I got a call from an old friend today. We used to go out, once upon a time, but things have risen and fallen with various fights and resurrections, until the point at where we are now where we're just close, comfortable friends who no longer yell at one another, and she has a girlfriend. You know, like everyone's old lovers do. Anyway, she just moved into a new apartment, which essentially signifies her independance from home, and another, presently stressful, phase in her life. Her new lover moved away for the summer though, and while I'm not sure if that's going to be near enough for visits, or far away to some other part of the country, it seemed to be harder on her than she wanted to admit. At the same time, there was little me, stuck in my room asleep all day, suffering from some loneliness and my own versions of stress. I don't usually play the role of companionable ear with her. That isn't because of lack of desire, but because she's just not that good with her feelings. It's nice when someone reaches out, even in small ways, though.
Another situation is even weirder. It doesn't directly complicate my life, but it does affect the relationship between my best friend, and her closest female friend, so by extension it leaves me concerned and hesitant. I don't know her friend well, but I hear a lot about her -- when my friend and I get together, we spend a lot of time on our own. But I guess the situation as it has been is that her friend has some very strong feelings for her, and recently she announced them. That is, she admitted to wanting a relationship with her. A close, exclusive one. In my own thoughts, I'd always imagined that my friend and her friend would get together in some sense, but only casually. They're very close, and while I have a close relationship that extends to love and affection with her, such things that might make her happy would be important to me. But at the same time, while I've never pressed my friend for a serious relationship (being the wishy-washy, polyamorous, person I am), my feelings for her are very deep, and she has had to admit that she can't bear the emotional strains and obligations of any serious relationship at this point in her life. So she's had to tell the same thing to her friend, and I can only imagine that this will cause a lot of tension and awkwardness for some time to come.
I feel sympathetic for both sides in this. My friend is a very sensitive, wonderful, beautiful girl, and this isn't the first time someone has been so in love with her that they started to press for more than she could give. The last time it was just a friend of hers, though, who had made some assumptions about her feelings for him, and as well the nature of their friendship. This time, it's a matter of one of the few people she really feels close to admitting some very hard things, and having some impossible expectations. How do you deal with someone who wants to marry you? How do you face one of your best friends, someone who loves you to the point of wanting to possess you to the exclusion of anyone else (including me), and hope she'll just endure the truth about how uncomfortable she feels being given this burden?
However, I sympathize and empathize with her friend, as well. I know what it's like to love someone -- to need someone -- who is somehow unattainable, and yet so close to your heart and your life. We've all pined for someone we share huge parts of our hearts and days with, and sometimes we silently bear our crosses, and sometimes we confess how we feel. And often these confessions can cause a lot of damage, but something has to be said because it hurts so much to be close to someone, and touch them, and share with them, and yet feel so empty, and so miserable. I've felt that. I've even felt it for my poor, dear friend. I don't want to marry her, and I don't desire to turn her into my girlfriend, but I admit I've thought about what the future might be like. And I've spent so many nights wishing she were here with me.
But I have met her, and perhaps it was paranoia, but I did get the impression she didn't like me. I would just assume it was my idiotic ways that might inspire this. It was very important that she like me -- because she is so important to my friend, even now -- but I felt something different from her. And maybe I'm wrong about it, but I think now that she probably feels as uncomfortable with me as I feel when I meet the close friends, or boyfriends, of people I'm close with. I'm someone who is essentially competing for our beloved friend's time and affection, and while it's possible my friend might find the time and the space in her torn heart for the both of us, she is being asked to give more of herself than she can give to anyone.
I suppose the true test of a friendship is how well it can survive someone's love.
The only complications are the reactions people have to your freshly dyed head. Mine tends to glow, on account of the richness of the colour, and when sunlight or even artificial light hits it, it acquires an aura beyond decription. It's just that shiny. Whenever I go outside, I have to deal with people's reactions. My own perception of them varies. Normally I can't even tell when people are staring at me, because they're somewhat bashful of allowing a giant 6 foot 2 freak with purple hair and a trenchcoat stomping around to know that they're staring at him. I usually never get to see it. I have to rely on the amusement of my companions, who themselves are privy to the gaping-mouthed astonishment/awe/confusion/whatever of onlookers.
The exception tends to be children, but particularly small children, who are themselves more inclined to show astonishment at such unnatural sights, and have no capacity to feel shame, and thus no problems with pointing and staring with wide eyes and gaping mouth. They usually say things like "Hey, that guy's got purple hair!" much to the mortification of their parents, who mutter nervous affirmations such as: "Yes he does, now let's go away before he eats us, dear..." though in actuality I find that sort of thing cute. I don't mind being a spectacle -- it's an incredible feeling when you're normally a shy little meek unassuming creature who only ever wants attention. The part I do mind comes in the form of nature's most perfect mistake -- jocks. Those baseball-cap wearing, Nike coat sporting, shaved-head, spitting homophobes. They're never fun.
The fundamental nature of jocks is their co-dependancy. They require each other to feel supported and affirmed, and thus in their typical gangs of stupidity they feel generally pretty comfortable giving the weirder, more intelligent freaks a hard time. Freaks are solitary and sulky by nature, so they're easy pickings. I've concluded that the problem at hand is that anyone who is different is actually quite terrifying for jocks to conceptualize. The entire social structure of this adolescent nightmare is based on conformity. You make fun of people who are different, because you know that if you were somehow different, your "friends" would make fun of you, too. All you can do is attempt to emulate everybody else in your pack and subculture, because the alternative -- isolation and rejection -- is terrifying. People who are different represent this. They consciously and purposefully reject conformity for something altogether different. They choose for themselves. They decide what they want, and that's scary. Jocks like to consider themselves tough, but the reality they face is that they're followers, not leaders, and thus they transfer their humiliation into aggressive posturing.
Conversely, a jock on his own is a virtual coward. It's a beautiful thing to behold. Sure, he might stare at you if he thinks you're a big freak, but all you need to do is waggle your eyebrows at him, and he'll mind his manners soon enough.
But anyway. A reaction I'm finding most common to my appearance is mere curiousity. I like to be friendly when people approach me, because in the end I'm attempting to present a positive image for myself. Sure, I'm a giant weirdo, but I'm also a big sweetie, and I like people to know this. But today, for example, no less than eight people approached us today to ask me "How do you get your hair that way?" And of course, the only thing I can do is take a deep breath, and describe it in the most basic terms I can, answering any questions -- usually: "My daughter/son wants/tried to do that. Where do they go/what would they do?" I'm happy to promote weirdness, but then again, I always suspect the motives of other people who want to be different (are you an intelligent, bitter freak? Or is it just a "phase"?), and it really is to my credit that I never bite anybody, no matter what stupid things they might say to me in their curiousity (Q -- "How did you get your hair purple?" A -- "I DYED it."). I do preen by the light of compliments, though. It's hard not to like those.
So the moral of today's story is, once again: love me.
It's because I'm a goody-two-shoes that I've never given into the temptation to misuse these privileges from the past, but beware, Rob's mean-ex-girlfriend-who-made-him-cry: your next boyfriend could be an evil geek.
Today, incidentally, is the 23rd birthday of a girl who was my first, weirdest, best friend, and from the time I was about 15 until 18, the object of the largest crush of my life. She moved north to coach skating when I was eighteen, and has since settled in British Columbia. It's an odd reality that we only communicate occasionally nowadays with periodic letters back and forth, but once was the time that we wrote one another just about every day. We went to the same school and lived on the same road and everything -- it's just that there's really an art to letter-writing, and I must say, my desire to scribble on paper and put it in envelopes has never been the same. Certainly I still love writing letters, but not on the same order of magnitude. Plus since she was one of my only friends back then, I just had lots more time.
The weirder thing is that, after all this time, she's probably moving back to stay with her parents for awhile, go back to school, and all that. She came home two years ago, after being away for at least two, and we had a brief visit, during which we got along famously -- but in a different way than when we were spotty teenagers. I guess everyone grows up, and in the years that passed us by we'd both grown mean and bitter from relationships and life. So anyway. Come back home and have a happy birthday, you. She doesn't have a computer, so it's not like she'll be the one reading this, but I'm a sentimental person, so just fuck off and leave my logic alone.
It's supposed to rain a significant amount today, and everyone seems upset by rain, but I'm always happiest on dark, rainy days, and today is a good time for lots of rain in particular. The local frogs are taking advantage of the flooding to mate, and it is only so long as the floodwaters are around that their tadpoles have any hope of surviving to become new, adorable frogs. Call me a frog lover, because there just isn't any better term presently available. I'm on their side.
So pray for rain, dance for rain, shoot ice into the clouds with your cannon, or spit off the balcony. The frogs and I are counting on you.
I discovered today, though, that one of my dearest friends (these tend to be the people I talk about most, if you're wondering if everyone just couldn't be my dearest friend by how I go on about so many dear people...), who shall be identified here as Johnny, requires some extensive surgery upon his wrist. He broke it last week, quite severely, and now they've determined that they need to implant some metal to brace the bones of his wrist structure. I mean, it's not that he's going to be crippled by the surgery, or that it's life threatening -- in fact, it will just ensure that he can use it properly more quickly than if it could have knit on its own -- but nevertheless, it means he will be put into some more pain, and that he will be vulnerable and exposed, and I guess I'm not used to thinking of him in terms like that. It's like, he's really quite infallible and wonderful in my eyes, and it's frightening to think of him in pain, in another city far away, where I cannot help or even merely be there to offer my support and affection.
Nothing especially bad physically has ever happened to me so far in my life, and it does have a way of reinforcing the immortality that we all to some extent or another feel about ourselves; but at the same time, it leaves me quite prepared to feel fear and worry and sympathy when I am confronted with the vulnerability of the people I love.
But oh, not today. Today I was given strange and mysterious fortunes of some sort -- whether they be good or bad I cannot say. I was really unpleasantly sick and tired all Sunday, and I didn't have the inclination or energy or lucidity to study. And my bowels were irritable. Oh, how irritable they were. Ugh. I've eaten nothing but rice pudding and crackers since Saturday. Anyway, sometime last night around 6am, I got around to hauling my linguistics -- linguistics, my most hated of studies -- textbook off the shelf and figured out which chapters were going to be on the exam itself. I was fortunate, at least, that the exam was not going to cover anything we'd already been tested upon from September till March... only the last four chapters on such novel subjects as social linguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition, and writing.
Wahoo.
I got an hour and a half of sleep, and got onto the bus to school
feeling ill already. It was cold and wet outside, and hot and humid on
the bus, and all I could smell was the smell of my wet trenchcoat for the
next hour and a half... and that has to be one of the unhappiest fragrances
yet born. I studied as well as I could on the bus, trying to ignore the
motion sickness that everyone gets when they read on the bus or in a car,
and all I could think was "I'm fucked." Which is odd, because I almost
never can get over my linguistic snobbishness to say things like that.
But finally, I got to school, with three minutes to spare before the exam
actually commenced, so I dashed on over to Patterson hall -- which, as my
trusty notebook informed me in my own handwriting, was the location of the
exam. But I got inside Patterson, and to my surprise there was a
suspicious lack of postings that normally go in every building where exams
are being held that tell students what room their particular exam will be
in (they don't post them until fifteen minutes before the exams begin out
of paranoia), and I just thought to myself, "Oh." And I'll delete the
rest that follows that.
I tracked down a directory that said at least what buildings each exam would be held in, and sure enough, there was mine -- Linguistics 29.100 A located in PH. PH -- Patterson Hall. Right? I looked at the building codes. PH -- Porter Hall, second floor of the Unicentre Building.
I'll skip what I thought next as I dashed down the stairs and ran across campus, too.
But I sat myself down and wrote me that exam, marveling that I at least was getting some of the short answer questions on the first question sheet of the exam down nicely. A note to my friend Charlotte would be that there was indeed a question on there about our old friends, pidgins and creoles, regarding which would have a simpler grammar. All may argue with me over that one, but I picked pidgins, because they aren't taught as a native tongue, and one of my curious habits is that I cannot stand to go through my text or my notes after an exam to see how I did. It just doesn't matter after that point.
As the scribbling time progressed, I finished the first two pages of short answer questions, and then I gleefully set upon what turned out to be -- blessed be -- true or false questions, and questions I knew the answers to no less. "Ha-ha!" I cried inwardly and triumphantly, and got straight to work. And then all of a sudden I was at the end of the exam, with only two more questions (worth a measly six marks each) that I'd skipped earlier to get this far, and it all just sort of fell into place. Ten minutes later, I was done. And I never even threw up once. I'd earned every possible mark and made every possible mistake I could, and I was ready to leave. I smiled at my linguistics professor, Professor Helmut Zobl ("No one who speaks German could be an evil man!" -- sigh), who smiled and waved at me, and then I spent the next thirty seconds wandering around like an idiot, with those feelings of victory momentarily squashed, because I couldn't remember where I'd put my coat and bag, and an entire examination room filled with linguists and engineers staring at me no less.
Oh well. That leaves just one more exam, and then endless hours of dead time are upon me.
I just want to point out a few curiosities in my day subsequent to this, though. I was starving and dehydrated after my exam, so I ran downstairs to the unicentre store in search of nutritious yummies that might still be kind to my stomach. Well, that ended up being a bottle of Sprite and a bag of cool ranch Doritos (my logic being, I drank three Sprites in the hospital without any more vomiting, and hey, Doritos are practically just corn meal. The next best thing to your own mother's milk. I guess the most important difference is that unlike mush or nourishing breast milk, Dorito chips are covered in the chemical goodness of salt and spices.), which I paid for with a ten dollar bill. As the clerk was ringing it up, I was thinking to myself how much I needed a loonie (that is, a Canadian dollar coin for you yanks out there) in order to catch an express bus home (which take me straight from downtown to Kanata like a miracle, but they cost a dollar extra on top of my bus pass), and that was when the clerk handed me 8 dollars and 86 cents change instead of 7 dollars and however many cents. So, OK, this was my real Ned Flanders crisis -- do I do the RIGHT thing, or do I pocket the extra dollar that will get me home? Well, I took it. All I could think at the time was "Cool! I have the power to make people give me loonies!" and I was so happy with my newfound creepy brain powers that it seemed like ingratitude to question them.
Ok, so, right, like, this is the other part: as I left the store, munching on my ill-gotten garbage, a fellow student rounded the corner and walked past me from out of the copy centre. As she passed, I noticed that she was wearing a black t-shirt that said in white script: "Woman Power" with the female symbol where the "o" in "Woman" would be, in red. This is all well and good, but because I'm a guilty and insane, I read her t-shirt and quickly blushed in spite of myself. Now, it isn't anyone's fault or anything. It's just the irony of t-shirts. But the problem that arises you print an empowering message on a t-shirt, is that it's actually quite impossible to read it without appearing to be staring at someone's breasts.
So the moral of the story is, kids: never try to make a difference.
The real problem is that I hate rejection. I mean, everyone does, but I'm really such a meek little thing and every prospective employer who doesn't call back or gives me just a little too much hope before hiring somebody else forces me to burst into tears, sobbing "You're just like my ex-girlfriend! I hate You! Waahh!" before I hysterically run out of whatever room I might be presently in. If someone would just approach me on the street and tell me that I looked to be a nice strapping young man who could use a job, and then proceed to offer me the chance to do this or that, I would quite happily get in their car and either give them their deserved oral pleasure in the back seat, or buckle up my seatbelt in preparation for the beginning of my new summer career -- because after all, I'm really ever so flexible.
When you have a borderline Christ complex like I do, it's very trying to be put into a position when people insist upon regarding you as insignificant and insultingly unlike their earthly saviour.
Footnote: I may have just broken up someone's marriage. It is at the time of this writing 5:30 in the morning, and out of curiousity I dialed the Carleton University 24-hour touchtone information system, in the hopes that perhaps some of my final grades were already available. However, at some point last year the registry changed from "560-xxxx" to "520-xxxx" and while normally I'm quite good about remembering the difference, tonight I plum forgot, dialed anyway, and just as I was having doubts, someone blearily answered. Well, what did I do but quickly hang up, without saying a word? I'm sure right now, an innocent and devoted husband or wife is being questioned about mysterious late-night callers violating the sanctity of their marriage. Even more ironically, maybe I called the house of someone who is having an affair.
Blame it on the stomach flu. I'm blaming a lot of other things on it.
Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.
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