On Blake

On second thought, perhaps I should change the title of this post; both because it's suggestive, and because that suggestion is inaccurate.

I've been avoiding talking about this, both on and off the blog. Chaz isn't really speaking to me right now, and somehow he knows when it's me knocking on his door (though, I suppose that Alfonzo has never touched Chaz's door, and Vlad is somewhere doing his mysterious thing, so...). I've caught flak for using the blog in personal conflicts, but this is my only way through that door.

In my defense, Blake instigated everything. Friday night, Chaz and Blake turned in early to gather strength for a long Saturday of party-hopping. I, with nowhere to go and no plans to make plans, was vegging out on the couch in front of the TV. I don't want anyone to get the impression that I enjoy Comedy Central (except Drawn Together, which is hilarious), but the state of modern late-night cable television is pretty sad. I don't know why Cartoon Network thinks that anyone wants to watch Billy and Mandy, let alone in the middle of the night. Yeah, point being, I was watching stand-up comedy when Chaz's door opened. Blake wandered out and into the bathroom.

He's cute, okay? His hair goes down to his chin, and he was wearing a dirty old t-shirt and boxers, and maybe it just was the lighting and the way the shadows fall across his face, but I was enchanted. Much more interesting than TV, I watched him leave the bathroom and expected him to wander back to Chaz's room. Isn't it strange how you can focus all of your attention on someone, and not even notice that they're looking back at you?

He sat down on the other side of the couch and asked me why I was up so late. I told him there was no reason to be asleep until I fell there. He told me that from the few minutes he'd been exposed to me, he'd gathered that I seem pretty depressed. I told him that I wasn't surprised. And then he asked if I was gay.

Maybe it's the hair, or maybe it was my IGBALTQ t-shirt, or maybe I just put the vibe out stronger than I know. I told him that I am bisexual, but that I'm experiencing an unwelcome early retirement. He scoffed at this, swearing that I am too cute to be so single. I shrugged, and he moved to the middle of the couch.

"I think I know what your problem is. You'll never attract anyone if you walk around with a black cloud over your head. Finding people is half what comes naturally, and half presentation. Just put a little more heart into your performance, and I'm sure things will turn around for you." I thanked him for the advice, and he went back to bed.

Saturday night at 11 p.m., there came a knock at my door. It was Blake. He ditched Chaz by saying he was too exhausted to keep partying, knowing that Chaz would rather die than stop drinking before 1. He asked if I was busy, and if he could come in, and then if he could kiss me; these were not questions I was prepared to say no to. His breath smelled faintly of alcohol, and I'm sure my clothes and hair smelled of weed. For the sake of discretion, I will employ a cliché and an ellipsis. One thing led to another and.....

It was a marriage of convienience, a hook-up, a one-night-stand; nothing that you aren't familiar with, Chaz. It was not some sort of premeditated attack on you, or an attempt to undermine or disrespect you in any way. We both had something that the other one wanted, and we made an exchange. I'm sorry that it upset you, but I regret nothing.

You don't know what Wash U's gay scene is like. It's the dryest wishing well in the world, around which are gathered roughly one hundred effiminate boys wishing for nothing but a confident, masculine man to come along and sweep them off their feet. I know that I've only got one foot in the grave of Wash U's gay community, but frustration and the despondance is real. If you'd been in my shoes, you'd have slept with him, too.

Again, Chaz, I'm sorry this happened in a manner that upset you. I didn't mean to hurt you over this, and I'm sorry.

-Alan

How Chicken Keeps Us Moderate

I was out on my own, driving around in the sudden 30-degree, ultra-windy night (for reference, it was 70-degrees at 2 pm). Listening to my Ideal* CAKE album, I felt the pang of homesickness.

(*the Ideal CAKE album is a 12-song playlist [12 being the average track number of a CAKE album], in which each track has been selected according to its position on the original album [the first five tracks from 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions on thier respective albums, and the last five tracks in the same manner], except for the middle two tracks, which were drawn from a pool of all tracks between the first and last five. Carl took issue with my method, but agreed that it was a satisfactory selection.)

I made a resolution not to eat fast food this year, which I have broken twice now; once because I was stoned and forgot, and tonight because I'm stoned and 7 weeks is a long time. But I thought about the Jesus-directed mission of our favorite fast food establishment, and realized that Chick-Fil-A keeps us behaving within moderation.

Assuming, as Socrates would, that we are all upper-middle class stoners with an affinity for CAKE and fried chicken, it is natural that we identify "The Good Life" as getting high, driving the Chick-Fil-A and listening to CAKE. The Good Life can be said to consist of four things : more than one person, inhaling marijuana smoke, listening to CAKE and eating the chicken, and that any things outside of these four things is said to be auxiliary goods.

And given that the combination of these four things is the ideal state, and that no incomplete combination of the components will be as good, we find ourselves forgoing the lesser forms of good. If the Chick-Fil-A is closed, one might merely stay in, catch up on sleep, or play Mario Party. If one is out of weed, one might just go home for dinner and regroup later. If nobody remembered an iPod, one might turn around to get it, or drive somewhere else in spite and confusion. And, lastly, if one is alone, one might scrap the whole gig altogether.

Because we hold out for the ideal combination, the alignment of the stars, we find ourselves doing the things that we love in moderation; a sign of great maturity. For if we were to be moderate only with those things that we do not care about, one might falsely proclaim high moderation on their part. But to defy those most satisfying components is to practice complete mastery of the self.

Thank you, Hellenistic Philosophy. Thank you, S. Truett Cathy. Thank you, Jon McCrea. Thank you, Cannabis indica. Thank you, Carl. It will be too long before I see you all together again. With this grief in mind, I eat White Castle.

-Alan

alantastic

Every time I want to log into blogger, I have to type "alantastic" and then my password. Though I try to maintain fairly simple relationships with my various and sundry user names, alantastic and I have had a very odd time together.

When I first assigned myself the name, back in August, it was with an air of sarcasm. "tastic" on the one hand, indicating a certain level of greatness which my blog does all but embody. "alan-tastic" on the other hand, contrasting a artificial suffix for "greatness" with one of the blandest names under the sun.

There, then, came a time when I felt a certain amount of animosity towards "alantastic". I thought of it as a code which activated, within me, a deeply embedded program which behaves almost as I do, but in a manner more superficial and less authentic than the real thing. Within myself, I figured, I had created a personality which behaved a lot like me, but lacked an initial spark, and as I typed "alantastic" I could feel this program taking root in my central nervous system, laying its silicon tracks of my organic ones. It was the enemy within; in some ways, it was everything I hate about myself.

And now, tonight, I find myself taken by a third and altogether more favorable impression. I bought a bicycle today, the newest addition to my growing fleet of vehicles. I have not named it, yet, but I'm working hard on coming up with something. It's matte black, very sturdy, with incredibly sharp gear wheels (as evidenced by my newly ruined button-fly blue jeans. {casts away a tear}). I bought it for a number of reasons, the most significant being that I wanted a bicycle and I had the money. Less significant, but of great importance, is the fact that I find myself driving short distances either to avoid the cold or to avoid walking. I surmised that if I had a bicycle, I would use it to travel these short distances, leaving Belinda to carry me to my more remote destinations. I also plan to go riding in Forest Park during my 2-hour break on Friday afternoons.

But the inaugural ride, tonight, was to Maggie's Greenway apartment. She was throwing a very low-key birthday party for a fellow member of the Alternative Lifestyles Association and, despite the cold, I rode my unnamed stallion through the nearly empty streets to her place. Somehow, merely knowing that I'd arrived by bicycle kept me smug all night, but it was the ride home which brought me into a new equilibrium with my username.

Oh, it was bitterly cold. To ride slowly was to allow the cold time to chill my bones, but to ride swiftly was to invite the wind through the pores of my clothing. The loose chin-straps of my Russian/Postal worker hat flapped behind me, and I slid along the nearly finished Kingshighway. It's eerie in a way that I've only experienced once before. The road, itself, is finished, but none of the acoutrements of a normal road have been installed yet; in essence, the whole area becomes an oil painting of pitch blackness. I felt slippery, riding there. I felt some cross between diffusion into the environment and stark contrast with the surroundings. Eerie like Van Gogh. Eerie like getting a body part as a gift.

In some ways, it's like riding through a ruined world in which you are the only survivor. Not like The Omega Man in which Charlton Heston rides around cities mowing down zombies who look like German mimes and who act like ninjas. Rather, the sort of post-apocalypse where I have nowhere to go, and I'm coming from nowhere in particular, and I just happen to be where I am. Even when everyone in the world is dead, there's still the cold and there's still the breeze, and there's still the feeling of both through three layers of clothes.

And that, my friends, was alantastic.

I've been looking for some sort of foothold to help me climb out of my pit of self-doubt, and I don't think that enjoying the feeling of worldwide solitude is quite the ticket to being well-adjusted, but to feel satisfaction of this sort comes as a refreshing reminder that I'm still alive, as dead as I may feel.

-Alan

News From The Front Lines

It's been a while since I posted from a computer that wasn't in my room. I used to have so much more to say (not to mention, so much more idle time during the day), I guess.

Anyway, the news of the morning is that I am now, officially, a full-fledged KWUR DJ. I did my first show this morning (too early for the sane to listen, but thanks to Bridget and Mom for tuning in), and I think it went well. I am aggravated by the slight pauses and seconds of dead air I amassed, but the girl who came in after me had about 2 minutes of nothing while we tried to figure out how to hook her iPod to the sound board. I made a CD, complete with crossfades in groups of three songs, and that seems to be the most stable way of putting on a show.

Playlist :
Don't Think Twice, It's Alright (Demo) - Bob Dylan
You Won't See Me - Dar Williams
The Greatest - Cat Power
You Can Get It If You Really Want - Jimmy Cliff
Subterranean Homesick Alien - Radiohead
Temporary Remedy - Ben Harper
Testing 1, 2, 3 - Barenaked Ladies
green grass of tunnel - Múm
The Long Ride - Dick Dale
Los Pasillos De Tia Conga - Conjunto Cespedes
Aqueous Transmission - Incubus
Excuse Me - Peter Gabriel
Trip To Poughkeepsie - Chris Koza
Get What It's About - Jon Brion
Mahna Mahna - CAKE

Overall, a nice, diverse selection. I'm hoping to have more of a narrative thread in the future, but I just wanted to show off all the different music I listen to.

Le sigh, though. They misprinted my name on the show schedule.

-Alan

V Day

Valentine's Day is not my enemy, but it is not my friend. Generally, the way this works is, if you're single, you hate it and if you aren't single, you love it. Each condition, for me, is a mixed bag. When I'm single, I think of a variety of gestures I could make to a variety of people, doubting whether or not it's a good idea. When I'm attached, I think of a variety of gestures I could make toa variety of people, and resent the fact that I can only officially gesture towards the person I'm with.

That glass is just a tiny bit less than half full, no matter how I look at it.

Motherfucker.

I've got to write a short story in a 7 days. I've been working on four, none of which want to turn into something worthwhile.

#1. My most hopeful story is about a boy who works in a psych lab with pigeons, falls in love with one of the women he works under, becomes violently angry upon learning that she's engaged, thinks the pigeons are telling him to kill the fiancee, and soon he begins listening to them. Undertones of how even humans, supposedly higher beings, are controlled by stimuli and conditioned responses.

#2. A story about Maggie, one of my favorite real life characters to write stories about.

#3. An aborted fetus of a story about a mysterious letter asking the recipient to meet late at night behind a building on campus.

#4. A second Maggie story, centered around a WU myth about the founder's seal and Brookings Hall.

The problem is that I can't get any of the stories off the ground. I've completely plotted out the pigeon story, but the execution is killing me. My plan is to jump ahead to a scene that I anticipate will be interesting, write it as though it were the beginning, and see if the result is something worth keeping. I think that I can make this story happen, but I've just been too scatterbrained to get it off the ground.

Sorry for the state of the union post. Not much is going on, and I'm tired of posting about Brody all the time.

-Alan

The Last Rites

Say goodbye, everyone, because in less than a day, I will die. You may think you see me around, you may even think that it's me answering my phone, but it's an impostor. Ask him, and he will betray his secret flaw: he is an entire year older than I am.

Part of my after-class routine is sitting on my beanbag, catching up on my webcomics, checking my mail, and essentially just loafing in cyberspace. It was sometime during today's performance of this routine that I realized that at 11:46 PM tomorrow, I will forever cease to be a teenager. Understandably, I wondered if there was any part of being a teenager that I had missed.

After many consultations with many insightful young men and women, we all concluded that I had been a very good teenager (or a very teenagery one, as Marina put it). I had : gotten in a car accident, destroyed an object out of frustration, argued with my parents over curfeiw, snuck out of the house, drank alcohol, smoked weed, kissed, dated, and had sexual intercourse, gotten a speeding ticket, stayed up all night, cut myself shaving, dyed my hair, driven at speeds over 100 mph outside of the state of Montana (no speed limits, ya' know), gone on vacation with my friends, gone on vacation by myself, seen a concert, driven to another city to see a concert, given someone flowers, made out in a movie theater, lost all of my clothes in strip BS, been attracted to an authority figure in my life, climbed onto a roof that I wasn't supposed to go on, played copious amounts of video games, ate far too much fast food, watched a teen-targeting TV melodrama over a significant period of time (The OC), watched "The Wizard of Oz" sync-ed to "Dark Side Of The Moon", fallen into a swimming pool while drunk and stoned, fallen into a swimming pool while sober, set useful objects on fire, played with gasoline..... there's a ton more, but it seems that I've done everything that I'm willing to do (examples of things I'm not willing to do : teen pregnancy (thanks, Lori), venereal disease, been arrested, or gotten a tattoo).... except get a piercing.

So I now sport a shiny stainless steel ring in the upper cartilage of my right ear.

I've still got just over 24 hours left, so if you have any things you think I might have missed, please comment as soon as possible.

-Alan