December Wolves/Marathon: This Is Probably About You (4 of 13)

Fourth in the Marathon series. Fourth on the record. This one and Jolly Roger hit a little too close to home, so I usually ended up skipping them, which was a mistake. The song, Don't Ask If This Is About You, is about the narrator going to a party, looking for a night or two of physical intimacy to get him through a rough period in his life.

Sound familiar?

Additionally, I'm way behind on December Wolves. Again. But, I got a kick in my ass in the form of an email and this came out of it. Number five, based on Home Is Where The Van Is, should be much easier, but then again, I said that about number four and it took me the better part of two months to come up with what's in front of you.

I guess I thought I'd write this about ex-girlfriends. Somehow, getting all of those emotions off my chest again I think would be easier. I have to admit things I've admitted before. But now, I just have to admit I'm an interloper at a college where I'm taking a class. Christ. I'm going to a nominally Catholic school and taking His name in vain there seemed appropriate. I have to admit that my plans aren't coming together quite as nicely as I'd like and I...I've...

I've checked out of college.

So, what am I doing going to the anime organization and thinking about hitting on these girls? I don't know if I've really checked out. I'd like to say I have, but it's not all that clear. I would like my life to be comfortable and one of those ways is college. But I feel skeezy, and even when I contribute something to that club, I still feel like a lecher, like it's their thing and I'm shoehorning myself into it.

I know what I need is a relationship and what I want, which is closer to my grasp, so I believe, is physical contact period. It's what I see in Don't Ask If This Is About You. There's a line, "sorry, I don't mean to be so old and drunk." It sums up perfectly my self-loathing feelings hanging around the kids I don't know watching anime. In short, the creepy old man.

I don't want to get too fatalistic, though. It might confirm a couple popular theories about me, spread by girls I have been linked with. I have nothing to prove to any of them. Not a single sexual partner. I have tried and failed. I have slept alone and I have slept with them. I've been scared of at least one and I've never woke up so refreshed when I opened my eyes and saw another one was still there.

And yes, while I'm coming close to a line, I'll say this: There will be no regurgitating of private, privileged information here. My feelings, though, are fair game. Theirs, less so. Less tellingly, if you want "the stories", you can go look for the entry where I am so paranoid, I see my ex-girlfriend's concern about me and dexterity with navigating gossip as the Russian mercenaries patrolling the newly captured Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2.

Shit gets unreal.

But where I'm breaking from the song is this: I'm willing to wait. I'm not taking anyone out I don't want to. There was a year (this one) where I looked for a year of "just getting me by" romantically. It didn't work. I was so fucking stupid. I a) didn't get laid that often and even if I did, b) it just reinforced how much sex and feelings are mixed up for me. I felt like an outsider in the anime group even when I was legitimately trying to be a part of it without the onus of boning.

I wanted someone to hold me to get me through. I was looking for that "just" moment. Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself. It wouldn't be the first time, certainly. But in "looking for someone to touch tonight", I allowed myself to disbelieve what a wise Italian woman told me. I let people down. I don't want to be leant a blanket by anyone I don't want to sleep with for months to come. I'll be alright. I can hold myself.

I have my own parallels. Specifically, Daredevil. He got fed up with corruption in NYC, pushed all his friends away, fought off 100 Yakuza stooges for three minutes until the FBI arrived and then he disappeared. His soon to be wife left him, serving him with an annulment and his life spiraled even further out of control. Black Widow (attractive Russian secret agent lady, redhead) showed up in his house, because her cover got broken and despite the near constant flirting from her, they didn't have sex. Why? He hadn't signed the annulment yet and he didn't ask his girlfriend to marry him under false pretenses.

If you're willing to swallow the pill of monogamy intellectually (which you don't have to), that kind of decision and control takes backbone. If not, well, you've probably stopped reading a while ago. I hope I can face the future with that kind of commitment and resolve. I'll let the future come when I wake up. But for now, no one's holding me when I sleep and the difference between 2009 and now is I'm choosing it this way. Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive. Now, to grit my teeth and make it through the year. Alternatively: Be awesome.

I think I'll choose awesome.

Blogging at Home for the Painfully Alone

I sometimes wonder what it would be like to have a life full of dignity and self respect. Wouldn't it get dull after a while? When would you talk to yourself under your breath, telling yourself how stupid or ugly you are? That you shouldn't do something because you'll only fail spectacularly at it (hello College, Social Life, and Elevennames!), like you've failed at everything else?

This would, in an ideal situation, be the point where I say "But then you go ahead and do it anyway and then you feel great about it because you aren't trying to prove anything to anyone." But I am not going to say this. Because it is a filthy bastard lie. I have done plenty of things that I knew I should not have done, and I did not feel good about doing them. That voice in your head that tells you about your limitations is there for a damn good reason. I don't doubt that sometimes it must be ignored, the times when you have to talk to the girl or write the paper or do something bold and brave and hooray inducing. Other times, individuals must be aware that no amount of blatant denial will hide their obvious, tragic failings. Which is part of what makes the internet such a miracle; we are forever observing people who participate in this culture of blatant denial. Sometimes we even reward them! The great yawning chasm of despair that mortal men call YouTube is seeded on a minutely basis with people who want the whole world to see their failings and arrogance. This is not to imply I'm naval-gazing over some kind of recent phenomenon, either; observe Danny Tanner and America's Funniest Home Videos, or even that Funt guy and his show. There is precedent here - I mean, what did people do at gladiatorial games, if not laugh at the funny looking or unlucky contestants? I mean, there wasn't a lot of replay value when they were eaten by tigers or whatever.

So instead of (can I begin a sentence not on a preposition, just once?) musing about the gradual erosion of dignity and the whole notion of Blogging Like An Adult (I just googled that!), I just figure that the whole thing is a social construct anyway, and I've got enough of those already, kthnx. I grew up with dungeons and dragons - I don't need another set of codified instructions about imaginary entities interfering with my daily life. Suffice it to say, the old crank in me hates everything, while the kid in me likes the two scoops of raisins. Or whatever. Effing Family Guy has ruined my entire generation. Or has it?

Anyway. My point (the irony is that I got distracted by the adult ADD website) is that, uh, the internets are an evolution of natural human patterns, and, uh (ha ha, check out that list of 151 strengths of adults with ADD! "The Positive's (sic) of ADD") that there's really nothing fancy or newfangled about it, that it's just more voices to contend with - that if they weren't supplied from the outside, they'd probably come from within. Human personalities seem to be consciously self regulating in a way that I (in my intense and scientific studies) have not noticed in animals. Which is to say, a trained dog will not look down it's nose (okay, so it will, hey, why don't you shut up?) at a dog which doesn't have any sort of normal socialization. And that hey, maybe that's the point of humanity's progress! Perhaps every social and scientific advancement has just been one great escalation of snobbery, a great sociological pyramid of gentrification, constantly seeking that one universal, Fonzy-like cool that will end the search. It certainly sounds bleak enough to be a cosmic truth, and fits nicely into the myths of lost civilizations.

Yeah, Atlantis? It was real cool until all these effing hipsters moved in, and the developers built all those new hotels and then the Gods killed the fuck out of everyone there.

But we, as mankind (perhaps man unkind? Oh ho!) will continue to build these giant enormous misguided attempts at setting ourselves apart from the crowd; our Williamsburgs or our Towers of Babel, and in the end, we're going to be left with a thousand languages and a million Brooklyn Vegans, leaving behind only disunity in their wake. We, as a species, will always look back to the studio 54's of our past, proclaiming that before us came a golden time, and that it is what we strive for, and that only disease and death await us in the future. Which is true!

In summation, we can have our metaverses and second lives and other kinds of annoyingly populist dreams about the future of technology, but we also have to acknowledge that, ultimately, they're going to jump the shark. As Yeats wrote, the center cannot hold. Or, as the alternapress can point out, Vice is going to be bought out by MTV. And that, in the end, is the mad rush and joy of being human - fast paced, tossing your all behind a hope or an ideal (we're all scenesters - don't deny it!), and then praying that we don't be too embarrassed by them in later on. Or that if we are, then at least we can be proud that we ignored that little voice inside our heads long enough to actually go for something, to risk being put in a compromising position so that we can know, for just a few moments, that for a short while we were the mad pulse of humanity, driving it onwards to it's next heartbeat.