For the record (her beauties beat)
For the record, I was incredibly tired and a little hungry. It does work as an excuse, especially when you consider what else I could have thrown at you – the three beers for example. Not literally thrown. I meant it metaphorically. Yes, I know you take things literally. Fine. Whatever. So there I was, on the way home – tired and hungry. It hard being a little drunk – especially when you’re expected to make witty conversation with people you just want to get away from. Far away. I think that was the purpose of the beer. I like Stella. Recent discovery – its lighter than regular beer! I think. Isn’t it? Well, anyways, I had the beer and some random tandoori chicken dinner thing. It was red. Dripping, dripping red. I could have sworn it was screaming redrum. That was a scary book. But you don’t read. So, I was telling myself, I shouldn’t eat this chicken, because my eyes will swell up and I might see him later and I don’t want to look like all my frustration had bubbled up in the sacs of my eyes. Right? But I did eat it, because I was pretty hungry then too, and it was there and I figured, I couldn’t be bothered to explain my allergies to four complete strangers. Strangers. That’s a funny word. Because in truth, no one felt stranger than me that night. You know that feeling you get when you’re uncomfortable? When it feels like your insides are stretching against themselves and all you want to do is loosen your skin? Like when you think you’re smiling, but everyone is looking at you like – are you ok? Why do you look so – strained. Yeah. I was definitely feeling some strain. Because I cant take the judgments and the back talk the discussion about other peoples lives. I mean, each one of us has our own demons and problems. Like what I did to Aaron. I mean, that wasn’t very nice. Or very fair. I was thinking – you know how when you love someone, when you want someone – you cannot even begin to understand how they can lead normal, unaffected lives when you are burning up in your sleep. But then I realize that Aaron must have felt that when I left. He must have missed me. And I didn’t feel a thing. In fact I think I felt relieved. He must have spent nights thinking about me – about my hair and my smile and my fingers. I mean, that’s what people do, right? Think about things that have nothing to do with the people they love. Love. That’s actually quite a joke. So Aaron missed me, and I missed nothing. And I will miss someone who doesn’t miss me. And I will wonder how he could miss all the torment emanating from my corner of the universe. Interesting, really. How we spend all this energy on things that will eventually to nothing but hurt us. What if we took all that time and effort and built schools for retarded little kids instead? Then we’d have a well-educated retarded workforce. And possible a more coherent Special Olympics. What?! Ok, fine. But its true. So, I was three beers down, tired, hungry and very very bored. Well, no. Bored suggests that I wasn’t stimulated. I was definitely stimulated. Just by all the wrong feelings. Nervousness, anxiety, insecurity. And I was terrified I would see him later and my eyes would look like I was going rounds with a bastardized little boxer. That so makes sense. Anyways. I was also terrified I wouldn’t see him – I mean, then I’d have to sit and rationalize what I was feeling and what he wasn’t feeling and whether or not I should walk away. My neurosis is palpable, no? So, I was confused and not at all at peace. Peace seems like such an unattainable concept sometimes. I mean, how do you quieten a mind. It’s a mini-universe. A microcosm of all the chaos in existence – right inside of me. I can hardly make a relationship work, do you really think I can harness the power of all of existence. Yeah, no. Do you think I miss Aaron? A little? Maybe just the friendship? It’s all so hard. Anyways, I was so sure there was a point to this.———————————————————————————————————————————————— The happiest that I have ever been? Ok, let me first denounce this incessantly sweet notion of happiness and how it, for some reason, is the ultimate rung on some invisible ladder of accomplishment we are all supposed to be climbing. I’ve been happy. And I’ve been fucking miserable. And let me tell you – the sadness was a lot more real, a lot more comforting and a hell of a lot more permanent than the sing-along version of reality. Why would you want to be in a state of constant fear – paranoia, that something might change – the warm tinglings of irreverent joy might desert you and husk the bullshit from the cloak of armor we call “humanity.” What?! It’s not pessimistic. It’s not even a judgment, really. Call it an observation. It’s just how I feel. Life is too short to spend it being happy. I think that if we learn to accept the fact that we are all just naturally more inclined to a deep-seated melancholy and chances are, are going to find ourselves in state of wanting to just let it all go more often than not, we’d be a happier tribe. Then we’d have something to sing about. But you were asking about the happiest I have, in theory, ever been. I wonder if I have really ever be .. yes, I DO digress. Alright. Happiness. I think it was the day that I started smoking. No! I’m being perfectly serious – let me explain this. Ok. So, everything around us is a social construct, right? Time, age, intelligence – even love to a large extent. We act a certain way because we have to, not necessarily because we are listening to the age-old chiming of some demented biological clock. I mean, who knows better than we do when we need to eat, shit, fuck? Apparently priests, doctors and Oprah. You can laugh. I’m telling you – everything around us has been created. From the way we interact, to the way we live, to the way we lead out our entire fucking existence. Take for example, kids. If there was ever an example of what we’re supposed to be, what we were meant to be – it lives in children. Just look at them! They talk when they want to, sleep when they want to, act out the most savage fantasies (all inherent, all under the surface) when they want to. It’s only when judgment and discretion creep into the picture that they start to question what they are feeling and what they should be feeling and how they should be feeling it. That’s why I started to smoke. Of course it makes sense. It’s a slow suicide. I wanted to do something so disgusting, so destructive, so obviously bad for me, so incredibly hard to let go off – because I could. You know? Because at the end of the day, no matter who tells me its going to kill me, no matter who knows I’m going to die a very slow and very painful death – I chose it. I am shitting on the youth of my happy pink lungs and telling them – whether or not they like it, I’m in control. And I’m willing to give them up for my remarkably common, but exponentially implicit death. Sorry, did you want oceans and windows. I have those memories too. But they all seem so tied up with who I used to be, who I gave up being. You know what the funniest thing is? I gave up myself before I gave up the cigarettes. Long before. I guess some things just make you happier than others.
