Journal

June 27th, 1995

This is an official document specifying that I am a piece of nothing. Never been that honest with you have I? So what to do with yourself? Sit around writing a book? Planning your mythical trip to college? Peck your seconds away at this keyboard?!

That's why you hate that damn alarm ringing so much in the morning--brings all of that crap reeling back at you. That's when you know there's something you hate thinking about but you'd better forget it because you've gotta wake up and get with your life. Get in the car and open shop; put on a smiley face and paint yourself nice and friendly for everyone to see that you are somebody else.

But the whole time you want to touch them but you can't because each and every one of them feels just as tasteless and empty to you as a picture in a magazine. So you'd love to take a stinking lot of them, stick them in a room, and scream "Hears who I am Goddamitt!"
"I wish you'ld all wake up to the real world."

I'm ready to jump into a hot Jacuzzi

Yea. Wish I could fucking find something great to do. Don't want to do anything terribly wonderful. Want to be kind to those around me. Helpfull. Want to teach. Want to learn. And I'd like to have a couple of friends who I could count on in times like this cause right now I know I can't handle being huddled against this wall.

But then how could I trust anyone with my thoughts when I know that the only reason I can trust myself with them is that I will forget?

And again I retrace my thoughts back by my gentle dream, to be a writer. Ah. What a great dream. And if someone will ever enjoy reading your writing then they might write their own books about it--and then it would be a blood waste of everyone's time. Like it's wasting yours now.
So what ere you doing ten years ago? Weren't things simpler then? Went to school. Got all A's. Came home ate whatever your mom happened to be making, complaining about what she's making, and then getting pissed at your brother simply because he is.

And now what am I doing but spending time punkering over plastic keyboards--it's fucking amazing, you idiot!! How many times do you actually have to sit down and think this before you've noticed that you spend too much goddamm time doing useless shit just like everyone else doing useless pointless, devoid and unwanted stuff!

I'm beginning to remind myself of how I knew Erin in so many ways. Now I can perhaps even see some of the problems he may have been experiencing dealing with other people or of wanting to be around the universe at all.

I thought I was young once. Out walking about Eugene in the drizzle thinking that I was alive and that no one else could see me. Now it seems no one wants to see me. But then it always has.
I've become so self-conscious that I sometimes just can't watch myself scratch without wondering why the hell I'm doing it or what it means in general. My whole room, for instance, is not so much a demonstration of me as it is a demontration of how I am struggling to stay afloat. You'll notice how while, one side of the room is perfectly clean and tidy. The posters are hung semetrily. The tape might not even be keeping some it on the walls but we try to keep it there to show everyone that I am cool.

But you should know you only see that when you look from the doorway. I don't even think of it or put and two and two together but that's what it is. Look at my bloody closet. It's where I keep my dirty underwear and my dirty magazines because I don't care where I throw them--exept not across from the doorway that might screaching open.

The doorway... It's been so many places it's begun to be scrawled on by kids I don't even know. I don't want you to look inside unless I'm ready. Don't make a phone call unless I'm maked over and wide awake. Don't come running around the corner without me knowing that you are there the whole time, cause if you do I will try to ignore you. I'll pull away and I'll scream and I'll yell and say it's all your fault and that you did this to me.

And meanwhile everytime someone tries to open that door you sit there watching them almost as if you had the cross-strings centered on their foreheads. And you're waiting for anyone to say hi so that you can create every fantasy in your freaking mind if only to say one thing:

NO!!

I want you to examine, for instance, your sexual fantasies. That something I've never asked you to do but do it for a second. Notice how they all say one thing: I cannot feel open and loved and cared for and have those same fucking wants and needs of another human. So what do you do? What do I do? I sit and make up stories that somewhere out there is a georgous woman who will finally know how to tantelize you and take your breath out of you. Wouldn't that be nice? Instead of going at with a girl who doesn't seem to know how to want to make out, or a girl who wants to make out but seemingly everything else is too damn interesting at the moment, or a girl who just wants to fall straight into your nipples like that's all there is, and a girl who tantelizes me, takes the breath from me, the quite literally, hits me in the stomach and takes the breath out of me again.

And then here I am thinking about this and why I am writing it. Just to admit to everybody that I'm not who they thought I was. Yes! I was scared shitless into getting good grades and yes I felt astrasized by everyone I remember growing up with! Yes I ran from home because I didn't know what else to do and that I wanted God to take me away and make everything better. To kissy nasty, boo-boo, go bye-bye, as they say. And Yes I hid in a little room! Just me! With my thoughts and my computer and my magazines and this and that and every now and again... Just every now and again I'd do something that made it look like I was trying to get out. To touch.

I'd go out for coffee.
...
Or I might wander inoscently into the library..
.
Or to the grocery store to get a bottle of Cabernet Savengaunt hoping that someone would say, 'ahoy there, you. I think that you might be ok. Now don't go off and do what you are going to do.

And so I go off and get totally drunk because I always do, particularly because there is no one there saying that they actually want to be around the misrable scrumpth that is me. And if someone does say yes then they don't even know who I am and they can't see me here sulking and screaming and devoid, hour after hour. And if they could.

I fear if anyone could.

When I think about what it might be like if others understood what I am going threw... I feel like I'd be locked away. Just because I want one second to lay back, totally relaxed and there for God or the universe or whatever and say, I feel alright... Why is that so bad?

Sometimes I wonder. I wonder about all of the opinions, all of the anger, all of the hostility that has created the world at divide with itself. And I keep bringing more and more into myself because I have to find someway to protect myself from everyone and everything that can scream at me "You God Damned Blind Son of A Bitch!!"

[For later note, I think much of what I am putting down now is me trying to blow my nose and breath]

If there's one thing I've noticed when I look down on my body. It's getting older. If there's another thing I notice. It's that it is alone.

God, then I go scrumbling my scruff again actually thinking and can go at it cause people like me and wanta hang around me...

...and that's exactly why the phone is still hanging on the wall.

The Wall.

I'm fucking Amazed, Ryan. Your twenty-one and your not dead yet! Who'd have thought of it?!! You were supposed to be rotting in your grave by now. Somewhere around sixteen or seventeen I recon but no you had to stick around until twenty-one and for what?

A pointless job, or at least one that everyone seems to give me the indication of a job not being seaworthy past five years. One or two friends. And always that door and me protecting myself... And my parents who are a million miles away and who I sometimes blame for this whole fucking mess in my head because that's all there is left! And all of the bad memories. Unhappy memories, I just wish I could go back to another country, to another body, to another world and live and grow up again new.

Shit. Even here, supposedly in the confines of my own room, I can hear it saying: you'll never get that published. Every syllable, every fleck and nuance of what you write is chicken drivle and if you think a chicken would be even that low then you'ld have to guess again!

And then I sit here dribbling. I can't figure out how to write. I'm stumped. I have to piss and there's gotta be something good to say but I'm too damn busy thinking about what it might be that what it is actually comes out.

And then it just cascades down over me and blinds me and I don't know what to think of life, the universe, and everything.

Life, the universe, and everything.

I just wish I could get up a shake the morning mist off me like a morning bird. Wish I could even be in that place where the mist is not stank, oiled, rotton, NOTHING.

It's gotta be the darkest thing of all, knowing that you're nothing, everything you do comes out to nothing, everything everyone thinks of you comes out to about nothing.. That's about the reality of it, isn't it?

And you know, Nadda-face, that all you want to do right now is walk down to the fucking privvy and take a leak but you will hold it and hold it because you're afraid of being asked that one and specific question you always have to lie to: "How you doin'?"

.how are you.howz it going.howya feelin.howaya this afternoon.howaya this mornin.how are you.how are you.

Well, quite frankly, I'm depressed, lonely, suicidal, alone, alone, alone... oh, and did I forget, alone?

But then I have to go do it or I end up pissing in a cup... And I almost want to piss in a cup so I can avoid people. If that's an indication of how much I like being around that side of myself, I don't know what is.

.....

and then, what do you do? You know. You think about what they're thing about. You wonder if they would think it's ok to have the bathroom light on or off. I wonder if I've left the light on? Should I go back and check? Make myself look like an even bigger worry? Or should I stay here and prattle with the door barely open so I've told them I'm not insane quite yet, and it's ok to take a peek, but I think you should stay out there.

No, I'm convinced, whatever I am doing I'm worried about who is watching it, tape-recording it, saving it, passing it around and having a hay day. I'm worried that my every thought and action is going to taken and pulled apart peice by peice like a damp, dead, piece of chicken leg, and then thrown in the garbage bin.

And so I'm sitting here, you see. Fake looks on my face because the door is cracked barely, barely a ways open. And when I think anyone's looking I struggle out a fake yawn, stretch, grumble. I press my forfinger on my upper lip and it looks like I'm thinking something terribly deep. And I'm doing it because I don't want to be too cheep. And you want to hold onto whatever class you can have and if that's a deep look of contomplation then that's what it's gotta be.

And why do I keep on writing? Why do I keep on saying AND?! Why can't I just leave! I want to go somewhere take me away from this misrable place I want to go OUT.

Ick.

And so I'm thinking, ya man, go out for a smoke. But then you'll have to by-pass you know who and that other, you know her--and for what? A couple seconds out on the porch with a cigerrette falling through your fingers and into the floor boards. A couple seconds to watch the cars come up and down the hill. Some come from on over. Some coming, I suppose, from under, then over (depeding on how you look at it). And they have lives that they are coming from or going to and you are just sitting on a porch with a burning cigarrette in your mouth burning your throat and your lungs and your life so you walk calmly back into your room like it was no big deal. Just for that one smoke?

And then I just wish I could sit here and smoke in my room because there's nothing better to be doing, and dammnit, I just don't feel comfortable out their in the living room with the rest of those living folks. I want to be here, with a nice comforter to surround me and keep my legs warm. I want my demolished pillow to take the brunt that is my head. I want this computer to take my hands and suck the rest of me away just as long as it's nowhere that I can be touched because you know I don't like that.

Again I'm sitting here, going back on your past, thinking of what you could have been. As a person and a friend and a husband, but it's hard because when even the tiniest taints of those thoughts come into my heads I break them apart and stare back out the window at the sky.

So what do you do, Ryan, if you ever actually get asked by one of those things out there to see what it is you are doing right now? What do you do? Will you turn your computer around and say, 'look, damn you. I'm fried. I'm being forced through the hell hole that is my life if only to one day understand it. I'm sitting here uncomfortable as hell screaming and yelling at you in your fucking comfortable seats with your nifty friends! What can I say? What should I fucking say?

Screw you. That seems to be the best of what I can think no-a-days. Had enough of trying to make good luck come between people. Had enough of saying, "Hey, tommy, you know it's not nice to make fun of Alison, now don't you, good boy?" And you get that whacked out of ya and where do you find yourself?and now just saying "I'm just working on something very intense right now don't look at me"

The only difference being don't ever look at me. Because you and I and everyone else has to know that my body and mind isn't what anyone would want. Look. Old, crumbling shit. Like an Apple II e, who the hell would ever use one of those anymore? Who indeed had the software to be run on one anymore or the boredom to run on it anymore. Anymore.

My back cracks, my left ass is putting a permanent mark in my carpet, and I'm wondering when the hell, if ever, I'm going to shut this damn thing off and put on the happy tube and hope no one will come knocking on my door to ask me why the hell I'm so happy being cooped up with my happy tuub in happy almost stereo with a happy pseudo television set. And then I want to plug into my happy computer and plug, yes, through my own telephone cable that no one else may ever fucking touch, over to my happy friend over yaunder and who has never been happy and who has never been a friend because it seems, sometimes, that she doesn't even has the slightest idea how to be a human.

And I don't know why. I don't know why except, that's all I have to do. That and my cigarette out on the porch. So it's either go out there, stuff my face, watch everybody come up and down that damn hill, or stay in here, turn on the tv, and watch everyone drive up and down the hill. Gotsomwheretogaandsomewheretocomefrom. I got nobody.

And here I am sitting like the silly puss that I am, that I might one day actually be reading this to a bunch of people, crying, bawling, blah, blah, blah, I can already hear myself puking profoundly to any thoughts of being surrounded by hands, whether on me, as applause, or just holding me. Cause you never know. When you let something hold onto you it might try to never let go. And it might try to pull onto your leg and pull up a home. Eat a hole, not asking you if it's worth a penny to ya.

But I'm getting lost now, thinking about Erin. Thinking that no matter how long long is and no matter how many rivers may pass under us and we under them that when we get back together no time will have passed. We'll still be tripping. Or we're still depressed here, or we're still drunk here, oh we're mighty tired of it all. But everytime I look at him it will be just like there wasn't a break because he was the tightest part of the knot. Everything in my life came down to what I was doing with him.

And then when he comes back into my life, shaved head, military boots, etc., it's no different because it's like taking one of those damn IIe disks out of a dusty cover and settting it back into the computer. Here we go. Yes. Depression. Open your eyes and see why you are here.

And damnit, I'm starting to sound like everything he wrote and jabbered in his journals that were supposedly made in the military while he wasn't on anything. I'm beggining to be able to reach into that unfathomed streches of the darkest parts of my personality and show the rest of my personality is here. That's what it most truly fears. That I can write it down and make it stick out here where everyone--where I--see it! If I spend every inch of every hour staying away from it and trying to keep other people away from it why should I allow it just a few seconds to wipe it's butt on this paper. And sometimes that's what I think this is.

Damnit. I want a cigarrette. I want a cigarrette and I want to smoke it out on a viranda near no major roads. And I want there to be faint music in the background but I can't quite tell what it is because I'm listening to the wind so much. I want there to be a nice french waiter named Jaque, and he will be wearing black and white all over and he will ask me what I want. But he knows all I want for now is to be left alone and write in my happy journal, so he jots down a couple of periods, and walks to other waiting customers who are beginning to fill place. And I'd like a nice couple to ask me to join with them while they sip at their tea and just smell the morning air. And I'd like a fresh new face, a new girl to meet me at the table, and I would like to keep her from seeing everything that I am but I can't because I can't because I won't because...

If I can't have all that, maybe just a cigarrette.

And now what you see you've done, you've got me wanting to shut the door, slide open the window a whisp and start smoking like I was at my parents or something. I wish they'd go away. I wish everybody would go away so I could take enough time to figure it out, whatever I need to figour out, then they can all come back.

Want my cig.

Want to masturbate.

Want to masturbate. Now that sounds tasty. We all know that feels good, except for those long and dull periods where you thinking you're doing it because you have to, and we all know that it's a good way to let our frustration out of our way and onto a dirty handky.

But I don't think so. It's too lonely, and everyone is looking at you like you are right now and all there is is now and all there is is nothing to do and your sittting there blumblering fool that you are, sitting there in your hands and you can't do a damn thing!

And Randy and Carrie are leaving the house cause you can't do a damn thing.

I want to cut it down. I want to make it look all pretty or morph it out of shape and make it look even more contorted than it actually is, but that's what it comes down to. I'm fucking freaked all the time about people about them about me about everything...I'm...

and I know if I could just sit down with Carrie, who I know to be a kind person, and talk to her I could become a close friend. And I know I could do it with anybody but I won't. I'm afraid they'll see me. I'm afraid they'll notice I'm seeing them.

I'm afraid they might notice how well I am at seeing them.

...and why...

Ok, so, fair enough. Lets turn the happy vision on for a minute and see if that sets you ok. Or a cigarrette. yes, the phone is ringing. If no one answers the phone, no one is home, and if no one is home, no one is left to haunt me besides myself and I'm fucking good at doing that.

Good. Coast is clear. Save your document and run to the porch--and remember! Put on your serious face and get that serious walk. Look at something as if you are seriously interested in it, not because you have nothing better to be doing, and saunter out onto the overporch were you will probably get your ass soaked by a rain wetted lawn chair while you watch cars go up and down the hill again.

You're back into the keyboard. Feels good eh. But nah. You can't get away from them it ah them everything outside. You can't just lock your door.

God! My fingers are cold. I wish they'd warm up. Just want to lay back and get warm.
Im really depressed and scared.
ling shit. Like an Apple II e, who the hell would ever use one of those anymore? Who indeed had the software to be run on one anymore or the boredom to run on it anymore. Anymore.

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