21 February 2002 ~ Helena is moody and feeling used...

I really should not be anywhere near a computer.

Okay, all of you, right now, simultaneously yell: "Helena, you're hormonal; fucking get away from the computer before you start drama!"

Whatever. Can't stop now. Too charged and ready to kill.

I'm really very angry at most men in the world at this point. Not all, just the vast majority of them. (And no, this has relatively little to do with being hormonally charged; I'd still be very angry at men. Being hormonally charged is just assisting me in expressing my views rather loudly...)

Hang on; I have to put on some pissed-off music...

Okay, this will do. It's Modest Mouse's "Workin' On Leavin' the Livin'." It goes: "...in heaven, everything is fine..." for about five minutes. This song reminds me of David. And of a sweet little art gallery in Asheville, NC, which prominently displayed large onion-fetus things. David doesn't make me mad right now. It's pretty damned difficult for David to make me mad. But anyway, on with the story.

Let's begin in June or July of 2001. With an email from a sort-of-stranger.

He emailed me about a post I'd left on a messageboard asking for a map of the North Bend/Snoqualmie area in Washington. I was preparing for my trek to "Twin Peaks." And a young gentleman by the screen-name of Mike-O emailed me with website addresses, maps, directions, and a personal email. Why? I have no idea. Just a nice guy? Sure.

I emailed Mike-O back to thank him, and we began a nice correspondence. We talked about our days. We talked about our hometowns. We talked about David Lynch. Good GAHD did we talk about David Lynch. We talked about music. We talked about Dubya. We talked about... well, just about everything under the sun. And Pink Floyd, too. Hell, we even exchanged "how I conquered the local 24-hour diner with my crazed sexuality" stories.

Mike-O lives in Seattle. For the two months before I moved out of Binghamton, we were discussing plans to "hang out and get coffee." Nothing romantic. Except, of course, the emails headed with R.E.M. love songs. Except, of course, the random proclamations that he was my number one fan, that he thought I was wonderful, and that sweet, sweet R.E.M. title "You Are The Everything" laced throughout his messages to me. Oh, and he told me I made his palms itch. One of the highest, most romantic and sweetest compliments that one Peaks Freak can give to another.

So, no, nothing REAL. No contracts or anything. I told my Binghamton friends I had an "online crush." That was it.

Now, when Mike-O and I actually got the opportunity to meet, I was really quite nervous. Would he like me? Would I like him? I REALLY felt like I KNEW this person. I really felt like, after six months of daily emails, I cared about him. But how do you really know? And how do you fit an online-person into a real-life context? Does the "online crush" automatically become the "boyfriend"? Or is it like meeting somebody for the first time? Who the hell KNOWS. All I knew was that I really supposed I was about to meet, in the flesh, a person I'd really begun to care about.

We met. We had coffee. We walked around Broadway. We walked to the U-District. We stood on a bridge and gazed at stars and boats. We sneaked through the backyards of rich people and looked over the hill at city lights. We watched "Lost Highway" in a movie theater at midnight. We held hands. We went back to his apartment. He offered to let me sleep in the guestroom. But we ended up having sex in his bedroom, and I ended up sleeping quite comfortably and peacefully with him underneath his posters of Lynchfilms. Eerily, some of the same ones I have. A perfect end to a pretty damned perfect evening.

Mike-O emails me later. We both insist we're not so "easy" as we'd seemed, hopping into bed on the first evening we'd actually met in person. We agreed to take things as they came and to see what happened next. Everything was okay though. Mike-O made me smile. But I noticed he'd stopped signing his emails with nice little quasi-romantic song lyrics.

A week later, Mike-O calls me. Mike-O spends an hour telling me how he's not sure residing in Seattle is doing him any good. He spends another half an hour asking for my opinion. Well, hell, I gave him a rather biased opinion: after all, I considered us sort of "together," or at least "potentially-together," and that made me fairly happy, so I tell him I think he can stick it out awhile longer.

The connection gets broken. My phone is always doing that. So I call him back from the lobby payphone. Within the first five minutes of our call being reconnected, he informs me, in no uncertain terms, that he's moving back to California to be with his ex-girlfriend.

Essentially, I never had a chance at all. Mike-O knew all along that he was moving back to California, that he'd be getting back together with his ex. You know, had I KNOWN that, I might not have opened myself up to potentially getting emotionally attached to Mike-O. DID I get emotionally attached to him? Well, yes, in a way... WHY didn't he tell me about his plans? WHY didn't he tell me he wasn't up for a relationship? Why did he spend six months emailing me every detail of his life except for the important things, like, oh, having a GIRLFRIEND? You know what this feels like? It feels very much like Mike-O was just testing me to see if I could live up to his standards. I think he spent six months REALLY thinking something neat could work out. I think he met me, liked me, fucked me, and decided that, oh well, wasn't good enough, might as well go back to plan A, which is to go back to the Cali-girl. And break the news to Helena a week later, after she's spent all this time smiling and telling her friends what a great new friend she has in Seattle.

Mike-O doesn't quote R.E.M. songs ever again to Helena. He emails sporadically. She emails back half-heartedly. The subject never comes up again. Helena kind of hates Mike-O, kind of thinks he's one of the most chickenshit people she's ever met, kind of feels used, and feels REALLY, REALLY rejected. But she doesn't say any of this. Because Helena feels that Mike-O is really too weak of a person to handle the wrath of a woman scorned. And Helena doesn't feel like wounding somebody just to get back at them for being ambivalent and secretive and dishonest.

Okay, so let's move on...

Helena keeps her misery mostly to herself, and is pretty much over it within a week. Helena figures that, dammit, she's on a new coast, she's got new friends, she's got school to deal with and pretty much an entirely new way of being alive. Helena figures that, while Mike-O was and is a fascinating person, she isn't going to waste her time being bummed out over the situation.

But Helena is a little lonely. And Helena is a little horny. And Helena isn't used to either of these things.

So Helena took a lover, as they say.

["They don't call them lovers in high school, Leland..." --Sarah Palmer, Fire Walk With Me]

Okay, okay, so Helena got a fuck-buddy.

Now, all was right and well with the world until Helena's fuck-buddy realized he'd accomplished something great and spontaneously began acting like a freak. Oh, he'd been a freak before, but now we're talking about "freak" with negative connotations.

Allow Helena to go on a little tangent and reminisce about losing her virginity... Helena's then-boyfriend Erich stood at the top of Helena's staircase, shirt off, and pounded on his chest, yelping about what a real man he was. Apparently, teenaged boys who believe they've just conquered their first female -- or who believe they've just conquered their first female who wasn't gross -- get this idea into their heads that they're really manly, studly, sexy, and delectable...

We must remember, of course, that Helena's fuck-buddy, who shall be known as Dracor, because that's his name, is NOT Helena's boyfriend. We've had a respectable agreement that we were friends, and we were fucking, and that was it. Not any particularly romantic, loving thing... Just good friends doing good things together. So Helena really has NO room to be a bitch if Dracor, her pet fuck-buddy, decided to pursue other interests. Right? Of course. And vice versa, Dracor really had no room to be a bitch if Helena, his pet fuck-buddy. Fine. Perfect.

Except that Dracor has taken everything just a little bit too far...

As soon as he came to the realization that he'd actually managed to land a hot chick (er... well, me anyway), he rushed into the hallway to ask our R.A. if he would join in a threesome. Our R.A., who I wouldn't actually MIND having a threesome with, respectfully said no. So my fuck-buddy, with the new understanding that he is a man, and that sex is not really all that difficult to get, wandered around campus looking for people who would potentially have threesomes with him. Helena, baffled by this, sat by herself in the lounge, chewing sunflower seeds and trying unsuccessfully to read her textbook.

Helena's fuck-buddy could not find anyone to have a threesome with himself and Helena. In all likelihood, this is a good thing.

Helena's fuck-buddy has officially designated himself the Campus Stud. He's busy trying to seduce the girl downstairs. He's busy trying to woo this one and then that one, and then the other one, plus her cute boyfriend... I'm telling you; it's HONESTLY not a jealousy thing. It's just that I'm feeling pretty used at this point. I was good enough to be an ego-booster, but now it's on to bigger and better things as soon as physically possible. Dracor and I used to take walks and things, used to sit around and just chat... Now, everything's different. *I* for one have not changed. But Dracor doesn't appear to have any interest in ANY of the stuff that mattered to me about our little friendship. He hasn't even TALKED to me for two days. We live on the same FLOOR, dammit. I feel like I've been added to a list and discarded as a person. Hell, I even told him he could wake me up and sleep in my room last night if he wanted, but he didn't.

What the fuck?

And you know, I really, really, really care about this person... I'm telling you, he's one of those friends you just love without questioning it. Ya fuck with Dracor, you're fucking with Helena, and Helena isn't going to be very nice to you. Dracor is a sweet, sweet, sweet person. I really do love him. It's just... he's so, so far out in space right now... I mean, I recall the general idea of the mentality of the teenaged male when he starts to realize that sex isn't a hugely difficult thing to obtain... But I'd really just like my friend back, without the new-and-improved Studmaster-Dracor. And I'd like to feel a little bit less used.

My dad told me when I was 16 that men would only ever want me for one thing: sex. A little later, I decided that guys liked me for sex, intelligence, and my willingness to sit through Lynchfilms. At this point, I think it has very, very little to do with intelligence or Lynchfilms.

The thing is... I really love LOVE. And I really love sex. And I really love ALL that stuff, and everything that goes with it. I love people, and intimacy. But it just keeps going so wrong... I had it SO good, and I was SO happy with Norman, and I came here with a lot of regrets, but with the promise that I was going to meet some new people and love some new people, and maybe screw some new people..... But you know, it's just not working, and I'm really very unhappy tonight.

I had it so, so good. And I was so happy. I mean, as relationships go, we had a damned good one for those three or four months we lived together. It took me awhile to get used to it, but now I AM used to it, and I can't even begin to tell you how much I miss him. And I'm kind of trying to fill up some empty spots with friends, school, sex, whatever else... But sometimes, like now, when things are just all going a little bit wrong, it's him that I want to hug.

Norman doesn't know this, but over Christmas, I taped some of his music. The two tapes of his songs are the only cassettes I have with me here, and they never, ever leave my tape player. They sing me to sleep every night. And when I walk alone to classes or to get dinner, I hum "Hell's in the Well." It makes me feel nice and loved.

In Binghamton, just about everything kind of sucked, but I knew that when I was feeling a little lousy after work, I could come home and sit on the couch smoking and eat junk food with a person I loved, who also loved me. In Olympia, everything's perfect... But there's really nobody who'd particularly miss me if they didn't see my face for a few days... There's nobody who really thinks much about me at all. I'm a little lonely, and I'm still kind of hormonal, and I'm pissed off about feeling used, and pissed off about feeling like most men really kind of suck...

...And I started rambling a LONG time ago, so I'm signing off here...

~H.T.*

PS: ...And don't even get me STARTED about the Valentine's Day ads in The Stranger..... Ohhhhh, don't EVEN get me started...