« i love this game | Main | the deep end »
repetition
October 14, 2005
i careened into my apartment last night, and kicked myself free of my shoes and clothes. my throat, still a little rough from yelling from the sidelines of the game the night before, was sore and raspy from having just screamed at the people in my apartment complex.
i sat down in front of the computer, and started banging away. this morning, i woke up, and as a few times before, felt in the light of day not so much that what i had felt the night before was completely invalid, but that maybe they just should never be said.
so, this morning, i pulled it off the blog. as usual, though, the other hand showed its contents, and it occurred to me that what i had written was a snapshot of a moment. insofar as it reveals some stupid and potentially destructive behavior, it just falls to me to feel stupid and not do it again. but the course of events happened, and the things i felt were real.
so, here it is again. i have replaced some of the more unnecessary f-bombs with the word "loofa," or the appropriate variant. similarly, two other expletives are now being represented by the words "crowbar," and "Governor Perry."
loofa loofa loofa
the title should prepare you for what follows. if you don't like that, go somewhere else.
tonight. wow. just like loofing old times. pointless. misleading. hurting.
this morning, i woke up, for the firt time this week, feeling a little better, dedicated to trying to get to work on time, and i decided, for the first time in a few weeks, to dress like i gave a loofa.
at lunch today, running errands, pullng the usual financial hijinks, it hit me - if i went to 219 tonight, chandra, my ex, would be there.
i have seen her there twice in the last year. i go there fairly regularly, and never anticipate it, never think of it.
after work, i didn't think of chandra at all, but i wanted have a beer, something to eat. i went to 219, still not thinking consciously of her.
there she was, on the patio. we hugged, talked, and that thing was there again. i went inside, and there's been so much loofing disappointment lately, so much loss of faith in myself and everyone else... i asked the waitress serving them to ask chandra to come see me before she left.
i wanted so much. i was at ground zero. she came in to see me, and there was the electricity that everyone else has commented on, and i've denied, that has been there every time we've run into each other.
when she left, the bartender, mike, asked why i had let her leave. i told him she was married now, and he said, "well, it sure didn't look like it."
but i don't think anything of it. it's just muscle memory. she's happy now. the guy can provide her with so much more than i can, and maybe his constitution is a better mix with hers. she needed someone to rein in her anger, but it would only work with someone she respected. it wasn't me. i hope it's him.
i sat. i drank beer. i raced through the crossword in record time. i fought back emotion. i tried to work the new jacked-up, impossibly-hard number puzzle in the paper. amelia showed up to meet me, and i felt a bit better.
mike showed up. he had a friend there. mike told me i should meet the two women his friend was talking to - one was married, but one was single, and a new runner.
i went over with him. i was cool. i tried to balance funny with serious, interested with reserved. we seemed to get along. she gave me her number.
we left the bar. she was clearly more interested in mike's friend, and mike admitted that that seemed to be the case.
we went to a bar called "glass." appropriately named. loofing nothing there, just illusions, reflection, a lack of substance. a row of improbably pretty girls outside the bathroom, primping and preening for the frat fucks (that has to stay - alliteration - ed.) that roamed and held their cocktails and their cocks and moved arythmically out in the bar.
girls who were not top-notch beautiful material flung themselves at frat boys and other empty loofing men. i sat, too drunk to drink any more, too fifth wheel at that point to be in a loofing conversation.
i just watched, and all i saw was meaninglessness, and denial, and arrogance, and decay. some part of me wanted to be a part of it all, but i can't. i tell myself it's my values, but those people wouldn't have me even if i sold my values out. i think i know that. i question myself, my supposed values. i'm a fake, because i want the pretty girls, i want to be wanted, i want the sex, i want the denial of everything happening in the world around me. i too, want to think and feel with nothing more than my dick.
but i don't. i've been there. i've tried to compete, and i won't do it anymore, partially because i know better, and partially, i so fervently hope, because i want no part of the lie.
i left as soon as i could. the girl didn't seem to give a flying loofa. i think i had confidence. he had something more. she doesn't know shit. she doesn't know who i am, what i've done, what i can do, what i'm capable of. she doesn't know fucking shit.
i went to halcyon. i love leora, but i can so rarely tell she cares. when she's working, she's focused, and nothing intrudes. tonight, she looked at me, and asked me if i was ok, if i was sure, then she cme and hugged me.
too many people, and sometimes i, dismiss her as pretentious, maybe cold. we're all wrong. she has more fucking heart than all of the girls in 219 or glass combined. she came and hugged me, for the longest time, imparted as much real comfort and love as anyone could.
i had a beer, left. i came home. i was not cool. i drove hard, winding the engine up, coming as close as i could to walls and poles, though never other cars. the parking garage was full, the range rovers and bmw's and audi's and mercedes of the 20 year-old rich kids hogging all the spaces. i rolled down the window, screamed, called them sorority crowbars and frat Governor Perrys. i told them all to go to hell. that made me feel better. part of me wanted to rush from the car to the door, but part of me held myself back, praying that some motherfucker would come out and one of us would beat the other to a faceless mush.
yes, this is how i feel. this is 36 years of this shit, of me trying, of me trying to be better, better looking, more worthy, dumber, smarter, more fucking worthy, more fucking worthy. you might think this is all extreme, a little wacko. but it's years and decades of this shit, always the same, nothing changing. who wouldn't go a little crazy from time to time, with a little alcohol in them?
tomorrow, i'll wake up, only a slight hangover. at work by 8:30. do it all again. a lawyer, a loofing lawyer. i'll come home, and the day will end when i decide i'm too tired and i have to go to bed. i will ignore tonight's disappointments and failures, my denial my own self-protective equivalent of the shallow lives and superficiality of the people in glass.
the devil in you is the devil in me.
and so it goes, and so it goes, on, and on.
Posted by Rob at October 14, 2005 12:56 AM