Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

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

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The first time it goes off is around six in the morning, for no discernible reason. I mean, it obviously goes off because i set it to go off then, but Lindsay is constantly asking me why i set my alarm to ring four hours ahead of time. No reason other than it’s like a two-minute warning for having to wake up and deal with another day.

I was happy to have the warning this morning, since the day seemed especially dreary. I didn’t even need to look out of my tiny back window to know; i could feel the chill sliding in through the cracks and twisting up to raise goose-bumps on my legs. Deciding to sleep through my first two classes was not the most wrenching decision i’ve ever had to make.


The other thing Lindsay can’t seem to understand is why my alarm rings over and over again. I tell her it’s a warning… life ahead in four hours… three hours… until finally it’s just “Time to wake up. Fucking Blastoff.” Apparently, one ring is enough to convey the message to her. Today the blastoff ring was #6, and the reason i got me out of bed was because the sun had decided to accompany it. I was up and navigating the mess of my floor to turn down the alarm before Courtney could start screaming, and i could feel the diffuse runny-egg yellow of a damp sun on my back. The day had made an ugly duckling transformation for me, and i felt as though i was headed for something not entirely dissimilar.


It’s strange to go from kneading a palmful of shampoo past damp curls down to the suffocated scalp beneath to sliding a dime sized drop down the middle of centimeter long strands on the top of my head. It’s the shortest my hair has ever been. Stepping out past my fish-curtain i caught my nude reflection in the mirror, and something seemed different other than my hair. No new pimples, no unexpected muscles. It was something about how the slope of my shoulders changes, the line of my neck becomes smoother. And, something else as well — as if my haircut was emblematic of some greater change that was working its way out from my heart and up through the skin.

I wasn’t sure of what the change might be, but i hoped it would go well with my grey turtleneck and sexy jeans.

It wasn’t until i had gotten halfway to my destination of skipping class that i started feeling the way my reflection looked. Nothing tangible, but my change in carriage had seeped down from my neck and shoulders and out from my gut to pervade my whole being. By the time i got down to the Green Room i definitely felt different, although to everyone in the room it read as something closer to narcissistic conceit. Really, could i help wanting to have attention paid to me? I had Changed and they wanted to talk about midterms. Ridiculous.


Amazing what a $10 haircut, losing three pounds, and being in my scientifically determined sexual prime can do for morale. Whatever. I try not to dissect the positive moments of life too much. I just felt … fuckable. And, not just hot or easy or anything like that, but like someone covetable. Someone other people have strong opinions on. And, well, fuckable sounded like a good adjective at the time, but now that i’m looking at it in writing i can see where that narcissistic angle came in.


So, maybe it wasn’t so different from most other days, really, but usually i’m more of a pity fuck, you know?

Nevermind.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/9028072/

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The feelings i have are these slippery things, and i wish they were more like velcro. I wish i could throw words at them and have them stick. I feel… slighted, continuously slighted by life despite my attempts to make it worthwhile. I feel unappreciated for being someone i enjoy being and over-valued for things i despise. And, of course, alone on a Sunday night my immediate reaction is to try to write a song about how i feel and, failing that, to blog about it.


The thing is, i’ve written this song already and blogged about it a hundred times. Yesterday Lindsay and i had a ridiculously deep conversation while watching the Eagles game, and i said something about getting married and having children and a house, and i meant it. But, i can never have any of that so long as i live within this private universe i’ve constructed, with all of its own symbolism and meaning.


I’m usually not shy with my lyrics, but this week i wrote something that says how i feel and i purposefully tucked it away. It Says how i Feel, but i can’t sing it or play it because for it to really come out and do justice to all the slippery feelings i have inside i need to make it perfect. In my head i hear the sighing melody and the double bass beat on the chords in the chorus, but try as i may i can’t get even a line of it to come out like that at all. Anyway, i don’t know what to say about this feeling other than what i already said in these lyrics last week, so here’s the latter half of them:

Imagine my whole life as Technicolor — with someone painting the shades into the scenes, and everyone acting from scripts with each other. They’re all off-book except for me, so every day is a stumble-through rehearsal, and each night is an actors’ worst dream because i never know the right thing to say, and i’m left silent in the spaces in-between. So, my front porch is a consolation, my door is a sigh of relief. The stairs are invigorating, my room is a reprieve. It’s then that i open my mouth, and the room is filled — the words come pouring out. My guts are spilled. It’s a shame i can only find my voice between four lonely walls of brick and concrete, but i don’t really have any choice: it’s just something about emptiness and me. Outside i feel just slightly out of focus; around other people i sing a little off-key. I wonder all the time if anyone will notice that i seem to be coming apart at the seams. I am coming apart at the seams.

It’s a one-dimensional representation of what i’m trying to say… my words stripped of inflection and tone. But, it’s the closest i can come to opening this up to you, so take it for what it is.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8889949/

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There’s a unnatural desert wind through the chill of my room every twelve minutes or so as the heater in Lindsay’s closet warms the house with its breath, and in the breeze that just passed a picture came fluttering down from my wall. I picked it up to affix it back to the wall by my door and saw that it was a picture Ross had just given me a few weeks ago – one of Laurel and I at my first Drexel party.

It was taken over two years ago.

Two years ago, and as i pressed my fingers against its shiny corners to cover up the bare rectangle of wall it had left in its wake all that i could was that life is a strange and mazelike thing. I thought about how i spent all that week decorating her house along with her roommates, namely Kate and Erika. Kate wound up moving away at the beginning of my Sophomore year, and then Laurel moved away for a while and Lindsay took her room. I moved into a different house with with Lindsay and Erika this September, and Kate just came to stay with us for the remainder of the holidays.

Two years ago, and i only wound up at their house so much in the first place because i got into the play that four of them were starring in, and i was only there decorating so often because i developing a crush on Laurel, and i only went back last year to hang out with Lindsay, which brought me back into their social circle again. And now i am friends with Laurel, and her boyfriend from back then was just in my living room, and Kate is staying here for New Years, and life doesn’t seem to do anything but endlessly coil and snake around itself anymore.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/8268451/

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I happen to really need a razor. Like, alot. I am down to my last disposable razor, and it seems to have lost it’s sheen. This is not to say i suddenly have some sort of mutant five o’clock shadow or anything of the kind, but i definitely start looking like a gang-member if i don’t shave in any given 36-hour period. It all would seem to add up … lack of razor, razor in the checkout aisle, me with a large margin between the price of eggs and saran wrap and the $20 i have in my hand. But, do i buy the razor? The shiny, new, rubber-grip, extra-blade, sleek, black, razor? Do i?

Of course not. Why? Because i am too embarrassed to pick up a razor and have it rung in the middle of a supermarket. I might get away with it at CVS, where they deal regularly in those sorts of things, but i feel like if i had attempted to buy it last night the cashier would’ve responded in the fashion of “Damn, boy, if you’re gonna buy your daddy a razor for Christmas least you could do would be get him an electric.” Or, you know, something else to that incredibly embarrassing and demeaning effect.

I’m afraid to buy men’s toiletry products in public. God help us all if i ever have to go and buy condoms*.

It’s just as if i’m done being a boy, and we all know i’m not a boy anymore, but the Man-Fairy will not come down and wave his magic wand to make the whole thing official so i can do things like buy shaving cream, or fuzzy-handcuffs, or anything else a man might buy.

I mean, i…. um, did i just say Man-Fairy? With his magic wand? Was i seriously blogging about that for, like, an entire second there?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7924530/