5.18
At some point in life, he figures, shit just materializes out of nowhere. Three hundred and ninety four days, for all the three hundred and ninety four days that he’s known her, nothing good has come of it. All he does now is sit at his desk and ponder what she’s doing. Is she making photocopies of something? Is she combing her hair? Is she sipping her coffee, held delicately in her small porcelain hands? Hands that, once on a rather fortunate occasion, found their way to him as she tripped over his mess of power cords and wires resembling the root of a very large tree, and she made the smallest of all possible noises, the most delicious noise he’s ever heard, rivaling even that of a cute puppy whimpering, the sweet sound that escaped her lips as her hands grabbed his shoulders for support. Her emerald eyes widening as the heel of her stiletto refused to leave the entanglement, her form shuffling down the rows of cubicles, her first and last encounter with Mr. William McEnrow, programming, fourth floor. And he didn’t even know her name.
Put it this way, he argues in his head, dead end job, unable to pay rent, why not throw yourself off the roof of your forty four story office building? He taps the ashes off his cigarette and watches the gray specks fall off the edge, into oblivion. The sheer orgasmic brilliance of dying, he didn’t know that he’s suicidal. He sticks the cigarette between his lips, checks his watch, pulls loose his stripped tie, William McEnrow, age twenty nine, is going to jump off the roof of a building, July 14th, eleven fifty four AM.
He stretches out his arms and feels like Christ nailed to the cross. The wind plays, like a sadistic tease, with his hair, running her chilly fingers between each strand and tickling gently his skin. The roof below pushes up on him, the sky above pushes down on him, he raises his head to a cloudless blue, the last thing he’d ever see, and he burns the image into his mind. Closing his eyes, he slips headfirst into resoundingly empty space and just falls.
People see him through their glass windows. Anonymous fellow committing suicide, always a pleasant surprise in the morning, and then his friend chokes on his coffee, throws the cup aside and plasters his face to the window in horror.
As if divine Providence existed, as if right at that moment the God that’s abandoned McEnrow taps him gently on the shoulder and whispers, “My child, open your eyes, your Eve awaits you.”
And the last thing he’d ever see ends up being her. Three hundred and ninety five days, and the bit that shakes him out of his suicidal plunge is the bit where she’s looking back. The folder slips from her fingers, and the glass between them disappears. A great gust of wind, still the same tease, throws the contents of the folder into the sky. She reaches for the paper, more for him than the paper. Like his mother’s broom, invading the little nooks and crannies of what used to be his childhood privacy; the wind picks her up and throws her out after him.
Checking and hoping are two different things entirely. Tell that to him though, he checks every morning, eight-thirty sharp, for her.
It’s raining, it’s wet and all the damn taxis in the world seem to have found a passenger and have the need to deliberately splash him with water as they pass by. His umbrella broke on forty fifth street and he walked another two blocks before giving up the prospect of getting there on time and of not getting wet.
“Taxi!” People are staring at him, he could care less. He flings his briefcase wildly above his head in attempt to flag down a taxi. The buckles on his black leather briefcase slip from their slick confines and send all of his papers bellowing into the soggy New York rain. Like confetti on New Year’s, a day’s worth of work falls onto the sidewalk. His briefcase drops to his side, he blows a few strands of his wet bangs marring his vision
6.19
I was told once to take care when you say things like, “I don’t know.” Or, “I love you.” I fucked up this time, didn’t I. Too much care, I suppose.
At this point, he considers slowly, does it matter anymore? The tiny voice, (why is it always tiny? Why can’t it be a big voice that pesters the living daylights out of him with his own insecurities?) the tiny voice that’s been around since the day his father upped and walked out on his mother and him, that tiny voice that’s been telling him for a good decade or two, to just get away from it all, the tiny voice says, slowly, just as slowly as he, to stop, to stop thinking.
I’m trying to write, and failing.
I’m trying to love, and failing.
I’m trying to stop, and failing.
I’m trying to fail, and failing.
I’m trying to try, and failing.
I’ll stop. Now. That it’s all over.
Good game tomorrow. Shame I’ll miss it.
I’m hungry. How the hell am I hungry?
Words and printed type and my life just follow.
So, here’s how this works. I don’t know how it works. I’m tired. I need a shower. I smell. I’m hungry and I don’t know why. Tell me something, honey, tell me something…
I don’t why I was so weird before, and why I’m so normal now. Now, that I’m calm and breathing, calm and thinking. Do pictures of Ricky Meyer really make me go crazy, or is it the inevitable deterioration of my own mind that makes me go crazy. One or the other, this Japanese techno shit is good, I was going to go ‘lol’ but I decided against it.
Japanese shit is good.
The only thing I’ve ever been truthful to is my Microsoft word document. It never says anything back. The only thing I want now is my stuffed dog. It never says anything back either.
“So,” his voice is a slow, melodic drawl. She can’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses. She catches the can of soda with condensation clinging to the metal and feels the cold, wetness seep between her fingers. “So…”
He pops the tab and the soda hisses, short and crisp, and dies as he kisses the lip of the can. She can almost hear the carbon bubbling, fizzing, she opens her own. “So,” she mimics, “so, so.”
“So.” He replies, letting out a loud sigh of satisfaction, setting the can on the jet black roof of the car, blisteringly hot from the August sun.
“So.” She’s not willing to change the topic of conversation. They look at each other.
“So.”
The car doors click open, together. They sit down in the slightly warm, beige leather seats, together. She turns the ignition, he buckles his seat belt. She flicks the air conditioning on, he twists the radio for a station. She steps on the gas, he leans back and feels the cold air coming through the slits. The car moves, slowly, down the block and makes a turn on Canal. The vehicle moves with a sticky slowness down the Chinatown street, people and street vendors clog the scene, she is used to it.
Sometimes the stuff you think about seems so obvious, you’re surprised no one else thought of it first.
Smoke on the Water comes on, he drums his fingers to the riff. She listens.
6.9
I’m going to make you a thousand paper cranes.
One for every thing I love about you. One for every thing I wanted to say to you. One for every moment I spend thinking about you, though, I have to say, a thousand doesn’t do that number justice.
One for every thing you don’t love about me. One for every thing you never wanted to say to me. One for every moment you never spent thinking about me, though, I have to say, a thousand doesn’t do that number justice, either.
One for all the wasted opportunities, one for all the little glances and touches, one for all the things between us and one for everything else.
One for all the things I wish I would’ve done. One for all things that I wished I would’ve said. One for all things I wish that would’ve happened.
Sadomasochist
Mandarin Final – Study for on Tuesday, Wednesday
Physics Test – Study for today, Tuesday
Chem Regents – Study for in general, 17th
Math Regents – Study for in general, not a real problem
Yellow Book – Work on over week
Prufock Things – Do ‘em with the Yellow Book
Drafting Final Project – Just try to get it done, alright? With as many parts as we planned to have originally…..(and don’t forget to copy someone’s notes…>.<)
Epton Test – Speak to him, take it on Wednesday, or something…
Get a dress
Make Miles a DVD
Perhaps it’s good that I’ve found an outlet, making paper cranes, to my emotional needs. Makes the keyboard labor less, makes my mind labor less, sharpens my ability to concentrate, and to, inevitably, fold paper.
I mean, like really, really, really, really. Just, shush. I’ll deal with it. Deal with it. Deal with it.
5.2
I’m supposed to be going to a party. Eighty dollars on the table meant to buy her a present, write her a card (maybe), show up, hang out, do something. But I really don’t feel like going.
Basically, I’m going to spam bad writing till I come up with something good. I’m trying to overcome writer’s block, but it’s exceedingly difficult.
Okay, stop, breath, breath, breath, breath. One drink too less, something like that. Just calm the fuck down.
Am sleepy, can’t sleep, rather, don’t want to. Think of him every time I so much as attempt to sleep, bothered by fact.
Restless.
I’m so tired, my arms and limbs and everything, just aches. I LOST MY FUCKING PHONE! Damnit, and gave back that kid his DS, you know, karma? Whatever happened to that shit? Whatever happened to this karma shit, huh?
And you know, if you don’t keep a fucking eye on him, he just disappears, he just goes, it’s so fucking…..aggravating, tiring, I’m slowly dying, I think.
Well, so, I’m just too tired to fucking care. I’m just too tired to care. My grades, him, my phone, my…life….just too tiring, too tiring. And fucking physics SAT II. Shit, shit, shit. I’m through with everything except the necessities, like eating.
Puppies are the cutest things in the world.
God, that stupid fuck, had to shoot me in the neck.
The way I figure it, eventually I’m going to go take a shower, but I’m so dead tired, I might just pass out on the floor and wake up tomorrow early. There’s the faint residue of my paint on my fingers that I can’t seem to wash off no matter how hard I try. My clothes feel damp with sweat, stiff with dry paint and sticky with filth but I’m too tired to remove myself from these cumbersome bounds. I have work tomorrow. My hair feels pasty between my fingers, straw-like and awful with paint working in between my scalp and the individual strands. Every time I run my hand through my hair, I feel the bumps where the little paint pellets struck and it hurts for the brief moment of contact.
I’ve gotten used to, I suppose, the great outdoors. Pennsylvania, or the middle of nowhere, is not a place I’d like to live in. The wide expanse of sky, the utter silence of grass shifting in the wind, the stretches of pure white clouds and how picturesque, as if out of a book of photos in Barnes and Noble, everything sends a shiver of delight and horror down my spine, as I stand there, carrying my rental paintball gun, feeling the weight of my belt tug at my waist and the mask, resting, ill-fitted and resting along my noise, my cheeks, my forehead.
There’s something pleasant, calming, once you get used to it, about a place like New York. I find remote pleasure in the sea of bodies I swim in, in the jam packed subway cars and the crowded streets, the blaring horns and the open windows, the restaurants and shops and lights and the bellowing smoke from the subterranean mysteries, the orange clad workers, the cones and the taxis, a marvel of civilization, these things we’ve built armed with our opposable thumbs and knowledge, which, eventually, I surmise, may be our downfall. Temperament, is a scary thing.
She is a scary thing. I know not what to think of her. I’ll let her be I suppose and just speak my mind. It irks me. Really.
Today, the students of my foreign exchange class performed a play. They’ve been working very ardently, trying their best to put on the best performance for their parents and teachers. Staying after school many days of the week, my classmates built an impressive set.
7.2
So, I met this kid my sophomore year who taught me the meaning of unrequited love. And then, I met this kid my sophomore year who taught me the meaning of actual love.
Not really sure anymore. This Japanese techno thing is claming, calming, ha. I’m too tired, brain dead, going to go insane. Going to go insane in a really calming, claming way. I like him. Yeah. Whatever. Gotta wake up. Gotta pack. Gotta study. Gotta read.
Forgot the other thing I was going to say.
Oh well.
The way life works out, it’s really funny. Because you write down all of this shit and you think about all of this shit and you tell someone all of this completely random shit, but the when the shit really happens, you’re not inclined, I’m not inclined to say a damn word about any of it. Not a single flipping word about anything to anyone. It’s like every developed into some sort of a state secret and my life is no like a tabloid newspaper of painfully unrequited love. It’s like, my life suddenly has purpose and my life is suddenly life. Or, is it just something completely unremarkable, something completely natural and normal and sane, to be where I am right now and nowhere else?
It’s all a really “What the fuck do I do now?” sorta moment and I have no answer to the damn question and that in it self is miserably painful. Thursday, or tomorrow, actually, is the semifinal game with Germany and Turkey? I hope they do alright.
Someone’s going to see you and they’re going to be like what the fuck?
I profess to some literary talent, but that’s only to save myself from the inevitable failure that is my life.
Times like this I wish he’d shut up.
That’s pretty much it. My life in a can of tuna fish. And the funny thing is, she can probably hear my keyboard, which is another annoying thing. Did I mention I no longer have doors? And this internet is a bitch, and I don’t want to deal with it, but it insists on not leaving me alone and it insists on dying every once in a while. I pray that I be some figment of some fanciful dream.
Gosh, the world is a weird place.
I’m lacking the will to type, type, type about my problems, but I have a lot of them. Whatever it is I thought I had for him, I lost it. Like a needle in a haystack, I’m going to have to find it all over again.
Mine, my boy. I have one of those now, another one, I should say. But, I can call him my boy, mine, all mine and be certain of it. It’s a strange, strange feeling, but I think I’ll get used to it. (God, I hope he makes it back alive.)
I don’t feel quite like telling anyone, because it’s nice just knowing that he’s there, and no one else needs to know. It’s a secret, it’s a definite secret that no one shall know but us, it’ll just be like that, just like that.
I miss him only when people bring him up in conversation. And people have a tendency to do it quite often, but now that it is all over, I’m alright. I’m all right.
He was a pleasant thing to have around I must say, a pleasant thing to have around.
When I think Call of Duty 4, when I think physics, when I think tall, blond, German kids, when I think freshman year, when I think ninth period free, when I think of flower stems, when I think of him, I shall remember.
And, here I am, after that wonderful proclamation, I’m writing about him all over again. Damn. Damn. Damn.
Hear his voice one last time, have him pull my hair just one last time, look up to speak to him because he’s a foot taller than me just one last time. Just one last time, like some forsaken lover, or something.
A brief moment in passing, just one last time, of someone, something, some whatever that I found endearingly beautiful.
Well, this is goodbye. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. No more shall I think of you, no more shall I ponder, no more shall I lust and wonder where thou heart lies, where thou mind sleeps, no more, no more, no more shall I traverse on the edge of peril, the lip of a doomed fate, no more, no more, for this is goodbye.
It’s a bit weird, but the best part of that lighter is the noise it makes. When it opens, when it snaps shut, when it opens, when it snaps shut, when it opens, when it snaps shut. The noises things make are just so tempting, so good, so smooth and smooth and shut.
You know, honest to god, I don’t feel like forgetting him. I don’t feel like letting go of him, though I really should. It’s terrible, the way I feel, right now, but god, I don’t want to loose a single bit, a single itty bitty what have you of my unfortunate feelings. I’m not even sure if it’s directed towards him, or I just feel better showering my unrelenting emotional distress on something tangible as opposed to an anime character with gorgeous hair and light blue eyes, or the one with black hair and black eyes and goes snap snap and lights shit on fire. Maybe, I don’t know, I can’t even gauge my own feelings anymore, love is like cocaine, like heroin, like smoking, like drugs, it’s like a fucking drug that I can’t get off of. I’m addicted to loving Ricky Meyer. Am I? Possibly, possibly not. It’s just strange, how I feel right now. It’s like stepping on the fine line between the past and future and the present is a dream that I can’t interpret, a hazy dream that I’m having.
And so the world turns and turns and turns and that comic strip gives me so much hope, and yet I feel like a loser.
This is the way the world works, I was told, that I couldn’t do anything about the wars, about the deaths, about the thousand other things that marred this planet and its people. And I could care less.
Call it ignorance or what have you, I’m willing to ride my grudge out against the world in a really fucking masochistic fashion
July 1st, 4:23 AM, she checks her watch.
“So,” lady with a clipboard, a stern look and a well chewed ballpoint pen begins, “what are your credentials?” At this point, he was tempted to say none, no credentials whatsoever.
Miller is caught in a dream. He is groping thin air as he falls into a vortex of bad childhood memories. His sixth birthday, he almost drowned in the pool. His senior prom, he kissed a girl he didn’t like just so he could know what it felt like. His high school graduation, he almost tripped on stage to get his diploma, Marsha Willson laughed. He lands on a soft bed of flowers, flowers as black as night, as stunning as death, a perniciousness that he couldn’t resist.
The slow, twittering breeze of the fan gives her Goosebumps, tickles her almost sunburned skin and moves along. She is sitting on the front porch, the August heat enveloping her lithe and nimble body, brittle and fragile, her thin ankles and loose wrists, her freckles and lopsided carrot pigtails. In her hand, a dripping ice cream pop, her tongue, like a frog, works fast to lick up the rolling beads of artificial blue.
Her brother watches with perverted pleasure as his blossoming sister takes the entire length of the ice cream pop into her mouth. Her kittenish noises, her tenuous eyelids stretch over her earthy green eyes as the blueberry treat slowly retracts from her mouth, a delicate line of saliva runs from the corner of her mouth to the pop.
Incest occurs to him for the first time and he feels like a toddler, uneducated and lost in the world of sexual deviancy. Below her formless sundress, he sees her tiny nipples, and imagines them pink, ripe, hard, like bug bites. Below the yellow and green patterned fabric, he imagines the feel of underwear, a slight dampness, perhaps.
He can’t touch her. He won’t touch her. Her little tongue, a pink, fleshy wonder emerges from behind her gates of teeth, gently licking at the tip of the pop. He moans, a little louder than he should and feels himself hardening, glad that they are home alone. She begins to suck, rhythmically. In, out, in, out, trails of blue on her tongue, her saliva coating the blue pop, he hears the noises of her work through the screen door and wonders if the innocent little thing on the porch knows the evils and desires she stirs within him.
Right, can we just not talk about it? Sure. Alright.
I want to bump into him, at some point or another, late in life, and just tell him everything.
5.20
The one duty we owe to
history is to re-write it.
– Oscar Wilde
MAKE HISTORY
Vote Kat Zi
for
Junior Caucus 08-09