2004-07-29 - 3:14 p.m.

Stressful day at work, but I seem to be rising above it. I've got a lot of work to do and I work on two PCs. One of the PCs I share with another developer and also with (of all things) the janitor. The janitor (let's just call him P.) likes to play online gin and he cusses and mutters and the whole nine yards. I had to ask him to stop so I could use the PC for a while. It was a major victory for me as I hate telling people to do things or, in this case, to stop doing things. I'm a classic "avoider" personality, just like my dear old dad.


I was thinking a little more about "desolation" and "aloneness" and it occurred to me that my experiences with this have not always been as negative as my last entry might have implied. The truth of the matter is that I have some actually not so bad memories of silent aloneness as well.

For example, I remember during one particularly hot Summer while I was in High School I went to this part at the other end of town that was thrown by a girl I barely knew. The party was pretty lame as the apartment was really small and there were so many people there that you could barely move, talk or even think from the heat. I ended up staying very late because I had come with this guy who was my best friend at the time (let's call him "Used Car Salesman" because that is what he was doing last time I heard about him) and his girlfriend (let's call her "Girl Who Goes to Latin America with Her Lesbian Lover only to Discover that she Isn't Really a Lesbian and was Just Doing it to Annoy Her Parents and then Freaked Out Thinking She'd be Stuck in Guatemala Forever" - oh, wait, that is way too long. Let's just call her "Red"). Well, Used Car Salesman decides to get way too drunk and flirt with other girls and Red decides to be a doormat and just wait around while Used Car Salesman is a dick to her. Eventually they have a huge fight and I just stand around looking like I'm from Mars because I don't know most of the people at the part and the ones I do know I don't like very much. Within 15 minutes of arriving I realized I wasn't going to get laid (which is probably the main thing a High School guy looks for in a party) so I just wanted to tie on a good buzz and then go home and look at some porn.

However, I end up waiting most of the night for Red and Used Car Salesman to finally decide to leave and Red get's into the car to drive us home and I get into the back seat as usual, but who is next to me, but Used Car Salesman? Isn't he suppose to be up front with Red? Doesn't the driver's S/O usually ride in front? "Whatever" I say to myself and we drive by Used Car Salesman's house and drop him off and then Red says: "Are you going to make me feel like a chauffeur for the rest of the evening or are you going to come up front?" So I get into the front seat and we start driving around aimlessly, certainly not towards my house, while she complains about Used Car Salesman and what a jerk he is and how he doesn't even try to understand her and I just sit there nodding and being supportive and in my hormone-addled, ignorant, teen-age brain all I can think is "I think I've got a shot with her", which, of course, I didn't because I wasn't a jerk and Red was in the mood for a jerk or else why would she be with Used Car Salesman in the first place?

Finally she drops me off and I am too wired to sleep so I turn on the TV and watch River's Edge which probably seems trite these days but at the time was a complete revelation to me. I felt so much like those characters that it really got under my skin in a creepy way. Crispin Glover seemed like a God to me that night. After that was over, I went into my back yard for one last cigarette (my parents frowned on my smoking so I always did it outside) and maybe it was all the liquor and stress and heat and emotional stimulation and frustrated sexual desire, but I just felt like the quiet (it must have been 4AM or so) that had settled on the town was actually speaking to me. It was the weirdest thing and slightly scary but totally cool at the same time. Ah, to be a teenager again...

Reading Huck Finn's DNC Speech
Wishing that this weekend will be extra long
Plotting who said anything about plotting??? Hey, look over there! [runs away]

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