just something gross

I have a hard time remembering most of the stupid/mean/dangerous things that I have done that would be the type of thing that I think this blog should be about. Like, I've done shitty things but why exactly are they going on here. Matter of fact, why is this introductory paragraph here? Seems a little frivolous... Well I've got news for you mister, you are being a tad judgmental and maybe this is about me, k?

This one night I was at a party. Like most parties in my home town, there were at least 2 of my ex's there. One of these was very recent and the other was someone that I had dated for a long time. So they weren't just girls I had fucked, is what I mean. I get really awkward in situations like this. Maybe anxious is a better word. I just drink and drink and drink until I no longer have the ability to think about what I'm doing. Typically I get really loud and stupid.

At this party a girl that I had only met a few other times was showing a lot of interest in me. This is always ideal because I have a tendency to come off as... um, desperate (shocking!) when I am the pursuer. So good news, I guess. We snuck off to one of the bedrooms...

We were both far too drunk to attempt what we were attempting. Another poor choice was not finding the light switch. We spent minutes fumbling around with each other's clothes not being able to find the bed that we had assumed would be in here. Had to duck out and check the room across the hall. Good news (arguably), a bed. We fell onto the bed and then... something went horribly wrong. I tried to get my dick inside of her and something was in the way. ALARM!

"um, uh, um, should uh, we be doing this?"

"What? (genuinely shocked) Oh! uhhhhh yeah"

She reaches down between her legs and grabs something. I was cracking up from how subtle and smooth she was trying to be. She brought her hand back behind her head and threw 'something' in the process.

::shrug::

And in sometime under ten (five) minutes, I am pleasantly content to go the fuck home. I walk out and the party is still going. People are drunk and talking and all that stuff that parties have. A minute later 'girl' leaves the room to join the party too. But at a run for some reason unknown to me. When she got to the end of the hall, 'slip, bam, ohhhh'! You know that sound of a body smacking the tile? That 'thwap'? That's what everyone (everyone) heard. I was maybe a few feet away and some people were looking at me like I was the one expected to help her. Clearly not what I had thought I was agreeing to.

I left. A dear friend of mine said to me recently, "with great power comes great... walk the fuck home." And so I did. I made it about halfway before calling a friend to come get me.

Hours later I am trying to fall asleep and I'm getting texts from the owner of the house about a condom, a tampon and some ruined sheets. I apologize profusely. These things happen.

Maybe a year or so after this, I went on a trip with a lot of people and 'girl' happened to be one of them. We ended up becoming very good friends and I think that it is even better because of the ridiculous beginning.

edit* I'm still sorry to my friend's little brother (as in under 13) for ruining his sheets.

It's Always A Big Circle.

In 2004 I wasn't a very good boyfriend to any of the girls that year had in my favor.

In 2005 I was a bit of a distracted boyfriend.

In 2006 I was a lying and cunning boyfriend.

In 2007 I was a hopeful but unsatisfied boyfriend.

In 2008 I was all of these and more.

For all the life of me I can't bring myself to give a damn about what kind of boyfriend I am anymore.

For every time I've cheated I've felt that I've chalked a line on a score board for moments in time that I lived and got to taste something great.

Sometimes just one last time.

others, something that would never be on the menu.

the overwhelming guilt I had to stomach were more for the girlfriend and what she deserved, virtually nothing to be said about the fear that they might leave me.

other than the fact that since 2004, being alone has only been a painful inconvenience.


For every time I've broken up with someone because "I can see the end," I've felt that I've done my good deed for the day/month/year.

Dealing with the fact that "I messed up the one I really wanted" by not letting another one happen is hard I guess.



But not as hard as I get when I think about all the women I might meet one day.

once a cheater...

As I sit here contemplating my single-ness I can't help but think about all the girls I have cheated on (and the regret??? that goes along with it). And since this blog is supposed to cathartic, or something, I figured I would shed a little light on it. I don't know if talking about a particular time is more beneficial that just examining the perceived causes (mostly the need to have my existence constantly validated by members of the opposite sex).

Well fuck it. The very first time I cheated on a girlfriend was one of the best decisions of my life. It was the second girl I ever slept with and we were nearing the end of our ill-fated, two month long journey. In that, the nineteen hundred ninety-ninth year of our lord, I fell in love with my first serious girlfriend. She was amazing. We worked together. And most importantly, I never thought that she would go for me. She was clearly too smart and pretty to like someone like me. This was roughly my thought process while I continued to date... we'll call her Ingrid because I've never even known anyone with that name. I thought that staying with Ingrid was better than being alone. Much better than being alone while secretly lusting after someone clearly out of my league.

So it happened that eventually 'hotter girl' let on that she was, in fact, sort of into me. Or so her adorable note was supposed to have me believe. I was ever the skeptic though and had a sneaking suspicion that this was some sort of joke intended to test my commitment to Ingrid. Of which, I didn't have much. The afternoon that I received said note I had only gone into work to get something. Or more likely just to casually flirt with 'hotter girl'. I had plans for that evening with Ingrid. Once I got the note in my hand and read it I couldn't believe my luck. I had to escape. I couldn't look that ecstatic in front of 'hotter girl'. We exchanged a few meek sentences about it and immediately left for Ingrid's place. I think that I was expected to break up with Ingrid but then what if the note turned out to be a trick. So I did nothing. Just pretend everything is normal. Don't let them suspect anything.

The next day I was scheduled to work with 'hotter girl' and I couldn't wait. I told her that because of her interests I was now newly single (you see how I test them!) and perhaps also looking to mingle. More realistically, I told her that I had idolized her since she started working and that she was awesome, or something. We kissed! We discussed kissing in the future (which we did). We eventually started dating. This dating lasted for somewhere over two years and in hindsight its hard to count this type of cheating amongst the others.

But there it is, just the same. It took me a few days to muster up the courage to really break it off with Ingrid (something that did not go over smoothly). When I did, I never mentioned 'hotter girl' and it never really came up since she went to a different school. But Ingrid did take some time out of her busy schedule to physically fight me in the middle of lunch one afternoon. This helped to set the stage for my future difficulties breaking things off with girls I am involved with. I am worried that they will hit me... in front of people. It also helped to underscore why so many people in high school thought I was strange, in that, girls I dated would sometimes inact physical violence against me.

I had my first serious relationship at 16. I dated this girl for a little over two years off and on (mostly on). When we broke up we both thought that we could stay friends... (forever?) Which, I guess, we are, without all the talking or hanging out.

Anyway, as we were trying to remain friends we would hang out and do random things together, things like drive around aimlessly and purchase a bunny and watch movies. As we struggled to find reasons to enjoy each other I had a lame idea.

A very lame idea.

I told her that if we missed each other we could look at the stars and like hold hands with each other via the stars that are Orion's hands. I want to say I worded it a little better but who knows. Oh to be 18, or whatever.

The saddest part is that I am not an incredibly creative person. At the time this ex swooned over this and we both got very huggy about it. So I have since told this exact same thing to, at least, two other ex's. Trying in vain to find some way to connect with women (girls?) on a meaningful level. The result of which is that whenever I see this constellation I am riddled with guilt. Typically, also riddled with the names of the girls that I have this poetic outer-space, hand-holding orgy with.

Underwater

The bench in front of the wal-mart at 2am has a great view of nothing.

ad hoc collections of car dealerships, home audio storefronts, and nothing.

You can sit and see the miles of pavement roll into the bridge, and then the ocean. It's close enough to the river(s) that you can smell them instead of the exhaust you would smell if you sat there during the day.

Nothing out of the ordinary for a substantially intoxicated person to purchase 2 bottles of Aspirin and a bottle of water. The whole thing was very natural. The few cars that did pass me added a nice touch of "not being alone" or "maybe it's not that bad."

The shameless text messages that would have been my legacy, serve as a sign post of brilliant idiocy. Lizzy was right to slap the stupid out of my mouth when I finally walked back to the party.

"I was just being drunk and stupid, sorry guys. Mind if i sleep in your van tonight?"

hours later, I was underwater in the back of a volkswagon bus. like bobbing for apples and vomiting curdled milk at the same time. By the time I managed to walk up the stairs to tap on the window and ask for a ride to the hospital, my eyes were only so much useless water in my skull. By the time the cop pulled us over for speeding to get to the hospital, all I could hear was an embarrassing roar in the back of my mind.

Like every drop in the ocean was calling me a loser in unison.

"you've metabolized too much of it for charcoal, we're going to have to go with a laxative."

"sorry we already gave you the charcoal."

You don't know humble until you're shitting black into a free standing commode in an emergency room. wiping what feels like molasses and tastes like blood onto your poorly tied gown. You can't appreciate "oh man, I'm such a dumb-ass," until two of your best friends are holding your stupid fucking hands while an orderly wipes blood out of your eyes.

Stupid doesn't even begin to describe how I felt.

Dull is being catheterized because you can't wake up fast enough to pee in a cup. Boring is pissing all over yourself because the nurse couldn't get it in the right way because you were busy cussing her and fidgeting.

"I'm stupid and selfish." is all you can say when anyone wants to talk to you about anything. Unless you're begging for solid food or a cigarette.

"please don't baker act me." somehow translates into "baker act me," when you're mumbling with a tube up your nose and into your guts. Trying your best to look and sound like someone who didn't just get all Golden Corral on some Bayer.

I'd like to say that it was because I didn't feel appreciated by my girlfriend, or maybe because my dad bailed when I was a child. I don't know for sure, but I think it had more to do with the fact that I was bored.

Everything since then has been a lot more satisfying.

When I was at circles of Care I met a guy who ate a handful of razor blades because he'd watched as his girlfriend died from an Oxy OD.

He was positively buzzing with life. I left him my pack of cigarettes when I got out as a show of thanks for giving me some wisdom that I live by to this day.

"Don't eat razor blades."

touched for the very first time...

I think I was fifteen years old the first time I jacked off. I had heard about it before and wondered exactly what it was. Sometimes in the shower I would get hard and I would be completely dumbfounded. I used to just slap my dick against the palm of my hand because that felt sorta good.

One day on the bus ride home from school, one of my friends explained a talk that his father (step-father, maybe?) had had with him. My friend went on to describe the mechanics of masturbation. I was intrigued, to say the least. I was also mildly horrified that his father could calmly explain all of this to him. Just not how we did things in my household.

Later that night I stealthily crept into the bathroom and gave it the old college try. I think I was just standing over the toilet like I would if I were pissing. I had an extra difficulty here. My dick curves pretty sharply to the left. Peeing isn't typically a problem unless I'm hard in which case I have to step back and to the right. This was completely different. I was standing over the toilet sort of leaning over it so that my junk was angled down and just stroking.

I started to think that my friend had made the whole thing up because nothing was happening. In addition to worrying about someone knocking on the door, I also started to get a little bored... BUT THEN! A slight tingling. And an intense desire to continue. After a while (probably 30 seconds) something magical happened. I almost fell over but thankfully I was bracing myself on the tank part of the toilet. Hard to say where exactly the cum went. Having never seen it before I wasn't really sure what to look for. I think I maybe put my pants on too soon because I felt a little sticky later on while I was laying down.

The point of all this is that this is where all the trouble started. It was like a drug to me. This feeling... This tingling... This release... This awesomeness. I didn't know what to do about it. I only now (a mere ten years later) have begun to grasp appropriate ways to deal with it.

One way, write about it on the internet.

I get HIV, part III.

"I'm so sorry to hear it.."

"you've broken our hearts D."

"We've been looking into it, you're going to be ok."

"..."

"Jesus, I guess I should get tested."


and they did. All of them, it was still a little blurry to me just how inbred my social circles were. From tip to tip, Brevard county was grasping desperately to ensure their safety. All under the pretense that my dick was far reaching enough to contaminate their drinking water.

Or the shared crotch of central Florida.

Nights grew longer. Daytime became the time that I either slept or crawled to the mall to piss my time away hawking costumes in a seasonal halloween store. Days were when Mary went to work at her clinic to afford us the ability to pack our faces with veritable cornucopia of narcotics and cheep beer. Nights were spent stealing coldpills from wal-mart. The Disbelievers were numerous in the beginning. As the months wore on and my health deteriorated from drug abuse and malnutrition, they became fewer and less vocal. Once confident, "he's a fucking liar," became, "Oh, that whole thing just sucks man." But the party raged on. Nightly raids of whatever party we could find turned up a treasure chest of stolen underwear, tales of our friend chris hitting another roommate's equally hideous girlfriend in the face with a full beer and the like. More and more people granted me a quiet, if subtly spiteful, veneration.

Sure I was never going to get laid again. But I'll be damned if I hadn't crafted a surreal new world for myself.

The last of the true detractors, a close friend while drunk, punched me in the face and gave me a big open mouth kiss while I was bleeding. A show of solidarity I suppose. Or maybe he thought I would cave and tell him I was bluffing.

I Didn't, but it was certainly romantic to feel an overwhelming affection for a person who I typically wanted to kill for washing our dishes in the bathtub and leaving them there. While wandering around the high school campus whacked out of my mind on goofballs and penny-whistles, I saw one of my old teachers.

"Hey, I heard somethi.."

"Yup!"

"Thats awful, what are you going to d."

"Nothing!"

and I ran as far and as fast I could away from campus. I was ready to die from complications from my illness. I wanted pneumonia, kidney failure, something, anything to take elevate me from what was rapidly becoming my Leper village of an apartment. The smell of rotten food and an honest to god landslide of garbage falling from the kitchen had set an atmosphere. Someone had kicked the front door off its hinges and paint-balled our living room. There were more strangers sleeping on the wrap-around couch than friends. One night I ate a handful of Dramamine with one of the last representatives of the apartment. 30 or so pumpkins filled our living room. I stood up to make my way to my room after saying good night. Then I fell face first over a pumpkin, the sound of my teeth clicking like an ice cube bouncing off the tile. I stood up, my friend trying to comfort me but unable to make the walk himself.

I fell many more times before I gave up.

Mary came to steal my roommates possessions the next day. Not thinking, I helped.

Then I got into another car, and fled laughing with my mercurial douche baggery.

I slept on a floor with Rhino and 4 other people in a 20 x 20 studio apartment on the beach. Cool beach air and a mason-jar filled with a C+C+C/Dramamine cocktail.

I hid from Mary. I hid from HIV. Not many came to visit. We wandered around. An old friend stabbed me with a blow-dart in the thigh. I got into an argument with one of the roommates.

so I left. I stood over my pumpkin friend and his girlfriend in what had been my room, from just before dawn til just after first light. I watched them sleep. I breathed to match their breathing. I sat and looked out the window over the somehow beautiful lawns of our crack village. I smelled rotten pumpkin all around, the pungent smell of a halloween aborted before the first doorbell was rung. I looked through my desk for my switchblade which someone stole from me in my week or so absence. I packed my backpack. I washed. My friends all woke up. They asked where I was going.

"North."

I rode north through truck-stops with people named Bernie, Clyde or Peacemaker.

regardless of that story.

when I came back, I had finally seen New York.

I wasn't dating Mary.

I didn't live in a hole with rotten pumpkins on the floor.

and

I didn't have HIV.

now all i had to do was convince everyone else.