06. pretty pathetic or how to leave your man
March 21.11 a.m. Already hot. 90°/56° Sunny, Blue Sky as usual. I got
no money, paid the phone bill. Feelin’ lonely. Winter down under,
first time snow in Perth. Mudslides in So. Cal.Dear Diary. Thank you
for being there. I hope I’m not bothering you but I just don’t care
anymore. I am bored out of my mind. I’m feelin’ lonely. Time hurts. I
woke up with a toothache. Ouch. Beat a dead horse.
Live for today, that’s what people say. Time to think new thoughts.
Same thing, day in and day out. I don’t handle being single very
well. It is my weakness. I’d love to get over it, if only there was
an easy way. There is no way. It just is. The state of sadness is a
reality that can only be changed by external forces. I’d love to be
in love but all the positive thinking in the world is not going to
help get me to that state.
I’ve been to paradise. Now, I am in hell.
I’ve stayed around the ranch these past few days. Micky came by
to say hello and tell me about his latest adventures. Otherwise, I’ve
been keeping myself pretty much busy so I wouldn’t have to think
about my tragedy. It is not easy to forget someone I love, but I have
to. And when I do, I will not love him anymore. Where do I put that
love in the meantime? My ego doesn’t need to be fed. I love myself
enough. Oh, ze problems whiz having a strong ego or iz it my
overdeveloped id?
It was great sex. Sex that bonds, so I thought. For him, it was just
a phase. A Phase! I can’t believe he said that to me and meant it.
Sex is not just the dot on the ‘i’, but the ’I’ itself.
Lately, I’ve been asking myself how gay relationships are supposed
to be defined? If supposedly the only thing that separates us from them
is our sexuality, then it follows that we fags are going to have to
develop sexual relationships that are different than straights’. So
why are so many fags striving for assimilation, all S-creaming for
marriage? Marriage is their way of saying contractual bondage. At
least some of us call it what it is, S and M.
No. No. No sex until marriage. What a drag!
Okay, the honeymoon was over. It took two years. I tried to keep it
going as long as possible but eventually the everyday did set in. We
couldn’t get much higher. Dildos, fisting, LSD, marihuana, alcohol,
special K, Tina. Sex weekends. Makes my dick hard just thinking about
it, and I threw it all away because I wanted to take our relationship
to a whole new level, I wanted to bring a third man. He wanted to be
the macho in a hetero-marriage.
I couldn’t give Peach what he wanted. He couldn’t give me what I
needed. There were no children to distract us. No shared future to
divert our attention from the present. I needed intellectual
stimulation. He needed a man twenty-four hours a day. I needed my
space, and classical music don’t fit in my installation. He disliked
my crazy artist friends and was bothered by my lightness of being. He
shops department stores, I do thrift stores, junk sales and the
occasional dumpster. He knows the price of everything he buys. I know
the place of everything I’ve found.
I feel like he took my soul and threw it away, threw it into the
muddy river, chucked it off the I-street bridge. I had to go get it
from the banks of the sacramento. My heart is hanging out, bleeding
sorry rivulets of blood, love trickling on the ground and he just
walks by.
A hand on the shoulder. A nod of compassion. Either one could
help me right now ’cause I am living in a land of sink or swim. I’ve been
underwater so long, I’d just like to surface and tell someone what
I’ve been doing. To rest my soul.
I can’t talk to my family even though a broken heart is a common
denominator. Mom is all twisted in her little world, spinning out on
convenience. Dad can’t understand how I happened, and if there is not
a dollar sign with the word ‘yours’ attached, there’s no use talking
to him. I do not understand why they continue to live their lie.
Bianca is dad in a dress. I think our genes got screwed up when we
were conceived. Micky only understands to a limit. Being hetero, he
gets mixed up with the sex / love thing when I start pouring out my
heart. I guess for heteros it is so beyond them, the concept of same
sex. They never see men kissing. Even the idea makes them nervous.
It is no wonder that they never understand.
It might be blue sky, but there’s a big black cloud hanging over my
head. Okay, sometimes I do carry it around with me by choice, but
lately it’s been hanging there all on its own. Oh well.
That basically sums up my mood. Resigned. Oh well.
I am the worthless amoeba eking out a living on a discarded doormat
at the bottom of a dumpster. Boy, that’s low.
When I greet people, and before they step on me, I ask them how
they’re doing. When they say, ’good,’ I want to know why. I want to
know how other people qualify a good life. Practically no one says,
’sad’ or ‘depressed,’ and never do they say, ’lonely.’ When I say I’m
lonely, most people give me the ’ah, poor Denver’ reply. What all I
really need is compassion, a touch, an ’I understand,’ or an
invitation to dinner. What I need least is to be left alone.
Nothing like feeling like living in a foreign place to make you feel
alone. Let me try that sentence one more time. I feel like I’m living
in a foreign country with no one to talk to because no one
understands the language of sadness. People just love to talk about
themselves and if I get a word in edgewise, it’s only to ask
questions about their life before they lose interest in being with me.
Crying on the steps of my dilapidated apartment building, I have
discovered the blues, belting out line after line, and the funny
thing is everything rhymes with blue. What am I going to do? How am I
going to get through? Oh poodle chew, I still love you. I have ruled
out suicide, my body has an amazing self-preservation system and,
instead, I’d be stuck in a coma after a failed attempt. Suck is life.
The stupid say that time has a way of healing old wounds. But why do
I have to wait? And who ’has’ time anyway?
I don’t want to hear people’s solutions for a broken heart. I hate it
when people tell me I’m lucky because I have a big apartment, I’m
still young, I supervise two adorable cats, I have a cool armchair.
Is this how people cheer each other up nowadays? They look for
material love supplements? Amore Shoppin’. (great name for a band.)
Just like every relationship is different, so is its break up – the
glide, the tear or the pop-apart. I’ve had the glide and tear
varieties. The pop-apart is a new experience. I didn’t expect it at
all, and for it to be so final. It just shows the man is emotionally
immature, excuse me, the boy. When people remain emotionally
unattached, it’s easy to ’whatever’ everything into trifleness.
Denver lowered his pen and unconsciously stared out the window. He
was at the start of his daily morning ritual, breakfasting in bed
while writing in his diary. He dipped a mini–sugar–donut into his
yellow coffee mug and placed the entire soaked food treat into his
mouth. He took another sip of his coffee while tugging at the hair on
the back of his neck. While masticating, he placed the coffee mug on
the nightstand. Before returning to his diary, he caught sight of the
T-shirt lying on the floor, inscribed by hand with the farewell
letter he had received a few months ago.
Dear Denver,
Stop thinking about old times. What you are doing has nothing to do
with love. It is aggressive and makes me aggressive. Open your eyes.
We do not have a relationship anymore. It is over. I do not want to
see you. I do not want to hear from you. I do not want to read about
you. Leave me alone and take care of yourself and your own life. I do
not belong to it anymore.
Peach
Denver had not seen Peach since the letter. He had tried, using the
pretext of collecting his belongings, to find a word with his former
lover, but Peach would share no pie. The items requested were simply
left outside on the front porch for Denver to pick up at his
convenience. Even the artwork that Denver had created for Peach was
returned.
He flipped back through a few pages in his diary and touched the
words he had written, feeling their strength, celebrating his
sadness. He was a bit overcome and his eyes welled up with tears. He
drew a sad face at the end of his last sentence with a teardrop
falling over its cheek.
I am lucky, he thought. I have a roof over my head. My health is okay
except for that little toothache that’s kind of bothering me. Hope it
doesn’t get worse. Knock on wood. I got some food in the kitchen. I
got a job. There’s just one thing missing in the equation, love.
We never even got to the third man. The concept was too much for
Peach. When I started making signals about enhancing our
relationship, he thought the opposite. And as fate would have it,
Peach would leave me for someone at work. Someone I practically see
on a daily basis. Was this form of abuse necessary? What did I do so
wrong that elicited such a negative outcome?
I never really liked Dean, He is about as smart as a turnip. He’s
just the happy sunny boy with lots of la-la on his mind. Now I hate
him. Whenever I tried to mention the break–up to Dean, he puts me on
hold, saying its between Peach and I. But Dean, YOU don’t get it. YOU
are what’s between Peach and I. YOU are the reason why I can’t get to
Peach.
Of course, Dean’s doing great and has no bones about loudly telling
it to everyone I work with. I can hear his happy voice everywhere in
the store, even when the music is booming. No tact whatsoever. His
laid–back speak, going on about the cute little activities he shares
with his new boyfriend. Oblivious to my feelings. I am not
oversensitive! It is really going on.
I can’t stand seeing his happy face at work. I hate seeing him wear
Peach’s clothing. It just adds insult to injury. Peach has even given
him that gray backpack that I gave him when I started wearing yellow.
And why, of all people, Dean? Even the name sounds suspicious.
I want to experiment. Explore the boundaries of relationships. I do
not want to assimilate into a straight mold. But because I suggested
too strongly, I have been sucked into some strange three-way psycho
drama of proximity. Penton Place with a smack of California blasé
thrown in. We’re all playing musical beds, sneaking around like cats
with our asses in the air on a hot summer night. We sure get bored
easily. This town has got all the stuff TV soaps are made of. It is
sick and it is the truth.
He put down his pen and sat in silence. By the time he put pen to
paper again, Denver thoughts had taken him to the moon and back. When
he returned, he took stock of the room around him. Although his heart
might be in the gutter, everything else looked pretty much the same,
although a bit more disheveled.
I guess I am lucky. Still trying to convince myself. I get to go
places. Fresno, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe. I live in paradise, albeit
boring. My career is moving on. I had a great show at End Art. I got
another show coming up at the Notodo Gallery. But none of these
things really interests me. I still get no money from art. I know
great friends who’ll take care of me. I must have some good karma.
Why then this abrupt crash into loneliness? Is this necessary?
Somehow, I can only think of my misery, even though I’m busy doing
art things. I don’t feel that the success has much to do with me.
After so many years of service to the community, I’m just finally
getting some pay-off. Okay, I did have to complain a little to get
the attention. How un-californian of me!
Born. Born. Born to be nice. Maybe I should see a psychiatrist or
find a guru. I need salvation. The fatalist in me has passed the
test. I am strong. I do not have to get stronger. Where does my ego
fit into it all?
I hope this is not going to be another bad year. Poop Donut. (better
name for a band) A never-ending cycle. We repeat the same mistakes
over and over again. Oh! I am such a fool. I suppose if I’m on the
bottom, then someone’s got to be on the top. What’s the difference
between walking on by when someone’s guts are spilled out on the
floor, or when it’s just someone’s heart broken and bleeding? “Same
difference!” as mom used to say. Can’t we just love one another
instead of looking for the differences?
And there is no such thing as a difficult problem.
When love goes wrong, nothing goes right. When I get that feelin’ of
Indigo, I just want to lie down and die.
My favorite drink is whine and I have laid it all down on paper.
Girl, I sure do love to go on.
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