world's shortest personality test

You are dependable, popular, and observant. Deep and thoughtful, you are prone to moodiness. In fact, your emotions tend to influence everything you do. You are unique, creative, and expressive. You don't mind waving your freak flag every once and a while. And lucky for you, most people find your weird ways charming!

The World's Shortest Personality Test

This week, I've been working the obnoxiously early shift, which is throwing me completely out of whack, hence yesterday's lack of a post and today's quiz.

Speaking of working, I'm making some new bannerheads, to be debuted sometime next week. If you have any suggestions for artists to bastardize into a banner, drop me a line.

hot hot heat.

97 degree weather in the shade and humidity worthy of an old cartoon, steam rises from the sidewalks, cats and flowers droop. Even the sun wears shades. Couple that with a house sans air conditioning and a family of eccentrics who could put David Sedaris' to shame, or at the very least share more than a dislike of potato salad at a picnic, and trust me, my family's one potato salad short of a picnic, which is to say that it's no picnic living at home this summer.

I spend as much time as I can in places that are air-conditioned and far from people whose DNA resemble mine. Spending an afternoon at the Barnes and Noble is infinitely better that hanging around at home, waiting for the various side-effects of medicines to manifest themselves in loud and boisterous ways, and watching them interact with other side-effects from other medicines taken by other people.

I spent the other day walking around the mall. It's a large and impressive mall, one of the largest in the country. Then again, our state is one of the fattest in the country, so maybe we need the extra room for the cheese-guzzling, brat-eating lardheads that travel from across the Midwest to drop some change in a mall that features taxidermy, two confectionaries, a gun shop, a leather outlet, four candle shops, and a massage parlor.

I was meandering about, minding my own business, dressed in my everyday attire: a Smiths t-shirt, too-tight jeans with a hole in the left knee, and flip-flps. While perusing the stores frequented by my youthful contemporaries (GAP, Abercrombie and Fitch, Hollister, etc), I was mistaken not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times as an employee. Sure, as a teenager alone in the mall pilfering the sale rack, there's a healthy chance that yes, I would be an employee.

But still, two people thought I was an abercrombie boy.

Imagine! Me, an abercrombie boy...

A Fucking Interdiction: A Piece of Fiction

I took a sip from my Vanilla Bean Frappuchino. I hate that question.

"I'm an English major, with a certificate in Creative Writing."

A certificate is like a minor, but they don't give out minors in creative writing at my school. I suppose Creative Writing, in and of itself, is minor enough.

I hate meeting people. I hate putting myself in a position to meet people. I'm a regular misanthrope, here--not in Moliere's sense of the term, but more like Qin Shi Huang; I build huge walls.

"So what do you want to do with that?"

I want to use my words to seduce a rich 25 year old, and become a stay-at home dad while he works. Or I want to start a band, and be proclaimed the next Patti Smith, live fast, die young, and leave an exquisite corpse. Or I want a long-lost relative to die and leave enough money for me to spend a year or two, working on a giant novel. I want something grandiose, without a lot of worry over money. I do that enough as it is.

"I don't know. I'd like to write, like personal stories for a magazine or something. Short, whimsical little things, but I don't want to be a journalist. Just those essay things. I'll probably end up teaching though."

I think I'd be a good teacher. The past few semesters, I'll be sitting in class, and thinking about how I would present the material differently. I'd put an emphasis on different authors, be concerned more with context, assign papers differently. I think I could handle it, especially in suburbia. I wouldn't like inner-city youth, finding the scholarly diamonds in the rough, the one teacher giving these students a chance. If I had patience, I'd be a doctor.

He drinks as I speak, and his eyes focus in on me, but at nothing in particular. Product makes his hair turn jagged, especially his bangs, little stalactites. I hate hair product. I like being about to run my hands through his hair, grab the back of his head in a passionate kiss without the need to wash my hands afterwards.

"That's cool." I don't like the smile on his face as it turns a sinister shade of coy. "So... What are you into?" He removes his right foot from his sandal, and places it on top of mine, rubbing against my stubs of foot hair. I jerk my foot under my chair, more brusque than I mean.

God, why did I agree to meet for coffee?

"I'm into... relationships." A shitty answer, I know. But I'm not looking for a hookup or a fuck buddy, I thought I made that clear in the gay.com chatrooms. I'm not even looking for a boyfriend. I go back to school in seven weeks. I don't want to get attached to anyone here, and then be all morose and broken-hearted when school starts up again. I've done my share of long distance. It just never works out.

"But you're a writer, right? Writers are always living life to the extreme, fucking everyone in sight. That's what all the great writers do." Wow. That's a new one.
"I don't know about that. I bet for every author who was promiscuous, there were five who were celibate, or at most, normal."

"Yeah, but who? All the great authors of the past hundred years have been sluts: Henry Miller, Tennessee Williams loved twinks, the Fitzgeralds fucked every chance they got..."

"Yeah, but uh, Hans Christian Anderson was celibate because he was neurotic about his sexuality--"

"He's boring, though. Children's authors don't count."

"Well, Balzac said something about losing a novel every time he had sex, that shooting your load was like shooting away your creative juices."

"No one cares about Balzac. I know you're not looking for a hookup, but why not a fuck buddy?"

"I want to be attracted to the person first, though. Emotionally attracted as much as physically." I'm fully aware that I'm a sapiosexual, attracted to language, and I suffer from both Rubens and Stendhal syndrome: I find great, emotionally charged works of art arousing. The creativity is a turn-on. And he's no artist. He's working at a bank right now, for chrissakes.

"But that's what a fuckbuddy is. Two people who are mature enough as friends to help each other out, however they need it. It's a higher form of friendship."

"I'd say it's two people getting horny at compatible times." I wouldn't know, sincer I've never had a fuck buddy, but I have absolutely no faith in human beings, and that goes double for gay boys in my presence.

That probably sounds too cocky and self-assured. I don't think of myself as that attractive, so when guys compliment my mugshot in my profile, even though I know they're just trying to get in my twink pants I still think of it as a compliment.

"So why'd you even bother to meet me for coffee, then?"

"I don't know. Friendship, I guess."

"You're looking for friends in the gay.com chatrooms?" Yeah, it sounded dumb even to me. But I couldn't think of anything else.

"Well, they can't all be sex-obsessed creeps."

"Yes. Yes they can."

"Well, I'm not, and I'm not a sex-obsessed creep."

"You're right. You're just a naive prude." Worse things have been said about me. I'd phrase it as "old-fashioned values," but a naive prude works.

You'd think there'd be a wonderful end this story, that either he or I'd say something wonderfully profound, bring this full circle, wrap it up in one glorious phrase, or he'd utter some moral about love and life for you, the reader, to take away from this story. But there's nothing like that.

He and I just fizzled out, awkward and curt. Just like the ending to this post.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

I admit it. I still think about Heart, on occasion. Rarely, really. I don't think I miss him. Or at least miss miss him. I miss moments I had with him, sure, but not him, as a person. As I'm going about my life, things don't pop into my head about how sweet he was (and he could be sweet--not often, but he could) or how he always thought he was helping me better myself (when in reality, it was just constant criticism). The things that pop to mind are the things that should have served as bright pink flashing lights that something was amiss.

Take, for example, this little tidbit.

Once upon a time, somewhat early in the relationship, we were talking online and he was telling me how I was doing something incorrectly. Incorrectly, according to him, that is. His exact words were "You're going about things the wrong way," which prompted me to reply:

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way?
I am human and I need to be loved,
just like everybody else does.

To which he replied "whatever" and changed the subject.

I mean, if he doesn't get the Smiths, why did I ever think he would get me?

No Surprises here.

You are a Slutcom 0, also known as the frigid level of slutcom. Slutcom 0 is someone who hasn't been with too many people, if they've been with people at all. Hook-ups are practically non-existant - there may be one or two in the past, but nothing consistent or spectacular. You're a card carrying member of the prude patrol, or at least close. Take the slutcom litmus test! The slutcom litmus test originated in A Word of Advice.

I'm such a prude. A prude with a boring life, and therefore has not much to talk about. Hence another quiz/meme thing.

And I am Marie of Roumania.

Your are Dorothy Parker - a cute little smart-ass,
armed with rapier wit and agile hands. You run
with the foremost minds of your generation.
You are appreciated in your own time, as well
as after your death.


Which Dead Poet Are You?


Oh, Dottie. If you keep following me around, I'm going to have to send for a restraining order.

In slighly related news, since men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses, I've started to wear contacts again. While wearing contacts does make wearing obnoxiously large sunglasses more fun, it does dry out my eyes, especially at work.

I don't know if I want men making passes at me, anyway. I mean, sure, it's nice to be checked out and all, but I'm not one for hookups, and I'm going back to school in 8 weeks or so. I can't start seeing anyone except for my right hand, with whom I've had a long-standing relationship for lo these nine years.

I get my kicks above the waistline

James Joyce once wrote of "that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia."

Normally, I wouldn't quote anything from Finnegan's Wake, as it is a huge literary joke. Lots of writers and essayists quote that line, but few take a second to look at its syntax in the book.

and look at this prepronominal funferal, engraved and retouched and edgewiped and pudden-padded,very like a whale's egg farced with pemmican,as were itsentenced to be nuzzled over a full trillion times for ever and a night till his noddle sink or swim by that ideal reader suffering from an ideal insomnia: all those red raddled obeli cayennepep-percast over the text, calling unnecessary attention to errors, omissions, repetitions and misalignments: that (probably local or personal) variant maggers for the more generally accepted majesty which is but a trifle and yet may quietly amuse: those superciliouslooking crisscrossed Greek ees awkwardlike perched there and here out of date like sick owls hawked back to Athens: and the geegees too, jesuistically formed at first but afterwards genuflected aggrily toewards the occident:

Whatever. The only thing Joyce is good for, in my opinion, is his appearance in Travesties by Stoppard.

Speaking of which, as I was searching for a link to Stoppard, I found a quote that I think some of you might enjoy.

You've turned literature into a religion and it's as dead as all the rest. It's an overripe corpse and you're cutting fancy figures at the wake. It's too late for geniuses: Now we need vandals and desecrators, simple minded demolition men to smash centuries of baroque subtlety, to bring down the temple, and thus finally, to reconcile the shame and the necessity of being an artist!

I had a point to this post, once.

Normally, I would refrain from even thinking about Joyce, especially during my free time, but Zadie Smith quotes him in Best American NonRequired Reading (2003), and it sparked my interest.

I want to add another person to Friday's meme, of the authors who've influenced/meant a lot to me.

Carole Nelson Douglas

Her books (and the Harry Potter ones, to a lesser extent) are the only ones that can consistantly keep me up until the wee hours of the morning, no matter how tired I am. It's that ideal insomnia, enthralled by a great author. It's not easy for me to sit down and read 600+ pages in one go, but with her books, I always can, and usually want more.

I should clarify. She writes two series of books, both mysteries. One is this silly little series about a cat who helps its owner solve mysteries in Las Vegas. It's actually not bad, for that genre of cozy mysteries. It's her other series that gives me literary wood.

Her other book series is about Irene Adler. Miss Adler was the only person to ever outsmart Sherlock Holmes. The first book in the series retells A Scandal in Bohemia from her point of view. In subsequent books, she is called in to help investigate mysteries that are too delicate for Sherlock Holmes. He's too famous to help in times of great, national importance.

My favorite books in this series are Chapel Noir and its sequel, Castle Rouge, where Irene, enlisting such notable people from history as Oscar Wilde, Nellie Bly, Sarah Bernhardt, and others, to capture Jack the Ripper. ::Link contains spoiler:: Her choice of killer seems both plausible and original, at least in the context of the story.

This book probably seems less literary than what I usually talk about. Sure, she's no Dostoevsky or Rimbaud, but let's face it: no one reads those dead guys for fun. Dostoevsky hurts. It's okay to admit it. He's a dead Russian, he's not meant for light beach reading.

But Carole Nelson Douglas? Her other series is light beach reading, sure, but this series isn't. It's no Russian classic, but it's no beach read, either. But definitely worth a look.

the Adolescent

All of Friday's talk about this blog's namesake made me think, "Hey. The new translation of this book is supposed to be jaw-droppingly amazing. I should probably check it out sometime." It's not like with Proust, where the translations are done in shifts, and there's a debate between stuffiness vs. stylism. The new translation is, at least to the best of my knowledge, universally acclaimed. I checked out the book from the library, and made some headway with it, but I'm not sure what I think of it, yet.

It's probably a sign that I'm still not up to par after the recent heartbreak (haha, get it?) and drama that I'm having difficulties reading the translation. It's a good translation, to be sure, but it's not seizing me like it did the first time I read the book.

I'll let you judge for yourself the translation job.

Here is the sentence, from the original translation, which inspired this blog.

I have suddenly realized that if I had a single reader he would certainly be laughing at me as a most ridiculous raw youth, still stupidly innocent, putting himself forward to discuss and criticize what he knows nothing about.

And here is that sentence, retranslated.

It has just occured to me that if I had at least one reader, he would probably burst out laughing at me, as at a most ridiculous adolescent who, having preserved his stupid innocence, barges with his reasons and solutions into things he doesn't understand.

I think I like the first translation better. I like how the realization is 'sudden,' and I have a obvious fondness for the phrase 'ridiculous raw youth.' But both are good works, worth a look.

Book Meme (Tagged by Monotonous)

Number of books I own: A pitifully small amount. I'd probably place the number in the low double digits. See, my mom is a librarian, and I've been on library boards and committees all throughout high school, the whole concept of 'buying' books is a foreign concept to me. My library card gets more action than a bottle of tequila during spring break, though.

Last Book Bought: Again, I don't really 'buy' books, unless they're for school. However, since I was saddened by my move back home after things with Heart went sour, I bought a few books, including his delightful little book.

Last book read: I recently read A Country With No Name by Sebastian de Grazia, who won a Pulitzer a few years back for the biography he wrote on Machiavelli. This book is the tale of an eager college freshman and his hot British tutor. Her iconoclastic, Socratic lesson plans include how the Founding Fathers illegally overthrew the first U.S. constitution, how our country has no name and therefore does not exist, Emerson's influence on everyone, how Lincoln was a traitor to the country, and why the South really got a bum rap.

Currently reading: A Miscellany Revised by EE Cummings. It's a collection of unpublished drawings, translations of other poems, critical essays on his contemporary authors, reviews and essays he wrote for the New Yorker, and some deleted monologues from his plays. There's some good stuff here, funny too. People always seem to think of Cummings as that poet with the crazy punctuation and capital letters, but there was a rhythm and a reason to his work, and this book shows how forward-thinking he was, and how seriously he took his writing, and modernism in general.

Next book on reading list: A new collection of David Sedaris' favorite short stories, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. While it's not his short stories, the collection does include some stuff by Dorothy Parker, Joyce Carole Oates, and Flannery O'Connor. There's some quality here, at least about the authors I'm familiar with. An epilogue by Sarah Vowell (another of my favorites) explains that this book goes to the proceeds from this collection will go to charity helping students to write and express themselves creatively.

5 books that mean a lot to me:
(These are in no particular order.)

I've mentioned my love for Martin Bauman multiple times throughout this blog. Even one of the rotating mastheads (the one with the pencil) is an homage to the cover art of this book. In a nutshell, it's a thinly-veiled autobiography of the author, David Leavitt, and how he came to (semi)fame during the 80s as a young gay writer. For a while, I thought I envied that life, but now I realize that the book is eerily similar to a biography of mine, should I ever write one.

The Complete Short Stories and Poetry of Dorothy Parker are wonderful. She is the epitome of the word 'sardonic.' Her poetry is epigramic, and her short stories, though similar, ring true. Her life is what it's like to be too smart to ever be truely happy, and how sarcasm and a good offense is the best defense against the world. A quote machine, she is usually remembered for her 'off-the-cuff' remarks, as opposed to her body of work, though that is slowly changing. Her poetry is recommended for those who don't like poetry, and as a founding contributor to the New Yorker and early writer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, her essays, reviews, and short stories could make a reader out of anyone. She's my favorite of the Algonquinites.

Every gay man with a blog wants to be David Sedaris. Don't bother denying it. You'd totally be lying. He has made his living writing short, personal stories; his books are like a collection of 15 wonderfully thought out blog posts. I'm choosing Me Talk Pretty One Day as one of the books because it was the first one I read, though all of his book are essentially the same: a five- or six-page story of a funny event from his childhood, his relationship, or his family.

Travesties is a book I read for class last semester, and I fell in love with it. I already knew that I loved Tom Stoppard, but I wasn't aware of how much until this play. Lenin (in hiding), Joyce (writing Ulysses) and Tzara (founder of the Dada movement) all lived in the same neighboorhood for a few months in 1917. This play pretends that they all hung out at the same library, and their huge, revolutionary ideas play, bounce, and interact with one another. Scenes are performed with the actors speaking in limericks, and the entire plot is a mesh between real life, references to "The Importance of Being Earnest" and Ulysses. I've never seen this play performed, though on the page it sparkles. It's relatively short, too (about 70 pages).

Last on the list is this blog's namesake, A Raw Youth by Dostoevsky. Though more recent translations title the book The Adolescent, I still like RawYouth as a title. I'm going to copy a synopsis from a website that puts it nicely.

Owing to his unstable childhood, Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky, the narrator and adolescent in question, leads a solitary life in which he comes to possess a certain powerful "idea." This idea is quite advanced and unusual for someone his age, but, given his personality, it is a logical development. He also feels "safe in his idea," because he knows he can embrace it and put it to work at any time. He is even arrogant as a result. But he keeps putting it off. Or, rather, life’s events prevent him from going ahead with his idea. His situation is such that he needs to do, understand, or take care of, just one more thing — then he can fall back into his idea. He resents the constant interference of others, but is powerless to resist becoming involved in their intrigues. At the same time, he is the first to admit that he is far too impressionable for his own good, and that the slightest distraction sends him headlong into the nearest trouble.

That's probably not the greatest factual summary, but it does more to explain why I like the book, not mentioning facts like the young widow or the will. It's a story of brash immaturity, freshness, and hidden naivete, uncertain and exuberant all at once.

Just like me.

a non-political post

Through a combination of half-off coupons, boredom, and bad judgement, my sister and I went to Old Country Buffet yesterday.

The food was, as we expected, bland and starchy; not terrible, but not worth the full-price, either. The food was boring, and not worth writing about.

What was worth writing about, however, was the company. There was some baseball game or scrimmage or something that got rained out, and one of the teams went to Old Country Buffet to drown their sorrows in mass quanities of luke-warm cheap meat. Through sheer luck, my sister and I got to sit at a table surrounded by athletic 17 and 18 year old guys.

It was very, very nice.

They talked loudly, posturing their masculinity in the way that guys first sprouting facial hair must. The story I remember most was a bat found in a lockerroom upstate somewhere, and how they caught it in a gym bag and made a hot, slutty girl carry said bag, and she opened it, and what proceded was sophomoric hilarity surpassed by nothing.

It was all very jocular, like a jailbait Jackass.

It was a bit muggy out, and so almost all of them were wearing khaki shorts, and they had wonderful calves. (I'm a big fan of nice legs.) These guys were much more appetizing than the food being offered.

We finished eating, and felt disgusted with ourselves for eating the crap there. My sister went out to the car, while I headed to the bathrooms. On my way to the exits, one of the guys, who must have caught me gawking at his teammates' sculpted legs, or noticed my outfit (small tshirt, buttonfly jeans, and GAP flipflops) (totally more gay-looking than what I normally wear), muttered "faggot" as I was walking by, loud enough for me to hear, but not loud enough to rise over the din of overweight people and a fully-stocked buffet.

As the group of guys near him laughed, I turned around, grabbed the hem of my imaginary dress, curtsied and got the fuck out of there.

'O' is for Outrage

I fully realize that I'm not as political as I could should be. I'm not as political as I used to be. I used to go out and picket, I've protested the war, boycotted companies, written angry letters, pestered my Congressman, I've done all that sort of stuff. Now, not so much. I blame Bush.

I wonder if that was actual strategy, if Karl Rove decided to just go hog-wild and fuck everything up. Social Security? Fucked. Education? Fucked. War? Fucked. Cost of Oil? Fucked. Equal rights for gays? Fucked. Environment? Fucked.

I remember reading an article in the Onion about outrage fatigue. There's just so much to be outraged about, but with so many outraged people, there's no focus. Any attempts just seem futile, and while it's easy to spout hatred, every organization that is trying to combat the ignorance and idiocy of the Bush administration is struggling.

There's just too much to fight. It's hard to pick just one cause and do anything about it. Bush and other high-ranking officials should have been impeached dozens of times, for scores of reasons, but it's just not happening. There's no one cause that sticks, and proves the Republicans are evil.

Until now.

Motherfuckers are messing with Sesame Street.

A House panel has voted to eliminate all public funding for NPR and PBS, starting with "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," and other commercial-free children's shows. If approved, this would be the most severe cut in the history of public broadcasting, threatening to pull the plug on Big Bird, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch.



Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, is allowed to fuck with Sesame Street. It's like Oprah. apple pie, or 'freedom'. You fuck with them, and heads are going to roll. Republicans are always complaining about decency and morals, so what do they do? They decide to cut the most wholesome entertainment in the history of the world.

I really hope this is the thing that makes middle America take note. Suburban housewives are going to look up while listening to CNN while they make lunches for their kids and wonder why they voted for such a douche.

A Jackson Post, But Not Really

Yeah yeah yeah, there was that whole "verdict" thing. I'm sure you're all sick of it by now. I know I am.

Honestly? I don't really know whether he was guilty or not. Sure, it sounded bad, but then again, the media has been completely and utterly biased when it came to the trial. They villified Jackson with the same fever pitch as they praise Dubya. I didn't follow the trial closely, by any means, but I did hear that Michael's bedroom was twice the size of my house, which probably means that sleepovers aren't quite the same as I remember them being, 5 boys in sleeping bags sardined on the floor.

I happened to be watching the news as Michael Jackson rode to hear the verdict. I watched as CNN showed the whole gang, Tito, LaToya, Janet, et all, walk through the metal detectors and enter the courtroom. I had put a tv dinner in the microwave at the time, and, I shit you not, the microwave started beeping when the guards waved the handheld metal detectors over Janet's boob.

Yeah, I was excited.

Don't push me I am not OK

Here's the link to the song I meant to post the other day. It's a yousendit.com link, so it'll only be uploaded for a week. It's an m4u file, so I'm not sure it will work with any music player other than iTunes. Which is good, because iTunes is amazing and you should all have downloaded it by now. Let me know if you have problems with the format, and I'll see what I can do. (It should also work on winamp)

As I said earlier, this song may be overstating my emotions a bit, but it still sets a mood that is/was representative of what it's like to have your (abusive) boyfriend cheat on you while your dad has quintuple bypass surgery.

Jumpers--Sleater Kinney.m4u
(Track #4 from The Woods)

I spend the afternoon in cars
I sit in traffic jams for hours
Don't push me I am not OK

The sky is blue most every day
The lemons grow like tumors they
Are tiny suns infused with sour

Lonely as a cloud
In the Golden State
"The coldest winter that I ever saw
Was the summer that I spent..."

The only substance is the fog
And it hides all that has gone wrong
Can't see a thing inside the maze

There is a bridge adored and famed
The Golden spine of engineering
Who's back is heavy with my weight

Be still this old heart
Be still this old skin
Drink your last drink
Sin your last sin
Sing your last song
About the beginning
Sing your song loud
So the people can hear
Let's Go
Be still this sad day
Be still this sad year
Hope your last hope
Fear your last fear
You're not the only one
Let's Go

My falling shape will draw a line
Between the blue of sea and sky
I'm not a bird I'm not a plane

I took the taxi to the gate
I will not go to school again
Four seconds was the longest wait

Quick Quiz and Link in Song Form

You are

What Rejected Crayon Are You?

Funny thing is, I took this test a few weeks ago, but decided against posting it, what with the 'reading between the lines' and the cryptic martyrdom post. Funny how this online quiz was right.


Also, for those of you not in the know, the deliciously notworksafe queerclick is back.

Am I original? (Yeah)
Am I the only one? (Yeah)
Am I sexual? (Yeah!)
Am I everything you need?
You better rock your body now

Everybody (Yeah)
Rock your body (Yeah)
Everybody
Rock your body right
Queerclick's back, all right!

PS--Yes, I am a huge geek, but you already knew that.

Don't Push Me, I Am Not OK

I talked to Heart the other day, and things were amiable.

Too amiable, in fact.

I talked to him online again last night, to let him know that things were too amiable, and that our conversation wasn't indicative of how things could be between us anymore.

I shouldn't have retracted anything in yesterday's post. He is as bad as you think he is.

But then again, I suppose if you tell someone that there's no chance of getting back together because he is an abusive boyfriend, he's going to get angry, and express that anger online.

I'm willing to take my share of the blame for the unhealthiness of this relationship, but there is NO FUCKING WAY I was the abusive one in the relationship, despite Heart's claims to the contrary.

Ugh. Men are scum.

Cool, Tall, Vulnerable and Luscious

While at work yesterday, a Liz Phair song kept playing through my head.

"I want to be cool, tall, vulnerable and luscious
I would have it all if I'd only had this much"

And I do and I would.

Despite all your claims to the contrary, I don't think it was all Heart's fault. I think I marginalized him too much, and probably didn't present the story as well as I could have. I was still hurting, and put together a blog post that painted him in a worse light than he deserves.

No, I'm not forgiving him for what he did. No, I'm not giving in too nicely. But we talked yesterday, and he's hurting. He's apologized many times, and sweetly, too. I don't know if he's read the blog lately, but he knows he did wrong and wants to make it up to me but doesn't know how.

Basically, I'm saying to ease up on your opinions of this guy. He's not all bad. You'll just have to trust me on that.

Don't get me wrong. Thanks for saying it. I'm insecure about my relationships, and definitely needed to hear that it wasn't my fault, and that I'm a catch, and all that.

Ah hell. I don't know. I probably sound like a battered wife in this post, defending her man, which isn't what I'm going for at all. Aw fuck it, nevermind.



When I started seeing Heart, my readership slowly dropped by over a third, and now that I'm single again, my stats are rising again. You guys must like it when I'm lonely.

Stream of Consciousness and an MP3 (maybe)

So I was going to post an MP3 by Sleater-Kinney, who are one of my favorite bands, except that their new cd doesn't affect me in the way their previous ones have, but I'm on dialup here at home and it's taking eons for the damn thing to upload to the school's server. The dialup here is slower than a grandma behind the wheel, it's so terrible you have no idea.

After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity I figured I would write a post in one go, stream-of-conscious style, while I'm waiting. Not that I particularly enjoy the stream-of-conscious type of writing, but someone on my LJ buddy list did one while writing procrastinating a paper on Joyce so I figured I'd give it a go, even though I'll probably do it wrong. I think I like using the word procrastinating as a verb. The song I'm trying to post is one of three or four on the album that I really like. I'll probably find the lyrics and post them once the song is done uploading. That is, if it's ever done uploading. The lyrics don't correllate directly to what I'm feeling, but there's a definite vibe that matches up with what I'm feeling at the moment, prickly guitars and urgent hushed voices. Goddamnit why hasn't it loaded yet?

I always thought that blogging shouldn't be an alternative to therapy. Sure it's good to get things down on the page, sure it's cathartic, but it doesn't beat one of those ugly couches and an obnoxiously large bill. I'm not paying you to deal with all my shit. Hell this afternooon I read a book by Biz Stone about blogging that said the same thing; I should know better. But really, now that things with Heart have broken down, all I want is for my ex, the one who's usually referred to as the Ex though when he guestblogged for me during Spring Break he told you his name (Peter) to come back and date me again. Dating him was one of the happiest points in my life. Hell, I just want to talk to him. Both he and Heart know of this blog, and read it on occasion, so this is probably some sort of passive-aggressive way of letting him know to drop me a line if he's interested. I don't know how they keep so nonchalant; I know that if either of them had a blog I'd be checking it daily, but that's because I'm a Leo and I think everything is about me. When Heart said that I didn't make him feel desired, that was really shocking to me, because I always thought that I could make a guy feel wanted. I'm a modest guy, and am rare to toot my own horn but even I'm willing to admit to being a pretty damn good boyfriend. I mean, I once made a scrapbook of our relationship for Peter's birthday, filling with it poems I wrote, the lyrics to our song(s), some art done by my friends inspired by us the couple, snapshots of us, and stuff like that.

Oh my goodness Peter just logged on AIM this second. I wonder if it's a sign from above that I should talk to him, or a sign that he usually works the late shift. Maybe I should IM him... ah hell I won't. The last thing I need right now is to find out that my first relationship, the one I've idealized in my head for so long, was all just in my head, and in fact I am a bad boyfriend. I doubt it, but there's the possibility. I was thinking earlier today that maybe I would ask him to guest blog a post sometime about whether or not I was a good boyfriend, but quickly realized what a bad idea that was. It's just asking for trouble, and would put him in all sorts of awkward positions, and I can't guarantee that his answer would be good for my psyche. And I'm all for indulging my psyche at the moment.

Goddamnit I'm getting sick of waiting for the damn thing to load. It's a good song and all, but I don't know if it's worth waiting the twenty minutes or whatever for is for it to load.

Fuck it I'll just wait and try again tomorrow. I mean later today, since I always write posts late at night, and it's just turned midnight. Oh well. Sorry to bore you like that.

Take Another Little Piece of my Heart

As far as you and me go, I'm having to re-evaluate how I define relationships...and how I define cheating.

It's pretty rare that a line like that comes up in a conversation and bad times don't ensue.

Yep, that's right. I was dumped. Well, I don't know if I was dumped, but it's off. Via an AIM conversation, again, no less. That gives me a perfect 100% when it comes to the other person ending the relationship and using AIM to do it.

Anyway, I don't think you should feel the way I think you're going to feel about learning that I had sex with someone else.

Why gee. Excuse me.

In a nutshell:

Heart meets up with a friend (whom he's had a crush on, off and on, for about 8 mos)
They go out drinking (though Heart told me he couldn't drink, because of his meds)
Afterwards, he invites Heart over to his place to watch a movie (basically synonymous with 'wanna fool around' in the college crowd)

And here's the kicker.

When he asked me what I wanted to do, I told him, if you want to take advantage of me, now's the time to do it.

What a sweetheart, eh?

Let's not be all dramatic about this

I wish I would have said no. No, let's be all dramatic about this. Yes let's scream and fight and really get things out in the open. But I didn't.

But by the end, he was the one who got more emotional than I did. I took it remarkably well, to the point where I'm ashamed that I wasn't in tears, just misty-eyed, and by the end, he was.

Yet somehow it still comforts me just to be chatting with you... even when I should feel awful. I almost want you to dump me, just so it will hit home how much I...
Oh, I hope you realize that this is over. This hurt me way too much. I just can't...
Then I guess it does no harm in finishing what I was about to say.
How much I love you.
Thank you.
But that can't change things.

But I think it was this exchange that made it easier for me to realize that it wasn't working out.

And maybe if our relationship had been more passionate, I wouldn't have been compelled to sleep with someone... I wouldn't have felt like I was undesirable, despite the fact that supposedly have a boyfriend. This is definitely not about me being a bad boyfriend.
But this is DEFINITELY not about ME being a bad boyfriend.

I'm sure I will have plenty more to say about that in the future. But as for now, my dad's coming home from the hospital around noon (too soon, in our opinion) and I've got to go help make sure things are ready for him.

The week began with my dad rushed to the hospital with fear of a heart attack, and the week ended with Heart breaking my heart. What wonderful parallelism.

Acid Tooth

I keep on remembering one story about my dad's eating habits.

(For those of you just joining us here at RawYouth, my father had quadruple bypass surgery yesterday, after falsely being diagnosed with having a heart attack this weekend. He had other ailments, which mimicked a heart attack, but while they were futzing around, they realized that even though it wasn't a heart attack he had, chances are that he would have had a heart attack relatively soon.)

While I was home for Spring Break, the nuclear family travelled to my grandparents' neck of the woods and went out to eat to celebrate the death of their Lord and Savior. Everyone else split some appetizers, but my dad ordered a piece of French Silk pie, saying that he was always too full to enjoy dessert after the meals.

My sister and I, sitting next to each other, gave him the evil eye, and made incredulous faces to one another, muttering things about his diabetes. My mom, overhearing us, and responding to everyone else's mutterings and disbelief that a grown man would order dessert first, said "Well, he's a grown man. He's allowed to make his own decisions."

Even though I don't think that particular piece of pie did as much damage as the fried fish and oyster sampler plate he had for dinner, I can't help but be surprised by the fact that we were surprised that he was at a dangerously high risk for a heart attack.

I'm a tree that grows hearts

The doctors said the surgery would take 3-6 hours.

It took 5 hours and 45 minutes.

It ended up being a quadruple bypass, not quintuple.
It also ended up a success.

After a while, they just stop counting

Quintuple bypass surgery. I didn't realize that they went up that high.


Keep your fingers crossed this afternoon.