how is he not dead?

|
so.

i did my annual pilgrimage down to so-cal over thxgiving week to visit old friends. drove back today. the leg from LA to palm springs and back, i drove with lily. the leg from SF to LA (and LA to SF on the return trip), i drove with a friend of mine.

now. coming down, i let him drive the central valley stretch. about 2 hrs of DEAD EASY driving. just two lanes northbound two lanes southbound -- STRAIGHT as an arrow. easy traffic.

he:

1) apparently does not understand the meaning of "high revving engine". a high revving engine is one where the RPMs soar easily to get you into the "sweet spot" sooner. the redline is high -- 8000rpm -- but in normal driving, you still shift at 2750rpm or so, just as usual. this means you shift much sooner than a normal stickshift car might. i.e., 10mph is the 1-->2 shift, 20mph is the 2-->3, etc etc. you can EASILY coast in 6th gear at 45mph, though if you wanted the extra oomph, you could stay in lower gears for brief power bursts.

this idiot, despite my REPEATED admonishments, stayed in 1st until 20mph. he stayed in 2nd until 35mph. 3rd was somewhere around 45. 4th was around... 60. 5th was about 75. 6th gear, he sometimes forgot altogether. and other times, he'd DOWNSHIFT into 4th trying to hit 6th.

ARGH.

now as if that wasn't bad enough, he also:

2) swerved. for no fucking apparent reason. every 3 min or so. and then! he started reaching for food behind the seat... GOING 85MPH... while passing a HUGE semi... while SWERVING one-handed.

ughhh.

and yet, somehow, i thought it would be a good idea to let him drive TODAY, when traffic was GODAWFUL. you'd get stretches of 70-80mph. then out of the blue you'd get 20mph, or even 0mph. you really need to hang back from the car in front of you and be ready to brake to a DEAD STOP for no apparent reason. and i had my reservations about letting him drive and all... but i figured if i got us through the mtns and onto the straightaway, even a moron like him couldn't fuck it up too bad.

lo, was i ever wrong.

so coming down the long, long hill into the central valley -- the traffic slows to a standstill. this MORON (who is, once again, going 60mph in 4th gear) KEEPS. ACCELERATING.

it was like he couldn't see the long line of red brake lights in front of him. he just never got off the gas until the LAST POSSIBLE INSTANT, upon which he SLAMS on the brakes and comes to a hard stop about 4 inches from the car in front of us.

i'm like, "dude, be careful."

he's like, "okay!"

and i figure, well, maybe it's just a freak mistake. i'm sure he'll be scared straight now.

10 min later? he does it again. accelerating at brake lights.

so i'm like, "DUDE, you're going to crash my car."

he's like, "it's not my fault! i didn't know they'd stop!"

i'm like, "you better get used to it. it'll happen again."

and 10 min after that? cars in front of us suddenly show red for like a half mile. it is OBVIOUS TO A BLIND MAN that they're going to slow to a crawl, if not a standstill.

this fucker is staring right at the traffic. and he keeps accelerating. and i'm feeling bad for ragging on him, so i hold my tongue.

and he doesn't slow down.

and the cars in front of us are coming at us REALLY FAST now.

and he's still going 65mph and accelerating.

and finally i realize if i don't say something his ass is going to crash. so i'm like "FUCK! SLOW DOWN!"

and he's like, "FUCK! OH SHIT!" SLAMS on the brakes. i feel the antilock kicking in, and the car is still about to go out of control, and he's swerving all over the road, and it's a FUCKING MIRACLE that he doesn't hit the guy on the side.

he screeches to a stop literally TWO INCHES from the car in front of us. he's like hyperventilating like a little bitch: "oh my god! oh my god! what HAPPENED!"

i'm like, "YOU WERE ACCELERATING AT A STOPPED CAR, YOU FUCKHEAD."

he's like, "it's not my fault!"

i'm like IT HAPPENED THREE FUCKING TIMES. so i have him pull the fuck over, and i drive the rest of the way.

13 hr drive. i drove 12 of them. and the hour i DIDN'T drive was hands-down the most stressful.

i don't understand how idiots like him can still be alive in our car-centric society. i really do not understand how someone can be THAT BAD at driving, and not have crashed and burned already. though honestly, this isn't just being bad at driving. it's like the part of your brain that processes depth perception and speed information is MISSING from him. he seemed to have NO grasp whatsoever of how fast the cars in front of him were accelerating ... or braking. furthermore, he seemed to be fucking colorblind. red lights all ahead, and this moron is ON THE GAS. and to top it all off, he had NO LEARNING ABILITY. you could explain it to him 10 times, and he could FUCK UP 3 times, and still never learn.

jesus fucking christ. such a fucking fishheaded IDIOT.

why do i do this to myself?

|
i want to die.

for some reason it seemed like a good idea to me to procrastinate until i'm almost out of time (again). then it seemed like a good idea to simply pull an all nighter to convince myself to not do this then. THEN it seemed like a good idea, since i was pulling an all nighter anyway, to not start working until, y'know, nighttime.

ergo i started writing this grant report at about 8pm last night.

okay, more like 10pm.

now -- one giant coffee, 3 espressos, one smaller coffee, one beer, one glass hpnotiq and 7 single-spaced page with tinyassfont later...

it's 8am. almost.

i'm fucking dead. my stomach feels all liquid from all the caffeine i ingested. i'm dizzy, my eyeballs are dry, and it's a bright new day.

WHOOPEE!

formative experiences, and the ones that got away.

|
2010 note: you know, you'd think this would be one of the OMGCRINGE posts for me? but oddly it's not. maybe it's cuz the stuff i'm talking about is so long ago/far away that it matters less now!

--

broke up with bri. somehow this train of thought leads into the categorizing of my formative experiences with chicks. how they affected me, how they affect me. blah. then again, it's probably cuz i was having this convo with a friend of mine. two, actually.

***

earliest experiences i had with chicks as objects of worship was the incident with the porn mag. i was, what... 10-11? and i found a little porn mag in my parents' room. STRICTLY softcore, very tame, but back then it was SHOCKING. i mean, i'd had sex ed and all, but sex ed basically teaches you "the guy sticks the penis in the girl and THEN THE GIRL GETS PREGNANT THE GUY GETS AIDS AND THEY ALL DIE. the end."

not very informative.

so it wasn't until i found the porn mag that it even BEGAN dawning on me that sex was something you want to do. i couldn't even begin to describe the experience now -- the way it started unfolding to me, in pieces and parts. not all at once. it wasn't like i woke up one day and knew all about sex. i couldn't even tell you when the pieces all fell together. but that was definitely a start: staring at pics of mostly naked chicks looking all wanton in the arms of more or less faceless men, and wondering why the hell i was fascinated.

the articles helped, too. smut, to be exact. i think that's where it first occurred to me that sex was supposed to be pleasurable.

the weird thing is, when i first flipped the mag open, i literally had NO idea what i was looking at. the pics were too non-explicit. just posing. you couldn't see dick-in-pussy or anything like that. it just looked like ... weird hugs. nakedly. and yet immediately, without a doubt, i was certain this wasn't art. i just knew, instinctively, that this was taboo. it's weird how kids have an instinct for that.

***

then came the girls on the wavy channels, when i was maybe 11 or 12. you know that infamous hentai flick, La Blue Girl? well i know exactly why it's called Blue Girl. or at least, why it should be.

see, on the wavy channels -- aka playboy and spice, scrambled -- you get perfect sound. but the picture is distorted. most of the time, it's "wavy". you can't see anything, except for the insinuation of motion and the lurid color of flesh. it was infuriating, and so maddeningly compelling. i think i was turned on by the noises. i couldn't for the life of me figure out why, though. and i do remember being frustrated that the turn-on only went so far. i hadn't figured masturbation out yet.

but once in a while, the wavy channels would suddenly clear up. the picture would still be fucked up. but instead of waviness, you'd just get everything in a negative color. eyes would be gleaming white dots floating in black. mouths were black teeth in a void of white. and skin?

heh.

skin was blue.

and oh god, let me tell you. those blue girls of my early youth? goddesses beyond compare. part of the allure was the sense of taboo, and the scandal of it. the other part must've been their rarity. i remember coming home from school and leaving the TV on for HOURS between 3pm and when my parents got home, usually around 6-7pm. i'd sit there "doing homework", very distracted, while hoping for a glimpse. and when the picture resolved, it'd be like a glance into this whole other WORLD, especially with the eerie coloration. and i'd sit there rapt, hoping it'd last, literally treasuring every second -- until it flickered back to wavy.

they say you never forget your first woman. actually, mine proved rather forgettable. but really, the blue chicks? they were my first, in a way, because in all and absolute honesty, nothing could ever compared, then or since. nymphs of the wavy channels! so rare! just seen in glimpses, and heard, doing all manner of shit i'd never even imagined (and holy shit, had i just seen her put his dick in her mouth?). talk about your forbidden fruits of knowledge. when finally i got free and unlimited access to porn in college, it was too free -- too cheap. i could see it whenever i wanted. and missed that bit? go back, watch again. just flesh for sale, bare and full of imperfections, luridly pink and tan.

ugh.

***

first true sexual experience outside of wet dreams: the first time i jerked off, circa age 12 or so. if it even counted. i didn't know what the hell to do, so i think i was just grabbing and squeezing -- experimenting. well, it worked. but for the longest time i resorted only to grabbing and squeezing to incite a response. it's amazing i didn't cause permanent damage. then for an even longer time i was convinced that the moment of orgasm was just the start of what sex was supposed to feel like. i mean, it had to be, right? why else would porn stars moan like that, when i'd managed to stay quiet? it wasn't until i was 13 or so that i'd heard of orgasm (i'd heard of ejaculation, but come on -- the way sex ed taught it made it sound like it was just automatic response to insertion, and it wasn't like i could see well enough on the wavy channels to know differently. i guess i thought sexual pleasure came AFTER ejaculation).

***

first gf i ever had was when i was like. 13? 14? seventh grade, i think. end of seventh grade. i was still a kid! it hardly even counted. it was a slightly fucked up relationship. met her at my very first party, where i got smashed for the very first time, and she was like... a high school junior, like 17 years old. so i was so flattered by it all that i sorta fell for her, only i never even fell for her. i was just flattered. there was no feelings there, and i barely even knew her.

and it was pretty messed up. she was ... eh. weird. i couldn't say exactly why. it was just a creepy feeling i got. slightly pedophilic, probably. heh. i remember the first week i was so flattered i didn't care. then we went to a movie together, along with two of my friends, and i think, in retrospect, she was trying to give me a handjob or something? but her hand was squeezing somewhere in the vicinity of my thigh, so it was doing nothing for me. i had no idea wtf she was doing at the time, so i was like wtf are you doing?

it mighta been that, that tipped me off. or hell, maybe she was just shy and untutored? who knows. anyway, after that things went downhill.

the over-16 high schoolers with cars could go off-campus for lunch, so she visited me in my junior high. first week that was great. second week, post-movie-experience, i started avoiding her. so during lunch i kept dragging my best friend into various classrooms to hide from the creepy older chick who i was, quote-unquote, dating. then the week after that, one of my friends ratted me out, and then she found me. and so i told her to please stop coming around because she should hang out with her own friends in high school.

and that was that. i came out of hiding, and i figured it was over, amicably. until, of course, the NEXT day, she showed up again. and i LOST it. "in true damon style" was how i put it the first time, and in true damon style was, indeed, how it was.

you gotta remember that at the time, i was still a kid. i still was only vaguely aware that people other than me also had hopes and fears, feelings and hurts. so, when i got mad, i let loose. and in front of all my friends, i started yelling at her to get out of my sight and never come around again because i never wanted to see her again.

the sort of shocked, frozen smile on her face (she'd shown up with a smile) was the thing i remember best about her. the actual break-up i in fact forgot all about until my best friend reminded me years and years later. i felt quite bad then. but that i have no memory of it myself, or didn't until reminded, probably says something about how much that whole affair meant to me.

***

so.

before joanna, in early 7th grade, i had SUCH a crush on Amber, the bad girl. we were in the same PE class and she was SUCH a rebel. i had such a crush on her, drawn to her badness. she was dirty blonde, and already kinda heroin-chic from smoking pot and dropping acid all the time. she had a boyfriend (actually, several during the course of the few months i knew her), apparently fucked all the time too, and knew everything there was to know. or, you know, at least pretended to. she kept lecturing us on techniques and special moves and how they blew her bf's mind, or bfs' minds, and i was SO in awe. i kept hoping she'd demonstrated her reportedly mindblowing bj techniques on me, but alas, no, it was one of those later on anonymous jr high flings that got me started on that.

anyway, Amber flunked all her classes because she flouted the authority of her teachers and simply refused to work. and in PE she walked all the miles and shit. so prior to that, i was always great at PE. and after that, i was always great. but that one year, i was like, flunking PE with her because i'd walk all the miles with her (along with this other guy and this other chick, all of whom were wowed by her bad-girl-ness) and talk shit about everything. i think that year was the year i learned to cuss like a sailor.

then she got expelled. she got sent to like the special school for rebel children, and that was that. i'm sure some part of me still looks for her, though. rebel bad girls. see, the burgundy haired girl rant, somewhere in this jumbled journal.

***

first true non-solo sexual experience: after joanna, first psycho gf, came a normalish stormy-jr-high-affair. hanging out, doing homework, walking home, screaming matches. i don't think we even made it to heavy petting. the gf AFTER that, or maybe the one after that?, we indulged in experimentation. she'd had an older bf before, so she knew a few tricks that hadn't made their way into my knowledge store yet.

right around then my dad had a little red celica, a sexy little manual sports car, and we'd go sit in it (parked in the garage!) all the time so we could turn the lights on and off, flick on turn signals, stomp the brake and pretend to drive. god, we were just kids.

but of course, soon enough we figured out cars were good for other things. so one thing led to another, and then one day she blew me in the front seat. i lasted about 30 seconds, and didn't reciprocate. didn't know how! but heh, it certainly made that car unforgettable.


***

after joanna, and after the normal shortlived jr high relationships, came the jr high prom. and man, this 7th grader asked me to go, but for some bizarre reason i said no (probably thought it wasn't cool to go w/ a 7th grader) and the irony is, i really liked her. i mean, i really really liked her. i thought she was really cool. it was just... at the moment i had a brain fart, said no, and then it was too late to renege. gah! such regret.

anyway so i ended up going with this 8th grader chick who was kinda a friend of a friend. and to put things into perspective, at this point i had had a few kisses, some pawing experience, but strictly above the belt on a girl. it was just a month or two after my very first bj experience, and still like... almost 2 years before i actually lost my virginity. so i had like. VERY LITTLE IDEA of female anatomy and physiology.

despite all that, kids were pretty, er, daring. so heh. at the prom, EVERYONE was grinding up on everyone else. and during this one dance my date was grinding against my thigh, wearing this short, pretty silverish dress, and i felt a certain moistness on my leg, through my slacks? and i swear, i had no idea wtf i was feeling. my first thought was, the fuck, did she piss on me? i think i didn't figure it out until i was thinking back in like. college.

man, this is turning into a litany of sex!

***

one more purely sexual landmark and then we can pass into the realm of The Ones That Got Away, i think.

anyway: first hands-down unequivocable sexual experience: the week after i turned 16, i drove my car to my very first REAL party. even the one where i met joanna didn't really count. my parents dropped me off, and my parents picked me up -- same with everyone else. we had to hide the beer in the morning. this one? the parents were off for the weekend, there were college kids there -- it was Sodom and Gomorrah.

so i met a chick there, who was a bit older. actually i never knew her well enough to know just how old, but my guess is 17-18. a few drinks went down, we went somewhere private (my memory has it as outside against a tree -- sounds exciting, but wasn't really -- but then my memory could be alcohol-fogged, and i also remember a case in one of the bedrooms. might've been two different parties, who knows) and got it on. it wasn't my first time with a chick, if you count bj's and hj's, but it was my first time. i think most first experiences involves 10 second timespans, but mine was kinda opposite. i was so nervous (and so drunk) that i had trouble getting going. heh. but, eventually things worked out, and that was the absolute end of my innocence.

afterwards we saw each other for about a week, but we never really hit it off while sober. so soon enough that evaporated.

***

roundabout the same time -- early high school -- i developed two major crushes. one was on my french teacher, who was about 26, and was tall and sleek and, well, FRENCH. god, i had such a crush. and it wasn't fair! she was so young and hot! and word had it her hubby was like 57 years old or something.

so, our high school was too big for the cafeteria, so we ate all over the school. me and my friends sat in this circle of benches set into a hill (the hill sloped up behind the bench, but was chopped away and bulwarked with posts, against which the benches were nailed -- if that makes sense?) around a big oak tree. it was a pretty unusual place because, as high school goes, cliques associate by geography, but "the circle", as we called it, was right smack in the center of several major avenues in the school. so my friends were really a minicross-section of the school. mainly, this was because my best friend was such a social animal, and made friends with everyone.

anyway, point is, the circle was also just outside the teacher's lounge. so every day without fail (except the days i wasn't there b/c of extracurricular crap or whatever), when the 10 minute bell rang, i'd be sitting there in my corner of the bench, up on the posts, waiting for la mademoiselle Clevenger to walk out.

i had french for 3 years, so sophomore year, i was still bright eyed and bushy tailed, scrawny, and it'd be a peppy "Hi Mademoiselle!"

then by senior year i was cool, man. i'd grown up by then, had my growth spurt and all, and varsity beach volleyball had packed some muscles on. and i was always kind of a ringleader among my friends, so i was way too cool to be peppy. but not too cool not to say hi. so she'd come around, and i'd have it down: this cool-as-arctic-ice nod up of my chin, and this slurred "suuup, ma'amselle."

i wonder wtf she made of all that. heh.

(and yes, those of you who've heard me tell the story before: i KNOW i always say that!)

***

after i hit my growth spurt in sophomore year and got on the varsity team my junior year, gfs came a little easier. ironically, though, the one girl i remember best out of high school -- well, okay, one of two -- was never my gf. never even close. but i was completely in love with her.

in my sophomore year, there was a girl in my 6th period class named evangeline. this is probably why i've always liked the name, and will usually give a girl named evangeline at least a second look on account of name alone. i used to think it was such a perfect name for her -- evangeline, angel. unusual, too, not too flashy -- not one of those pop names so popular at the time.

anyway, she had some sort of health issue. neurological. she wasn't nuts, but she did have terrible headaches that caused her to miss school all the time. when she was there, she was quiet, frail, and maybe because of her difficult situation, always seemed far and above everyone else around her. dignified; so mature. i felt like there was a wisdom to her, and maybe there was. she sat across the room from me and i spent most of my 6th period trying to catch a glimpse without looking like i was gawking. i'd invent excuses to look her way: maybe i was staring at the bulletin board behind her! or looking out the window!

i don't think i ever even spoke more than two words to her. she was a senior, so she was way out of my reach even if she'd been at school more. add her health problems to that, and she was just completely unattainable. i think i remember her best from this one sunny spring afternoon. the classrooms were arranged in rows lengthwise, so that there were no windows on the shorter walls, but windows on both the longer walls. on one wall they were big windows; on the other, little windows up high. the way the classroom was set up for this class, half the chairs were in rows 4 deep against one of the longer sides, and half against the other. there were also short rows against one of the shorter sides and the other short side was the "front" of the class. our teacher usually lectured while walking around the middle open area, though, and he was an awesome lecturer. it was a literature class.

digressing.

point is, she sat on the side of the class with the big windows, which faced the west. so in the afternoon the sun would shine in. the way i remember her was from this gorgeous spring afternoon -- one of those days where the sky is shatteringly blue between these big puffy white clouds, because it had just rained. and she was sitting there in this off-white sweater, one of those with long strands of thread coming off so it looked kinda furry. she was blonde, not yellow californian blonde, but this gorgeous, layered blonde that ran the gamut from pale to honey. her hair wasn't totally straight; it had a soft natural curve to it, waves, and she wore it slightly in-curved at the tips. her skin was porcelain-pale, totally flawless, taut over her cheekbones and fine jaw, though this probably had a lot to do with the fact that she often didn't feel well. and -- god, can you imagine it? the sun hitting her from behind, through the window, just lighting her up like that, incandescent? it was unforgettable. she was luminous. she glowed. i gawked.

oddly, i don't have any memories of her past that. i'm not sure if the semester ended and she went to a different class, or maybe if she left school due to health problems. anyway, i still remember the way she looked perfectly. it's the ones that got away that stick with you, and if you look through my writing, and look at the women i'm attracted to, or the women i dream up, and you'll see plenty of luminous, achingly lovely blondes who don't say much and seem to know a lot more.

***

last formative experience. most of my real experience with women has been in college and after; somehow, it still feels like these were the ones that shaped me, more or less. anyway: kelly. that's not how she spelled it, but name changed to protect the innocent.

every school has its popular clique, right? and at the top of the popular clique, the alpha female, around whom the school orbits. i mean, yeah. everyone hates her. and yeah, her popularity was probably secured by the popularity of her boyfriends. but when push comes to shove, it's the chicks that play the popularity game, and it's the chicks that really determine the pecking order. we were just the prize bulls they fought over, most the times, though sometimes one of us, by rejecting the top chick hard enough, could cause her to fall.

kelly, though.

heh, kelly.

NEVER have i met someone else quite like her, and from what i hear from other people, nor have they. she was something else. a different beast altogether. i knew her in 7th grade -- she was already the popular girl then. but in high school, all the popular girls from their own middle schools mesh together and start reforming cliques, which then climb up through the years and, sometime around junior year, clash for supremacy. or i think that's how it usually works. how it worked with kelly: the minute she stepped in, she was under the wing of the most popular clique in the school. freshman status notwithstanding. and by sophomore year, everyone deferred to her. i don't think anyone didn't know who she was. she had this cat look to her. narrow wideset eyes. ash-blonde hair, slightly wavy. and this permanent, slight curve to her mouth, which wasn't by any means a smile. i think in Mean Girls, there was a line about the queen bee -- she always looked fierce? well, that was kelly. she always looked fierce, and she NEVER smiled. except when she wanted something, or was going in for the kill.

my god, she was a bitch. my god, we all hated her. and my god, if she'd ever given me half a chance, i wouldn't have thought twice.

alas, i never rose above the status of peripheral acquaintance with her. i was on the varsity beach volleyball team, which meant i qualified as jock and knew the jocks, but i was also in AP classes and knew the nerds. that alone probably disqualified me. plus, i wasn't on the football team, and the lucky few in her orbit were all on the football team. usually. i think she briefly had a fling with the class president, too, who wasn't on any athletic team, but was wildly adored nonetheless.

so, yeah. i brushed close enough, at least in the few brief weeks in... what was it, junior year? ...that i hung out with them in the jock area. talked to her a few times, but she always smiled more at someone else, or laughed harder at someone else's joke. grrr. and eventually i settled for one of her friends as gf, but that's a bitter pill to swallow when you'd come so close to the center of the (school's) universe. and i've never been good at staying close to what i couldn't have. it drives me nuts. so soon enough the relationship with her friend fell apart, and when that fell apart, i went back to the circle, somewhat humbled.

sometimes i think the truth of the matter is, though, that the perfect woman in my mind? the ice queen i rave about? in the end, it's just the impossible amalgamation of amber, evangeline and kelly. i mean, i can trace out roots in each of those three. the ones that got away, and all that.

ok -- tired of writing now!