"I believe in sex and death... but at least after death you don't get that nauseous feeling."-Woody Allen Sleeper
I'm exhausted. Went out last night with the computer lab crowd. Again, a very odd situation. To be out with former students (none of mine), but still they are aware that I am a teacher, and there is always the risk of rumors being spread. I'm a terribly nervous and anxious mood today. I'm not sure why. But I will tell you about last night.
I went out with the boys, because it was all boys and myself. This is how it has always been. When I was child I was always the only girl at the birthday party. There would be all these boys and me. And now twenty years later it's the same thing. So I'm out with the boys and it was fun. (Boy could I get less descriptive than that? Or in the words of Brad Pitt "Could the freak be any more vague?") But they got me all wound up. They were playing this game called never ever. You go around in a circle and each person says something that they have never ever done ie I have never ever had sex with a rabbit. Of course, the idea, is to "get to know" your friends very well and to get everyone else drunk. So we are playing never ever, and the game starts off sexual. I mean, most of the time there is usually a "warm up round" or two where its safe statements like "I never ever sput in someone's drink." But no the first person to go says "I have never ever tasted my own come." I mean, going for the gold big time. So we do one round (surprisingly I managed to only get "hit" twice-on what I won't say). ( I will reveal that one of the things I had "never ever" done was get walked in on while having sex-the best part was that another person valunteered at the table that he hadn't been walked in on, but he had walked out during sex once. Now that's BAD sex.) So I'm all wound up, and the way these guys were talking this was going to be an allnight bender-unfortunately, it ended at twelve (after starting at nine) which to me is like a tuesday night (althought his tuesday night I was out until 4:30 in the morning-so this was sad even by tuesday night standards). So we are going home on the train and I'm like screw it, I'm all awake I'm going to fitzpatrick's. So I walk in and of course I have the floor as the only available girl in the bar. So first I'm getting hit on by crazy drunken Mike. Crazy drunken Mike is a fixture at Fitzies. He's becoming more of a feature with every passing day. Mike is ok when he's sober, which is about two minutes every day. He is, however, a crazy drunk. He's hit on me many times drunk and yet he never seems to remember this or that I always say no. He is also a maudlin drunk. Lately he has been coming in and getting trashed and saying that his firm is about to let him go (which I've been hearing for a month now). Am I surprised that they are letting him go (assuming its true)? Not in the least. I'm amazed this guy lasted as long as he did cleaning ashtrays, never mind being a stock trader (or something like that). Last time I saw Mike he ended up crawling around under the bar looking for a bag he didn't even bring. So MIke sits down next to me, and to escape I run to the other end of the bar to hang out with Angelo and Justin, people I wouldn't join, but in the considering the circumstances they understood. So while I'm talking I see this guy who last year, we sat and talked for like two hours. He is married, but it's apparently some kind of open arrangement. Anyway he asked me to go and see this performance art piece with him on his birthday (not just me you understand, a group type thingy) so I said yes and then the day of he called and cancelled (not surpising) and then never called again. I have seen him on occassion and he waved but makes no effort to talk. So then I see him staring at me, I mean like a burning smoldering stare, a stare that aspires to peel paint and rip clothes and inflame the loins. (It failed. It didn't even chip my fingernail polish.) So he comes over and he is all over me. And I'm like "Hey, hey, there. First of all you are married. And like second did we forget that whole not calling thing?" Was it with men that they think like five seconds of attention is going to erase rejection. I mean, doesn't buy me a drink. He just rolls up on me and expects me to, well, sleep with him. So he is like "i'd like to buy you a drink later, I'm with my friends right now." And being me I'm like OK fine. So I notice that Mike the crazy drunk is gone.So I decide to go back to my original spot. (Ok there was an attractive kind of a heavy david duchovny looking guy at the other end of the bar who had been looking at me when I was being hit on by crazy drunken Mike.) So I go back and David Duchovny guy starts talking to me. His name, and please prepare yourself for this, is Damien. Yes, I have now bagged my first anti-christ. (Actually, Damien is the name of a saint who tended lepers in Hawaii. How do I know this? HBO. That's right better larning through cable.) So he starts to talk to me. And of course, he asks me what I do and I tell him, and yet again I still get the "Oh I'm afraid to talk to you." I'm still the same girl I was five minutes ago, but all of the sudden now I'm intimidating. So sure enough he has a girlfriend with whom he is in the "process of breaking up" with his girlfriend. (I have that effect on some relationships, apparently.) So he is "tormented". He is one of those guys who wants me to seduce him, who wants me to say "I want you. I want you no matter the cost.If it's only for a night, that's ok" Which I am not going to do. So he kept staying and staying and staying. Finally he left. So hung out with my irish cop friend and patrick. It was fun. Butwhy is it all these involved men just want me for sex? Do they really think I have such a hard time finding it?
Dag nab it I just wrote this big post and then I got kicked off and its gone. And I don't want to sit here and type the whole thing over again. I'm in a bad mood today. Partially because I'm still sleep deprived from tuesday night. I suppose that is the sign of a good night out (two or three days of recovery) and I'll be going again tonight with the people from the computer lab (please see the I can be with them but not of them post-perhaps this will change-or will there always be some sort of boundary?) My apartment is a wreck and on some levels I'm getting worse. The depression is on some levels getting better. I mean, do I look more well adjusted? yes. I'm not drinking every night like I used to (in fact aside from this week I usually only go out once a week if that-of course I didn't go out at all this weekend so that's why tuesday was "an acceptable loss") But I am more worried about myself > ihave less hope than I did last year and I'm beginning to age. In a few months I've gone from looking young to looking ym age. It's the depression that is aging me, but I don't know what to do about it. last year at this time I had hope of getting of the depression, I was in therapy and on medication and going to the gym. Now I'm still in therapy as I have been for seven years, but I show no signs of getting better. And I'm sick of being sick. I'm sick of fighting for everything and always losing ground. Maybe it is time to beat a retreat. Maybe it is time to gracefully surrender, with some sort of honor and dignity. Because I have done so many things I'm ashamed of in the desperate hope of feeling better and nothing works. I've tried behavior modification, the gym, dancing, shopping, being out of the apartment, doing things I want to do (the cruise etc) nothing is working. There are so many things that worse that dying. People keep telling me I'm lucky. right, I'm lucky because I lived. I'm lucky to have survived. And I want to tell these people there are so many things worse than death. I should know because I've lived throught a lot of them. And I'm tired. I want something to come easy. Something to cheer me up. And the first person who says "buck up little camper" is going to be smacked.
Told you, bad bad mood.

Inspirational Quote of the Day:
Woman: How do you live with yourself?

Man: because no one else will do it for me. Other People's Money
OK the quote of the day, Vin Diesil in his ad for Pitch Black (showing on some channel this weekend) and A Man Apart- "It's about love and the loss of love"-um great Vin, that's EVERYTHING. Show me something that isn't about love or the loss of love. Take some time out of your busy schedule, Vin, and get yourself some original thoughts.

Am I hostile, damn right. Or maybe I should just quote Vin back to himself, "Did not know who he was fuckin' with." Pitch Black
Thought I wasn't going to post huh? Well, I'm just making it under the wire. Although I have to admit I'm kind of strapped for a good inspirational quote. Let me think. Today, I kept thinking of the Usual Suspects so maybe I'll have to go with "Well, let me ask you what you think the DEA would have said if I told them that the Lochness Monster hired me to go and hit that harbor?" It's a nice line, isn't it? Everyone else goes for the big lines (like the biggest trick the devil ever pulled...) Or maybe I will go back to my totally eighties trend and quote Labyrinth, "Oh it's so stimuating being your head."

Well it is he who shall not be named's birthday today, is quite unfortuantely now 22. And I would like to say, happy freakin' birthday you totally pathetic slab of matter that calls itself a human being. My only hope for the upcoming year is that it be filled with the unrelenting agony that you so richly deserve.

Do I sound bitter? Well, just look at this way, I didn't send him a dead rat. Or a dead anything really. My absence probably thinks I have "moved on". How many times did he say that? "You need to move on." Well it would be considerably easier if you hadn't just driven my soul and my will to live into the core of the frickin' planet. Just advice for next time.

Well I had a strange night last night, but I'm too tired to write about it. So here's the deal. You imagine it. And then tomorrow I'll write about it, and you will see how much better what you imagined is compared to my actual experience.

"I'd think we were snobs, if we weren't so much damn better than everyone else"-Beth Marshall
More memories of Sara (the late great)
She and Martha B used to have a huge collection of paper back romances purchased from supermarkets and gas stations. They would dog ear the "good parts" and then we would all go to Jess P.'s summer house at the beach and read them out loud or two each other while eating raw cookie dough (pillsbury-back when metabolism was on my side and I could eat fries and ice cream and drink coke four times a day and not try and make carrot sticks appealing). We used to joke abouther name being Sara Dumblonde and tease her about so many jokes going over her head that she should have an airport in her hair. I remember her auditioning for some of the school musicals with that terrible singing of hers (the directing teacher, who I will name, Mr. Nields thought open auditions or more accurately collective humiliation was a good idea. Welcome to the antithesis of teenage psychology 101.)
I have two pictures of all the NEO rats up in my cubicle now. One is a picture from graduation, and the other is the cast of Knight of the Burning Pestle ( In the words of Metafilter WORST.PLAY.EVER. based on the WORST.IDEA.FOR.A.PLAY.EVER.-All you aspiring playwrights out there, don't worry. The worst play has already been written, the best you can hope for is second best.) I have gotten all nostalgic for high school and college recently. To be sure, I don't fall into the trap that many of my friends fall into, forgetting that I was miserable back then. To be sure, I just wanted to be over. I just wanted to get through it to get to the elusive, and now hallucinatory, "good stuff" that lay beyond. But comparitively the misery I am in now is far worse than the misery I was in then, which makes me fear ofthe misery of the future. (I am the ghost of depressions passed.) But I look then, I had a place. I had a social group. I knew the function I was supposed to serve. Back then there was a plan to follow:school and then college. And now, no friends (not in the same city at least) no boyfriend even, no plan. Just fear and misery. Not a particularly good place. I look back at the NEO and it was home for so long. Later there was the courtyard at third north where we would all get together and bitch about "Chuckles" our drunken speech teacher (who inspired Kevin's epic poem "Chuckles Do Not Fuck With Me Today"). Often we would gather with our fourties of hard cider (tactfully disguised in brown paper bags) and complain until two in the morning about his comments ( the same three no matter what you did "You aren't fully in touch with your chest resonance", "You're holding back", and our personal favorite "You aren't dealing with the place?" how are you supposed to deal with the place with your voice?) I didn't have a boyfriend then, but at least I had things to distract me from that. I had friends who made snarky remarks and parties and movies. We had rehearsals and plays. I used to think I didn't have a boyfriend because I was always busy doing work, now i think I was doing work because I didn't have a boyfriend. And now I do work because I don't have anything else. This was not where I wanted to be.

I'm trying to get out and do stuff to combat this depression. I'm going to a party tonight and then on thursday I'm going to go see a band play.I'm trying to be positive, but it is very difficult. The thing is I look back at where I was in high school and very little is different. I still don't have a boyfriend. I still feel like I'm behind where I'm suppposed to be. I still feel have massive anxiety attacks about things, both invented and real.

Yet I still maintain my problem is that I'm not crazy enough. If I was totally crazy I would have a boyfriend already. If I was totally crazy it wouldn't even be a problem.
"What am I gonna say when I see G-d? I was framed." Benicio Del Toro The Way of the Gun

So I open the mail this morning to find out a girl I went to high school with is dead. I don't know how, or honestly, even when, although I do know it probably occured sometime in the last two years. It might even have been september eleventh. So odd, to think that we were in the same city and didn't even know it. I run into people I went to high school with on occassion. It's been a while since the last time. I'm sure you think I shouldn't be so upset about it. I mean, if I was so out od touch with her, I shouldn't really care. But I do. She wasn't supposed to die. She was suppose to come to our ten year anniversary this summer and make me feel all depressed with everything that she had accomplished. She was supposed to have a good life, because she was a good person. I'm not just saying that because she is dead. Even when she was alive, or when I thought she was alive, if you had asked me about her I wouldn't have been able to come up with anything bad. I remember that she couldn't sing on key to save her life, that she sang more on key with headphones on than when they were off. I remember that she was knock kneed and pigeon toed. I remember that she always had dark brown roots in her blonde hair. I remember her taking our chinese food order at school, she always organized the orders.I remember obsession with becoming the wife of some italian mobster, she could tell you anything about the mob. I remember when she went out with Eric K, back when he was stylin' himself to be a big Jewish producer, complete with cigar, camel hair coat, and bad attittude towards women. I remember the rumor that she had sex with him in the lighting booth of the theater. (Her among many many others-not myself-I preferred fooling around in the dressing rooms. I liked the mirrors.) I hadn't spoken to her since graduation. I don't think she came to Ryan's reunion party the year after we graduated. Or maybe it was two years after we graduated.She wasn't supposed to die. She was supposed to come back and bitch about things, and talk to us, all of the NEO rats about the old times. About the shows we were in together (The Knight of the Burning Pestle-oh the humiliation!), the cast parties, the old scandal. She was supposed to come back so we could snark about Martha and Jon's relationship. She was supposed to come back so we could all of, the whole damn gang, go back to the NEO and remember. Remember Rohit, Chris (juggling), Eric, Jon(I am a sensitive artist), Perchik, Martha, Steve (the most republican looking head banger ever-trips to wendy's), Trevor (good backrubs-scary guy-who told me when he graduated that he wanted to,um, fuck me in half ), even scary "Jesus loves you" Jon H the girlfriend abuser, Rob (who now has gone back to teach at my old high school-which I think, in a way, is totally pathetic) Cary S., Leigh, Jessica (of the giant legs? rememeber the Dark of the Moon video? also a shutterbug) Cary D. (the clydesdale), Adam (I was an extra in Scent of a Woman!), Gold (the only guy who could make me blush on command), Chris S (who "christened" the bathroom wall during a rehearsal for Dark of the Moon), Ryan (Mr. Ed), and many others who I'm sure I am forgetting. But we were all supposed to go back. We were all supposed to make it this far and impress the hell ouut of each other and promise to have lunch and never call. We were suppose to talk about what a great time it was, even though ti felt like hell when we were going through it. We were supposed to have our picture taken together, just like the picture I have of our graduation. She wasn't supposed to be missing.
And this just reaffirms that even more there is justice to the universe. No matter how you look at it. Because so many people who make no use of their lives, who are totally ungrateful, who only use their existence to hurt others are allowed to run amok. They survive. And people like Sara die. And there is no rationalization. There is no looking for the bright side. There is only complete and and utter unfairness.And a horrible guilt. That I should have called and should have stayed in touch and should have enjoyed her more when she was around. I should have known when she died instead of getting a completely anonymous update from my high school. I should have known. I should have known.
"Karma is just justice without the satisfaction. And I don't believe in justice." James CaanThe Way of the Gun

Totally depressing weekend. Yesterday was the worst. I was invited out to see a movie with the socially clueless linguist, and having nothing better to do, I accepted. In some ways, a really bad decision, and in other ways, a huge freakin' mistake. So I meet her and the movie we want to see is sold out for the early time, so we buy late tic and decide to find a place to hang out and have a drink. So we are looking for a bar I used ot hang out at called the Library, of course, it's been so long since I've been in the village when it wasn't for work I couldn't find it (although when I got home I found I was only two blocks off course-damn it!) Walking around I was surprised at all the cute little shops that sprang up, and again,as I always am when I walk around the east village, I am sorry that I live up town and I remember all the great things we took advantage of when I lived down there. I didn't have to take the subway anywhere. Walk to Coney Island High (when it was still open-I actually saw the Ramones there-when joey ramone was still alive). Walk to the jazz clubs (there's a good one Houston with white sangria that kicks butt). Walk around in the west village, just window shop or get cupcakes at the Magnolia Bakery or the best damn tabouli or zatar bread at moustache. Even when I didn't live there, when I lived in the financial district, I sitll hung out at al these places the union square farmers market, republic, coffee shop. I miss it. I'm getting old. I don't even get carded anymore. Two years ago I used to get carded if I looked at a bar. I got carded going into movies (Seven, Snatch, and the Blair Witch Project). Now I walk into a bar and no one cards me. I'm beginning to look my age. The only thing that gave me hope was that I look young, and now I'm even losing that. Or is simply that this chronic unhappiness is beginning to take its toll on my features.