Ten AM. Am woken up by random stomach pain. I knew I shouldn't have eaten those peanut butter girl scout cookies last night. I have a slight allergy to peanut products. But dammit, I LOVE peanut butter girl scout cookies... Turned on the TV to Lifetime and watched about half of the Intimate Portrait of Patti Labelle. Got a strange tingly sensation when I heard her singing "Over the Rainbow," and decided to ignore the rest of the show and check my email.
Eleven-thirty AM. Unsolved Mysteries is on, and I watch a segment about the Roswell UFO crash site. Fucking cool, man. There's something really, really fascinating to me about New Mexico and all the weird shit that always seems to happen there. Having lived there, I can personally attest to the fact that there IS something pretty bizarre about New Mexico... A strange sort of energy... I guarantee, if you type in "New Mexico, aliens, energy, spaceship, ley lines," or any of those things at Yahoo or Google, you'll get back a whole host of wonderful websites created by New Mexico natives who are convinced the Second Coming of Christ is imminent, who believe they've ridden in alien spacecrafts, and who have theories about magnetic radioactive energies leaking through the Earth's crust and directly into government-issued implants in their brains. Real X-files type stuff. I'm not sure if any of that is true -- as a matter of fact, I suspect most of it is utter crap -- but the high percentage of kooks in New Mexico is one fact that can't be denied.
Twelve-fifty PM. I decide to go to the gas station; my house just isn't complete witout orange juice. On the way up there -- it's not even two blocks -- I saw a car full of high school kids on their lunch break. They were leaning out the passenger-side windows at a kid with M.S. or some other disability -- he tends to jerk his arms a lot and walks kind of strangely. They were jeering at him, telling him, "do the Michael Jackson!" and pushing each other around in helpless laughter. Of course, the disabled kid maybe didn't know exactly what was going on, but he didn't seem very happy. I fucking hate the high school kids. I always feel as though they're laughing at me, as well. I felt self-conscious walking a block and a half to the gas station wearing a shitty old sweatshirt, because I was afraid these nasty little fuckers would lean out their windows and yell things at ME.
WHY am I still intimidated by these little jerks? I graduated high school. I'm years older than most of them. I've got my own apartment and the liberty of doing what I want without the authority of teachers and parents limiting me. Hell, I'm old enough to buy cigarettes -- and booze in another month -- while they're still going home every day and having mommy cook them macaroni and cheese for dinner. They're still begging for an extended curfew. They're still children, and I'm, for all practical purposes, an adult. Why am I intimidated by an unruly pack of children? And why -- WHY? -- do they have to be so cruel?
One PM. Came home. Had some orange juice. Checked my email. A note from my "penpal" in Uganda. He's really starting to piss me off. A week ago, he sent me a message asking me to be the "Mum" of his children because he really thought he loved me. Love? Yeah, whatever. He's seen a dimly-lit photograph of my online, and has received approximately three emails from me, mostly about the names of my pets and the location of my town, and yet he thinks he's in love with me? I emailed him back and told him I couldn't marry him and be the Mum of his children because I'm too young for that sort of thing. Today, he sends another message saying he's worried about me because he hasn't heard from me in a whole THREE days, and it's breaking his heart, etc. I MUST write back to him immediately, he says, so his heart doesn't break, because he's so very much in love with me. Whatever. Just whatever. I don't take very well to guilt-trips along that vein. At one time, I spent four months assuring this guy Greg that I was madly in love with him because he told me he'd kill himself otherwise. Gahd, how do I get INTO these things? Human beings are amazing creatures, and it never fails to astound me to think of all the basic things we've been given, the acts we can perform, the capacities our brains and bodies have for modifying our surroundings and circumstances -- but sometimes, I really think that the vast majority of people, even with their wondrous gifts, have a hell of a lot of faulty wiring.
Two PM. Following a conversation the other night, over Boone's wine and Devil Dogs with Corrine, I've been thinking a lot about love. Corrine noted several examples in her life of people deciding they wanted to marry her and spend the rest of their lives with her. "It's like, I'm destined to make people want to marry me!" she exclaimed. "I know the feeling, sort of," I replied grumpily, slurping my beverage.
This Ugandan guy brings up a lot of thoughts about such things. It's amazing how many people have suddenly decided they were in love with me, and really had no idea who I am. Greg, for instance, who saw me and within four days was threatening suicide if I, the love of his life, didn't go out with him. Josh, for instance, who spent a week writing me long scrawly letters of devotion until I finally told him I just wasn't going to fall in love with him, particularly not after a week. The little Java Stoner Kid in 1997 who walked up to me one day and handed me a note about how beautiful I was and how he'd been waiting his entire life for me, though I'd never spoken to him or seen him before in my life. They were all serious, too! It wasn't just a dumb ploy to get me into bed! They REALLY genuinely thought I was this goddess that they had to possess. Maybe some of that extra-terrestrial New Mexican radioactive energy leaked over to Binghamton, New York.
It's not that I don't believe in love at first sight. I've experienced love at first sight. But love at first sight is different than puling, pitiful obsession at first sight. How? I'm not sure, but I think generally love at first sight involves wanting to KNOW something about the person you're so suddenly interested in, rather than merely trying to get them to date you. Why is it -- HOW is it -- that this eclectic posse of people seems to choose me as their key to being initiated into the realm of True Love?
Now, I've vaguely complained about this before, and several times have gotten the response, "You should feel flattered!" Well, I'm NOT flattered when I suddenly expected to reciprocate some sort of undying affection for somebody I don't even know. It's not flattering to be expected to take care of people who will not consider taking care of themselves. Why me, anyway? That's the question I always ask myself. Why me? Certainly not for my looks -- there are plenty of girls in the world much lovelier than me; I'm rather plain and ordinary, and don't stick out in a crowd. Probably not for my brains -- there are plenty of geniuses who get ignored while I, of mediocre-to-high intelligence, am the Chosen One of rapidly-appearing, snivelling, never-had-a-girlfriend, little boys. What advantage do I have over the millions of other people who have so many of the same qualities as me? What makes me so goddamned special? Why am *I* the one my Ugandan correspondent wants as the mother of his children?
I'm fairly well aware of who I am and what my limitations are. I'm not ugly by any means, but I'm not a ravishing beauty. I'm not content with my world most of the time, but I'm no revolutionary. I'm a good writer, but my work pales to an opaque drivel next to the likes of the authors I read. I'm a sexual being, but I'm no pornstar drooling to bring the world to the brinks of screaming orgasm. I've got a lot of talents and a lot of interests, but for every talent I have, there's someone -- or many people -- who are better at it than me, and for every interest I have, there are many people who are much more informed than me. Of course, this is not to say I'm unloveable, that I'm deserving of a backseat to all the brilliant and beautiful and talented people in the world. But it DOES mean that when somebody's going to fall in love with me, they'd better be respectful of my limitations as well as my abilities, or else they're only in love with someone they've imagined.
Two Thirty-Five PM. I've worked myself into a state of discontent. Am checking my email again. A note from Brian... We've decided to build a tunnel connecting Binghamton and Seattle so that the distance between us will be minimized. Truthfully, I'm a bit worried about such a tunnel's consequences; what if some of Binghamton's overflowing strangeness reaches Seattle? From what I understand, western Washington State has its own share of strangeness -- apparently a lot of serial murderers, possibly a result of the abundant local fungus population -- and if it can withstand the New Mexico radiocative energy Brian brought there with him, I suspect Seattle can withstand just about anything. Still, the thought is disquieting.
Thirty-nine days and forty nights until Brian's arrival in Binghamton. Have I mentioned this? His impending visit, which I look forward to with an anticipation approaching mild psychosis, is making me a bit nervous. Brian and I have much unfinished business. Oddly, two years of living on opposite coasts have done nothing to change this. When I left college, I said goodbye to everyone but him. I supposed I'd never see him again, but I still couldn't say goodbye. It's funny, in a way, because we never spent much time together. We never spent much time alone, never spent much time talking about anything important other than spaceships and Europe and gothy music. Yet the time we did spend together was highly concentrated. "The concentrate they make concentrate from." --Audrey Horne, Twin Peaks Am not sure, after two years of a slowish, mundane existence, that I'm ready for the intensity of a visit with Brian. Nonetheless, I'm slowly preparing things for our reunion: learning to cook something vegetarian, cleaning up all the random messes I tend to leave around, trying to remember the things about this town that most impress non-natives... Thirty-nine days... I've got a bit of time to prepare for Brian's whirlwind. Getting emails from Brian reminds me of running away with the circus. ...And is much, much -- INFINITELY -- nicer than getting emails from psycho-Ugandan.
It's three twenty-two PM. I suppose I'd better go do something with my day.
~Helena*