Blue Everything

I want to start a fucking fight. I want to hit someone over the head with my Bud Light bottle. I want to batter someone with my bare hands. I will have to get pulled away, and I will start beating the people that try to stop me. I want to create an utter violent chaos. I want to knock down walls. I want to claw someone’s eyes out. That guy with his fucking polo shirt- who the fuck does he think he is? That fucking gel in his hair. He goes to the gym, works out. “Check out my abs bro.” I want to just fucking kick his teeth in. He deserves it. People will remember it. “Remember that time we were at that bar and that kid just snapped on that guy, and kicked his head in?”

There’s this girl, she is probably older than me. She is wearing blue; she has short, brown, curly hair. I fantasize about waking up in the mornings with her, completely in love. We talk about going to get a late brunch. Moving to Savannah one day or Charleston. A town with an old Southern charm, with minimal racist tension. Our house will be small, but will have a library. She will do her work; when she comes homes at night, I will be writing in the corner. We periodically will distract each other by our random sporadic thoughts that no one else finds interesting but us. We love these thoughts. We have sex in the shower. She looks over my direction sees, I’m looking at her. I quickly look away, but can’t find anything to anchor my vision. It was a poor exit.

I walk to the bar, order another Bud Light. Everyone is looking at me. Wondering how old I am. They are thinking about how young I look. What the fuck is this kid doing here? They can tell I haven’t had sex in a long time. It emits out of me like a light for everyone to see. They laugh at me in their heads. No girl would waste her time talking to me. He wouldn’t know what to do with me, he is so young. I try to emit a light a confidence and wiseness, and wit. But, I can’t muster it; I know it isn’t in me. I know they are all right. When my beer comes, I go back to my seat at the table. The ugly kid who came with us bought some cigarettes for the table. I have just started to get good at smoking. There are six guys sitting at my table. They are all pretty tame and won’t talk to any girls. Not that I do all the time, but I have been known to. There was a time when I was a semi-ladies man, if you considered my beta male status. Not now. People around us think we are gay. A group of guys are talking about it. I can hear them, I feel them looking at us. This doesn’t really bother me. Except for the fact that they perceive that as something wrong with us, when, in fact, the real problem with us is that for all existing purposes we only use our dicks to pee out of. I think about hitting on them- fucking with their heads. Then, beating the shit out of one of them. They will remember the night a fag beat the shit out of one of their friends. They will think twice before making fun of gay people again.

No one is really talking; we are all just sitting there staring at each other, waiting for something to happen. The guy who bought the cigarettes starts talking to me about a job he got this summer. He talks with all arrogance about how awesome his job was, how important the work he got to do was. His father is a doctor; he owns a practice. He’s pre-law, his dad set him up with his lawyer friends. He has nothing going for him. He openly admits he wants to be a lawyer to get girls. I know he has failed on virtually every attempt, as he does with all other girls. He is mostly defiantly a virgin, but in the most desperate, sad way.

Blue walks by our table. She is standing in a group circle, talking to some friends, all girls. She is the shining star, though. She is the face that you spot when you scan the crowd. Her. I have to go say something to her. What? I’m fifteen. She has so many good things to offer, and I only have potentially good things to offer. Things that will never be fully realized. She sees me looking at her again, I don’t take my eyes off of her for a second. I give her a slight smile. She doesn’t immediately look away but, she gives no reaction and then looks back at her friend. Fuck. I’m never going to have a girl like Blue. What can I do?

It gets close to closing time. My friends are drunk and arguing about abortion. I want to get the fuck out of this place. I tell them they should close their taps before it gets busy at closing time. Even though most people have cleared out. They listen because they are shit-faced. I sit, patiently smoking a cigarette, praying to Blue who will never hear me. I feel like I might cry. Keep everything in. Don’t let it out here. My chest feels like it is expanding.

When we get back to my friends apartment they keep drinking. Two of them smoke up. I fall asleep on the sofa. I wake up at 7AM to a cell phone alarm going off. One of my friends is passed out on the ground, not responding. I look for the cell phone. Then I realize that the cell phone is in his pocket. I leave to walk to my apartment. I pass a couple leaving for the morning.

Things That Really Happened

It was at some mixer or birthday or one of those things. I’ve never really been good at telling what type of party I’m at. I was standing with your friends that I came with and didn’t really know well. Watching the crowded mess of people stand around and drink and talk,trying desperately to be funny. Not me them. They were trying to be funny. You were talking to some guy; some guy’s name I forget now. I knew the guy, though. You had talked about the guy, at some point, in length to me many times. I know he had cheated (in his opinion not cheated) on you with his girlfriend. I was watching you talk to him. In my head, I remember having a beer. But, I couldn’t because I was twenty, and we were at a bar. And, I remember having to get a red bracelet at the door because I wasn’t twenty-one yet. And, not drinking the whole night, I remember wishing that I were trashed. That I was the type of trashed where you aren’t really sure if you are asleep or just trashed.

But, there I was drinking my Bud Light, watching you talk to this guy, when your friend I didn’t really know said that you would probably like me to meet the guy you were talking to.

I thought this was because you and me were kind of on a date, and you wanted this guy to be jealous, to see that you were with some other guy. That’s what I thought. I didn’t know that we definitely weren’t on a date, which I would later hear back through a five-friend chain, and that you were in love with this guy. I was your good friend.Your good friend that you had high opinions of and wanted to like this guy too.

I don’t remember him. I’m sure he was nice. I’m sure he had deep blue eyes that make you feel like you’re a part of everything that is important and big. I’m sure it’s now hard for you to imagine those feelings you had for him that night- the mixed and equally consuming feelings of lust and infatuation. It’s not hard for me to remember how I thought of you on those nights. Spring in the south always feels like a room after you’ve had sex in it. That’s why I remember the feelings, I think; they felt consummated. I felt like we were already in a full fling. That we had secrets about each other- that we both were sharing with each other a side we had grown accustomed to hiding.

I liked you drunk. I remember that. You reminded me of the first girls I ever got drunk with in high school. Smiling, for the first time letting yourself think things you aren’t supposed to think around boys. You moved in slow motion, with an increased intensity. Maybe you were normally that way and that’s the way you appeared to me when I was drunk. Either way.

Retro-Psychology

I’m getting ready to move, and, in my gathering of stuff, I found a notebook from when I was 7.

Of particular interest, was the spelling/handwriting section. In each case, I had to come up with a sentence for the spelling word we were given* (Note: I’ve realized that some of them are supposed to be us giving definitions, not just sentences). What follows is both surprising and incredibly direct. I wish I could remember if I wrote them as honest fact, or with some sense of irony. Probably, they were the first thing that came to my head. I enjoyed finding and reading them, while wondering what I was thinking for most. Hopefully, you’ll do the same. And now, exactly as written:

Writer. Person who puts letters on paper.

Beehive. I’ve seen a beehive, but with no bees.

Ride. To be carried.

Talk. I don’t like to talk.

Teeth. I like my teeth.

Party. Group of people having a good time together.

Mark. Unit of money in East Germany and West Germany.

Nose. The part of your body used to breath.

Lion. A lion is a large animal that looks like a cat.

Old. Has lived a longgg time.

Secret. I hope a secret will come true.

Sailboat. I didn’t have a sentence.

Know. I know everything.

Are. You are next.

Mmhmm. Oh, 1995…

all over but the shouting

sorry for the length there is more blog below story

I started walking out of the house without any intention. I knew I would probably get lost quickly, not because I didn’t know where I was but because it was dark and there weren’t a lot of streetlights.

It had just stopped raining about an hour ago and the streets were still slick. The air was thick and you could feel it sticking to you as you walked. It made the lights look beautiful, though. Like floating firecrackers or something. I stopped and stared at the traffic light three blocks away.

Red.

Green.

Yellow.

Red.

I looked back. I could still see the porch of the house I left. There weren’t many people left. Just the people who normally came over to the house. I wasn’t one of those people. I was invited to the party by this girl I had gone on a couple of dates with. It was her 21^st birthday. It was the first time she had invited me anywhere. She actually called me twice to make sure that I would come.

I went knowing that she wanted me to be everything great. She wanted me to be funny, sweet, charming. She wanted us to sneak into the kitchen by ourselves, where she would laugh at nothing in particular, staring into her drink. Then she would pretend to be sheepish and look up at me. And I would smile at her. Then we would have gone back to my apartment and I would have sex with her with a gentleness and a passion that she hadn’t felt before. She would always remember her 21^st birthday. We would have left together and she would be walking with me right now, to her place or to mine. But, again, I’m walking home fucked up and by myself.