 1998
The Cleanup
Oh my God! I just woke up and it's 11:59 AM and this room is trashed and I don't remember anything that happened or why I'm still here, except I know that I flipped out and I'm sure they think I'm on drugs. (Now, how to make my nose bleed... oh god, it already is!)
And I need to go back to sleep... It is all still in my system. And I am so embarrassed.
*******************************
Susanna was so right. I do everything for someone to take care of me... I've been so much more fucked up than that... Why did this happen last night? Because I make it that way... in some strange fucked up way, I think I wanted it that way, and I hate myself for that.
I remember ChoirMan and my blue nail polish, PhysicsGuy and the broken bag... And the Tylenol out at the bar and slamming my head against the wall and slapping my face, and he said that he doesn't respond to threats. That's good perception because I am a threat.
I'm sure that by this time AIR7 and Scheisser hate me, or are so confused that I'll never be welcome here again, and I wonder if, secretly, I made it that way on purpose. I think I just need some water and some food... God, I hate myself.
This is so embarrassing!
*******************************
Okay. 2:43 and I'm sitting here alone, watching OLTL and I just found "the threat" and I feel like shit and have no money. And Blair is about to blow Todd's cover, but I don't think she will... not on the first day of the trial. Now I think that it's officially over. I crossed that line and then went way past it. God, I hate this...
*******************************
Okay. Later still, and the day has not picked up. It's 4:10 PM and I have 20 minutes until the shuttle comes, here on the steps of "Hammer" and at least I resisted my wrists-- that is definite improvement... And at least now it is ALL out. That I'm absolutely crazy and absolutely fucked up.
I don't know whether it is better to disappear or become an angel... I will have to play my cards very carefully to clean up this mess, and I must never bring up ANY of it again. I'll ignore it... We should all ignore that which makes us uncomfortable.
Now I'm choking on smoke... Fuck! How can I have absolutely no memory of writing that? Of telling him that? HOW could I have let that happen? Why are things always so out of control? Because I make it that way and because it is too much to hold back...
Maybe I should write another letter... And what about school? I should just go home and study... Wednesday I'll study all afternoon... I can't believe ChoirMan found out about the new voice teacher, but I'm glad he did... and I'm glad that I didn't tell him... Now it seems like I'm capable of holding things back... "Suzanne" in my ears... I want to sail now...
It's getting cold and it's making me happy... I guess... Some guy just walked past me with no shirt on. Is he fucking insane? You are... You are... How could you have done that to yourself? And I wonder what AIR7 will have to say about it tomorrow. But I hate all of this pretending and I hate that I feel such defeat, such desperate defeat.
Was this it? Did I have my "Five Week" breakdown? What was five weeks ago? That would put me at around September 8th. Right when school was starting... What was I doing then? Well, I wasn't writing in here, so that probably means that I wasn't breaking down, so the theory doesn't stick... Oh yeah-- I was mad at GoldenFinch. That seems SO long ago... (Who knows where the time goes?)
I just missed the shuttle. Now I have another twenty minutes to wait... But this is not frantic (It was last night, what do you mean?) It is resigned and gray. Fuck him for pretending nothing is wrong!
Remember you used to freeze your fingers off? Well, winter is coming again... let the games being!
And he is everywhere all at once and I wonder how this has changed from those glowing twin suns (because now the stars are real). And I love watching the paper curl and burn.
There's no one left. God, there's nobody!
And I need to go back to sleep... It is all still in my system. And I am so embarrassed.
*******************************
Susanna was so right. I do everything for someone to take care of me... I've been so much more fucked up than that... Why did this happen last night? Because I make it that way... in some strange fucked up way, I think I wanted it that way, and I hate myself for that.
I remember ChoirMan and my blue nail polish, PhysicsGuy and the broken bag... And the Tylenol out at the bar and slamming my head against the wall and slapping my face, and he said that he doesn't respond to threats. That's good perception because I am a threat.
I'm sure that by this time AIR7 and Scheisser hate me, or are so confused that I'll never be welcome here again, and I wonder if, secretly, I made it that way on purpose. I think I just need some water and some food... God, I hate myself.
This is so embarrassing!
*******************************
Okay. 2:43 and I'm sitting here alone, watching OLTL and I just found "the threat" and I feel like shit and have no money. And Blair is about to blow Todd's cover, but I don't think she will... not on the first day of the trial. Now I think that it's officially over. I crossed that line and then went way past it. God, I hate this...
*******************************
Okay. Later still, and the day has not picked up. It's 4:10 PM and I have 20 minutes until the shuttle comes, here on the steps of "Hammer" and at least I resisted my wrists-- that is definite improvement... And at least now it is ALL out. That I'm absolutely crazy and absolutely fucked up.
I don't know whether it is better to disappear or become an angel... I will have to play my cards very carefully to clean up this mess, and I must never bring up ANY of it again. I'll ignore it... We should all ignore that which makes us uncomfortable.
Now I'm choking on smoke... Fuck! How can I have absolutely no memory of writing that? Of telling him that? HOW could I have let that happen? Why are things always so out of control? Because I make it that way and because it is too much to hold back...
Maybe I should write another letter... And what about school? I should just go home and study... Wednesday I'll study all afternoon... I can't believe ChoirMan found out about the new voice teacher, but I'm glad he did... and I'm glad that I didn't tell him... Now it seems like I'm capable of holding things back... "Suzanne" in my ears... I want to sail now...
It's getting cold and it's making me happy... I guess... Some guy just walked past me with no shirt on. Is he fucking insane? You are... You are... How could you have done that to yourself? And I wonder what AIR7 will have to say about it tomorrow. But I hate all of this pretending and I hate that I feel such defeat, such desperate defeat.
Was this it? Did I have my "Five Week" breakdown? What was five weeks ago? That would put me at around September 8th. Right when school was starting... What was I doing then? Well, I wasn't writing in here, so that probably means that I wasn't breaking down, so the theory doesn't stick... Oh yeah-- I was mad at GoldenFinch. That seems SO long ago... (Who knows where the time goes?)
I just missed the shuttle. Now I have another twenty minutes to wait... But this is not frantic (It was last night, what do you mean?) It is resigned and gray. Fuck him for pretending nothing is wrong!
Remember you used to freeze your fingers off? Well, winter is coming again... let the games being!
And he is everywhere all at once and I wonder how this has changed from those glowing twin suns (because now the stars are real). And I love watching the paper curl and burn.
There's no one left. God, there's nobody!
Monday, October 12, 1998
Suicide Wish
Oh God, I lost you for over a week and chewed my nails off because of it... Things have gotten so much worse in my head, but so much better on the outside... Anyway, I am on the phone with VJ right now and super distracted...
***************
So, in Carmine's later, and all that floats through is him, him HIM. And I know that this is a transfer and I fear the break to come...
**************
I want to kill myself NOW!!!!!! In front of Scheisser and Adam. I want to kill myself... to kill myself... I want to be
**(my drunken handwriting became illegible at this point and I can't read it).
Let me perish please. PLEASE. Where is my what turned
**(and again, the writing is illegible from here to the end)
***************
So, in Carmine's later, and all that floats through is him, him HIM. And I know that this is a transfer and I fear the break to come...
**************
I want to kill myself NOW!!!!!! In front of Scheisser and Adam. I want to kill myself... to kill myself... I want to be
**(my drunken handwriting became illegible at this point and I can't read it).
Let me perish please. PLEASE. Where is my what turned
**(and again, the writing is illegible from here to the end)
Thursday, October 1, 1998
Running on "Empty"
From scarped cliff and Quarried stone she cries, "A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing. All shall go." --Tennyson
God, now I really haven't written in her in forever. So much, so much is happening and it is all so markedly different than before. There is a weird lack of emotion at anything that is happening. And oh God, the crush thing has come back as horrible as ever, only this time laced with more of a false reality. Things have so changed though...
I don't THINK anymore. The weights have all gone. It's like-- finally it was enough that I couldn't take it and my mind erased all of it. And I am starting to realize that more people like me than I think.
I have been hanging out with AIR7 and Scheisser a lot lately. It's making a lot of conflict with Amac, BigSis, etc. I think that VJ is kind of weirded out that I'm hanging out with Scheisser too, but I'm having fun and it's really frustrating that I have to tip-toe around all of these other weird relationships.
AIR7 has seen my crazy side (wild, I mean) too, and I'm hoping that I can trust him with it.
I sleep over there a lot-- "the bachelor pad," and it sucks that I just can't be myself and have fun. Everything is becoming more and more tangled as I have to keep track of who knows what, etc.
I had a super long talk with GoldenFinch today, though, and I think that things are okay. I feel really good about it, at least for now. SO things seem to be going okay...
It's so weird for me, though, to be so "empty" like this. I feel like all of my thoughts are almost petty and not worth writing down because they don't carry the weight of my life. It's like I've said before-- freedom from suffocation is not the sweet taste of the air. It is the absence of the choke. It is absence of pain, not joy...
And to be so without extremity is unfamiliar...
God, now I really haven't written in her in forever. So much, so much is happening and it is all so markedly different than before. There is a weird lack of emotion at anything that is happening. And oh God, the crush thing has come back as horrible as ever, only this time laced with more of a false reality. Things have so changed though...
I don't THINK anymore. The weights have all gone. It's like-- finally it was enough that I couldn't take it and my mind erased all of it. And I am starting to realize that more people like me than I think.
I have been hanging out with AIR7 and Scheisser a lot lately. It's making a lot of conflict with Amac, BigSis, etc. I think that VJ is kind of weirded out that I'm hanging out with Scheisser too, but I'm having fun and it's really frustrating that I have to tip-toe around all of these other weird relationships.
AIR7 has seen my crazy side (wild, I mean) too, and I'm hoping that I can trust him with it.
I sleep over there a lot-- "the bachelor pad," and it sucks that I just can't be myself and have fun. Everything is becoming more and more tangled as I have to keep track of who knows what, etc.
I had a super long talk with GoldenFinch today, though, and I think that things are okay. I feel really good about it, at least for now. SO things seem to be going okay...
It's so weird for me, though, to be so "empty" like this. I feel like all of my thoughts are almost petty and not worth writing down because they don't carry the weight of my life. It's like I've said before-- freedom from suffocation is not the sweet taste of the air. It is the absence of the choke. It is absence of pain, not joy...
And to be so without extremity is unfamiliar...
Saturday, September 26, 1998
Waiting for the Crumble
Okay. So maybe it was a slight overreaction. It is so hot out today, despite my dreams last night and I wonder if tonight is a good idea. Maybe I will throw all of this away and burn it so that I will never have to think about evidence.
And B was right-- such precision is unnatural and unnerving.
I'm on the subway and I have no thoughts on anything. My mind, from exhaustion, has gone, but my throat still really hurts and it's hard to swallow. (96th Street will be next.)
I just want to throw out all of these records and everything from the past. It has all started to fade anyway. Nothing has the strength of feeling that it used to and I wonder if the depression has gone forever, or if it is only momentarily dormant. (The sleeping serpent under the table at the Constitutional Convention).
Thank God that I didn't faint again today. I was sure, for a while, that I would, but I stuck it out.
I haven't spoken to Amac in a while. I wonder if that is good or bad or if I should even be trying to quantify it. Things have been too perfect though... Too good... And I will just sit here patiently and wait for them to crumble...
But in all seriousness, I know how he gets under pressure-- he sucks. And I have no one if it ever comes back. Nobody wants that job and I wonder what will happen to me without it. Oh well... I guess I shouldn't worry about it until the crack. I might as well have fun until then.
Okay. Almost there...
And B was right-- such precision is unnatural and unnerving.
I'm on the subway and I have no thoughts on anything. My mind, from exhaustion, has gone, but my throat still really hurts and it's hard to swallow. (96th Street will be next.)
I just want to throw out all of these records and everything from the past. It has all started to fade anyway. Nothing has the strength of feeling that it used to and I wonder if the depression has gone forever, or if it is only momentarily dormant. (The sleeping serpent under the table at the Constitutional Convention).
Thank God that I didn't faint again today. I was sure, for a while, that I would, but I stuck it out.
I haven't spoken to Amac in a while. I wonder if that is good or bad or if I should even be trying to quantify it. Things have been too perfect though... Too good... And I will just sit here patiently and wait for them to crumble...
But in all seriousness, I know how he gets under pressure-- he sucks. And I have no one if it ever comes back. Nobody wants that job and I wonder what will happen to me without it. Oh well... I guess I shouldn't worry about it until the crack. I might as well have fun until then.
Okay. Almost there...
Tuesday, September 22, 1998
The Bread and Salt
Oh God, I can't believe what I have said and I sit here mixed with dread and fear and God, I don't even remember half of the crap that went on and I am getting sick of nights that pass me in streaks and of this feverish runny nosed burn that always accompanies this class. (It is 9:00 AM.) But at least I got his phone number (the drugs) and it's not all a total loss. (In fact, I'm fucking psyched-- not that I'll ever get the guts to call.)
And I must never forget that all of this is created. (First she created the bread and salt and then she believed in them religiously. Thanks Katerina Ivanovna!)
And Solomon just passed me.
It seems that nobody (no one!) is out this morning and I am wondering whether or not I will be able to look him in the eye.
It is really gray and damp today, but in a beautiful way of death with only the few stray echoes of morning birds. And the later it grows, the more likely it is that he already has passed (I think) but I hate incoherency like this and messed up handwriting and in three more minutes I will make myself go upstairs.
But fuck! I promised that I wouldn't do this anymore. I promised that there would be no more of these mornings. (But God, if it weren't for yesterday, I wouldn't have that number! I'll check it later.)
Okay, he passed brightly and I just want to die. (Lai, Lai they cry!) Okay. I should go up.
*************************
Anyway, so I did go up. And now I'm sitting in class and listening to Mozart and wondering how such a big fucking deal can mean absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing to anyone else.
Now class is about to start...
And I must never forget that all of this is created. (First she created the bread and salt and then she believed in them religiously. Thanks Katerina Ivanovna!)
And Solomon just passed me.
It seems that nobody (no one!) is out this morning and I am wondering whether or not I will be able to look him in the eye.
It is really gray and damp today, but in a beautiful way of death with only the few stray echoes of morning birds. And the later it grows, the more likely it is that he already has passed (I think) but I hate incoherency like this and messed up handwriting and in three more minutes I will make myself go upstairs.
But fuck! I promised that I wouldn't do this anymore. I promised that there would be no more of these mornings. (But God, if it weren't for yesterday, I wouldn't have that number! I'll check it later.)
Okay, he passed brightly and I just want to die. (Lai, Lai they cry!) Okay. I should go up.
*************************
Anyway, so I did go up. And now I'm sitting in class and listening to Mozart and wondering how such a big fucking deal can mean absolutely nothing, nothing, nothing to anyone else.
Now class is about to start...
Friday, September 18, 1998
On Friendship
Now I am waiting at my new voice lesson. I am tired, but remarkably slept about nine hours last night. Then AIR7 woke me up at 3:00 AM to tell me about his dates.
I talked to GoldenFinch on the phone today for a really long time and it was good. It made me feel good that she called me, although it is not the same and never will be. I have changed too much, and yet, I am sure that his is only an in-between and in another few years, there will be a very big change again.
I have been sitting here for 15 minutes already. I wonder how long he intends for me to wait!
I spoke to B this morning too and he pointed out that we would be having our two year anniversary of our friendship at the "New Member Welcome." I'm glad that he remembered it. But then, when I said I wondered if we'd be friends in ten million years, he said "no." He said he moves around a lot and is a bad correspondent. What the hell? I mean-- why admit defeat now? Am I the only one who believes in such absolute friendships that they are all giving and eternal? I mean, Amac seems to agree with me, but it's different.
Anyway, they said that my lesson will start in another few moments. At least this year doesn't seem as heavy. Shanah Tovah! Right?
I'm going home tonight.
Oh-- I'm up!
I talked to GoldenFinch on the phone today for a really long time and it was good. It made me feel good that she called me, although it is not the same and never will be. I have changed too much, and yet, I am sure that his is only an in-between and in another few years, there will be a very big change again.
I have been sitting here for 15 minutes already. I wonder how long he intends for me to wait!
I spoke to B this morning too and he pointed out that we would be having our two year anniversary of our friendship at the "New Member Welcome." I'm glad that he remembered it. But then, when I said I wondered if we'd be friends in ten million years, he said "no." He said he moves around a lot and is a bad correspondent. What the hell? I mean-- why admit defeat now? Am I the only one who believes in such absolute friendships that they are all giving and eternal? I mean, Amac seems to agree with me, but it's different.
Anyway, they said that my lesson will start in another few moments. At least this year doesn't seem as heavy. Shanah Tovah! Right?
I'm going home tonight.
Oh-- I'm up!
Thursday, September 17, 1998
Alma Mater Twilight
It is so beautiful out tonight. The breeze runs up and down my back like an icy finger, but still with the warm mint of summer. Whispers of mystery float lightly in my ear and I imagine the slick oils on the wings of that bird. It cuts the sky in sharp spurts of life and I fled a sparrow.
The lawn is decorated with the rainbow of a carnival, although they still haven't replaced my light. I don't care now, though. All I see is him, him, him and nothing else can effect me. Not even the aching pulse in my thumb or the spokes running up and down my arms and into my cheeks, under my skin.
Darkness is falling the landscape now, mercifully collapsing the world into slumber (and Violetta shrieks in protest).
Two clashing stars sweep across the sky, paying homage to Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden and I wonder if they're all that wrong.
It's weird-- not being buried. I hardly know what it is to breathe, but I am realizing that it is not the cool, sweet taste of the sky on your lips, but rather the lack of suffocation that distinguishes it.
But only I know the truth and when I think of it, it makes me uneasy and i wonder if it is better or worse. Will it all be falsified? (Oh God! The brightness!) Can the universe really exist in a person? In the opera, they're always singing "il mio universo e in te." Maybe that's why people stop seeking and why it makes no sense to me.
Maybe they all really are asking for the universe. Maybe they've just found it.
Oh God... now my entire left leg is tingling uncontrollably and I am hardly aware of how to help it.
Oh well... I'll try to read.
The lawn is decorated with the rainbow of a carnival, although they still haven't replaced my light. I don't care now, though. All I see is him, him, him and nothing else can effect me. Not even the aching pulse in my thumb or the spokes running up and down my arms and into my cheeks, under my skin.
Darkness is falling the landscape now, mercifully collapsing the world into slumber (and Violetta shrieks in protest).
Two clashing stars sweep across the sky, paying homage to Dagny Taggart and Henry Rearden and I wonder if they're all that wrong.
It's weird-- not being buried. I hardly know what it is to breathe, but I am realizing that it is not the cool, sweet taste of the sky on your lips, but rather the lack of suffocation that distinguishes it.
But only I know the truth and when I think of it, it makes me uneasy and i wonder if it is better or worse. Will it all be falsified? (Oh God! The brightness!) Can the universe really exist in a person? In the opera, they're always singing "il mio universo e in te." Maybe that's why people stop seeking and why it makes no sense to me.
Maybe they all really are asking for the universe. Maybe they've just found it.
Oh God... now my entire left leg is tingling uncontrollably and I am hardly aware of how to help it.
Oh well... I'll try to read.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)