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[drunkwithpines]

I used to special order obscure books for weirdos. The service wasn't actually formally restricted to weirdos, but this seemed to be the bulk of my clientele, in spite of the stolid location (downtown DC) and the characterless megastore in which I worked. Closet keeblers masquerading as ponytailed programmers, fans of Suzanne Somers' poetry,

Comments

no guilt

[rambert]

I occasionally do this same thing. But then I think of the times, many more times, when my family has done the same thing to me, and I've forgiven them by the next day. I apologize and give myself a little of the same forgiveness.

I'd have smashed my face through some unyielding surface long ago, otherwise.

And don't make fun of Suzanne Somers. She is the greatest poet since Rod McKuen.

P.S. At your next meeting, combine the two words: fucking asswipe. Then look to the nearest empty chair and say: "Sorry."

I do things like this all the time. Probably why I do a lot of restaurant work.

speaking of empty chairs

[drunkwithpines]

where the hell have you been?
fucking asswipe!
sorry.

you've been missed.

Re: missed? i didn't even see you throw anything

[rambert]

Ooh! That sort of language gets me sort of, jazzed-up, ya know what I mean? (i feel like I'm channeling Michael Keaton's character in 'Beetlejuice' all of a sudden. This is not good...)

I'll be around, periodically. L.J. gets to be reflex with me, real fast. I hate this, the anxiety-tinged: "time to update, let's log-on and see if anyone answered my post," personal marketing bit.

Also, and bluntly, I hate everything i've ever written.

I'm really not sure why I continue to do it, unless it's all an attempt to defy my internal editor, that draconian little cocksucker.

Anyway, I'm going to get my fix of newly minted burracho con pines posts, now. Wish me luck ;)

Re: missed? i didn't even see you throw anything

[drunkwithpines]

I certainly have my own strident ambivalences about this forum. Different from your own, but no less anxiety-tinged. Recently I stopped caring, which is pleasant, though we'll see if that phase lasts.

Since we're being blunt, you are likely all alone in your low opinion of your screed. I've told you what I think. And I'd repeat it, but I hardly expect kissing ass will change your new approach. But there you have it.
It's a blow to those of us who know you only at a mediated distance.
Come to my birthday party and change all that, and I may stop whining.

Plus you're the only person I'm aware of who knows from where I stole my user name.

Re: missed? i didn't even see you throw anything

[rambert]

strident ambivalences...maybe it's because it's plural, but this strikes me nicely.

And of course there was my favorite, your waiters like spoon-chested Sonny Bonos. (as opposed, one might suppose, to the supernova-chested, mandala-aureola'd waitressesBut enough

excellent, so i have effortlessly reminded you of the perfect woman

[drunkwithpines]

There's a lot of crap poetry in the world. Neruda is simple. But it's a turbulent, ardent elemental simplicity, which when I too was a college freshman, I found riveting. I discovered The Captain's Verses at the bedside of an unfaithful self-involved writer-boyfriend (kind of like a scholar-athlete?) who went as far as to write a play about our breakup, quote my letters therein, ham-fistedly title it Detox, and cast friends of mine in the production. Neruda was one of few things of value I took from that. The other was having Thanksgiving dinner with Marianne Faithfull.

Incidentally, I too got the frigid lesbo snob speculations. Shy girls suffer so.

Re: excellent, so i have effortlessly reminded you of a cheating, selfish, mediocre playwrite

[rambert]

First-off: writer/boyfriend=scholar/athlete?

This would indicate that being your boyfriend included lots of strenuous physical exertion. It's none of my business of course, but did this involve leather or tangerine oil? I ask, not out any prurient interest, but because I'm thinking of writing a play of my own ;)

A brief interruption: You had turkey day with Marianne Faithful?!!? No wonder the Arthur Miller of the shower cap and lab jacket set called his play 'Detox

Re: excellent, so i have effortlessly reminded you of a cheating, selfish, mediocre playwrite

[drunkwithpines]

Huh. Think what you will.

This bad boyfriend's estranged-and-attempting-to-redress-it father was a dancer. Modern dance: he did the 'dance with no movement' I am told. Good fucking lord. "It's much more physically demanding than you'd think." He was friends with various depleted Beats and hangers-on. Marianne Faithfull was dating his girlfriend's brother, and yes: they'd met in detox. She didn't say a word with that husky voice of hers. I was so impressed and tense I didn't shit all weekend.

I do in fact have copies of the letters I wrote; he flew back from Paris with photocopies for me to review in an attempt to convince me to not leave his ever-philandering ass. Apparently Paris is a much richer experience when one is dramatically lovesick and penning letters to pining females, and it would be an aesthetic blow to his semester abroad. Who knows, maybe it was in earnest. It was certainly the most romantic gesture made for my sake, though I always suspected it was more gesture-for-gesture's-sake.

Re: excellent, so i have effortlessly reminded you

[rambert]

I see no reason to doubt any romantic excesses perpetrated on your behalf. And it gave you an interesting story to tell.

Maybe you should write your own play. Or a short fiction. I'd depict the wayward playwrite character as having the air of someone who had a definite air about them, of course. What the hell, it's all grist for the mill.

Incidentally, how did you come-off in his play? It can't have been too badly, unless you're incredibly philosophical about such things.

I sometimes wonder how people would describe me, ones with any power of verbal description, that is. It's tough to get under the surface with a few words. I used to want to do profiles of everyone I spoke to on the train. These days, I just sort of close my eyes and avoid all contact.

it's easy to be philosophical about things that happened in 1988

[drunkwithpines]

You know, I don't really recall, except that he stubbornly defended the role as a composite love object. Then quoted my letters and cast my slightly trashier doppelganger in the role. His girlfriend, who was his girlfriend before me as well, to whom he returned after rediscovering his fidelity, said about it: "I guess it's been long enough so that it doesn't seem like such a slap in the face to her." This is an option that had never really occurred to me. And the director, who, like everybody else, knew full well that this was something that belonged buried and forgotten in a desk drawer like a junior high diary, insisted that he directed it with "intentional disrespect" which he hoped was obvious to me. Everyone I knew found the whole project a bit grotesque on principle, so of course they all paid to see it.
And so did I.

Re: it's easy to be philosophical about things that happened in 1988

[rambert]

You were dating Truman Capote? A lot of women would enjoy the drama, but the shag and tell Roman-orgy-a-clef bit makes me uncomfortable.

It reminds me of an old Delmore Schwartz story where the narrator goes to the flicks and sees his life there on the screen. He yells at his mother to leave his abusive father and etc. It was a great device for its time. It's not bad now.

But it must've been interesting, seeing your trailer park, femme fatale counterpart there on stage.

I keep thinking I have a trashier doppleganger, but then I rememer it's just me.