long, rambling, not-well-written, and naming names. sorry. skip if you want. you probably better.
(What makes Melanie interesting to me is that she's so assuming, almost (and probably definitely) pretentious and seemingly nave. I have to know how she exists thinking the way she does.)
i started a song once with the words "there is nothing interesting about me; with that said, i'd like to change the subject." i mention this because i've been seeing someone lately, not "seeing" in the colloquial manner implying some prurient interest, literally just seeing, i mean we've barely touched--and this someone, perhaps as a means of avoiding something about herself, seems to fixate on my apparent inability to say anything unequivocally good about myself. she keeps asking me a lot of odd things--if her questions make me uncomfortable, if she's making any sense as she talks about anything and everything, because that's what we talk about--and i keep finding the answers are as simple as answers get. she doesn't make me uncomfortable, not in the least, and she makes sense in the most calming of ways. i met her at work, not the day job but the night job; she had a cute friend who spoke to me in some state of inebriation talking her up as this "cute, petite" med student who needed some accompaniment on some level because her other friends were married. i met her once, didn't say much since i was working, and as she left she gave me her phone number saying "if i give you the opportunity, will you bother me?" so i did, i called her one night and we ended up talking for far too long on my mobile phone (a tragic waste of minutes in retrospect, but it's easy, fucking easy to count minutes like that and feel like you're the lowest form of life.) we met a few days later at the pied cow, which is actually where i met melanie for our first date all the way back in september, she wasn't stripping then, wasn't perpetually passed-out or fucking someone, but i'll get to that later. this woman has a name, it begins with a vowel but i won't say much more than that, i'm trying really hard to not name many names these days because it got me in so much trouble with tiffany and mackenzie and chelsea and heather and allie, the last of which being a kind of trouble i'm not even sure she is aware of, because it's not about april or any shattered commitment, i'm referring to the inescapable commitment you make when you form words, the kind of power they assume once they leave your brain and start to exist for real. but i met this woman at the pied cow, and we sat there for five hours just talking, and the talking was like sparring because she's that kind of woman, and now as i write it i realize that she's so much like danielle, danielle of pulsed belly quivering beneath my fingers, danielle of pale skin and red hair thinning at the front like her mom, and i say she's like danielle because she's insouciant, and i want to think i can say with any assuredness (anything) that she's running from the things she says she cops to running from and that's why she seems so empowered but i don't know and don't care. we talked forever and i couldn't tell if she was enjoying herself or not, because every second she looked only mildly amused, somewhere between self-absorbed contentment and annoyance, like she didn't really give a fuck, and with that i've decided what i don't like about her, which is simultaneously what i probably find the most attractive about her. she's confrontational, i could hazard a guess why but it's probably wrong. oh, fuck it; she's most likely confrontational because she wants power, she most likely wants power because she feels powerless, hell, she's gone so far as to fucking say she has felt powerless, and i can't help but wonder if that's why she's talking to me, she sees me as something that needs to be toppled, some embodiment of hegemonic bullshit that needs to be purified and eliminated. and, in turn, that's why she doesn't understand me, because i'm so honestly vulnerable, that my fear and pain and susceptibility give me life. i'm not threatening, i never tried to be although i have always wanted to be, at least in part, i just don't have the spine, it takes a degree of self-assuredness to be threatening that i just don't possess and probably never will until i get tired of having principles. i saw her again last night, i think i missed spending time with someone whose words you've seen to do it, and i felt bad but not too much so, because she seems to function just fine without me and, if she isn't, then i'm really fucking scared, because i'm sick of people catching feelings when they say they won't, which is just a cover up of me getting sick of making the same mistakes repeatedly, don't have sex with anyone ever, don't have sex with anyone ever, ha-ha. anyway, i met this voweled woman again, we went to dinner and then walked around and then walked back to cars. we got in one and drove around forever and then decided we needed tea, so we parked the car and walked to backspace and talked and drank tea. we'd been talking the whole night through, i'm wondering if that's all we're ever going to do and, yet, the thought of that ambiguity crystalizing into reality is as comforting as a touch on my back--but i'll get into that later. we played some pool in our work clothes, which was fine for me but kind of funny for her, she was wearing this tan tank top and a redder skirt that went down far enough, i'm not kidding when i say she's fucking small, i mean just plain tiny, and only then did i try to not look at her. the strip clubs, for all their innate dysfunction, have conditioned me to acknowledge when the hormones kick in and logic steps aside, to any degree. i felt no guilt about staring at her face and eyes and lips (all entirely too made-up in that yuppie kind of way, yet i somehow found it nice at the time, if unnecessary) and, for fleeting moments, the side of her arm, above the armpit, almost where the arm meets the chest, and the idea of the breasts that lay nearby triggered some oft-tapped guilt, and by that time we were playing pool and i was winning and i didn't want to be as attracted to her as i'd already admitted to being. i won, we were playing eight ball but i still won, she looked at me with an exuberant bitterness i knew wouldn't last but would last, i'm not going to try to explain that one, this is so out-of-character that you're just going to have to deal with me being as cryptic as i want, she looked at me like that and then we walked back to the car and i drove her to hers and we talked candidly then, exhaustion and time wearing on our affectations. and i dropped her off at her car and we started to go home. i called her on the way, my exact words were
"i like you. a lot,"
they were juvenile, i knew then and even though they seem less so, i know now, and she said simply "well, that's better than you not liking me," and i got a little angry then but not really and replied
"you know, you don't have to minimize everything i say. i do have some self-esteem,"
and we said goodnight and i hung up and brought the entirety of my attention back to the road. i was almost home when she called, we talked a bit more about things and then i hung up and parked at the house and walked in, remembering my grandfather was home. i walked down to my room and tugged my clothes off except for my t-shirt and underwear, and i peed and brushed my teeth, and took my contacts out and jumped into bed before calling her again. i think we'd spoken late at night before but i want to think it was a dream even though i know it's real. we talked a bit more about the things we'd revealed and she apologized for how she'd responded and i accepted her apology, and we had more odd moments and then hung up and i went to sleep right away.
she text messaged me at work, an expression of her vulnerability and wish to never put herself in that kind of position again, only she phrased it in that kind of flippant way people use when they don't know whether or not they mean something. I asked her if i could call her later and i eventually did. actually, i text messaged her back on my way downtown. she called me and i called her back, and we spoke briefly, but i was on my way to a movie that i had tried to get someone else to see with me because i missed her and hadn't really spent much time with her, but she was sick or not feeling well
(and she said something to the effect of "because i know you're really popular" which made me think she saw me last night, and i felt guilty but not really, i'm just spacey at this point and weird and even though i thought i was done feeling both those things for a while it's fairly obvious i'm not.)
so i went to the movie alone, it was really, really fucking good, it made me miss everyone who inspired me that i know/knew.
melanie was the one who re-appeared in my life, for a brief time, i went to chopsticks one night memorial day weekend because she was there, she text messaged me after i'd gotten home with the explicit intention of laying down on the couch (my grandparents were out of town) and watching aliens until i passed out. but she asked me to come out, she was with her sister and it made sense in the sense that i wanted to see her because i can't stand losing and i knew she was going to do some kind of weird fucking thing that would make me emotionally fucked again after i'd put myself back together. and i know i do this to myself. but i put my clothes back on and went to chopsticks and sang a song and she talked to me and she got really close to me and said "we should sleep together again." and then i said
"oh?"
and she said "yeah." and then she said some more things, amounting to saying that we should get back together and be a couple again, and i said
"why?"
to which she replied that she chose Dallas because she thought he was a safe choice or something to that extent, my memory of the moment is cloudy because i was half-asleep and upset. so i told her i didn't know, i used those exact words but i'm not going to quote it right now because i've taken up enough space as it is. i sat down and talked to clarissa for a bit, and she warned me to not do it, because melanie would make out with anyone who would pay attention to her and it made sense, she was talking to some nigga-looking dumbasses while i was there, i didn't really give much of a fuck because i was so ambivalent anyway. i tried to get ahold of her on different occasions after that, succeeding at times except for when she went to bend, she disappeared and didn't tell me, which didn't bother me at the time, but her refusal to acknowledge me when i was trying to get ahold of her was telling until she informed me of what was going on. when she got back to portland, we said hello at different times, trying to plan something out that never quite happened, and not because of me. we met briefly outside a movie theater, i was going to harry potter with lindex because she'd broken off what slight almost-plans we'd made for the night until she decided to go see super size me with her sister, i met her outside the theater anyway and said hello. i took lindex home and saw that the matador was open and wanted to go there, partly because i wondered if jeanette was working because i knew she had in the past, but decided against it because it was late and i needed to get home. i dropped lindex off and started to drive home, and i text messaged melanie to see what was up and she said she was at the matador. i laughed at the ugliness of it all and decided to fucking bite the bullet and go. i walked in and didn't spot melanie at first, but jeanette was there, half-drunk because she was tired and hadn't eaten very much, so friendly and nice and pretty and completely fucking strange. she hugged me and we chatted for a second before i spotted melanie, and she said some things that i'm not going to repeat, jeanette i mean, things i really needed to hear but things i will keep in my brain because they were private, in that loud, oliver-queen-in-dark-knight-returns-describing-batman quiet kind of way, but private nonetheless. i think it had the desired effect, though, because melanie was being a bit dodgy when i sat down next to her and hugged her, she hugged me back but she was acting then, she and her sister were talking to these two dipshits and seeming to enjoy the attention. as i write that, i realize how oddly parallel to me that is--but i'll get into that later. i asked her
"are your offers still on the table?"
to which she laughed incredulously (and, as i suspect, a bit bored) and said "yeah." i half-slurred
"the answer is i don't know, at least until i find out why the answer is yes"
and left, i went home and went to sleep because i felt myself not wanting to think about it. for the next few days, i vacillated (i probably misspelled that) before visiting her at work. by now, all the time i've spent in strip clubs has rendered union jacks just another uninteresting place, but i still couldn't talk to her because i couldn't shake the feeling of her just acting, which made me angry and still does. we made plans for breakfast that weekend and she stood me up, and i haven't spoken to her since. barring one text message, she's completely disappeared, and i'm trying to repress the urge to find her and fucking lash out in my own passive way and succeeding at times.
it's so funny, she said something once months ago after we broke up about how i need to find people that are worth my time. she said that, of all people, and i remember hitting that kind of angry where i just can't believe that i'm there, talking to someone (even though it was on the phone), because i think everyone is worth my time until they prove they aren't. i've got what some people would call lovers, they're not really lovers so much as friends i have sex with, i don't know why i hate to use the term lovers but i do, probably because even that implies a commitment. no, i've got them, but i think that makes me not want them, and i have to apologize for that, because it's not that i don't want them personally, but i think it's because i don't want myself, or i'm running from myself, or i hate myself for running from myself because of them, or i hate myself for wanting to run from myself because of what i do with them, and even then it's only the sex i feel guilty about, i'd like to thank tiffany and mackenzie for making me make myself feel guilty for wanting that again, it's like being seventeen, thank you very fucking much (that's misplaced aggression, kind of like when pre-med and i were walking across the burnside bridge before we went to backspace and she was describing the relationship she has with one of her siblings and the pain of it made her shout at a guy who was staring at her.) i don't regret the time i spend with them, i just regret the sex, probably because of the lack of desire for a relationship, i hate following my biology but my heart is just apathetic.
anyway, i was offended when melanie talked about people not being worth my time, because she's truthfully made the largest case for not being worth my fucking time and, yeah, i fucking love her, in that weak danielle kind of way. fuck, i'm referring to danielle again, i don't mean to say i'm still fixated on her, it's more her type.
so tonight i spent by myself, not necessarily by choice, but i'm glad in the end. introspection is nice, even if the end result is self-loathing (but that's fucking inevitable, right? god, i'm so fucking clich). i left the movie in that trying to reconcile the fiction i long for with the fact i'm in, there isn't much of a mire anymore and i'm thankful for that but i'm still displaced. i missed people i've met and people i never met, i liked so many solipsistic ideas and realized i needed to say something, i needed to unload. so here it all is.
(What makes Melanie interesting to me is that she's so assuming, almost (and probably definitely) pretentious and seemingly nave. I have to know how she exists thinking the way she does.)
i started a song once with the words "there is nothing interesting about me; with that said, i'd like to change the subject." i mention this because i've been seeing someone lately, not "seeing" in the colloquial manner implying some prurient interest, literally just seeing, i mean we've barely touched--and this someone, perhaps as a means of avoiding something about herself, seems to fixate on my apparent inability to say anything unequivocally good about myself. she keeps asking me a lot of odd things--if her questions make me uncomfortable, if she's making any sense as she talks about anything and everything, because that's what we talk about--and i keep finding the answers are as simple as answers get. she doesn't make me uncomfortable, not in the least, and she makes sense in the most calming of ways. i met her at work, not the day job but the night job; she had a cute friend who spoke to me in some state of inebriation talking her up as this "cute, petite" med student who needed some accompaniment on some level because her other friends were married. i met her once, didn't say much since i was working, and as she left she gave me her phone number saying "if i give you the opportunity, will you bother me?" so i did, i called her one night and we ended up talking for far too long on my mobile phone (a tragic waste of minutes in retrospect, but it's easy, fucking easy to count minutes like that and feel like you're the lowest form of life.) we met a few days later at the pied cow, which is actually where i met melanie for our first date all the way back in september, she wasn't stripping then, wasn't perpetually passed-out or fucking someone, but i'll get to that later. this woman has a name, it begins with a vowel but i won't say much more than that, i'm trying really hard to not name many names these days because it got me in so much trouble with tiffany and mackenzie and chelsea and heather and allie, the last of which being a kind of trouble i'm not even sure she is aware of, because it's not about april or any shattered commitment, i'm referring to the inescapable commitment you make when you form words, the kind of power they assume once they leave your brain and start to exist for real. but i met this woman at the pied cow, and we sat there for five hours just talking, and the talking was like sparring because she's that kind of woman, and now as i write it i realize that she's so much like danielle, danielle of pulsed belly quivering beneath my fingers, danielle of pale skin and red hair thinning at the front like her mom, and i say she's like danielle because she's insouciant, and i want to think i can say with any assuredness (anything) that she's running from the things she says she cops to running from and that's why she seems so empowered but i don't know and don't care. we talked forever and i couldn't tell if she was enjoying herself or not, because every second she looked only mildly amused, somewhere between self-absorbed contentment and annoyance, like she didn't really give a fuck, and with that i've decided what i don't like about her, which is simultaneously what i probably find the most attractive about her. she's confrontational, i could hazard a guess why but it's probably wrong. oh, fuck it; she's most likely confrontational because she wants power, she most likely wants power because she feels powerless, hell, she's gone so far as to fucking say she has felt powerless, and i can't help but wonder if that's why she's talking to me, she sees me as something that needs to be toppled, some embodiment of hegemonic bullshit that needs to be purified and eliminated. and, in turn, that's why she doesn't understand me, because i'm so honestly vulnerable, that my fear and pain and susceptibility give me life. i'm not threatening, i never tried to be although i have always wanted to be, at least in part, i just don't have the spine, it takes a degree of self-assuredness to be threatening that i just don't possess and probably never will until i get tired of having principles. i saw her again last night, i think i missed spending time with someone whose words you've seen to do it, and i felt bad but not too much so, because she seems to function just fine without me and, if she isn't, then i'm really fucking scared, because i'm sick of people catching feelings when they say they won't, which is just a cover up of me getting sick of making the same mistakes repeatedly, don't have sex with anyone ever, don't have sex with anyone ever, ha-ha. anyway, i met this voweled woman again, we went to dinner and then walked around and then walked back to cars. we got in one and drove around forever and then decided we needed tea, so we parked the car and walked to backspace and talked and drank tea. we'd been talking the whole night through, i'm wondering if that's all we're ever going to do and, yet, the thought of that ambiguity crystalizing into reality is as comforting as a touch on my back--but i'll get into that later. we played some pool in our work clothes, which was fine for me but kind of funny for her, she was wearing this tan tank top and a redder skirt that went down far enough, i'm not kidding when i say she's fucking small, i mean just plain tiny, and only then did i try to not look at her. the strip clubs, for all their innate dysfunction, have conditioned me to acknowledge when the hormones kick in and logic steps aside, to any degree. i felt no guilt about staring at her face and eyes and lips (all entirely too made-up in that yuppie kind of way, yet i somehow found it nice at the time, if unnecessary) and, for fleeting moments, the side of her arm, above the armpit, almost where the arm meets the chest, and the idea of the breasts that lay nearby triggered some oft-tapped guilt, and by that time we were playing pool and i was winning and i didn't want to be as attracted to her as i'd already admitted to being. i won, we were playing eight ball but i still won, she looked at me with an exuberant bitterness i knew wouldn't last but would last, i'm not going to try to explain that one, this is so out-of-character that you're just going to have to deal with me being as cryptic as i want, she looked at me like that and then we walked back to the car and i drove her to hers and we talked candidly then, exhaustion and time wearing on our affectations. and i dropped her off at her car and we started to go home. i called her on the way, my exact words were
"i like you. a lot,"
they were juvenile, i knew then and even though they seem less so, i know now, and she said simply "well, that's better than you not liking me," and i got a little angry then but not really and replied
"you know, you don't have to minimize everything i say. i do have some self-esteem,"
and we said goodnight and i hung up and brought the entirety of my attention back to the road. i was almost home when she called, we talked a bit more about things and then i hung up and parked at the house and walked in, remembering my grandfather was home. i walked down to my room and tugged my clothes off except for my t-shirt and underwear, and i peed and brushed my teeth, and took my contacts out and jumped into bed before calling her again. i think we'd spoken late at night before but i want to think it was a dream even though i know it's real. we talked a bit more about the things we'd revealed and she apologized for how she'd responded and i accepted her apology, and we had more odd moments and then hung up and i went to sleep right away.
she text messaged me at work, an expression of her vulnerability and wish to never put herself in that kind of position again, only she phrased it in that kind of flippant way people use when they don't know whether or not they mean something. I asked her if i could call her later and i eventually did. actually, i text messaged her back on my way downtown. she called me and i called her back, and we spoke briefly, but i was on my way to a movie that i had tried to get someone else to see with me because i missed her and hadn't really spent much time with her, but she was sick or not feeling well
(and she said something to the effect of "because i know you're really popular" which made me think she saw me last night, and i felt guilty but not really, i'm just spacey at this point and weird and even though i thought i was done feeling both those things for a while it's fairly obvious i'm not.)
so i went to the movie alone, it was really, really fucking good, it made me miss everyone who inspired me that i know/knew.
melanie was the one who re-appeared in my life, for a brief time, i went to chopsticks one night memorial day weekend because she was there, she text messaged me after i'd gotten home with the explicit intention of laying down on the couch (my grandparents were out of town) and watching aliens until i passed out. but she asked me to come out, she was with her sister and it made sense in the sense that i wanted to see her because i can't stand losing and i knew she was going to do some kind of weird fucking thing that would make me emotionally fucked again after i'd put myself back together. and i know i do this to myself. but i put my clothes back on and went to chopsticks and sang a song and she talked to me and she got really close to me and said "we should sleep together again." and then i said
"oh?"
and she said "yeah." and then she said some more things, amounting to saying that we should get back together and be a couple again, and i said
"why?"
to which she replied that she chose Dallas because she thought he was a safe choice or something to that extent, my memory of the moment is cloudy because i was half-asleep and upset. so i told her i didn't know, i used those exact words but i'm not going to quote it right now because i've taken up enough space as it is. i sat down and talked to clarissa for a bit, and she warned me to not do it, because melanie would make out with anyone who would pay attention to her and it made sense, she was talking to some nigga-looking dumbasses while i was there, i didn't really give much of a fuck because i was so ambivalent anyway. i tried to get ahold of her on different occasions after that, succeeding at times except for when she went to bend, she disappeared and didn't tell me, which didn't bother me at the time, but her refusal to acknowledge me when i was trying to get ahold of her was telling until she informed me of what was going on. when she got back to portland, we said hello at different times, trying to plan something out that never quite happened, and not because of me. we met briefly outside a movie theater, i was going to harry potter with lindex because she'd broken off what slight almost-plans we'd made for the night until she decided to go see super size me with her sister, i met her outside the theater anyway and said hello. i took lindex home and saw that the matador was open and wanted to go there, partly because i wondered if jeanette was working because i knew she had in the past, but decided against it because it was late and i needed to get home. i dropped lindex off and started to drive home, and i text messaged melanie to see what was up and she said she was at the matador. i laughed at the ugliness of it all and decided to fucking bite the bullet and go. i walked in and didn't spot melanie at first, but jeanette was there, half-drunk because she was tired and hadn't eaten very much, so friendly and nice and pretty and completely fucking strange. she hugged me and we chatted for a second before i spotted melanie, and she said some things that i'm not going to repeat, jeanette i mean, things i really needed to hear but things i will keep in my brain because they were private, in that loud, oliver-queen-in-dark-knight-returns-describing-batman quiet kind of way, but private nonetheless. i think it had the desired effect, though, because melanie was being a bit dodgy when i sat down next to her and hugged her, she hugged me back but she was acting then, she and her sister were talking to these two dipshits and seeming to enjoy the attention. as i write that, i realize how oddly parallel to me that is--but i'll get into that later. i asked her
"are your offers still on the table?"
to which she laughed incredulously (and, as i suspect, a bit bored) and said "yeah." i half-slurred
"the answer is i don't know, at least until i find out why the answer is yes"
and left, i went home and went to sleep because i felt myself not wanting to think about it. for the next few days, i vacillated (i probably misspelled that) before visiting her at work. by now, all the time i've spent in strip clubs has rendered union jacks just another uninteresting place, but i still couldn't talk to her because i couldn't shake the feeling of her just acting, which made me angry and still does. we made plans for breakfast that weekend and she stood me up, and i haven't spoken to her since. barring one text message, she's completely disappeared, and i'm trying to repress the urge to find her and fucking lash out in my own passive way and succeeding at times.
it's so funny, she said something once months ago after we broke up about how i need to find people that are worth my time. she said that, of all people, and i remember hitting that kind of angry where i just can't believe that i'm there, talking to someone (even though it was on the phone), because i think everyone is worth my time until they prove they aren't. i've got what some people would call lovers, they're not really lovers so much as friends i have sex with, i don't know why i hate to use the term lovers but i do, probably because even that implies a commitment. no, i've got them, but i think that makes me not want them, and i have to apologize for that, because it's not that i don't want them personally, but i think it's because i don't want myself, or i'm running from myself, or i hate myself for running from myself because of them, or i hate myself for wanting to run from myself because of what i do with them, and even then it's only the sex i feel guilty about, i'd like to thank tiffany and mackenzie for making me make myself feel guilty for wanting that again, it's like being seventeen, thank you very fucking much (that's misplaced aggression, kind of like when pre-med and i were walking across the burnside bridge before we went to backspace and she was describing the relationship she has with one of her siblings and the pain of it made her shout at a guy who was staring at her.) i don't regret the time i spend with them, i just regret the sex, probably because of the lack of desire for a relationship, i hate following my biology but my heart is just apathetic.
anyway, i was offended when melanie talked about people not being worth my time, because she's truthfully made the largest case for not being worth my fucking time and, yeah, i fucking love her, in that weak danielle kind of way. fuck, i'm referring to danielle again, i don't mean to say i'm still fixated on her, it's more her type.
so tonight i spent by myself, not necessarily by choice, but i'm glad in the end. introspection is nice, even if the end result is self-loathing (but that's fucking inevitable, right? god, i'm so fucking clich). i left the movie in that trying to reconcile the fiction i long for with the fact i'm in, there isn't much of a mire anymore and i'm thankful for that but i'm still displaced. i missed people i've met and people i never met, i liked so many solipsistic ideas and realized i needed to say something, i needed to unload. so here it all is.