A u g u s t 31

In some ways it hurt so much though. There we were, civilly having a conversation (Charlotte pointed out to me, when I was looking miserable, that, really, wouldn't it be a million times worse if we weren't sitting there, talking things over? If she didn't want to talk to me, or me to her, or someone had stormed out angrily, or something...? Of course, I agreed, but imagining the scenario of us not talking just got me more depressed), but so many times I just thought, if there were any chance she'd catch me, I'd just fall into her arms and start sobbing.

It isn't that any one thing will get me this unhappy, but unfortunately I'm trying to deal with entirely too many sources of extreme stress and unpleasantness at once, and I'm not a strong person. But even a STRONG person would be feeling the pressure right now, so I think I'm entitled to a little moping.

I'm beginning to reconsider the value of this excessive honesty, in terms of Snivelling, though. It seems to cause entirely too much damage sometimes, because a lot of what I say involves the lives of others, as well as me. Charlotte mentioned the Daily Snivel to one of her friends a couple of weeks ago when they were talking about me, and the idea of some person basically publishing a diary of personal thoughts really upset her friend. I hadn't really looked at it from that perspective before -- Charlotte being an avid reader, all things being equal -- but it really disturbed me, and I could actually agree with her objection. Charlotte certainly doesn't mind the occasional starring role, so long as (and I really should have thought this through) she doesn't have to find out about my personal feelings on-line, when I should be telling her in person. I'm not sure. I may attempt to find some way to chronicle my life without so explicitly involving the people who are close to me.

And in terms of my new apartment, I'm terrified. I move on Monday, and I think I might have actually made a mistake in taking this place. I know it's shitty of me to say, but in the end I'm kind of a private person, and I'm not really sure if I made the best decision in moving into a house with 14 people, most of whom I don't know. I'm there for two months (having paid that much rent), and then I'll just have to see. Ideally my dear friend Broken will get her student loan on the second try (her circumstances will be different), and then we can find a 2 or 3 bedroom (perhaps with our friend Kincaid, who is cool and laid back) maybe in October or November. This is my hope.

I think I just have too many reservations. I want more personal space than I'll have, and I want a bathroom. Not necessarily my own bathroom, but certainly a place where I can do the full range of bathroom things, and only share it with one or two other people. At this point, there's a half bath across the hall from my room, and showers are in these little stalls in the "sauna room" (the Apollonia being a massage parlour once), and the kitchen truly scares me. I'm thinking about getting a meal plan at school just so I can avoid the whole thing. Maybe buy a tiny fridge if I can fit it into my budget.

I think at this point I'm just not ready for such massive scale living. I've been frightfully sheltered here in Kanata, and while I've really pulled my act together this summer in terms of autonomy and responsibility, I need a place I can call "home," and really feel like it's somewhere I'd want to live for a year or two. Funny, but I guess that means I'm looking in a sense to put down roots.

It's really snobbish of me actually. I'm not sure how much of this is just cold feet, and how much is my feeling that I'm going to be living in a studenty slum type situation. Even if my room is cozy and cool, I just won't have the amenities I'd need... like a place where I can feel safe cooking and storing my food (there is at least one "convicted" food thief moving in, and the girl who holds the lease has suggested that maybe people should get their own fridges, on account of the evil smelling and decrepit device in the kitchen), and a living room I can put my feet up and watch my precious Babylon 5 and Simpsons in. etc. etc. etc. Maybe I'm aiming too high, but right now I'm scared of where I'll be living, and that's not the right foot to get off on. I don't know... I'll see in a month or two.

I made this decision myself, but that means that I can also get upset with myself for rushing into it. I think, after four let downs, and a ticking clock, I decided that I'd take any reasonable place, especially one that would let me move out sans lease if it didn't end up working out.

I'll be happy there for the time I'll be there, I think. Just not completely "at home," if you know what I'm trying to say. I feel bad, because Broken thinks it a great place, and my friend Tara really wants me to live there with her and her boyfriend, and the very nice and ambitious young woman with the lease needs as many people as she can get to keep the house in existence, but in the end I have to do what makes me happy, not everybody else. I just hate letting people down.

Granted, I don't even know what makes me happy anymore.

A u g u s t 27

I was seriously impressed. Radiohead sounds as good live as they do spinning on endless infinite "annoy the neighbors" repeat on my CD player. And in spite of being surrounded by several thousand angsty teenagers fueled by the cloying smell of a whole mess o' pot and making themselves intimately familiar to me with an unearthly amount of pushing and crowding and personal-comfort-zone negation. I think every girl out there was standing with her hands cupping her breasts to free up at least a little modesty and freedom. I wish I'd had that excuse.

I spent a lot of time enjoying the show tremendously, but also I spent a certain percentage of that wondering -- "Who keeps blowing on my hand? Is it you? Why are you doing that, missy? Why do you blow on my hand every three minutes?" but in the end all I know is that apparently that's just what some people do.

I think the only criticism of the concert that I could provide, is that it wasn't the greatest venue at which to meet my friend Charlotte's new fashionable accessory, Slash. What I mean by this is that while I should have been ready to meet this person, so important to such a dear friend of mine, I wasn't quite. But maybe I could never have been. To risk foreshadowing, he wasn't quite what I expected.
I spent a considerable amount of time trying to come up with a sensible pseudonym that sufficiently conjured up his impressive charisma and good looks, but ultimately I went with something sexily dangerous.

The best way to describe Slash that I can articulate is by pointing out with infuriating vagueness that somehow he's just "too something," in the sense that he's "too handsome," and "too cool," and "too motivated." Which is something that pathetic people like me get to say, because it's the only thing that might actually let us degrade someone like that, and thus take off that depressing edge of what might as well be a huge inferiority complex. Kind of like the "Newton/Notwen" disorder I occasionally prattle on about.

In the most general sense, I think I was initially mildly leery of him, but only because of the suddenness with which he entered Charlotte's life, and the immediate rapport they seemed to develop, which coincided with her boyfriend's return from afar, and imminent departure to somewhere even farther away, and my confession of my feelings. I'm not a jealous person at all, but I'm horribly insecure, and when I'm paranoid about something, it does no good at all for a new, wonderful, shiny person to dance into the life of someone special to me, making me feel like I have to compete for attention that used to be exclusively mine. The sucky part sort of came for the two or three weeks that Charlotte and I dwelled in awkwardness, as we both sort of tried to get over my affection for her -- I spent a lot of time wishing we could just hang out innocently like we used to, knowing that I shouldn't really call, and knowing as well that she was largely coping by spending her time with other people (since previously, lots and lots of her time was spent with me). I ended up lonely and envious of this new friend's position.

But it was all sort of done under the assumption that Charlotte no longer wanted a part in any relationship. Of course, in a way, that was worse, because my exclusive position as her confidant and buddy was being threatened by a new "friend" far more than any boyfriend could manage, so all in all it was a miserable time for me.

Still, things gradually got better; beginning most noticeably last week. This week was, of course, even better. She's been calling refreshingly often, and has gotten back into "thinking of Rob" mode, as evinced by just doing little things for me, and with me, like wanting to meet so I could give her a mixed tape I put together for her, and the next day arranging another rendezvous so she could give me these forms she'd gotten for me that will probably lead to more Federal employment next summer for myself, and Broken, because she'd heard the new forms were being released, and at least one organization would be accessing the database around the end of September, so she wanted to be sure we got into it SOON SOON SOON.

But even then, I still felt yucky. For instance, when she gave me the forms, which was a really sweet and thoughtful thing to do, she was like, "But now I have to rush home! Slash (name changed) is making me 'pasgetti' (cute) for dinner, and then we're going out to the Dunvegan (a cool Irish pub where readings often happen)!"

As it turned out last Wednesday, Charlotte called and informed me that Slash had an extra ticket for the concert, and she wanted to see if I could find anybody willing to go. I tried Lilith, just because I'd mentioned to it to her before, and we still haven't gotten together, but she wasn't home, and when Broken called, listless and bored, I asked her if she'd wanted to come. I wasn't sure she would, because she doesn't like crowds, concerts, or Radiohead, but she was actually quite eager, explaining that her general aversion to things Radioheady had to do with the fact that I've been playing the new CD an awful, awful lot. This was a happy ending, and worked out well. Broken and I met after my day finished, and we romped downtown until the designated meeting time, at the statue of Terry Fox outside the Rideau Centre.

Thus leading to that point when it came time to meet.

Slash showed up first, recognizing me easily on sight, on account of a glowing mop of freshly dyed purple hair attached to my scalp that precedes me every bit as much as my various reputations. Oh, and he was a charmer though. Egads. Chiseled good looks, easygoing attitude -- so so unlike the manic freak sitting beside him with ultraviolet hair and a RAM module around his neck on a freshly constructed necklace. Charlotte was late, so I took the opportunity to duck back into the mall to freshen up in a washroom, leaving Slash and Broken to chat it up for awhile. I ran into Charlotte on the way back out, and debated waiting for her to come out of the washroom, and deciding instead to go back outside, since she knew where to find us and I didn't want to leave Broken to entertain a complete stranger for very much longer. Still, they'd gotten along fine, talking about poetry and school. To my chagrin, not only was Slash a civil engineering student at Waterloo (a tough school to get into), but he was quite cultured (according to Broken, he exclaimed at one point, "Rob?" Is he Tamara's brother? I saw her read at Strathcoma Park! I LOVED her!") and knowledgable -- not a combination that occurs often. AND he windsurfs. That's how he and Charlotte met. She saw him windsurfing, and since her parents live on the water, they have all the equipment necessary, but none of them know how to windsurf, so she got him to teach her.

So yes. He IS exactly like Ken. Like the doll. He looks good, he does everything; he is every girl's dream doll.

Bah humbug, I say.

Of course, I was still ready to accept this person. I reasoned, "Well, Rob old boy, he's HER friend. If she wants to hang out with him, that's cool! After all, he's LEAVING in nine days. It's not like they're having SEX or anything. So be COOL, daddio!" (snap snap) And it's not like I begrudge people for making new friends... everybody does it all the time. It might be that he made me a little insecure, but I knew I'd get over it once Charlotte started paying an equal amount of attention to me.

And then we were in such a rush to walk over to the Civic Centre that it was halfway there before it occurred to me to ask myself "Wait a minute! Are they holding hands?!" Which was obviously a rhetorical question, asked more out of indignation than a disability to see the patently obvious, which of course would be the reality that they WERE holding hands. Now and then he'd even put an arm around her, and then she'd put an arm around him. Or they'd hug, or cuddle, or embrace, or touch, or one of a million other cute couply things that made me quietly, internally, hurt.

Of course, meanwhile, I'm there with Broken, and we're holding hands, and touching, and hugging, and even kissing so, really, where's the problem? I'm not sure why, but there still was one for me. I've been quite unable to figure it out.

See, I've spent weeks trying to purge this love I have for Charlotte. I've had a whole lot of time, on account of the awkwardness that resulted from my confession, to be terrified of losing our friendship, to regret everything I'd felt, and said, and that really went a long way towards squeezing the juices of love out of my nervous system.

And perhaps it's the pettiest, saddest, thing for me to think in the world, but from a certain point of view (mine), it really hurts to feel.. replaced by someone. To know for sure that his friendship is what has kept because our friendship has been so very strained. And not only that, but while I'm consumed with guilt, and misery, and stress, and self-loathing over my terrible, misplaced affections, she wound up falling for him. I have much to atone for. I spend each day feeling endless globs of angst, and deep unhappiness, knowing that I've caused one of my dearest friends to feel uncomfortable with me by inadvertently and unwillingly falling in love with her. It confuses me to see her so fond of someone that she was only a few weeks ago ready to tell about the fact that she just didn't want that sort of attachment to anybody.

And no, I'm not jealous. I was honest when I told her I was in love with her, and honest when I said that this didn't mean I ever thought a relationship could work, should happen, or would be good for our friendship. I mean, yes there are times I wanted to be with her, and yes sometimes I think about the ironic ease of their situation, and yes once in awhile I wish I was the person she was spending all this quality time with. But I don't think that's really the reason this bothers/hurts me.

He makes Charlotte happy. She deserves to feel that way. Goodness knows that it's been hard for her to know who to trust lately.

Maybe I'm afraid of having to compete for a friend's attention with someone who probably gets the hiccups more sexily than I do, or maybe I'm just hurt that Charlotte can be happy when things are so uncertain between us, but they're not really very good reasons. Maybe I don't have a very good reason. Maybe, like most human beings in a situation like this, I'm just reacting by feeling lonely.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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