Role Reversal

Today I'm going to avoid the controversy that is swirling around in my head that makes me want to punch clean through a wall...again... and write about something, someone who in the past two weeks or so has provided me with an unbridled and uninterrupted happiness that I haven't seen the likes of in literally years.

I suppose it fits the pattern that the day I don't spend my time thinking that my phone is ringing because they're answering my last text at work when in fact they aren't and it's just my imagination wanting the phone to be ringing, I'll pause here to let you re-read that bit, is the day that that happy-streak ends with a thud in the late hours of a day.

I'm going to go ahead and assume that she isn't reading this because I can really think of only a few people that might regularly read whatever I have to say semi-regularly and she isn't included in that short list. It's not that I don't want her to know eventually, but it's not the kind of thing I want to leave to a blog post to describe directly. So here's the brief description of why this girl has such an effect on me:

I am a person that likes to say a lot of things. I like to say how I'm feeling almost obsessively, I like to share funny little anecdotes so that I can see people laugh and in turn make myself laugh, and every once in a while I love saying things that border on insane, just to see what reactions I can get out of people.

There are two other people, besides the target of my... I don't really want to call if affection because that seems a bit forward... crush, I suppose, that would react with an equally insane and/or downright hilarious response. It's something I value highly in people, and it's no coincidence that both of the other people that would give those reactions are people I can tell anything to.

You might be asking yourself "Is that all?" or questioning whether that's reason enough to care about someone. You're right to do so, but you've all seen enough movies to have heard "she's smart, funny, and above all downright gorgeous" enough times to make statements like that redundant. Plus, as a writer I feel I can be a bit more creative than that.

I think it might be inappropriate to call her a godsend, both due to my beliefs and that it's once again quite an overbearing description, but I was actually pretty depressed for a time after graduation reaching on into my first experience of the new and exciting world that is college, and talking to her profoundly turned everything completely around.

Working 8 hours was enjoyable (seriously, enjoyable) because at random intervals I could step off to the side and read what she'd just texted me. Not just bearable, mind you. Straight enjoyable. You've all likely seen what I have to say about various aspects of my job to know how much of a turnaround that is.

I needed this. I was ready to explode an hour ago. Now I'm just simmering.

A sample of things to come

This is a small little taste of the new project I've started working on in the wake of my completion of American Gods. It's a Fantasy story, without all of the knights, chivalry, etc.

This is an aside that I thought up at work. You'll recognize Llewellyn Graves' name, but rest assured it's not the same character in the slightest, I just put it in for now until I think of a better name. You'd think I'd choose a name without so many L's, but whatever.

Margaret Tennyson stood at the sink of her kitchen, wiping the leftovers of dinner into the drain and scrubbing the plates clean. The room was quiet, spare the running water and the clink of dinner plates, though down the hallway, her son Robby was strumming at an old acoustic guitar aimlessly. Her husband Walter was in the living room, snoring over the static of a music player that had played all of its songs.

She looked out at the rest of the town through the small window just above the sink. The red sand looked just as vivid in the twilight as it did when the sun was highest in the sky. Some of it was picked up in the breeze and blew onto the footpath leading to the Tennyson’s front door.

She stared out of the window wistfully as if she was trying to recollect some of the more glorious days of old. She grasped at them, only to feel them dissolve in her hands. As quickly as she’d remembered them they were gone, faded into the deep blue of the night sky.

She noticed a boy no older than 19 staring at her from the sidewalk. It was the young Llewellyn Graves from the end of the street. He was standing on the side of the road, his hands buried in his long navy jacket’s pockets to protect them from the blistering cold. He produced a gloved hand from one of the pockets and waved one big wave with it, his face beaming with a broad smile.

She went back to cleaning the dishes. She thought she heard a mumbled request from her husband in the living room. She turned, plate in hand, to see if her husband needed anything. As she did, the plate slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. It shattered into several pieces with a loud crash. She’d crouched down in an effort to catch it, but it was already too late.

She remained crouched, waiting for Walter to come into the kitchen and start beating her upon finding the mess. She waited, her eyes closed meditatively as she braced for the oncoming pain, in complete silence for a few moments. Walter had stopped snoring and Robby’s strumming had stopped abruptly with an odd final note that sounded more like a violent impact between the ground and the instrument than an actual orchestrated series of notes.

After ten seconds, Walter started to snore again, almost simultaneous with Robby’s continued strumming. She opened her eyes. The plate sat, completely intact, on the floor in front of her. She picked it up, examining it with an astounded look on her face. It was the exact same plate, down to the slight chip near its center. It was also, somehow, now completely spotless even though there was a smattering of Chicken Cordon Bleu across it when she had dropped it.

She turned back to the sink. The plates that had been piled into the sink just a minute earlier were now neatly stacked next to it, glistening in the twilight. Above the sink on a windowsill sat a vase with a single red rose in it. She hesitantly walked towards it, plucking the flower from the vase and pressing it up against her nose.

The fumes almost intoxicated her. There was a vibrant, flowery aroma, stronger than any single smell that she’d ever smelled before. Images flowed back into her: bridal showers, weddings, baby showers, birthdays, long nights out with a young and attractive Walter. The old days. The good days. She inhaled the scent deeply and she remembered those days. The corners of her mouth slowly started to rise as if the aroma itself were pulling them up.

She looked back out of the window. Llewellyn Graves was making his way down the street, hands still dug deep into his pockets. Margaret Tennyson looked back at the night sky and, for the first time for what seemed like an eternity, she saw the stars.

My Literary Future

Today I did something that you'd get a slap in the face and a "AHAHAHA! BULLSHIT!" for if you ever told my parents about it.

I finished a book.

I bet you thought I was going to say something like illicit like "I smoked close to my bodyweight in marijuana" or "I drank enough to get an elephant buzzed". That might get the same response, but alas, my life is not that interesting.

I'll concede that it was actually an audiobook, but seeing as it was the same story being told I don't see all that much of a difference. Besides, I work a job that sees me spending 3+ hours on my own, undisturbed. Since I can't usually find the time or the drive to sit down and read, I saw this time as a perfect opportunity to "take in", in lieu of another acceptable term, American Gods by my new favorite author Neil Gaiman.

It inspired me.

It's a book about the gods of old, like Odin and Anansi and all the rest, fighting against the new gods, like Technology and Media. It's not really that simple, of course, but the way Gaiman describes mundane things and makes them bearable and in some cases downright entertaining sent me on a little writing tear.

I decided... or rather Inigo Rane decided... to pick up a little story I started writing last year. It never left the introduction, as just about every one of my stories don't, but after reading American Gods I started getting new ideas and new ways to portray them.

But 500 words into it, I stopped and thought. I really, really want to make a career out of writing. It is probably the one thing that I do exceptionally well and, quite honestly, it's the only thing outside of working a $15/hour job for the rest of my life that I could conceivably make a career out of.

So I decided to give myself a challenge. By the time I go to Missouri in the fall, I will finish this story that I started in the wake of American Gods. I'm going to try make it at least 75,000 words, though considering how much I've written compared to how far along the story is it'll probably crest 100,000 by the end. In addition, as hard as I'm going to try to make it fantasmigorical on ten different levels, I don't really care how good the final product is. If I finish it, and it's at the very least readable, I'll be satisfied and continue on my journey to be a bestselling author.

I know a few people might not have liked her for various reasons, but something the Professor from my college English class will always stick with me: "You're a great writer. You're going to be a writer someday if you want to be."

Considering she said that after reading one of the essays I wrote literally seven hours earlier, I think I'm in pretty good shape.

Post-Trip/Uber-Tired Rant

I guess the first part to this is informing you that I am debuting what I like to call the Sex Machine in this blog.

The technical term for it would be a 13" MacBook Pro, but I much prefer Sex Machine. It could be confused with a machine that delivers sex, but then you wouldn't be confusing it because that's exactly what it does. Say what you want about Apple, you haven't lived until you drag four fingers down on a mousepad and make the screen do weird shit.

But the meat and potatoes of this piece is what you came here for, no doubt. You don't care about the Sex Machine, at least as much as I do, so let's talk about something you don't care about slightly less.

When I left Plano on Saturday morning, I have to admit I was a little down. This was due to a number of things. Firstly, rejection is a bitch. Even if it has sound reasoning behind it, it's a mega bitch-ass bitch. That's not to say that the person dealing the rejection is in any way the same, because that'd be kind of stupid if I didn't like the person in question enough to be in a position where rejection is a viable option and end up you know what I lost where this is going but let's just leave it at rejection is a bitch and move on to:

Secondly, I'm still not really believing that I'm a college student. I've just been through orientation and I still don't believe. Imagine what it was like on Saturday. It still feels like I'm staying up later than I should and I should stop writing and maybe get some damn sleep so I'm not late to English tomorrow (or today, given the time). I hate to say it, but I'm kind of unsettled. Plano is what I've called home for the last 12 or 13 years, and now I'm about to leave.

Thirdly, I spent probably around 20 hours in a car this weekend. About 8 of those hours were spent in Oklahoma.

Fourthly, I spent about 8 hours in Oklahoma. Seriously the worst state in the union, and I haven't even been to Kentucky yet (I'm sure they'd just LOVE me there).

Story time. There's a McDonalds that arches over the turnpike in a town called Vinita. It was the single most depressing place I've ever been to, and I've been to a Young Republicans meeting (HI-YOOOOOOOOOOOOO no seriously I've never been to one). The first thing I saw on the way in was the Will Rogers Mini-Museum. It's a bookcase, maybe two, of stuff that Will Rogers, whoever the fuck that is, did. Apparently he wore cowboy hats and smiled for pictures a lot. That's what I gathered from briefly glancing at it before shouting "Mini-Museum?! HAH!", anyways.

The second thing I saw was quite possibly the dingiest fast food joint I've ever seen, connected to the saddest collection of souvenirs I've ever seen (Who would want to buy a T-Shirt that openly admits they've been to Oklahoma?), and populated by possibly the most entertaining people I've ever seen.

There were two Cherokee kids playing with one of those prize machines (I would make a joke about slot machines in casinos here, but that might be racist), too many old guys in ponytails, and a working staff at McDonalds that was just SO happy to be there (read: on suicide watch).

They didn't take the cake, though. We got in line, or at least got in the general vicinity of what we perceived to be a line, behind these two girls, maybe 2-3 years older than us. They also had about 4-5 children no older than four hanging off of their limbs and running around them on the floor. We asked whether or not they were in line, because somehow they made it hard to tell, and after a few seconds we actually did get a, quite bitchy, 'yes'.

When my dad brought our food over to the table I found overlooking the turnpike (where a family of three guys talked about what it would take to jump off of the turnpike: "All you'd hafta do is jump over them walls", a father-son lesson I never received because my dad was... well... competent), I hypothesized that the reason it took so long for the girls to answer us was that they thought they felt something drop out between their legs again and had to make sure it was nothing before they called Child Services.

So when I'm done eating, I look over at my car to check if any rowdy Oklahomans had broken into my car and taken the Sex Machine away from me before I could experience it in all of its splendor. You know that saying "Don't go swimming until 30 minutes after you've eaten"? The same should apply for viewing PDA (public displays of affection for the acronym impaired amongst you), ESPECIALLY when the girl is in her 40s at the earliest and the guy is WELL into his 60s and is driving A FUCKING CADILLAC TOWNCAR, otherwise known as the Old Person Mobile or more simply put, the hearse.

That one slid into the list of things I never want to see again just under "half of my high school class".

Thank You

Today I did something that I haven't done in a very long time.

It's not the most masculine thing to admit, but honestly I don't really give a fuck. I cried. Pretty hard. I didn't cry when it looked like I was going to fail economics and by extension my senior year of high school, I didn't cry when I realized that my further education would put such an enormous financial burden on both myself and my parents, and I didn't cry when, at various points in the year, I felt like something worthless beyond words.

I didn't even cry last week when my world continually shifted from perfect to abysmal at an alarmingly regular rate. I tried to cry then. I thought that doing that which I hadn't done in months would cleanse away all of the pent up emotions and feelings inside, that it would make everything normal again.

And that's really why I started crying tonight, or the early this morning if you're that picky. The word "normal" means something completely different now. A few months ago it was go to bed around 2, wake up at 8 or 9 depending on the day (though that's really 8:30 and 9:30, modestly), go to school, get out of school, go to either work or something hockey related, and then go home, rinse, and repeat. There might have even been some schoolwork mixed in there at some point.

Now what does "normal" mean? I don't really have any idea. I'm in limbo right now. Out of high school but not in college yet. I doubt I'll adjust to that until I turn 19, but I'd be dissatisfied if I said that the lifestyle change is what's bugging me.

Because really it's not. It's you. Yes, you. This is addressed to all of you reading this, assuming I have spoken to you or have some kind of association with you. I sit here, having walked across a stage in downtown Dallas not 24 hours ago to receive a "diploma", and I realize that the one single thing that I'm going to miss about Plano in all of its broiling hot splendor is all of you.

And I have a message for all of you.

No matter how much I've shouted at you, no matter how many different variations of the word "motherfucker" I've used to describe you, and no matter how much I've disagreed vehemently with you, I love you. There were points in my life where I really didn't see a point in getting up and going through my normal routine, and I really believe that if it weren't for all of you, I wouldn't have.

Some of you have made me laugh uproariously, some of you have almost made me blow an artery in anger, and some of you have even made me cry, both tears of joy and sorrow. But all of you have had at least some impact on my life, shaping me into the wild-haired and unshaven vagrant you see today.

That's not saying you haven't done a good job of it, just that I prefer the whole "wild man in the forest" look to being clean cut.

But yes, I love all of you. Next year and for all of the years afterwards, I'll miss all of you dearly. I might see a few of you along the way, maybe even get to know a few of you even better than I do now. For the rest of you, don't go thinking about forgetting me. You'll still need to know a little bit about me when a familiar name shows up on the front of a New York Times Bestseller and/or a Pulitzer prize.

Inclosing, thank you all so much for the last 1-18 years. You still have no idea how much all of you mean to me even after I've smacked you in the face with it since the beginning of this diatribe.

Aftermath.

And then, that feeling hits and you reach for the 'reset' button.

That Feeling

There is a feeling that I always seem to get in the pit of my stomach when I know something's wrong or is about to go wrong. I'm getting that feeling again today.

I regret to inform all of you that, yes, this is another semi-rant about relationships and my lack thereof. I realize that I write quite a few of these, to put it mildly, but as I've stated time and time again, the purpose for me keeping a blog was to get my feelings out into the open.

So, in case you can't tell from that pretty piss poor piece of poetry from the middle of May, I like a girl. A girl that I spent quite a bit of time with over the course of the year. There are three, maybe four people that know who she is, and according to one of them they had no idea that I had such feelings.

Here's the weird part though. Usually I don't get that aforementioned feeling until after I've been thrown up in the air and shot down with a large caliber rifle. I don't really feel pathetic and hopeless until after the words "get the fuck away from me" or some variation thereof are spoken or written. For some reason or another, I'm getting this feeling now, before she even knows about it.

All I have to support the theory that this is the beginning, middle, and end of the discussion on the topic is my self-loathing "she wouldn't even if she did know" line of reasoning. I mean, it's never really failed in the past and history does have a tendency to repeat itself.

But my god. Every time before I get that feeling, there are a series of especially warm ones. As I mentioned, I've seen this particular girl quite a bit over the course of the year, and in the month that I've felt something for her, I've lit up every time I'm around her. I make an extra effort to be funny around her, with varying results, just so I can see that amazing smile of hers. Every day is a reminder of that wonderful trait of being... just plain weird. Different. One of a kind.

Cliche, you say? Absolutely. Then again, the human spirit is rife with cliches just waiting to explode at the first sign of affection.

As much as those warm feelings have existed, raising the corners of my mouth even as I write this, I still can't shake that dismal feeling. My instincts have been good about warning me of oncoming storms in the recent past. It's almost worth saying that I'm praying that they're wrong this time.