"Good grief!"
The night I left off on Wednesday, I found myself going from talking on AOL Instant Messenger with Tara to talking on the phone with her for a couple hours. It was so strange hearing her voice for the first time in about a year. I think I was completely shaken most of the conversation, pacing with a cordless phone between each end and corner of the downstairs. I got caught up with the last year of her life and couldn't really muster much talk of myself for some reason. We talked about 'us' or whatever you want to call it. I referred to us as an 'eight-month one night stand' and she said we were more than that. The conversation started off small, simple, and stupid, of course, but I think we both wanted to steer it towards the past. She was honest with me for the first time about a couple things. It's weird to think you can be so close to someone and not know that you're being lied to for so many months. When I asked her how she could possibly have been mad at me for lying to her about my feelings for her when she knew she had lied to me about fucking two other people and she said, "Because I'm a hypocrite." I got to hear about her crazy boyfriend she moved across the country to be with and how miserable she was while there. This might sound terrible, but I was really happy to hear that she wasn't happy while leaving the awful comments about how happy she was to my last blog entry about her a few months back. We said our sorries and talked about hanging out. It was really strange for me to be talking to her. Every single one of my relationships have ended on bad terms. Somehow, they've even ended on bad terms that never get reconciled. Other than Lisa, every single girl I've ever dated hates me to this day and has yet to ever speak to me again. So every girl that left me, I was left with questions and concerns that would never be answered or explained or rationalized. This was the first time I got closure, I guess. I really, really hope Tara and I become close friends again, at the least. More than anything else, I just really miss hanging out with her all the time.
Thanksgiving was nice. I spent it with my family. My father picked me up early and I just sat around the living room for a while, eating chips and grapes that my mother had set out. Even though they're not the slightest bit parental in the ways they should be, I always enjoy just hanging out with my mother and father. I guess that's better than no parents at all. I sat on my little laptop on the couch and my mother told me to keep it as an early Christmas present, promising to pay me back the money I already spent on it. I asked her a hundred times if she was sure and she insisted on it. It was really exciting, especially since I was becoming so attached to the little guy already. Hopefully, I don't get jumped by six kids on bikes again any time soon. A day or two earlier, my mother had called me to ask if it'd be alright if Jason X, my piece of shit cousin, joined us for dinner. Apparently, he had shared a sob story about, "not having any family to be with," or whatever to my brother (and probably a dozen other people, since he's on a constant attention and sympathy binge), so my brother asked my mother and even bought him his own $12 Tofurkey for dinner. Even though I wasn't going to enjoy having him around, especially since I in no way consider him family, I said I was fine with it, because I'm a halfway-decent person.
I hung out with my brother for the most part, while my psychotic youngest brother, as usual, just sat on the couch with his legs crossed, playing video games or watching videos of video games on his laptop. My sister stayed hidden in her room with her cellphone. Sometimes, my family depresses me to be around, even though I at the same time feel so at home around them since we're all so alike in so many ways. My brother Yoda does absolutely nothing with himself other than buy things online and play video games whenever he isn't sleeping and even when I've talked him into doing things with me outside of his house, he finds a reason to not enjoy himself; my youngest brother also has no interests in the outside world and only cares about video games, even one time telling me that bikes were 'gay'; my sister is the most outgoing, but she's completely lost in materialism and has an unwarranted entitlement complex. My parents both hate their lives; my father talks about waiting to die every time I see him and my mother always seems like she's about to lose her mind. I'm thankful for these little holiday get-togethers just because everyone kind of puts those things to the side. It just sucks sometimes wishing you could help an entire room of people completely unwilling to help themselves. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, a classic, which was followed by some more recent, generic version of a Charlie Brown special that was mostly propaganda about the pilgrims, where the Indians somehow speak English and the pilgrims are all like, "Whoa! How do you speak the same language as us?!" Ridiculous.
Dinner was amazing. My mother has gotten so good at preparing large vegan Thanksgiving dinners for my brother and I. She brought out our plates, our Tofurkeys fancily sliced into four chunks, covered in the mushroom gravy and surrounded by mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing, peas, and corn. She also made each of us the best vegan pumpkin pie I've ever had in my life. We drank soda out of wine glasses. My ungrateful scumbag of a cousin, Jason, never bothered showing up. Instead, he went to visit his fake girlfriend at her family's house, all while complaining about it over texts to my brother. My brother told him we were about to eat and he said he was, "on his way." Two hours later, he still wasn't there. My brother told him we were finished eating and he said, "I'll be there soon." My brother looked so bummed out. I felt really bad for him, but then again, he brings it on himself by continuing to be friends with someone as self-absorbed and petty as Jason. Shared DNA or whatever means nothing to me; family is a title you have to earn in my eyes. Anyway, I ate until it hurt to move. The rest of the night, I'd get up every fifteen to twenty minutes and snack on my plate some more. By the end of the night, I still hadn't finished all my food. My parents fell asleep pretty early and I wasn't able to hang out with my brother because he had boyfriend duty after Kayla got off of work. Sometimes, I wish I had someone to wait for. Tara called my cellphone and it was weird to see how much she wanted to talk to me immediately after our first AIM conversation.
It was a good night. And I am unbelievably thankful for mostly everything in my life.
The next day, I walked to the bus stop and rode the 55 home for the first time in months. I felt this unbelievably melancholy for some reason. As soon as I walked into my grandmother's house's door, I got a call from Kara asking me where I was. So I turned around and walked back the way I came to Tia's house. I sat on the bed with her and Bianca and we decided to basically back out of our own friendship Thanksgiving since we had no money. We still had fun, though. Bianca brought a really delicious chocolate vanilla cake she made and Kara brought pumpkin pie and string bean casserole that I refused to try because it looked weird and smelled like hashbrowns. We turned off the lights and watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox since I was the only person who had seen it before for some unknown reason. Lots of laughing and exclaimed 'awwwwwwwws'. My grandmother picked me and Kara up and a half hour or so after we got there, I headed out to hang out with Amy for the first time since September. I felt like a jerk leaving Kara all alone in my bedroom, but I already had these plans with Amy and this would be my last chance to see her until the end of December. She picked me up and we went to Bombers. We didn't buy anything because neither of us had money. We just caught up and enjoyed talking to each other as usual. I like talking to Amy because when we 'catch up', we actually catch up and I very rarely have had friendships where I actually care about what's going on in their life and believe they actually care about what's going in mine. Plus, she's so fucking funny. We were there for about two hours before she brought me back home.
Earlier, while waiting for her to pick me up on my grandmother's front steps, I got a call from Tara. We had loosely talked about hanging out Friday night, but it didn't seem official. Sometimes, when people ask to hang out on a certain day, I just agree to it, even if I know I already have 'plans'. The reason for this is because very few people actually follow through with plans, so I feel it's better to have several and leave room for some to fall through. Surprisingly, everyone followed through on this night and I unfortunately had to ditch Tara. She made me feel really bad over the phone, telling me she had given up plans with others and had even dressed up. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if I was ready to be face-to-face with her again. I spent the rest of the night with Kara. She's pretty upset that I'm talking to Tara again. And she might have good reason to be worried. But there's always been something so intoxicating about her and even after she totally fucked me over, lied to me, and abandoned me, I couldn't help but miss the good times we had. It really stressed me out, though. I hate when someone makes me feel like I shouldn't do things I'm doing.
Sunday, I went out to the movies with Dana. We had planned it a month in advance for some reason. She's had these free Regal movie passes for a while now and was nice enough to reserve them for us. We went to Colonie Mall, which I am still technically banned from, and saw Love and Other Drugs, another mainstream romantic comedy, this one revolving around mid-'90s pharmaceutical marketing practices, Jake Gyllenhaal as a player, and Anne Hathaway as the artist girl who's into no-strings-attached sex because she has early on-set Parkinson's. It was an okay movie. Then again, that's all these kinds of movies ever are: 'okay'. Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal were nice to look at, though, and some parts were pretty funny. She brought me home after that. Dana comes off as quiet and innocent and friendly, but she actually hates the world. I sat online for a while and then got a ride to Tia's. We hung around and talked and then watched Harmony Korine's newest masterpiece of trash cinema, Trash Humpers. I was so excited to see it and it definitely didn't let me down. Made to appear as though it's through the lens of a crappy VHS camera, it's supposed to be following the youthful destructiveness of a group of senior citizens, who, yes, hump trashcans, destroy all in their path, and even kill people. After that, we watched four or so episodes of the newest season of Dexter, which as usual kept me on the edge of my seat and tense. I got a call from Kara, telling me my father called her, looking for me. Then I checked my phone and noticed I got a text from him, in all caps, telling me my 'drunkin slut mother' threw him out and he had nowhere to go. I didn't respond, but decided at that moment that there was no way I could move in with my parents. It was almost 4 in the morning when she surprisingly decided she needed to get some sleep before school. So I let her go to bed and walked home.
I forced myself to sleep as late as I could. I didn't want to face the anxiety that would come with trying to figure out how to say that I changed my mind about moving in with them. Not only that, but the last two times I'd been there while they argued and decided to leave because of it, my mother would scream at my father, "Now he's not going to move in because of you!" I was literally afraid that if I changed my mind, she'd lay the blame on my father and I would become just another reason for them to argue. But Gemma showed up around 5, so I had to wake up. I took a breath and called my mother. I told her I couldn't move in with them because I couldn't handle their arguing. Even if it only happens once a week; even if it only happens once a month. I can't handle it and it makes me as miserable as it did when I was five, nine, thirteen, sixteen, et cetera. She sounded sad and disappointed, but didn't hold it against me. She told me to give it some thought over the next couple of days and promised me her and my father would sit down and have a serious talk about it. Gemma came over and finally kinda-sorta returned my Daria DVD box set. Instead of returning the ones I owned, she brought me the new and official box set that was recently released, telling me she stole it for me from FYE on Black Friday. It was pretty cool of her. And now that I have my things back, I think maybe I can try and be friends with her again. We sat on my bed and had our first real conversation in months, because I wasn't trying to mask my contempt with sarcasm this time around. She even ordered me Chinese food, which was nice.
Yesterday, my grandmother ordered me Chinese, too. It was nice of her. I was up all night long defending my gender and battling a new form of sexism that wears a mask of political correctness and historical justification. Because of this, I'll probably have one more person online who checks my blog just because she hates me. Since it was past 7 when I finally went up to my bed, I figured I'd just stay up and finally go down to the Social Security offices to figure out how I go about moving out of state. I got dropped off around 9 and found out they had moved thanks to a handy sign that they chose to put inside the building, which is being completely renovated. I had to walk to the NY Lottery building and take the elevator to the eighth floor, which offered a great view of just how fucking ugly this city is, even from an aerial perspective. I found out that all I need to do to keep my benefits coming is to just notify the local Social Security office in whatever city and state I move to after I've already physically moved there. Simple as that, I guess. I got to talk to the cutest woman named Starr and she discovered that I had actually been mistakenly screwed out of a certain amount of money, ranging somewhere between $750 and $1,000. So in a few months, I'll be getting that in the mail or something. It'll really help me hopefully afford the deposit on a new place to live once I move. It was good news. I went to the library after that and found nothing of interest once again. I went to sleep when I went home and waited for someone to call me.
Jessica Knapp, who I had never met outside of the Internet, offered to drop me off $22 just so I could afford seeing the Tim & Eric show at Northern Lights. By 5, she texted me and said she was going and actually could take me with her and her friend. It was so awesome of her. She came all the way from Broadalbin to get me. It was raining, of course, because that's always what the first couple of months of 'winter' are like in Schenectady. I had to give directions to Northern Lights and I was surprised I remembered them. The line wasn't that long and we got in quick. Just as I walked through the door, I saw Tara's car drive by. I got so nervous like a little boy. When we got inside, there was a giant screen on the left side of the stage. I was pretty excited. I stood around with Jessica and her friend until I saw Tara and Ellie walk in. I childishly moved and hid because I wasn't sure if I was ready to see Tara in person again. They walked by me without noticing and I eventually followed. I stood next to them until Tara noticed. I kept trying to talk, but was bad at it. All I could smell was Tara. She has this distinct smell that had stuck in my memory since the first night we slept together. I stood with her the rest of the night during the show. Anti-comedian Neil Hamburger opened and it was fucking hilarious. I have no idea how someone can hold a character like that for a solid half hour. Two jokes that killed the hardest: 1.) "What do you get when you put a penny into all five members of Smashmouth's assholes? ... Nickelback!" 2.) "What do Brett Michaels and Terri Schiavo have in common? ... They both have to be in comas to be lovable!" Tim & Eric's hour-long set was, as expected, totally hilarious, awkward, and confusing. I loved every second of it and it was really cool seeing them for the second time with Tara, since the first time we saw them was together. I got a ride home after from Jessica. I asked her a bunch of questions because that's what I do when I meet someone in person for the first time. When I got home, I talked with Tara on the phone until it died.
Oh, and I drew my brother as a Peanuts character:
It's raining again today. It makes me miserable, but at least I have some orange soda and Netflix to console me.
Thanksgiving was nice. I spent it with my family. My father picked me up early and I just sat around the living room for a while, eating chips and grapes that my mother had set out. Even though they're not the slightest bit parental in the ways they should be, I always enjoy just hanging out with my mother and father. I guess that's better than no parents at all. I sat on my little laptop on the couch and my mother told me to keep it as an early Christmas present, promising to pay me back the money I already spent on it. I asked her a hundred times if she was sure and she insisted on it. It was really exciting, especially since I was becoming so attached to the little guy already. Hopefully, I don't get jumped by six kids on bikes again any time soon. A day or two earlier, my mother had called me to ask if it'd be alright if Jason X, my piece of shit cousin, joined us for dinner. Apparently, he had shared a sob story about, "not having any family to be with," or whatever to my brother (and probably a dozen other people, since he's on a constant attention and sympathy binge), so my brother asked my mother and even bought him his own $12 Tofurkey for dinner. Even though I wasn't going to enjoy having him around, especially since I in no way consider him family, I said I was fine with it, because I'm a halfway-decent person.
I hung out with my brother for the most part, while my psychotic youngest brother, as usual, just sat on the couch with his legs crossed, playing video games or watching videos of video games on his laptop. My sister stayed hidden in her room with her cellphone. Sometimes, my family depresses me to be around, even though I at the same time feel so at home around them since we're all so alike in so many ways. My brother Yoda does absolutely nothing with himself other than buy things online and play video games whenever he isn't sleeping and even when I've talked him into doing things with me outside of his house, he finds a reason to not enjoy himself; my youngest brother also has no interests in the outside world and only cares about video games, even one time telling me that bikes were 'gay'; my sister is the most outgoing, but she's completely lost in materialism and has an unwarranted entitlement complex. My parents both hate their lives; my father talks about waiting to die every time I see him and my mother always seems like she's about to lose her mind. I'm thankful for these little holiday get-togethers just because everyone kind of puts those things to the side. It just sucks sometimes wishing you could help an entire room of people completely unwilling to help themselves. We watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, a classic, which was followed by some more recent, generic version of a Charlie Brown special that was mostly propaganda about the pilgrims, where the Indians somehow speak English and the pilgrims are all like, "Whoa! How do you speak the same language as us?!" Ridiculous.
Dinner was amazing. My mother has gotten so good at preparing large vegan Thanksgiving dinners for my brother and I. She brought out our plates, our Tofurkeys fancily sliced into four chunks, covered in the mushroom gravy and surrounded by mashed potatoes, homemade stuffing, peas, and corn. She also made each of us the best vegan pumpkin pie I've ever had in my life. We drank soda out of wine glasses. My ungrateful scumbag of a cousin, Jason, never bothered showing up. Instead, he went to visit his fake girlfriend at her family's house, all while complaining about it over texts to my brother. My brother told him we were about to eat and he said he was, "on his way." Two hours later, he still wasn't there. My brother told him we were finished eating and he said, "I'll be there soon." My brother looked so bummed out. I felt really bad for him, but then again, he brings it on himself by continuing to be friends with someone as self-absorbed and petty as Jason. Shared DNA or whatever means nothing to me; family is a title you have to earn in my eyes. Anyway, I ate until it hurt to move. The rest of the night, I'd get up every fifteen to twenty minutes and snack on my plate some more. By the end of the night, I still hadn't finished all my food. My parents fell asleep pretty early and I wasn't able to hang out with my brother because he had boyfriend duty after Kayla got off of work. Sometimes, I wish I had someone to wait for. Tara called my cellphone and it was weird to see how much she wanted to talk to me immediately after our first AIM conversation.
It was a good night. And I am unbelievably thankful for mostly everything in my life.
The next day, I walked to the bus stop and rode the 55 home for the first time in months. I felt this unbelievably melancholy for some reason. As soon as I walked into my grandmother's house's door, I got a call from Kara asking me where I was. So I turned around and walked back the way I came to Tia's house. I sat on the bed with her and Bianca and we decided to basically back out of our own friendship Thanksgiving since we had no money. We still had fun, though. Bianca brought a really delicious chocolate vanilla cake she made and Kara brought pumpkin pie and string bean casserole that I refused to try because it looked weird and smelled like hashbrowns. We turned off the lights and watched The Fantastic Mr. Fox since I was the only person who had seen it before for some unknown reason. Lots of laughing and exclaimed 'awwwwwwwws'. My grandmother picked me and Kara up and a half hour or so after we got there, I headed out to hang out with Amy for the first time since September. I felt like a jerk leaving Kara all alone in my bedroom, but I already had these plans with Amy and this would be my last chance to see her until the end of December. She picked me up and we went to Bombers. We didn't buy anything because neither of us had money. We just caught up and enjoyed talking to each other as usual. I like talking to Amy because when we 'catch up', we actually catch up and I very rarely have had friendships where I actually care about what's going on in their life and believe they actually care about what's going in mine. Plus, she's so fucking funny. We were there for about two hours before she brought me back home.
Earlier, while waiting for her to pick me up on my grandmother's front steps, I got a call from Tara. We had loosely talked about hanging out Friday night, but it didn't seem official. Sometimes, when people ask to hang out on a certain day, I just agree to it, even if I know I already have 'plans'. The reason for this is because very few people actually follow through with plans, so I feel it's better to have several and leave room for some to fall through. Surprisingly, everyone followed through on this night and I unfortunately had to ditch Tara. She made me feel really bad over the phone, telling me she had given up plans with others and had even dressed up. Honestly, I wasn't even sure if I was ready to be face-to-face with her again. I spent the rest of the night with Kara. She's pretty upset that I'm talking to Tara again. And she might have good reason to be worried. But there's always been something so intoxicating about her and even after she totally fucked me over, lied to me, and abandoned me, I couldn't help but miss the good times we had. It really stressed me out, though. I hate when someone makes me feel like I shouldn't do things I'm doing.
Sunday, I went out to the movies with Dana. We had planned it a month in advance for some reason. She's had these free Regal movie passes for a while now and was nice enough to reserve them for us. We went to Colonie Mall, which I am still technically banned from, and saw Love and Other Drugs, another mainstream romantic comedy, this one revolving around mid-'90s pharmaceutical marketing practices, Jake Gyllenhaal as a player, and Anne Hathaway as the artist girl who's into no-strings-attached sex because she has early on-set Parkinson's. It was an okay movie. Then again, that's all these kinds of movies ever are: 'okay'. Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal were nice to look at, though, and some parts were pretty funny. She brought me home after that. Dana comes off as quiet and innocent and friendly, but she actually hates the world. I sat online for a while and then got a ride to Tia's. We hung around and talked and then watched Harmony Korine's newest masterpiece of trash cinema, Trash Humpers. I was so excited to see it and it definitely didn't let me down. Made to appear as though it's through the lens of a crappy VHS camera, it's supposed to be following the youthful destructiveness of a group of senior citizens, who, yes, hump trashcans, destroy all in their path, and even kill people. After that, we watched four or so episodes of the newest season of Dexter, which as usual kept me on the edge of my seat and tense. I got a call from Kara, telling me my father called her, looking for me. Then I checked my phone and noticed I got a text from him, in all caps, telling me my 'drunkin slut mother' threw him out and he had nowhere to go. I didn't respond, but decided at that moment that there was no way I could move in with my parents. It was almost 4 in the morning when she surprisingly decided she needed to get some sleep before school. So I let her go to bed and walked home.
I forced myself to sleep as late as I could. I didn't want to face the anxiety that would come with trying to figure out how to say that I changed my mind about moving in with them. Not only that, but the last two times I'd been there while they argued and decided to leave because of it, my mother would scream at my father, "Now he's not going to move in because of you!" I was literally afraid that if I changed my mind, she'd lay the blame on my father and I would become just another reason for them to argue. But Gemma showed up around 5, so I had to wake up. I took a breath and called my mother. I told her I couldn't move in with them because I couldn't handle their arguing. Even if it only happens once a week; even if it only happens once a month. I can't handle it and it makes me as miserable as it did when I was five, nine, thirteen, sixteen, et cetera. She sounded sad and disappointed, but didn't hold it against me. She told me to give it some thought over the next couple of days and promised me her and my father would sit down and have a serious talk about it. Gemma came over and finally kinda-sorta returned my Daria DVD box set. Instead of returning the ones I owned, she brought me the new and official box set that was recently released, telling me she stole it for me from FYE on Black Friday. It was pretty cool of her. And now that I have my things back, I think maybe I can try and be friends with her again. We sat on my bed and had our first real conversation in months, because I wasn't trying to mask my contempt with sarcasm this time around. She even ordered me Chinese food, which was nice.
Yesterday, my grandmother ordered me Chinese, too. It was nice of her. I was up all night long defending my gender and battling a new form of sexism that wears a mask of political correctness and historical justification. Because of this, I'll probably have one more person online who checks my blog just because she hates me. Since it was past 7 when I finally went up to my bed, I figured I'd just stay up and finally go down to the Social Security offices to figure out how I go about moving out of state. I got dropped off around 9 and found out they had moved thanks to a handy sign that they chose to put inside the building, which is being completely renovated. I had to walk to the NY Lottery building and take the elevator to the eighth floor, which offered a great view of just how fucking ugly this city is, even from an aerial perspective. I found out that all I need to do to keep my benefits coming is to just notify the local Social Security office in whatever city and state I move to after I've already physically moved there. Simple as that, I guess. I got to talk to the cutest woman named Starr and she discovered that I had actually been mistakenly screwed out of a certain amount of money, ranging somewhere between $750 and $1,000. So in a few months, I'll be getting that in the mail or something. It'll really help me hopefully afford the deposit on a new place to live once I move. It was good news. I went to the library after that and found nothing of interest once again. I went to sleep when I went home and waited for someone to call me.
Jessica Knapp, who I had never met outside of the Internet, offered to drop me off $22 just so I could afford seeing the Tim & Eric show at Northern Lights. By 5, she texted me and said she was going and actually could take me with her and her friend. It was so awesome of her. She came all the way from Broadalbin to get me. It was raining, of course, because that's always what the first couple of months of 'winter' are like in Schenectady. I had to give directions to Northern Lights and I was surprised I remembered them. The line wasn't that long and we got in quick. Just as I walked through the door, I saw Tara's car drive by. I got so nervous like a little boy. When we got inside, there was a giant screen on the left side of the stage. I was pretty excited. I stood around with Jessica and her friend until I saw Tara and Ellie walk in. I childishly moved and hid because I wasn't sure if I was ready to see Tara in person again. They walked by me without noticing and I eventually followed. I stood next to them until Tara noticed. I kept trying to talk, but was bad at it. All I could smell was Tara. She has this distinct smell that had stuck in my memory since the first night we slept together. I stood with her the rest of the night during the show. Anti-comedian Neil Hamburger opened and it was fucking hilarious. I have no idea how someone can hold a character like that for a solid half hour. Two jokes that killed the hardest: 1.) "What do you get when you put a penny into all five members of Smashmouth's assholes? ... Nickelback!" 2.) "What do Brett Michaels and Terri Schiavo have in common? ... They both have to be in comas to be lovable!" Tim & Eric's hour-long set was, as expected, totally hilarious, awkward, and confusing. I loved every second of it and it was really cool seeing them for the second time with Tara, since the first time we saw them was together. I got a ride home after from Jessica. I asked her a bunch of questions because that's what I do when I meet someone in person for the first time. When I got home, I talked with Tara on the phone until it died.
Oh, and I drew my brother as a Peanuts character:
It's raining again today. It makes me miserable, but at least I have some orange soda and Netflix to console me.