You dreampt that you and Phillip were at the University of Maryland, going to some sort of reading or concert or something that was in an opera hall except that it was designed like Bauhaus or an Escher drawing. On the walls there were animated books that turned into butterflies, and had a Dr. Suess quality to them, they moved, they flew. You thought it was stupid for a university to have such a childish motif and that this is why there is such an education gap. The hall had a few tiers. You were on the top tier and it wasn't like a normal tier, the stairs were scary as fuck like a catwalk. You looked out towards the stage and down to the orchestra seating and were terrified. Normally, you just grab on to the balustrade or rails or walk backwards when your acrophobia kicks in, but this time, as Phillip began to lead you out to out your seats, you were so scared that you ran back up the stairs and threw yourself on the floor, spread eagle, to feel more secure. Phillip came up after you and didn't try to make you go out to the seats again. You tried to imagine how you could crocodile your way out to the seats, but never went. Phillip sat next to you at the top of the stairs and it was okay.
Phillip told you last night that there are changes happening in his life. that you might get to sleep next to him for the rest of your life. you are scared of falling again. but he'll stay with you. he won't let you live in fear, won't push too hard. older and wiser and tempered.
Monday, September 16, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
exercise restraint of pen and thumb
Because you have insomnia, or a guilty conscience, you're awake at 12:24AM on a work night. You are also incredibly old because up at 12:25AM on a work night isn't really that late. When did you become so lame? Meh. Own it.
You wonder if writing down some of your crazier thoughts will exorcise them. You wonder if it will cause more damage, a blog is a public space after all. You convince yourself that you're not that important and that no one reads this thing anyway. You are not too hopeful about the exorcism either.
While taking a piss earlier tonight you realized that you haven't thought about the vision wall in a long time. Where did those pictures go? Of you and Phillip and your imaginary family. You always imagined Oliver would be the first child, making the gender ratio more men than women in the house. Phillip's current family is his wife and daughter and mother, who lives close by, and female cousin soon to go to university. These are dangerous thoughts to write out. These could hurt her feelings if she knew them.
It'd be better not to say anything here. If this is not the place, stop writing, take a bath, brush your teeth, drink some tea. Do anything other than write something you may regret. Exercise restraint of pen and tongue.
If you think this is the place to air out fantasies and ignore the tenth step, reconsider your motivations and pray for the willingness to be a kind human being.
You wonder if writing down some of your crazier thoughts will exorcise them. You wonder if it will cause more damage, a blog is a public space after all. You convince yourself that you're not that important and that no one reads this thing anyway. You are not too hopeful about the exorcism either.
While taking a piss earlier tonight you realized that you haven't thought about the vision wall in a long time. Where did those pictures go? Of you and Phillip and your imaginary family. You always imagined Oliver would be the first child, making the gender ratio more men than women in the house. Phillip's current family is his wife and daughter and mother, who lives close by, and female cousin soon to go to university. These are dangerous thoughts to write out. These could hurt her feelings if she knew them.
It'd be better not to say anything here. If this is not the place, stop writing, take a bath, brush your teeth, drink some tea. Do anything other than write something you may regret. Exercise restraint of pen and tongue.
If you think this is the place to air out fantasies and ignore the tenth step, reconsider your motivations and pray for the willingness to be a kind human being.
Monday, June 24, 2013
what have i done.
you don't even know where to start.
all of your stories have different endings, but the beginnings are all fairly clear.
this beginning is much more ambiguous. you don't know where it left off. that's not entirely true. it left off when you blocked his phone calls and blocked his emails. But now, you don't know where it fits it and so you don't know what you're supposed to do with it. it defies all the rationalizations and categorizations and compartmentalizations that you've made over the past decade in regards to Phillip.
he sent you a text message sometime last year at one o'clock in the morning asking, "were we ever friends?" and you ignored it because of the time and because you didn't think he had his head on straight. maybe he would have regretted talking to you in the morning.
when you were in a moment, where the bunny ears weren't adjusted right, and everything was very grainy and you kept on calling and calling at 2am because the light was on in what you mistakenly thought was his apartment building, it was his neighbors light. You and his neighbor became friends after you stopped talking with Phillip. He was an amazing writer, caustic and shy, capable of great kindness and sarcasm. He died a month ago, so after complete radio silence for four years, you told Phillip. It seemed like righteous motivations.
but now you're so confused. some days you wake up and feel like you found the other pea of your platonic pea pod, other days, he's your unicorn and you've done enough of sitting and being a virgin to know that he's the unicorn to your virgin and that you're the unicorn to his virgin. you cried yourself to sleep last night, lamenting the fact that it took four years for you to figure out that men have emotions and are human, which was essentially, the lack of understanding you had when you were together. he was a possession, not an entirely seperate entity from you and not a reflection of you.
'what have i done.' that's what you think today. tomorrow, you may be ten shades of happy that he is married to a beautiful woman with the most adorable daughter. taking care of his mother. being an adult. and you may be so happy that he has found the freedom to be all of these things, husband, father, son, with someone else. you have to remember, 'it wasn't me. he didn't do these things with me.'
and do you allow yourself to dream about what happens with either feeling, how do they play out, what do they look like, so that you can figure out how do you act, what is appropriate behavior. it's all very ambiguous. after a year of practicing meditation, that's where you turn. inwards, watching the emotions as they stick to certain places in your body, recognizing the feelings and listening to what feels right, turn to page 100. to make up some fan fiction, turn to page 101.
all of your stories have different endings, but the beginnings are all fairly clear.
this beginning is much more ambiguous. you don't know where it left off. that's not entirely true. it left off when you blocked his phone calls and blocked his emails. But now, you don't know where it fits it and so you don't know what you're supposed to do with it. it defies all the rationalizations and categorizations and compartmentalizations that you've made over the past decade in regards to Phillip.
he sent you a text message sometime last year at one o'clock in the morning asking, "were we ever friends?" and you ignored it because of the time and because you didn't think he had his head on straight. maybe he would have regretted talking to you in the morning.
when you were in a moment, where the bunny ears weren't adjusted right, and everything was very grainy and you kept on calling and calling at 2am because the light was on in what you mistakenly thought was his apartment building, it was his neighbors light. You and his neighbor became friends after you stopped talking with Phillip. He was an amazing writer, caustic and shy, capable of great kindness and sarcasm. He died a month ago, so after complete radio silence for four years, you told Phillip. It seemed like righteous motivations.
but now you're so confused. some days you wake up and feel like you found the other pea of your platonic pea pod, other days, he's your unicorn and you've done enough of sitting and being a virgin to know that he's the unicorn to your virgin and that you're the unicorn to his virgin. you cried yourself to sleep last night, lamenting the fact that it took four years for you to figure out that men have emotions and are human, which was essentially, the lack of understanding you had when you were together. he was a possession, not an entirely seperate entity from you and not a reflection of you.
'what have i done.' that's what you think today. tomorrow, you may be ten shades of happy that he is married to a beautiful woman with the most adorable daughter. taking care of his mother. being an adult. and you may be so happy that he has found the freedom to be all of these things, husband, father, son, with someone else. you have to remember, 'it wasn't me. he didn't do these things with me.'
and do you allow yourself to dream about what happens with either feeling, how do they play out, what do they look like, so that you can figure out how do you act, what is appropriate behavior. it's all very ambiguous. after a year of practicing meditation, that's where you turn. inwards, watching the emotions as they stick to certain places in your body, recognizing the feelings and listening to what feels right, turn to page 100. to make up some fan fiction, turn to page 101.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
the second meeting
Beware the stalking Bacchus. “They” say to stop and just listen, to not reply but to take what you can use and then leave the rest for another day. That made sense because there were too many thoughts running through your head. They say "get out of your head."
The reading was about the first step, acknowledging that you have no power over your
addiction. There were many stories told, and you remembered something a friend told you earlier that day when you told her you were going to a meeting, that when you keep your story close in your consciousness it isn't so hard to admit that first step.
To play your ‘tape’ turn to page 5.
To stay in the moment and listen to other people’s experience, strength and hope turn to page 7.
The reading was about the first step, acknowledging that you have no power over your
addiction. There were many stories told, and you remembered something a friend told you earlier that day when you told her you were going to a meeting, that when you keep your story close in your consciousness it isn't so hard to admit that first step.
To play your ‘tape’ turn to page 5.
To stay in the moment and listen to other people’s experience, strength and hope turn to page 7.
playing the ‘tape’
Freshly sodomized, that’s how you woke up on the last day. You consider it to be your last day because you were still pretty drunk from the night before.
Mid-July, a mid-twenties pathetic. You lived in the up-and-up neighborhood, before the Target moved in, before the writing on the wall in a dive bar explained “if you took a cab here, you don’t belong.” You moved there because you love Salvadorian food. You moved there hastily, when you were engaged to be married at 21 years old. The building was beautiful and well maintained. You didn’t have the energy to figure out how to wash the filters on the air conditioners so you lived with the balcony doors open to get a cross breeze, which inevitably led to having to sleep with your sheets over your head so the mosquitoes could not feast on your inert body. You lived in squalor, but in a really large apartment for the rent you were paying. No t.v., you thought and still to some extent still think that they are tacky. Instead, your apartment was filled with books, most of which you haven’t read, but they make you seem smart and educated, a conceited façade. The kitty litter box lived in the kitchen and was rarely changed. The whole kitchen area could be closed off by double doors so that the wreckage and science experiments weren’t readily visible. Empty beer bottles littered your bathroom. Most of the furniture you inherited from your father, the blue-blood Rye New York side of the family. You’re descended from Rob Roy and Thomas Nast, so stubbornness and vanity and hubris run in your veins, as well as the disease of addiction. Your therapist told you that you should go get help since you were 16.
It was nearly a decade later and your ass-hole hurt. Your sheets were not on your bed, but hanging over the doorway of the balcony so that the light wouldn’t shine through. Your wrists were beginning to bruise from the handcuffs. And you couldn’t find the key.
Ink-neck, so labeled for the tattoos on his neck, wouldn’t let you go to the police station to have them removed. You were tired and humiliated. He thought so lowly of you, he had told you so the night before. He couldn’t believe that you couldn’t remember how many guys from your JCC dodgeball team you dropped on. You think he even called you a slut; although it didn’t keep him from asking you to go drinking with him. Eight hours later he was asking if you had a key to the set of handcuffs that were in the bowl next to the front door. Drunk, you said, “Yes.”
You put on a tube top. Didn’t shower. Tried to hide your restrained hands in a black over the shoulder bag while you and Ink-neck boarded the metro to his house and car, which had a set of keys stuck into the rim of the driver's side door and the ceiling foam. You drove to Wendy’s with him and he blew the tire of his car and so both of you sat at a gas station for an hour or so. You laughed at him. You missed your mother’s birthday party. He wouldn’t drive you home so you went back to your apartment on the metro.
You haven’t spoken to him since. You see him around town every once in a while, and you duck, you hide.
If this is enough to keep you from drinking just for today, turn to page 3.
If you want to drown this memory, turn to page 8.
Mid-July, a mid-twenties pathetic. You lived in the up-and-up neighborhood, before the Target moved in, before the writing on the wall in a dive bar explained “if you took a cab here, you don’t belong.” You moved there because you love Salvadorian food. You moved there hastily, when you were engaged to be married at 21 years old. The building was beautiful and well maintained. You didn’t have the energy to figure out how to wash the filters on the air conditioners so you lived with the balcony doors open to get a cross breeze, which inevitably led to having to sleep with your sheets over your head so the mosquitoes could not feast on your inert body. You lived in squalor, but in a really large apartment for the rent you were paying. No t.v., you thought and still to some extent still think that they are tacky. Instead, your apartment was filled with books, most of which you haven’t read, but they make you seem smart and educated, a conceited façade. The kitty litter box lived in the kitchen and was rarely changed. The whole kitchen area could be closed off by double doors so that the wreckage and science experiments weren’t readily visible. Empty beer bottles littered your bathroom. Most of the furniture you inherited from your father, the blue-blood Rye New York side of the family. You’re descended from Rob Roy and Thomas Nast, so stubbornness and vanity and hubris run in your veins, as well as the disease of addiction. Your therapist told you that you should go get help since you were 16.
It was nearly a decade later and your ass-hole hurt. Your sheets were not on your bed, but hanging over the doorway of the balcony so that the light wouldn’t shine through. Your wrists were beginning to bruise from the handcuffs. And you couldn’t find the key.
Ink-neck, so labeled for the tattoos on his neck, wouldn’t let you go to the police station to have them removed. You were tired and humiliated. He thought so lowly of you, he had told you so the night before. He couldn’t believe that you couldn’t remember how many guys from your JCC dodgeball team you dropped on. You think he even called you a slut; although it didn’t keep him from asking you to go drinking with him. Eight hours later he was asking if you had a key to the set of handcuffs that were in the bowl next to the front door. Drunk, you said, “Yes.”
You put on a tube top. Didn’t shower. Tried to hide your restrained hands in a black over the shoulder bag while you and Ink-neck boarded the metro to his house and car, which had a set of keys stuck into the rim of the driver's side door and the ceiling foam. You drove to Wendy’s with him and he blew the tire of his car and so both of you sat at a gas station for an hour or so. You laughed at him. You missed your mother’s birthday party. He wouldn’t drive you home so you went back to your apartment on the metro.
You haven’t spoken to him since. You see him around town every once in a while, and you duck, you hide.
If this is enough to keep you from drinking just for today, turn to page 3.
If you want to drown this memory, turn to page 8.
staying in the moment
It was a beginners meeting, most of the people who spoke were talking about powerlessness.
You were trying to relate to the people who were sharing, you remember when you quit using illegal drugs. That memory is still fresh. It isn't hard for you to stay away from illegal drugs; you disdained users. You had come to realize how retarded you were, and how retarded they were, not the colloquial retarded, but seriously stunted, not growing. It was difficult to assume that same perspective on using legal drugs, you were still drinking alcohol and taking pills that had been prescribed (granted, you weren’t taking them as prescribed, but that was simply a bagatelle).
If you want to continue lying to yourself, turn to page 8.
Turn to page 10 if you’ve hurt enough and are willing to start taking suggestions.
You were trying to relate to the people who were sharing, you remember when you quit using illegal drugs. That memory is still fresh. It isn't hard for you to stay away from illegal drugs; you disdained users. You had come to realize how retarded you were, and how retarded they were, not the colloquial retarded, but seriously stunted, not growing. It was difficult to assume that same perspective on using legal drugs, you were still drinking alcohol and taking pills that had been prescribed (granted, you weren’t taking them as prescribed, but that was simply a bagatelle).
If you want to continue lying to yourself, turn to page 8.
Turn to page 10 if you’ve hurt enough and are willing to start taking suggestions.
continuing the lie
You hadn't reached rock bottom, you were trying to be wise, you were trying to out-smart yourself. You were lying to yourself daily that you could do it. You knew you couldn't, because you didn't.
Immediately after the meeting you went out and had three delicious dirty martinis on the rocks, lots of olives.
It was convenient that you had Ink-neck to drink with, that he wanted you to drink with him so that he'd have a better time. You thought that if you could catch him early enough that sex would be enough, that that would be a good enough time. basta, enough. You started out with a diet coke, and thought, “If I have one martini I can make it home by 12 and be in bed on time and make it to work on time.”
The main reason for the sobriety hunt was because you were tired. In the preceding three weeks you had found that both ends were exhausting. Drinking was exhausting and so was not drinking. You stayed up until 3am drawing in a manic state of anxiety on many nights during that white-knuckle period.
You stopped that night at 1:30 and were in bed by 1:45am. You made it into work on time the next day. It was luck and you knew it.
You didn't know about that day, the beginning of what you call your bottom. You were supposed to go to a going away party with your dodge ball guys but doubted that you could sit in a fully stocked limo without taking your clothes off. It felt like the Bacchus was stalking you. It was like going up against Vizzini, the Sicilian, when death is on the line.
And then came the surrender. The details of those days … don’t matter. Not really. Everyone has gotten drunk, right? taken too many pills? Blacked out? Been handcuffed with a keyless pair? Missed their mother’s birthday dinner because the key had to be found? Been sodomized? Everyone has, right? It’s normal, right?
If you need another example of your unmanageable life, turn to any of the following pages: page 21, page 23, page 26, page 28.
Immediately after the meeting you went out and had three delicious dirty martinis on the rocks, lots of olives.
It was convenient that you had Ink-neck to drink with, that he wanted you to drink with him so that he'd have a better time. You thought that if you could catch him early enough that sex would be enough, that that would be a good enough time. basta, enough. You started out with a diet coke, and thought, “If I have one martini I can make it home by 12 and be in bed on time and make it to work on time.”
The main reason for the sobriety hunt was because you were tired. In the preceding three weeks you had found that both ends were exhausting. Drinking was exhausting and so was not drinking. You stayed up until 3am drawing in a manic state of anxiety on many nights during that white-knuckle period.
You stopped that night at 1:30 and were in bed by 1:45am. You made it into work on time the next day. It was luck and you knew it.
You didn't know about that day, the beginning of what you call your bottom. You were supposed to go to a going away party with your dodge ball guys but doubted that you could sit in a fully stocked limo without taking your clothes off. It felt like the Bacchus was stalking you. It was like going up against Vizzini, the Sicilian, when death is on the line.
And then came the surrender. The details of those days … don’t matter. Not really. Everyone has gotten drunk, right? taken too many pills? Blacked out? Been handcuffed with a keyless pair? Missed their mother’s birthday dinner because the key had to be found? Been sodomized? Everyone has, right? It’s normal, right?
If you need another example of your unmanageable life, turn to any of the following pages: page 21, page 23, page 26, page 28.
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