I think everyone considers me so extroverted because of my introversion; i spend so much time spinning thoughts around in my head by myself that when i’m unleashed onto the public i’m this unstoppable whirlwind of energy and chatter. So, maybe i need all this downtime to be as happy as i am. At the same time, i don’t have as many friends right now as i did this time last year because i never see anyone. One factor in that is theatre… ugh. I don’t like to act. I am bad at it. I hate being in boring shows just because they’re what’s around to do. And one is coming up… good person of sezuan, a show i don’t like one bit. And there aren’t any characters who i want to be. And i’m going to be too busy next semester anyway. And i seem to have been drafted. To the theatre i am a warm body and a resource; the director knows i have a certain amount of potential and that i work very hard and so he basically made sure to make me agree to work in the show before i could decide if i liked it or not. So, now if i don’t show up at auditions, it’s a personal afront more than it is a statement about my opinions on the show. Isn’t life nice?
Year 01
Have you ever asked someone with a bruised lip if you could kiss it to make it better? It seemed like such a good idea at the time (while staring at the cutest swelled lip i’ve ever seen in my life, as swelled lips go), but in retrospect i’m not sure how well it would’ve went over. Someone ought to punch me in the lip and then ask me if i want a kiss to see how i react…
Any time i get farther away from the city than the mall-ridden accessible suburbs, i get freaked out. To me, riding out to Millersville or Bloomsberg is roughly equivalent to a plane dropping me in the middle of a cornfield in Nebraska. It’s rather amusing, because i’m not of those “MAC machine, cell phone, newsstand, food truck” city people, but i am one of those “instant accessibility, constant public transportation, city skyline at night, traffic lights as opposed to rampaging cows” people. Meeting and chatting with students from Ursinus College was especially amusing/jarring, because i narrowly chose Drexel over Ursinus within the last two possible days before matriculation. Ursinus was a nice place, and i would have been a very valued student there, but it was just too goddamned far away from my precious precious skyscrapers. I could learn to love the country, but i’d need a really freaking fast internet connection, a driveway shorter than a third of a mile, a credit card with good online fraud protection, and my own car. In other freaky news, i would have definitely been a PiNu pledge at Ursinus, which means in the alternate reality of my life i would’ve just met the entire Drexel posse today for the first time. In that reality i eventually learned to like beer because that’s what everyone drank, and i learned to accept my theatre classes because Ursinus doesn’t have a straight Communications degree, and i learned to accept that going to a concert would be an all day event back in Philly. In short, i would have learned to compromise all of the things that i take for granted because without them i’d probably just curl up into myself and wither away.
I have this very irrational (yet, highly rational) fear of contracting Oral Herpes. This started out as a sort of joke at parties – an excuse not to share pieces of pizza and drinking glasses with other people. As the years progressed my little rule evolved into my golden rule: The only people i’ll share anything with are people i would lock lips with anyhow. My friends all think i’m insane, of course. What most people don’t realize is that Herpes is the most prevalent sexually transmitted infection, only it isn’t just transmitted sexually. Anytime someone has a cold sore and they kiss you or share a drinking container with you, you run the risk of transmitting their infection. There is no cure for herpes. It is unsightly and easy to spot. It can weaken your immune system enough to allow other diseases to take advantage of you; by virtue of this trait is is known as a co-factor to AIDS/HIV. So, i might be overly paranoid, but my fear is not irrational. Anyhow, i hate sharing.
Today is “A Day (with)Out Weblogs,” in observance of World AIDS day. The silence is deafening, defeating, and absurd. While some of the originators of this movement certainly have their hearts in the correct place (a place that seeks to emulate the popular “A Day (with)Out Art”), i think limiting the blogging world to silence is completely the opposite of what this day requires from us as intelligent human beings. Our art is the art of gabbing and linking and wasting time; today perhaps we should donate a little of our time to gabbing about AIDS/HIV, linking to information about it, and spending our time educating ourselves.
I am a thrice certified AIDS/HIV Peer Educator (Red Cross twice, Planned ParentHood once) and have served four years as a Peer Educator as well as conducted coursework in AIDS related topics. Silence on my part would be a waste. If you can claim any actual knowledge of AIDS/HIV, your wasting a day of your life on the behalf of other lives that are wasting away. If you can’t claim to be properly educated in AIDS/HIV your silence is a waste as well unless you’re spending the time learning something about this disease that has cast a pall over the entire world.
If today needs to be a day of your silence, please don’t let that silence go wasted. Please.