This Blog Has A Flavor...Bacon!

Okay guys, in something almost unprecedented I'm giving you not one, not two but three blogs today (counting this one). The one directly beneath this one is an objective view of New Year's while the one following it is more of a personal touch on everything I've been through over the passing year. So pick your poison, choke down a healthy dose of alcohol, and reflect as appropriate. See you in the New Year.

Would you like some Chesse with your Whiny Bitch Syndrome?

The New Year began with nothing so spectacular as a raucous party or a mind numbing hook up, but rather with relative quiet serenity brought about by the blue wash of a television. Enjoying the company of close friends and relishing the warmth of being off the street and away from the chaos outside, it could have been more, but it most definitely could have been worse. Embracing the coming year meant accepting the passing of old things, lying to rest some juvenile tendencies, relishing the coming events and looking beyond my own shortsighted endeavors. Old friends had passed into the wayside, but new friends were made. I ended the most debilitating relationship I’ve ever been in, courted a new lady friend and realized that my powers of deduction and reasoning were not isolated to one person but that I could form a deep emotional connection with someone I hadn’t seen in a decade. While the ramifications of the realization served to splinter the dynamic, mainly out of fear, it did serve as validation of a talent that all too often I downplay and regard with humility. Aside from the relationship stuff I suffered some of the wickedest vitriol ever dished out by my father, saw the limits of my emotional capacity realized and found that I am capable of enduring incredible things. I welcomed my nephew into the world, which I’m still unsure of how to regard so indifference is the chosen response. I invested in my car, obtained two jobs, and realized above all else that I’m a better person than I give myself credit for being.

I’m not nearly as emotionally callous as I claim to be, unless I choose to be, and in that I’ve found that I’m exactly where I want to be, in complete control of my emotions, able to connect, commit, and feel as I choose. I have also learned incredible things. While the edict I clung to before my dalliance with Nicole was one which asserted all feeling to be a form of weakness, I now see that extreme emotion can be debilitating if left unchecked. I reeled in my own hubris, ascribed the worst of my habits to my own choices, and made conscious efforts to limit them.

Aside from all of the emotional growth, the relationship learning, and the sordid bouts of romance, let me leave you with something a bit more up lifting. Right now, for many, life is too mired in the shortcomings that we’re forced to recognize every day. Not enough money, too many bills, not enough time, too much drama, things seeming too hard, a slew of things, situations, people, and circumstances that seem far too daunting and imposing for us to endure or survive. But take it from someone who has seen the ugly side of what life has to offer, there is good out there. I have endured unimaginable things in my life, family so fractured and polarized as to elicit silent cries of emotional agony, the scathing expression of deep emotion that comes to little more than strung together sounds, and some of the most heart wrenching goodbyes you can imagine. But there is still good in the world. I’ve been lucky enough to surround myself with some of the best friends money can’t buy, a mind and an intellect sharp enough to accept and adapt to the ever changing circumstances, and an as yet unbreakable resolve to persevere and endure the worst the world can throw at me.

So do me a favor guys, before you go washing your hands of the passing year and relegating all that is to be learned from it, take a moment to reflect on all you’ve been through, all that you’ve seen, all of the good times, all of the bad experiences, every moment you can remember and embrace it for all that it is. Good cannot exist without evil, and thus we cannot appreciate our blessings unless we acknowledge our shortcomings. Be thankful for all you’ve endured because, trust me on this, it all works to make us far better people than who we would be otherwise. See you guys in the New Year, may it be better than the passing one, but just as enlightening and full of opportunities for growth.

-T

It's not all bad...Right?

2009 saw numerous things for me personally. The New Year began with more of a whimper than a bang. I sat silent and nonplussed as the clock chimed twelve. The exuberance being felt at countless parties and relished by so many lovers across the land was lost on me. My love was no doubt cradled in the arms of someone else, her lips pressed against someone that was not me. Such was my lot in life. I sat quietly contented on the couch of a friend’s house, the TV serving more as white noise than anything to actually command my rapt attention. My phone idly buzzed and flashed messages of well wishing and celebration, but my heart hung heavy as I waited for the only message I really wanted. It arrived twenty-one minutes after midnight and simple said, “I love you baby, Happy New Year Pig. Feel me”. The euphoria that surged through me was unparalleled. For those brief few moments I was elated.

Nicole and I had endured the normal death knell of our relationship, the Holiday Season, and come out alive. No break ups, no terse words, no fighting, I even got her gifts. All seemed right with the world. The year progressed slowly, the days ticking by idly. Valentine’s Day came and went and little more was said than a passing acknowledgement of Singles Awareness Day. March began and served as one of the heaviest hearted months I’ve ever had to endure. Nicole’s two year wedding anniversary was looming just ahead and with it a deadline I’d imposed the previous December. She had to make a choice. As each day drew closer to the 24th, anxiety and fear permeated every fiber of my being. At last the Monday before arrived and she sat stoically upon my bed and delivered the words I hoped I wouldn’t hear. To be honest it came as no real surprise, her own fear and guilt had compounded in a way that left her unable to emotionally connect. Imagine my surprise at the realization that I had found and fallen for someone more emotionally stunted than myself.

The deadline came, harsh words were said, but still nothing changed. Within a month of that night we were back to behaving as though nothing had changed. Then came the announcement that she’d be moving by August and our relationship, such that it was, would end. I set out to try to make her stay and also to find ways to cushion the emptiness she would leave. No amount of talking, pleading, reasoning, deduction, or placating would bring about a reversal of what had already been set in motion.

The months wore on with little more being done or said to alleviate the impending chaos. I devoted time to my car, worked my ass off, and kept myself busy in a myriad of ways. The end of May saw my first face to face meeting with Natalie. I had stored her number in my phone back in February but had declined calling it as I was contented and too afraid of what may have been with Nicole. The meeting went well, albeit nothing of consequence happened. I returned to my life and embraced, as best I could, what was to come working diligently to keep the truth of the entire affair hidden from all but my most trusted friends. A month before Nicole was to leave me forever I set about making final preparations. I backed up the few letters and messages from my Myspace that held any meaning and deleted an account I had opened back in 2005. I also began to try to compartmentalize my feelings in an effort to keep them from consuming me.
A few weeks before Nicole took off, I found myself diverting my affections to a girl I’d not yet met. Entranced by a photo and enamored with what I could ascertain through my own observances I found myself intrigued and infatuated. Finally, through the facilitations of a mutual friend, Jessica and I finally came face to face. A most peculiar meeting to be sure, as she looked every inch the knockout I’d envisioned, and I was covered in sweat, grease, dirt, and countless other forms of grime. I’d spent the afternoon working on Jeremy’s Mustang and was covered in head to toe in the tell tale signatures of automotive work. Jessica and I began talking, and a mutual attraction seemed evident, but our own emotional hang ups served to be our undoing. I was nowhere close to letting go of Nicole, and Jessica still found herself harboring feelings for her ex. It was destined for doom before it began.

Nicole called me August 1 to say goodbye and less than a half hour later she and I were staring into each other’s eyes for what would be the last time. So many things left unsaid, so many feelings left unresolved, and yet we let it happen; heedless of the cost. Hours later I found myself trying to hold Jessica and recapture the feelings I’d had earlier that afternoon, to no avail. Jessica’s own proclivities toward physical affection were decidedly different than Nicole’s and trying to ascribe the same patterns of behavior to another person could only be described as being foolish at best. The late nights and early morning wore on and in the end all either of us had to show for our attempted trickery of ourselves was a couple awkward sexual encounters, some laughs, and a reaffirmed understanding that we really wanted people other than each other.

Silence is a funny thing. It can comfort you, give you peace, serenity, clarity, and an oneness with your own soul, or it can cripple you, wreak havoc on your mind and leave you battered and psychologically beaten. For me silence held solace from the immediate pain that followed Nicole’s departure and then it gave way to a chaos of the mind that, I have no doubt, would have consumed lesser men. Assailed by countless images and memories, eventually I managed to construct a mindset where I had achieved emotional detachment from the horrors that plagued me. While saying that I had found my peace from the devils of that time would be an outright lie, I have found a way to live each day without the pangs of want, longing, and misery that plagued me for so many days and nights. So in many ways I’m better. A part of me will always belong to her, will always be connected, and will always feel her. It’s inescapable that when you are that close to someone you begin to live in tandem. But persevere, survive, and endure I must, after all, no one else is going to save your sorry asses from the zombie invasion.

Phantoms...

Days later and still I find my thoughts muddled. My conscious mind consumed by something more than the simple conundrums of understanding, I am possessed that which is the most volatile of cancers, hope. Unable to let go of history, still wracked by the visions, bombarded by the stagnant phantoms of feelings what once was, pining away for what could never have been. Perhaps solace will find me in sleep, I think I need more Tool

Interesting Habits...

Why is it that the keys to our own damnation are sewn into the very fabric of our proclivities? I have been good, I've managed to stay the course and abide the terms of the handed down finality with little recourse or reason to seek absolution beyond what is readily given. Yet now I stand peering blindly into the past, heedless of the cost I know I will inevitably pay. No sin goes unpunished. I teeter, knowing full well what I'm in danger of falling into, what I will become. For all my inner strength, presence of mind, unconquerable will, every ounce of power I wield I am rendered impotent. I am left unable to assert myself, unable to accept logic and reason, so consumed by an aching heart...still the drama unfolds. Unable to escape, unable to fight, a titan muted and made a slave his own hubris. Pride is truly my sin, a sin compounded by limitless passion and unrivaled loved.

A Very Merry Fuck You, and A Happy Go To Hell!

December is for most a time when the hustle and bustle of gift buying and exchanging is paramount on their list of things to do, and they set about extolling their dangerous festive mindset to anybody within earshot. Self centered selfish kids make up mile long lists of shit they feel they are owed, and expect morbidly obese bearded man (who may or may not be a pedophile) to deliver them, no questions asked.

So where to begin with this shit storm of things that seek to induce projectile vomiting? Do we start with the fat man that defies all conventions of what children are taught? Or with the obligatory gift giving that permeates the month? Or how about the myriad of lame parties all seeking to show off someone’s home or reacquaint forgotten friends with each other in the hopes of expanding the haul of gifts? Or perhaps we begin with the spewing of good tidings from people we don’t know and how they impose the expectation that we stand behind their religious ideology for a holiday that has been too far commercialized to really have any religious symbolism left in it?

I think I’ll start with the fat man and see where we end up. Now most any realistic parent will tell you that they stable their dislike for the holiday and simply endure the bullshit for the sake of their children. Now these children are another matter entirely. Too many books written on positive reinforcement and how to properly discipline your child focusing on reasoning with the child instead of going old school and doing it the way your parents did it, have produced an entire generation of children that feel they are in charge and able to dictate to anyone how to have their way. So these kids are pandered to with TV shows so insipid and thought destroying that they begin to exist in a world where everything has a neat solution and nothing terribly bad ever really happens.

Now this same crop of snot nosed, self serving, juice box drinkers make up huge lists of demands to be forwarded to an morbidly obese fat man with the expectation that he’ll deliver a slew of crap free of charge and without expectation for recompense, furthering the belief these kids have of the world provided free lunches at every turn. Now the down side is that the majority of these kids will pitch a huge fit if their exact demands are not met in any way.

The true meat of this demon though is not just in the way that it furthers the idea of entitlement to a generation of kids that already feel they’re owed the world, or even the fact that it rewards children already so spoiled rotten that their parent’s bargain with them when they misbehave instead of just outright beating their asses, but instead, the problem lies in the double standard it promotes. All year long children are told to ignore and avoid contact with “strangers”. However for one month out of the year, kids are encouraged to write long letters flaunting all of the half assed good things they’ve done, exemplified, or exhibited over the past eleven months, most of which comes under the heading of just not being a complete ass of a child, and they mail their ramblings en masse through an already failing postal system to a guy they’ve never met, let alone actually seen outside of a TV special. The double standard doesn’t end here though, oh no. See I’m going to take it a step further, because when a child believes in an invisible fat man employing midgets in a socialist setting without the benefit of time off, pension plans, retirement, vacation, unions, or even a business model that falls under the eye of Fair Work and Labor Board, that child is considered young, innocent, pure, or unaware of the depravity that exists outside of his perfect little suburban life. However if an adult believes in anything unseen or verified by the rest of society at large (see Bigfoot, Son of Sam, or your local crazy hobo) or as is told in so many useless holiday movies, they actually believe themselves to be the slave driving white man with the beer gut and the dangerously high cholesterol, that adult is committed to a rubber room, made to stand trial, or just genuinely seen to be a massive pain in the ass for the rest of society. What makes it okay for a kid to believe in shit that makes no sense but it’s not okay for an adult? I mean we don’t institutionalize people for believing the bible, even though ninety percent of what comes from it is bullshit and used by people like the Westboro Baptist Church to promote hate, intolerance, and bigotry. So why the difference in treatment? I mean we’ll pay a guy to dress up in a red suit and let a slew of screaming, whining, selfish, sick brats sit on the guy’s lap and ask for useless shit, but if the guy in the suit claims himself to actually be the real douche bag he’s portraying then we have him committed for being a danger. It’s like adult society insists that you can’t adhere to the belief that Santa Claus is real, but by the same token, if you’re a kid you almost have to. Your parents actually promote you writing letters asking for free stuff to a guy that is essentially a slave driver making exclusive use of a class of people with a medically defined handicap that escapes crimes against humanity charges because he doesn’t turn a profit from the products he distributes.

All I’m saying is that if we’re going to teach children that strangers are bad, don’t promote a letter writing campaign to someone they’ve never met, and further more doesn’t really exist. And if it’s okay for kids to believe in shit that is very plainly not real, and perfectly acceptable for two thirds of the human population to believe in miracles, a bearded man living in the clouds, and a guy that dresses in drag that can turn water into alcohol, why are we keeping the more interesting among us locked up? It just doesn’t make much sense to me.

The gift giving is another issue for me because it’s not done out of genuine want, or even out of any sense of altruism, but rather out of obligation. My ex girlfriend hated receiving gifts, but dammit if she didn’t buy one for everybody (sans myself, which always seemed a little weird, it’s like she was married or something), but as much as she professed to do it out of her want to make people happy, I know she did it out of obligation. And most of you buy gifts the same way, you tell yourselves that it’s because you want to, because it will make the people you care most about happy, or that it’s all in the spirit of the season, but really it’s all out of obligation and the fervent hope that if you invest enough time and energy in it, you’ll get something in return that isn’t a huge steaming ball of dog shit. The exchange of gifts has become the primary reason for even passing acknowledgment of the season, with countdowns of how many shopping days are left, organized gift exchanges at both the work place and in social life, and countless commercials, emails, and advertisements championing the “perfect gift”. Just as Thanksgiving is a holiday set aside to promote gluttony, Christmas seems to have been established to encourage greed. Gifts are even given to people we hardly see or like, as peace offerings to bury long gone disputes shrouded in the mists of the past. In-laws that are greeted through clenched teeth, extended family that is hardly known or recognized is welcomed into the home so long as they have an object in hand, and all of them privy to heaps of useless, mass marketed bull shit.

Now if the pandering to kids and the mindless buy in by parents who know they’re perpetuating a bullshit story wasn’t enough, we have countless, and I do mean countless, songs, TV specials, movies, books, stories, shirts, and ceremonies that blast the holiday into the consciousness. You can’t turn around, spit, yell or punch someone without being told to have a happy holiday, wished season’s greetings, or hearing someone spout some tiding of good cheer. The songs are perhaps the most asinine as they promote things that are very decidedly un-Christmas. Rudolph is a ridiculed and insulted reindeer that is harassed, ostracized, insulted and generally disliked member of his species but when the fat man comes asking for assistance due to unforeseen weather conditions, the oft disparaged animal freely acquiesces and the night is saved. The song promotes acceptance of social out casting on the pretense that if suffered long enough individual talents shine through. It’s a topic for another post, but too often ridicule stifles natural development of what could be wonderful abilities in an effort to fit in.

The TV specials promote the notion that no matter how catastrophic the situation all can be made right with a song, a positive attitude, and good will. Sorry kids but the truth is that if your mommy, daddy, grandma, or uncle is on a plane that goes down somewhere in the Rockies, no amount of singing is going to save grandma from hypothermia or starvation. I think they should bring back episodes of The Twilight Zone just to show how weird the world really is.

The movies are just advertising gimmicks that seek to make people warm and fuzzy but reminding us what a family Christmas is all about in storybooks and how little real life is able to resemble it. Families scattered to the furthest reaches of the globe are supposed to come together for a single day of the year, bury old wounds, and share a meal in the interest of good tidings and cheer. In truth most families today are lucky to hear from long lost relatives, let along see them. Tall trees, heavily decorated homes and fresh made eggnog, with the biggest problem at hand being a good moral lesson needing delivery to make someone come home and feel loved, it makes for some really entertaining television. But the truth is that this fairy tale idea of families coming together and feeling closer and working through any hardship together is little more than fabricated fodder meant to call up ideas of a Leave it to Beaver idealism that is long gone and forgotten.

All in all, the holiday wouldn’t be so fucking abhorrent to me if it would just put aside the pretense and exhibit a little honesty. It’s a time of year set aside to promote commercialism, greed, and the accumulation of useless shit, wrapped in the ideation of goodwill and warm feelings, and topped with a bow of pedantic cheer and all of it meant to elicit the behavior of decency that we should show anyway. Dress it up however you like, it’s still an evil holiday, it still stands for little more than corporate greed and commercialism, and at the end of the day, the closest connection you can have with family is the same you share the rest of the year. Getting an overpriced piece of shit in a box isn’t going to endear someone to you anymore than they already are unless your affection can be bought, in which case you should just admit you’re shallow and kill yourself.

Welcome to the machine...

The holiday season, it’s a time for families to get together, people to put aside their differences and help each, a time of year when the whole of society comes together as one and we share in the harmony and company of our fellow man. NOT! This is the holiday season Hallmark would love to sell you. The kind of bullshit you see on TV and in countless specials, and for what point and purpose? How does any of this drivel make out lives any better? It’s mass commercialism packaged in such as to appeal to the basest instincts we still carry that we shouldn’t be shallow self serving assholes.

But let’s strip away the entirety of the coloring book veneer and look at what it really is. We’ll attack this hydra one head at a time and move forward. First on the list is Thanksgiving. A shallow useless holiday devoted to best excesses of our society. A day when already fat, unhealthy, lazy, useless middle class people gather together to consume exorbitant amounts of food and alcohol in the implied interest of sharing a meal with those closest to them. Now here’s my issue with this, Thanksgiving started as a puritanical holiday first idealized as a celebration for the sickly, starving, and barely functional puritans to commemorate a bountiful harvest. Not the first culture to do it. The ancient Romans would host entire week long events to show their gratitude for good harvests. But the puritans put out this lavish spread invite their peace loving Native American neighbors to dinner and sit down to a meal of quail and venison and preach god’s word to the savage people. And if you believe that story I’ve got some beach front property located in sunny tornado free Kansas just outside Topeka that I’m looking to sell for cheap. Don’t miss this great deal. It’s a bullshit story. The puritans barely had food to survive much less squander and thus chose to eat up and eat hearty while things were still fresh and had less chance of killing them. Somehow in the four hundred years since that first observation it has become a day when people gorge themselves on a myriad of foods and sweets and then spend the rest of the day mired in a personal hell of family and friends.

So enough with the history lesson and borderline evangelical touting of the intended religious ideation. The holiday as it stands today is a time for people to load up their loud, obnoxious children and tote them to all corners of the country to be with family they can’t stand and don’t want anything to do with, all for a free meal and some vacation time. But the relaxation never comes. Somehow there’s always a matriarch that is pulling her hair out trying to get everything done and coordinating the placement of tables, food, seating, which family members are going to be in attendance, and trying earnestly to pry her useless and uninterested husband from the couch for last minute errand to the store for salt, sugar, KY Gel, or whatever last minute trimming has been forgotten. The men sit around and watch a football game as though it were the Super Bowl while drinking ridiculous amounts of beer and chips. The children run screaming through the house, looking for anything to keep them occupied, while avoiding cousins they barely know and dodging grandparents far too steeped in boredom so as to become menaces to the privacy of the child. And that’s all before the meal is actually served. Inevitably there’s the single jaded aunt who’s pissed off for no decent reason you’re ever made aware of, that calls the children to their own table. Now here’s where the tone becomes entirely different depending on which table you’re at.

For the kids that have been relegated to their own table there is inevitably a toddler present that is made to be cared for by their slightly older sibling. All the way up to having to cut up the food and in some cases feed it to the spoiled little asshole. The other kids engage in conversations about how many presents and gifts they believe themselves due for the next head of this beast, Christmas. The conversation very quickly begins to mirror a school yard bout of “my dad can beat up your dad”. Then it becomes a contest of who has more friends, who got the best gifts the previous year, which game console is better than the next, why one kid is better because he has more games or accomplished some asinine feat of uselessness in a game no one cares about. Then it moves to a public verbal beating of the kid who wants books, hot wheels, movies, or computer related trinkets, over the latest video games, toys, or trend. Finally the entire thing culminates in the kids wanting nothing to do with each other or pairing off to tease and ridicule others. All of this occurs with hardly so much as a raised eyebrow from the parents.

Now at the adult’s table the conversation hinges on career, attitude, life style, parenting, discipline, why one cousin can’t seem to keep a girlfriend or why another isn’t married yet, or the ultimate topic why one set of snot nosed trouble making dick head children is better than another. There are always the parents that think they have their lives together and flaunt it without the slightest hint of modesty. They parade their honor roll kids around and espouse how well their doing in school and social clubs and the GPA, negating the fact that the kid is already in therapy for anxiety, hasn’t had a good night’s sleep since he was two and views the rest of the world as owing him a living. Then there are the nosy aunts that think they have some kind of sage advice to offer about how to manage one’s life and keep things in perspective. Then you have the grandmother that pesters the oldest single male at the table about when he’s going to find a nice girl, settle down, and start a family. All the while someone else at the table yells to the kids to quiet down, someone comments on how dry the turkey is, someone else is on the phone with a personal call, a screaming newborn is flinging food wildly into the air, and finally there’s an inquisition going on with one of the younger adults about grades, relationships, and career goals having to fit more in line with what the inquisitor was after at that age.

Paints a very beautiful picture huh? A masterpiece of chaos and insanity and it’s all done in the name of satisfying a social norm that has long outlasted its usefulness. In the age of teleconferencing, email, text messaging, and other forms of global communication, the ideation that Thanksgiving serves as anything more than a tradition held over from before the invention of the microwave is just ludicrous. You cram absurd amounts of people together in hopes they will get along for just one meal and when the gravy goes cold, everyone departs to their own corner of the world. For most though, the day doesn’t end there. Dinners are served early, children put to bed or left with sitters so that parents can slumber before the real reason that this pedantic ritual survives: Black Friday.

The one day of the year when people assemble en masse despite freezing temperatures, incredibly long lines, and sacrificed time with the “loved ones” that are supposed to make the holiday all worth while, and they do it all for one reason, to ensure that the ungrateful brat they brought screaming into the world can have the latest Jerk Me Off Elmo and other assorted useless shit.

We’ve reached the part of the story I like to call a complete indictment of our capitalist ideals. Huge retailers shave off insane amounts of money from the stickers of merchandise in hopes of attracting scores of people to their stores. People die, riots ensue, theft skyrockets, and all in the name of higher profits for companies already too bloated to provide even the most basic customer service. So these insane deals are put together, people stand out in the cold at odd hours hoping to be among the first into the store so that they can buy the latest combination toaster back scrubber and it’s all so that they can perpetuate the idea that they actually care about whoever is going to end up saddled with the thing.

Black Friday should be a head unto itself but because it can’t possibly stand without the mass commercialism brought about by Christmas, it’s lumped together. Christmas is intended to be a religious sacrament, a day when Catholics honor the coming of their savior, despite recent evidence pointing to a birthday in the spring. Christmas comes out of the old veneration for the winter solstice but has since been turned into a gift grab. It’s not about family, togetherness, or good will toward your fellow man. It’s about who can buy the most expensive shit for people they don’t really care about, who can throw the biggest party, who has the most friends.

People buy big expensive gifts in order to accomplish two things. They are trying to inconspicuously buy the affections of people that can’t stand them any other time of the year, and garner as many gifts for themselves as they put out. There’s an unspoken expectation, just as with birthdays, that if you purchase something for someone they have an obligation to reciprocate. So we spend copious amounts of money on a slew of valueless objects in the hopes of engendering better feelings upon those we associate with, while sitting through countless parties that seek to steal your soul, and all in the name of getting into the “Holiday Spirit”.

And we haven’t even begun to cover the true commercial end of things. From about two weeks before the day that venerates gluttony until the first week of January, advertisements everywhere tout new products, big savings, and bigger selections. The major companies choose the final months of the year to release their newest crop of merchandise in order to capitalize on the seasonal expectations. Video games, consoles, TV’s, cars, trucks, amusement parks, toys, board games, clothes, shoes, cell phones, cruises, shit even music is released en masse during that brief window of time and retailers are galvanized into working longer hours, increasing staff, and pushing higher levels of notoriety all in order to get as much retail market share as possible.

We’ve completely bastardized a holiday that is only supposed to be acknowledged by practicing Catholics and all in the name of consumerism. From what I actually know about Chanukah, yes there are eight nights of gift giving but for most Jewish families the emphasis still lies with the acknowledgment of the religion. Christmas is acknowledged by heathens, agnostics, and even cultures that have no veneration for the mythical figures from the bible. Society has stuffed the celebration down our throat so much that those who choose not to buy into the dog and pony show are called Scrooge, a Grinch, or any other of a number of anti holiday characters put forth in a media meant to up play the childhood indoctrination level and vilify those that operate differently. If you choose to speak unkindly of the season or refuse to acknowledge the spirit of giving, then you’re labeled as having something wrong with you. But what about the people who don’t acknowledge Guy Fawkes Day? Or the October Revolution? Both of those things were big events but because they don’t make major companies money (okay Guy Fawkes kind of did, but that’s another rant) they’re relegated to simply cultural holidays unworthy of even the most basic TV special or retail sale. Christmas has become completely bloated and over rated. Movies are released to capitalize on the time people have off, programming is changed to emphasize the season and really it does nothing to promote a sense of camaraderie with your fellow man. People are more concerned with making sure their thankless offspring have the latest toys and games than offering a warm meal or clean clothes to those less advantaged.

It was bound to come up, so let’s face it now. Are we really so debase as a culture that we need an entire commercially sponsored holiday to be decent and kind to one another? Has the foundation of our civilization crumbled away to much as to require that we devote an entire time of year to not being nasty, self serving, narcissistic cretins? If it truly is required that we have sponsorship of large companies and a forced idealism put in place in order to show any measure of compassion to our fellows than we have bigger issues than just breaking down the imposed consumerist culture.

Birthdays & Halloween & Puscifer, Oh My!

Alright kiddies I’m back, and hopefully there are still some of you out there to read this. Sorry for the long delay and the angst ridden post of last time. Emotions got the better of me and left me seeking solace to something that wasn’t really broken to begin with. Oh well, you live you learn. Anyway enough with the disclaimers, so much has been going on since last I checked in here that I almost need a scorecard to keep it all straight.

Let’s start from the beginning; I had a birthday, which was royally kick-ass. Major props to everyone that showed up and watched me drink my fucking face off. So much fun, such good times, such wonderful friends and from what I remember, it was a super awesome night. I got to catch up and hang with my old friends Melissa and Andrew from Mt. Sierra which was a treat in and of itself. The Greeks showed up which made the night all the more awesome because I had my TA sisters present, I do wish more TA members could have been there but there’s always next time. Then there was Natalie who made the trek all by her lonesome, kudos to you. And then of course my cadre of buddies Jeremy, Eddie, and Mark came out to share in my drunken stupor. Christine made a rare public appearance and I thank her for that, much love. And of course my dearest and oldest friend good old Dean. He stayed sober to enough to get me home in one piece and even made sure I got into my own bed. What a guy. So many awesome people made that night so incredible I don’t think I’ve ever had a better birthday!

Then there was Halloween. Oh good god gravy that shit was so incredible. I got to roll down to San Diego with the Greeks to see the one and only Maynard James Keenan live and in the flesh as he did his thing on stage as Puscifer. Not only was the concert ridiculously amazing, but I had the privilege of being reunited with some of my TA brothers and sisters that I had the honor meeting back in August. We had such a good time with fun costumes, great stories, and of course plans to meet up again this coming Friday at the Baked Potato for a Volto show.

I’ve had a great past couple of weeks, despite fighting unyielding tooth pain, and a 24-hour cold. Good times with the best friends money can’t buy, and a genuine camaraderie with a caliber of people that getting harder and harder to find. I joined TA on a whim as a means to support my favorite band and hopefully to get something to tide me over until the release of their next album, what I got instead was a family of like minded, funny, engaging, and truly beautiful people that have shown me a true sense of belonging and the best times I think I’ve ever had in my life. Here’s to you, all of my friends, TA brothers and sisters, my Mt. Sierra peeps, and all others that I have had the pleasure of knowing. May the Jager keep flowing, the music keep playing, and the good times keep coming.

Until next time remember, “There is no problem in life so big or complex that it can’t be solved by throwing ridiculous amounts of money at it or killing everyone else involved!”

-T

The plane landed weeks ago, my baggage finally arrived...

Letting go of certain things is infinitely easier said than done. It’s amazing to me that despite all of the progress I’ve made toward getting away and branching away from things that held me back, certain hallmarks of that time can send me reeling. The mention of a band, anything that elicits a memory of that time, the truth is that as strong as I like to believe I am, I’m more fragile now than I think I’ve ever been. I’m reaching for anything solid to hold onto the only thing I find is the haunting glow of what was. I’m conflicted with myself over whether I did something wrong, if I failed, if it was my fault that everything fizzled.

Just happening over a picture is enough to leave me cringing. It’s amazing how passion can be both a blessing and a curse. My passion drove me to unparalleled lengths to profess, declare, and validate my love and affection for someone seen as so undeserving, and now it sends me into an emotional rut that borderlines depression and guilt over all the whispered wrongs. The entirety of the saga played out before my eyes and I remained stoic and unmoving as I watched the train of finality barreling down to destroy me. But I let it happen. I tried to play the martyr, hoped that my soul’s tempering in the fires of my youth would be enough to protect and see me through the crash.

I did survive, but what is it exactly that remains. I’ve still not let go completely and I’m jaded against myself for that. Part of me sees it as a weakness that I could be made to feel so small, so fragile, and so utterly vulnerable and all because of one person. To be stripped of my veneer and left exposed before the clawing eyes of my peers for them to judge, inspect, and influence.

Taken from me are the trappings of vitriol and venomous observations of those foolish enough to keep my association. I don’t know who to be angry at, myself for believing the lie, her for being so easily manipulated into dooming us before we had a chance to begin, or the cosmos for damning us to this horrific cycle of futile defiance. I swore to myself I would never love, I would never feel like I felt for her, and my conscious mind, my rational thoughts failed me completely, and I fell headlong into the damnation of my psyche by letting myself feel anything more than a passing intellectual interest for her. The human heart holds the greatest weakness possible for those that would seek a life devoid of vulnerability.

So very few in this world know what it is to truly be open and completely vulnerable to another human being; to truly open oneself up to another human being; to really trust another person. The concept is infinitely easy to reason, you ask for trust and because someone tells you things that seem to be of a personal nature, you accept that they have made an emotional investment in you. The sad reality is that trust isn’t built on the things you’re willing to say, but rather the things you can’t bring yourself to put into words. I’ll tell almost anyone about the sordid details of my youth, the abuse I endured, or the depreciation I suffered at the hands of those in a position to engender a pain for which there was no cure, but only a select few know any kind of truth or trust from me.

But here I am, I made the choice to open up and expose the soft belly beneath my armor and I ended up with a stake through my heart. I thought by ignoring it I could make it go away. I reasoned that if I felt nothing then I couldn’t hurt. I tried to fill the void with trappings that were ultimately unwanted and unfulfilling. In the end there’s nothing left except to say that I am the victim of my own machinations. It is said that we reap what we sow, but it’s near impossible for me to accept this since I endeavor to be all things to all people, go to extraneous lengths and undertake absurd endeavors in an effort to help those around me and the one point in which I invariably fail is when it comes to finding any kind of true happiness. I tried to fulfill her every need tried to always make myself available and endeavored to never say no and I have nothing to show for the endeavor. Perhaps the biggest error I made was that I tried to understand her, attempted to really get to know the person behind the witty remarks.

But people aren’t puzzles, they’re not meant to be dissected and figured out. She was never mine to understand but still I committed my mind to solving the mystery, to winning her heart and calling her my own. Now I just feel broken, unable to move forward and still mired in my own hell, searching for reasons, for understanding, for some kind of clarity to something I never fully understood to begin with. The scary part is that for perhaps the first time in my life I have no direction or inclination on how I should feel or react. The raw passion ebbs and bristles at the sides of an already battered psyche and I search for an answer that is never going to come. For me, the idea of accepting that reality is akin to rewriting the laws of gravity. But acknowledging that I am completely powerless to influence the will and whim of someone else is not only staggering but makes me feel completely impotent. A kind of stifled, listless energy that seeks a release and the best that can be found is a gasp of air every once in a while. It’s like lightning in a bottle; the energy is contained but not gone. I need to find my own release and let go of the baggage, let go of her, and find some reason other than just the pedantic ideation that life is worth living to keep pressing on in the maelstrom.

Gone are the harsh words, the terse edicts, the flagrant verbal attacks, the clandestine moves of subversion and intrigue, and the tears for a love that never was. In their place is a gap, an abyss that hungers to be filled by any means necessary. That abyss is the hole she left when she went away, the love she took with her, and the part of my soul I will never get back. I could fill it with drugs, alcohol, countless vapid women, or just the ramblings of my own depraved mind, but in the end the only way to fix a wound that big is to find sutures capable of making me forget all that she was. To erase everything I thought I knew, all memory of what was and what I believed could have been. Find me the tools to mend myself and correct this broken state of mind I now harbor. Point me to the smiling shiny happy people and I will gladly become another mindless drone in the scheme of the universe, oblivious to the world around me and never more involved in it than what is within my reach. I would gladly give up the very thing that keep me grounded, useful and unique in exchange for making the wound go away, making the pain cease, and leaving me with nothing more than a fake plastic grin to wear and show to everyone that I am not as broken as I truly am.

I'd like to apologize in advance...

Okay it’s been a wee bit too long since I’ve posted anything new. Creative energies don’t translate very well when I’m borderline “walking dead”. But I’m not whining, just justifying. I’ve been in touch with most of you lately and have explained the extenuating circumstances for my lack of creative ability for this particular venue. All of that aside however let’s talk shop here for a minute. Most of the time when I do one of these I have some kind of emotional impetus that drives me to begin writing. While I have the emotional catalyst it’s highly muted given my weary and somewhat addled brain so this may come off a wee bit dry but I promise the next one will be exactly what you’ve come to expect.

I had a conversation with Aurora the other night and during our discussion (we talked about a great many things that I won’t dare repeat here) the topic came up of the way that we define relationships. Now I’m the last person to rehash old news and recycle my ideas, but she’s touched on it before, and I’ve even mentioned but never really done a piece dedicated to it. There is a dangerous social aversion casual sex. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person that can bed down easily with just anyone, I’ll flirt like no other but when the bar yells last call, I’ve got my keys in my hand I’m out the door and in bed before the first tab is closed out.

But I have needs, the same as anyone else. Carnal desires and I’ve succumbed to the trappings of the flesh a couple times, but if I’m not into the person or can’t see myself eventually growing to love that person than I will do my level best to keep my flirting to a minimum and prevent the wrong idea from coming across.

Enough about my habits though. What we’re dealing with here is a tendency for people to regard flirting as a gateway of sorts and that somehow sex with that person immediately suggests, denotes, connotes, or requires some kind of deeper emotional connection. Why can’t sex just be something carnal, purely physical and nothing more? We’re sexual beings at our core. We like sex. It’s fun, feels staggeringly good (provided you have a partner with half a clue or at least that takes suggestion, or worse can give you some direction), and is great for relaxing.

But despite the wide spread whispers of one night stand abounding (because of my association with a certain man whore, I’ve been made of a great many one night stands) most of us can just never bring ourselves to have them. The connotation seems to be that if you sleep with someone without any connection or expectation of it becoming something more, than you don’t respect yourself or you’re compensating for something. Why can’t it just be that you were horny and there was someone there to fulfill your needs?

It seems that it’s almost a crime against oneself for any measure of indulgence. And this doesn’t come out of any misguided religious idealism although the major defenders of this practice will most likely sight some obscure upbringing where they were indoctrinated to see sex as something holy, sacred, and overtly valued. I’m not advocating mindless hookups or the rampant spread of countless STD’s (although it would thin the gene pool considerably) rather I’m asking for sex to be seen for what it is. It’s like eating, farting, taking a shit, or self mutilation; it’s just a physical action that you can’t do yourself. When you love the person it takes on a whole different dynamic because the emotions are there to begin with but if you see someone across a crowded bar and think, “Wow I’d love to get them back to my bed!” where’s the harm in trying? Use protection and go have some fun.

Society and years of repression have indoctrinated us into believing that sex is still a taboo to discuss in public, something you don’t mention in certain venues, or just subject matter that we shy away from. It’s sex. Not torture, not maiming, not even rape. It’s sex between two consenting adults for mutual physical gratification. You’re not finding a life partner or seeking out answers to the deepest and most profound questions in the universe, you’re getting naked and knocking your hips against someone else’s for a few hours in the hopes that you’ll achieve a biochemical release of hormones and proteins that cause euphoria and pleasure. Sorry to go so scientific but if we’re going to make any head way let’s strip away the bullshit.

Now I mentioned that when you love the person it’s a whole different situation, and it is. Having sex with someone you care about is done as much for mutual carnal pleasure as it is for emotional closeness. You open yourself up emotionally to your partner and really let your innermost feelings come out. You trust completely (or you should) and you’re able to achieve the heights of pleasure. It brings two people closer together by providing a physical expression of the emotional connection that is already shared. It is for this reason that I believe the term “making love” is still applicable to this instance of sex because it holds a deeper meaning.

Now carnal, drunken “you look great after 9 shots” sex is entirely different from what I mentioned above. A casual bar hook up is done for no other reason than to get yours, you don’t have to please your partner, you don’t have to last long, and there’s no obligation of anything beyond that one instance of animalistic pleasure. It’s the ultimate win-win. You get to feel incredible and ideally there should be no guilt involved.

But like so many other things, society complicates and contrives things which only becomes a perpetuating cycle. Casual sex is seen as a complete taboo unless you are willing to acknowledge that you lack self respect, and in order to find the joy and rapture that comes with sex you willingly get involved with someone that you might not really value emotionally. It’s a sickness that is perpetuated by society and really, what purpose does it serve. Casual consensual sex does not obligate a relationship in the same way that a relationship doesn’t require sex, but it sure helps!

Detox

I am an addict. Pure and simple. I don’t pop pills, I don’t drink copious and unsafe amounts of alcohol, I would be so lucky to have such a simple and run of the mill addiction. Instead I’m hopelessly devoted to my own misery. I have an innate and inescapable need to be miserable because I know of no other way to validate my existence. Before I met Nicole I spent twenty-one years being miserable and then she came along and I clung to the happiness I had when I was with her to such an extent that I willed myself to ignore the horrific treatment I endured at her hands. I was so blinded to the utterly disgusting treatment that I actually indoctrinated myself into believing that I was happy.

But the fairy tale ended. She moved away and I was left alone, or I should have been. Now here’s where I break one of my own rules. I’ve tried being civil and courteous to the mystery woman mentioned so often in previous posts so much so that I’ve refused to name her and taken great strides to avoid doing so. However as she is far too busy to even acknowledge my texts, phone calls, or anything else, I see no reason to continue the charade of niceties. So I’m taking off the kid gloves and whatever will be, will be.

To truly tell the story properly we need to turn the clocks back a bit longer than just Nicole. All the way back to 2003. In August of that year I embarked upon my first real relationship and I couldn’t have been happier. Despite warnings against it I blindly moved forward and tried to revel in what I had finally attained. Well what I couldn’t see but everyone else could was that the relationship was a bit one sided in terms of treatment. To her credit I won’t name her, and I certainly don’t hold a grudge. Neither one of us really knew what we were doing. But when it ended in April of 2004 I was crushed, my entire world had come crashing down in a singular instant, and the topper was that she broke up with me via email. Classy I know.

So as most people know I mired away in my hell and spent the next year and a half pining away for something that wasn’t going to happen but still hoping that we could reconcile and return to what we had. In hindsight I can see that in truth I was just feeding an addiction. So when the time finally came that I achieved the closure I needed on it and I was able to move on I first dabbled briefly with a girl named Rose. Things went reasonably well for about two weeks, we met a party where she asked to borrow someone’s pants and ever eager to be wild and crazy in those days I jumped at the chance. So she borrowed my pants, and we bonded, and things kind of moved for a bit. Then she got flakey and the initial attraction broke down. So I took my leave and let it go.

Then came Erica. A truly pointed thorn in my side. She was pretty and coveted by many but in all honesty she was the ultimate tease. The clincher came when she called me one afternoon to proudly tell me that she had slept with my best friend. I took the news in stride and bore no ill will to him as she had been pushing my patience quite far the entire time I’d known her. So again I was ignorant of how badly I was feeding my addiction and I simply moved on.

My next foray came when a mutual friend introduced me to a girl that I was quite taken with and she seemed at least reasonably open to the idea. So we talked, we flirted, we even went out once. The entire time I doted, I analyzed, and I put myself out time and again to make her happy. Then suddenly she just disappeared. No phone calls, no texts, no emails, no IM, just dead silence. So I figured she’d gotten bored and moved on. A week later, I wound up slovenly drunk at a party held in my honor and by the end of the night I had attached myself to girl that couldn’t have been more trouble if she tried. She fervently sought out a firm relationship with an intensity that would have scared a rabid wombat but I foolishly tried to play the middle ground. The first girl returned after her absence and acted as though nothing were wrong.

I did what is still considered both the smartest and the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I told girl #1 about my dealings with girl #2 and asked for some time to get things straight because I had assumed the worse during girl #1’s absence. This action was met with unrivalled hostility and almost cost me two friendships in the process. By the time the dust settled I had no one, I was miserable, and I was fairly jaded.

Four months went by and the misery of my job kept me contented until I met Kristen. As loathe as I am to admit it, she first caught my attention when I noticed her picture on a friend’s MySpace. I made friends with her and figured nothing would come of it. She came into the store I worked at and made every man’s jaw drop as she walked in.

For the next four months I did everything I could to win her affection and make her notice me. Everything from text messages in the morning to dropping whatever I was doing to meet her every beck and call. Finally at the advice of a friend I gathered my courage and told her how I felt. She was flattered but explained that she just didn’t see me that way. So crestfallen I retreated again but very briefly. A quick slew of interests came and went in a span of only a handful of months. Lisa, Kathleen, Kat, Neha, Stacey, Allyson, and Samantha all between September and December. While I didn’t sleep with any of them, there was more than casual flirting and a couple dates.

Now we come to the meat of our story. 2007 promised many things for me. The first year of me being 21, new job prospects, and a consolidation of friendships as well as what was to be a degree. Six days into the year everything fell apart. I met Nicole at the Brass when I showed up wearing a Halloween costume and the night began the whirlwind romance. Nicole got married we kept seeing each other and I could never bring myself to just walk away. She was feeding my addiction in a very sick and morbid way. So for two and a half years I pined away hoping for something more and hoping that if I suffered just long enough I’d be blessed enough to have her for my own. But I suffered needlessly and all to feed an addiction.

When the bubble burst and she told me she was moving I wasn’t just crestfallen, I was heartbroken. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. I’ve seen things in my life too damning and horrific to describe in any kind of detail, but the only thing that truly struck a bolt of fear into my heart was the notion of losing her. I had lost myself to what I had become while I was with her and the only thing that mattered was seeing her. The irony is that by the end, I was so filled with scorn and maliciousness that I couldn’t imagine why I’d ever loved her, and in truth I questioned if I ever really had loved her. The last time I saw her she looked nothing like she had the first night we met. She hadn’t aged gracefully, and the stress of us had ravaged her once gorgeous features. Her eyes had become deep and sunken, her face was wrinkled and weathered from too much smoking, and her smile had gone from beautifully radiant to slightly dull and uninviting. She held me close but her fingers felt like white-hot pokers digging into my flesh and searing my skin.

The final time I saw her I tried to seduce her, she managed to ressit but not without a considerable effort. I remained cold and callous through most of her visit but I broke my composure when she told me that she wanted me to take a chance and let in someone else should I ever find someone that I could love. She basically was asking me to invalidate every admission and expression of love I’d ever made to her by being willing to just accept a replacement. I wept freely and accepted that she was leaving. The trick to this is that only a matter of hours later I’d be hanging out with my new interest, Jessica. While she sported a steely and cold demeanor that made me think her interest in me was less than I’d been led to believe, the night went off reasonably well. The next two weeks continued well enough with our mutual interest seeming to grow and deepen.

Fast forward a month and she’s not returning my calls, ignoring my texts, and seems to have disappeared. I still don’t know why she decided to go bat shit crazy and begin ignoring me. Oh well, her loss. I tried being cordial and courteous but I got nothing in return. She couldn’t even be bothered to adhere to the offer of friendship that she put out. I know she’ll read this and I’ll end up with a massive backlash of some kind about how I don’t know everything, or how I’m wrong, or something to effect of me being out of line, but it’s hard to be factual when I know nothing. And since this is more or less my own private domain I can say what I want so long as there’s no defamation of character.

Suffice to say that I’ve reached my crossroads and while this piece, unlike all the others, has not been written in a single sitting, I have in fact found my catharsis and survived my detox. So I’m better. I’ve bled out what needed to be bled out, I’ve reached level ground again emotionally and I’m ready to move on with life. I’d like to extend big thanks to Aurora for listening to my whiny ass, give big hugs to Nikki for constantly telling me I deserve better and can have better, and anyone else that endured my ramblings during any ordeal mentioned above.

Love begets obsession

I’ve noticed a dangerous association between love and obsession. The Offspring did a song back in their early years (the Smash album I think) called Self Esteem. In the song there’s a line that goes “…the more you suffer, the more it shows you really care…” and this statements seems to have become one of the central tenets of the way that relationships are approached. The correlation between love and obscene devotion is something that disturbs me greatly.

I will be the first to admit that I did nothing admirable or even condonable during my time with Nicole. While I was a decent man, and treated her with the utmost dignity and respect, I victimized myself by allowing her to dictate the pacing and tone of the relationship with no regard for my own hurt feelings. But I’m noticing that there are others that are willingly subjecting themselves to the kind of abhorrent treatment I so recently suffered.

I’m talking about women becoming hopelessly devoted to guys that they felt something for and think they can recapture the feelings, or girls who are willing to look past the misery of that their relationships engendered in the hopes of making things better. The idea that given enough time the issues will resolve themselves or cease to bother you is ludicrous at best. We become who we are through stimuli and our best reactions to it. To think that suffering will change someone’s most intrinsic facets is lunacy.

I once subscribed to the ideal that if I suffered long enough and vocally enough to everyone else but her then somehow things would change and get better. And not just with Nicole but with every woman I’ve ever been involved with. I won’t list all the names, but the point is that any amount of suffering or pining is unneeded. Now I say this full well knowing that I’m still making peace with and putting away some feelings that I harbor for someone, but I won’t begin to expand upon them here. The point is that it’s unneeded suffering.

The point and purpose of any interpersonal relationship or dynamic, I believe, is mutual betterment of the parties involved. If you’re miserable you’re not getting better. The problem, as I see it anyway, is that we’re all emotionally stunted in some way shape or form. I like to call it “emotional constipation”. We find people that we can connect with, even for a second, and we become hopelessly a ludicrously devoted to them in sick and obscene ways. Hell I fell in love with a girl not too long ago after knowing her for maybe two weeks. I’m guilty as charged for that sin.

The trick here is that while the behavior itself might be deplorable or at the very least disappointing, we all do it. Perfectly rational, logical, level headed people that let all of their better traits fly right out the window the minute they get around that special someone. I have a penchant for puzzles and figuring out people so naturally when I’m in a relationship I question everything, I seek absolute understanding, and can’t bear to be kept in the dark about anything. The primary thing that drove Nicole crazy was my ability to figure her out (I now know that women despise this in the worst possible way). Ironically the same proclivity didn’t extend to…whoops almost name dropped there. Let’s just say it didn’t out last the relationship.
The bottom line is that love is confused for obsession a bit too often I think and it’s not due to any true emotional connection but more a feeling that is propagated by proximity. Being near that person elicits a feeling and that feeling is sought out fervently. It’s like a drug that becomes an addiction and the thought of losing that person of getting them out of your head, of making a life without them in it is deplorable. So we cling to it ferociously and refuse to let it go. And almost before we know it, the impetus for the feelings are gone, the relationship has gone stale and we wind up hating who and what we’ve become and worse we shoulder guilt over what we’ve changed the other person into.

Think long and hard about whom you are now and who you think you might be if not for the significant other in your life or the last person you called your own. Consider all of the facets of your being and decide whether the behavior is something borne out of your own natural progression or the result of subtly being made into the ideal of someone else. It’s staggering when you look at it, and no doubt will cause a good number of you to reevaluate the people you thought you were, if you’re doing the analysis right that is.

Addiction comes in many forms...

At what point does attraction cross the line into obsession? Is there a clearly defined line between normal attraction and dangerous addiction? I ask only because these seem to be the paramount questions I’m facing and I’m wondering if anyone else has taken the time to really consider it. I spent so much fighting for something I couldn’t have and at the time I sincerely had diluted myself into believing that the more I suffered the more it meant that I was genuinely in love with her. I know I was a sick man.

But hindsight lends perspective and I see now that more than anything I was chasing ghosts, running after something I never had and never would. But what about when you have it, when you hold it in your hands, when you can actually look into her eyes and see the emotion behind them and there no extenuating circumstances keeping you from each other aside from your own fear and trepidation? If you keep chasing that dream, is it still just as foolish?

I know I’m asking a lot of questions and not really saying much in the way of commentary or hypothesis but I feel it necessary to posit the queries early as a means of letting the answers develop naturally. The mainstay of this piece is kind of a part II to the previous one. At what point do you just give up on something? When does the potential pay off exceed the amount of investment needed?

There is a kind of sick comfort that exists in accepting that you’re miserable and that there’s little to be done to change it. The embodying of a blind acceptance for something so abhorrent that your better nature takes a back seat and you become something else, a self made victim. We all do it, we run away from the things we don’t want to face down, we hide from the feelings we don’t want to acknowledge, and we sit idly by and wait for the difficult situations in life to blow over. There are those of us that rise to the challenge and confront it head on, but the number is growing smaller and smaller.

They say the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, well in case you didn’t notice, I have a problem. I have a proclivity to getting involved with women that are never completely available to me. I won’t go down the entire list, but in naming the most recent forays we’ve got two wonderful examples. As everyone well knows, Nicole was engaged when we met then got married and still we continued seeing each other. The end of the story is of course that she moved and left me holding the fractured pieces of my broken heart. The next vixen that I cast my attention on, told me very plainly as we lay naked holding each other that she was not over her ex. She claimed that she still had feelings for him, but it was nothing to worry about. The klaxons in my head sounded off like an air raid warning. My instincts told me to be wary and with good reason, but I digress.

Back to the admission portion of the piece, I have an addiction to being involved with women I can’t have almost as a built in way for me to be denied happiness and thus continue having the fuel to feed this fire. I avoid happiness like the plague, never really wanting to indulge too far for fear of losing the edge that misery gives me. I grew up in a near constant state of chaos and the result is that, as much as some would like to discredit this claim as just my aspirations to identify with Heath Ledger’s Joker, I am a creature of chaos. The only way I know how to be truly contented is when I’m mired in strife. I am the world’s most perfect example of a wistfully functioning malcontent. I seek out happiness just like everyone else, but I seek it in places and from people that can realistically only engender more discomfort.

While most would take the above admission to either be an emo statement or the ramblings of a very psychologically diluted and thus mentally sick man, I assure you it’s merely my assertion. I recognize the contradiction in the assertion and believe me I see the incredulity, but let’s be honest, no one who has any insight into the dealings discussed above can really say I’m wrong. I’m still chasing ghosts, still pining away hoping for some change, some reality shift that causes the heavens to rupture, the earth to split wide and for the woman of my dreams to come springing forth from the nexus of oblivion and take me into her bed and provide me with an endless supply of love and affection. And then the dream stops, the reality sinks in, and I’m made to face the fact that Nicole isn’t coming back, and the as yet unnamed vixen that so recently stole my heart does not and cannot reciprocate and I am the victim of my own delusions.

This is veering dangerously close to being something I don’t want it to be. Let’s take a breath here and give a moment to collect my thoughts…

Okay that’s better. So my addiction is that I cling to women I can’t have because of this misplaced ideal of love that I ascribe to the truly remarkable specimens and because so many others toss the term around the gravity of my admission is lost on deaf ears. Sucks to be me, but I digress. The truth is that while I may fall hard for a very select few, there are those that seek all the attention they can find and they do anything and everything they can to cultivate that. Random pictures, indecipherable texts, muddled status updates, clandestine dealings, anything to generate interest and grab the attention.

Attention whoring, as we’ll call it, is done by many in a myriad of ways but ultimately it all serves the same goal, getting the attention of the people around you. But what causes it? Is it the same addiction that I mentioned above? There are people in this world so deprived of the attention they think they need that they’re willing to endure hellish and abhorrent behaviors and treatment just to sate their own lack of self esteem. They endeavor for nothing more than recognition in any regard. Whether it’s someone blaming them for ruining their life or someone doting upon them with all the love and adoration in the world they will never be satisfied. Addiction fills a void, it’s satisfies a need, either created or engrained, but it serves a purpose. Attention whoring is an addiction.

What makes our self esteem break down to the point where we have to seek out validation of our existence in someone else? The unhealthy defining of our lives by how others perceive us seems to be a driving force in the way business is conducted. Always seeking to please others is a fault that is personified in a massive number of people. Now don’t get me wrong I know that to some extent we are all playing parts, we’re all naturally conditioned to want to be liked. We’re social creatures! But when it begins to make you lose sight of yourself or reevaluate facets of yourself that were once above analysis, you might be trying too hard to fill that hole.

Nobody enjoys being disliked. That’s a given. Hitler is seen as the embodiment of all evil in the twentieth century but I’m sure as reviled as he still is, were he still alive his ultimate goal is just to be liked. Call it peer pressure, extenuating circumstances, weak wills, people pleasing, or just a plain lack of self identity but it all comes down to the same thing, we have a need to be liked and an addiction to notoriety so we do almost anything to get that. A girl who sleeps with a guy because she wants him to like her, or a girl who refuses to really leave her ex for fear of having no one around, or a guy that does insane things just to get noticed, or a guy that behaves completely inappropriately to garner laughter and recognition are all examples of people doing things that compromise facets of self to earn social acceptance. I show up to parties in a myriad of costumes, not because I have nothing else to wear but because I know it will get me noticed. Recognition is what it’s all about.

The girl who beds down the random guy is earning the attention she wants from him, and getting noticed by the other women who want him as well as her friends for being so bold. So she spreads her legs, moans and whimpers, screams and yells and all to make him like her. She puts on a show to gain acceptance, to gain recognition, and most disturbingly, to get a warped form of respect.

The girl that can’t leave her boyfriend is afraid of being alone and losing the respect she believes she’s garnered. In most cases the boyfriend is either a selfish ass that cares more about himself or his friends than the relationship or he’s an overly sensitive pansy that lacks any kind of conviction or will of his own to function independently. I was the latter guy for about two months during my tenure with Nicole. But ultimately, she stays so that she won’t be alone and so that when or if she breaks his heart she won’t be the one cast in a negative light. It’s the old thing of whomever calls it quits on the relationship the one in the wrong is or the one with the guilty conscience. So she sits, suffers in silence and hopes that he’ll get bored and leave or a massive fight will break out and she’ll have just cause to have left.

The guy that behaves inappropriately is really just an act to get attention. Pissing in the sink, calling girls unkind names, baring his ass, yelling at cops, screaming obscenities, or just making people feel uncomfortable are all methods of getting noticed. And recognition feeds the addiction. Then you have the flip side of things, someone that does perfectly legal things but to such an extreme that you marvel at them. He drinks until his liver is screaming at him to stop, just so he can say he out drank someone else, or does obscene amounts of drugs simply for the bragging rights, or he picks a fight with a random stranger for no reason simply to be the center of attention for however long the fight lasts.

Now these are a bit extreme but the concept stands firm. We all do things that are sheer lunacy and we do them for no other reason than the attention that is generates. There is such a thing as addiction to attention and some people will do anything to get it. Perhaps in the end though, love in its purest form is just a diluted form of addiction.

Happiness in Slavery

Nine Inch Nails did a song by that name, and the video was so obscene that they never showed it. I’m not here to talk about music videos though. Today’s topic of discussion centers on those situations and dynamics where we become enslaved to the machinations of someone else. You know the old story; you meet someone that initially you get along with well enough to spend more time with them and eventually your association reaches a point where you’re mutually detracting from and destroying each other.

To further illustrate the point consider a woman that is beaten near constantly. The kind of woman that is always missing teeth, sporting black eyes, swollen lips and gums, broken bones, swaths of hair missing from her scalp, and of course a myriad of cuts and bruises. She knows she’s miserable. She feels the sting of every strike, and the humiliation from lying about the cause of each injury, but it’s not enough to get away. She stays with the abusive asshole because she “loves him” or she “deserved it”. But what point does your self esteem reach a point where you’re willing to forego true happiness in favor of misery?

That example speaks directly to physical abuse, which is abhorrent, but it’s nothing compared to emotional abuse. Staying with someone that doesn’t understand you, doesn’t take the time to get to know the real you, or is dependent on you to the point of not being able to function. They guilt you into remaining there all to avoid having blood on your hands from that failed relationship. Endless promises of things changing, spending more time together, anything to keep you from leaving. The truth is that people don’t change unless they want to, and certainly not to keep what they already have. Their behavior got them what they have in the first place, so walking away is an empty threat.

But we all do it. Friendships, romantic liaisons, even our parents all find ways to manipulate us into doing things we don’t feel comfortable doing. We are so afraid of being alone, of being unable to form any kind of lasting connection with another human being that we become ferociously protective of the meager connections we do form. Fair weather friends, sycophantic acquaintances and abusive lovers all serve to keep us enslaved in some way or another. We don’t want to be alone, to stand in isolation or admit any kind of failure so we deride the shortcomings in our relationships and press on, secure in the delusion that things will get better.

I have been chastised by every woman I’ve been involved with for the past five years for being too zealous, too passionate, too overwhelming in the way I handle myself. But I don’t take it as a bad thing because the comments are always in the context of how I’m so remarkably different from the other guys they’ve been involved with. But ultimately the question has to be asked, why you would want to be associated with someone that isn’t engaged. Someone who is blind to their surroundings or so unwilling to see what is going on that they don’t even rationalize it away they just ignore it completely.

My best friend told Nicole’s husband about her affair and after they fought about it for one night, everything was fine and he went back to existing in his ignorance. He found contentment in his blindness. That’s just one example though because it happens all the time. We make excuses, turn blind eyes, ignore massive warning signs, rationalize away a cascade of things, and all to prevent the inevitable acknowledgment of just how miserable we really are. As long as we make someone else happy we find some kind of nobility in our misery. While I champion the idea of Cosmic Balance and all that is encompassed in that, why should we willingly subject ourselves to being unhappy, even in the slightest, simply to make someone else happy? Doing that is detracting from our own happiness and subsequently we don’t really live. We exist to serve another and isn’t that really just a form of slavery?

There’s always that compromise of things that you look past in order to find the bliss and elation of being with someone, but at what point does it become too much? Is a heroin addiction worse than a man that is incapable of being able to find confidence in his own merit? What makes a drug shooting junkie worse than a man that will do anything and everything to make the woman he loves happy? It’s a subjective thing, but ultimately my take is that if you’re so blinded by your devotion and apparent need for someone else, you’re addicted, in the same way that the heroin addled junkie screams for his fix. It’s obsession, and take it from someone that knows, it’s dangerous. It crosses the line from love into obsession when your entire life threatens to crumble and implode by that person leaving. I said goodbye to Nicole and guess what, my world changed, it didn’t implode. I know it was love. But there are those that have had the objects of their affection become discontented and thus seek to find the happiness they’re being denied, and in the aftermath of one human being making a decision that is best for them, the guilt, rage, and manipulation that arises serves only to further the selfish goals of the one engendering that unhappiness.

You suffer in silence to keep from writhing in abject agony. Consider this, you meet someone, you get along, things go well and before long you’re entertaining the idea of being more than friends. So the fateful day comes when you take the plunge and things go well. Fast forward a couple years. You’ve lived together, broken up a few times, seen other people, tried to see what else the world has to offer but you keep coming back. The romantic version of the story tells that it’s fate, you’re meant to be together. But the reality is most likely that one of you is able to goad, manipulate, or guilt the other into continuing the charade of compatibility by capitalizing on the good and forcibly ignoring the bad. Do me a favor, the next time you go to the dentist and have a tooth drilled, pulled, or crowned refuse anesthesia. It’s the same thing. You’re willing your mind to ignore and forget the negative in order to acknowledge only the positive.

Relationships are about mutual growth. Friendships, romantic relationships, even family, it’s about growing and getting better because of how the people around you bring out the best in you. But too often lately I’ve heard stories of people being pulled down into an emotional abyss simply because they cling to the delusion of what they once had. If your relationship ran a year or more and you clearly contemplated leaving them at any point that didn’t directly stem from a fight, odds are you’re just biding time. Sitting around idly waiting for life to make the decision for you while you indoctrinate yourself to believe that there is some measure of redemption and due respect or adulation for your ludicrous endurance of that misery.

We are all given a limited time here. For most it’s seventy, eighty, or ninety plus years. For some our time here is much shorted for a modicum of reasons. But to spend even five minutes being wretchedly unhappy is five minutes of your life wasted. It’s an intrinsic facet of human nature that we avoid pain and pursue pleasure, but for most of us we let the despicable situation that develops continue to propagate while we continue suckling away at the opiate we receive and the whole time we’re completely unaware of how much of ourselves we lost on a daily basis in the situation and worse, how much of life is passing us by while we toil away praying for an organic change to something that is too irrevocably damaged. In the end, perhaps it’s not just happiness in slavery, but self imposed slavery to prevent happiness.

The Calm Before the Storm

So big things are brewing down here at the Asylum and progress is being made. Eagle eyed observers will see the hints of the coming changes, but I’ll save the big announcement for later. A weekend full of reflection, more catharsis, and time and conversations with good friends, has brought me back to some kind of balance. An ironic place to be given my penchant for extremes, but I digress.

So no more emo bullshit for a while, I promise. I’m scorned but I’m healing. Most of the vitriol that found its way here was me bleeding out and refusing to acknowledge that for the first time in over three years I’m without a woman in my life in some dynamic other than friendship. The woman I spent so long pining away for has moved away, leaving me to deal and cope with what has followed and I did my best to deny any reaction to it. My most recent foray into moving on ended disastrously for, ironically, the same reason I was concerned I wouldn’t be able to have anything good. I made a choice, swallowed my pride, and admitted that I was embarking on something great, but sadly I was in it alone. Fear and trepidation gave way to indecisiveness and now that need to belong has amalgamated itself into desperation and a blinding belief in something putrid and sullied.

Once again, I digress. I swear I’m not as jaded as I sound. This is more an update of where things are at right now instead of a deep reflection or diatribe about something specific. Like I said, new things in the works here at the Asylum and we’ll have more on it as things develop. I’m getting back to me, and my creative energies are flooding back to me in ways that I haven’t experienced in years. Good news for those of you hell bent on reading my next work, overwhelming for me. So stay tuned for another post a little later, I’ve got three almost publishable pieces are that just waiting on some kind of conclusion and then they’re up, so be prepared for a massive flood of works. You have been warned.

Oh and before I forget, welcome back Immortal Aurora. You were missed. She actually struggled through the back log to get caught up and she actually left comments. So kudos to her for the valiant effort! Also once again I ask that if you read, please comment; if you’re not going to contribute to the conversation, don’t bother coming here. I know it sounds harsh but if I wanted a one-sided dynamic I’d stick to my journals. You come here for my thoughts, I come here for yours.

Realizations

The universe, I’ve found, is a fickle thing that bends and tests most of us in ways beyond our immediate comprehension. In the endless pursuit for the continuance of Cosmic Balance we are blessed and cursed countless times. It’s ironic when you get perspective from the absolute most unexpected place. I’m much less jaded and honestly more relaxed about things in general. It’s amazing what some closure, a good night’s sleep, and some reflection on past habits that desperately need to be broken can do.

I spent the evening reflecting on how trite and, in truth, borderline emo everything here has been getting and that’s not what I want. Of course I will always write from a perspective that speaks to whatever it is I’m going through or experiencing at that point in time, but I’d like something other than my useless commentary on my myriad of failed relationships to stand the test of time. I sat last night and read over the countless volumes of text I’ve authored in the last four years. HOLY FUCKING MOSES! I write way too much. Three and a half gigabytes of pure text, endless pages all speaking to a maelstrom of topics. The sad thing is that I found a pattern. I read over some of the pieces I’d authored about past relationships and found something both disturbing yet comforting.

Hidden behind all the insipid babbling was a measure of eloquence but it was mired in teenage angst, weak prose, and useless complaining. I realized that I have a dangerous pattern of falling immediately and ridiculously hard for women that show an initial interest in me. My passion bursts through like water against a failed flood game and I end up letting the more overwhelming aspects of my personality run free and rampant. Not a good way to build any kind of relationship or dynamic. But as I sat there reading this god awful work and trying fervently to convince myself that I didn’t actually author it, it struck me that I allow feelings of attachment to override the base emotional standing of neutrality that I normally exercise and it skews my insight. Think House on methadone instead of Vicodin. If I’m moderately miserable then I’m incredibly analytical, observant, and contemplative. I can figure out anything and everything in seconds. Introduce anything that elicits a warm fuzzy feeling and my penchant for analysis falls like a house of cards.

It’s a little disheartening to make the realization that I can’t do the things that set me apart if I’m serenely happy but I guess I’m more like House than most people or even I would like to admit. Introduce a cure to the misery I live through daily and you stymie my rational mind. My kryptonite! So let it be known, no more women, ever! No happiness for me! I will simply tolerate being mildly discontented with life in order to keep my keen mind.

Sorry I know that sounded incredibly emo, but the truth is that I can’t risk giving up or letting go of the only thing that makes me special and separates me from the myriad of other faceless people. I have an innate acumen toward intuitive and deductive reasoning and I’ve been squandering it chasing women that don’t appreciate me and honestly don’t deserve me. I make excuses about why they do or how they’re not too bad and still end up alone in the end. If my rational mind were as keen as it is when women aren’t involved I’d never end up in that situation. I think that as much as sex with myself for the rest of my years might suck, it’s the cost of maintaining my intellectual capacity.

More to follow later, on a topic not personally related to me.

Musings...

Much has been made about the alleged brilliance of my writing and the way it intimidates or at least comes across as a daunting task to comment. I fear you people build me up into something more than I am. I write, a lot, and often. Hundreds of documents a month, dozens of pieces a week and most of it never sees any exposure beyond the initial authoring. It’s an expected facet of investing this much time in something that you invariably end up getting somewhat good at it. But the point I’m trying to make is that I’m not the best, I’m not the supreme writer of the age, I’m simply above average and in that there is still a measure of banality.

I’m not saying this to elicit responses of praise or contradiction. I’m comfortable with my skill as a auteur and I don’t need validation in that, what I do want is comments that tell me I’m reaching and audience. Something to let me know that I have readers, that there are souls out there willing to read and endure my usually far too personal drivel and take something away from it. It’s not a competition and no one is judging or keeping score. I ran into this when I had the “Old Domain” where I would have readers that would never comment, never respond, but they would stealthily troll around and read but never say anything and then feel hurt or betrayed if I called them out on something.

Now all that having been said, please just comment on any facet of anything, even something as mundane as a smiley face or a one word response to the effect of “Nice read too many big words!” I would take. It means I’m reaching you. I do this as much for me as for you. If I stop getting feedback then it becomes just another journal and I don’t need another one. Between the pieces that never get published, my Deviant Art Journal and of course the leather bound diary I carry with me, I’ve got more than enough venues for personal matters to be discussed. When I sit down to author something for this particular forum I write it to you guys, not myself, not as a means of achieving catharsis but as a way to connect with you. But it works both ways guys. I stop getting, I stop giving. I do owe thanks, however, to Nikki (not to be confused with Nicole, I got one email asking if they were the same person. Not even close. Nikki is awesome, Nicole is from a circle of hell so deep and depraved that even Lucifer doesn’t dare go in), Justina, and Christine for subscribing, and commenting. Also shout outs are due to Immortal Aurora who has been absent due primarily to computer issues. Sorry but playing catch up will be hell.

Now that we have all of the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to something we can all relate and identify with instead of just my pointless whining. Today’s topic is the absurd way that we as a culture and a society have complicated interpersonal romantic relationships and the perversion that we’ve turned marriage into. If we strip away all of the new age bullshit about marriage being the ultimate commitment between two people who love each other with all their hearts what are we really left with? The answer is not one you’re going to like. The institution of marriage came about because it was a way for men to assert sexual ownership rights over women and claim them as property. It wasn’t a deep heartfelt symbol of undying love; it was a way for women to be controlled under the pretense that if they slept with anyone else or were in any way unfaithful an invisible man in the sky would strike them down. Men would take ownership of a woman by marrying her and she would be made to raise his children, service his needs (both domestic and sexual) and care for him home while he was off spreading his seed free of consequence.

Marriage has since evolved into something a bit more palatable to our social norms by being seen as the logical progression of a relationship between two people that have enough common not to kill each other after prolonged periods of time in the same room. The main reason for this progression The sad thing is that the concept of an undying, all consuming, completely fulfilling love that satisfies and contents is something seen more in fairy tales and cheesy romance novels. It does exist; don’t get me wrong, I’m the best example of a die hard romantic I’ve ever found. I tolerate and endure more than anyone else I know to try to make relationships work. I’ll allow myself to be victimized, ignored, cheated on (to an extent, see one of the other posts), introduced as a “friend” when she’s too confused or concerned to identify me as anything else, hell I don’t even take issue with the idea of the ex being a part of her life. I told Nicole on numerous occasions that if we ended up together I wouldn’t mind her continuing her association with Matthew, with a good measure of stipulations tacked onto that of course. But the point I’m getting at here is that for better or for worse when I fall in love with someone, it’s a complete and all encompassing thing. I don’t cheat, I don’t stray, and I will go to any length I have to in order to make her happy. The problem I’m finding though is that as much as women claim they want a guy who’s going to do this kind of thing for them, when they get around me they become incredibly afraid and intimidated by it.

So here lies the quandary. What is it exactly men are supposed to do when nothing they do is right? I mean I give, I sacrifice and I get shit on for all of my effort. But guys like my best friend have carnival prizes for the women he sleeps with that he awards based on their performance in bed and he’s one woman shy of hitting number one hundred. Now I know the argument by most of you is going to be that those women are dumb, and let me stop you and just clarify here. Those women who have slept with him, yeah, they’re not dumb, they’re completely fucking retarded. Most of them don’t even qualify as high functioning retards either. They’re seven shades of fucking stupid and should really have their lives reevaluated and begin to implement some kind of change. Nothing against him, but let’s face it, he’s a whore. Back to the point, why is it that a guy who tries to do everything right, who listens, takes notes, never forgets a birthday (I still call the first girl I ever dated on her birthday every year), suffers through Christmas and the awkward exchange of gifts, even makes a concerted effort to appear presentable and publicly acceptable when meeting parents or family, get nothing in return for his efforts?

Relationships have evolved into these incredibly complicated things where you need a score card and commentary by John Madden and Pat Summerall just to keep up. There’s all these arbitrary terms, friends with benefits, sex with no strings attached, one night stand, fuck buddy, casual dating, just dating, kind of together, talking, seeing each other, together, not together, exclusive, open relationship and really it’s all bullshit. You need an example?

Friends with benefits: this is every good friendship, otherwise why be friends? I benefit from hanging out with you if for no other reason than I’m not bored.

Sex with no strings attached: Awesome I love sex when I don’t have strings grafted into my skin. It makes moving much easier and I feel a lot less like a marionette.

One night stand: Do I really need to go into how fucking stupid this one is? Odds are unless you’ve got her back pressed against the wall, all the fucking you’re doing for that one night is on a bed and you’re both lying down. No one is standing unless the jackass with the cock is standing in the door way with his dick in his hand hoping you brought a friend.

Fuck buddy: if you don’t know the person well enough to even call them a buddy before you take them into your bed, odds are you should be hoping for a one night stand.

Casual dating: am I to understand that there is another kind of dating; perhaps some kind of sudden death dating or high tension dating? If he says the wrong thing he gets shot in the face. If she forgets when her period starts she’s flayed alive.

Just dating: you buy dinner, take her home, and then you go home to rub one out because you’re just dating so sex is out of the question. After all you’re not friends with benefits and you’re certainly not fuck buddies. You’re just dating!

Kind of together: well you’ve been seen in the same place, at the same time, talking to each other. You were even caught kissing on a couple of occasions. But you’re only kind of together. Wouldn’t want to send the wrong idea after all, make someone think that there might be more going on.

Talking: this is really fucking stupid. I talk to hundreds of people a week. Doesn’t mean I’m trying to fuck any of them!

Seeing each other: I open my eyes, look across the room, and happen to make eye contact. The light is interpreted by my brain as visual signals and I see you. The same process occurs in your brain, unless you’re blind at which point stop staring at me! We’ve seen each other, now let’s become friends with benefits!

Together: well thank god you’re together! I’d hate to think you’re in need of assembly. I’ll try to find the instructions from Ikea and we’ll get you done up right. Let me get the special tool that came in the box.

Not together: well I couldn’t find the tool, and the instructions are in some bastard version of Swedish so I guess you’re not together. Sorry.

Exclusive: I don’t recall ever being asked to sign a contract with a girl. But maybe I should start. If she goes to work any one else’s knob or does work for an agent other than myself she’s broken my exclusive contract. I’ll sue god-dammit!

Open relationship: the door is always open for you to leave. Don’t like doing things my way, get the fuck out of here!

These terms are completely useless and stupid. They don’t mean a fucking thing. We assign them special little meanings and talk in this bullshit language because really when you strip away all of the infidelity, the cons, the games, the flirting, and the exorbitant amount of effort that some guy through just for a single piece of ass, how exciting is sex really? It’s hard enough getting each other’s clothes off what with women wearing pants that are painted on these days, and then half the time the guy can’t even figure out what he’s doing and looks like he’s having a seizure in a Mel Brooks movie. But if done right, sex is this messy, hot, sweaty, lurid, loud, debauched act engaged in by two people for what is believed will be mutual physical satisfaction. But we dress it up and add all manner of pretentiousness to it and it becomes something that doesn’t get done without the right amount of alcohol, or the right encouragement from friends, or the right amount of trust. And really if you’re bedding down with that person anyway, as convoluted as dating has become in today’s world, you should care about them enough and have at least a little bit of genuine romantic attachment to really open up, relax, and just enjoy the ministrations of your partner.