The Decagon - part 5
I got some pictures developed the other day. I took the two rolls of black and white film that had been sitting in my bedroom, drove down to the camera store, and had them developed with a matte finish. I paid for everything with money from my new job.
The pictures date from all the way back to January of last year, to as recently as this April.
Two rolls of film for almost two years of my life.
The first roll starts in a house where I spent a week snowed-in by a blizzard. I spent the week there with people I genuinely like and have much respect for.
The second roll ends with pictures of a girl who looks like a French movie-star. I cry when I look at those pictures. I think she might have loved me then. I want to kill myself when I look at those pictures.
There's a dirty, blood-caked razor blade hidden under a small stack of paper in front of me. About a month ago I told that impossibly beautiful girl what I'd been doing to myself with that razor blade.
"...Are you doing it because of me? Because If you are, you shouldn't be in this relationship."
"So is that your excuse to get me to leave so you can find someone better?"
"No, it's not my excuse. You don't know what it's like sitting next to the hospital bed of someone you care about after they've tried to kill themself."
She had me there. I eventually just lied (I'm really good at that), and told her that I wasn't doing it because of her. She pretended to believe me. She didn't bother to step in. I suppose I'm not really worth saving anymore.
We haven't broken up yet, which is the "funny" thing. Things are "weird" right now. I guess it's pretty weird when your "girlfriend" is out until four in the morning with some guy and doesn't answer your phone calls. That's kinda weird. I'm just paranoid though. That's it. I'm just uptight, and suspicious, and never "have fun".
This entry was supposed to be about the memories that are conjured up from looking at pictures. Things change.
The Decagon rolls forth.
I kind of want to put a bullet in my head right now.
If there's a hell, I visualize all the other suicide victims glaring at me, muttering the word "asshole", when they find out that I killed myself over a girl.
There are probably quite a few really great girls out there. I'll probably meet a few. None of them will be as sexually deviant as the girl I'm "with" now. It kind of sucks. I really only care about physical companionship. I was hoping to have sex in a graveyard at least once. I could have, with this girl. She's done it before. In the section reserved for suicide victims. I don't think it's going to happen now. Dammit.
I don't really know why I'm writing this. It's fucking self-indulgent bullshit. I wish I had a lit cigarette so I could stub it out on my neck.
I was a total asshole to the caterer who rents space in the kitchen I work in (note* I actually really like the people I work with). I kind of have a crush on her. I always get crushes on pretty, learned, emphatic women 15-20 years older than me who are really good at reading emotions. She always takes the time to say "hi" to me. I think she knew I was having an UN-good day today.
"How are you today, Evan?"
"I'm alright," I muttered.
I would've liked to ask her if I could have a hug, and a shoulder to cry like a pale-skinny-faggot-bitch on. That was kind of uncalled for. I love being pale and skinny, and no one has called me a faggot for years.
"I won't tell you all my 'problems'. I only care about physical companionship," I would say to her.
A couple nights ago I stole one of my dad's beers and walked to a place I like to go to. I walked on deserted back roads that have no streetlights. I know the way perfectly. It's a little place right on the water. No one ever goes there. Most people know it's there, and yet it's a secret. When I was a teenager, my younger-older sister and I would walk there a few times a week. So it reminds me of my sister. One time, I walked there in freezing, windy weather to take pictures of boats for my photography class. So it reminds me of taking pictures. I walked down there with the girl who looks like a French movie star. It was freezing, so we had to hold on to each other to stay warm. At that point, the most we had ever done was hold hands. It reminds me of her. About a week ago, an old friend and I drove there. We sat on the edge of the pier together and listened to the strange sounds coming from the dark water. We drove to my house, got a flashlight, and drove back. The light revealed dozens of tiny fish, eating hundreds of tinier fish. We sat, and watched, and whispered, and everything felt alright. That place reminds me of her now, too.
I walked down there alone a couple nights ago, and drank a beer. I had originally planned on smashing the bottle, maybe taking the biggest shards of glass and cutting various parts of my body open with them. I didn't. Instead, I set the bottle down on the pier, and hoped that someone would see it. And I hoped that they would imagine someone there, someone very lonely, and they would wait there for me, because they were lonely too, and "they" was really "she".
I wanted to cry as I sat drinking beer (Becks, my dad likes shitty beer), but I couldn't. I wanted to cry more than anything. I was thinking about writing this while I sat, and how amazing it would be. Not so amazing anymore. Not very similar to what I had in my head. I wanted someone to read this and cry. I wanted it to make them think of everything that they didn't want to think about, and I wanted to them to cry. I wanted to be to the one who made them do it.
I've never seen or heard "her" cry. She knows how to "control her emotions". I guess this "relationship" isn't very tragic.
I got up from the pier and walked back towards my house in the same direction that we had walked a couple months before. I had made her a CD, and she had been listening to it, and dancing in the middle of the road as we walked earlier. She was totally exhausted, and dehydrated. I don't usually see her tired. She takes like, five Aderol a day.
"I would never shoot coke," she told me on the way back from the Bauhaus show a week ago. I didn't want to go with her. I bought tickets for me and her when things where still "okay". I didn't have anyone else to go with, so after almost a month of not talking, I had to be with her. I think if I hadn't seen her last week, I wouldn't be writing this right now. Driving in her car, dancing with her, seeing our favorite goth legends together, getting drunk with her, watching her flirt with other guys, and finally touching her naked body; all of that made things worse.
"So...you've snorted coke?"
She nodded her head.
"..."
"Sorry. It was like, two years ago."
I still can't describe exactly what I felt at that moment. Mostly disappointment and anger, I think. Whatever. She likes to keep little details from me. Just unimportant things. It's no big deal. People can do whatever they want. Hell, she didn't even know me two years ago.
We walked along that road, and she was tired. There were no stimulants in her body. We walked past a house that was very familiar to me. I could find my way around inside of it in pitch blackness. I told her about this house, and about how I had spent so much of my childhood there, with a childhood friend. He's in the police academy now. He always wanted to be a cop. Ever since he was a little kid.
She told me that she thought it was weird and sad for her to hear about the house, because she had grown up in Oregon, and she could never walk past a house here and tell someone she loved that she had spent her childhood there.
Instead she told me a story about a little girl.
There's a girl...maybe you might meet her, and she might tell you about me, but there's a girl who dreams about a faerie tale land where everything is twilight, and there are pixies and cherry trees that are always in blossom. And there are waterfalls, and mermaids, and giant lilly pads. And this girl who's so special, and amazing, will tell you about this place in her head where everything and everyone she cares about lives. She'll tell you about a tree where the people she loves and cares about most live. Each branch is a home, and she'll tell you that only very special people are allowed there. She'll tell you that you would be there, and you'll kiss her on the cheek. She'll say this on a long road with only a few street lights. She'll be out of breath and delirious, and more vulnerable than you'll ever see her again. And she'll make you cry while you write this.
I was with that girl as we walked along that road. I loved her and I couldn't tell her. We walked, and she told me about her secret getaway. And we got back to my house and drank water, and went to her car, and she read me Existentialist writing, and managed to make it exciting, and we talked about writing, and she was even more vulnerable, and I loved her so much seeing her hard shell crack and crumble, and then we had sex.
And then things continued on their downward spiral to where they are now.
I walked on that road by myself and thought of this, and thought about writing these words. And I wished that someone would drive past, and stop, and I would get in their car, and find myself awake the next day in the bed where they slept every day since their childhood, and we would leave together that same day and never come back. Again, "they" is really "she".
I never told that French movie-star girl what my secret "fantasy world" looked like in my head. I told her I would, and I didn't. It's not too hard to describe. It's simply a vast night-cloaked, neon-illuminated city where nobody knows who I am.
I suppose she'd want to know things like that about me. She always thought I was holding something back from her. Ethereal things. Unlike the physical events she withheld from me. She wanted me to bare my soul to her in some kind of profound way that I didn't understand.
I wish I could know someone who was just happy with knowing me. Not knowing my deepest fears and dreams, but just knowing me in the present. Why can't that ever be? People always think I'm hiding some kind of secret, and it always leads to disappointment for them. I guess I never live up to peoples' expectations. And yet I always make it clear not to expect much. I always tell them that I'm nothing special. So many of them have tried to change me.
I was going to write about how I only picked out a few photos from those rolls of film I had developed. I picked out the few that still affected me. Each one is a memory, a slide show of my life up to this point, and I find that only a few things really matter, because I've changed. I like to tell myself that nothing really matters. I tell myself that I'm a nihilist. But my memories aren't static pictures. They're alive. They're living and breathing, and I can't get rid of them, and no matter how much I change, they'll always be there, with my love, and no matter where I go, I'll always come back to my secret place, and they'll all be there, and I'll cry.
The pictures date from all the way back to January of last year, to as recently as this April.
Two rolls of film for almost two years of my life.
The first roll starts in a house where I spent a week snowed-in by a blizzard. I spent the week there with people I genuinely like and have much respect for.
The second roll ends with pictures of a girl who looks like a French movie-star. I cry when I look at those pictures. I think she might have loved me then. I want to kill myself when I look at those pictures.
There's a dirty, blood-caked razor blade hidden under a small stack of paper in front of me. About a month ago I told that impossibly beautiful girl what I'd been doing to myself with that razor blade.
"...Are you doing it because of me? Because If you are, you shouldn't be in this relationship."
"So is that your excuse to get me to leave so you can find someone better?"
"No, it's not my excuse. You don't know what it's like sitting next to the hospital bed of someone you care about after they've tried to kill themself."
She had me there. I eventually just lied (I'm really good at that), and told her that I wasn't doing it because of her. She pretended to believe me. She didn't bother to step in. I suppose I'm not really worth saving anymore.
We haven't broken up yet, which is the "funny" thing. Things are "weird" right now. I guess it's pretty weird when your "girlfriend" is out until four in the morning with some guy and doesn't answer your phone calls. That's kinda weird. I'm just paranoid though. That's it. I'm just uptight, and suspicious, and never "have fun".
This entry was supposed to be about the memories that are conjured up from looking at pictures. Things change.
The Decagon rolls forth.
I kind of want to put a bullet in my head right now.
If there's a hell, I visualize all the other suicide victims glaring at me, muttering the word "asshole", when they find out that I killed myself over a girl.
There are probably quite a few really great girls out there. I'll probably meet a few. None of them will be as sexually deviant as the girl I'm "with" now. It kind of sucks. I really only care about physical companionship. I was hoping to have sex in a graveyard at least once. I could have, with this girl. She's done it before. In the section reserved for suicide victims. I don't think it's going to happen now. Dammit.
I don't really know why I'm writing this. It's fucking self-indulgent bullshit. I wish I had a lit cigarette so I could stub it out on my neck.
I was a total asshole to the caterer who rents space in the kitchen I work in (note* I actually really like the people I work with). I kind of have a crush on her. I always get crushes on pretty, learned, emphatic women 15-20 years older than me who are really good at reading emotions. She always takes the time to say "hi" to me. I think she knew I was having an UN-good day today.
"How are you today, Evan?"
"I'm alright," I muttered.
I would've liked to ask her if I could have a hug, and a shoulder to cry like a pale-skinny-faggot-bitch on. That was kind of uncalled for. I love being pale and skinny, and no one has called me a faggot for years.
"I won't tell you all my 'problems'. I only care about physical companionship," I would say to her.
A couple nights ago I stole one of my dad's beers and walked to a place I like to go to. I walked on deserted back roads that have no streetlights. I know the way perfectly. It's a little place right on the water. No one ever goes there. Most people know it's there, and yet it's a secret. When I was a teenager, my younger-older sister and I would walk there a few times a week. So it reminds me of my sister. One time, I walked there in freezing, windy weather to take pictures of boats for my photography class. So it reminds me of taking pictures. I walked down there with the girl who looks like a French movie star. It was freezing, so we had to hold on to each other to stay warm. At that point, the most we had ever done was hold hands. It reminds me of her. About a week ago, an old friend and I drove there. We sat on the edge of the pier together and listened to the strange sounds coming from the dark water. We drove to my house, got a flashlight, and drove back. The light revealed dozens of tiny fish, eating hundreds of tinier fish. We sat, and watched, and whispered, and everything felt alright. That place reminds me of her now, too.
I walked down there alone a couple nights ago, and drank a beer. I had originally planned on smashing the bottle, maybe taking the biggest shards of glass and cutting various parts of my body open with them. I didn't. Instead, I set the bottle down on the pier, and hoped that someone would see it. And I hoped that they would imagine someone there, someone very lonely, and they would wait there for me, because they were lonely too, and "they" was really "she".
I wanted to cry as I sat drinking beer (Becks, my dad likes shitty beer), but I couldn't. I wanted to cry more than anything. I was thinking about writing this while I sat, and how amazing it would be. Not so amazing anymore. Not very similar to what I had in my head. I wanted someone to read this and cry. I wanted it to make them think of everything that they didn't want to think about, and I wanted to them to cry. I wanted to be to the one who made them do it.
I've never seen or heard "her" cry. She knows how to "control her emotions". I guess this "relationship" isn't very tragic.
I got up from the pier and walked back towards my house in the same direction that we had walked a couple months before. I had made her a CD, and she had been listening to it, and dancing in the middle of the road as we walked earlier. She was totally exhausted, and dehydrated. I don't usually see her tired. She takes like, five Aderol a day.
"I would never shoot coke," she told me on the way back from the Bauhaus show a week ago. I didn't want to go with her. I bought tickets for me and her when things where still "okay". I didn't have anyone else to go with, so after almost a month of not talking, I had to be with her. I think if I hadn't seen her last week, I wouldn't be writing this right now. Driving in her car, dancing with her, seeing our favorite goth legends together, getting drunk with her, watching her flirt with other guys, and finally touching her naked body; all of that made things worse.
"So...you've snorted coke?"
She nodded her head.
"..."
"Sorry. It was like, two years ago."
I still can't describe exactly what I felt at that moment. Mostly disappointment and anger, I think. Whatever. She likes to keep little details from me. Just unimportant things. It's no big deal. People can do whatever they want. Hell, she didn't even know me two years ago.
We walked along that road, and she was tired. There were no stimulants in her body. We walked past a house that was very familiar to me. I could find my way around inside of it in pitch blackness. I told her about this house, and about how I had spent so much of my childhood there, with a childhood friend. He's in the police academy now. He always wanted to be a cop. Ever since he was a little kid.
She told me that she thought it was weird and sad for her to hear about the house, because she had grown up in Oregon, and she could never walk past a house here and tell someone she loved that she had spent her childhood there.
Instead she told me a story about a little girl.
There's a girl...maybe you might meet her, and she might tell you about me, but there's a girl who dreams about a faerie tale land where everything is twilight, and there are pixies and cherry trees that are always in blossom. And there are waterfalls, and mermaids, and giant lilly pads. And this girl who's so special, and amazing, will tell you about this place in her head where everything and everyone she cares about lives. She'll tell you about a tree where the people she loves and cares about most live. Each branch is a home, and she'll tell you that only very special people are allowed there. She'll tell you that you would be there, and you'll kiss her on the cheek. She'll say this on a long road with only a few street lights. She'll be out of breath and delirious, and more vulnerable than you'll ever see her again. And she'll make you cry while you write this.
I was with that girl as we walked along that road. I loved her and I couldn't tell her. We walked, and she told me about her secret getaway. And we got back to my house and drank water, and went to her car, and she read me Existentialist writing, and managed to make it exciting, and we talked about writing, and she was even more vulnerable, and I loved her so much seeing her hard shell crack and crumble, and then we had sex.
And then things continued on their downward spiral to where they are now.
I walked on that road by myself and thought of this, and thought about writing these words. And I wished that someone would drive past, and stop, and I would get in their car, and find myself awake the next day in the bed where they slept every day since their childhood, and we would leave together that same day and never come back. Again, "they" is really "she".
I never told that French movie-star girl what my secret "fantasy world" looked like in my head. I told her I would, and I didn't. It's not too hard to describe. It's simply a vast night-cloaked, neon-illuminated city where nobody knows who I am.
I suppose she'd want to know things like that about me. She always thought I was holding something back from her. Ethereal things. Unlike the physical events she withheld from me. She wanted me to bare my soul to her in some kind of profound way that I didn't understand.
I wish I could know someone who was just happy with knowing me. Not knowing my deepest fears and dreams, but just knowing me in the present. Why can't that ever be? People always think I'm hiding some kind of secret, and it always leads to disappointment for them. I guess I never live up to peoples' expectations. And yet I always make it clear not to expect much. I always tell them that I'm nothing special. So many of them have tried to change me.
I was going to write about how I only picked out a few photos from those rolls of film I had developed. I picked out the few that still affected me. Each one is a memory, a slide show of my life up to this point, and I find that only a few things really matter, because I've changed. I like to tell myself that nothing really matters. I tell myself that I'm a nihilist. But my memories aren't static pictures. They're alive. They're living and breathing, and I can't get rid of them, and no matter how much I change, they'll always be there, with my love, and no matter where I go, I'll always come back to my secret place, and they'll all be there, and I'll cry.