"nobody loves me..." part II

i really, really don't want this to be a place where i bitch and moan about the things in my life that i am unhappy with -- i don't want it to be a place where i write about what i did today and where i went and who i saw, who said what to who -- this isn't a diary. why would you even care to read it if it was? i don't want to read your diary. sorry, i'm just not that interested.

i want this to be a place where i come and, if not write about important and more universal themes than the boring particulars of my life, then at least write well about something. i want this blog to be a more literary endeavor.

i don't want this to simply be a place where i come to complain about stuff, because i hate the sound of whining.

but sometimes...you just gotta be a whiny bitch.

this is where i make this all cool and literary, by doing non-linear blogging. ready?

saturday night i helped close the resturaunt i work at, like i always do, and stayed afterwards with some of the other employees for discount (and sometimes free) drinks, like i frequently do. i have a manager at this restuaraunt who is the sister of the owner. she's kind of a firecracker. outrageously cute. six years older than me. mostly single. italian (....what can i say? i love italian broads). she is like five feet tall, and blonde, and looks like she's 23. needless to say she is crush worthy, and thus, i have a crush on her. just a little one. mostly though, she's a good hang, and i don't have a lot of friends and while she's got it together and i don't, we're both out of long term relationships, and swearing bachelorhood. so how fun would it be to have a gal pal again, i think to myself. i haven't had one since highschool, really, and the ones i'd had were mostly all platonic; it totally worked out for me. i love hanging out with girls, and i get along better with them far better than i do guys sometimes. part of it is i'm comfortable with the sexual tension. i'm super flirty, and manager girl responds well to it, and i like that interplay.

this is, more or less, what i want from manager-girl. she had talked about us hanging out before, and would mention it in passing, but it never came to pass.

this is where saturday night comes in.
basically the two drinks i had grew me a couple balls and just as everyone is leaving the parking lot at work i call manager-girl's cell:

me -- hey
her -- hey, what's up?
me -- so, when are you going to ask me to hang out with you...
her --
me -- cuz i know you want to, so you should just ask me to. i mean, i know you're shy and all that (she isn't really)
her -- well, what are you doing right now?
me -- (not believing that worked) um, i don't know, just driving home i guess
her -- well, where are you?
me -- right near main and transit
her -- okay, well i'll give you directions and you can come over...

(me getting directions, end of conversation.)

and so i hung out with her at her way cool house. its actually the lower apartment of a house; the upstairs she rents to a tennant. not that that's important really, but she showed me a bunch of pictures of her remodeling, and we drank some wine. and we looked at other pictures of her family and drank more wine. then we had wine with cheese. then she turned on portishead. then we sat on the couch and listened to more portishead and lenny kravitz and stevie wonder and fiona apple. and talked and talked and drank and drank and two bottles of wine later i'm pretty goddamn drunk (i come to find out i drank the two bottles mostly by myself) but still kind of holding it together. i couldn't tell you what we talked about. she made me an open faced peanut butter and honey sandwich, and i ate a cookie and drank a coke with lime somewhere in there too.

and i know it sounds like i'm building to some kind of climax, but that's the thing -- there's no climax to be had. nothing happened. she offered to let me sleep on her couch rather than drive home but i insisted on driving. but i never made a move, we never got to that place -- we were on good behavior -- me, because i didn't want to fuck up a good hang and her for god knows what reason other than that maybe she is kind of dating some guy she went to highschool with all those years ago.

she says she isn't dating him, and that he's not her boyfriend. but if he's not now, he will be, and it kind of pisses me off. he's an all right guy and everything, that's not it. and i keep telling myself i don't like her like that even though i kind of really do, but that's not it either. really, its that if she starts dating this guy, there will be no reason for her to hang out with me. its just one of those things where lonely people can find some kind of meaningful, and on a lot of levels, fulfilling relationship within the guidelines of platonic friendship and i love that. i don't want to date her -- but i don't want her to date anyone. because then i lose a potential friend, and a good hang. and then even the sexual chemistry gets swallowed; women don't let themselves admit that anyone other than who they are dating is attractive.

thing is now i'm afraid i look weird to her; i am totally and completely jealous of her boy friend, but not really for the reason that she thinks. and how do i explain that? it doesn't make sense. but i guess its just a problem with my expectations.

and now, you know what? it feels like i have those feelings for her now. its almost a reflex, really. i am acting a certain way and doing certain things and going through certain motions and they are producing weird hormones in my brain and they are making me think i like this manager girl. i like her fine. i'm not in love with her, and i just can't be with anybody right now. and she is growing less and less interested in me by the day, by the hour. even since saturday, its been noticeable. and i hate it. i can see it all happening and i hate it but there's nothing i can do.

maybe its time to get a new job.
dammit.

"nobody loves me, it's true" part I

how many nights have i felt like this?

this is how i've felt for at least half my life...

ok. yes, i broke up with my girlfriend on purpose. and no, i don't want to date anyone either. so why do i want girls to be interested in me and why do i get angry when they aren't? i want every woman to be in love with me -- its all about ego. its all about ego and i know it, and a world of women chasing after me would never be enough.

in a way, it gives me a peek inside the head of the typical slutty girl -- you want so badly for people to want you and when they do and you give them what they want it makes you feel good to be wanted, makes you proud that you are good enough to be used. you want someone to want you so bad it feels good when they turn you into a piece of meat, which is, for you a pedestal -- for you it is the highest regard you can hold someone in -- the instant "i want to fuck that person" reaction when you see someone who is so beautiful they can't hold it in -- you want to be that for other people.

i completely understand that.

and i'm the furthest thing away from a slut that there is. don't get me wrong, i have inclinations, but i've never acted on them . and even now, when i have those inclinations and am a little more willing to act on them it doesn't work. it is because i am unlucky. it is because the girls i could get want to date me and the girls i want to "do things" with are out of my league -- or they think that they are -- or they are teases, and really don't want anything from me except to know that i want them and then that's good enough and see you later, goodbye.

i just saw the texting girl. the girl i almost (though i use that word loosely -- in retrospect, let me rather say "would have") cheated on my ex girlfriend with. i was driving on the scajacuada expressway and ended up getting off at the elmwood exit right behind her. she recognized me, and waved, and i took a second and had to figure out who she was and then waved back, and pulled off into the buff state parking lot for a class it turns out i missed. she called me:

"you have no idea who that was, do you?"
"i-- no, i-- yeah i knew who that was, of course. what's up?"
"nuuuh-than. what are you doin?"
"ah, i'm just going to class right now."
"what time does your class start?"
(its six fourty three)
"at seven."
"all right, well, when you get out, give a call."

(seven thirty)
ring ring ring ring ring ring...(an ungodly amount of rings)
click.

(seven fifty five)
text message to texting girl:
"tease"

(nine fifty)
ring ring ring ring (voicemail message that i didn't catch)
message:
"ah, all right, you're gonna be a punkass, that's fine. whatever. maybe i'll see you around."



girl games get me down

not a good title

my girlfriend and i are broken up.

it is my fault. i am a man and men, i am learning, are bastards. the real men aren't, but then i'm not really a real man -- i'm a 25 year old boy, and i haven't figured out how to grow up yet or take care of myself, much less someone else who is relying on me to be the man i presented myself as. but i am not him.

i didn't cheat; technically, i've never cheated. i've broken trust with girlfriends before, and those situations involved other girls, but it has either never gotten to a physical point, or it has gotten physical only after a girlfriend had decided we should "take a break." but when its all said and done, its just a technicality, isn't it?

somewhere in my heart i cheated. i'm a bastard for doing it, and i think i am aware now that it was all about ego. i had been texting another girl, a girl from work, who was not my girlfriend; but she was young and attractive and flirtatious and devilish, and i don't know if she directed all those things at me or if i am just especially weak, but i fell in love with the sexual tension and the idea that i was good enough for it. and we had texted some things we shouldn't have, each of us being in relationships. it was nothing too outrageous -- we kept it PG-13, and i kept all of her texts, and my girlfriend found them and i have never felt so bad to see such a look on someone's face: she never deserved that. and as much i wish i could take it all back, my ego still hides those texts close in its heart, and i can't be someone like that in a relationship, and i can't figure out how to make it go away while i'm in a relationship.

it is probably the most dangerous thing i've ever done, letting my amazing girlfriend go, even after she was willing to forgive me. but she would not forget, and i wouldn't blame her, and as long as i am the guy that i am, it would only happen again -- and i need to not be that guy, and i have to figure out how to do that.

this other girl was in greece for a month; she just got back this week; she just texted me ten minutes ago.

the same curious buzz of my phone-on-vibrate, the familiar message icon, blinking with urgency; the thrilling ripple in my ego:

"how was buffalo while i was gone?"

changed in all the wrong ways;
just the same, in all the wrong ways.

sun, aug 14, 7:00 pm

George

deciding to blog today as my writing exercise...

i have a friend whose father is a writer. he's not a professional, and he's not published; he left a reasonably well paying banking job to, as i understand it, go to the barnes and noble cafe and write for eight hours a day, six days a week. now that i write about him i can't help thinking: isn't there something just a little bit heroic about that?

his name is George, and he is a fascinating guy. he emmigrated from India to the U.S. with his wife and his young son, and after that, had my friend Kiran and Kiran's little sister, Pushba. the whole family is remarkable, really. of course they have their family problems that they deal with in family like ways, but they are really spectacular people.

i am going to school right now for english, because, as someone who wants to write, i felt like it would be good to get some kind of training, especially because i lack the will to impose the necessary structure upon myself to get things done. but George has no formal education in things literary -- and this, of course, is only a formality -- he could probably teach half the classes i've taken so far. he is a brilliant guy who has read everything, and understood it all to boot. so while talking to him about books, he learns from me the stuffy phrases and terminologies passed around college English departments like "Romantic Movement" and "British Modernism," while i in turn learn things infinitely more valuable from him:

1) do what you have to do: George had to write. he writes. he was compelled to do something, and he had the courage to do it; he's still finishing his manuscript, still waiting for a break, still grinding it out. but he's doing what he means to do, what he's meant to do -- and that is living the life.

2) it takes sacrifice to be an artist.

3) Julia Cameron's morning pages. morning pages are excellent; morning pages is the simplest idea that you've never thought of. it is so outrageously natural, it is the inclination that we generally ignore. it is nothing more than keeping a journal. an art journal or a writing journal or a journal about anything at all -- it has no rules, the constraint of intelligability does not apply. its unstructured artistic anarchy is bound by only one rule: the act of doing it. it is not the journal or diary or book itself that becomes a focus -- it is all about the act of writing in it, which, for me is an important distinction. it is about process, it is about taking notes on your own thoughts, in whatever way they come out. and it is the first thing you are supposed to do every day.

right now it is summer and its easy for me to do morning pages; i have few obligations and a lot of time to myself. the general rule is three handwritten pages, no more, no less, every morning after you wake up. i have yet to get to three full pages, and getting two and a half usually takes me just as many hours; i do about a page an hour, handwritten -- i think slowly and write slower. it'll be much harder to do them once school starts.

but they are primarily a tool to overcome writer's block. i feel like i have perpetual writer's block -- i never have anything good to write about, or i write about things very badly -- so it is easy to see why i've been working on the morning pages exercise. the best effect they have had is anchoring my day around the goal of the act of writing, which i hope will translate into the schoolyear. i want to be a writer, a creator. i need to be writing. it makes writing my priority. it drives me to write. i've been doing it almost every day for about two months now. i've been writing. i'm being productive; and in writing, they say that counts for everything.

thank you George; you are my real-life writing hero.

the no-hitter

When I was young, every summer my parents would enroll me in little league. I was excited about it, if only for the fun of hoping that I would get teamed with my best friends. After a couple years we began to play something more like ‘real baseball,’ but early on in our little league careers we were confined to playing T-ball, an awkward, aberrous version of the sport we thought we were playing. My guess was they didn’t trust a six year old to pitch, so we all hit off of the T. we all wanted to hit pitches; we thought it was stupid that we couldn’t play the game the way it was meant to be played; but most of all we were confused as to why there was a pitcher’s position, manned by someone we called the pitcher, who never got to pitch?
I liked T-ball. I was good enough at it, I could hit well. I didn’t realize at the time that it didn’t count for much – anyone is a good hitter when he hits off of a T. Much, much later I would figure that out – that hitting from a T would make anyone look good, that was a discovery. It was not what I learned when, finally, I was allowed into the real game of baseball. A discovery takes reflection, it pieces together what you’ve learned. What I learned was how terrible I was at baseball. How well the game was played to me back then and even today I still equate with how well one hits. Sure, there were other elements – how fast you could run, how well you could catch a ball – but all of that was secondary: what everyone waited for was the hit of the pitch, and if that never happened, it didn’t matter how good a first, second, or third baseman you were, you had no game. Nothing to run for, nothing to catch. Nothing for our parents to watch. Nothing for your coach to pat you on the back for. I don’t watch baseball, I don’t play it, but I’ll stand by my elementary understanding of it: it is all about hitting. It is all about hitting and when the T fell away and the pitcher finally pitched what I learned was I was a terrible baseball player: no one ever struck out in T-ball. And this was not T-ball.
At first I thought perhaps I could beat the system. I could get walked. I could try to get walked, I could let the pitcher make the mistake, I could wait him out. I feared nothing if it was not getting struck out. It was a shame that T-ball had never taught us. I feared it as some dark purgatory, a wasted swing of my bat that would land no blow – my boyhood, in its closeness to primitivity, connected it with the swing of the sword; and if it did not land, if it was not a killing stroke, then was that not life threatening? I did not understand that I could not hit defensively. They used to tell me not to be afraid of the ball, but I was not afraid the ball. They used to tell me, all of them – all the coaches and all the parents – they used to tell me that Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time, struck out more than anyone else. It didn’t matter to me. I dreamed of the hit heroic, the one that would win the game and me my glory. Everytime I stepped to the plate I dreamt of it. Every pitch I thought I would hit. But I could not even flinch. Not even when the pitcher beaned me, I couldn’t flinch. I was frozen, stoic – all potential, all dreaming of the home run, but unable to coordinate my muscles to the dream, gripping tightly a batfull of terror that nearly outmatched my vanity. I could not move, I wanted to, and I’d pray to God to help me, and the two sides of me, the fear and the lust for glory pulled against eachother, opposing, straining, furious, equally, oppositely until nothing. Nothing happened. Nothing ever happened. I was only conscious of my own shame, and only mildly soothed of it when I was walked to first. But I can’t imagine the shame I should have felt and didn’t, the downpress of all the other parents in the crowd – “HIT IT! SWING!” – the descending avalanche of disappointment from the coaches, until finally, worst of all, they learned to expect nothing of me.
I don’t remember what position I played when I was in T-ball. But when I finally decided to quit little league I was an outfielder. My parents tried to encourage me not to give up – it wasn’t the right attitude to have – but all my friends played the infield, and baseball was boring and besides, couldn’t they see how bad I was? Couldn’t they see the look on my face when I walked up to the plate? Did they not know what that meant? Eventually they stopped putting in the batting line-up. When I did play I had little to do, so far away from the action, so far away from home and the hitters, outside the collusion of the inner diamond. I was too far away, I couldn’t see what was going on. I didn’t care. The sun was hot, the grass was steaming and sun baked. I kicked the heads off of dandelions. If someone hit to the outfield, I only knew because of the clock-ring of the bat and the cheer from the stands. I would turn around, but I could never see the ball against the brightness of the sky. I didn’t care to. I would find it when it fell; I would throw it blindly anyway.

Aaron Sorkin is a first class bastard.

my friend girish burned me a copy of the first disc of Sports Night, season 1.

i've seen almost all of these episodes before, and i own seasons 1-3 of the West Wing. they are two of the best shows that have ever been on television. they are simply stunning. the wonderful irony of them is that Sports Night is not about sports, and the West Wing is not about politics -- which is helpful for me, because i hate them both. not being the most athletic kid coming from an unathletic family helped take care of sports for me, and as for politics -- don't get me started on all of you assholes who think you know something about it.

so how did i get into either of these shows? literally with many many recommendations and five minute increments of watching them in reruns.

and i can't get enough of them. the beautiful thing about dvd's is i can have just about as much of them as i want, commercial (and hassle) free. (i can't abide commercials). for two hours i watched eight consecutive episodes of Sports Night last night. the episodes are painfully short, which is their one and only drawback for someone like me who really can't get enough of a good thing; they clock in at about 22 minutes (...as most half hour shows do when you include...commercials...). i love the West Wing, and i won't try to compare it in quality to Sports Night because its just too hard, but Sorkin gets 42 minutes to play around with in the West Wing, and he is given the opportunity to be wonderfully orchestral and non-linear in his writing. But what is sick is how little Sports Night suffers from its 22 minute limitation: it is concentrated Sorkin, and a little goes a long long way.

somehow he manages to pound so much funny and dramatic and tearjerking into one episode, an episode that always delivers, and always leaves you wanting more, always leaves you glad that even though you know you've watched a few episodes on the dvd, after the credits role, the gods have favored you with the intro to another episode and you hope the dvd is a spinning spiral of eternal episodes...

...alas...discs, epidisodes and series do come to an end...
and i still want more. Sorkin is the Shakespeare of our time. if there aren't college classes on him in a hundred years, i'll be upset.

i don't know how you can be that good. its mind boggling to me that someone is that talented a writer, and i hate that its not me. he's amazing.....

what is funny to me is that i was in a car accident yesterday -- i totalled my mom's car because my sister's car, which i was driving, is in the shop -- and my car is basically on blocks because i couldn't afford the cost of keeping a '94 saturn sl2 on the road. my eyes burn like hell because i had to sleep at my parent's house last night and i couldn't take my contacts out, and i have no idea what time i have to work today or how i'm going to get there.....

and i'm writing off about Aaron Sorkin and a show that got cancelled after two seasons...

ugh.........Aaron Sorkin.....what a bastard.