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.
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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.
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What if we made fewer confessions and told more truths?
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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?
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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.
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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.

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.

A Metaphorical Conversation in Two Parts

or, A Broken Promise to Never Write Pointless Posts

I.
The Supermarket, Sunday morning after church
Age 16
Status: Closeted

Mom: Do you want some apples for this week?
Me: Yeah that'd be great.
Mom: What kind do you want?
Me: I like green apples.
Mom: Ew, you don't want those! I hate green apples!
Me: Yeah, but...I like green apples, and you asked me what I wanted.
Mom: How could you possibly eat those, I just really don't like them!
Me: You asked me what I wanted, and I told you. You don't have to like what I like or understand why I like it, I just want them!
*storms off with a bag of green apples*

II.
The Dining Room, aka my dad's office, where my mom is proofreading something
Age 19
Status: Out, but we don't like to talk about those kinds of things

Mom: If you have a list of things, do you put a comma before the "and" before the last one?
Me: You could. It's called an Oxford comma (sidenote: I'm not sure why I always insist on being a pretentious grammar fuck), some people use it, but you don't have to.
Mom: Hm. Well I really don't like using it. It doesn't really look right. It looks kind of funny.
Me: Well I know you don't personally like it that way, but I always like to do it like that. I know you don't, and you don't have to, but I do.
Mom: Eh, I still think it looks weird.

LOL. Substitute in whatever words you'd like for "apples" or "commas." It's like inappropriate Mad Libs. This conversation is also best imagined if you picture my mom as a small Asian lady with a thick Chinese accent. I mean, she's not and she doesn't have one, but, I'm just saying. It's best imagined as such.

But really. Some things never change. Just in case anyone is wondering about the tone of this, it's really not a hey-my-parents-don't-accept-me-so-feel-bad post. It's more like, lol how could I possibly lead two such contrasting lives, being loud and out and badass in one, and arguing over produce and punctuation in another?

Though, transcribing these has made me realize that it really should come as absolutely no surprise to me that my mother couldn't possibly wrap her head around tolerating or understanding, let alone accept my, ahem, homosexuality. I mean, it's difficult enough for her to understand why I like green apples or my preference for the Oxford comma.

But, I'm a college girl (grrrl) now, and I buy (read: steal from Whole Foods) my own green apples and proofread my own papers. Oh, and I like girls.

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And now, for a little vocabulary...
gaytience - (n) 1. the good-natured state of endurance that one enters when that straight girl who keeps flirting with you at parties insists upon said straightness and acts totally normal about everything in the daytime. She is said to be "testing your gaytience."

2. the frustrating state of endurance that one tolerates while looking forward to an event but currently leading a life free of queerness. This may happen, say, when one is home from school and looking forward to Pride Weekend in a different town, or even just when one sifts through the dense plot a totally straight show/movie just for the gay undertones that may or may not arise.

That being said, I'm going to DC on Wednesday after a very, very special event that will totallly make my life on Tuesday night. My gaytience is running thin.