Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Three days from around ten years ago

I've mentioned (I think) before that I used to keep a journal online through another website. I don't really readily recall why I stopped writing in there except maybe I had fallen out of the habit after updating it regularly for about seven years. I'm glad I did it. I met so many wonderful people through that community, friends I met and hung out with in real life, people I dated, and those rare and wonderful friendships I maintain virtually only. I have at least five people in my online life whom I have never met in person but who I consider friends for many years. Is that odd? Maybe. But I'm happy they are there and that social media makes it so easy to maintain those virtual relationships right alongside old friends from my past and new ones from my present. Even though it is terrible, social media is wonderful.

Another thing I enjoy is mining the entries from that site. It is like peeking into my brain from 12 years ago. I'll sign into that account sporadically and I hope I'm not being annoying but I love this access to my past. I love reading about what I was doing/thinking about/wanting a decade ago. (Hint: drinking/men/men who drink). It reminds me of those halcyon days of city living and being in my twenties. Or rather, it allows me to look with considerable distance and insight at my twenties during a very unstable period in NYC when I was usually broke and depressed with halcyon colored lenses. And isn't that the same thing?

Anyway, I was digging through there today and thought for today's blog post, I'd share a few gems from various times. Apparently I wrote in almost exclusively lowercase letters back then. Excerpts from various entries are included below:

9/8/04:
saturday evening all my cousins and their SOs and nancy piled into my hot apartment where we ate pizza and drank beer and joked about life and each other and how lucky we are. then we all piled into the hot subway where we sweated and didn't talk at all for fear of sweating more.
we arrived in soho, got our tables and drank and drank and drank until we were so full of drink that going elsewhere to drink seemed like the best idea. and we did. and then we left five minutes after arriving. (mental note: don't return to the iguana club on 55th st.)
so then on the way home at 4am from the diner, i witnessed a couple fighting. he shoved her into a car and drove off. i hope she is ok. she did beat the crap out of him before being shoved into the car so i have high hopes.

I remember this night vividly. And I never did return to the Iguana Club on 55th Street though I cannot for the life of me remember why.

12/16/04:
i am weary of the machinations of female friendship. i am tired, tired sicktodeath of passive aggressive emails, constant introspection and self analysis and deprecation, suppression of urge in favor of even more self deprecation. i just want to ration the emotion and self loathing, save some for later, put a lid on the boiling pot, put it in a storage facility in long island city with a fucking month to month lease.

i want to hang out in a sports bar and talk about genitals and sports and swig whiskey. i want to be flattered and lauded silently through wandering eyes. i want to walk into a room and inhale testosterone.**

now where's my chewin' tobacco?

**not to be confused with body odor.

and though pablo neruda wrote this about being tired of being a man, i shall transform it to my needs as i think it applies well:

I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.

I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

from walking around

ok?

I don't know for certain but I'm reasonably certain I know which of my former friends this email is about, considering we spent a huge percentage of our friendship arguing over email. Normally it didn't bother me so much but there were moments when I felt I had lost the plot and I truly craved the friendship of males for the sheer balance that creates. One is not better than the other, I don't think I ever thought that...I was just frustrated by passive aggression which is a staple with some people. I'm going to overlook the clear stereotyping I've done here because I'm still in touch with that frustration and sometimes I really do crave more male friendships. I've never really been that good at them for one reason or another.

3/21/05:
things i did on friday:

-displayed waterworks in front of n at benny's burritos. 
-drank $3 margaritas. 
-walked around greenwich village, perused an awesome tucked away, practically fossilized book shop 1/2 the size of my apartment.
-drank some more at the slaughtered lamb just before the roof erupted in a torrent of jacuzzi water from a place above the bar. 
-contemplated what it would feel like to be electrocuted by the still on television being slowly soaked by the torrent of jacuzzi water.
-added to the trillion memories n and i have at the slaughtered lamb that are both odd and wonderful at the same time.
-waited seventeen hours for a goddamned n train to arrive and take me to astoria.
-left a stupid, drunken and emabarassing voice mail for my sister since she pissed me off so much that afternoon (and i'm still feeling bad about it)
-fell asleep, fully clothed, with one shoe on my foot.

Yep. Pretty much.

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