Thursday, October 14, 2010

sleepy

I want to know what it is about moving to this city that has made me perpetually exhausted.
I'm not complaining. Just confused, really.
My classes aren't that long, my schedule isn't that full, my classes aren't THAT early. I have plenty of time for naps.
And yet...I'm always TIRED.
I'm always sleepy. I'm practically falling asleep at my desk typing this.
Perhaps it is a conspiracy. VCU puts drowsy pills in my food, to make me sleepy, to make me perform poorly in classes, to make me pay them more tuition to stay in their school even longer.
Maybe it's my bed, the matress sort of feels like a half-deflated raft after all.
Maybe its my room-mate, the weird one, who always makes weird noises all night and turns off the AC while I'm sleeping and makes me wake up sweating.
Maybe it's these blogs I have to write, they keep me up at night, so stressful you know? What am I going to write about this week? What song can I possibly write a page and a half about?

It's probably all of these things. Definitely.
It can't have anything to do with me staying up til 2 talking to my boyfriend every night.
Or reading until 3:30am because I really want to finish the book (which has nothing to do with any of my classes).
Or procrastinating all of my homework until after I get off skype at 1:30am.
Or because it seems like a good idea to wake up in the middle of the night and go on facebook and eat pudding.
Yeah, it's definitely not anything I'M doing.

defense

In defense of...


Our good old patriarchal idealism’s. Seriously. It's great that in our so-called advanced society, we're still resorting to dated one-sided thinking about gender equality. In the olden days, we at least were up-front about our predjudices. Now we keep them hidden under the rug, we make shocked faces when speaking about it in public, we harbor it deeply in our hearts and sneakily.
Rather than generalizing, I will pinpoint my focus for this particular blog. My parents.
Double standards are second nature to them. It's stunning, the mastery they exemplify when saying one thing and doing another. This astounding quality presents itself most frequently in their raising of myself and my older brother. Growing up, neither of us were angels, but he messed up in far bigger manners than I did. Therefore my parents decision to love him more than me utterly makes more sense. As I would spend long days at home trying to impress my parents with my wit and my actual dedication to school and sports, my brother would drive his shitty insurances-less car over for visits and it was as though my mother would truly come to life. Springing out of her chair, she would offer to order him pizza, give him some money. I would ask myself, 'Self, didn't you just tell mother you were starving and she told you to fend for yourself? Yes, Self, that did happen. HMMM.'
This debauchery also presented itself in mine and my brothers' wishes for body modification. Like any teenagers, we both wanted tattoos and/or piercings to represent our individuality and how special we are. The difference is, at 17 my brother got a tattoo as a gift from my parents. When I was 17, my parents would not even allow me to get the impermanent hole in my nostril I so desperately wanted.
Thus this lead to my brother over the years getting more and more tattoos, and me getting my nose pierced without permission and thus getting in trouble.
As I got older, so did my friends. They began getting tattoos as well. My friend Amanda especially delved into the tattoo world, getting them frequently, big ones, expensive ones, beautiful ones. Ones she had to hide from HER parents, though she was over 18 and thus legally enabled to get the ink. When I told my mother about the tattoos and showed her pictures, she looked both shocked and disgusted, as if Amanda had cut off her own ear and had it sewn to her bicep for cosmetic purposes. “I think she has a problem, Kate.” my mom says each time Amanda gets a new one.
Fast forward, it's move in day. I'm moving into my college dorm, out of my parents home. I'm well over 18, almost nineteen. My friend Dana sits on the bed, watching my mom and I unpack, my mom is being nice to Dana about her tattoos.
“Mom, I'm going to get a tattoo.” I say.
Her eyes widen. “If you do, before you graduate college, you're not getting anything from me financially.”
I smile.
“But JD has tattoos!”
My mom is smiling, light hearted, because we are in the company of a friend. “That's different, JD is a boy. And I like Dana's tattoos, but she's not my daughter.”
I am flabbergasted. She seems very serious. Dana and I share a secretive, wide-eyed look, and the tattoo I already have on my shoulder seems to be guiltily pulsated under the Tshirt by which it is hidden.
I digress. This essay has not been very well-executed. What I'm trying to say, my point I'm trying to prove with sarcasm, is that everyone has double standards about men and women and even though as society we strive so hard to be 'equal', even little things like saying tattoos are okay on men and not women, are furthering our inequality. Either we're the same in all aspects, or we're not the same at all. So cut the bullshit. If my brother can have 8 tattoos, half of then looking hood rat prison-esque, then I can get as many as I damn well please. WORD.

Friday, October 8, 2010

forbidden?

The first time I saw her, it was like a vision. One of those rare moments in life where you feel connected to God, to heaven, to every realm of the universe that is so much more than you will ever be. I remember being at a loss for words, a loss for air, a loss for sane thought. She swayed into my life, confidence exuding from every poor on her tiny body, my heart thudding love songs behind my rib cage.
I am a man of rationality, I always have been. I've prided myself in logical thinking for all the years in my life. It was what got me through 8 years of college, what earned me my PH.D, what got me through long nights of being over-stressed and over-worked. I know how the world works, and I live my life in a very formulaic way. Thus most relationships in my life have been nothing short of clinical.
My first wife and I were brought together by biology, my junior year of college. We had similar ambitions, similar lifestyles, in this way we established a relationship – there was no passion, no rawness to us. Our divorce was similar, it was smooth and emotionless, just another pile of paperwork on my desk. Essentially, I am a realist. I don't even dream in my sleep.
48 years into my life, and this is all changed. I wonder now, how this can be. In every persons life there is the moment, I think, when you suddenly realize that everything you thought, everything you believed, was so irrevocably wrong. She was mine.
All she had to do was walk into my kitchen, as I was methodically preparing dinner at 7pm as I did every weeknight. She walked slightly on her tip toes, her smooth calves leading up to jean shorts, a man's button-down shirt left unbuttoned over a tight tank top, her golden hair spilling down her back. Her eyes, blue, framed with millions of pure-black lashes, giant, staring at me. I had become deaf, paralyzed, dead. I had died, right there, in my kitchen, in the sight of an angel.
She has beautiful, she was everything I had never dreamed. She was my daughter's best friend.

In life you are handed many choices, and there is always a distinction whether it be clear or nearly undetectable – there is always a right and a wrong. Which you choose is always determined by your knowledge of the situation, or lack thereof. That was always my belief, but after the day I met Julia, I began to realize that the knowledge of what is 'right' does not always help, when what is wrong is what you need. When every bone in your body yearns for it, when your mind never sleeps, when you feel at last that you have a soul. When you have lived a life was lifeless as mine, and you finally feel a fire burning inside of you, it is almost insane to think of letting it pass by.
I could say there was nothing I could do to escape it, but that would be a lie. Of course I could have walked away, I could have done something. But I wouldn't.

Her eyes, when they beheld me, seemed to come alive. I like to believe that my daughter noticed nothing, but I know in my heart this cannot be true. From the very first moment, the passion was tangible. It filled up the room, it drowned us. I couldn't keep away from her, I couldn't close my mouth. When my hands finally touched her skin, it was though my flesh was on fire. Pushed against the wall, her body hard against mine, our lips together. I had found God.

It was like a game after a while. We had established rules, there was an etiquette to us. While we pretended what we were doing was normal, we knew it was not allowed. We hid in the shadows, we let ourselves blossom together, but only in the dark. It could be seen as a terrible way to exist, yet it was beautiful. I had my muse, I had beauty in every moment of my day. The first time our bodies joined together, I felt inhuman. Her legs wrapped around me, her hair cascading over my own face. Life had become heaven, I would die for this.

I became sick. This is normal, once you become old. Death is as inevitable a part of life as anything. But it is the one part we as humans try so hard to forget. As weeks trickled by, I began to feel Death become a part of me. It existed in my core, it existed with my blood and organs. It waited to swallow me whole. It makes sense that when I had at last found reason to be alive, I would die. What is a good story, after all, without a tragic ending?
I told no one, even when I began to feel my body deteriorate from the inside out. I was rotting, I felt as though pieces of me were falling off and being left behind each day. Each day that I saw her became nearly too much to handle. My heart felt as though it could explode. I was too happy, I was too fucking sad. The beauty, the beauty of her. I never had to tell her. One day, she looked into my eyes, and she knew. The young body, it possessed terribly old eyes. She said nothing, only looked at me, then slowly wrapped her arms around me, pulling me tighter and closer, tighter and closer. I never cried, but my heart nearly broke as I felt her tears drop slowly, one by one, down my back.
“I love you.” She whispered into my ear, into my hair, her breath hot and quick on my neck. “I love you, I will always.” Her voice was broken, as broken as her heart, as broken as my body. I did nothing but hold her back, feel the frailness of her thin body, her smooth skin under my old calloused hands. I did nothing.

thanks

Thank you God, for Netflix. If I did not have you, my life would be desolate and barren. I would shed tears each day for my life, a life void of meaning. A life void of Nip/tuck.
Thank you, Cheeze-its. If not for you, I would be constantly hungry. I would have no caring companion to nibble on when bored, when lonely. When hungry, and lacking companions to dine with. Thank you.
Thank you, polka-dot bedsheets from Target. You are comfy, and adorable. You give me a nice place to lay my body on, that pleases me both physically and aesthetically.
Thank you Starbucks in the library. Thank you for making me wait in the long line, being shouted at for my order, for a drink that tastes like shit. Thank you.
Thank you Jersey Shore. Thank you for preoccupying all of my peers' minds with your nefarious antics. Thank you for introducing new and idiotic things into my culture. Thank you for making me giggle at Snooki whenever I feel low.
Thank you, air-conditioner in my room. Even though you get turned off by my evil roommate whenever my back is turned or whenever I am not home, you are always eager to be turned on again and cool me down instantly. Thank you.
Thank you Skype. On the nights you decide to actually work properly, you provide me with lovely face-to-face contact with my boyfriend that I would be unable to have otherwise, aside from weekends. On the nights you don't work, for no apparent reason, thank you for the added frustration and suicidal/murderous thoughts you give me. Thank you.
Thank you, bathroom in Johnson Hall. Thank you for having broken lights so my showers are always dim. Thank you for always getting black hair on me, mysteriously. Thank you for smelling bad.
Thank you facebook, for providing my ex boyfriend an extra means of stalking me when I refuse to text him back, on the grounds he is a douchebag.
Thank you Tuesdays/Thursdays, for being my favorite days, because the classes don't suck.
Thank YOU.