sex lies and scotchtape.

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So here's what I'm thinking:

I'm thinking maybe I can design a machine or something that'll take my thoughts and create a world from them, like my own private heaven, only interactive, so I could invite friends in now and again. But for the most part I'll just crawl in and live out all those million and one sordid fantasies that won't ever come true in real life.

(Oh Geez. He's on an Angelina rant...AGAIN.) Cynics! No, alas and alack, this is not an Angelina. This is...

...a Renée rant.

Yeah, I think this is the first time I wrote on this thing about her, but this woman. This DIVINE CREATURE. Has been dominating the shadowy flamescapes of my carnal thoughts for the last...god, how many weeks?

Who: Renée, last name not revealed to protect the identity of the innocent...and, in the case of the miniscule (like 0.0000000001%) chance that Renée surfs onto this site, she will not immediately guess who I am, and that I'm drooling about her.

(It'll take her 0.5 seconds to make that connection.)

Let me start again.

Who: Renée.

What: Senior resident. Sex goddess.

When: NOW. Last x months. Forever! Always. GUH.

Where: San Francisco. UCSF.

How:

Now that. Is an interesting question.

How did this start? God knows. It's one of those things. Love is not blind, but love does have a way of sneaking up on you. Not that this is love, I don't think. More like a mad infatuation/lust. I've been working under her for months - since like late August/early Sept, in fact, and she's my supervising senior resident - and somewhere along the way, I fell madly, completely, totally in lust with this woman.

Stats: brownish hair, hazel eyes, ~30, 5'6" maybe, not terribly curvy, not a supermodel. Not simpering, not flirtatious...kinda cynical and wry, with a foul mouth and an utterly ADORABLE way of putting her fingertips over her mouth, opening her eyes wide, and ducking her head exaggerated-like whenever one of the bigwigs pass by and scowl at her for saying, for example, "God-dammit, that perverted dickhead in room 1827 wants another spongebath."

Not, mind you, that she ever said anything like that. But you get the point.

So, that's her. Not gorgeous. Not nymphlike. Not swanlike. Not virginal and youthful. Not smouldering and experienced. Not elegant. Not even polite. All in all...rather average.

And.

Hot as ALL hell.

My GOD! I would give years off my life for this woman! For the past month or two, I've been unable to concentrate on anything she tried to teach us (us being the first-year residents), simply because I found myself staring fixedly at her (when she's lecturing you, though, you have a reason to) and trying alternately to figure out:

1) Why she's so sexy, and

2) Just how her mouth would feel against mine. And whether her breasts are firm or delightfully soft. Whether her back would bend sweetly, or if she was more rigid, more (sexxxxxual) tension there. What sort of sounds she would make in bed, for chrissakes. Screamer? silent? moaner? whimperer?

So by now, everyone's like, why the fuck don't you just ask her out, right? The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is simple.

She.

Is.

Engaged.

AUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

I'm going to lose my mind. I'm not kidding. I'm gonna FLIP over this girl. It's NOT FAIR that she's so freakin hot when I can't figure out WHY she's hot (ask me about ANYONE else and I could tell you. Lisa? Elegance. Style. Trim sleek waist. Long blonde hair. Rowrr. Sara? Dear god. Unmentionable. The things she did..! Latisha? DANCED like a GODDESS. Michelle? Had that sorta laugh that made you wanna lock yourself in a room with her for the next 139148606 years. ANGELINA, for crying out loud? Eyes. Lips. That easeful casual sexual confidence of hers.), and it's even MORE not fair that she's engaged.

So there I was, for weeks and weeks, silently pining. Augh. Weeks and MONTHS! All the while I worked under her day after day after day, grinning, cracking jokes, taking it easy, taking it smooth. Talking about Final fucking Fantasy 7 (which she happens to be playing right now...hmm...maybe that's where the attraction began...god I can be such a geek. heh!), me giving her little tips and whatnot. And all the while I couldn't, freakin!, think, straight when she leaned across me and pointed at something or other on whatever chart I happened to be looking at.

Right, but I survived it. I pulled through. End of the rotation. Moving on. Last day was today. Yesterday, actually, since it's officially wednesday, and has been for the last three ours.

Hours, I meant.

So. We were done by 3pm, actually. Easy day. She let us scamper home early and did all sortsa crazy extra time to handle all our appointments (so nice...). We ended up in some crazy theological debate that took up 2 hours (don't ask) and then finally, when we were all filing out, me and a half-dozen other first-years under her command, a miracle, or a curse, depending on how I look at it, happened.

You gotta picture this, see. It's a room, there's a door. Me heading for door, coupla folks in front of me, one or two in back. Flurry of goodbyes. Laughing, chuckling, friendly feelings.

And right as I'm heading out.

She goes,

"Hey Damon!"

So I stop. Hand on door-handle, kinda turning, doing my raised-eyebrow-thang (I'm good at manipulating my eyebrows. Talent.). I go, "Yeah?"

She goes.

"Come back and see me sometime."

Me, internally: EEEEEEEE. Hallelujah and Ode to Joy. I felt like I was Jesus Christ walking on water.

Me, externally: Cool and unruffled as a glassy mountain lake in the winter.

"Sure."

And out I go. Get in my car. Sit in my car. Hyperfuckinventilate for the next ten minutes.

Go home.

Dwell on it.

Mull it over.

Think it over.

Take it out and turn it about like a new jacket. Put it on. Take it off. Put it down. Grin like a nincompoop. Scream (well, internally) with frustration. Weigh pros against cons.

Pro: HER.

Cons: 1) might get shot down like icarus in the sun. 2) Might end up in sordid one-night-stand that will leave both of us feeling guilty forever and ever. 3) Might end up with long relationship with my once-boss, and still superior, that eventually ends. 4) Extreme scenario: might end up MARRYING her.

And here it comes - just how calculating, cold, cynical and un-idealistic I really am. 1-3 will probably all end up with me living through hell for the next 3-5 years while she subtly hints to my betters that i'm a humongous jerk, and they should take pains to make life SUCK for me.

#4...

...no. It's lust. That's all it is.

I think?

AUGH.

Okay, it's fucking almost 4am and I have a long day tomorrow. I'm gonna quit thinking about this.

impulse.

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i'm fucking restless.

i've been restless all day. i don't know why. well, yeah, i do. it has to do with fucking politicians and their inane babble. if the people in charge wanted your info, don't you think they'd ask for it? and if you really wanted to help, don't you think you should tell it to them? not to national tv?

fucking vultures...fucking parasites...

i can't sleep...

it's 12:35, granted, which isn't that late, but i do have to be up really early. really. fucking. early. but i've got all this energy in me. it's just crunched up tight inside me, this ball of white-hot destructive/chaotic energy, and i feel like i can't sleep until i do SOMETHING.

i wanna beat the shit out of someone

i wanna fuck

i wanna break something. shatter it to dust.

is this healthy? no, maybe not...fuck it...fuck being healthy...i should've gone out tonight. i broke up with sara, just this fuckin monday. been a great week for me, yeah. no one to fuck. shouldn't fight. can't afford to break anything.

just so dissatisfied...like something's askew, something's gone wrong, and the only way to right it is to unleash this knot inside me.

maybe this is why people loot stores after a disaster. not out of malicious intent, or out of desperation, even. just to feel the glass break. just to feel shit break. just to let this thing out, one way or another. i KNOW this is why people fuck like weasels after a disaster. it's a release. and it's a return to instinct. it's like something's fucked up so bad your human intellect is blown away. all that's left is base impulses. fuck. fight. hunt. run.

damn it.

damn it!

i wanna say something profound. but there's nothing to say. so here's me, signing off. gonna take a shower. try to get some sleep.

nyc.

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I just wanted to say something about the terrorism today...

NYC is the symbol of America. Fuck Washington DC. Fuck everything else. NYC. The original melting pot/salad bowl/whatever. Diversity. The good and the bad. The best and the worst. The bastion of capitalism and the stronghold of liberalism, at least on the East Coast. There's nothing like New York, New York.

As Chuck would say, there are cities...and then, there's The City.

They tore out the heart of the City today. There's never going to be another World Trade Center like this first one, even if they rebuild it. The innocence is gone, I guess. They tore out the heart of the City that's the heart of the United States, and they did it because they wanted to destroy our spirit.

They failed.

The World Trade Center might be gone. And I'm pissed about that. I'm really pissed. I don't care if New York City's crime rate is sky-high and a zillion people get murdered there every year. That's different. That's ourselves killing ourselves, and that's...allowed. Not good, but allowed. That's part of New York's imperfect, stained, macho glory. But THIS. This is a fucking outrage.

NYC is a city somewhere between heaven and hell, but it's OUR city.

It's our city, even if they blew the Twin Towers up. And all they've really done, is piss us off. All of us.

We're a tough breed. Those of us in New York City. Those of us in San Francisco. All of us. We're a diverse breed, and we don't always get along, but when shit hits the fan, we unite. E pluribus fuckin unum, assholes, so gloat while you can. We're coming after you.

And there's hope. There's always hope. Out of atrocities come beauty. I heard people say "I love you" today, and really mean it. There were rescuers rushing into the fray, ready to give their lives for others. There were volunteers heading into ground zero hoping to help somehow. Anyhow.

I saw the hospitals flooded with people willing to give their own life's blood to aid strangers. I saw people of every imaginable religion praying for the wellbeing of strangers. I saw young men and women still on the brink of life hold up candles in honor of the dead. We gather; we cry; we sing; we will pull through.

They can blow up all of New York. They can blow the whole fucking nation up. It won't make a difference. Those who survive will just come back twice as strong, twice as pissed.

This shout-out goes to New York City. For those who died, and to those who lived: rock on.

mindscapes.

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There's a meadow somewhere...

It's nested high in the mountains, and the grass grows as long as a pretty girl's hair. It's long enough to catch the wind, which is moisture-touched and warm, because it's late Spring (which is the most hopeful time of the year), and it's long enough to bow and ripple in that wind. And at the edges of the meadow, trees - evergreens - stand sentinel against the sky, which is littered with stars, more stars than you could count in a lifetime.

The grass is red. A deep, ruddy red, not the red grass turns when it has been bled on, but the red grass can be in your dreams. The sky above is a deep, deep, deep purple, a royal color lightening to lilac at the horizons. During the day, it'll brighten to the most royal hue of purple never to grace a king's robes.

Only it does grace a king's robes...in this world, which exists only in my head, and shows itself in glimpses and snatches in my writing and my ramblings and my dreams.

The King's name is unknown to mere mortals like us, but I've always associated him with Oberon. And his land, of course, would be called Avalon - and it's an Avalon far larger than a mere island.

The King lives in a shining castle in the proud imperial city. The streets are filled with merchants and peddlers, sailors from the wide ocean. The imperial guard is decked in shining silver splendour, bearing graceful, deadly swords and spears. The knights on their steeds pace through the cobblestone streets and ride off to save maidens at the far reaches of the kingdom.

Over it all the imperial palace towers: the castle, all spires and graceful arches, buttresses that literally fly. It's built not by physics but by magic, a gleaming jewel crafted of blue and gold and silver and white. The castle - the city - the world - is both fantasy-medieval and supermodern; medieval in the style, but clean-edged, sleek, futuristic in the taste.

The nobles hold court in the great hall, seated at both sides, while the King and Queen sit upon their thrones at the far end of the room, resplendent on a raised dais, the sunlight cascading through a window at their back, falling upon their shoulders. Commoners - which in the Imperial City is to say, sailors, for with magic, there is no need for anything else - come to petition before the High Lords of Avalon in open court, and in closed court, the nobles stand to argue eloquently, to compliment and snipe. They're decked in their finest robes, and they are beautiful, elfin, high cheekbones and exotic features that tilt and slant. Their hair comes in every color of the rainbow but purple streaked onto a white purer than snow; their eyes, in every color but green.

Those are the colors reserved for Oberon and his Queen, because those are, and have always been, royal colors. And Oberon's eyes are a light green, like frost on grass, but Titania's are the color of emeralds - not the paltry emeralds found on earth, but larger ones, more perfect emeralds that glitter and glow and hold the sun in their bellies.

There is a third class in this world: the warriors. The knights, who are not as conservative (to put it nicely) and droll (to put it not-so-nicely) as most the nobles, but not as uncouth as the sailors. They are the ones who wield the shining blades out to the outlands to conquer the dragons and slay the sea-serpents. Every so often, a young would-be knight comes of age, and the Queen sends him (or her; my world is democratic) forth on a quest to claim a place in the world.

The quest always takes a year, and takes the future knights into every corner of the world. And there are a lot of corners.

There's a railroad, for example - a bullet train, actually, that arcs out of the city on its slender-columned, raised tracks that soar well over a mile above the ground. It travels faster than any known plane, and it streaks roughly southward, across the great flatlands with their dark rich soil and their golden crops under the surreal purple sky. There are farmers here, far from the grace and decadence both of the city: tanned strong-limbed men and women with cowboy squints and a slow drawl to their fluid elfin tongue. They're simple folk; they grow corn and cotton and all those crops, and under the harvest moon they dance. The girls marry young and the boys grow up young here; they die young, too, and die beautiful.

The train speeds on: further past, the land wrinkles up into a sudden, rocky mountain range. Then the lands dry out; flatlands become scrublands, which gradually thins into a wide silent desert, all pristine sand dunes amber-gold, shifting slowly like an ocean almost-frozen. Only it's hot, so very hot, and no one can survive long here.

Past those, the sand hardens and cracks; it's a desolate place, but beautiful too in its own savage way. Eventually the cracks become ravines, and the ravines become great stone canyons, where natural monoliths stand motionless as the wild dry wind howls past. Tumbleweeds roll; the canyon is five miles deep, and the sky is almost a dream above.

Then the wind begins to take the flavor of moisture again. It's nearing the sea, that is to say the Ocean, which is the only sea, and the sea that rings the entire, vast (and only) continent of this world. To the south the sea is angry and grey; temperatures are dropping again. It's cold at the southern edge of the continent. It rains often, but it hails often as well. The sun sets slanted and distant, and the dusk is long, the night longer still.

There's a great city at the edge of the world, at the terminus of the train's run. It's a grim city, dark and seedy. The building are modern, but scarred by acid rain and twisted - literally - they corkscrew into the sky, and inside millions of people move like bees in a hive, silhouetted by the lights within. The alleyways are littered with refuse and yesterday's newspapers. The walls are concrete. They weep when it rains. The city races right to the edge of the sea and then crumbles messily off, perching at the very edge of the cliff while great sewers open to vomit the sludge of the city into the sea. You never see the sun here, and steel is always rusted, but impregnable.

The Queen's jealous sister, rules this city. She is beautiful; she is as beautiful as Titania, but her heart is cold, and her hair is raven-black shot through with ...mmm, I don't know. Some livid color, born of envy and a deep-seated, hidden pain.

She makes me sad. She makes me want to comfort her, but coming that close to her will only end in a beheading.

Every year, at Winter Solstice, she sends her sister a gift: something lifeless and exquisite. Bone, crystal, steel. It goes north along the train tracks, and every year it's some sort of plot to kill the Queen, but at the last minute a messenger arrives, and warns her of the danger...because, you see, she loves her sister. She just can't forgive her.

North of the Imperial City, and west, there is nothing but ocean. The Imperial City is the center of the world, but it sits at the northern edge of the continent, which cuts away south-west from there. The ocean there is milder, broad and greyish blue. The docks are crowded with husky sailors, foul-mouthed and hearty; they load cargo onto their ships, though where they ship them I do not know. There's a colonial feel here, even though the City itself is medieval, and the plains to the south are 1800s. The ships are graceful clippers and majestic schooners; there are a few lumbering galleons, and from their masts stream snapping banners and billowing sails.

It smells like fish here.

The northwestern coast is rocky, but the weather is mild. Fog comes in here. Somewhere there's a city that's the distant dream of San Francisco: always shrouded in fog, always indistinct, always beautiful, always shining. To look too long would be heartbreak.

South of there, along the western coast, there is a great redwood forest. Or it looks like redwoods - but they are large, so large, that a man (an elf) is like an ant beside one of these giants. The first branches loom high, high above the earth; the needles are deep green. The air is tranquil and holy and wistful with the salt air; the ground is springy with the root structure of these great trees.

Inland from there, the forest becomes a rainforest. The thunder rolls low, and warm rain falls like a salve, drenching everything. Ever dripping, ever a deep, rich green that even our jungles can't match, the canopies stretch one over another. The earth is rich here, rich and wet. Everything is rich here. Green and brown, and the occasional splash of color - spotted cats the size of elephants that slink through the green shadows and scream in the night. Here and there, a sudden burst of red: flowers, erotic opening lush things.

It's sweltering; the mosquitos could eat me alive. Literally. Insects here grow as large as dogs; sometimes, a giant beetle, large as a cow, ticks slowly through. It's a wet land, disconcerting, throbbing and alive.

Farther east, the rainforest becomes fields, and we cross the path of the train again. East of there, fields becomes grasslands, prairies in deep red, and past that, the grasses turn sere and golden, and it's a savanna. Wide-spreading trees with wide-spreading roots sheltering maned beasts that roar louder than thunder, but they're black, and their manes are golden. There are spotted cats here too, and the things they hunt: the graceful timid creatures besides that eat the grasses and flee from the predators which stalk, and mate, and roar their pride to the stars.

The stars: there are more than you can imagine here. Brighter, too, millions of them, scattered across the velvet sky. There's a band of the galaxy visible, just like on earth, but it would put our milky way to shame with its ethereal beauty.

There are two moons hanging in the sky. Large, large moons, both full tonight, full over the broad savannas, and if only earth's moon was even half as beautiful...

Sometimes the rain comes to the savannas, though. The dry season ends and the sere heat ends and the wet season comes and storm clouds gather, piling high into the sky, brilliantly red at sundown, lividly bruise-purple at their bellies. They move over the savanna and lightning trades between the thunderheads.

Thunder booms out across the savanna. The animals raise their heads and listen.

Then rain falls like a heavy curtain, blurring the world. Not the cold lashing rain of the southern edge of the continent. Not the warm drenching rain of the rainforests in the west. This is a powerful sort of rain, but without bitterness: a masculine force of nature, but inherently good. Animals move like grey shadows through the rain. This is the only time of the year the grasses are green instead of red, and the tree-trunks are dark, and the tree-blossoms bloom fragile and pink. The long-dried gullies and ponds fill again with the rain. The monsoon sweeps through like a tidal wave. Life returns. Life survives.

And, north of the savanna - for here, the continent juts northward - temperatures begin to drop again. The grasslands return, but only for a while. In the distance, purple shadows of vast mountain ranges, nothing like the mountains of the rest of the continent, loom up. Trees gather at the edge of the grasslands, and spread in a thick carpet up the feet of the mountain like lichen on a rock, but the mountain is too high. The treeline ends at the mountains' waistline; barechested, the rocky giants rear into the sky.

Not far above the treeline, the clouds gather thick. These are storm clouds; tempest clouds. They roll in off the frozen polar sea, full of fury and ice. They growl and snarl, writhing about the mountains. They are slate-grey, lead-grey, heavy as lead, and when winter comes they spit snow in great white torrents, blanketing the forest and the highlands.

The peaks of the mountains are too high for the snow to melt and the ice to run to water. Though a river tumbles out of the mountains' breast, a river in which river nymphs bathe, a river by which the Prince has once lost his heart to a slip of air - though there is a river, it does not come from the highest reaches, which are perpetually frozen. There's another screen of clouds, miles above the first that stretches in from the ocean; this one is miles thick itself, and the only way through it is to climb the mountains, clinging like burrs on the side of a great white tiger.

The highest peaks rise even above these highest clouds. Up there, the air is thin and intoxicating. It is silent there, truly silent, silent as it can never be anywhere else in the world. It's silent and the clouds below mask all traces of the world below. It's beautiful beyond speech, but it's a lonely world, a cold world; to be at the top is to be the only man left on this world, and when the sun sets, the barren peak about you, sheathed in ice, is also drenched with the blood of every man, woman and child that has ever died in all of history's black annals.

At the very highest peak, a great monolith stands in tribute to every knight to have ever fallen in battle. Names are carved into the black granite, and in the grooves, liquid gold burns pure and true, vehement negation to the loneliness, the silence, the loss of the world's highest end. Warriors come here to honor their lovers, their brothers, their teachers, their fallen. And there's hope for every loss in this world, and beauty for every sorrow.

This is the world that exists only in my mind. This is the world that has existed in me before adulthood, before games, before roleplay. This is the world, I sometimes think, that has existed before books, before schooling. Maybe before the world I live in really existed for me. This is the world that spreads in my head - or, in reality, only the smallest slice of it. There is so much more to tell, and in the end, everything I ever say, everything I ever dream, has its root in this world.

restless.

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Yeah.

Been a while since I've written here. I wanted to write the other night, Saturday night it was, but more than that I wanted to get up get dressed get out get driving.

Restless, I was. Couldn't sleep. Got up with fingers itching to write and a foot itching to mash that goddamn 27-year-old pedal to the metal and hear that engine roar.

Would've probably gotten another ticket. Heh. Premiums are going up. Can't afford that.

Didn't write that night, either. Just lay in bed with the lights off and the CD player on until I fell asleep, sometime in the gray haze between late, late night and early, early morning.

Say, around 4am?

It's a hot day, too hot for comfort, not hot enough. It's raining in the desert, I think; I can see the thunderheads piled high and angry in the east. God, I think I'd like to see that again. I wanna feel the sudden incongruous suffocating moisture in the air and the electricity crackling unheard and unseen (but so felt) all around until lightning sudden wracks the sky and it just

pours.

I wanna drive through that, top down, seatbelt off, me and my girl, me and the clouds.

It's sunny outside, though. Hot, but not that hot. Not the moist sort of electric-hot the desert gets to be right before a big, big storm. And not the muggy sort of monsoon-hot the east coast is cursed (blessed?) with, either.

You know, weather like that makes the plants so beautiful. The humidity, it makes the trees so vividly, richly green, dark green, lush green. It's not a green we ever see here in the west; where it's wet enough here, we only have redwoods and sequoias and pines, evergreens, because of our almost-nonexistent coastal plain, and our rocky terrain.

In all honesty, I can't stand the heat much anymore. San Diego living has spoiled me. I can take the cold a bit better now, but heat...

Still, there's a certain seductiveness about heat, isn't there? Something about the way it envelopes you for the first ten, fifteen minutes - comforting - before it makes you sweat.

And oh, God, does it make you sweat.

I wanna live in Mexico. Deep in Mexico, in a little village with a Church, someplace forgotten by time. Or, no, not in the village...close by, out in the scrubland that borders on desert, long straight roads, cattle and half-wild horses and los vaqueros under a sky overcast in that gray racing humid way only lands west of the Gulf and east of the Pacific can boast.

You know, California was named after a legendary Queen?

memories and thoughts.

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Just...babbling.

*

Sunsets. this one night in san diego, when i was 17, i took my dog for a walk. we had canyons near our house, so i took him for a walk there. looked a lot like steppe-land. grasslands.

it was summer, so the grass was long and yellow, and the hills rolled and tumbled down from black mtn, which is this 1000-ft tall "mountain" in the area. not big, but you grow to like the way it looks. but anyway, there's this sorta frontier there at the edge of the canyon.

there's Del Mar on the west near the sea, and Penasquitos, where i live, inland, and canyon in between. so there's this squiggly line where the houses end and the canyons begin, and all the way at the horizon you can see del mar, and beyond, the sea. so that's what it looks like, this line of houses and then just open canyon. and the farther into the canyon you go the less you can see the houses until eventually you see nothing but canyons, some stands of eucalyptus trees, some parts where the grass grows green, and in the ravines, little streams.

(or actually, they were mud. but there were still reeds)

that night, there were these clouds in the sky. streaking out of the west in long strips. and when the sun set, they went red. and the whole. fucking. sky was on fire.

i'd never seen anything like it, and i haven't since. i've seen sunsets were half the sky was red - that happens a lot. but not when there was red all the way into the eastern horizon. and it was right before a storm, right? and in san diego the storms roll out of the east. so you followed these streaking clouds east, and there were these huge, huge round thunderheads sitting there

and there was me and my dog beneath this incredible sky. in the middle of this canyon. silence and birdsong all around.

*

When i was in fifth grade i knew this chick named carole. she had greasy black hair and a really raucous laugh. i didn't like her. once we were on the playground crawling through a tunnel in the jungle gym, or something like that, and i had the bad luck to be behind her. her underwear had a big yellow stain on it.

since she was the first girl other than my sister whose underwear i'd seen, it put me off the idea for a long time.

*

When i was maybe eight, my dad took me for a hike. it started out with this trail winding up the side of a mountain, and the pebbles were loose. there was no handrail to the right; the left was the rock face of the cliff; the path seemed about a foot wide to me. i slipped and fell and i was dead certain i was going to die. but i didn't.

when i got to the top of that mountain, the trail wound into the forest and it was damp and dark and peaceful and earthy-smelling, but i kept wondering where the cliff went. it didn't make sense to me then, that half the world could be a cliff one minute and not the next. it makes sense now, of course. we simply passed through the summit.

*

Heh. once, in kindergarten, this kid reached for the scissors i wanted, so without a thought i sank my teeth into his arm. he howled. i was immensely proud of myself, especially since i could see the marks from my teeth in his forearm.

*

I've been so high/I've been so down

Up to the sky/Down to the ground.

It doesn't sound like Madonna. But it's so. SO. heartbreakingly beautiful. such a great song. i love it so much. it reminds me of...oh...shadows in blue and green and shades of pale...slow-motion waterfalls that are water, but more like sheets of fabric. not silk, not that smooth. something a little coarser, with texture. linen? is that what it's called? it reminds me of looking back through that waterfall after you've died at the world you've left behind. and it reminds me of some last dance with a lover while your world goes gray and you lose yourself. and it reminds me of making love beneath the northern lights while the world burns away to ash, somewhere.

it's a fascinating song. it's called Paradise.

*

Las Vegas.

it's kinda sad. i'm always disappointed by Vegas. i love driving there over the desert. all the white heat and the asphalt and stuff? and i always love Vegas when i'm leaving and i look back and it's all glittering and blatantly artificial. but then when i'm in it, i HATE it.

i think it's because i love the idea of las vegas. imagine - a city almost completely devoted to the vice of gambling, with prostitution walking side by side along with stage magic, exotic animals, and the ever-pervasive dry heat of the desert. Las Vegas. this completely man-made city of sin rising out of the desert, all glitz and glitter and gambling and whoring. it's attractive in a gaudy, perverse, wicked way. it sounds sandy, stifling hot, crackling and blistering with electricity and neon lights and desert heat. it sounds corrupt. it sounds like the electric serpent east of eden.

eden would be california.

but then you get there. and there's a billion other tourists just like you, with their Illinois plates and their station wagons full of luggage and crying babies, wandering around clutching their children's hands and telling them not to get lost, stealing peeks at the Hustler magazines in the newstands as they pass. looking for the fabled city of sin.

but it's not there.

it's not there.

it's overrun by tourists looking for it, and it's lost in its own glitz and hype. and really, it's sad. it's a mirage. you can only see it when you're outside, and dreaming, and it disappears when you get there. all you have left is an empty wallet.

*

It rains so much in the Bay that i had dreams that the world was flooding, just like Noah's Ark. i remember looking out the window and seeing rain pouring down so thick it was hard to see through it. i remember it at night, looking out at the ivy dark green and soaked and wet, pounded in a monsoon-sized rainstorm, listening to the thunder boom once before the sky cracked open.

i remember it during the day, even better. it was like a haze. i remember the mist pouring over the mountaintops and tendriling between the eucalyptus at the summits of those mountain ranges. and the way the trees looked, especially the cherry trees in spring when the blossoms were this shocking, vulnerable pink against the dark, dark, dark brown of the wet, slick bark. and how the ones with greenery seemed so much more vibrantly green because it was humid and the sky was dark. and the bay in the distance, when it began to rain and the water falling made the sea ripple in millions of tiny places, and made it seem shimmering silver to me far away.

sometimes i think i love San Francisco all the more because i'm not in it, because when i go to the east bay i see it from afar, lit from behind by the setting sun which makes the fog rolling in under the silhouetted Golden Gate Bridge glow luminously silver-white. and the city is white, too, at times like that...glowing white, but also backlit.

but it's not like las vegas. i love it just as much when i'm in it. driving into it, there's nothing like seeing that great city rear up before you on the Bay Bridge, or appear out of nowhere around the mountain. or, even, taking the BART up and suddenly rising out in the midst of the pigeons and the people and the towering, towering skyscrapers.

*

i don't have anything else to say tonight. except that sometimes when i'm awake in the middle of the night looking out at the world that's all quiet and dark, i really love everything.

say what?

|
In case you're wondering why the time of this entry is "Goddammit", it is because it is currently 3:36:21, and I need to be up in about three hours, preferably less.

I have a habit of doing this. Did you realize? If you haven't yet, realize it now. I. Have. A BAD habit. Of staying up very late.

You know that little gold dragon on my page? It's fucking not appearing. Stupid geocities. Idiots. To see it, you need to load another page on this site (like, say, the old-entries page) and then back-button. It'll appear then. It's quite dumb that way. I'm sure Geocities can be circumvented with a little clever programming, but I'm too lazy to try and anyway programming is not by far my forte.

Remember that weirdass dream about stuck jaws and crunching teeth? I had it again. Twice, actually, in the last month. Yeah, it's been more than a month since I've written and I had the fucking dream twice. What does it mean? It's freaking me out. It's a very disturbing dream, trust me.

Hmm, there was something I wanted to say but I can't remember what.

At the top of my screen, there is an ad banner showing some guy's ass in briefs next to the slogan "viagra for the digital age". Do I even want to know?

No. I do not.

My ex-girlfriend's coming to town soon. I don't know what to do about her. Ex's are tough, especially when you parted amicably with a promise to "see how things are" in 6 years, at the end of your residency. Well, my residency ain't over, and technically, neither is our relationship. It's on hold. But I'm with someone else now, as you probably know, and that just...

...sucks.

Whatever. We'll see what happens. I'm responsible, I'm an adult, I can handle this. Friends. Just friends. Stuff like that.

I meant to write something tonight. I really did. I can't for the life of me remember what.

I think it's the ass at the top of my screen. It's very unnerving. I'm gonna scroll it up off my screen. There. Much better.

I have a cat balanced atop my head. I'm not kidding. Spaz. The girl. She's on my head.

Oh, God, I'm gonna be so fucking tired tomorrow. Later today. Whatever.

This song I'm listening to, Vertical Horizon's Best I Ever Had, it's reminding me of what I wanted to talk about, or maybe it's the one that made me wanna write in the first place. It's something I want. I can't remember. Jesus, this is annoying. Not just something. It's not a thing. It's like...something more abstract, you know? Love, probably, it probably has something to do with some other bizarre tragic love scenario my overtired brain has cooked up.

A few nights ago they said you might be able to see the Northern Lights in California. I forgot why, but I went out that night and looked, and I didn't see them. Someday I'll go see the Northern Lights, though.

Oh! I remember. It's not that song. It's this song. Uncle Kracker, "Follow Me"--download it if you don't have it and listen to it MORE THAN ONCE. The first time, you'll be like, "eh". After that, you'll be hopelessly hooked.

It's about having an affair. In a kinda lighthearted, upbeat way. Or something? No, that's not right...

Well, listen:

All you know is when I'm with you, I make you free
And swim through your veins like a fish in the sea.

Best line in the song. But it needs the rest to make sense. So download it. Or let me know, and I'll send you a copy.

But that's not the point, see. The point is, I think I wanna have an affair with a married woman, maybe five years older than I am. Yeah, I know what you're thinking. It's past 3am; Damon's on his weird Id-rant again. But I'm serious. I think that would be nice. You know, storybook-style.

Woman's a little older than the man, married but unhappily to some rich dude. Maybe there used to be magic there in her marriage, but not anymore. And then I come in. Maybe I'm the lawnmower or something like that, who knows how we meet, but it happens, you know? Making love in the summertime with the windows wide open and the white curtains billowing. White sheets. White walls, high white ceiling. Early evening outside, the sky's that shade of blue it turns before it turns black. Stars are coming out. Crickets. Pool's reflecting light up in dappled shades to the ceiling.

The affair'd last all summer, see. You get the torrid bits on the hot nights when the hubby's away on business or something. All over the house. By the fireplace. In the kitchen. On the desk in the study and on the couch in the den. On the goddamn porch, upside down from the chandelier and all sorts of craziness like that. And you get the secret giggling trysts in the hedgerows. And of course the white-sheets thang. But then end of summer, husband finds out, begs wife to go back to him, promises he'll be a good husband this time, stuff like that...

She falls in love with him again...they fall in love with each other, rekindled flame and stuff like that.

And I'm outta luck.

I wonder why my little scenarios always end with me and my broken heart. Maybe I haven't had my heart broken yet so I'm determined to see what it feels like. You know, morbid curiosity. More likely it's because it's 4am.

And since it's 4am, I'm going to bed. Next diary entry will be more interesting, hopefully. Heh.

Chill.

winged.

|
It's raining.

It's 35 degrees outside.

It's snowing everywhere above 1200 ft.

I'm listening to my mp3s. It's warm in my room. My chair's comfortable. I'm comfortable. It's a good night to stay up late.

Even if I have to be up in 4 hours, and have yet to sleep.

I had a bizarre dream last night. Actually, this morning. Actually, it was probably noon when I had this dream, but I had yet to rise from bed. At any rate, it was strange. It had to do with me trying to play mp3s, only all I managed to play was a recording of people having sex. Loudly.

No matter which mp3 I tried, it'd be moaning.

A coupla nights ago, I had a dream that my jaw was stuck. I couldn't open it all the way, and I couldn't close it either. It was a very disturbing dream. Finally I crunched it closed, and it felt like I shattered my teeth in the back. There were little pieces of tooth-shrapnel crunching, and there was the feeling of bloodbubbles bursting under the teeth. It was quite disgusting.

I opened my mouth, and half of my teeth fell out. While I was trying to put those back in (no blood this time, oddly), the rest fell out. So I put them all in, like a old man's dentures, and shut my mouth to keep them in. I was just worrying about how I'd go through life without teeth when I woke up.

The scary thing is I swear I've had this dream before--not the teeth falling out bit, but the stuck-jaw bit.

I didn't mean to rant about bad dreams, by the way.

It's really raining hard outside.

It's inspirational, the rain. There's something inherently right about writing when you can hear and see the rain outside. I like the way rain drums on the roof. I like how you can hear it dribbling down the raingutter pipes. I like how it snakes down the windowpane, and how outside everything's gleaming and wet.

I really like how streetlight reflects on the asphalt in the rain. And the way curtains of rain billow in the sky.

I'm a little tired...

I'm listening to a song called Indulge Me by Olive. A friend of mine told me to DL it. It's very...cool. Sensual. I think it could be a little slower, personally, because with the subtle throbbing beat it's got, it's really got the potential for being a chill-out type of song.

By that I mean a song you can stretch back and close your eyes and groove to.

Really, though, this song has that sort of potential. But it's a little too fast, which makes it more the dancing type of song. It has one HELL of a provocative beginning.

It sounds like glints of moonlight off of moving skin. When you see just flashes, hints of the curve of a shoulder, the length of a bare thigh, the dip of the spine at the small of a girl's back. Someone else's hand there, the arm curling around the waist, the fingers splayed over the skin. And slowly rolling movement, so the light shifts and cants and changes. When it's so detached and ghostly in the dark that it's not like you're looking at someone's body anymore; it's like a landscape of skin, or a seascape, always moving.

And shadows, hints of shuddering kisses...

There's a line in it--

Indulge me please/I'll take the breath you breathe

--that's awfully suggestive without really saying anything at all.

The woman who's singing, she has a very clear sort of voice, almost (but not quite) innocent. The song itself is slow and throbbing and...achy. It sounds like sex at first, but then it starts sounding like the sea on a quiet night. Always moonlight, though. Something about the song just whispers about the moon.

I'm starting to yawn...

I think there should be a planet out there that's nothing but liquid. The creatures that live there will be liquid, too. Sentient, capricious, everchanging whirlpool-beings. Currents. Living waves.

And the whole planet will be alive, too. You'd know this because of the way the tides will rise and fall.

What is it about rhythms that's inherently natural to the human mind? We just seem to like rhythms. The tide is calming. The falling rain is soothing. The phases of the moon, the swaying of a swing, the repeating clatter of train wheels over the tracks. The rocking of a cradle, making love. Music. Dance. Breath. Heartbeat.

I want to soar...

I want to have wings like the eagles.

I want to watch a thunderstorm from above. I want to dance in the falling snow without touching the ground. I want to see the desert rushing beneath me from five thousand feet in the air. I want to kiss the moon and ride the wind.

I want to nest at the peak of the tallest mountain. I want to be some aerial eagle/man spirit. I want to have eyes like the eagle, golden and sharp, and tiny feathers in the place of hair. I want to have a piercing cry that shatters the silence like some javelin of freedom.

love.

|
I should be asleep. I have to be up in six hours or so.

I think I'm thinking of Lisa again. Or maybe Sara. In the movies, everyone always knows when they're in love, and with whom. I wish life was that simple.

I think someone once said love was like the sun. Or is that just my imagination? I don't know. It's an appropriate metaphor. Love is a blazing sun. Falling in love is vaporizing in the heat of that sun. Being in love is soaring up, up into the air, mingling and mixing with the one you love, being lifted so high that you don't think you'll ever come down again.

I think I've fallen in love a lot. I think I fall in love pretty easily. I don't know if I fall out of love easily. That probably means I don't. Heh. Either way, though, when I do come out of the sky I find I'm still separate from whoever the other had been. That's falling out of love...

I think when I find The One...if you believe in that sort of stuff about the one perfect girl and whatnot...I think then, when I come back out from the light of the sun, I'm going to find that I'm not separate from her anymore. I think that's what true love, if such a thing exists, is.

But then again, it's 12:23, and I'm writing on 4 hours' worth of sleep.