Alpha to Omega

You* know who you are. I know who you are. So, why do you pretend that you don’t read my blog—I know you’re reading it right now, I know you don’t like it because you don’t comment, don’t link here and don’t bother to make yourself known, and yet you persist in reading my blog. Why? That’s not a rhetorical question.

How do I know you exist? Because I have a statcounter (it’s also how I know that a strange number of people happen here by searching for ‘big tits hockey fantasy’ or something along those lines. I fail to see the connection). I also know that you got here via someone on my blogroll and proceeded to venture to and comment on several of the blogs on mine. You stupid fuck.

Well, I’ve been to your blog. It is bad, and I’m not just saying that because I hate you or because you’ve never commented on my blog. It really is. I can tell that the reason you don’t like my blog is that you don’t think it’s deep enough. It doesn’t explore the meaningful nature of blah blah blah. I think you may be thinking so hard that you fail to see just how self important it is, much like the self-gratifying, dick sucking comments you leave on the site you reached me by. How about a one-liner once in awhile instead of a bloated essay written by a high school student who just tried acid and listened to the Doors for the first time? Oh, and guess what—the aforementioned blogger you think so highly of doesn't much care for you either.

*You could be specific. In some regard I am speaking to a certain special someone. On the other hand, I know of more than one person who fits this exact profile.

I'm a rabbit in you headlights.

Dear World,

Can you ever forgive me? Does it ever begin to mean anything when I say I’m sorry?

I can perhaps begin to help you understand if I explain the events that lead up to my disappearance. Maybe if you know the state of mind I was in, you will be more willing to forgive me.

When John makes love to me, I stare at the ceiling tiles. I know precisely how many there are on the bedroom ceiling, but I won’t tell you, because I think that’s a little too personal. A few weeks ago, I had a dream. In this dream I was in the oval office, wearing a blue dress, and President Bush was there and we were being dirty. He was doing things to me that I hadn’t even dreamed about until this point—things that John would never do. He was talking dirty to me as well, he kept saying “Timber….I got me a whole lot of TIMBER!!” and he was very excited. When I woke up I was aroused, I felt filled with shame and so I prayed to Jesus. Jesus was very forgiving, but he suggested that I might have some issues with my sexual relationship with John.

I was confused, I didn’t know what to do, and I misunderstood what Jesus was trying to tell me. So, I went out one night while John was at Bible study and tried to get kidnapped. I thought that maybe if I got kidnapped, the kidnapper would do dirty things to me and I wouldn’t have cheated on John but I would have fulfilled my desires. But, no one would kidnap me. I stood on a corner downtown where a lot of scantily dressed women kept telling me to “get off their corner, bitch” and a lot of men would leer at me from their cars, but they only gave me funny looks and kept on driving. Folandia, one of the ladies on the corner, told me that I was too ugly to get picked up by any of the men and, in her words I “smelled like God”. Well, I didn’t know that the Good Lord had a smell, so I guess Folandia was wrong.

I went home very upset. No one would kidnap me. I wasn’t desirable enough. How could I marry John when he clearly didn’t want me and was only with me because he’s an uptight Christian freak? There was only one solution—I’d show them I was desirable—I would have to kidnap myself.

So that’s what happened, world. I concocted a bold faced lie and ran away from home because I had a sex dream about George Bush. Just saying his name makes me tingle all over—with shame. I am a horrible person and I deserve what’s coming to me. Please punish me, in the eyes of God and the State and the President. Please, please spank me.

*Any factual errors contained in this letter are the result of the complete disinterest of the author. All unfounded and unjustified assumptions are the result of Jenny Wilbanks being both an inconsequential person and news story. All aforementioned assumptions were made by looking at the picture on the right, and not by reading or watching any coverage of the actual case.

I’m fourteen and I’ve just started to need people. What I mean by that is, I’ve always been a loner, but when I reached the age of fourteen it became apparent that I need people with whom to associate so that I don’t delve into permanent weirdness. What I mean by this is that the marketing got to me.

I’m trying be cool. I’m trying to want to be cool, but I just can’t do it. I have geek blood and that makes me awkward as hell around anyone who is overly concerned with appearances and stuff. I’ve cut my losses and just accepted that my friends are going to have to be losers.

And they are. They aren’t losers because they are socially awkward and would rather read books and listen to good music and go over plots for future novels with themselves out loud than explore that vacancy that is teenage society, they’re losers because they think that stuff matters and they’re losers because they pretended to themselves that they could have a notable place within it.

One such friend, Alicia, is especially bad for this. She likes to pretend that she’s devastatingly attractive and claims that she constantly has twenty somethings pulling over in their “hot” cars to talk to her. There are always stories of her exploits at the mall and with her older sister (who is attractive, but who only gets the attention she does by virtue of being the biggest and youngest slut I’ve ever met) and with her neighbours, exploits I pretend to be impressed by and then have to pretend not to be disgusted by when I get personally introduced to a zitty faced mormon kid or a very zitty faced D and D geek boy. Of course, there is the bad music too—a combination of commercial rap and Mariah Carey—and this has lead my friends to a fetish for bling, weed, black guys and cars, all things I can’t understand. So, maybe it’s easier to begin developing such an opposed personality in this context. Or, maybe it isn’t—I’m sure it’s fairly hard for anyone to do much of anything besides wish they were 18 at this age.

Alicia has decided that we need to branch out, meet more people. She has arranged for our attendance at a get-together in her neighbourhood. Alicia has hook-ups, you see. She notes my eye-rolling and counters it by telling me that the zitty-faced kids aren’t invited. This is serious. In fact, Josh is going to be there. Josh? Is there a more white-trash name, (well, besides Jeb)? Shutup, Josh is cool—he drives a red sports car and he’s seventeen. Apparently it hasn’t occurred to Alicia that seventeen year olds who hang out with fourteen year olds are probably not very cool, in fact, will probably get arrested for possession of kiddie porn one day. That doesn’t matter, we’re still cool because we’re going to the party.

So we go to the party. It’s in a trashy duplex down the hill in the crappy part of the neighbourhood. There’s an old barbeque on the weed-ridden lawn along with some sexy lawn ornaments. The rest of the party is in the basement; they sit on a makeshift floor of mismatched carpet remnants and a fuzzy flower-print sofa that appears to be collapsing in on itself. There is rap music playing on the stereo—the only thing in the room in any condition worth mentioning, including the people. Everyone appears to be high, except for the people who are trying to appear to be straight and hard, whose heads bounce in tune to the music and whose eyes scan everyone in the room as if able to detect the social status of each person who enters. I guess they aren’t drunk enough to be rowdy yet. It’s one of those situations where everyone sits around in small groups talking about inconsequential tripe and wondering how to infiltrate one of the other groups on the other side of the room and eventually score a “hook-up”. Alicia immediately infiltrates Josh’s group, the largest in the room and we are offered a bottle of Crown Royal and cigarettes. Josh is white, but you wouldn’t know this if you were to encounter him on the phone or in a very dark room. Josh forces me into interaction as soon as he exchanges greetings with Alicia.
He juts his chin out at me “Yo”
“Hi”
“Josh”
“(You don’t really think I’m going to tell you my real name do you?)”
I wonder for a brief moment if shaking hands with someone in this situation is appropriate. No, probably better to just straight face it.

Nothing of consequence happens. People talk about silly things and attempt to outdo each other with their stories. They get drunker and louder. I sit back and watch, amused and stoned for the first time ever and drunk for the third. Josh’s brother arrives, the highlight of everyone’s night because he is eighteen and wears a wife-beater shirt that shows off his hot bod. He also has greasy hair, dirty jeans and a face that looks like it was crushed in a vice, but no one seems to notice this, except me of course, but I’ve always been a stickler for details. They gather around him like he is Jesus. I’m confused.

The highlight of my night, is when Josh begins hitting on me whilst we all sit around in a circle discussing, of all things, the boy’s bad-ass “blades”. I assume Josh has voiced his intent towards me at some point to his loser friend because the friend suddenly has an overwhelming urge to help him impress me.
“Hey,” he says “Josh, show her your blade—“ and then to me “it’s so cool.”
Josh does pull out his blade, stuffed in his white tube sock, of all places and presents it to me for my approval—a big fat meat cleaver, not unlike something a cartoon chef would wield, stolen from his mommy’s kitchen, all for me and my approval.

Needless to say, Josh and I didn’t “hook up”. Sorry Josh, I don’t do white trash.

My upstairs neighbour is a bit of a freak. That is, I really don’t like him. You may wonder why I would choose to devote any amount of time to him considering this fact, but the truth of the matter is that you are kind of a pious cunt for making a remark like that in the first place. See, it’s like this: he’s up there in his bathtub several times a day (no exaggeration), thumping around and presumably throwing soap or attempting to bathe with crutches or fake limbs and that’s bloody well fascinating. I don’t like him, but he’s interesting. The way Napoleon Dynamite is interesting—don’t tell me you would have been friends with him, you wouldn’t have.

I happen to know that my upstairs neighbour doesn’t have any fake limbs and isn’t in need of crutches. This is because I encountered him one day as I was leaving my apartment. He was carrying his bike-thingy up the stairs looking very serious and meaty (oh, to defy middle age) in spandex and helmet and I smiled at him, as if to say “Hey neighbour, how’s about a friendly hello?” Well, there would be none of that. I couldn’t help but be taken aback and bemused when he replied with…well, he didn’t. Nothing. Not a smile, not a frown, Just Space. It was like staring at a passport photo. He also has a sticker on another bike that says “One less car!” and that kind of annoys me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic that you’re putting forth effort and doing your part and that your heart is in the right place, but don’t you think the need to advertise it kind of reeks of desperation the same way it reeks of desperation when people need to advertise their sexual encounters?
“Wow, I’ve been having way too much sex lately”
“That’s nice….what’s your name again?”
Yup, and I have great tits. Hey, just throwing that out there.

I might have been able to dismiss my upstairs neighbour as an isolated jerk, but there’s more to it than that. There are these joggers who come into work all the time. They go for their run and then they stop in to pump themselves with more unnatural substances (no, I don’t deal, I sell coffee) before heading home to whatever they head home to. The interesting thing is that you can tell what they head home to by their interactions with me. The majority of the joggers are women and they’re all approximately 35 to 45. Some of them are unnecessarily evil. I mean evil, hostile, inappropriately bitchy. Case in point: Woman orders “A Latte”. I make the Latte. I hand over the Latte. She responds with “I thought this was iced. I want it iced.” So maybe she’s a complete moron, right? Wrong. She’s ordered many a latte (the hot kind) after many a run before. Now, that’s just uncalled for. Let's face it lady, if I were psychic, I'd have my own show. So, there’s that, and I know it sounds trite and redundant and completely childish to diagnose like this, but I think they’re threatened by me. I’ve never wanted to believe that people are so ridiculous that they would be jealous of a random stranger, despite the insistence of my male companions that I get glared at constantly, but I’ve begun to give this theory some merit. Because you can tell that the joggers who are polite to me are happy with themselves and their lives and that the ones who are bitches probably like to talk (lie) about their sex lives and the schools their kids go to. I finally got bored of the joggers and I summed it up thus: for people who are supposedly so fucking high on life, they sure are a miserable bunch.

I’ve decided, dear readers, that I’m going to devote the next couple of entries to fascinating (or just plain absurd) people such as my active friends. Characters. It’s a series I’m going to call "Portraits".

Overly Drunk Friend of N’s to Large Breasted Co-Worker (referring to K): This is Amy.

- - -

Overly Drunk Friend of N’s to Some Guy (referring to K, again): This is Amy.

- - -

My Friend N to Her Drunk Friend: No, I can’t go on Saturday because my friend K is having a housewarming party (K is standing right next to me).
Drunk Friend: Oooooooh, that suuuuuucks. Amy? Do you have a cigarette?
K: No, I told you, I don't smoke.

- - -

Drunk Friend to Total Stranger (complete with hugs and touching): Don’t you love my new shoes? I didn’t buy them…they followed me hoooooome! (Raucous laughter)

- - -

Me to N: Does she smoke crack?

- - -

N to K: Do you find strangers react to you differently as a blonde?
BLONDE Drunk Friend: OH! People tooootally react to me differently now that I’m a brunette.
N to Drunk Friend: Honey, you’re blonde.
Drunk Friend: Well, this is a lot darker than I am usually. Seriously, I had some baaaaad hair going. It’s a lot better now.
K: Yeah, and blonde.

- - -

Me to N: Does she smoke crack?

- - -

Drunk Friend: I can’t believe I lost my purse! I feel sick. And my mace was on my keychain. I don’t want anyone to find it.
N: Why don’t you want anyone to know you have mace on your keys?
Drunk Friend: It’s not about them knowing, it’s because I use the mace whenever people try to steal my keys! I can’t believe it…and I just got a new roommate and now already I lose my keys?
K: I think you should break her in early, I mean, you don’t want her to go a whole year thinking you’re not a flake.

I’ve read this five times already:

Cities at night, I feel, contain men who cry in their sleep and then say Nothing. It’s Nothing. Just sad dreams. Or something like that…Swing low in your weep ship, with your tear scans and your sob probes, and you would mark them.

The first time I read this there was a distinct “Ah ha!” It wasn’t audible, even in my head, but the feeling was there. There was some indication that if I juxtaposed this opening paragraph with everything I’ve written and continue to write, it would highlight everything I’m doing wrong.

This is the fifth time though, and I can’t pull out my computer (which I’ve become so dependant on; I seem to have no use for pens anymore) and furiously record the dialogue in my head. There are far too many people around me, this is rush hour and this is public transit, and it makes me uncomfortable having people around when I’m trying to disclose things. Writing is so much like acting—the process should make you feel naked.

So, I stare out the window, Amis still in hand, my left index finger stuck in and holding the page. There isn’t any need for this, it’s the first page and I haven’t got past it, but maybe I’d like to sneak at it again. I read past it this time and Amis describes a marriage and a bed that reeks of it and then I reach the line:

…the young sleep in another country, at once very dangerous and out of harm’s way, perennially humid with innocuous libido—

Jesus.

I take my finger out of the book this time; I smile and even shiver and put it away because it isn’t something I should be reading with all of these people around. I’ve found something that is so much a privilege and yet so much not—something we aren’t conscious enough to miss when it’s missing—and that is inspiration.

I stare out the window. A man jitters by the train as it’s at a standstill, smoking crack from a pipe and talking to himself. The train begins moving again and stops at a busy station where people fresh and exhausted from work pile onto the train. A woman sits next to me and a man stands above her.
“What do you want for dinner tonight?” The woman asks the man.
“I don’t know”
They play out the scene as people who have known each other for a very long time often do—barely regarding each other and taking the other’s presence for granted. I think for a moment that this should make me sad, but it doesn’t. I am briefly able to see these people as they really are—the colours of their work outfits become suddenly brighter, there is no inner dialogue in my head telling me that they are bad or boring or amputated people—they are just there. They continue to talk and I stare out the window, hearing small portions of the dialogue. I think I hear the word vegetables several times. And more questions: “What do you want to do tonight?”
“I don’t know…go to bed early. You have to get up early, don’t you?”
This is an ironic encounter given the three pages of Martin Amis’ book I’ve just read. I steal his words to describe this discourse—they reek of marriage. We pass a Sherwin-Williams paint outlet and the jingle runs through my head a few times. Innocuous libido. If only it were always that way—completely harmless and natural—protected by it’s intrinsicality and absolute innocence. But the perversion of the thing itself is not the thing itself, it’s the Nothing. It’s this performance, also natural and so potentially inevitable: It’s just sad dreams.