The White Room
Andrew was supposed to take inspiration from the sterile walls of his self imposed prison. Or at least he tried. When he had designed this room he had imagined the white walls, ceilings, and furniture as being a backdrop his characters would move about on. Like somehow they would be the screen and his mind the projector. But now, after two years of writers block induced unproductivity, the walls merely morphed into unwritable faces that laughed as he struggled with blank pages and an empty head.
“Get out”, his friends and mentors had told him. “Go out and watch the world and find inspiration there.” So he had. He had sat endless hours writing down tidbits of overheard conversation, noting the beauty of a moment, countless sights and sounds and each time thinking, “Jesus, this would make for a fantastic bit of a poem or a story.” But then when he settled to start the greater work, they all stayed disconnected isolated moments. He had done myriads of exercises, written dozens of starts, and never found anything worth continuing. No greater unifying theme emerged other than his growing discontent and frustration.
It was now June of his third year of literary futility, unable to focus or care on anything but finding his story; he drove away everyone who he mattered to. He rarely left his apartment, refusing to let the faces of the white room and the blank pages drive him away from what he loved. He was never any good at anything but writing, it was his passion, his singular focus, and now it was driving him insane.
It had also driven the last in a long line of girlfriends over the edge. That day Jen had stood in the door of his white room. “Andrew,” he didn’t look up from his lap top. “Andrew.” Still nothing.
“ANDREW!”
“Jesus Christ! What the hell was that for?”
“I called your name three times!”
“I would have heard you.”
“Andrew you’ve been in there for 6 hours. Your cell phone has rang three times, it’s like you’re in a whole different world.”
“You know not to bother me when I’m in here.”
“If I didn’t you’d never leave!”
Andrew muttered something non-committal. He honestly did not care. He just wanted to be alone. He just wanted to get something done. Something on the page he could use.
“You need to come out of there. We haven’t spoken in three weeks. You never leave this fucking room! How the hell are we supposed to be together when, even though I live in the same apartment, I never ever see you?”
“I’ll be out in a little while.”
“No, come now.”
“Jen, go away, I need to work. Why don’t you understand I need to get some decent shit, on paper, in the next month?”
“If you don’t come out now, leave that fucking lap top and this creepy room, I will.”
“Fine. Go.”
So she left. Never even came back to the white room to say good bye. And Andrew didn’t really miss her that much. She didn’t get it. She didn’t understand what it meant for him to not be able to write, and he could not forgive her for that.
A few hours later, Jen joined the white crowd in his room. He sat at his desk while her face whispered at him. She told him how he had changed. How he was talentless and was too weak to accept it. How he was obsessed with a lost cause. He couldn’t take it. So he left the white room. The faces of the white room had accomplished what a real person could not.
Unable to face Jen’s visage in the white room, for the next few days he couldn’t spend any extended period of time in the white room. But not trying to write didn’t help his state of mind. He did not like thinking that the faces had beaten him. He needed to try to write. No matter how much the faces bothered him or how frustrated he had become with himself and writing in general, he had to write.
The next week he had gone back to his white room. In a Howard Hughes-esque moment of frustration fueled insanity, he had locked his door and vowed not to come out until he had something. He wouldn’t let them win. They just wanted him to fail. They didn’t want him to write. They knew he could. They just didn’t want him too. So he went in. He wasn’t leaving till he had something.
He had sat at his desk. He had paced. Moaned, ranted, screamed and raved. Still nothing. He typed three pages of worthless crap and then erased it. The faces in the wall grew clearer and more intense as the few hours he had anticipated grew into a day. Much like the composite people of dreams, they were at the same time one person, and many people. Sometimes they were his father, who stopped being so supportive of his son’s creative brilliance after two years of no published work. Other times they took the face of girlfriends passed who, like Jen, had been initially attracted to his dark, intellectual, “tortured artist” chic, but who quickly tired of him and his obsession. But unlike those dream characters, waking never drove them away. Jen still whispered away, slowly wearing down his resolve. After the third day he had stumbled out of the white room, delirious from hunger and thirst. But this time, the faces didn’t stay in the white room.
Then next Monday after the faces left the white room, after they took over his home, he left his apartment. Andrew took one of his many notebooks, threw it in a backpack, and shuffled out of his apartment. He had become so accustomed to the harsh, artificial fluorescent lighting of his white room that the natural sunlight momentarily blinded him. He walked slowly down his street towards a park where he used to sit and write, turning and looking everywhere for the faces, only to not find them.
Delirious with joy he thought for a moment that he had banished them from his mind, and a bit of the weight that burdened his stride momentarily lifted. But not five minutes later he heard the mocking laughter he had come to recognize and fear. He glanced around the street, noticing the tattered homelessmen, the overdone soccer moms and the scurrying businessmen. He turned to continue walking and stopped short.
There, not ten yards away, lurking in the shadow of an obscenely obese man, was one of the faces. Today it was his high school English professor, whose encouragement and enthusiasm had been a driving force behind Andrew’s career choice. But now the words of his mentor had been twisted by the visual representation of Andrew’s frustration to mock him.
“The most talented student in my class!” the face shouted at him over the din of the street, reforming the encouraging words in a mocking tone. “Your work is exceptional and original”. The face of Dr. Warsaw smirked, giggling at its own rapier wit. Andrew closed his fist around the backpack straps, focusing solely on the monumental task of putting one foot in front of the other, trying to block out the face and it’s voice. The face moved with him, taunting him all the way to the park, where Andrew sat to try for the millionth time to write something. He took out his notebook, clicked a pen to readiness, and jumped, startled, when he heard his mother’s voice originating from the space next to him.
“What are you doing?!?”
“Jesus Christ!”
“You know, you are such an incredible disappointment. How hard is it to write something? Your father and I never thought you would end up wasting your life and our money like this.”
Andrew couldn’t handle it. He bolted. They had never worn his mothers face before. Out of the bench so fast he nearly lost his shoes, he wildly threw his notebook at the crowd of white faces wearing the expressions of former friends who had suddenly gathered with the appearance of his mother. He took off back the way he came, the faces of his mother and Dr. Warsaw keeping close behind, following him through the city streets.
Down the street, not a block from where Andrew ran, a “homeless” man stood taking money from tourists. He honestly hoped the suckers felt better after they gave him their change. Considering he did nothing strenuous other than the effort he put into looking pathetic, he did very well. Suddenly, a tall, emaciated blonde man ran by him, screaming. The man looked as if he hadn’t sleep in weeks, with dark circles under crazed eyes sunk deep in a skull that showed clearly under the thin, pale skin. He watched the man run, screaming at nothing, batting at invisible pests. “Bad trip,” he thought to himself as the blonde man disappeared around a corner.
Up the street, Andrew fought his waking nightmare. “Shut up! Just shut the fuck up!” he screamed. As he ran, faces of benign strangers morphed into figured from his past. Disoriented, he stumbled into the street setting off a cacophony of car horns and yelled curses. He never heard them or saw how close he was to death as he ran across the busy road. The faces stayed with him, some in front, and some behind forming a complete perimeter around him. They gave him no chance for escape. “You are such a disappointment!” “You talentless idiot!” “Who do you think you are exactly? You can expect to just live off nothing! Get a job you lazy shit!” his father, his mother, his teacher, his ex-girlfriends all screamed at him. They swooped back and forth in front of his face throwing him off balance again. This time he fell.
He lay on the pavement, the faces still vying for his attention, as people moved past. Some stopped or slowed but many just remained at the same pace. He was just another drug addict to them. But unbeknownst to the passerby, Andrew was experiencing much more than a bad batch of the latest hallucinogenic. This was something much, much, worse. The imaginations of Andrew mind had become, to him, more real the people who tripped over him. The faces of the white room and their words overwhelmed Andrew’s consciousness to the point where only the slightest most familiar parts of reality slipped through.
Slowly through the babble of shouted curses and the motion of the faces, Andrew realized he had to get to his apartment. He had to get to the white room. Some part of his frazzled consciousness knew, though how was indistinct, that salvation lay there. So he struggled to his feet, upsetting a few scurrying businessmen, and ran, stumbling, to his apartment.
As he came to his building, a new voice joined the chorus. Andrew stopped cold, then moved with a new initiative. Of all the faces and all their voices, this was the least welcome, the most disconcerting. He ran up his steps. Unable to keep his balance, trying to avoid Jen, his mother, his father, friends, and teachers, he hit the walls and the railing, almost falling entirely over the edge. But every time he heard that new voice, he moved with a new energy.
Fumbling for his keys, he heard, “Andrew!” and then again, “Andrew!” He flung open the door and slammed it shut behind him, against the faces and their words. Breathing heavily, he moved towards the white room. But respite was not to be his. The faces came through the walls, the newest member leading the mob.
Laura’s face came through the door at eye level. Sweet, cherubic, and destroyed like it had been the last time he had seen her. He had watched his little sister die, and here she was, watching his mind leave him, helping the process. He backed away slowly. He had known the little voice yelling his name had been her. But seeing her mangled face before him in the ethereal white the faces manifested in was an entirely different pain. Her face, out of shape, her voice slightly distorted, it was the final nail.
Andrew let lose an animalistic, gut-wrenching scream. He ran to the white room, and fell to his knees, pulling at his hair, his face so twisted in pain and insanity he was unrecognizable. The face of a man burned at the stake, a man tethered by his body to a mind that was no longer functioning in a reality common with the rest of humanity. The faces hovered in the door to the white room, watching and speaking with smug arrogance to man they were destroying.
He got to his feet, trying to drown out the faces he still screamed at the top of his lungs. He threw his laptop against the wall, where it shattered and sparked as it hit the wall. He scattered his notebooks, his hands blindly grabbing and tearing at any paper they came in contact with. The faces slowly advanced as he tore apart his writing sanctuary. He picked up his desk and broke it against the wall. Almost three full years of frustration, failed attempts and abandoned starts broke apart under his hands. Every word he had typed and handwritten for that whole time, he destroyed. All the while, the faces moved closer, grew louder, Laura’s sweet, toddler voice always discernable over the myriad of voices as they yelled about his worthlessness, his lack of talent and initiative.
Eventually his hands fell on a felt tipped marker, and in trying to break it, the cap came off and soared into the wall, leaving a jagged mark. Momentarily, just for the space of a breath, their voices stopped. They then immediately started up again once the tip of the pen left the surface of the wall.
So Andrew picked up the pen and started writing. He wrote on the walls, as high as he could reach, on the floor, on the furniture, any gibberish that came to his mind. He wrote the time of day, the date, places he been, people he’d known. Most of it was total nonsense, but as long as he kept the pen on a surface, as long as he was writing, the faces stayed quiescent, watching him. He wrote and wrote until his hands ached. He would write on the walls, then the floor, then the walls again, and then a piece of furniture, whatever happened to strike his fancy at that particular moment. He wrote until every space on the walls, floor, and furniture was filled up. He emptied every thought he had out onto the white spaces of his white room.
But as the space filled up, the faces grew more agitated. They stayed silent, but they rustled as they moved about, looking at their brethren. Laura’s haunting eyes followed his every move. Andrew started to panic; he only had a square foot of space left. He wrote smaller and smaller as the space on the wall dwindled, until his writing was so tiny he couldn’t read it. The faces grew more and more restless. Staying silent, they moved to and fro in the door way, shuffling themselves into new orders, though Laura stayed solidly at the forefront. Then he ran out of space. There was not a single blank area in all the reachable space of the white room.
Then the faces broke their silence. As soon as he ran out of space, the faces came streaming through the door way into the white room like a tidal wave breaking, and as soon as he took the pen from the wall they started screaming. He tried writing on himself, but they still advanced. As Andrew tried to get out of the room, looking for more space to write, they flew about Andrews head, screaming and cursing, driving him again to his knees and slowly towards the floor. His mother screamed at him, while his father spouted his disappointment, while Jen told him over and over again he just needed to get over himself already, and all the while Laura called to him with the expression on her face saying, “why didn’t you save me?” as she said his name over and over again.
They screamed and flew about his head till he was curled up in the fetal position in the corner of his white room, facing the door. The faces continued to scream, and scream, and scream. Andrew began to cry. Pulling at his hair and sobbing uncontrollably, Andrew staggered to his feet. The faces moved with him, jostling for position in front of his face, but completely surrounding him on all sides. He moved slowly through the remains of his writing sanctuary, shuffling through three years of filled notebooks, past the remains of his laptop, which still smoked a little bit. All the while never stopping to read what he had left on the walls and floor.
On his way across the room he tripped over the remains of his desk, which lay crumpled where it had fallen. He lay for a moment, consolidating what was left of his logical thought. If someone had seen him in that moment, surrounded by such destruction and chaos, the sudden peace that came over his face would be at the same time, beautiful in its purity and startling in its contrast to his surroundings. Andrew had made a choice. So he got up. His face no longer reflecting the chaos of his mind, rather the serenity knowing he had a solution. The nebulous idea that originated as he lay in the street had solidified like diamond. The faces continued to shadow him, but he no longer cared. They redoubled their attempts to catch his attention, but the new Zen calm he had reached was untouchable. They swooped in and out in front of his face, and screamed and taunted at an unprecedented new level of intensity. But Andrew was unflappable. He continued to walk, slowly, but surely through the remains of his white room, kicking shreds of paper and bits of wood aside as he moved, and out into the rest of his apartment. He walked through the kitchen, into the larger living area. There he started to pick up speed, and after a few steps had broken into a full sprint. Still, his face retained its strange, empty calm. The sprint ended near a window, where Andrew leapt with all his might, into his window.
The window broke with a shattering of glass and wood, and as Andrew’s form went sailing out into the afternoon light and disappeared, the shattered glass fell with a musical tinkle as it hit the ground four stories below.
***
Suicides were rare. Mostly he got called in for burglaries he knew he wouldn’t solve, or murders that already happened. But today was a suicide. Some crazy artist had thrown himself out a window. He adjusted his belt with his cuffs, gun, and other crap he had to carry around on his uniform. Damn thing was so uncomfortable. He watched as the landlord went through key after key after key, looking for the one that would let him into the dead man’s apartment. The hours he worked were terrible. He understood his job was not of the nine to five variety, but this was getting ridiculous.
Finally the sweaty bald little man found the right one, and let him into the apartment. The place surprised him. It was clean, neat, everything in order. Not what one would think to find in the home of a man who was, by all accounts, very unstable? The officer moved towards the window where the man had met his end, noting the blood on what glass remained in the frame, noting that there was no sign of a struggle. The man hadn’t been thrown, this was a suicide.
The officer turned back in towards the rest of the apartment and continued looking for a reason for the resident’s dramatic end. He looked in the bedroom. Similar to the rest of the apartment, it looked like it hadn’t been used in weeks. The bed was made, but dust covered its entirety. Obviously it had not been used for a restful night’s sleep for some time. For a moment he wondered if the man actually had lived here, considering its condition. The officer backed out of the room. It gave him the creeps. But that was nothing compared to how he felt about the white room.
Here was where all the evidence of insanity had accumulated. The floor was coated with scattered and torn notebooks. The remains of what looked like a laptop lay crushed under the mark it had made when it was thrown into the wall, the screen separated from the casing. The furniture was pushed over and thrown about the room. What looked like it might have been a writing desk was crumpled in the middle of the room. But more unnerving than the general disarray of the room, and the ubiquitous shade of iridescent white, was that the entire room was covered in writing. In what looked like black marker, someone, presumably the suicide, had written on every surface in the room.
The officer moved carefully through the mess of the room to one wall to try and decipher the unruly scrawl. Strangely, the words weren’t the ravings of a mad man, or the scattered thoughts of a schizophrenic. Though the penmenship was terrible, it was a clear narrative. A story about a man looking for something he had lost. It was captivating. The officer soon realized he had started in the middle of the story so he searched around the room until he found its start, which lay under a long jagged black mark in the corner of the room. Reading the story was difficult, as the author had moved about the room as he wrote, occasionally the words jumped from the wall to the floor, then to a piece of furniture, but the thoughts represented were always complete. And heartbreaking.
The story was emotive, the characters reached out and took the officers heart and broke it. By the end of the story the stern, hard, and experienced police officer was crying quietly into his hand. He had never been much of a reader, he had never enjoyed it, but this was different. This story had touched him.
The officer walked slowly out of the apartment and motioned for the lab techs to do their thing. “But don’t rub anything off the walls in the white room.” he said to them as they walked by. They nodded, having no idea what he was talking about, but his expression warned them into silence.
The story was still on his mind as he finished up the report back at the station. His impatience with the mountain of paperwork he needed to finish increased exponentially over the course of an hour, and he remained unable to think about anything other than the story for an extended period of time. His attempts to distract himself from the memory of it never succeeded for more than a few minutes, and as time wore slowly on with the intrusive ticking of the clock, he realized he was not going to get his work done. So he left for the day, the story still in his thoughts.
Over the course of the next few weeks the officer slowly began to realize that he needed to get the story out. He had spoken to the other people who had gone into the white room and read the story and their reaction was universal; none of them could stop thinking about it. The story in itself had been nothing really groundbreaking. The story was as cliché as any of them, and the characters, while vibrant and fully three dimensional, were not revolutionary. But the story itself was written in such a hauntingly beautiful tone, it turned the ordinary words into something extraordinary. Also, the characters were written they were so easily to identify with that willing suspension of disbelief was almost unnecessary. As long as it stayed written on the walls of the white room, the officer knew he’d never be free of it.
He made a return trip to the scene of the suicide, back to the man’s apartment, back to the white room. As he tore through the yellow tape the stark cleanliness of the apartment struck him again, but in a slightly different way this time. Something seemed off, even more so than the first time he had been here. He rushed to the white room, eager to read the story again. It was easy to find the white room; the layout of the apartment was seared into his mind. But when he got to the doorway to the room, he stopped short.
The story had been painted over. The crime scene clean-up people or maybe that repulsive little landlord had had the room repainted. The white was gone, replaced by a generic off white beige, the torn paper and destroyed furniture removed. The white carpet which before had black stains from the broken pens that had laid everywhere, had been torn up and replaced with a dark hardwood. All that remained of that extraordinary story had been erased. The officer let his body sag in the doorway, against the new paint that covered where the story had been.
It was gone. The beautiful last work of an insane writer never immortalized. No one would ever know about it. No one would understand. He had to try and remember it, to write it down, if nothing else just to get it out of his head. He had to share it with the world.
The next day he sat at his desk in his den, with a white notebook he had bought especially for this, trying in vain to remember the exact wording of what he remembered of the story. He saw in his peripheral vision, something moving in the corner of the room. He thought for a moment that he must have imagined it, so he went back to writing. But not five minutes later he saw it again. This time he looked hard at the motion in the corner. For the moment when he could see it, it looked like a face, but then it disappeared. A little unnerved, he went back to his notebook, but the persistent motion in the corner was too distracting for him to work.
He looked at the notebook for a moment, and then looked quickly into the corner; there was a face in the corner. It looked like his brother. It smirked at him, and then disappeared.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Roads
What does a road know
of those who travel it?
Could a country path
Tell of the folk who walk it?
If they could know,
And if they could speak,
Would they reflect their travelers?
Or the places they touch and the patterns they form?
Would the road less travelled
Be mysterious and adventurous?
Would the road not taken
Be lonely?
Would the streets of Manhattan
Be harried, irritable, and loud?
Or instead, would they be regimented,
organized?
Would they be goal driven,
Single minded?
Or richly cultured
And in touch with the future.
Would Provinctown’s roads be
Colorful, artsy, flamboyant... like its people?
Or bipolar like its landscape,
Or perhaps a combination of the two?
Would the cramped, narrow, Bostonian roads
Display a cold indifference to comfort,
Or would they shout heartfelt greetings,
Take in the lonely and give them a home?
If a sidewalk could speak!
Oh The stories it could tell!
Though perhaps its best that it can’t
for the sake of skirted women,
In the end though, I think
That roads may be at home,
as silent constant companions,
guarding the secrets of those who travel them.
of those who travel it?
Could a country path
Tell of the folk who walk it?
If they could know,
And if they could speak,
Would they reflect their travelers?
Or the places they touch and the patterns they form?
Would the road less travelled
Be mysterious and adventurous?
Would the road not taken
Be lonely?
Would the streets of Manhattan
Be harried, irritable, and loud?
Or instead, would they be regimented,
organized?
Would they be goal driven,
Single minded?
Or richly cultured
And in touch with the future.
Would Provinctown’s roads be
Colorful, artsy, flamboyant... like its people?
Or bipolar like its landscape,
Or perhaps a combination of the two?
Would the cramped, narrow, Bostonian roads
Display a cold indifference to comfort,
Or would they shout heartfelt greetings,
Take in the lonely and give them a home?
If a sidewalk could speak!
Oh The stories it could tell!
Though perhaps its best that it can’t
for the sake of skirted women,
In the end though, I think
That roads may be at home,
as silent constant companions,
guarding the secrets of those who travel them.
Spirals of Steam
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
Swirling, moving, twisting, with the air entwined.
Unseeing, unhearing, uncaring,
Dancing with the wind as it’s curls unwind.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
Leaving the putrid darkness behind,
Moving towards their brethren clouds,
Joining forms of similar kind.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
Silently moving, completely unconfined.
Mixing with the cold breath of strangers,
Singularly unmaligned.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
I watch and wonder what’s on your mind.
Perhaps if I could escape corporeal form,
I’d go with if you if you didn’t mind.
Swirling, moving, twisting, with the air entwined.
Unseeing, unhearing, uncaring,
Dancing with the wind as it’s curls unwind.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
Leaving the putrid darkness behind,
Moving towards their brethren clouds,
Joining forms of similar kind.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
Silently moving, completely unconfined.
Mixing with the cold breath of strangers,
Singularly unmaligned.
Spirals of steam rising from the grates,
I watch and wonder what’s on your mind.
Perhaps if I could escape corporeal form,
I’d go with if you if you didn’t mind.
On a Pale Horse
Smoke spirals away,
peace settles on a long day.
blame,
anger,
shame.
Disappear with an intake of breath,
with lungs full of Smoke.
greetings!
a kiss from death.
peace settles on a long day.
blame,
anger,
shame.
Disappear with an intake of breath,
with lungs full of Smoke.
greetings!
a kiss from death.
My Name Is Shane
Dear Jen,
I never cared about what they used to say. With the semi butch hair and the less than feminine clothing style, I never was surprised. To be honest I didn’t even know if I was gay or not, so other people speculating didn’t bother me. I wanted to know just as badly as any of those gossip feeders that ran the “socially acceptable” club. No one gave me shit, but that was a product of a small school, and they all knew how much the soccer team needed me. Sweeper isn’t the most glamorous of positions, but, “Offense sells tickets, defense wins games” as my old coach used to say. And they all knew better than to mess with my game. Not to sound arrogant or anything, but there’s a reason why our team has won states every year since Steph and I joined the team. Except for the whispering, I was one of the most well-liked people in the school, but nobody ever had the guts to just ask me, so they got their kicks talking about me.
I needed to figure it out just as badly as them. Jesus, I was a senior in high school, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do when I grew up or if I would pull a peter pan and never grow up, but I already had to deal with/figure out my stance on the most complex of human emotions before I even got to college. For most people, at least the initial phases of the process known as love are instinctual, darwinistic, find a member of the opposite sex with decent genes and that can stand you, and mate with it. I know that obviously a long term relationship of any sort is much more complicated than that, but at least for straight people, there’s an obvious biological goal.
See here I’m talking like I’m gay. I don’t know maybe I am, but here’s the kicker; I like guys too, physically at least. I haven’t felt really connected to a guy since before the whole puberty thing. Does that sound backwards to you? It does to me. I don’t know, maybe guys are just assholes in high school.
Let me explain my predicament fully. Besides rocking the, fit, flat chested, sporty look, which always seems to make people think about the topic at least once, there was also the fact that the simple, not to flashy, nice jeans and a tee-shirt chic appealed to me. I was in no way fashion illiterate; I knew what looked good on other people. I taught my brother how to dress, since my parents never seemed to feel the need to, and he’s widely considered the best dressed guy in his grade. I liked my tomboy look, even if it put off the straightedge and the sporty people a little bit. The art and theater people loved my look, but as much as I love art, I was never an good at creating it, and I loved sports, so I wasn’t about to throw away soccer just because some twit didn’t like my clothing choices. So people got the impression that I was butch. There was no cut-off plaid or men’s pants, but it was high school, people read waaay too far into stuff like that anyways.
But if any of their assumptions were even a little bit less true, it would have really helped with the whole not caring thing. I know I said before that didn’t care about the whispering, and I honestly really didn’t until senior year, but after that I swung back and forth between intense, “Fuck you all and up yours,” angry attitude stemming from an insecurity of mine that I will discuss in further detail later, and a Zen calm during which I really honestly didn’t care what they said. The worst part of the whole deal was that they were right, and they didn’t even know it.
They couldn’t even really understand what was actually was going on with me. They loved their gossip but if they had known they right, their whispers would have moved to a new and undiscovered level of insanity. There are people who went to that school who really did think that they truly cared about the person who they thought I was, and I loved them for that. I really did. It’s definitely no fault of theirs that I am the way I am, and it also isn’t their fault that I hid it after I figured out what was going on. So far you are the only one who I have had the guts to explain what’s going on with me to. I have no idea how you’ll take it, but I feel like it would be incredibly disrespectful of me to not tell you, considering all of the personal stuff that you have entrusted to with.
So, if you haven’t picked up on the topic, there was a girl, and her name was Ashley Lauren Greene. She played on my soccer team the past two years. Last year she was a sophomore, I was a junior. She wasn’t particularly good, but she understood the fundamentals quickly. She was a solidly middle of the pack kind of player. But even then, when I didn’t know her, I was never under the impression that she was average. We hung out that first year, we had our inside jokes and we sat next to each other on bus rides, but we weren’t really close.
So then soccer season ended and basketball season rolled around, and Ashley and I stopped talking much because I was busy and she was busy. Before I knew it, the year was over, and preseason for the next soccer season started shortly thereafter. For some reason, Ashley and I hit it off with an explosive bang that year. Maybe it was because we had both grown up a bit, I don’t know, but we clicked. We were both sarcastic, cynical, and more than willing to call the other out when they had gone too far, which I think was what we really liked about each other and why we bonded so quickly.
But about halfway through the season, I noticed her for the first time, and that’s when shit went downhill. It was after a soccer game; we were dirty, tired, and pissed off that we had lost. But I managed to make her laugh. She turned towards me with that smile on her face and I swear to God it felt like she had reached into my chest and tied a noose around my heart. She had me. More fully and with a feeling stronger than what I had felt for anyone in my life up to that point.
From then on school, soccer, my cell phone, everything was about Ashley, and it sucked on several levels, first of which was that she was straight as a fuckin arrow, second was that I had no one that I could talk to about it, and third not only was I unable to talk to anyone about it, I suddenly had to be very careful when I was around her. When she hugged me there could be no lingering, even though gathering her into my arms and never letting go was the only thing I wanted to do. When I spoke to her I couldn’t look into her eyes too long, even though I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Most of all, I could never, ever let my tongue slip while talking to her or anyone else. Talking to you, or to my teammates, or even the people from school or friends I had from other schools became a chore, because she was on my mind a lot, and if I said anything I would be royally fucked. I had to make sure I didn’t bring her up to often in conversation. I had to make sure my expression didn’t change when I or someone else said her name. Keeping the secret my own took every ounce of concentration and determination I had.
Then, in addition to the stress of keeping how I felt a secret and out of the high school gossip mill, there was also the guilt, the shame, and the completely and utter loneliness I was now subject to. Suddenly I wasn’t just the quiet, talented girl who might be a little strange, now I was the school dyke. Just because no one knew didn’t change how wrong it felt to me then. It was even more than the moral code of my peers and teachers, which even before Ashley I wasn’t sure I believed in, that condemned it. The idea of falling in love with a girl just seemed fundamentally wrong to me. Call it brainwashing, call in evolutionary instinct, all I know and knew then was how I felt, and none of it made any sense.
Realizing what I felt for Ashley and trying to learn how to deal with it was the hardest think I have ever had to do in my pampered little life. I never really got over her, and if she miraculously showed up at my door and told me that at some point, she had felt even something similar for me. It would still, and probably would be for many years to come, be the happiest day of my life. I fell so very, very hard for that girl, and I dealt with the indescribable joy she made me feel as well as the gut wrenching, heart crushing, lung filling pain that knowing that not only could I never have her, but that also that if she knew how much I cared for her, she wouldn’t even be comfortable being near me. If she had known that I loved her, she would have hated me. I dealt with that knowledge completely and entirely alone. There was no one to help me, and for that I blame no one more than myself. I never even let on that I was struggling with something because I was so scared and so angry. Scared both because of what I could lose and also what I could gain if the actual true story about my romantic preference got out. Because even though intellectually I knew exactly what the odds were of a gay fairytale ending happening if she found out. I knew the chances were around 10 trillion to one. But I couldn’t help nursing a small, tiny; barely there flicker of mad, insane, hope. And even though I knew it was insane, even thought I knew it was totally off-the-wall nuts, that tiny bit of a spark of a hope was what kept me alive those 9 months. It was what made me come back time and time again when I told myself I wouldn’t and couldn’t subject myself to that pain again. That and the mad, obsessive love for her that no matter how I tried to think, no matter what mantra I said over and over to clear my mind, forced me to notice the brilliant blue of her eyes in the sun, which was the only times one could see the gold in them. It made me notice her style, her grace even in stumbling. They say love is blind. I would say that it is those who aren’t in love, who never have been, who are blind. Love, or what I have felt that I assume is what people refer to when they say the word, is the most freeing shackle I will ever wear. It rubs, and it is heavy, and its damn near impossible to hide. At the time, all I saw was the pain of it, but now that I have some objectivity, now that I have really thought about it, and most significantly, now that she’s gone, I can see that underneath the pain of unrequited love with all the normal cliché hurts and grievances and even a few that were unique to my situation, there was an undercurrent of profound peace. I knew my place in the world. I knew what bound me to this life on earth, and it wasn’t my soccer prowess, my relationships with my peers, parents, teachers, coaches, siblings or even the God I had been taught all my life to revere and who was supposedly the one responsible for my existence. No. my purpose was to ensure Ashley’s health and happiness as best as I could.
I understand how really, really stalkerish and slightly insane that sounds. Even writing it out makes me cringe when I try to predict what you’ll think of me after you read this. But I promised you years ago that I would be honest to you always, and although this may be a little late coming, I hope that eventually you might be able to understand what I mean without judging me for something that I did not chose anymore than I chose my height or eye color.
Perhaps I do myself a disservice writing this so honestly, perhaps it sounds worse than it actually was, or perhaps the cynics are right and love is in fact blind. But I was never, ever untoward with Ashley. I may have let slip an awkward compliment a few times, but they were heartfelt and there was nothing crude or perverted in my words. I know with absolute certainty that I loved her with a pure and simple affection. I am human though. I slipped occasionally and would get angry with her, which even in the moment I knew was dreadfully unfair. I also cannot say that I never thought about her in a purely physical sense. But over the course of two years, I got to know her well enough for her to call me her best friend. I cared more for her than any single person or group of people on this planet. A purely sacrificial, selfless love that gave me the most certainty and the most pain that I can imagine existing.
And I will not condemn myself for that.
Others may. How people who once thought they knew me react is not something that I can control or even affect. I cannot pretend that the biting, hateful words of people who have not even the slightest idea of what my life has been like thus far won’t hurt, but I have two points; how can I demand that people who have no experience, either personal or by proxy, with people like me accept me immediately because I want them too? It would be selfish and wrong of me to demand their love before they really know me, and if anyone decides that they cannot stomach who I actually am, I am the one who changed the game. It is my responsibility to look to the welfare and comfort of the people around me, and in order to do so I would remove myself from the situation. But on the other hand, though by no means will I demand that they see this, the God the majority of these people claim to serve is one of love and acceptance, it seems as though it would be a tad bit hypocritical of them to toss me out on the street.
Ashley died two weeks after my high school graduation. I went to the funeral, and as I watched them lower her into the ground, all the reasons that I kept how much she mattered to me a secret puffed away on the brisk summer wind. It seems so incredibly silly now that I kept how much I loved someone a secret. But the only thing I can do about it now is not hide.
I have no desire to be offensive. I will never push who I am and what believe in someone’s face, but I will not conceal a part of myself that is pure, and innocent a yes a bit dramatic, but also beautiful. I will not be ashamed of something that no part of my shattered and reassembled heart can even begin to truly believe is wrong. I love Ashley Lauren Greene. I loved her, never told her, and then she died. Those I care about will always know, whether that love I have is platonic or romantic. They will know regardless of gender or aesthetic preference and I will do my best to hold my head high and remain proud of the person I am. I will falter, I will misstep, but I will never allow what people who don’t and can’t understand my experiences think control how I live my life.
I will recover from Ashley dying. I will always miss her. I will always love her, and I hope she is in better place. I know that I am, and even after all the pain, I am so glad she lived, and that I got to know her, and love her. Because even though she never knew it, and for all intents and purposes, never will, she taught me the most important lesson I think I will ever learn:
Love, let Love, and share love, because one never knows when love will be gone.
And now, like before, but with a new strength of purpose, what they say does not and will not ever bother me.
-Shane Carlson
I never cared about what they used to say. With the semi butch hair and the less than feminine clothing style, I never was surprised. To be honest I didn’t even know if I was gay or not, so other people speculating didn’t bother me. I wanted to know just as badly as any of those gossip feeders that ran the “socially acceptable” club. No one gave me shit, but that was a product of a small school, and they all knew how much the soccer team needed me. Sweeper isn’t the most glamorous of positions, but, “Offense sells tickets, defense wins games” as my old coach used to say. And they all knew better than to mess with my game. Not to sound arrogant or anything, but there’s a reason why our team has won states every year since Steph and I joined the team. Except for the whispering, I was one of the most well-liked people in the school, but nobody ever had the guts to just ask me, so they got their kicks talking about me.
I needed to figure it out just as badly as them. Jesus, I was a senior in high school, I didn’t even know what I wanted to do when I grew up or if I would pull a peter pan and never grow up, but I already had to deal with/figure out my stance on the most complex of human emotions before I even got to college. For most people, at least the initial phases of the process known as love are instinctual, darwinistic, find a member of the opposite sex with decent genes and that can stand you, and mate with it. I know that obviously a long term relationship of any sort is much more complicated than that, but at least for straight people, there’s an obvious biological goal.
See here I’m talking like I’m gay. I don’t know maybe I am, but here’s the kicker; I like guys too, physically at least. I haven’t felt really connected to a guy since before the whole puberty thing. Does that sound backwards to you? It does to me. I don’t know, maybe guys are just assholes in high school.
Let me explain my predicament fully. Besides rocking the, fit, flat chested, sporty look, which always seems to make people think about the topic at least once, there was also the fact that the simple, not to flashy, nice jeans and a tee-shirt chic appealed to me. I was in no way fashion illiterate; I knew what looked good on other people. I taught my brother how to dress, since my parents never seemed to feel the need to, and he’s widely considered the best dressed guy in his grade. I liked my tomboy look, even if it put off the straightedge and the sporty people a little bit. The art and theater people loved my look, but as much as I love art, I was never an good at creating it, and I loved sports, so I wasn’t about to throw away soccer just because some twit didn’t like my clothing choices. So people got the impression that I was butch. There was no cut-off plaid or men’s pants, but it was high school, people read waaay too far into stuff like that anyways.
But if any of their assumptions were even a little bit less true, it would have really helped with the whole not caring thing. I know I said before that didn’t care about the whispering, and I honestly really didn’t until senior year, but after that I swung back and forth between intense, “Fuck you all and up yours,” angry attitude stemming from an insecurity of mine that I will discuss in further detail later, and a Zen calm during which I really honestly didn’t care what they said. The worst part of the whole deal was that they were right, and they didn’t even know it.
They couldn’t even really understand what was actually was going on with me. They loved their gossip but if they had known they right, their whispers would have moved to a new and undiscovered level of insanity. There are people who went to that school who really did think that they truly cared about the person who they thought I was, and I loved them for that. I really did. It’s definitely no fault of theirs that I am the way I am, and it also isn’t their fault that I hid it after I figured out what was going on. So far you are the only one who I have had the guts to explain what’s going on with me to. I have no idea how you’ll take it, but I feel like it would be incredibly disrespectful of me to not tell you, considering all of the personal stuff that you have entrusted to with.
So, if you haven’t picked up on the topic, there was a girl, and her name was Ashley Lauren Greene. She played on my soccer team the past two years. Last year she was a sophomore, I was a junior. She wasn’t particularly good, but she understood the fundamentals quickly. She was a solidly middle of the pack kind of player. But even then, when I didn’t know her, I was never under the impression that she was average. We hung out that first year, we had our inside jokes and we sat next to each other on bus rides, but we weren’t really close.
So then soccer season ended and basketball season rolled around, and Ashley and I stopped talking much because I was busy and she was busy. Before I knew it, the year was over, and preseason for the next soccer season started shortly thereafter. For some reason, Ashley and I hit it off with an explosive bang that year. Maybe it was because we had both grown up a bit, I don’t know, but we clicked. We were both sarcastic, cynical, and more than willing to call the other out when they had gone too far, which I think was what we really liked about each other and why we bonded so quickly.
But about halfway through the season, I noticed her for the first time, and that’s when shit went downhill. It was after a soccer game; we were dirty, tired, and pissed off that we had lost. But I managed to make her laugh. She turned towards me with that smile on her face and I swear to God it felt like she had reached into my chest and tied a noose around my heart. She had me. More fully and with a feeling stronger than what I had felt for anyone in my life up to that point.
From then on school, soccer, my cell phone, everything was about Ashley, and it sucked on several levels, first of which was that she was straight as a fuckin arrow, second was that I had no one that I could talk to about it, and third not only was I unable to talk to anyone about it, I suddenly had to be very careful when I was around her. When she hugged me there could be no lingering, even though gathering her into my arms and never letting go was the only thing I wanted to do. When I spoke to her I couldn’t look into her eyes too long, even though I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen. Most of all, I could never, ever let my tongue slip while talking to her or anyone else. Talking to you, or to my teammates, or even the people from school or friends I had from other schools became a chore, because she was on my mind a lot, and if I said anything I would be royally fucked. I had to make sure I didn’t bring her up to often in conversation. I had to make sure my expression didn’t change when I or someone else said her name. Keeping the secret my own took every ounce of concentration and determination I had.
Then, in addition to the stress of keeping how I felt a secret and out of the high school gossip mill, there was also the guilt, the shame, and the completely and utter loneliness I was now subject to. Suddenly I wasn’t just the quiet, talented girl who might be a little strange, now I was the school dyke. Just because no one knew didn’t change how wrong it felt to me then. It was even more than the moral code of my peers and teachers, which even before Ashley I wasn’t sure I believed in, that condemned it. The idea of falling in love with a girl just seemed fundamentally wrong to me. Call it brainwashing, call in evolutionary instinct, all I know and knew then was how I felt, and none of it made any sense.
Realizing what I felt for Ashley and trying to learn how to deal with it was the hardest think I have ever had to do in my pampered little life. I never really got over her, and if she miraculously showed up at my door and told me that at some point, she had felt even something similar for me. It would still, and probably would be for many years to come, be the happiest day of my life. I fell so very, very hard for that girl, and I dealt with the indescribable joy she made me feel as well as the gut wrenching, heart crushing, lung filling pain that knowing that not only could I never have her, but that also that if she knew how much I cared for her, she wouldn’t even be comfortable being near me. If she had known that I loved her, she would have hated me. I dealt with that knowledge completely and entirely alone. There was no one to help me, and for that I blame no one more than myself. I never even let on that I was struggling with something because I was so scared and so angry. Scared both because of what I could lose and also what I could gain if the actual true story about my romantic preference got out. Because even though intellectually I knew exactly what the odds were of a gay fairytale ending happening if she found out. I knew the chances were around 10 trillion to one. But I couldn’t help nursing a small, tiny; barely there flicker of mad, insane, hope. And even though I knew it was insane, even thought I knew it was totally off-the-wall nuts, that tiny bit of a spark of a hope was what kept me alive those 9 months. It was what made me come back time and time again when I told myself I wouldn’t and couldn’t subject myself to that pain again. That and the mad, obsessive love for her that no matter how I tried to think, no matter what mantra I said over and over to clear my mind, forced me to notice the brilliant blue of her eyes in the sun, which was the only times one could see the gold in them. It made me notice her style, her grace even in stumbling. They say love is blind. I would say that it is those who aren’t in love, who never have been, who are blind. Love, or what I have felt that I assume is what people refer to when they say the word, is the most freeing shackle I will ever wear. It rubs, and it is heavy, and its damn near impossible to hide. At the time, all I saw was the pain of it, but now that I have some objectivity, now that I have really thought about it, and most significantly, now that she’s gone, I can see that underneath the pain of unrequited love with all the normal cliché hurts and grievances and even a few that were unique to my situation, there was an undercurrent of profound peace. I knew my place in the world. I knew what bound me to this life on earth, and it wasn’t my soccer prowess, my relationships with my peers, parents, teachers, coaches, siblings or even the God I had been taught all my life to revere and who was supposedly the one responsible for my existence. No. my purpose was to ensure Ashley’s health and happiness as best as I could.
I understand how really, really stalkerish and slightly insane that sounds. Even writing it out makes me cringe when I try to predict what you’ll think of me after you read this. But I promised you years ago that I would be honest to you always, and although this may be a little late coming, I hope that eventually you might be able to understand what I mean without judging me for something that I did not chose anymore than I chose my height or eye color.
Perhaps I do myself a disservice writing this so honestly, perhaps it sounds worse than it actually was, or perhaps the cynics are right and love is in fact blind. But I was never, ever untoward with Ashley. I may have let slip an awkward compliment a few times, but they were heartfelt and there was nothing crude or perverted in my words. I know with absolute certainty that I loved her with a pure and simple affection. I am human though. I slipped occasionally and would get angry with her, which even in the moment I knew was dreadfully unfair. I also cannot say that I never thought about her in a purely physical sense. But over the course of two years, I got to know her well enough for her to call me her best friend. I cared more for her than any single person or group of people on this planet. A purely sacrificial, selfless love that gave me the most certainty and the most pain that I can imagine existing.
And I will not condemn myself for that.
Others may. How people who once thought they knew me react is not something that I can control or even affect. I cannot pretend that the biting, hateful words of people who have not even the slightest idea of what my life has been like thus far won’t hurt, but I have two points; how can I demand that people who have no experience, either personal or by proxy, with people like me accept me immediately because I want them too? It would be selfish and wrong of me to demand their love before they really know me, and if anyone decides that they cannot stomach who I actually am, I am the one who changed the game. It is my responsibility to look to the welfare and comfort of the people around me, and in order to do so I would remove myself from the situation. But on the other hand, though by no means will I demand that they see this, the God the majority of these people claim to serve is one of love and acceptance, it seems as though it would be a tad bit hypocritical of them to toss me out on the street.
Ashley died two weeks after my high school graduation. I went to the funeral, and as I watched them lower her into the ground, all the reasons that I kept how much she mattered to me a secret puffed away on the brisk summer wind. It seems so incredibly silly now that I kept how much I loved someone a secret. But the only thing I can do about it now is not hide.
I have no desire to be offensive. I will never push who I am and what believe in someone’s face, but I will not conceal a part of myself that is pure, and innocent a yes a bit dramatic, but also beautiful. I will not be ashamed of something that no part of my shattered and reassembled heart can even begin to truly believe is wrong. I love Ashley Lauren Greene. I loved her, never told her, and then she died. Those I care about will always know, whether that love I have is platonic or romantic. They will know regardless of gender or aesthetic preference and I will do my best to hold my head high and remain proud of the person I am. I will falter, I will misstep, but I will never allow what people who don’t and can’t understand my experiences think control how I live my life.
I will recover from Ashley dying. I will always miss her. I will always love her, and I hope she is in better place. I know that I am, and even after all the pain, I am so glad she lived, and that I got to know her, and love her. Because even though she never knew it, and for all intents and purposes, never will, she taught me the most important lesson I think I will ever learn:
Love, let Love, and share love, because one never knows when love will be gone.
And now, like before, but with a new strength of purpose, what they say does not and will not ever bother me.
-Shane Carlson
Sunday, April 5, 2009
new stuff
don't have a lot of time cause i have to leave for my riding lessons in about ten minutes.
but here's my life as of now:
-basketball is over, we only made it to the second round of sectionals, which is sad.
- i decided where I'm going to college, i put my deposit in at University of Buffalo two days ago and I'm so excited. I've never actually been to the campus, but i took the virtual tour online and i think I'll like it. and its big enough that i won't feel crowded, the tuition is great plus i got a scholarship, and they have a really spectacular pre-med program. and I'm just happy to have made my decision. now i don't have to worry about it.
- I've started riding lessons. like horses. and so far its a lot of fun. she still has me on the lead line so its getting kind of boring, but I'm glad she's being a stickler for form cause in the long run its better for me.
-I'm trying to find a job now the bball is over cause i have a sorts of time and no money.
-i got a anew laptop and its gorgeous and i love it. its a dell inspiron, black with a 500 gb hard drive, a ton of ram, with a backlighted keyboard and a fingerprint scanner. i loves it = ].
right now i have it running 64 bit with windows vista, idk if i like it yet, but we'll see.
anyways i got to go.
but here's my life as of now:
-basketball is over, we only made it to the second round of sectionals, which is sad.
- i decided where I'm going to college, i put my deposit in at University of Buffalo two days ago and I'm so excited. I've never actually been to the campus, but i took the virtual tour online and i think I'll like it. and its big enough that i won't feel crowded, the tuition is great plus i got a scholarship, and they have a really spectacular pre-med program. and I'm just happy to have made my decision. now i don't have to worry about it.
- I've started riding lessons. like horses. and so far its a lot of fun. she still has me on the lead line so its getting kind of boring, but I'm glad she's being a stickler for form cause in the long run its better for me.
-I'm trying to find a job now the bball is over cause i have a sorts of time and no money.
-i got a anew laptop and its gorgeous and i love it. its a dell inspiron, black with a 500 gb hard drive, a ton of ram, with a backlighted keyboard and a fingerprint scanner. i loves it = ].
right now i have it running 64 bit with windows vista, idk if i like it yet, but we'll see.
anyways i got to go.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Long Post. be prepared.
Hows life been?
as you can see from my previous post, i decided awhile ago that i think blogging is a by product of a self-obsessed culture. but hey, when in Rome?
so update on my activities since August:
Soccer season was amazing, and i kinda still wish it was still going on, even though its getting cold out. Basically we had the awesomest team ever. it was really small, we only had 12 to 14 players depending on who was hurt, but instead of letting it bother us, the team really stepped up this year.
It seemed like this year everyone cared. In past years it's seemed like half the team was only there because they felt they had too or because they were using soccer to get in shape for basketball. This year everyone wanted to be there and it made a huge difference in how we played, how we related to one another, and how much we won. We ended the season with a 9-7-1 record, the best I've ever been on. Perhaps that's a little pathetic, but it was really a great season and I'm gonna miss it.
School is really crappy. I've never struggled with school work like this before. and its not just normal senoritis, which i have an advanced case of. No my brain is just not functioning at the usual pace. i don't understand material, i forget my homework, and Mrs minter and Mrs Schwartz's attitude about class is distracting and makes it hard to focus.
its partly my fault. haha I've been trying to be stupid for so long its finally catching up to me. Oh well.
Basketball Started a couple of weeks ago. i don't know how its gonna go. i don't even want to play, but i felt like i had to cause you know its my senior year, "last chance" and all that crap. But they team is looking good. we all work together really well and i don't think there's going to be a lot of drama, which will help. Also everyone's gotten better since last year and we have some young new talent in the form of Alexis M. Si i don't know, we;'ll see how it goes. it would help if the season wasn't so incredibly long.
Oh and i was part of stage crew for drama. i wasn't in the play because my dad was pissed at me and wouldn't let me, but also because of soccer and school work and stuff. But stage crew was fun, and the cast party was a freakin riot. me and Alex played Water Pong = ] stupid anti-alcohol christian rules. lol = ]
this fall has been pretty fun actually. the first quarter just wrapped up and my grades were ok. Ashley, Dass, Stepha and i have gotten closer because of soccer and we've been hangin out a lot. its been fun, i like having friends = ]
Now onto the subject of colleges:
I HATE COLLEGE STUFF
doing applications gives me headaches. i hate arguing with my mom about where i want to go. i hate wanting to go to smith even though its like the definition of a radically Liberal college.
and they make you write a FREAKIN TON. ugh. I'm gonna quit school and be a hobo.
and i hate hate hate hate the word lesbian.
it has such an incredibly negative connotation. Its associated with all the stuff I've been taught is wrong but i have no problem with. Why can't we just let people be in love? I've heard and understood all the arguments against homosexuality( another word i hate)but personal experience has refuted them beyond reasonable doubt. I love people who love the "wrong people" I've loved the "wrong person" for nearly a year now, and besides the usual pain of unrequited love, no one's been hurt, and i can't see why its wrong. I'm sorry i just can't.
*sigh*...ok rant is over now. Next:
There's a major update that needs to reach the people i love, but I'm super scared of how they're gonna respond, how should i say it?
And i have a new favorite song, its called "Cheap and Cheerful" by The Kills here are the lyrics:
I'm bored of cheap and cheerful
I want expensive sadness
hospital bills, parole
open doors to madness
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
I'm sick of social graces
show your sharp-tipped teeth
lose your cool in public
dig that illegal meat
cos love is just a dialogue
you can survive on ice cream
you got the same needs as a dog
it's alright to be mean
it's alright to be mean
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
it's alright to be mean
it's alright to be mean
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
aha isn't it awesome? = ]
and i have a new hero: Thirteen from house. and the actress who plays her (Olivia Wilde) is fricken awesome. she speaks french and is a huge sponsor of doctors without borders. And shes been married for 6 years, which is fabulous and rare thees days in Hollywood.
Ok I'm done now. Respond pleez it would be super nice of you. emwads@yahoo.com for those who need it. talk to ya'll later and maybe I'll post again in a month.
as you can see from my previous post, i decided awhile ago that i think blogging is a by product of a self-obsessed culture. but hey, when in Rome?
so update on my activities since August:
Soccer season was amazing, and i kinda still wish it was still going on, even though its getting cold out. Basically we had the awesomest team ever. it was really small, we only had 12 to 14 players depending on who was hurt, but instead of letting it bother us, the team really stepped up this year.
It seemed like this year everyone cared. In past years it's seemed like half the team was only there because they felt they had too or because they were using soccer to get in shape for basketball. This year everyone wanted to be there and it made a huge difference in how we played, how we related to one another, and how much we won. We ended the season with a 9-7-1 record, the best I've ever been on. Perhaps that's a little pathetic, but it was really a great season and I'm gonna miss it.
School is really crappy. I've never struggled with school work like this before. and its not just normal senoritis, which i have an advanced case of. No my brain is just not functioning at the usual pace. i don't understand material, i forget my homework, and Mrs minter and Mrs Schwartz's attitude about class is distracting and makes it hard to focus.
its partly my fault. haha I've been trying to be stupid for so long its finally catching up to me. Oh well.
Basketball Started a couple of weeks ago. i don't know how its gonna go. i don't even want to play, but i felt like i had to cause you know its my senior year, "last chance" and all that crap. But they team is looking good. we all work together really well and i don't think there's going to be a lot of drama, which will help. Also everyone's gotten better since last year and we have some young new talent in the form of Alexis M. Si i don't know, we;'ll see how it goes. it would help if the season wasn't so incredibly long.
Oh and i was part of stage crew for drama. i wasn't in the play because my dad was pissed at me and wouldn't let me, but also because of soccer and school work and stuff. But stage crew was fun, and the cast party was a freakin riot. me and Alex played Water Pong = ] stupid anti-alcohol christian rules. lol = ]
this fall has been pretty fun actually. the first quarter just wrapped up and my grades were ok. Ashley, Dass, Stepha and i have gotten closer because of soccer and we've been hangin out a lot. its been fun, i like having friends = ]
Now onto the subject of colleges:
I HATE COLLEGE STUFF
doing applications gives me headaches. i hate arguing with my mom about where i want to go. i hate wanting to go to smith even though its like the definition of a radically Liberal college.
and they make you write a FREAKIN TON. ugh. I'm gonna quit school and be a hobo.
and i hate hate hate hate the word lesbian.
it has such an incredibly negative connotation. Its associated with all the stuff I've been taught is wrong but i have no problem with. Why can't we just let people be in love? I've heard and understood all the arguments against homosexuality( another word i hate)but personal experience has refuted them beyond reasonable doubt. I love people who love the "wrong people" I've loved the "wrong person" for nearly a year now, and besides the usual pain of unrequited love, no one's been hurt, and i can't see why its wrong. I'm sorry i just can't.
*sigh*...ok rant is over now. Next:
There's a major update that needs to reach the people i love, but I'm super scared of how they're gonna respond, how should i say it?
And i have a new favorite song, its called "Cheap and Cheerful" by The Kills here are the lyrics:
I'm bored of cheap and cheerful
I want expensive sadness
hospital bills, parole
open doors to madness
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
I'm sick of social graces
show your sharp-tipped teeth
lose your cool in public
dig that illegal meat
cos love is just a dialogue
you can survive on ice cream
you got the same needs as a dog
it's alright to be mean
it's alright to be mean
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
it's alright to be mean
it's alright to be mean
I want you to be crazy cos you're boring baby when you're straight
I want you to be crazy cos you're stupid baby when you're sane
aha isn't it awesome? = ]
and i have a new hero: Thirteen from house. and the actress who plays her (Olivia Wilde) is fricken awesome. she speaks french and is a huge sponsor of doctors without borders. And shes been married for 6 years, which is fabulous and rare thees days in Hollywood.
Ok I'm done now. Respond pleez it would be super nice of you. emwads@yahoo.com for those who need it. talk to ya'll later and maybe I'll post again in a month.
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