Another day in Freudian Hell...
To the pastmobile, Robin! ZOOOOOOOOoooooom.....("are we gay yet?")
EARLY THIS MORNING of MAY 11th, the year of our GayLord 2004
I wake up sneezing again! Godammit that's like the fifth time in a row!
Drift back to sleep and hours later wake up to alarm clark blaring. Go into the Benefactor's room and accidentally turn it off instead of pressing snooze. I had the sneaking suspicion when I was pressing all of those buttons with my eyes half-closed that I wouldn't be waking up any time soon. But as noted, it was a sneaking suspicion; it snuck off before anything could materialize in my brain and tell me what I was doing.
Go back to sleep and wake up to the phone ringing at 9:01. I now have exactly twenty-nine minutes until B returns and we go to meet with the counselor at Richmond Tech to discuss my courses.
I answer the phone; it's another wrong number.
I shower quickly and as I'm drying off I hear someone moving around outside the bathroom. I realize B must be waiting. I dress and brush my teeth and hair in what I hope is record time, but as I step out and I see him, he's hurrying about, busy with his own chores. He tells me that he's got to run around the tri-county area ferrying car parts.
Inside I sigh with relief, and I don't feign disappointment. He says he'll come back and we'll go after lunch, which works for me.
I drive Nanny to her...what do you call a female hair-cutter? A hair stylist?
I drive Nanny to her woman-barber, hoping that she's across town so I get to drive farther but it's not two miles from the house. The woman-barber trims my hair. Just trims. Little is gone, but enough from the sides that my hair looks okay again. The woman-barber is good; she tells Nanny that she can see how I run my fingers through my hair all of the time.
They talk about my new car and my driving. They talk about her 15-year-old and how he's driving and can't grow a beard like mine.
That's sad, since I'm 19 and look like I have dirty-blonde pubic hair all over the lower half of my face, but for christ's sake the kid's only 15. They move on to telling me about how I used to run around chatting up the ladies when I was here a decade ago. I don't remember that, but the smell of recently permed hair is attacking my nostrils and I clearly remember smelling it when my sister had her first.
We leave and are not even out of the parking lot before Nanny tells me about how the woman's husband is dead and she's having trouble raising the kid on her own. This woman needs a knitting circle.
We get home and eat lunch.
I try to read the Richmond Tech book some more, to get some clue as to what I'll be discussing with the advisor.
But the Internet sways me (as it always does) and I get lost and bored surfing the web.
Benefactor calls every thirty minutes, and he's apparently travels quite a bit. He arrives at three.
We get into my car and I drive to RCC. Light, airy conversation. My AC kicks ass.
I try and park far away so that he'll bitch about having to walk too far and I get to put the car in reverse and drive like that for a while. I do this for about six minutes before he realizes what I'm doing and makes me park next to the Admin. building.
As we're walking up the steps of the administration building I trip grandly and twirl across the pavement as if it were ice. I land on my ass, but two seconds later I'm up on my feet and looking to see who's laughing at me.
Surprisingly, other than B, no one is. The campus is nigh empty. We walk in and the receptionist isn't even at her desk. Had she been, she would've been privy to an excellent view of my dumb ass being a spaz. I can't believe my luck!
The advisor talks to me next to the room where I took the entrance test last week and discovers that I don't want to major in Administrative Programming, but instead the Arts. He fills out a form changing my major and tells me to sign up for classes next Monday that will help me in getting an Associate Degree in Arts. I thank him and leave.
The entire session took six minutes. I am ridiculous.
Driving back I realize I could be here upwards of 2 years and I decide to have 'the talk' with B. He understands and takes it really well. Friendship it is then.
It soon hits me though, with the deafening silence that follows 'the talk', that I've just killed any chance of a return to light, airy conversation. You can't have a deep discussion and then jump back into normal stuff as if nothing had happened unless you're my Mother or my Mother's Mother, and frankly that shit weirds me out anyway.
So I tell him to turn on the radio and he jumps at the opportunity. We listen to eighties hair-band music and I can see that he doesn't get it but I enjoy the rest of the ride (about forty-five minutes) anyway.
We get home and I call my family, tell them how it went. Both my mother and my sister are sleeping when I call them seperately. These women are sleeping at like four something in the afternoon. Father is still at work so I text message him.
Later I work out too fast and pull a muscle in my chest. I wheeze and cough intermittently for the rest of the day, so I'm grumpy when Pa takes me to Wal-Mart and won't stop lecturing me about everything I do. Of the three, he is the most aggravating and the most respectable, because he's polite while being a jackass, you know? He's nice, but he's real. He's still putting on a face for me, but it's transparent and he doesn't mind when I see what he's really feeling.
I pump gas for the first time after (because Pa won't let me just park and start pumping while he talks on my cellphone) driving around the pumps in wild/crazy/slap-happy figure-eights so much that I start to hear the remix of "Woah Black Betty" in my head accompanied by accordians and goofy sound FX.
We get back to the house and it turns out that I grabbed an extra bag of stuff in Wal-Mart and we left with someone else's forgotten mini-watercooler. Pa says he'll take it back tomorrow.
I go with B to the video store and get a rental card. I spend ten bucks to rent the Unrated American Psycho, Jeepers Creepers 2 and Willard. B again tells me that he doesn't understand Widescreen and he wishes that I would get stuff in Fullscreen so that it would fit his TV. I don't try and explain it to him again, finally resigning to the fact that 90% percent of Southern people just won't ever fucking get it. Instead I assure him that I'll watch them by myself on the computer, and I won't make him sit through them. It seems to suit him well.
I'm tired of Wendy's and I don't trust Arby's anymore so we go to Burger King and I get a Double Whopper and king size Coke&fries. I'm going to have to stop eating this shit soon or it won't matter how much I work out, I'm going to put the weight back on.
While I eat we watch on old episode of Raymond. I laugh at the show while B laughs (I'm good on living with him, but his laugh still creeps me out sometimes) at the ads, go figure.
I cross over to Nanny and Pa's and Pa is watching an old fight between Ali and some other, much less famous black guy. Electric Stevens or something.
I ask to use the computer, which is something I've never done before, because I know he wants me to so he can say "Not yet, I want to talk to you."
He does, and we do. See? A transparent mask. He's the only one I can work with on a higher level like that.
He turns off the fight and we sit across from each other, our postures very relaxed. The conversation is much less pleasant than the one earlier with B, but more shit is cleared from the system.
It gets particularly tense at two moments;
In the first, Pa mentions (offhand, not actually part of the conversation) Sadie and "her boyfriend, husban-the guy, whatever," and he looks in my eyes and he can immediately tell he's crossed a line. He wouldn't have said this, except that the hostility comes from an earlier and equally tense conversation we had had about Sadie and what she was up to. He'd asked about her, and whether or not she was still with her beau. I said she was, and that they were engaged. He'd gotten about as emotional as I've seen him get in a long time and had asked if she planned on inviting them to the wedding. I told him she was not, figuring that the truth would spare him more grief in the long run. He'd dropped the topic after telling me not to tell B or Nanny, because he didn't trust them not to do something foolish, which I'd agreed to. Presently, he sees that he's crossed a line and alters the example he'd been describing to me in which he'd used them, and I don't press the matter cause fuck, I'd be messed up about it too, whether I'd had it coming or not.
In the second, I tell him that my mother and father raised me well and supported me and he begins to suggest otherwise. I go off on him, telling him that he shouldn't judge what he doesn't know and hasn't slightest idea of and he brings up B, which really sets me off. We wind up talking about monetary support and I tell him I don't give a shit who paid what to whom, I had two parents who put a roof over my head and food in mouth for nearly a decade. He presses and I tell him that I trust his word on the matter, but that I really don't give a shit one way or the other. He says okay, and under his mask I can see that he still doubts me and that he plans to bring it up again down the road, when he believes he has a better foothold on my judgement.
We'll see. For now, we're calm again and the system has been cleaned. We both feel emotional, but better for it.
I think it's important to hug the people who piss you off too.
Back to the present, Shakes the Clown! Woooooooooooosh ("are we gay yet?")
It's 1:14 now. I'm going to watch one of the three movies and then go to bed. On the other hand, I might just finish Gothica.
EARLY THIS MORNING of MAY 11th, the year of our GayLord 2004
I wake up sneezing again! Godammit that's like the fifth time in a row!
Drift back to sleep and hours later wake up to alarm clark blaring. Go into the Benefactor's room and accidentally turn it off instead of pressing snooze. I had the sneaking suspicion when I was pressing all of those buttons with my eyes half-closed that I wouldn't be waking up any time soon. But as noted, it was a sneaking suspicion; it snuck off before anything could materialize in my brain and tell me what I was doing.
Go back to sleep and wake up to the phone ringing at 9:01. I now have exactly twenty-nine minutes until B returns and we go to meet with the counselor at Richmond Tech to discuss my courses.
I answer the phone; it's another wrong number.
I shower quickly and as I'm drying off I hear someone moving around outside the bathroom. I realize B must be waiting. I dress and brush my teeth and hair in what I hope is record time, but as I step out and I see him, he's hurrying about, busy with his own chores. He tells me that he's got to run around the tri-county area ferrying car parts.
Inside I sigh with relief, and I don't feign disappointment. He says he'll come back and we'll go after lunch, which works for me.
I drive Nanny to her...what do you call a female hair-cutter? A hair stylist?
I drive Nanny to her woman-barber, hoping that she's across town so I get to drive farther but it's not two miles from the house. The woman-barber trims my hair. Just trims. Little is gone, but enough from the sides that my hair looks okay again. The woman-barber is good; she tells Nanny that she can see how I run my fingers through my hair all of the time.
They talk about my new car and my driving. They talk about her 15-year-old and how he's driving and can't grow a beard like mine.
That's sad, since I'm 19 and look like I have dirty-blonde pubic hair all over the lower half of my face, but for christ's sake the kid's only 15. They move on to telling me about how I used to run around chatting up the ladies when I was here a decade ago. I don't remember that, but the smell of recently permed hair is attacking my nostrils and I clearly remember smelling it when my sister had her first.
We leave and are not even out of the parking lot before Nanny tells me about how the woman's husband is dead and she's having trouble raising the kid on her own. This woman needs a knitting circle.
We get home and eat lunch.
I try to read the Richmond Tech book some more, to get some clue as to what I'll be discussing with the advisor.
But the Internet sways me (as it always does) and I get lost and bored surfing the web.
Benefactor calls every thirty minutes, and he's apparently travels quite a bit. He arrives at three.
We get into my car and I drive to RCC. Light, airy conversation. My AC kicks ass.
I try and park far away so that he'll bitch about having to walk too far and I get to put the car in reverse and drive like that for a while. I do this for about six minutes before he realizes what I'm doing and makes me park next to the Admin. building.
As we're walking up the steps of the administration building I trip grandly and twirl across the pavement as if it were ice. I land on my ass, but two seconds later I'm up on my feet and looking to see who's laughing at me.
Surprisingly, other than B, no one is. The campus is nigh empty. We walk in and the receptionist isn't even at her desk. Had she been, she would've been privy to an excellent view of my dumb ass being a spaz. I can't believe my luck!
The advisor talks to me next to the room where I took the entrance test last week and discovers that I don't want to major in Administrative Programming, but instead the Arts. He fills out a form changing my major and tells me to sign up for classes next Monday that will help me in getting an Associate Degree in Arts. I thank him and leave.
The entire session took six minutes. I am ridiculous.
Driving back I realize I could be here upwards of 2 years and I decide to have 'the talk' with B. He understands and takes it really well. Friendship it is then.
It soon hits me though, with the deafening silence that follows 'the talk', that I've just killed any chance of a return to light, airy conversation. You can't have a deep discussion and then jump back into normal stuff as if nothing had happened unless you're my Mother or my Mother's Mother, and frankly that shit weirds me out anyway.
So I tell him to turn on the radio and he jumps at the opportunity. We listen to eighties hair-band music and I can see that he doesn't get it but I enjoy the rest of the ride (about forty-five minutes) anyway.
We get home and I call my family, tell them how it went. Both my mother and my sister are sleeping when I call them seperately. These women are sleeping at like four something in the afternoon. Father is still at work so I text message him.
Later I work out too fast and pull a muscle in my chest. I wheeze and cough intermittently for the rest of the day, so I'm grumpy when Pa takes me to Wal-Mart and won't stop lecturing me about everything I do. Of the three, he is the most aggravating and the most respectable, because he's polite while being a jackass, you know? He's nice, but he's real. He's still putting on a face for me, but it's transparent and he doesn't mind when I see what he's really feeling.
I pump gas for the first time after (because Pa won't let me just park and start pumping while he talks on my cellphone) driving around the pumps in wild/crazy/slap-happy figure-eights so much that I start to hear the remix of "Woah Black Betty" in my head accompanied by accordians and goofy sound FX.
We get back to the house and it turns out that I grabbed an extra bag of stuff in Wal-Mart and we left with someone else's forgotten mini-watercooler. Pa says he'll take it back tomorrow.
I go with B to the video store and get a rental card. I spend ten bucks to rent the Unrated American Psycho, Jeepers Creepers 2 and Willard. B again tells me that he doesn't understand Widescreen and he wishes that I would get stuff in Fullscreen so that it would fit his TV. I don't try and explain it to him again, finally resigning to the fact that 90% percent of Southern people just won't ever fucking get it. Instead I assure him that I'll watch them by myself on the computer, and I won't make him sit through them. It seems to suit him well.
I'm tired of Wendy's and I don't trust Arby's anymore so we go to Burger King and I get a Double Whopper and king size Coke&fries. I'm going to have to stop eating this shit soon or it won't matter how much I work out, I'm going to put the weight back on.
While I eat we watch on old episode of Raymond. I laugh at the show while B laughs (I'm good on living with him, but his laugh still creeps me out sometimes) at the ads, go figure.
I cross over to Nanny and Pa's and Pa is watching an old fight between Ali and some other, much less famous black guy. Electric Stevens or something.
I ask to use the computer, which is something I've never done before, because I know he wants me to so he can say "Not yet, I want to talk to you."
He does, and we do. See? A transparent mask. He's the only one I can work with on a higher level like that.
He turns off the fight and we sit across from each other, our postures very relaxed. The conversation is much less pleasant than the one earlier with B, but more shit is cleared from the system.
It gets particularly tense at two moments;
In the first, Pa mentions (offhand, not actually part of the conversation) Sadie and "her boyfriend, husban-the guy, whatever," and he looks in my eyes and he can immediately tell he's crossed a line. He wouldn't have said this, except that the hostility comes from an earlier and equally tense conversation we had had about Sadie and what she was up to. He'd asked about her, and whether or not she was still with her beau. I said she was, and that they were engaged. He'd gotten about as emotional as I've seen him get in a long time and had asked if she planned on inviting them to the wedding. I told him she was not, figuring that the truth would spare him more grief in the long run. He'd dropped the topic after telling me not to tell B or Nanny, because he didn't trust them not to do something foolish, which I'd agreed to. Presently, he sees that he's crossed a line and alters the example he'd been describing to me in which he'd used them, and I don't press the matter cause fuck, I'd be messed up about it too, whether I'd had it coming or not.
In the second, I tell him that my mother and father raised me well and supported me and he begins to suggest otherwise. I go off on him, telling him that he shouldn't judge what he doesn't know and hasn't slightest idea of and he brings up B, which really sets me off. We wind up talking about monetary support and I tell him I don't give a shit who paid what to whom, I had two parents who put a roof over my head and food in mouth for nearly a decade. He presses and I tell him that I trust his word on the matter, but that I really don't give a shit one way or the other. He says okay, and under his mask I can see that he still doubts me and that he plans to bring it up again down the road, when he believes he has a better foothold on my judgement.
We'll see. For now, we're calm again and the system has been cleaned. We both feel emotional, but better for it.
I think it's important to hug the people who piss you off too.
Back to the present, Shakes the Clown! Woooooooooooosh ("are we gay yet?")
It's 1:14 now. I'm going to watch one of the three movies and then go to bed. On the other hand, I might just finish Gothica.