I've had a cold for a couple of days now. Seems to be a pattern- I like to write when I'm sick. Must be the down-time. I'm gulping sudafeds like air, and they're making my nose green and crusty, but at least I can breathe. My eyes feel like they are slowly poked out of my skull, as if by the handle of a hyperdermic needle. I kept waiting for them to pop today. My co-workers caught me blinking and swallowing, bull-frog-like, in a desperate- and stupid- attempt to keep them attached to my optic nerve. Is this what they call sinus pressure? I wouldn't know. Some people really take an interest in their illness, scouring WebMD for mutual symptoms or greedily feeding their paranoia to watch the rest of us squirm or to satisfy their hypochondria ("I have an itchy nose, too! It's polio!").
It really slowed me down at work today. I work for my city's Parks and Rec. Department, doing whatever they need- coaching, score-keeping, chaperoning, etc. Our boss summoned us a whole hour early to give us donuts and orange juice in exchange for forcing us to listen to her rant and rave- really the only thing she can hold on to, the real foundation of her authority, the sole claimant to her boss throne. The silver lining: we WERE paid. Oh yippy... After that, I dragged ass for six hours, letting kids hit me with baseball bats, hi-five me in the nuts, pelt me with mitts and hats, and try to "pants" me during our morning run. Any other day, I'd be grinning while recounting all the mischevious pranks and adorable quirks of the kids, but when I'm sick, I really start to feel like a punching bag. To make matters worse, my co-workers, who are already kind of annoying, kept pushing my buttons, asking me where my "sunshine" went and why I wasn't being my usual "Winnie the Pooh" self. Fucking gag me. I kept trying to work up a sneeze to blast them with when they made that caricatured droopy frown face, asking me questions in baby-talk, "Are you gunna be okeayayyyyyy?"
How's summer been? I really can't say. Too complicated an answer... My first inclination is to say "fucking terrible," but I really can't find the reasons, you know, except for the same bull shit things I usually bitch about in here- no ambition, no plan, no friends, no feeling of home, no good jobs. I've had plent of time to read. I finally finished the Dark Tower, and I got around to capping the two epochal dystopian novels that everyone who's ever been to a bonfire has had to listen to some asshole sermonize about- 1984 and Brave New World. After that, I read Portnoy's Complaint and A Passage to India. I'm working on Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer right now. It seems pretty dense and experimental, which worries me. Nothing makes me more insecure than when I feel I'm missing the subtlety in something.
I've spent a lot of time in Flint with my girlfriend. We have fun because we love being together, even if our love affair is split between the two most miserable metropolitan areas in the country. Sometimes, though, being with her saddens me further. "You have to love yourself before you can love someone else." The insecurities and shortcomings I can ignore with a book, a song, a day in the sun, reappear when she's around. Questions like "why do you love me?" or "but I'm a loser, aren't I?" or "do you know I'm not an adult, not even a little bit?" throb in my brain like a migraine, and they taint some of the good times I know we'd be having. Added to these are the fatal uncertainty and pernicious financial situation I've been grappling with lately. But, summer is warm, forgiving, lazy, listless, balmy, drowzy, smiley, sunny. . . I can be the grinning idiot, the prepubescent pococurante, for another two months.
J.J. , my brother, is making me download him music all the time now. I've always resented those people who say they have a "music guru" or someone who showed them "good music" and, thus, "saved" them. It's too personal, music, that is, to be picked out by someone like a store clerk. It's not like fashion. We don't asked to be dressed by someone with good sense. Whatever, it doesn't matter. Word of mouth is important to music, anyways. I guess I'm not sure whether that's separable from musical tutelage. Either way, I've showed some stuff I really like, and, much to my delight, he's liked it all. This summer hasn't been a complete bust. I've found some stuff I like: New albums from The Dirty Projectors, Phoenix, The Dear Hunter, Dream Theater (of course), and The Mars Volta have all been pleasant, nothing that's really knocked me off my ass, though, though Orca Bitte, from the Dirty Projectors, was exceptional. When he's not soliciting me for new music, J.J. can be found baking underneath a blue canopy, hugging his personal flotation device, laughing at his ironic smear of nose sun tan lotion- absolutely revelling in the thrill of his new job, a life guard for our local pool. Sarah, my sister, joins him there. It's pretty cute, actually, watching them strut off together, twirling their whistles, feeding off each other's egos, trying to out hard-ass the other with their morning threats, "Well, today, I'm not going to let anyone so much as SKIP on the deck. If they do, their ass is grass!" To this, the other will reply, "OH YEAH? Well I'm going to tell ______ that I'm sick of their @#$% and that she/he can go to a different pool if they touch pool rope one more time." "Whoa, that's awesome!" Power-tripping in the red suit!
My dad, I think, is starting to feel old, and it's absolutely awful to watch. He sleeps like a lion. In fact, he lives like one outright. He'll wake up, roar, scaring rivals away from his section of the wildebeest, gorge, then sleep and sleep and sleep until he's hungry again. Anyways, back to his nigh-silent senescence, he's been quieter, more irritable, less good-natured about his failing body, more defensive. I probably wouldn't notice his lonely descent if it weren't for his occasional bacardi marathons, when the graying layers of his mind are peeled back and he's jolly again, telling me, "It'll all work out," "Just keep doing what you're doing," "You'll find it," "Something's out there," making me engraged. Of COURSE, drunkeness would elicit that kind of shit. How nauseating is it that this "hope in the bottle" crap has to be spread before me, this bottle-tipping despair. But I don't hold my dad at fault. He's just feeling old; accepting age means accepting death, and there would be nothing to learn if we didn't have to accept death. It's the supreme challenge, and, frankly, the only thing worth LIVING for, as far as I can tell.
My mom is going through menopause, which means the water works are being flipped on and off haphazardly. She'll cry if a hug is too short or if a memorial is broadcast on T.V. (for MJ, for a veteran, for ANYONE). She's been irritable, too.
My friends? I really have nothing to write about here . If I haven't succeeded in isolating myself from all of them by now, I'll be truly surprised for the first time in a long time. My one good friend left in this city is pissing me off. I work with him, actually, and lately his butt-kisser laugh has become insufferable, both because it's insincere and because it's fucking working. My friend in Ann Arbor truly got lucky: three semesters spent conducting a booze and drug experiment, wondering whether he will remember the name written on his diploma when it's handed to him, landed him an awesome research job for the summer and tons of connections. Great, good for you, I say. And what does he do? Throws it back in my face, usually with my girlfriend standing right next to me (inadvertently stirring the self-pitying questions I just wrote about): "So, are you even doing anything?", "Aren't you going back home to the same job?", "Isn't that type of degree worthless? Unless, of course, you want to be a barrista?". I'm not charitable enough to try being happy for someone when that's my return back-clap.
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