When I Was 20, I Lived in a Living Room

And I wrote about all my present events as if they were in my past. It's a strange thing to do, but at the time it made sense.

See,

I felt bulletproof for a little while.

And then I realized I was wrong, but it only made me feel bulletproven, validated.

As in,

"No, I am not bulletproof, but here -

look at all this bullet-proof.

I have the wounds to show you.

I'll lift up my shirt;

you will see

I am riddled.

come, occupy my negative space."

And so,

we acted like happiness was a score to be settled

- a dual.

Pointed earned and lost through laughs and smiles, or...something like that.

- touche.

Score tied, zero-zero.

Sometimes they call that "love."

But in actuality, there is no winning or losing. There is only luck

, and inertia.

Keeping the planets lined up (in just the right way),

Keeping the stars saying yes (or no, sometimes),

Guaranteeing - at the very least - that any part of the dust in my lungs might find its way into yours

, or vice-versa.

And now, instead:

stick

tick

click

b o o mstayawhile

s t i c k a r o u n d.

(putmymouthonyours, the rest is easy [or so they say])

i'm just saying,

if you stayed in my living room,

i'd let you keep your clothes in my garage.

anachronistic heart

There is a girl in the Valley who grew up from the ground. I never knew her until now, but from what I felt, I could have guessed that her hair was scented with the orange groves she grew up on. Like nights spent building fires unsupervised on front lawns. Her hands smelled like dirt in the way it’s only understood by children, and they pointed straight up at the sky. Unmarred by industry or coldness of heart, the plain stretched uninterrupted, and in every direction, it came to meet the sky. We spoke for the first time; I asked if the stars could be mine. She didn’t speak, only looked into my childhood.

She smiled and pointed up.

She hadn’t given me the sky, she had simply introduced us.
-
There were reasons I never knew the sky. Mostly because in the depths of my own concrete jungle, she and I never chanced upon each other during any of the lives I had spent sprawled across asphalt greens.

But there were signs.
When I was 7 I raced the boys across the playground lined with wrought iron, blooming from the concrete, pointing to something that appeared to be hidden behind the silhouetted buildings. But it was above our heads. Sirens spinning crimson and the steadily frantic cadence of car alarms formed the susurrations that lulled me to sleep each night. They hinted at something more. Because everything where I’m from is jaded, even the sounds know they’ll dissolve into the wind.

Confessions of a Teenage Runagay

AND THAT'S WHAT IT WAS. Running away was supposed to be arduous, maybe treacherous. And although it was terrifying, when it came to the rough-and-tumble-hitchhiking-living-out-of-a-knapsack lifestyle, I lucked out. There was a small house, there was a big house, there were a bed and a couch respectively, and each night I played out mild nightmares of prodigal return.

I was high every day. I was drunk every night. And in my sleepy mornings in between desperate glasses of water, my headspin caused the makeshift sleeping bag glide against the floorboards. It felt as though a reckless inertia was driving the particles of my body away from each other, which made sense since - as far as Rockland County is concerned - I've vanished into a black hole anyway.

And there you were the whole time, unfalteringly, unwaveringly beautiful. Like watch you in the car when you close your eyes to sing along beautiful. Like hazy teenage trips to the back of my mind when I would trace the shapes of girls for the first time. Now at 19, I'm old enough to feel embarrassed about it but young enough to clumsily hope for more.

We couldn't always hold hands in public, but we could make out in your car. And we did. In a very specific way. Like gravity, like collision. Like the way two teenagers make out in an airport parking lot, hungry and impatient, because that was who and where we were. An agreement made in a fever dream. We felt scared, but never alone. We felt right (we were right). We felt stupid ("We are so stupid"). We felt big (it's still true).

Because I knew that if I knocked long enough at the curve of your ribs, if I lingered just a bit, your anachronistic heart would wake, answering me suddenly, and I would be granted permission to live within the walls of your body.

And you didn't even come with any weird surprises. Not even a tacky winter coat.

In my time here I learned to talk to animals. I feel like that makes it sound like I fell flaming from the sky into the desert, where I was rescued by Bedouin people and given special powers. Or like I'm Eliza Thornberry (and however she got her powers, I don't really remember). In actuality, I just met a dog that didn't know she was a dog and a cat that thought I was a cat. Animal-queer is what Charles said. And I thought it was funny. And then I hid behind your best friend because the cat kept hissing at me.
--
Postcards from Mexico.
Postcards from Dallas.
Postcards from the road.

I am in none of these places, not right now, but they are from where I'm sending my love. It's unrequited, the way we all secretly like it, because there's no return address. Because there's no return, not really, anyway.

I just can't believe I left all my underwear at home. Scratch that, I can't believe I left all my underwear where my parents live.

I'll eventually have to trek it back to the East Coast. And if I could go back on wheels, I would. Fuck, If I could go back on foot, I would. I would send my love not from the places I am, but from the places I've been, so even if you try to go looking, you'll just find tire tracks and whispers, if that.

This is my pledge to never stop moving.

(If anyone feels so moved to read more on the adventures, check out my Autostraddle piece toooo).

I Was Going to Google It, But I Thought We'd Have a Conversation Instead

I WANTED to document 30 minutes of an amphetamine crash.

5:04 a.m.
These are the most unproductive moments of my life. My heart has never beat so fast, and my eyes have never moved so slow. I'm darting. I'm shaking. I'm drafting notes.

Is this a panic attack?

The sun doesn't rise until 6:38 a.m., did you know that? The fuck is that about? Did you know I'm a little more than a mile from campus, and there's thunder and lightning and rain, and that might make it dark for a little longer? I think it will, and I don't have an umbrella or a hood or an excuse.

No, really, is it?
Hours ago my heart felt like it would swell until it exploded. MY BODY WAS ALL CAPS. I was so excited. I love(d) you all, I want(ed) you to know it. My arms tingled. My thoughts chased after my words, which tumbled carelessly and endlessly out of my mouth, my eyes were bright. I laughed into your collarbone, I told you all how much you meant. Now, alone at 5:09 a.m., an amphetamine rush is only panic. My mouth is dry. I don't want water. I want water. I have to get up for water. No water. Where is my love now, where are my thoughts? I have no more words; the insomnia stole my words. Where are all those whom I've neglected for fear of missing? Where are all those whom I've avoided because they kept calling, unknowingly waiting for my anxiety to subside? Where is everyone now that my hands are shaking and the sun's still hiding and the clock moves two minutes forward only to fall one minute back?
-
I think I have effectively broken every basic rule my parents have ever given me. All at once.
I think I look like an asshole when I try to dance like a hipster. I think everyone looks like assholes when they try to dance like hipsters. But I think I do it wrong, so the asshole-ness is extra. Like, I get a gold sticker.
-
By the way,

Sorry I stole the sheets from your bed.
Sorry I didn't let you know what was going on. I didn't mean to, or not to.
Sorry I was drunk when you saw me. Sorry I'll be drunk next time you see me. I'm actually only a little sorry, but I know I should be more sorry, so here's my apology.
Sorry I did exactly what I begged you not to months ago. Sorry I cried then. I cry easily; it's a little stupid and a lot embarrassing.
-
What if we made fewer confessions and told more truths?
-
Sometimes there are nights that disappear into haze. Maybe you forgot what you were on.
Sometimes you wonder where you were all night, and then you wonder where you should have been, and you wonder if you should have been the source of the noise. If you should have been making the floorboards creak and wail with your jumping, if if the walls would have been happier to echo your voice. Entire portions of night disappear. Where did they go? More importantly, where did I go? I think that I stopped existing for just a little. I think I got lost in an alcove; it was pretty dark, y'know?
-
I think that I live far away from home, though I don't really know what that means.
Hometown nostalgia tricked me in those last few days, made me think it was real. Made me desperate to be seen before I disappeared. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be wearing skinny jeans and plaid, I wanted all of you to see how the band of my boxer briefs peeked out the top of my pants. I'M GAY, I wanted you to know. I'M GAY, and I was gay when you knew me, but now I'm not sorry, and no one needs to tell me it's okay and that I'm okay and that high school doesn't really matter, because I always knew those things. It's just that now I believe them.

Leaving was sad. Leaving was final.
They said you'd go to college, and you'd come back, but you'd never come back. I think I'm going a little farther this time.

About that thing, about my parents, about how we fucked it up. We just fucked it up, this thing. That they always saw their lives, secure and prosperous, without lesbian daughters or heartbreaking arguments or silent stalemates. We should have been sad to see each other go; instead, I think we're relieved. How does that thing happen? That thing where your life wasn't what you wanted or expected or believed? Does it happen to our unhappy, middle-aged parents? Or does it happen to us all?
-
But hey, what am I scared for? Hey Brandon, didn't we realize today that everything, every moment has already happened at some point in time? All of this has already happened; somewhere it's done. It's just a matter of getting there. I'm worried about 6:38 a.m., but that's okay, because by 7:38, I'll know. It's just a matter of getting to 7:30. Life will just happen until then; we'll get there. We'll know.
-
5:33 a.m.
Street lights still glowing orange. Can't tell if it's raining, can't see through the blinds. Weather.com says it's raining. Guess I'll have to trust that. I wonder if, when I get outside in an hour, I'll be trapped between places, locked out of one apartment, a mile away from the next. It's going to be raining, which is too bad, because I wanted to walk along to the sunrise. Maybe I should memorize these directions, just in case the newly inked napkin melts through my fingers on the way.

Your Actions in Life Will Reflect in Eternity

Total Asia Swineflu Mask Count: 16
Portion of which found at the airport: 7

Once upon a time I went to Asia, made a lot of swineflu jokes, came back, and was afflicted with cough, runny nose, and slight raise in body temperature. Swineflu. is not. a joke.
(no, it totally still is)

Right now I'm trying to fix my jetlag. Last night I slept from 6pm-11:30, and I've been up since, and now I have that stinging headache you get when your body is just pissed that you've been up on the computer all night and you're not sleeping and you have swineflu.

I feel like I have a lot of things to say about the Philippines, but a proper recap post will never actually materialize. I turned into sort of an introvert over there, I think I lived a lot in my head and just stared out into the strange world around me and had conversations with myself. This resulted in a lot of observational-type writing, since 1) it is my favorite, and 2) it was all I could really do...observe. It feels like a weird shift from when I started this blog ranting about gender and sexuality and societal norms. Does anyone have strong feelings about this? Can I get some feedback? Maybe that's a school thing. Maybe I'm several different people, or at the very least several different writers. I'm nervous about this going back to school thing that's happening in less than three weeks. I'm not really sure who I became over the summer, or if I became anyone at all, or if everyone else became something and I didn't, or vice versa. Different post for a different time.

Hey look, here's this!

----------------------------------------------------------------
'YOUR ACTIONS IN LIFE WILL REFLECT IN ETERNITY' is what the billboard said on the way to Makati. It wasn’t in front of a church, like a fun fact or a quick tip for eternal salvation. It wasn’t “Jesus is the way, the truth, the light” illuminating the side of a building, turning it all neon and glowing and casting a dim, colored light over Manila’s chronic traffic jams. Its letters were arranged, all caps, on what seemed to be the header of a former movie theater, as if weary traveling souls could stop in and have their 120-minute salvation session accompanied by popcorn and soda. I wish this was a movie. I wish it was the vehicle for Vin Diesel’s comeback.

I also wonder if there ever was a statement simultaneously truer to those with belief and more false to those without, though its something we wished were true. We wished it were true knowing that nothing survives an eternity, not even our own, knowing that eventually we’d all bend to question marks, then fade, and then what? Just a movie billing. Just a shrug.

-candles
-manila paper
-safety pins
-pastries
-cake
-postcards
-twister fries
-priest

We’ve been sent on an absurd scavenger hunt, my cousin and I. Today is the blessing of her family’s new house, and we’ve been made responsible for picking up all necessary supplies. And nothing is more necessary to a house blessing than a priest. The car ride is long because Manila traffic is notoriously unforgiving. Bumper to bumper at any and all times of day, drivers so aggressive that when it loosens up even bus drivers navigate their monolithic vehicles by weaving between cars. What do you listen to in the car with a priest? We think Coldplay. We’re not sure why. I don’t have any Coldplay on my iPod. I think this means I’m not meant to hang out with priests.

He’s wearing plaid, and this confuses me because I sometimes forget that priests are also people, and people sometimes wear plaid. He’s wearing a plaid shirt and faded blue jeans made of that really resilient material and he speaks loudly and gruffly as he laughs and tells us about barkless dogs and gives us advice on convenience stores where we can buy alcohol. He is not at all like the priests I've known in the States. They are old and stern and do not like plaid. They furrow their brows and move slowly and take careful, agonizing steps, their shoes are weighed down by the heaviness of soles. They do not know where I can buy cheap beer.

By the time the house creeps up on us, Gaby and I are singing along to the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back,” I am wondering how this song manages to seep into my life at all junctures and how, in every sense of the phrase, we've gotten to this point. Father Ben is happily tapping along in the front seat. Maybe he wants to hear “Billie Jean.”

The house is extravagant, beautiful, sweeping in that cold, modern sort of way. High ceilings, ever-expanding white interiors, stone floors, walls of windows like eyes dumbstruck and gazing into the abandoned house next door. It’s not yet been furnished. Six cardboard-wrapped chairs are lined up in the living room, and the granite dining table stretches the length of the dining room, flanked by plastic patio chairs. The workers tape our manila paper to the windows, obscuring the view. “The theme of tonight’s party is ‘Furniture Warehouse,’” says Gaby. She motions to the scaffolding outside the door, the pile of construction rubble on her front lawn. “Deconstruction under construction. Post-modern. Deep.” These are the kind of jokes you make when everyone you’re related to is an architect

Father Ben enters the house, shaking hands with our grandparents who sit demurely in the barely-furnished living room. He opens up his backpack and takes out his priestly robes, throwing them over his plainclothes. Oh, okay. There we go. Phew.

We’re lined up in the doorway, all of us. The air conditioners have yet to be functional, and in this short span of time, we’ve learned to gather in the corridor that runs straight from the front door to the dining room at the very back of the house. It’s breezy, which is relieving, unless you’re trying to light candles for a blessing, which we are. We’re jammed into the doorway and cannot focus on what I'm sure were Father’s sagacious words about hospitality and family and home. We’re too busy hovering over our candles, hands cupped over flames, shielding the flickering, flailing, frantic little lives on top of the wicks. My candle is out, we whisper. Can I light off yours? Oh, it’s out too. What’s he saying? Does this blessing still count if we’re just holding wax sticks?

Maybe it will be better once we’re in the house, like really in the house. We follow Father through the rooms as he sprinkles Holy Water over the Furniture Warehouse. He leads us in prayers, incantations, a repeated murmur of the Hail Mary. He loses some of us along the way. My grandparents can’t climb up the stairs, the train of people is too long to navigate the tight U-turns in the hallways. Didn’t we go into this room already? I’m waiting in the kitchen next to the KFC.

How are you even supposed to hold candles? Who the fuck forgot to get the paper to catch the wax? Oh, right.

I wince and swear as the wax drips over my fingers, down my wrist, onto my exposed feet.
And I remember that time I watched drops of wax turn opaque and harden on your chest. And how you gasped and grabbed my collar when your skin burned because I was new and clumsy and held the candle a little too close. And how, though I was intrigued by the flame, I knew I could never even try because my pain threshold was too low and besides, what had just happened to you made me feel nervous and stupid.

When did it happen that in my mind, that everything in my life turns to sex? I wonder if this is something like growing up or if I’m having a really prolonged adolescence or maybe I just watch too much TV. I’m like an explicit Midas. Straw to gold, blessings to sex. I wonder what’s with this business of turning things, transforming them. I wonder if this means growing up, and that maybe it's just nothing more than gracelessly executed alchemy.

They Call It Way Too Rowdy, We Call It Finally Free

It's like my notebooks threw up on my wall.
My notebooks hide the contents of my head, thoughts, scrawled out in code, meanings revealed by ink color or placement on the page, once sandwiched into a leather binding, are now hanging up over my desk. Pinned up against the wall as if they escaped from my notebook and found themselves disoriented by the explosion with which they were released.
My lists are on my walls. I can look at them all at the same time. Even if I can't understand what they're trying to tell me. They're overwhelming, but as they sit there staring at me, they remind me...something's happening.

Something's happening. Something's fucking happening.

I should have known it because lately I've been so restless and eager and anxious in the very best way, but also in a way that totally keeps making me nervous. Toward the end of the school year, I used to do this thing where I'd take present me and look back on past me, and almost feel envious. It would never be distant past me, it'd just be like...me three months ago before I knew that such-and-such was going to happen, like I never knew I'd stop caring about money or I never knew I'd end up on the floor of this total beatniky apartment, or hey, I never knew I wouldn't regret coming home for the summer.
Anyway, what really characterized the me in the past was that she never knew that her life had the potential to go somewhere else. I mean, she knew that there was growing to do, and that growing meant change, but this girl never felt what I feel now...like I'm on the brink.

Things just keep fucking happening.
Before I was always expecting my luck to run out or for things to slow down or for me to try to have to be a real person. But it's been all ups. And I'm finally starting to believe in it.

What I'm trying to say is, I just had one of the best weekends everever, the weekend that was supposed to be the peak of my summer, and though I did go through this two-and-a-half day period of real/fake/real devastation when it was over, what I'm beginning to realize is that what happened this past weekend isn't over at all.

So here we go. Starting off with a little vocabulary:

gaygrounding (n) - a common punishment for teenagers of the homosexual persuasion, where the subject in question is not forbidden from leaving her home, but from leaving her home to...do gay shit. This may include Pride events, hanging out with that girl with the short hair from down the block, or secretly running downstairs to watch Logo every time the parents leave. This last part, of course, still continues, as that is the point of secretly running downstairs. Gay grounding is usually highly ineffective and tends to promote increased homosexual behavior, but with a sexy, vindictive edge.

See: X, KC Danger

Gaygrounding is what I narrowly escaped this weekend after a blowout of sorts with my parents that almost kept Emily out of my house and me out of a momentously absurd pride weekend.

But. There are some things that are worth modeling through it for.
And one of those things is Autostraddle.

I think I mentioned before a few of the reasons why I love this fucking site and how I can't possibly believe I'm lucky enough to be working (I've been told that's sort of an inaccurate verb, interning perhaps?) for them. It always turns into gushing. Just to be sort of repetitive, this place isn't just a website, it's a community. A community run and organized by some of the smartest, wittiest, most interesting, self-assured, and unapologetically fucking crazy (and potentially superattractive, who knows, oh wait I do) queer ladies I've yet had the privilege of knowing. Like, I thought in a group of lesbians, there's always the one really cool girl who sort of rallies and carries the rest. But in this group it's all of them. And they're the ones giving a new kind of lesbian, bisexual, or otherwise inclined women a voice. They can have fun and get shit done. And it's just nice to know that that exists.

Oh, and did I mention that the interns are totes bomb-ass too?

And did I mention that both those groups of people hauled ass to New York (or, y'know, bused in like 20 miles like me) for dinner and a parade and a spoof on Tyra mail and a Rodeo Disco Party? Because that happened. And it was glorious.

Here are the vague concepts:
1. Meeting People from the Internets
So bitches always be like, "Isn't it weird that you don't really know any of these people? Like, won't that be weird?" Well, let me answer that for you. I do know these people, and they are weird. And crazy as shit. But there's too much love to deny it. The thing about meeting people on the Internet and then meeting them in real life is that you've already got it out in the open--we're weird. Like, yep, we exist pretty functionally in 3D, and maybe we've got jobs and friends and school and shit, but at the end of the day, I don't have to second guess what you're doing, because I read it on Twitter. I didn't have to be there for your last significant experience. Read it on your blog. Let's just talk about it, how we're all kind of weirdos who feel the need to broadcast our lives online. And we're unapologetic, because we wish other people would do it too. Give 20 people like this a weekend together, see what happens.

2. Drunk
The number one feeling of the weekend. There was little/no time to not be like this. I think most of the interns ingested their daily amount of grains through liquids this weekend. But why not? I mean what better way to get to know someone than by getting all loud and getting all touchy and getting all honest and covering each other while peeing because the line in the men's room is shorter and ending up in a room full of juice bottles in the corner of Stonewall Inn? Were those last parts just me? Woops, sorry then. What I'm trying to say is good times all around.

3. Persistence
In flyering alwaysalwaysalways, in getting up before noon despite wicked hangovers, in believing that eight people can stay in one hotel room. In fighting gaygrounding because we that what we did wasn't wrong. And in sneaking back into a bar over and over again, only to be escorted out by the same cowboy bartender three times.

4. Embarassing Honesty
I've got this tendency left over from DC that goes like this: amphetamines + alcohol = rambling honesty and an abundance of feelings/the need to tell them all to you. And so I did. Sitting outside Mason Dixon for two hours while the party reached its peak and eventually cleared out, Emily and I were visited by various members of Team Autostraddle who shared a number of drunken gems and relics from their young gay past (no, we totally heard everyone's coming out story, and it was all really cute, especially since everyone was in cowboy hats). We sat out there for two hours and watched everyone go by, half dazed, never sober, always talkative, and half in love with everything and everyone and the feeling of a dream finally realized, though realization didn't mean an end.

And it's all just so fall-against-the-wall-and-take-it-in-because-what-if-you-never-feel-this-new-or-real-again. ((But you do and you will and you know it, but you don't thikn you're allowed to admit it just yet)).

5. Withdrawl
It was like having everything happen at once. And the fastest of events make for the slowest of goodbyes, and after two straight days of being surrounded by peoplepeoplepeople (rather, girlsgirlsgirls), waking up alone in an all-too-spacious bed just doesn't do it. All day I can talk and work and run around my town, but when I finally stop, all it is is, why is my bed so big, and why am I the only one in it? And where are the other ten people I've attached myself to in these two days? And why aren't we getting stared at in public? Where are those naked feathered guys who walked behind us in the parade? Why aren't the following my car around? (Actually, if someone could arrange this, that'd be great). I miss everyone; I never wanted them to go back to 2D.

Everything's a little duller now, a little muted. But at the same time, everything's a possibility. Everything is what it could be, or could be again (and again and again), because maybe the apex is just a plateau, and we're all just really into climbing.

This Is a List of the Things I Learned

Christ, is the "a" in that title supposed to be capitalized? Whatever, I don't know.

The past week or so has been filled with a series of what I'd like to fancy as interesting and introspective posts, but (and I think I've used this line on you before), my personal life's been getting a little too personal lately and I say inappropriate things in my head, and so all the contents of those posts will hopefully soon be relegated to paper in my pretentious hipster Moleskine journal. Aw yeah.

I'm embracing the hipster because lately I've been hanging out in Williamsburg so often that it would just be insulting to try to deny it any further. That being said, I'll defend myself once again: I'm not a hipster, I'm just a lesbian. Really. I'm thinking about writing an article about passing as straight only by passing as a hipster. I'll start it once I come up with a really clever, obscure title that I can use to judge people who don't understand it.

Anyway, now that I've clearly established that I'm in a psychotic state of mind (to Nina: "I love face tattoos because I hate having to wonder if someone is a psychopath."), the point of this post is basically just to have a post because I get a little bummed out when I go a long time without updating. So in going with the whole I'm-sequestered-away-from-my-people-but-I'm-stupidly-optimistic deal that's been taking over my brain this past semester, I present (in list form!) things the summer has taught me so far. Not all positive. Mostly in a weird middle ground, once again proving that I'm crazy.

This actually is probably going to end up looking like a series of mini posts compiled into one big post, and maybe one day I will actually end up turning some of these into their very own entries.

Hokay, let's begin!
In no particular order:

1. The most interesting people I know are all addicts.
We've all got addictive, hungry personalities, and we are all fucking crazy. Some of us are addicted to substance. Some of us are addicted to workworkwork or the internet or drama or the notion of glamour. Glamour the British way, obviously. We chase these things and cannot get enough and one addiction feeds the other, and goddammit, we're just all trying to get our fix of whatever and trying to figure out why we need it.

2. No, I would not like a receipt.
I don't check my ATM receipts. Ever. This is probably why I'm broke all the time/why my bank account sometimes ends up pretty far into the negatives. Or I think I'm broke. I wouldn't know, I don't check my ATM receipts. I'm not a compulsive shopper, but I pretty compulsively do not give a shit about what I'm buying. I don't even know what I've been buying. I think it's been food, because I certainly don't have anything to show for it. Also transportation costs FAR too much. Also you should really be allowed to withdraw less than $20 from ATMs. I was in line behind this guy, and dear lord, that thing just shot 20's at him. He doesn't just have $20 in his bank account, he has multiples of it. That's why he was in a suit.

3. I now have a favorite time of day, and that is 4-5 a.m.
This only counts if I've been up until this point, not if I'm waking up then. Making it to 4 a.m. means that you've been up entirely too late, probably doing something stupid or having the longest, most intense conversation of your life, or having the time of your life, OR everything you've put into your body has made your body angry, and now it won't let you sleep and, consequently, you are completing one of the above listed activities. Making it to 5 means you're officially nuts because now real people with real responsibilities are waking up to go to their real jobs, and there you are, still awake and fucked up from the night before. I love staying up through the night and day and then throwing yourself out into the streets at 11 a.m. where all the normal people are running around looking normal and stressed, and I'm just standing there all crazy-eyed with a RedBull in hand and a long letter to write.

I like buying RedBulls at 11 a.m. because it means that something weird happened. I feel liek people either buy them in the morning to get themselves going or at night to do the same (but with alcohol). If it's 11 a.m., you've already gotten yourself out of bed and to work/school. The hardest part is over. Why are you standing there looking crazy?

4. I've deemed this one to be inappropriate for interwebz.
Just know that I'm going through a detox, and my brain is like "what's serotonin?" and the subsequent crashing has pretty much led to the seemingly hopeless life-reevaluation that's been going on the past few days.

5. We don't give a damn, we don't give a fuck.
I actually, legitimately care about very little as of late. Not in the whole life-is-meaningless-I'm-16-and-wear-a-lot-of-eyeliner sort of way, but in the way that I realized that getting stressed and throwing fits over things just...doesn't matter. Oh, also we don't get in trouble for anything, and we don't get hit by cars. My friends and I shamelessly and flamboyantly throw caution into the wind and run through fountains and guess our way through traffic. Basically, I survived my week in DC, and that is a miracle.

Also, last night, while taking off a sweatshirt, I accidentally removed my entire shirt in front of a group of people that I really didn't know at all. It looks exactly like you're imagining it in your head. And actually, I'm fine with that.

6. Something I did not learn.
How to pronounce "creuller." Wow those donuts look great. I keep wanting to fucking order one whenever I go into Dunkin' Donuts, but I never. can. because I cannot pronounce it and am to shy and weird to try. So someone, please, either give me a phoenetic spelling or tell me that they taste like shit and not to waste my time. Thanks!

7. I still look really awkward flirting with girls.
Despite claiming this as one of my only few marketable skills, I'm still fucking weird. Great evidence of this is when, post-Santigold, a few friends and I were standing outside of DC9 smoking when I found a cute girl on the other side of some glass making eyes at me. I returned a shy smile, tried to be cute, then accidentally dropped my cigarette and chased it into the street like a small child chasing a ball. I did not see her inside.

8. Wow, I'm boring.
Last week I was at a used book store with Rachel, and after sifting through aisles and aisles of books filled with history, social commentary, and theory, I finally settled on this purchase:
I can't be certain, but I think it makes Rachel hate me.
It also makes me look at really tacky wall decorations like this and say stupid sarcastic things like, "Oh hey, I really like the way that size 18 Times New Roman font looks. Good job double spacing, really creative."

Sidenote: this really is the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. In addition to the really unrealstic waving that happens, it's basically a really awful poem about imperialism. Needless to say, I'm stealing it and putting it in my room next year.

9. I'm literate!
...or am I?
No, really, I've been reading, and it's exciting (this obviously only serves as an extension of #8)!
I like non-fiction (I wasn't kidding)!
I'm too lazy for descriptions, but check these out! (Descriptions will come eventually. I love parentheses).

Non-fiction:
Resist!: Essays Against a Homophobic Culture (Mona Oikawa, Dionne Falconer, Ann Decter, Rosamund Elwin)
The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession With Virginity Is Hurting Young Women (Jessica Valenti)
Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity (Matilda)

Fiction:
Call Me By Your Name (Andre Aciman)

QWAC is starting a book club this year, get pumped!

That's it for now. It's a list of 9, yeah. I'll have something interesting to say soon.

Everything We Touch Turns to Discourse

So this piece lives on the walls of the apartment where I spent my last week in DC. It's a spontaneous stream-of-consciousness piece that I scrawled across the walls in what, so far, have been the happiest, most simple moments of my life.

I was a bit hesitant about taking it out of its original context because I was scared it would lose its meaning and its feeling, but lately I've been having a really difficult and terribly frustrating time conveying my college experience and my new-found identities and ideas to everyone around these parts, and I thought this might dip into the surface.

-----------------------------------

So am I a beatnik or am I a sellout? Am I guilty of fraudulence? Does my fuck-what-you-want-ain't-got-nothin'-forget-my-possessions non-materialism truly mean anything if I've got a $200,000 education keeping me here just not to care? Can I really be free of my possessions and obsessions if mom and dad are still backing up that iPod and that computer and when the year's over, I go back to my house in the New York suburbs to drive my car (MY car) around suburban streets to the sounds of my motor and the empty satisfaction of the American dream?

What am I?

I am my own god.
In the beginning there was God, and Zie loved us so much and so well that Zie gave us the greatest gift of all: to, in turn, create Hir as we wished. And so I have made God into myself, for that is all I will ever control. And I am my experience, and I am yours, and everyone I've ever known. I am love in and of itself. I am human relation because if I can know that someone's life has been changed because of me, then I do not regret because I have lived.

What if you died tomorrow?
Would you be sorry or scared because knew not how to live?
I think that I would not. I may not wake up tomorrow or never again write or create or have my soul leak dark blue on to a page. I may never fall in love again or know everything or meet a beautiful girl be a beautiful girl or see the children of my friends. But today I sat on the floor of our apartment (OUR apartment) slicing a stolen apple with a clear plastic knife and felt complete among the beers and the boxes and the feeling that we were living it like we wanted. My best friend knocking back his second beer at 2 pm, and I felt infinitely happy.

We are everything.

We ourselves are individual microcosms, universes, worlds within ourselves. Eyes reflecting starlight are stars in themselves, bright thought glazed, leading our ways and revealing ancient secrets through mere glances. Passion is a tempest, violent in its beauty, tumultuous and turning, leaving ships in its wake, its sailors not destroyed, rather, changed.

We are the colliding of bodies.
We are the collapsing of bodies.

We are pressed hips and chapped lips and trembling fingers, shedding their regrets and hesitations and releasing all that words do not, cannot, say.

We are verbal intercourse producing birth, creation.

Revolution?

Revolution.
Don’t you go thinking that what we’re doing here isn’t revolution, because revolution is born every single day. It happens every time you change someone’s mind. It’s deconstruction. Every time someone questions who they are or what makes them that why or why they’re unhappy, that’s revolution. If even just one kid stops getting so goddamn down on themselves because they’re not “just like everyone else” because they realize that “just like everyone else” is a farce created by a system designed to tell us that we’re wrong, then that's revolution.

Why be "just like everyone else"if all that means is assimilating into this world full of –isms? Sexism, classism, racism, heterosexism. Why should we all strive to be white, rich, and upper class? Why is that what “equality” means, and why do we tolerate “tolerance?”

What if wealth became experience, not status? Because if that was the case, wouldn’t we already be prosperous in human connection?

We could all be wealthy in each other.

Have a Great Summer

There's no best part about quite literally not living anywhere, because every single part is the best part. I mean this totally and completely. I carry my life on my back, I have absolutely no responsibilities, I fall into the stories of the people around me, drink beer, and live my life so well that I cannot even comprehend it. My every day is enhanced by the excitement and mystery of where I'll fall asleep that night and what I'll do when I wake up the next morning because for once, I am free of obligations and may really and truly do anything.

I'm calling it urban backpacking.

(Partially because the only reason I can afford to do this is because of my privilege and my parents' permission, but whatever. It's the end, not the means).

The worst part is that, being the last one to leave of those who are leaving, I have to watch everyone go. I have cleverly evaded this by occupying myself just enough so that I've managed to not say goodbye to the majority of people who have meant the most to me this past year. And I would almost feel guilty about this, but I don't. Goodbyes don't mean much to me at all. I mean, they do, but not nearly as much as my time previously spent with a person that made an emotional goodbye expected or worth it at all. I don't say goodbye because 1) they're rarely permanent, and 2) I don't want the last time I see a person for quite a while to end up being some awkward, fumbling, sad attempt at a summary of what our friendship has meant, and 3) you already know that I want you to have a great summer. That's basically it. I love people too much for goodbyes, and my verbal skills often fail me, leaving me with a lot of regrets and "I wish I had said's," and that's not anything that anyone needs to bother with.

The last time I saw you, I probably just left it at "later."
Because that's really all it is, you know?

Things I UnLearned in College

This was going to originally be a finals week rant about how frustrated and exhausted and pressed for time I was. But somewhere along the line I changed my mind. It may have been at midnight on the seemingly inaccessible patio on which, only six floors up, I could view the entire school, silent, consumed by their books, while I exhaled and watched cigarette smoke float through the still, humid air over the top of my Red Bull (the two have been a strangely familiar but not unwelcome combination from high school) as I prepared for one more caffeine-soaked evening devoted to conquering the evils of microeconomics. It also may have been six-and-a-half hours later, when, dazed but bright-eyed, I emerged onto the quad to find the air as still as ever and witness a few individuals milling about under the newly grey sky.

Or maybe it was just that substance-induced sleep in the amphitheater the other night. Who knows.
The point is that I realized that all this stress and pressure and unhappy-making nonsense was just that: nonsense that a series of events and places and people socialized me to believe were necessary to a generic, synthesized form of happiness and normalcy. And that, as much as I've learned in my first year of college, the things that I've unlearned are just as, if not more, important in deconstructing everything that I had assumed I wanted.

So here we go.

They told me I had to be a business major because that's how you make money, and money buys you success, and this success makes you happy. Money makes you happy because you're always entitled to new things, such as a new wardrobe each season bought from the nearest mall with the money you've been earning at that dead-end minimum-wage suburban-kid job. But you know you're happy because why else would you keep trying to earn money to buy things? You still want it, really, you do.

To be a woman, they said, your hair must fall at least to your shoulders, and you must use it to lure men. This and your feminine wiles. Failing at either of these disqualifies you as a real woman, and you'll never be beautiful. For that you must be ashamed and scared and spend your time shielding yourself behind another person.

And yes, you do need another person to make you complete. You can't do this by yourself because if you're not in love, then you're not happy, and if marriage and children aren't in your future, then you're not normal (did you ever notice that everyone you talk to is mysteriously and definitely married when they talk about their futures? What makes that a given?). If you blew it the first time you loved, then you'll never find it again, and you probably didn't deserve it in the first place, so you have to go and ruin everything you touch because it'll never be the same anyway.

Pants are necessary around others.
So are shoes.
And you can't get there if a pair of wheels won't take you.

Carrying all this shit around, it's no wonder everyone is so damn unhappy.
The problem is where to go from here.

I think I'm going to spend the summer (when not flipping burgers and fending off angry pool moms) alone on buses, wandering through cities, bumming around friends' places, losing myself (though not really getting lost, because that's terrifying) in the woods, reading, reading, reading, hearing other people's stories and making my own.

Company is always welcome.

This Business of Business

This entry is coming at you live from Global Corporate Citizenship.

Yes, it is as horrible as it sounds, and yes, I am here because of my greatest kept secret: I am a business major.

Not so well-kept secret: I hate being a business major.

The classes are tedious and uninteresting, and I'd swear that there's nothing in the content that you couldn't figure out yourself. Even the professors tell us time and time again that success in business is dependent largely on personality, not whether or not you can list the differences between sole proprietorships and corporations.

I wouldn't necessarily mind pursuing a career in business once I graduate (though my degrees, if successful, will end up being conducive to a career in music journalism), but as far as education goes, quite frankly, this shit is a waste of time.

Business education benefits the pocket, not the mind, and if you cannot expand your mind, then why bother with a college education?

I miss my history courses, my literature analysis, and the intricacies of DNA. There are no questions in business, nothing to explore. Only facts and statistics and fifty-dollar ghetto public speaking pamphlets (not how to public speak in a ghetto manner, rather an expensive poorly-assembled packet).

And yet, I. am still. here.

I cannot leave, despite my overwhelming passion and desire for other subject matter.

And last night I finally figured out why.

How my life was to proceed, according to my parents:

1. Birth

2. Elementary eduction

3. Prestigious Jesuit university

4. Church on Sunday

5. Graduate with a business degree

6. Pursue a career conducive to earning lots of dolla dolla billz

7. Marry a nice man (Filipinos appreciated, but not required, score!)

8. Pop out children

9. Die

My life plan:

1. Check

2. Check

3. Find my inner radical queer at American University

4. Hungover on Sunday (getting better at this. In addition, that's not the only reason I don't go to church. Reference my first entry for vague thoughts on religion)

5. Fail my business classes, pursue Women's and Gender Studies, Anthropology, Biology, Journalism (anything that will earn me no money in the future)

6a. Live in a box

6b. Not mind living in a box, because all my friends from AU live in boxes anyway, and we're in love with our lives so whatever

7. Gay. (not the only reason I don't see myself getting married, but that's an entirely different post)

8. Gay AND irresponsible (and kind of selfish and totally disapproving of the way that childhood is rapidly disappearing for newer generations, also another entry)

9. We'll see.

If I could, I would make a bitchin' venn diagram of this, and it would become even more apparent that I've ballsed (yes, balls as a verb) it all up already. I'm not sure how to reconcile this, because here, away from home, I'm finally able to pursue what I truly want, free from direct restriction from my parents and able to get all my quality out-of-classroom-learnin'. But. My weekly phone conversations with my family serve as a constant reminder that I'm nothing that they expected. Worst of all, is that I've got the feeling that even if I didn't decide to earn a Catholicalicious education and ironically pursue a soulless business degree, all would be well if I'd just settle down and get married.

None of this is happening, and as far as I know, my life is better for it.

But business, right now, it's all I've got.

How We Operate

I'm doing this because I'm lazy.
There's a 3am life chat-inspired post that I was planning to make, but it's the middle of the afternoon, aka the lull of all my writing abilities, and I don't think I'm going to have any time tonight.

So I'm posting a little piece that I wrote a couple of months ago.
I'm sort of torn between whether or not I'm actually into this. I do believe that it's an incredibly valuable skill to take mundane experiences and dress them up with pretty words until they feel significant and profound (I'm not sure if I've actually attained this ability yet), but on the other hand, I think that life should be lived with such intensity and passion that even the most blase of phrases should convey the beauty of the human experience.

And right now I feel somewhere in between.
So here's what I got out of Winter Break.

They say to expect traffic in Stamford, Connecticut. They say it’ll stop you all the way down I-95. Turn on the radio, and you’ll hear that what was supposed to be a two hour drive will now double itself into four. Nothing weird, no freak accidents, no flipped tractor trailers spilling produce onto the roads or any weird shit like that, just traffic slowly clogging up the arteries of the road.

Arteries carry blood away from the heart, which is funny because this highway is the one that’s taking us back home. We’ve been away because home contains memories that we can no longer chase and people we no longer know, and in this two days’ time, we’ve come so close to truths we may never reach again.

But we cannot be away forever, and so we go, chasing the sunset that my parents demanded that I beat home. Chasing the sunset because it’s unacceptable to chase ghosts. And as much as we wish to speed down the highway, weaving between cars and confronting danger with every change of lanes, we remain in traffic. So we sit and we wait and we turn up the volume, screaming away the melody and drowning out the sound. We hum through words we cannot say, and sing softly the melodies that ring true with a heartbreaking beauty that keeps the silence at bay.