A Realization

I could jerk off to hundreds or thousands of beautiful women online, but it won’t take away the pain of losing you.

Romantic, no?

Chill

I’m particularly wired today. Don’t know what it is, but I’m practically leaping out of my own skin. And that’s one more reason I went for a walk again today at around 4 PM. I do this to “take an ergo-break” and stretch the legs after many hours sitting on my ass at my cushy desk job.

I have been, and was once again this particular walk, accosted by a pretty woman peddling Greenpeace memberships. They’re awfully persistent–flirty but all business. But this time for what ever reason I was flustered. Usually I’m cool and can shake them off after some casual chit chat. But this time, she snared me with those eyes. Like I said, she was pretty, but not more than usual. She even told me her name, but I forget what it was–something like Stephanie I think.

But even so, I couldn’t speak. I was a stammering fool for no reason I could tell. I nearly panicked. My heart raced and I began to sweat. I wasn’t cool. But she charged on ahead with her spiel, either oblivious or otherwise unforgiving of my discomfort.

I finally obtained my coffee without further incident, but not without being twice more assaulted by another Greenpeace associate.

I went back to work.

Blip! Up came my Yahoo messenger. It was my hot friend. Everybody has a hot friend, right? Well, she messages me every so often, usually to talk about boys and relationships and whatnot. I think she does it just to torture me. Or, maybe she’s trying to make me a better person.

Well this time she starts out by asking, “Ken, what do you think about nipple piercings?” to which I could barely manage a reply of “umm.. not planning on getting any myself.”

“I’m thinking of getting both my nipples pierced, but nobody will go with me,” she said. Piercings weird me out, and I live a thousand miles away, but if not for these things I’d be there lending my friendly support if you know what I mean.

Yep. She must do it to torture me. I don’t really think of nipple piercings as particularly attractive. In fact, I strongly prefer un-pierced to pierced. But this friend–well, there’s just something about her that… well… once again I became that nervous wreck I was earlier that day when simply trying to get my coffee.

I left work later than usual, but it was still as soon as I could. As soon as I got back I slipped into my jogging shorts and ran around the block a few times. Then I had a couple slices of pizza and did forty push-ups, followed by a couple dozen crunches. I took a shower, painstakingly washing every little square inch. I combed my hair. I brushed my teeth. I even flossed. I think she’s trying to make me better.

To women, men are like projects. Can I find a woman who doesn’t try to change me too much? Or maybe I’m just changing myself?

I’m still a fucking wreck! I’ve got to chill. I could have a cocktail and sleep, but I still know I’ll wake up at three in the morning and start thinking about her all over again. Hot friends are such a pain in the ass sometimes.

Great Expectations

I’m starting to think I’m expecting too much out of life. Maybe it’s because I’m of the atheistic “I’ve but one life to live; I gotta live it” kind of philosophy. For me there are no second chances. I don’t believe in reincarnation or heaven, so I’ve got to make my impact while I’m alive.

My current conflict is selfishness. I could slavishly devote myself to the good of the world and the betterment of the lives of others, or I could selfishly devote my life to me and only me. Clearly there’s a balance to be had.

What I feel I ought to do and what I feel I want to do have been very much at odds lately in pretty much every aspect of my life lately. What I perceive as an unusually orthogonal relationship between the two things has led to restlessness, boredom, and depression.

I’m tired of my job. I’m tired of my romantic relationship. I’m tired of where I live. And frankly, I have no right to be tired of these things. I am, pragmatically, in a very good situation.

Still, I can’t help but think I’m doing what I do for the wrong reasons. I spend a lot of time working to make money. I make money to afford a house. I’m in a romantic relationship to get married. I live in the town I live in order to settle here.

Yet, I know I don’t really want any of these things. Why am I working so hard for an end I’m not interested in?

Sentimental Education

I’m realizing it’s not just my generation that’s the generation of disenchanted whiny emo losers like myself:

If I had a woman to love me, I might have achieved something. What are you laughing for? Love is the food and air of genius. It’s powerful emotions that produce great works of art. As for looking for the woman of my dreams, I’ve no intention of doing that. Besides, even if I find her, she’ll only reject me. I belong to the race of the disinherited, and I shall die without knowing whether the treasure within me is diamond or paste! — Sentimental Education, by Gustave Flaubert

Frédéric, the main character of Sentimental Education, utters the aforementioned passage this in the very beginning of the book. I can’t remember if he grows up or not, but re-reading the passage makes me wonder, ‘When will I grow up?’

To The Memory of Your Memory

Lee wrote a letter, addressed to nobody.

Ruanne,

Imagine we’re in a world where everyone can say what they mean. In such a world, the burdensome thing I might say to you is this:

I had another dream about you last night, and woke up missing you terribly.  I mean, you’re quite literally on my mind every day. Every spare moment is devoted to you, your friendship to me, the vibrance of your being. I suppose this means I’ve been in love with you. I suspect you’ve always known.

It all began five years ago, when we first met. Back then, I was twenty seven. You were seventeen. I never really thought of you more than a friend in those days. I guess our age difference excluded us from being more than friends–perhaps it still does, I’m not sure. But as we grew to be close friends these last few years I began to love you, your youthfulness, your beauty, and your energy.

Now that you’ve gotten engaged and moved away to Texas, perhaps for good, I’ve come to realize more and more that we can never be together. Now it’s official. It’s not like you could change your mind now; previously I could delude myself into thinking such a posibility for us existed; now it really is all fantasy and none of it possibility, let alone reality.

It’s been nearly a year and a half since I’ve last seen you, and you’ve haunted me nearly every waking moment since then. Now, your letters are starting to come less frequently. I’m starting to forget what you look like. Even that seemingly permanent image of you in the snow, looking like a pixie, is beginning to fade from memory. It seems every bit of you is trying to erase itself from me.

Until that happens, I live with the warmth, pain, and light your beauty brings to me everytime I think about you. You’re free in my mind to become what ever you want to be. You can be even more beautiful than before. Your smile can become brighter and your laugh more musical. You could very well become the perfect woman.

I don’t want it that way thought. I want the impossible–I want my memory of you to change as you change, and this I can only have if you stay in my life. I think of this as an unfair wish, to both of us actually. I’m wishing upon myself more heartbreak, and wishing upon you love you can never accept or provide for.

But I’ll fight every urge in my mind to perfect you.

I only have to ask, how do I stop this?

Lee

Tree of Knowledge

Younger Kenny, still bleary eyed at noon after another college Friday night, placed beer bottle after empty beer bottle into a plastic trash bag.

It was a moment of sleepwalking almost, as so many of his moments are, when his actions are semi-conscious and so are his thoughts. His actions are nearly automatic, and his thoughts are involuntary at best.

In fact, they’re so involuntary they might as well be a sort of psychic rape. His thoughts are forced on him, and then he feels guilty and dirty for having thought them.

In his delirium, he couldn’t help but picture (like in Evil Dead nearly) a young, delicious woman being raped by like the Tree of Knowledge, not physically, but psychically–karmically almost–vile knowledge like seed for impure, evil thoughts flowing into her consciousness while she struggles to maintain her innocence, her very ignorance.

He chuckled inappropriately to himself for several minutes, on and off, as he cleared away trash and other evidence of the prior night’s drunken debauchery. Yet, as quickly as the unwholesome although amusing thoughts came and went, he was overcome by another barrage of half-formed imagery and whispers from his subconscious–a remnant of sleep almost, like hypnagogia.

He was overwhelmed almost by the minutiae of life, the just near infinitum of little perfunctory actions that must take place at every day like brushing one’s teeth, bathing, and putting on clothes. And every week one would take out the trash and sort out the recycling, and every month one would sit down to pay the phone bill, the rent and everything.

There would be people he’d have to see like his dear parents and his little brother. Yes, they’d be needing his attention every so often. And just biking to school, and going to class, and studying for those meaningless philosophy exams.

He continued his cleaning throughout these thoughts, and each empty beer can began to feel like a massive oil drum. Later, he began to study for Monday’s exam. As he resumed reading through Hart’s Concept of Law the pages felt as heavy as mattresses, and his whole arm tensed and moved with the effort of lifting just one single page after another.

“You maybe have some weed, or a glass of wine, watch some porno,” mumbled Piotr the Ukrainian in his jocular way. “Spank it, and sleep it a little better, so you see?”

The advice, while well-heeded wasn’t enough. The obligations will always be there, thought Kenny. And not only just these obligations, it’s those nagging, psychic intrudes that seem to plague the weary and young. Piotr had a steady dame. Lee had Ruanne to think about while he cried himself to sleep. Mordecai probably thinks about languages as he drifts off to sleepyland. And I–I just think about being raped by the tree of knowledge, he thought. Kenny chuckled to himself again for a while as he studied, and the day seemed a little better.

Masturbation Day

This post continues some fiction I’m working on. Just a word of warning, this post may be graphic and offensive to many.

Sunday is Masturbation Day, at least it is for not-so-God-fearing slightly a-moral atheists.

Not to say that masturbation is a-moral; if anything, it’s a moral imperative.

My good friend Lee Derby, born and raised Methodist (albeit agnostic by nature) still has a lot of guilt, and unchecked lust. The guilt and lust is something nearly everybody has in nearly every society. The two go hand-in-hand, lust and guilt. We’re expected to deny our very nature, our very inherent lustfulness.

Do you know the seven deadly sins? They’re Lust (of course), Avarice, Pride, Gluttony, Sloth, Wrath, and Envy.

“I like the seven deadly sins–I think they’re fun,” I said a pro pos of nothing whilst having coffee with Lee and Mor. “and I think I’m addicted to semi-colons.”

“Tsk–semi-colons?” scoffed Mor, a linguist.

“Why do you think the seven deadly sins are fun?” asked Lee, aparently offended by the glibness of my statement.

“C’mon man, think about it: lust, gluttony, sloth–these are all things I enjoy thoroughly. Why should they be sins? It doesn’t make sense,” I said.

“What about the other ones? Greed? Anger?” said Mor.

“Those can be fun too,” I said just as glibly as before.

I’m addicted to glibness and semi-colons. And maybe pussy too.

I found myself tuning in and out of the conversation. Mor and Lee had plenty to debate on their own. Lee kept saying things like, “why celebrate sins? What makes these things necessarily good?” and Mor kept saying things like, “lust for semi-colons” or some such nonsense.

We’re all a bunch of guys who, while intelligent, think we know more than we do. We sit around and have these needlessly intellectual discussions about things that are entirely subjective and culturally relative. There’s no denying it unless I alone am insane and either sociopathic or just inherently a-moral. The deadly sins are those which are most in our nature to commit. They’re emotional; they’re real.

Why feel guilty about these things? Although we shouldn’t necessarily celebrate them, we should be more accepting of ourselves in that these so-called sins are a fundamental part of us. If God does exist, and it is in His image that we were created, don’t you think that not only has He given us the capacity for committing these sins, but the will to execute them as well? And, if these things are true, could the only way for us to be forgiven by Him is to forgive ourselves for being human, like God himself?

It’s a rhetorical question really. Don’t answer it. Please.

I have better sins to propose for replacement of the original deadly seven. These are sins that while also in our nature are more worthy of condemnation. They are Cruelty, Hypocrisy, Malice, Bigotry, Willful Ignorance, Ideological Partisanship, and Child Abuse.

I found myself shaken out of my little reverie when Mor and Lee began arguing about semi-colons.

“Did I mention I think I’m addicted to semi-colons?” I asked.

“Yes!” they both responded in unison.

I’ve seen the most demented, twisted shit. I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen people kill and then later lie about it. I’ve seen people have sex and then later lie about it. I’ve seen bigots and hypocrites. I’ve seen pedophiles and preachers trying to justify what they’ve done. I’ve seen hordes praise the slaughter of others. I’ve seen burning crosses and stormtroopers goose-stepping.

I’ve seen things I wouldn’t dare describe to you in detail–ship wrecks, rocket attacks on defenseless civilians, cats on LSD, slaughtered whales, nerve gas attacks, planes flown into buildings, shotgun wounds to the face, decapitations, nuclear blasts, torture, rapes, mutilations, eyes popped out of their sockets, burns, people with no eyelids, no jaws, no noses. I’ve seen defenseless people shot and stabbed by soldiers. I’ve seen villages napalmed. I’ve seen piles of emaciated skeletons.

I’ve concluded there is no limit to the cruelty that man can inflict. And yet people can’t talk about masturbation. I can’t smoke a Jay on the steps to my apartment. People can’t show breasts on TV.

I really pray to that non-existent God out there that this is something we can wake up and realize–to see that we’re having more fun being cruel than being kind. I hope it’s not just entropy–because we all know it’s so much easier to destroy than to create. Maybe that’s why we’re all busy blowing each others shit up instead of handing out smiles and candy. Either way, I doubt it’ll ever change.

Mor and Lee were talking about grammar, syntax, and inflection.

“Next topic!” I barked. They both laughed.

“Lunch?” said Lee hopefully.

“Sure, and afterward let’s go to Fantasy World,” said Mor jokingly, refering to a strip club.

“Eh, I’m feeling too tired,” I said, pulling my hat over my eyes. I’m lazy because I eat too much and I jerk off too much. It’s okay since today is Sunday. You know what day Sunday is, right?

Brilliant

My name is Kenneth, and I’m a brilliant man. Perhaps I’m not brilliant by all outward appearances, but I’m definitely brilliant on the inside; I’ve decided everyone is.

I have a friend. Her name is Ruanne. Ruanne’s brilliant–perhaps not in what she does or says, but she’s definitely brilliant on the inside. Ruanne wrote a heartbreaking story a few days ago. You see, she’s taking a creative writing class. I applaud her for these efforts. I think she’s kind of cute, not just on the outside. I think it’s cute she’s trying to write.

But the story is just so heartbreaking. It really is. It’s full of symbolism, and lost loves, injustice, and longing. It’s a little trite, but I nearly cried.

Nearly, but not really.

But I can’t help but wonder about it. Why did she write it. Perhaps more interesting to me than Ruanne’s touching and actually quite well-written story is what the impetus behind it must be. What is the brilliance welling within Ruanne, and why can I not see it. Why can we not all see it?

Like me, she’s not brilliant by all outward appearances. Well, she is brilliant outwardly insofar as her beauty is brilliant because she is quite beautiful–stunning really. She shines with her brilliant beauty. It’s like a ray gun. Zap!

But she’s really just too young for me anyway. I’m thirty. She’s twenty. Twenty is too young–I’ve learned to deal with this detail and so we’ll be friends. Fine. It’s fine, really.

And there is the magical quality of her friendship. She’s a good friend. I’d maybe even call her a great friend. Still, she is friends with everybody. Does this mean my friendship isn’t valuable to her? Or maybe she’s like my Ukrainian friend, Piotr, who’s somehow figured out the social engineering at work behind friendships. Perhaps. But I bet I’m just paranoid.

I’d just love to know what it is. I’m curious about her, and everyone I know really. What makes them do it. What makes them live and engineer their lives, to make friends or to not make friends. What crafts their responses to me when I question them.

I sat out on the terrace of Mor’s apartment with him and Lee. We were having our yuppy espressos. I put the question to both of them: if you could know the innermost thoughts of every person should you wish it, could you handle them.

I cited my curiosity with Ruanne’s story, and Lee, who’s carried such a torch for her, got aggravated and jealous.

“Why are you so interested in Ruanne all of a sudden,” he demanded.

“I just want to know why she wrote the story,” I said in defense. “You’re the one who wants to fuck her.”

“Fuck her–know her innermost thoughts,” Lee scoffed. “Sometimes it sounds like the same damned thing.”

I found myself blinded, pleasantly, by Lee’s brilliance.

Creepy Sonar Noises

Okay, okay, okay. I know I’ve been awfully quiet, for better or worse. Truth is, I’ve been incredibly busy in my day job. Yes. I have a day job. (It’s probably why I’ll never write the Great American Novel.)

Anyway, since it’s Valentine’s day I just wanted to stop by and post something, just so you know I haven’t forgotten about you. How are you holding up, Baby? Did you miss me?

Some Real Problems

I’m a liberal and I admit it.

I’m getting pissed off at the ultra-conservative and ultra-liberal in this country. They fail to focus on real problems, oh, such as the economy collapsing and whatnot. Yes. That is what I would consider a real problem.

Meanwhile, ultra liberals in California are complaining about UC Berkeley’s expansion efforts. First it was the tree sitters protesting the removal of trees (on UC-owned property) and now the arch-liberals are sending out lists of contractors who are working on the new Biology (read Vivisection) Lab.

Meanwhile (again), Bill O’Reilly is going on and on about a “Far Left” newspaper called The New York Times and ranting about their editorial on immigration. (Just to be clear, the NY Times editorial supports amnesty for every illegal and their abuelas. Bill, on the other hand… well, you can probably guess. The guy says he’s not racist, but he’s about as nationalist as they come. Nationalist is a big word for racist against other countries.)

I have one simple request, on behalf of Everybody Else:

Focus on some Real Problems!

Please. Normal people don’t care about these minutiae of political tit-for-tat bullshit squabbles and worthless causes; we just want to live a good happy life. That means we need you to solve things instead of sit around playing swords with your dicks. (I’m talking to you Congress. Go solve the economic crisis instead of being a bunch of little assholes.)

Ahhh, that rant felt good.