Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

selfy-stuff

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I try to listen to my body when it screams at me.

Earlier in the evening it seemed as though everyone suddenly needed to talk to me. Lindsay had locked herself out and needed me to let her in, our friend Chris called to leave a mysterious message about how “important” it was for me to call him, members of my music fraternity were hounding me via email and instant messenger. Just as suddenly, i needed to go to sleep. It wasn’t even midnight yet, and i didn’t feel tired; my body just didn’t want to operate. I couldn’t type, or think, just slide into a dreamy haze every time i relaxed and listened to the music i had on.

I bid everyone a farewell for the night, started a cd on tenth track, and was asleep before the end of the eleventh.

It was in that same manner that i woke up: ostensibly because i heard a noise, but really because my body needed fuel. Lately I seem to have found myself on a sort of a diet, which is to say that i’m not eating a pint of ice cream every third day and i’m not eating half a pound of chocolate as a midnight snack. I know, though, what waking up like that means: i need some sort of fuel.

Down in the kitchen my body was like a compass: milk rather than juice & two small pieces of chocolate. I was obviously a little dehydrated and a little low on sugar, though i would have never noticed it on my own. In retrospect, i had hardly drank anything yesterday – definitely not the half gallon of water that’s suggested. Similarly, i had only had sugar from a fruit salad much earlier in the day.

My body knew exactly what i needed once i was in the kitchen, but did it send me down there as well? Did i wake up with the explicit purpose of needing a drink? Was the vaguely disturbing dream i had been having my subconscious mind’s way of waking me up to refuel? The dream i had been having was definitely strange … the nearest i could come to describing it would be to say that the Borg were drugrunning from a largish warehouse that was being fronted as an Acme Supermarket that my mother and i drove into by mistake, and that our only means of survival were pretending to have been already assimilated and making sure to sell out of our small stock of vintage G.I. Joes (who would apparently inform their child owners of the distress we were in, because all of the adults were on the drugs). The overall tone of it was one of horror … knowing that the tiniest slip would make everyone aware that i wasn’t who i was pretending to be.

The birds are already trumpeting sunlight, and my body seems to be through with telling me what it needs to keep it going. If only the rest my life were so succinct.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/04/85009938/

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I have had my ups an downs with Dan Savage’s Savage Love column, and the particular letter that was pointed out in my comments the other day fits nicely somewhere in the middle. Specifically, the first half is an up, and the last paragraph is a down.

While Dan’s opening is indeed quite Savage, it’s also sadly true; the easiest way to stop being mistaken for a homosexual is to stop “acting” like one. Of course, the harder way to stop being mistaken for a homosexual is to only cultivate friendships with people that avoid such idle and generic stereotyping based on shopping, cooking, and Madonna. I enjoy shopping because i’ve had to shop with my mother my entire life, i enjoy cooking because i think it’s one of the sexiest things you can do with another person, and i enjoy Madonna because i’ve always loved music and she’s always been good. So, if those traits (and others) make me “gay,” then… well, then i’ll take the dictionary definition, thank you very much.

Savage hits the melancholy nail right on the head with his second paragraph… that most women would love to meet men like myself or the writer of the letter, but that they would love to meet them so that they could have them as friends. Witness this exact reaction in my friend Lisa, who refers to me as her sassy gay friend. When it comes right down to it, she doesn’t really care whether or not i’m gay — she’s just in it for the sass. The point that was brought to light that i never thought about is that women do want to think they’re bringing out the sensitive side in their men, and so a pre-sensitized guy can seem like sort of a letdown. Of course, not all women subscribe to both of these rules (thank god); some girls like a guy who’s a little bit ambiguous, perhaps for the exact reason that they bring out the guy in him rather than the sensitivity.

The down about this particular column’s closing is, for once, not one i have with its author. The letter writer in question is so superficial of a skirt-chaser that he’s “cultivated” the traits in question, and so Dan dismisses him by telling him to “[B]utch it up a little bit. Shop a little less, care a little less, and listen to Madonna a little less.” I would say the same thing to the man in question, maybe even adding “And try being yourself for once.” I’m sure he was thinking it, though. The down, for me, is that Savage isn’t really addressing the question in my mind, which is “What about if that is yourself?” I can surely be blamed for any sexual ambiguity i present in the form of lap-dances and suggestive commentary, but Savage is essentially endorsing that artificially touchy-feely men should drop the pretense, so i’d assume he’d similarly endorse laying off the pretense of being more of a guy’s guy as well.

So, what’s a girl’s guy to do? In my opinion, not a whole lot — other than believing in the things that make you yourself. No, most girls don’t find sensitive men overwhelmingly attractive (unless they’re fronting decent emo bands, and then it’s open for discussion). However, the girls that do tend to fall for the softer sort of guy are more confident about themselves, i think … enough so that that don’t need a alpha male to lead them around by the arm. This doesn’t mean they’re perfect, or self-confident, or what you’re looking for … but they are probably free from playing the more typical parts of the daily boy-girl game most people subject themselves to.


Mention Madonna a little less? Maybe. Give fewer lapdances to “Queer?” For sure. Change? Never.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9792246/

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I’ve had a very unusual audience reading me as of late, and i think it’s been having an effect on what i am and am not writing about. Aside from the multiple real-life entanglements i seem to have mired myself in with some of these new fans, i have also picked up a few erstwhile instant messaging pals from a ways back. It’s them that have been really making me think lately, about what i write and about myself. One of them has a lot more in common with me than i ever knew back when we were just casual writing associates, trading fiction back and forth. Talking to him recently has been a strange experience, much like when i first got to know Tony … feeling as though i am looking into a mirror and feeling only a slight dissonance between my own self image and the one being reflected back at me.

Two days ago i was chatting with all of the usual AM suspects when a new message window popped onto my screen from my old friend. It read: “I stopped reading your blog. It was getting depressing.” Upon questioning he couldn’t quite put his finger on what about CK was bothering him… whether it in itself was depressing, or whether the tiny contrasts between his own interior monologue and this exterior one of mine were what was wrong. He said he might start reading again after a few days of break, but tonight he had no idea that i had made plans for tomorrow night; he hadn’t started reading again.

Writing since our first conversation has been hard, moreso than avoiding publicizing my V-day plans for all to hear or trying to work Sara into a blog before she beats me to death with a stapler next time i show up in the office. Despite all of the filters i put on what i am and am not allowed to talk about, i hardly ever think about how and why anyone else reads it, and as such it is equally shocking to me to find out i am being depressing or funny or something else that no one can quite pinpoint.

It’s the same thing as my dissonance with a mirror, really, as seen from both sides — i am at once shocked that anyone cares enough to notice and skeptical that anyone notices enough to care. And, honestly, it’s nice to be a surprise to myself from both directions.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9705383/

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I wear my headphones for the entire walk from here to the theatre, and from there back to the apartment. This week i’ve been singing the whole way there: Pinkerton, Garbage, Return of Saturn, Jagged Little Pill. I investigate each record in thirty minute intervals, picking apart the melodies in high-definition sound and finding their places in my own range. Rivers comes out strained in chest voice, i solidly match Shirley’s alto, Gwen brings me up to falsetto or down to my lower register, and Alanis tends to hover over my break point. I cannot keep my voice inside my chest.

I never really try to imagine myself from outside. I suppose it’s a problem i have … why there is such a disparity between my interior image and what i actually allow people to see and hear. Today walking home at midnight belting out “you’ve already won me over, in spite of me” i finally stopped for just a second to think about the picture. The image. My whole frame dwarfed by my round black earphones, shrinking me even farther away from my twenty earned years, swinging my arms and stretching my baritone voice, planting one foot in front of the other. I draw stares from plain pedestrians and pretentious Penn kids alike.

I hardly ever picture what i look and sound like, even when i’m doing the most outrageous of things. Last night i caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the middle of “Like a Virgin” or “Material Girl,” and – suddenly – my voice matched up with that writhing image of me as if audio had just been synced up to a projected movie. I had to stop singing for a moment so as not to cry. The boy i was looking at wasn’t at all the one i felt i was being at the time.

I really don’t mean to be any of this at all.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9569992/