it's been a while, a lot of things have been going on, not everything of which I can put onto this blog. I'm updating drunk for the first time in a long time, and it's so unsure, who reads this, and who I want to read this. A lot of things have been coming through facebook these days, seeing that my good friend ryan is finally seeing someone, that's certainly very good for him, and she is very cute indeed.

What else? Nathalie may be getting married, and i am not ready for all my close female friends to be married, and even less so for her. I really do not know how to feel about it. It really only reinforces the idea that I need to find someone myself, but where? I feel too damaged, too messed up by what has come before to be ready for what is to come. So much last year has only fucked me up, made me bitter, bitter of people who perhaps didn't deserve it, but I strongly suspect that they might.

I don't want to suddenly be a christian or a soldier, I don't believe enough in any of it. We all make our own sacrifices. Are they all worth it?

i just need a little diet cola, or maybe just a little lifter puller

too much excitement, too many friends dropping like flies. spent the weekend drunk and exhausted, dehydrated and uncomfortable. ryan came back again and every time it's like nobody ever left, makes me think we'll do this forever. almost made a lot of mistakes going back north, what's the point of going back to people who go back to other people?

makes you realize maybe you were never the first choice, just last one remaining.

i feel so hideously detached, uncaring about everything. i just want to graduate, want to make a clean break. i've exhausted all the possibilities around, and now I need a new place to ruin, need new girls to ruin me.

what am i doing with my life?

something i wrote a long time ago that i think is relevant, that really seems to sum up how i've been feeling recently: why do i spend so much time remembering when you've already forgotten me?

i need a new feeling.

we're old enough to hurt feelings now

been so long, never did update all year, not even drunk but i feel like i should be so this should count. there's nowhere else for me to write this up, didn't want to put something that wasn't remotely literary on the other blog, too much to say to write it up in the notebooks. spent the day listening to the hold steady's new album, which is sad and sweet in a different way. it's been so much to think about lately, so much going on, school troubles and sweet and dangerous girls, so many i won't see again and feel like i don't know well enough, never did, never will

too late, always has been

because we all make our mistakes and we learn our lessons; or we don't, in which case we must repeat them, repeat until we learn. learn not to put too much of yourself out there, learn to be hard and quiet and to try your best not to look past the people right there, don't get that sad and faraway look in your eyes. there's too much to get down about, there are other things to appreciate.

appreciate the small things in life: driving barefoot, getting monstrously intoxicated with people you like and nobody else. spend a day doing nothing, go to bed, do the same thing the next day. try out lucid dreaming. succeed. fail. immediately enter sleep paralysis. smile to yourself when you pick your lover's hair out of your own, tangled up in there from when you were tangled up with her. she's gone, but some things remain. hope that maybe you remain with her because, given the choice, you would have remained with her.

make your choices, give them to others. give her the same choice you give everyone else: i'll be yours till the bruises fade; and an invitation for her to do her worst. how hard she tries tells you all you need to know. think too much about love, how it's been the only thing that's ever seemed important. miss your friends who are long gone, wonder if they'll ever come back. think about going yourself.

remember how soft she was. try not to wonder if her eyes have gotten harder. think about the reasons she left, and realize how many of those reasons were you, but remember how many weren't your fault. think about a pretty, pretty waitress in chicago, and the best hamburger you ever had in your life. but these things aren't important. never have been. never will be.

concentrate on your life and where it should be. those things were never important, never will be, but they're all that's ever mattered.

Look out, you rock n' rollers

Back to school, back to all that entails, the apathy and boredom, the longing, all the commiseration, the mistakes and the drinking, drinking, drinking. Ryan Spain blew back into town in the rain, and we set off once again on that self-destructive road to oblivion. This weekend obviously we were too intoxicated for me to do much writing but now I am going to change that.

Drinking story, to be mixed with an account of the weekend.

So Friday Ryan and I set out to complete the Trifecta, that is, a flask of liquor, a bottle of wine, and a sixpack of beer each. Well we didn't quite make it, as after the wine (which we drank far too quickly) we both started throwing up, and though I don't remember much of this (Matt had to recount most of it for me) I do remember that I threw up for practically forever, and was in no shape to continue, though Ryan wanted to. I ended up having to wash my sheets, and I managed to forget about them and ask matt five times where they were, five minutes or so passing between each inquiry. I then managed to make my bed, though I don't remember doing it, but I definitely put the sheets on upside down. We may try again next week, and be more careful in our pacing. Friday was a lot of fun otherwise, as I hadn't been that drunk in a long time.

Yet the highlight (lowlight?) of the weekend was last night, at Mallet's long-awaited Pirate Party, where Brian did his best to get me stupid drunk and for the most part succeeded, and I had to fight down the bile towards the end of the evening but mainly kept it together. I had to try not to throw up, either. Seeing some people just makes it hard, wondering where things went wrong, realizing that it was me, always has been, always was me who fucked it up. I was reminded of when I was leaving, going back home, and she kissed me hard and I promised to be hers until the bruises faded.

And even though it was just a couple little marks, there was still a genuine sense of loss when they were gone.

Neglect

So I've been neglecting this blog, but this is for several reasons. School's back in session, and lately I've also found it harder and harder to get drunk. Sometimes the company we keep makes things difficult. I spent yesterday drowning myself in rum, and while I had an amusing moment this morning where I couldn't remember what I did for a few minutes, it all came back to me. Almost a fifth of rum will do that to a man. I broke my flask too, busted the weld on it.

There's really not that much to say right now. Maybe I'll be drunk and wordy later.

Sorry. I wonder how much of life we spend being apologetic.

These nachos were simultaneously a great and terrible idea.

A few weeks spent living, spending, living and spending far beyond my means but being something close to happy, a few days doing nothing I regret in Nashville, eating antelope in a whiskey blackberry sauce, sucking down cuba libres like there was no tomorrow, listening to music, spending time with friends I don't see enough, sitting on a riverboat, letting Tennessee wash my worries away.

Then back home again, long enough to touch base, before I was off again to the nation's capital, to Washington DC and an old friend I just met. Four days of letting myself ride the bitterness, of nostalgia and adventure, of finally getting down to living, being who I want to be, having all that pressure to be interesting but realizing that the best plan was just being myself, letting the self confidence my lovers gave me show through, being nice and dangerous, unapologetic.

A selection from my journal, the day I landed: "The life of the summer dead had begun to weigh heavy on me, and all this uncertainty has left me wanting more. I'm excited, exhilarated, accelerated, need need need to do something go somewhere be someone, I need to kiss every girl I love, need to be needed, want every love to be returned equally, exactly."

All this time spent regretting everything and nothing, all those things undone, words unsaid, all those things I can never say or do now, because it's too late, always has been.

I've resolved to be more, I've decided I am tired of being cut down, and the only thing standing between what I want and me is myself.

I really am relieved that she was like an old friend I just met, reminding me so much of her best friend, who when I saw her again that day all those years ago, it was like she never left, like all the years never happened.

Scribbled this on the plane:
Finally heading home
With some brand new tales
Got the sun at my back
The wind in my sails
I'd grown too old in my wandering days
Maybe it's not too late to change my ways

DC was an adventure, days of adventure, a nonstop whirlwind of expectations and danger and mystery, of realizing once again that I'd made a mistake, that I'd fallen a little bit in love with another forbidden fruit, recognizing that it wasn't because of who she knew but who she is, and how twisted the former would have been. I always leave a little bit of myself behind, wondering if you worry about me.

Kelly you were right, and you weren't the first to see it, everybody I've been close to has seen the sadness, the result of getting my heart shattered as you put it, telling me I needed to find a girl who won't leave or be left. It's because it's always been the same, I've always been irresistibly attracted to the same kind of person, because I am always leaving or being left. You're a wise girl, and I hope it is not another eight years before I see you again. Come to think of it, there are so many wise girls I have not seen in years, and I wish that weren't so. With few exceptions, I am closest to those who are furthest away.

As much as I try to hide it, the sadness, the bitterness, it's always the same, I get quiet, I look off into space, and you know something's wrong, I'm somewhere else now. Before then, after, those long spaces of quietness, I look at you and I smile and I really and truly enjoy you. She thought I was so deadpan but the truth is there is so much love, and I always try to hold on, never let go.

I long to lose myself again in the lips and embraces of my lovers. Always trying to light that fire. And here I am, swearing I won't go, wishing I could stay, anything to keep from moving on, from falling to the wayside, trying to remain first in your heart.

I'm realizing how far we've come since we were thirteen, how much has changed, how much we've grown up, how much we have changed, how much this place was meant for living and then for moving out, how much we needed our wising up, our growing up, our growing apart.

So here I am, leaving, being left, another day to cut me down, thinking maybe my heart is giving up on all this abuse. I miss you all. I always have. I always will. And I've never really blamed you. I'm always dreaming that you could be mine, and I could be yours, and really mean it.

I've seen the cruel and hard, and I've seen them hard on you

Another few days spent out of stasis, living in the half-life of the Tuscaloosa summer dead, another few days spent drinking and sleeping on the floor and trying not to let the night get to me. I'm not drunk right now but I am hungover so let's let this still count, ok? I've been hungover for days, waking up in the middle of the night covered in sweat, the last vestiges of a truly intense nightmare fleeing my memory, and all I can think of is I wish you were here, because maybe I'd sleep better with somebody to hold.

Another couple of nights spent making promises I can't keep, can't remember to remember to keep, even simple things out of reach. Trying to drink and occupy my time and try not to worry too much, erasing my memory with Irish Car Bombs and waking up on the floor again, another morning after with the sun streaming in the windows and wondering how I made it home alive again.

I'm ready, finally ready, I think, take a deep breath and jump in with both feet, to be you and me. Lately I've been thinking a lot about these things and how cute those kids are together and how love gets into our lives and messes us up, how we were regular people once, with regular people dreams and then those changed to be a big house, sixteen cats, enough room for everything we ever wanted. I've been thinking of being that right blend of nice and dangerous, and I started again because you can't be too perfect, you need something to disapprove of, because people need fixing. These past few days I've spent sitting in a half-empty apartment, trying not to succumb to the fear, staring into space and knowing I'm wasting all my time but unable to stop.

And so all I can do is talk about it, I guess.

Time for a drunk story. Yesterday, I was very hungover when michael decided it might be a good idea to pour everclear on an open candle. Well you know that scene in Joe Dirt when the oil-covered guy pees on a fire? The flame shoots up his pee stream and immolates him. Well, it was basically like that. The fire shot up the alcohol stream into the bottle, where it turned the fumes inside into a fireball, shooting burning everclear out of the bottle all over the floor and walls. We watched the burning puddles for a good couple of seconds before michael realized that he was on fire and began to furiously pat it all out. I got up and walked into the kitchen, got a glass of water, sighed, and poured it on the fire like this was an everyday occurrence.

Maybe it should be, it was definitely one of the more interesting things I've seen all year. At least these sorts of problems have actual solutions.

If I'm not the only one, I at least want to feel like I am. I'd try my best to do the same.