5.31

Do you ever gave sad attacks? A crushing despair that hits you with complete disregard for reason or stimuli?

I do.

5.30

I was so angry that my head hurt and my arms ached from straining against myself, trying to keep myself from strangling you to death. I was so worked up that I could feel my heartbeat in my fingertips and the sweat drip off my forehead. I was so hurt that I cried until my face felt puffy, all over a situation caused by you that I made up just so I would think it was true and I could forget that you ever existed.

Have you ever been such a good actor that you're able to fool yourself?
I warn against it. When you find yourself crying on the bathroom floor because the person you want to hate is a thousand miles away having a conversation with you in a state neither of you are in and it's all in your head, perhaps you should take a step back and reevaluate.

5.28

You enter my dreams like a plague. You creep in around the edges and you always scuttle away again before I had a chance to say hello, or talk about old times, or hold you tight and promise to never let you go. Perhaps it's for the best; I am a sentimental old fool.

5.27

The earth is so far away, now. I don't suppose you can see it out the window. Maybe we should just close it; I'm done watching salvation drift into the distance.
If only I weren't talking to myself.

5.19

I have a confession, Loughmann. I know you won't want to hear it. I've been looking at older women.

No, idiot. Not like that. But like I've passed that age when men stop looking at seventeen year-olds and thinking "alright."

Well, I always assumed so, anyway. But that's not my point. My point is that I've started trying to find out for myself if older women are attractive. Hear me out, now. I've been looking for the last six months for a woman who clicked for me. Six months of actually looking at women at the mall, or restaurants, or wherever one sees older women, and you know what? Nothing. Nothing ever at all.

Really! I can explain, see: all these women I've seen have a stranglehold on their youth. Yeah, locked in a vise grip. They wear too much makeup and they wear young clothes. Like a sexual relationship with a car--just wrong. So very wrong.

Well, I bring it up because this morning I ended my search.

Haha, she was something nearing forty, and she was beautiful. Not gorgeous or sexy, but beautiful like a very old statue left in the rain. I know. Don't shake your head at me.

Self confidence. That's what you're looking for. She walked like she knew who she was and she didn't need people to agree. That's what all this painting yourself up is for: to make other people think you're young and vibrant and alive, well, I'll tell you something. If I had been older and stupider, I would have asked this woman's phone number. She was that--

I am not, either.

And you can shut up, Loughmann. See if I trust you again.

5.17

I couldn't explain it even though I saw it with my own eyes. A woman I knew from the market, too. She ran, screaming, into the square and collapsed in front of God and everybody, just as nude as the day she was born. She lay there, writhing on the ground, but her hands looked pinned in place by some unknown force. Eventually, her eyes and mouth started bleeding. She was yelling the most obscene language, but it wasn't her voice. She sounded like a swarm of locusts, and I'm not making jokes.
Everyone was gathered around, but nobody knew what to do. We could cover her shame, but we would have to approach first. No one wanted to be the first to get near her.
Then, he approached. He touched her and she immediately ceased thrashing. He lent her his cloak. He cleaned the blood from her face. He forgave her sin.

If I never believe in another messiah, I believe in this one.

5.16

[I always have such grand plans for how I will keep up during the summer. Haha hahaha ha haha no]

Lift your lip, little woman. Let me see your teeth. Good for you; you're finally angry.
I've been trying for four years to break your temper, and for four years I couldn't cut through the titanium shell you've forged for yourself. Today, I count as a victory. I finally angered you. You broke. You showed genuine human emotion.

The problem is that now I've made you mad at me, I want the implacable back.

5.14

I like to think I'm just as suave as can be. I like to think I can say all the right things. I like to think I'm a ladykiller, but truth be told, you probably fell in love with me when I called at midnight and cried for an hour when my mother died.
That's not suave. That's not the right thing. That's not ladykiller, but it's genuine, and that's what you fell in love with.

5.9

The dog's asleep on the floor next to me. He has been there since I entered the room. That's been hours since.
Mom's asleep on the couch behind me. Her leg was keeping her up.
The cat's awake on my lap. I would insult her to move.

The dog loves me, but he loves everybody.
Mom loves me, but she loves her whole family.
The cat loves me, and--ah, there it is. Singular love, reserved only for me.

The cat won't sit on dad's lap; he plays with her tail. She hates that. The cat won't sit on Phil's lap; he moves too much. She hates that. The cat won't sit on Katy's lap; she picks her up and swings her. She hates that. The cat won't sit on mom's lap; mom lays down. She hates that. Since I'm the only warm thing in the house with the patience and mindset to sit for two hours and pet an unruly beast, I have the love and adoration of the cat. In a room full of people, she seeks me out. Despite attention from all sides, she sits with me.

She sits on my lap.
She rubs my cereal bowl with her face.
She meowls when I whistle. I make sure to whistle when I can.
She loves me. Only me. Just me. No one else.

I swear I've never felt this before.

[This is a real cat. This is a real story. And now that I'm done typing this, I want to go to sleep. I have to move. The cat will hate me, if only for tonight.]

5.8

[I have an idea for tomorrow to write a really cool post, but it might break my arbitrary rules. I'll look into it.]

She has a run in her stockings from where the tree branch caught. I slide my fingertips along it. Either I'm hoping to mend it with my will or just touch her skin; she can't tell.
I look just as bedraggled. My tie hangs from my pocket. My shirt flaps open. My hair lies loose and limp. I can't be seen to visibly sweat, but I give off too much heat. She rolls away to cool off.
So why did I bring her to this field? Why in our best clothes? I'm tricky, but she thinks she has me figured out. But then she's surprised; I pull a key out of my pocket and the tie goes everywhere. I probably can't control my smile. She reaches for my hand, eager. I pull back; I make her give me a kiss before relinquishing the key.
"What's it to?" she asks. I shake my head.
"Guess."
She really doesn't know. "Car. Wrong shape. House?" My face gives nothing away. "File cabinet? Work? Desk? Locker? Padlock?" I laugh. She's frustrated. "Well?"
"Do you give up?" I'm infuriating.
"Of course, but only if you'll tell me what it's for."
I roll away and sit up. The sun beats a halo into my hair and she can't look right at me. I pause like the words are difficult to find. "I know we joke and kid a lot, but I want to be serious for a moment. That key belongs to a lockbox in which I put everything I've ever been ashamed of."
"Everything? Must be a small box."
"It's garganutan. But that's not the point. I want you to hold it--that's the point."
She fell silent, not sure what I was going to say next.
"I want you to have it because . . ."
She thought for a minute. In that minute, her mind stretched worlds and saw futures that would never be. She dared ask one question: "Are you serious?"
I laugh. "No, silly. Nobody makes keys for regrets. But symbolically, yes. I give them to you."
"Good." She says. But she doesn't know what to do with them. She doesn't deserve them, necessarily, and I didn't have the right to give them to her, necessarily. So she reaches over and puts them in my pocket. "Hey," she says. Her head tilts onto my chest. "Keep this safe for me until I need it, will you?"

I guess I laughed because I thought it was funny, not tragic. She certainly did.

[I wrote a story at three am from a first person perspective with a different person narrating, I guess.]

5.5b

I will be so excited to make your acquaintance. I've heard so much about you, it will be just lovely to meet you for real. Of course, it must be so hard for you, I understand, so that's why I haven't asked to meet you before now. But as long as you think you're coming out, I do want to meet you.
I'm really nervous.
What if you're really not what I expect? What if you're just like everyone else?
I shouldn't like that. I've never met a truly evil person before.

5.5

I want so badly for my words to be permanent, but I keep writing them in chalk.
Do you think I'll ever be able to hate you in print?
I doubt it.

5.4

Jerry Aeche was a normal enough man for the company he kept, or so my dad's friends says. Certainly they never knew what to do with him. Was he a drinker? Only in moderation. Did he do drugs? Once, at Vallaby's party last year, but only if you count a single hit off a joint. Did he chat up the ladies? He certainly was interested in ladies, but I don't think chat up would quite describe it. He wasn't funny, especially, nor was he exceptionally dull. Jerry just was, and if you don't believe me, you can ask around. I'm sure most people will agree.
The only truly interesting piece of Jerry's life relates to his daughter, which I'm sure you will all agree after I tell you about her. You see, Jerry is normal-looking, of course. And his wife was normal looking, and probably still is for all I know. But Jerry's daughter caused him no end of pain on account of she made him abnormal again. Of course, there was the first and foremost inconvenience on account of single dads aren't too common around here. I didn't learn that Jerry was one for the first ten months of our acquaintance. Anyhow, his daughter was attractive.
Oh, right. That's a major inconvenience for Jerry, because most Dads aren't (once quite literally) beating boys off their daughters. But Jerry did, you see. Ok, I'll start from the top.
Dark (that's Jerry's kid) was normal normal when she was in grade school. Just like everyone else, you understand. She was Jerry's pride and joy. She got Bs in school. She had one or two conservative sleepovers. She played with her dad and didn't complain about wearing dresses. She got in trouble once. Normal, you see. And then puberty and everything. If you've never known a girl grow to a woman in . . . oh, let me see was it about a good solid month in his mid-forties and you look away and she'd grown an inch? And then she filled out just like you'd expect from a real woman. I mean, I'm exaggerating, but you understand that she was a girl one day and a woman the next. And you can believe me, the boys noticed. She was in middle school, but a high school boy started hanging around her, which was abnormal because none of her friends had that. Jerry actually found that boy outside the house at three in the A.M. and he did one of the first abnormally un-Jerry things. He locked that kid inside the house and told him that nobody would hear him scream now, but Jerry didn't have to hurt him. You're hearing this, right? Jerry said this. Anyway, he held the kid down and he said that "You've got a choice, see, and it's between trapped here and your parents don't get to see you graduate or get a degree or get married or have any kids and that, or you can choose to leave her and tell everyone you know that nobody messes with Aeche's daughter." And of course the kid liked his life more than his dignity, but doesn't everybody? So that was the first of Jerry's problems.
And this kid, Jerry's, I mean, she was something else. She wasn't one of those magazine ladies with the teased-out hair and the push-up bras. Nothing like that. She wasn't necessarily a body, you understand. She was confidence and power, the like I'd never seen. She walked like an avalanche, all pure and perfect and yet in slow motion because if you really knew what was going on in there, she was an unstoppable force. She fell into every step she took and never had to move for nobody on the sidewalk. See, I could describe her hair and hips and lips and so on, but she was something even when she was wearing all winter clothes and a hat and all, and you couldn't see her figure worth nothing. She just had to walk past you and you were catching yourself staring at the walk away. And more than that, you know was her personality. She could talk to anybody and I don't think I'm joking at all by that. She always had something she could talk about with anybody. I mean get her in a room with an astrophysicist and she'd be asking him questions and then telling about that one time that she learned what stars were and she'd have him wrapped in ten minutes, tops.
You can see how this is going, you know.
Anyway, Jerry was, by all accounts, normal. So he was a pretty normal dad. Other than that one creep from high school, he left Dark all to herself as far as love went. I mean, he would ask questions, but she was always so good at answering that he never caught on. See, she talked to a lot of boys on account of her talking so well, and then she would get all confused when they act "Hey, honey how about a hump?" and she hadn't given them so much as a go-ahead or a how-you-do. These boys I think really started to get her down, but she never stopped trying to befriend them, as you know. Anyhow, Jerry was always watchin' her on account of her being the only thing in his life worth noticing. He was pretty normal still at this point, I think.
And then! Then, oh boy. She fell in love. We're talking fluttering lashes and pounding hearts and sweaty palms and all that and then on top of it they would stay up until the sun just talking about everything and every once in a while when she didn't think he was looking she would steal a kiss and he would wrestle her on down and kiss her so her knees went and then they would walk outside and look at the moon for a while holding hands. They had it bad. I don't think I remember that boy's name, but he was just what you'd expect would be with the most beautiful girl you've ever seen--what? No, he was an ugly mother's son. Tell me the truth, have you ever seen, I mean outside of the movies, of course. No, you haven't either. Only them really terribly unlikely men ever get the women of your dreams. I guess he wasn't that bad, either, but he sure was short and dark, and that wasn't what I would have pegged her for at all. Maybe I'm just confusing myself because I'm not really a partial judge, you know. Every man is in love with her and all.
Right! So Jerry got all twisted over this. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't drink nothin' neither. He was in a right terrible old state. He knew his girl was gonna make some decision soon and he just hoped it was the best decision for all involved, but he wasn't so sure about it. Jerry took off from work, one, and his supervisor didn't know, and he just went and talked to this boy's parents on the sly. I think he worked at an office where they sell cars, what's that? Oh, dealership. Right. Anyway, Jerry was all worried for her and rightly so.
No, I'm not tryin' to scare you. I'm about to tell you if you can keep your pants on.
See, she had fallen hard for this boy and he was just as sweet as can be, if you'll believe it. But comes the day she decides she's gonna marry this boy. When--I suppose about she was twenty, but I could be wrong. And Dark, she decides this and she takes this boy's words into her heart about how he's gonna ask her just as soon as the time is right. But she and he have different life paths for a while, I don't know what the summer, I guess? But she comes back and he's ready for her and now you have to understand something that Jerry is normal, right, but his daughter is not. She's not the casual doin' it type. I haven't known her to give it up to a boy, and that's maybe ever. She just don't see the point. I think it's on account of her having all the emotional security and that. She's constantly surrounded by boys she thinks are her "friends" so much that she may have forgotten what that means for the rest of us, 'cause we all see these boys and see so much more. And this all pains Jerry to no end, of course.
And she's not this "spread-your-legs-please-honey-just-a-little-to-the-left" type, but this boy has had enough of her stalling, see, and if you do love me, where are we, then, why can't you prove it. And he takes her and not unwillingly in his head, but this request is like the mountain that diverted the avalanche. She doesn't know how to articulate it or whether it's fair or not to say no on account of nobody had asked her before quite like that. And he came away from it thinking he was the better and she came away thinking she'd been had.
Jerry didn't learn about this.
Dark goes into complete recluse condition and won't talk to anyone for months or maybe years like she did before. She certainly loses all faith in men and she loses her man, too. I think he moved away and she didn't chase him like he expected and when he called back up she was so blistering angry that he just moved on. I don't think she did or could, though, you know?
So she meets more men and she's slowly coming back around to this old point of view when she finds the safest guy she knows. He's handsome like the movies and tall and fair. In other words, he's nothing like the old. And he's one of those Christian buttholes who gets ladies and doesn't know what to do with them for he's never even used his dick for more than peeing, I guess. He was just as safe as she could like. He wouldn't never sex her without her wanting first. And she thought that was enough. And so she really fell for this guy, you know, and he just fell for her like a big pot of water to the floor. Like thud and no helping it but to get the mop, you know. And he's so safe he doesn't even take her clothes off never. I mean if boys are like fire he was a flashlight, is what I'm saying. And he doesn't kiss her too hard, too often, and he always asks first. He always gives her an out and everything is always just so hunky-dory. I think, well I'm not an expert on her, though I might sound like it. But this boy catches her totally off guard, you see, in a way she didn't even know would be a problem.
No, she had run from the sex but forgot the promise. I'm telling you he asks her to marry him and she freaks out so hard that she almost goes back to that place where she won't talk to anyone anymore.
Really, I mean come on. She's so worried about her physical scars she can't even remember her emotional scars for just one minute? Anyway, he does what any good Christian would do, he runs and I don't think she's heard from him again. Just like them, too, to give up when the going gets tough.
And now Jerry hasn't heard none of this until she comes home after this Christian dude tears her heart out more efficiently than you can know. She spills all the beans to Jerry, and now he knows, see, and it's at this point I guess I should apologize to you.
See, I framed this as a story about Jerry, but this is where Jerry's story ends.
He dies, and I mean dies from a broken heart as soon as the words are out of her lips. Say what you will, but he did. And his last words to her were so sweet and lovely, I'm sure, and she cried to say goodbye, and now she's buried her old man in a little grave on the hill under the shade of the tree that he built that treehouse for her. But see, his story ends and it's tragic and all, but her story goes on, and even she don't know how it end. So you see Dark, just once in your life, and hopefully all this will flood back to you and you'll see past the confidence and the avalanche and the fact that she lives her life like a living painting, and you maybe won't be the next guy to walk through the revolving door of her life.

5.3

She smiles a lot.
I want her to care about me, but I've tried too hard. I've been too clever. I've said too much. I've played my hand.
Here's what I look like: bumbling idiot, always looking for a laugh, never good enough for a conversation. I'm the guy who will pull up his pants and waddle. I'm the guy who will eat ketchup in my applesauce for attention. I'm the guy who wears his tuxedo shirt under his tuxedo just for laughs.
She smiles a lot, but I'll never keep up this pace. I'll never manage to keep her laughing, so when I suddenly, stone-faced, ask her a serious question, she'll laugh again.

Then she'll shake her curls and act like I've told the best joke of all: the comedian turned inside out.

5.1b

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm the nightmare that stalks the deepest corners of your sadness, latches onto everything you love, and breaks all your favorite things. I'm the monster that you can't escape no matter how far you run. You're always dragging me behind you like a weight around your neck, always ready to trip you up or suck you down under the current of your life.

I'm fear.

I'm anger.

I'm loathing.

I'm self-hate.

Good luck getting rid of me.

5.1

[Someone else posted about their headache, and I figured I shouldn't share this story there, but here. Good luck figuring out what it means]

I guess I'm lying on the floor. Let's figure out what led to this point. I couldn't see out of the center of my eyes for about a half an hour. I'm not sure what was up with that, but I kept grading papers. Then, I guess I could see out of the center but everything else in the world was gone. Then I laid down. Now I'm here. Turn the lights off, please.