June 18, 2009
I continue to sit at my desk staring blankly at the screen. I can get no work done, I cannot move forward. All I hear is support for ftms, no support for soffas. Why? I have just as hard a time as the people who inject themselves in the ass, the thigh. I have to suffer through the incessant chatter about who you’ve come out to, whatg your day was like as a gender-afflicted individual; meanwhile my needs go unment. If I speak up about myself, we immediately go back to what your life is life. Yes, you are like that friend of yours you didn’t want to be like. No, I will not go to the twin cities to stay with your addict brother and new fiance, while you navigate the rocky relationship you are forging with them as a brand new white straight male. I can’t deal with you and him and the new condo and the extravagant display of wealth and the beauty contests and the stress of him asking a thousand questions about whether you’ll grow a penis or buy one and then your mom will call and piss you off. I want carefree summer weekends, not ones fraught with pain and disaster and gender warriorism. Maybe you forgot I didn’t get to enjoy last summer, what with the impending brain surgery. Maybe you forgot I am a graduate student. Maybe you forgot I have an internship, and a full time job, and concerns of my own, one of which happens to be this relationship and your blase attitude about it. Maybe you forgot that I existed at all. Funny. I didn’t.
I feel so ugly in this relationship I can’t stand it any more. I ask myself, how much do I have to give up? Hoe much do I even have left to give? What’s left? I’m beyond crying, beyond fighting, beyond hearing anything from you about your reasoning as to why things happen. The fact is you’ve turned downright inconsiderate and full of yourself. You vowed it wouldn’t happen. No, taking that weekly shot of testosterone wouldn’t change your personality one bit, would it. Well, here we are, three months later, and you’re worse than a teenage boy, insisting you are right all the time, trampling all over my feelings, forgetting that I exist, or that anyone else does, for that matter. I’m immobilized by your elitist, privileged view, your sense of entitlemet that you have about this relationship. That your happiness is what matters most. That what makes me happy doesn’t matter. That any request I may make about that I need or desire is disregarded, because apparently the testosterone has hardened your heart, deafened your ears, turned off your brain. I’m exhausted by trying to make this relationship work, and you cannot, fail to see, the herculean effort I am putting into it, because it seems not to mater to you anymore. You take me for granted. You assume I will always be here. You assume you know what is in my heart and mind, and that is your biggest hubris, your biggest mistake of all.
May 12, 2008
pains
Sometimes I get migraines that explode on the left temporal lobe and I think it might be anger and words that need to come out like when you pop a pimple so I guess I’d better just do it so it will stop already.
Last night I went to lay down and my shins started hurting real bad. My actupuncturist told me that’s because my spleen and liver hurt, and they do that when I am mad, and when I get real mad, it will cause the front of my legs to hurt, that’s how mad I am.
So now I have anger all over my body, creeping through my brain and on the front of my legs and in my liver, and I don’t know what I’m all mad about, but it’s there, like the Nothing in the Never Ending story. My anger must be Never Ending, like a big fat metasticized cancer.
It probably started because N and I had a bad weekend, and I don’t know how it all started, but it just was bad, off, and I hate offness. Offness is even worse than real fighting, because it’s secret and insidious and it rankles me, like when you have static electricity in your hair and it sticks to your face. You know it’s not supposed to be like that and it’s feels bad and you keep wiping the hair off of your cheek and it won’t stop clinging and you know the whole day is going to be like that so you’d rather just go back to bed than deal with it. And I don’t even know how to talk to her about it because how do you say: you feel like static electricity right now, and I don’t know why but it’s not right, what is wrong, I want it to stop, can I spray you with static guard or hair spray or rub a dryer sheet on you, and, also, stop telling me how I do everything wrong for once.
Sometimes my head hurts so bad I feel like I am going to vomit, and I wish people knew what that was like so they wouldn’t think I was faking. I think when people say they are having a migraine, and they are still at work or walking around or driving, the rest of the world thinks they are faking. The rest of the world can suck a fuck. I feel like a hot poker has been stuck into the left side of my head, and then I have that awful dental taste in my mouth, when they make you bite down on the stuff that gives you x-rays or flouride treatments, and it radiates down to my shoulder and takes away my ability to see, but I can’t just not live my life because my head stopped working right years ago. I wish N could have one just once so then she’d know and not think I was a liar because I think she does think I am liar. I think she thinks if I was a better person I wouldn’t have them. But the truth is I didn’t have them this bad until this year, and I don’t know why that is, and I’m beginning to worry I am taking on her shit and it’s getting inside my brain and coming out in the form of migraines. Why have I gotten so sick?
February 20, 2008
Check #1500
I am tired of the goddamned nanny state.
Today I decided I needed to order new checks. I generally hate doing dumbass things like this, because documents like checks and drivers licences are always out of date. I move every 6 months, for the love of god, and I am not going to waste time and money trying to update every fucking institution as to where I am currently residing because by the time I have done this I will be moving again.
Also, the last time I went to update my driver’s license, I had to go 4 times to the goddamned DMV. Yes, 4 times. The first time, the computers shut down. The second time, the wait was too long and I had to get to work. The third time, they literally Shut the Glass Door to the DMV in MY FACE after I had waited in line for 45 minutes because the guy was going to LUNCH and told me to come back later. And the fourth time we had a torrential rainfall and the streets flooded so badly people were fucking canoeing down city roads. I am morally opposed to the DMV now.
But I need checks because now I am out and perhaps I would like to pay the fucking rent or I will be moving sooner than my prearranged biannual trek across town.
I go online to my bank to order some checks. My bank has FREE LIFETIME CHECKS. Great. Because people write so many checks these days with the advent of debit cards, that’s a real plus. But the place won’t let me order them, because I just write them out willy-nilly, without regards to what order they are in. Yes, that is true. I don’t give a fuck what order my checks are in, I just write out one month’s rent with check number 1401, and then the electric bill for the same month with check number 1352. I don’t write out that many checks, and I lost a box somewhere in a move, so now all my shiz is scattered all over the place, and we’ve already established my 2007 taxes are filed in my car at this point, so it’s not like this is a goddamned surprise people.
But the website demands, DEEEE-MANDS that my checks be in order. It is a moral mandate that I know what number check I am on. Why? I know I am not at 1500, why not start there? It’s a fresh number. Maybe it will inspire me to keep better track of shit, get a checkbook that isn’t threadbare, find a filing box for my W2s, live in one place for more than a year, stop raging on into polling places with a driver’s license that is 4 years out of date, go to the DMV without visions of molotov cocktails dancing in my head. Maybe I can reinvent my life with a goddamned new set of checks.
But no. I am too naughty for that, and now I must pay the price.
So I try to call my bank, to pay my penance. I will explain to the bewildered customer service rep that I don’t know what check number I am on, but maybe they can tell by looking through 2 years of bank records (because that’s when I last ordered checks) what would be the Proper Number Checks to Start With. Because this is such a matter of importance. Because Lives Depend on me getting the right numbered checks. And of course the customer service person will be bewildered, because by the time I am at a point of actually speaking to people on the phone about some issue I am having, I am generally flabbergasted that I couldn’t just take care of my insane life online, so I am Aghast I Have to Deal With Another Real-Live Human Being.
What do you suppose happens next?
Oh, you can guess where this headed.
Of Course it was an automated line. Of course it is not staffed with Real Live Humans. Because they have realized that people like me are far too dangerous to reason with. We cause chemical imbalances in others. Especially when we are doing things like not taking care of financial records carefully.
I fucking hate automated lines. Thankfully, it was not one of those ones where you speak to the god-awful automoton, like Sprint’s fucking Claire, or the nameless evil on Charter Communication’s phone line. I usually bypass those by screaming “Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyou” into the phone until they get overwhelmed and direct me to a Real Live Human Being.
Thankfully I did not have to shout a bunch of expletives at work. I am not sure they would have looked kindly on that. Instead, this was an automated line where you press numbers. So I pressed # and * and O a bunch of times to get to the CSR with no luck. Boy was I fucking pissed. I just need some goddamned checks, at whatever fucking number they start at. 1500, 1429, 1601, I don’t care. How am I going to pay my rent?
Instead I just satisfied myself by maniacally pushing 0 until my phone display filled up completely, and then slammed my receiver down. Fuck you, nanny state.
Mail and snow
So I went on down to Family Video and rented a game cube, and I am going to play some video games stoned this week. Why? Because it’s goddamned cold and snowy and there’s nothing else to do. That’s why.
I voted in the state’s primary elections today, and the old ladies at the school I raced over to on my lunch almost didn’t let me through because I didn’t show up with mail to prove that I am a legal citizen. Because legal citizen ship means I get a utility bill mailed to my house, and not, say, to my cardboard box. Whatev. I managed to find my W2 form in my car, so I could fill out a form for Clinton and go on my merry way. Yep, that’s where I am at folks: I am keeping important tax information in my goddamned car because I don’t even have a cardboard box. I have a rolling fucking filing system. Advanced.
I am so ready for this goddamned winter to be over. Let’s go already. Today I saw some jackass using a pick ax to dig out his mail box. Chunks of ice were flying all over the road behind him, towards cars driving by. Probably because his utility bill was stuck in his mailbox and the polling nazis wouldn’t let him vote without it. It’s a sad day when we are using weapons to collect our mail because the weather has raged against us for months. We know. The earth is angry. Got it. I think this is Al Gore’s real-life version of an Inconvenient Truth.
February 19, 2008
Five Days Straight
I’ve been stoned for five days now.
Mostly in the evenings, although there was that one day where I skipped work and smoked all day off and on, went to Macy’s and Fannie Farmer and bought Trinidad candies.
Mostly it’s for the concussion I got from being at work, although it’s enjoyable in and of itself. There is nothing like the dual joy of pain relief and philosophy in three inhales.
When I get high, it is mightily delightful. It took months to get this weed. I smoked off and on over the summer with her, she being the first one who I had ever smoked with. I was like a high schooler: first crush, first smoke. We snuck off into her bedroom. Naughty us, devising a shoddy ventilation system to fool everyone else in the house. Oh, I’m sure they were fooled. We giggled on the bed, thighs touching thighs, side by side. I excused myself after she started falling asleep; wanting to stay but knowing it wouldn’t be wise. Rightly so; nearly eight months later we are still giggling on the bed, side-by side, thighs definitely entangled — along with hearts and lives and dreams of puppies and shared living spaces — blowing marijuana smoke out of the storm window, shoddy ventiliation system in place, not-quite fooling the bemused roommates.
Mostly, the year after my divorce has been marked with getting high. It has been marked with letting go of stupid rules about what people Do and Do Not Do. People like me Do Not Get High. We Do Not Do Drugs. We Do Not Feel Too Good. Not People Like Me.
Mostly, the year after my divorce has been about five-days-straight of doing whatever the fuck I want. Five days straight of drinking box wine. Five days straight of smoking weed. Five days straight of obsessive ebay shopping. Five days straight of smoking cigarettes in backyards and ttext messaging whomever I want until 12am at night and going to Taco Bell at 1am and crashing lame backyard parties.
