December 29, 1997.
I'm late.
Which you've doubtlessly noticed.
I can explain.
Last night (Sunday) I waited for an hour for my bus to come and take me back to my happy, warm home. Said bus never quite arrived, so I spent all this time in significantly colder than zero-degree weather, with ice-blue hands that could not be warmed even with two layers of gloves. My hatred and prejudice towards the bus mongers of OC Transpo is at an all-time high, because of the fact that I believe it was thoughtless incompetence that stranded me (versus say, me being late for the bus or anything personally preventable). In the time I waited, two buses labeled as the "97 Kanata" came by (as opposed to the "97 South Keys" which runs oppositely, towards downtown), and it was the arrival of one that teased me into waiting and waiting for half an hour more for the other. When I got onto the second bus, to inquire as to the possible arrival of the bus I wanted, the driver told me it was 2:40 in the morning (I left Broken's house at 1:30), and that as far as he could tell, my bus had long since come and gone (it also happened to be the last bus of the evening).
So, I think what happened was that the first bus was my bus, but the driver simply neglected to update his route number, so I stood there like an idiot on a stick, chilly chilly chilly, until at long last I gave up, madly and coldly, and (thankfully) wandered back to a place where I would be welcomed and warmed.
The other part of my day I won't really discuss at length. It just involves a messy rumour passed along to me in a worried phone call. Apparently one of my friends either cut her head while shaving it, or tried to kill herself. I'm not at all sure which, but felt inclined to rush home as best I could, with "we love you, you know" chocolates in tow.
More when I get a chance to sort things out. Sorry for the delay.
They didn't shut up. Just when you thought one had fallen asleep, the other would begin howling. It was awful. I hate children. I might think my nieces are angels (even when they're beastly, they're better than all children everywhere, and cuter too...), but I feel no such obligation towards the world of preadolescence in general. Screaming children, sort of like the way that a howling baby will cause a lactating woman to start leaking milk, compel me to get a vasectomy, the pruning shears, or something, such that I might never taste the infinite pleasures of childraising. Bleah.
But anyway, the party was memorable. I'm not sure if we actually spent any time in the warehouse at all. Caira was working the door, so we spent most of the party hanging out with her, because most of the guests were complete strangers, and they weren't the people we wanted to talk to. And Burrhus and Phreeduh were in attendance, which was a delight. I even attempted to invite Mary at the last second, but he was (er) entertaining a friend, and so I blushingly let him go.
It was a special treat for me to be reunited with an old, particularly dear friend from my days as a high school wastrel (with even more teenage angst than I have now... now I have twentysomething angst, which can be controlled with chemicals, if only I had the ambition to get some prescribed to me), who was home briefly from her classes at Queens University, in Kingston. We'd been phone and e-mail-tagging for about a week, trying to coordinate our movements, and just when we thought we might not see each other during this brief and tentative window, I dashed home from Toronto, gave her a call, and quick as a flash, she and her boyfriend made the forty-minute drive to Ottawa from South Mountain (where her parents live). It was wonderful. Of my old high school cronies, I've only really stayed especially close to a handful, like Laura (who visited), Charlotte (of whom you often read), and others you don't read about like Evoy, and Hymie, and Corelli. Oddly enough, my friends are beginning to take real-life steps, verging on putting down roots and everything. Evoy surprised me two weeks ago by announcing that he was getting married. And Laura's boyfriend has landed a real career-like job in Alberta, where he'll be earning oodles of money and relocating the both of them in the Fall. Charlotte's almost finished university, and next year she'll even be more of a big-shot professional woman. Who would have thought that I, anal retentive master of rigidity, would prove to be the prodigal rapscallion?
However, things have not all been so fun or philosophical. As yesterday's brief Snivel suggested, life has not been wholly fantastic at the house. When I was at Broken's, still bitter and (emotionally) chilly from my hour-long wait for the bus that never came, she got a phone call from Kincaid, her long-time friend and my next-door housemate. He was sick and wheezy with asthma (we have two asthmatics in our house, both of whom have been smitten by a flu which many in H'Tog are suffering from, but it seems especially deathly to those whose respiratory systems are already treacherous. Kind of like the Chicken Flu, but for asthmatics. Caira had to go to the hospital last night for a dose of the "fat and crazy drug," which is apparently excellent for severe attacks of asthma, but if taken for prolonged periods, makes you put on lots of weight and become psychotic.), but was also inclined to share gossip with us (we're a house of vicious rumours and endless gossip, but in Kincaid's defense he was legitimately concerned), so he told Broken, and then me, that the present rumour was based on some kafuffle in the hallway outside his door, where he gained the impression that something was amiss with our sweet, elfin, depressive housemate, Pixiegirl.
He wasn't entirely sure what to believe; he'd heard two different stories. The first involved the rumour that Pixiegirl had attempted suicide the previous night, and had left a suicide note explaining herself, and was bloody and unwell. The other that, oh no, she'd simply cut her head trying to shave it. Neither sounded especially good to me, one being unlikely and the other sounding ludicrous. I'd talked to her that evening, and she was extremely unhappy, but not suicidal (we discussed it specifically), and it didn't seem like she could have taken such a radical turn. That being so, I was still extremely worried about her, and this was the reason I'd been so insistent upon coming home that night (and why being stranded upset me so). I'd promised her a massage (she gets the most terrible muscle cramps from stress along her shoulders and spine. And no forces short of morphine can actually chase it away, but hour-long massages can alleviate the pain a little), and I really hoped to be of some cheer, in my odd, wry, manic way.
In my mind, I devised a scenario that was most likely. That Pixiegirl, miserable, angry and destructive, had gone on a self-mutilation binge, and cut herself up enough to look serious about it, yet not actually threaten her own life. Over the past week or so, she's been put under increasing amounts of pressure from various demanding sources, and none of it's good. I'm actually rather angry with certain people at this point, because I feel like Pixiegirl has been pushed and manipulated and in some ways become a pawn for concerns that are not actually supposed to be hers. As well, I'm familiar enough with the compelling melodrama and self-hatred of cutting to understand its allure in times of extreme emotion -- which is basically all Pixiegirl has known of late. I didn't truly know what could be done, but I did want to give her a sort of token of affection and sugary reinforcement, so on the way back to the house I bought her some chocolates (After Eight -- the best kind), and fretted and worried all the way (as I said, certain scenarios seemed more likely than others, but I had no idea as to what was really going on at all) downtown.
When she, Lesleigh, Jaysen, and a new housemate returned home, Pixiegirl looked pale and tired. We smiled shyly at one another (the introvert's way), and she came into my room to talk for a few seconds (it being the Front room, centre of all traffic). I asked her how she was, and she explained that she was ill, and in pain, and tired. I fumbled in my briefcase, and pulled out the chocolate, explaining that they were purchased out of fondness and concern; she beamed slightly, and gave me a hug, ate a chocolate delicately, then showed me her wounds. Her left arm was cut in a hideous, deep, tic-tac-toe pattern all along its pale underside, from elbow to wrist. The inside of her leg was even worse. The sight was heartbreaking and terrible, and I hugged her and frowned sadly, and explained how worried I'd been, and the relief I felt knowing that (at least physically) she was alright. I felt awful for her; apparently there had been notes she'd written... although they weren't really suicide notes. She was mostly feeling alone, hurt, angry, and betrayed by the people closest to her. She'd smeared it with her own blood, presented it to the people in question, and retreated to her room to be angry and miserable all at once.
The response had been affirming, but in some ways, too little too late. Everyone has been walking on eggshells, giving her love, affection, attention, and everything, but I'm not convinced that the problems themselves have been resolved. I indulged her in something like two hours of intense back-kneading last night, to the Eels, the bitter intonations of Mr. Leonard Cohen and a mixed tape presented to me by Clorinda last year (I had sort of been avoiding listening to it, because of certain unhappy associations, but I was adventurous and happy about our friendship at long last, so on it went). It didn't really help all that much, but I was at least happy to have tried. I think the symptoms will remain as the obvious function of various causes. These, unfortunately, I must get into later, as I have to rush to the bank and keep them from declaring me ready to pay back last year's student loan.
But hey, what do I have to complain about?
There's this guy hanging around her right now, who's quite keen on winning her affections. He and his girlfriend recently broke up, and I suppose from that perspective the situation would have to be ideal. He's lonely, she's lonely; one plus one equals "happy." And various house members seem quite keen on this blossoming romance, because of the fact that he's this cool goth guy everyone likes having around. So Pixiegirl was being pressured into accepting him into her life, and all the while she was trying to reconcile her own powerful feelings for someone else. In some ways, she's acquiescing, but increasingly I think she's putting up defenses, and his advances, not entirely welcomed to begin with, are (from my personally slanted perspective) becoming upsetting. And yet, at the same time, she feels strongly compelled to listen to her friends' urgings, and she is lonely. But I personally think she's being manoevered into something she's not ready for, and this situation probably played no small part in the events of the other night.
My resolve for the week though (perhaps just for this week), is that people are the masters of their own destiny, and you can't really barge in on the lives of other people, whatever your intentions. Though I think it originally applied to the reality that there is an increasingly worrisome situation here at H'Tog where we are losing money as if from a wound, some people just aren't paying their rent, or their bills, and someday soon, it might well be that the house will be out of money, we'll be out on the streets, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves (or, specifically, the deadbeats who got us into this). Instead of burning a hole through my stomach lining with worry, however, I decided that all I can really do is be the best housemate I can -- pay my rent, pay my bills, help out where and when I can, and be as pleasant and positive as possible. People can't be nagged or badgered into making the right decisions for themselves all the time, forever and ever. Eventually you have to grow up; at least, I was always under that impression.
Pettiness, politics, infantile demands and idleness from
the people who contribute the least but expect the most have soured my
dreams of a happy communal-esque safe gothy freaky family house, and it
will either get better, or it won't. For whatever happens, I'm trying my
darndest, enjoying the company of my friends, preparing for the worst, and
hoping for the best.
Anyway, I've expanded this philosophy to the
predicament with Pixiegirl. I think she's great, and I want to be
helpful, but I can't barge into her life and start making decisions for
her. It would imply so much disrespect and contempt for her. All I really
can do is be the best friend I can; be supportive and attentive and
giving, and try to make her happy. If it falls apart, then at least I
can be there, and try to help without authoritatively messing her up
even further.
I'm feeling kind of like a loser because I forgot to make plans for New Year's Eve (honest, I just plum forgot), and this is one of those holidays where if you aren't doing something, then you actually are a giant grubby loser, so boo on me. In any event, Charlotte did make plans, and as they involve Toronto for several days, I'm left to ferret-sit at her apartment. This is something I've actually looked rather forward to -- hours and hours of wearing down the maniacal energy levels of a sadistic weasel -- and since I'm poor and not likely to be rich before the fifth (I know my paycheck is going to be late, because it took forever to obtain an invoice for November's wages last month), when my student loan kicks into its second installment, at least that's some simple, honest, entertainment, unlike the partying, drinking, whoring, or otherwise overly indulging that perhaps you have planned for the coming festivities.
I haven't really gotten into the proper details of my Toronto adventures this Holiday Season, but I really do have to prattle on a bit about the birthday present that Johnny gave me when he visited my sister's house on Boxing Day. It came in a big painted-green box, laced shut with red yarn, and adorned with a cloth bag painted to resemble an eyeball (my room seems to have three coherent themes -- happy faces, frogs, and eyeballs). It was safely nestled in a slaughtered forest's worth of shredded newspaper, and if you can't tell it was impressive and magical, then obviously I have no talent for foreshadowing whatever. I reached into the box, and began sifting through in my curious and gleeful search to discover what fabulous thing awaited me. Out came what appeared to be a murdered stuffed animal, attached to a considerable length of coiled telephone cord. Obviously, it was the receiver for a telephone, but it was hardly that simple a discovery. Attached to the cord was the rest of the telephone. Oh, and it was beautiful. It was an old, rotary telephone, the square kind that sits on 1970's secretary's desks in the offices of private detectives (like the daring Mike Hammer, for example). It had been reconditioned, and then horrendously modified. I'm not sure how many stuffed animals were murdered and eviscerated for its benefit, but all of them were red and pink.
It looks vaguely like a Popple in the way its fur protrudes, but the most accurate description I've so far been able to establish is -- if they had a muppet that was a phone, then this phone would be that muppet. The receiver has legs on either end, both of them rear ends with tails. You can pet the whole phone, and your ear is toasty and snuggled when you talk into it. The rotary mechanism is covered in sparkly glitter, as is any part of the phone that isn't already covered with fur. I was in love with it, and forever indebted to Johnny for thinking of me when he saw it at a craft show. I spent some respectable portion of my Sunday afternoon getting it to work. I wanted to have both my telephones perfectly functional, as well as my modem, so a trip to Radio Shack was in order for the operation to be successful. But, with the magic of a splitter and twenty-five feet of modular cable, it works smashingly, and is the new centrepiece of my room (if you exclude me, that is.).
So top that.
I was out all night ferret-sitting at Charlotte's, following a drunken but merry holiday interlude here at casa del freako. Last night was fun, but in odd ways. Caira and Mefisto are moving out this week (woe, for they will be sorely missed), so I spent a fair amount of time helping them, as opposed to diving headfirst into the merriment rampant elsewhere in our house. I was in an atrocious mood for much of yesterday, and I didn't really feel like joining everybody in fun and excess. So it was peaceful and uplifting to carry boxes and furniture down two flights of stairs into the van they'd borrowed, where I could sweat a little, pant a little, and otherwise feel like I'd earned the pleasure of acting like a dork later on.
Tomorrow's Snivel will include my (heh) resolutions for 1998, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to sit down for too long today, so I wanted to at least inform you that already I've managed to do something especially dumb.
My first big goof of 1998 involved a well-meant, but ill-fated, phone call to Clorinda. You see, Clorinda is pretty -- if you will -- sassy, and she likes witty banter and making fun of all the gangstas and Homey G's out there. So she mocks street slang all the time, and usually adds "Bitch!" to the end of her sentences. Like, "Shet up, bitch!" and so on, lad dee da, ha ha ha and all that. Actually, it's pretty infectious, so being the social joiner I am, I've picked up on it as well, to the point of embarrassing myself (which is how I typically pick up anything). A bunch of my friends and I were sitting in my room last night, drinking homebrew beer provided by our friend Frettchen, and playing chess, and generally yakking and gossiping (and occasionally frolicking). It was kind of like the fall of Rome in other parts of the house, and I was perfectly happy to avoid those members of the house who had gotten so pathetically drunk as to have lost all physical control, particularly that most precious of control -- control of your cardiac sphincter, which keeps the vomit inside your stomach.
As the minutes ticked on towards a whole new year, I decided to be characteristically anal about the whole process, logged onto a time server, got my PC clock adjusted just so, and maximized my system clock (avec snazzy Smashing Pumpkins font) so that we could watch the last minute of 1997 flow past. As happens (and as well you know), the New Year did in fact arrive right on schedule, and as the atomically precise second passed my clock over to 1998 time (Eastern Standard, but of course), we cheered and smiled and kissed and giggled, and had more to drink. But I was thinking of Clorinda that day, and I really wanted to give her a quick call, and leave a message (as I expected she would be out partying herself) wishing her a Happy New Year. And that's what I did. Except, idiot style.
As her machine faintly told me to leave a message, I gleefully shouted into my phone, "Happy New Year, Bitch!" Just the way Clorinda would, if she had called me.
And everyone looked at me funny as I hung up, and so of course I explained, "No, it's funny! Clorinda will get it! She always talks like that! It's a reference, see!" And as far as I knew, it would die there. Of course, my phone rang about ten minutes later, and on the other end is Clorinda, cheerful but confused.
"Rob?" She began, "Did you just call me and leave the message 'Happy New Year, Bitch!' on my answering machine?"
And that's where I screamed and began apologizing.
I guess because I was cheerful and loud on her message, she had no idea who was calling. Usually I'm extremely quiet (as much because of the connection as my disposition), and cheerful or not, I have a certain quality to my voice that was apparently not as intense as last night's message. So she dialed * 69 in the hopes of figuring out if someone had prank called her, or was serious, or what, and came up with my area code.
And Clorinda found it extremely funny, but I still haven't stopped blushing, and while I feel like a tremendous fool, it seems for the best that I confess to my utter dumbness here and now, as a cleansing ritual that might better pave the way for a year of intelligent decisions. <
Resolution number one: "Don't be an idiot."
Once again, Happy New Year.
1. Never fall in love again.
2. If I have to fall in love, it should be with something harmless and unrealistic like a porno magazine, or a street lamp, or a ball of twine, so that I could confess my love till the cows come home and it wouldn't affect our relationship in the slightest.
3. At least see if Prozac might not help.
4. Fight crime.
5. Attend, or form, some sort of recovery group for street vigilantes who become so intoxicated by the power and violence of holding the lives of others in their hands that they eventually become worse monsters than whatever they happen to be fighting.
6. Spend so much time chanting the words "You turned me gay -- wanna see?" to myself that the next time I run into my mean ex-girlfriend, I won't even need to think.
7. Misplace my sense of guilt for five luscious minutes.
8. Discover secrets to time travel, voyage to the past and the future, write a manuscript entitled "The Things Rob Does Wrong in His 148 years of Glorious Existence, and How to Make Them Go Away" and give it to myself on my eighteenth birthday.
9. Save the day for at least one person I've never seen before, and will never see again, who thought there was no hope.
10. Snap, and with a five minute tirade that no one will ever be able to forget, let someone I violently dislike know precisely what I think of them.
11. Become such a hot commodity in the world of the rich and famous that I can actually declare posing for pornographic photographs (to be printed in Playgirl, as well as by the publishers of North America's finest gay porn) as a source of income on my 1999 income tax return.
12. Play God.
13. Shave off all my hair. Mail it to Billy Corgan. Hope for the best.
14. Buckle down and work hard at school, because getting on the Dean's List would especially irritate Phil, who didn't want me attending the same university as she did.
15. Write, or draw, or publish, or something.
16. Lose enough weight to justify a solid week of dinner at Chinese buffet restaurants.
17. Hornswoggle Clorinda into visiting me.
18. With my ability to make comely lasses lose count, form a colossal, evil, polyamorous financial cult empire that can take on Scientology and make it my bitch.
19. Write more letters, and make more phone calls, to the people I love the most, yet see the least.
20. Keep enough money saved up that, if the house explodes in an eruption of politics, duplicity, pettiness and irresponsibility, I can skip away, giggling all the way into an apartment with a nice big kitchen of my very own.
Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.
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