Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

stories

by

I was idly cleaning my room this morning in what was a vain attempt to finally distribute the last of my packed belongings from moving in last month when i ran across my notorious stash of condoms. To refresh the memory of those of you who didn’t read me way back when i had a whopping three visitors a day, i have a giant ziplock back of q-tips which conceals a sizable handful of condoms that i never spent money on and have never used. They don’t seem like the sort of thing i should throw away, so they’ve continued to live a blissfully undisturbed existence nestled in the depths of a multitude of cotton swabs.

In my haste to find these stalwarts of my bathroom collection a new home i perchanced to examine their shiny wrappers and, much to much chagrin, my abundance of free condoms all expire this month! So, seeing as there’s about a week left to go, i’m thinking their happy home in my apartment might very well be my bathroom trashcan. Actually, all of them were expired save for one, which is good until my 21st birthday.

Does your god send you messages about needing to get out of the house more through expirations dates on contraceptives? No? Just checking…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6525271/

by

Yesterday i was whining to the theatre peeps about my yet-to-be finished upstairs bathroom, which mostly owes it’s unfinished state to the fact that inside of the stall shower there is belly-button height bar along the three walls that isn’t entirely secured to the wall. It isn’t that i need some sort of safety catch in case i slip while reaching for soap or shampoo, but at any point where it isn’t firmly connected to the wall there is a gaping hold in the water-proofing and i’m afraid i’ll make the inside of my wall rot if i take a shower before it’s finished.

So, anyhow, i was lamenting that i want my shower fixed, not only so i can take quick morning showers, but because the handle-bar seems ideal for two-person maneuvering inside of a stall shower. This brought a hearty chuckle from the sexually frustrated theatre crowd, and then the conversation kept moving.

So, today the repair guy came by to see what was still left to be fixed in the house, and when i remarked to him about the broken shower bar he replied: “Well, you know what that’s from, don’t you?” [insert blank stare from yours truly] “Sex in the shower.”


I rest my case.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6289386/

by

Whether or not you could tell from that last post, i was functioning at about three fifths of my typical brain capacity today. All day. It entailed not being able to see friends of mine from three feet away when Gina was already talking to them, and dropping my chai latté all over the punk cds at Noise Pollution, and knocking toys off the rack at Showcase comics, and hitting on our waiter something awful in China town just because i wanted to know the secret of his haircut. Well… that’s not the best representation of my day, but just trust me: it was nice to trade in intelligence for some happiness. Try that one on for size.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6180712/

by

Last night was our second of three nights performing in our student written/directed plays, and we actually had an audience. A big audience. All of the major current Drexel Players showed up, and we had equally that many Freshmen in attendance for our little meet and greet function afterwards. The show was hilarious, the actors had a good time, and then things got interesting.


Being the Friday night of a show we were (of course) going to have a cast party later, and somehow someone got the idea to start inviting the people at the reception every time our program director turned her back. So, we went from a rowdy crowd of theatre people alternately hitting on each other and talking about how trashed we were going to get (or, in some cases, how stoned we were already) to leading a parade of assorted players and freshmen back to Kevin’s at 8:30. Yes, 8:30. I don’t think we’ve ever started a party so early in my entire time here.


Us regular peeps didn’t drink especially in excess, but there was an unusual amount of energy in the air between it being our first big party as a group this year and our first chance to mingle with our new recruits. Needless to say, things quickly got out of hand. I decided after only consuming half of what i typically do that i really needed to be a whore. A big, cheap, rowdy whore. Suddenly i found myself giving people peeks at my underwear and straddling others sitting on couches or in armchairs. And, somewhere in there, someone unfortunately asked me if i was planning to give lapdances.


I am infamous for my teasing at lapdancing at theatre parties, but last night i was all sexed up with nowhere to go and i happened to have Garbage with me, so suddenly “Queer” started popping up on stereos all around the house as i writhed around like a man whose clothes were on fire.

My first dance was for some girl named Adina who lamented “It’s a shame you’re not straight,” to which i replied “Oh, but i am.” Needless to say, that lead to some interesting conversation. But, anyhow, after another warm-up dance i decided to take my act down into the middle of the living room where i could be viewed in all of my inebriated bump-and-grind glory. Let’s just say that a lot of me was seen, and it involved a lot of writhing around on top of Chevy and Hillary. Somewhere in the middle Meg decided to start spilling beer on me (intentionally) and between all the adrenaline of dancing around half naked and how much i generally despise Meg i smacked her (but only in the nose, and she slams me across the face harder every night in the play). If anything, i figure that should make tonight’s kissing (and slapping) all the more interesting.

Afterwards i seem to recall being carried out of the room over Chevy’s shoulder and plunked down in the hallway, and afterwards i just followed someone around all moon-eyed while they talked about how they weren’t ready to break up with their boyfriend and how they like this creepy crew guy and i just sat and listened for the remainder of the night. Because, ultimately, i’m protective of my female friends even before i am possessive of them. At some point i danced to “Miami” and then facilitated Ross crawling into a bathroom, and then i collected Erika and Lindsay (both knee deep in their own inebriation-related drama) and we found someone who hadn’t been drinking to drive us home.

Wow, it’s almost as if this is a journal… or that i’m happy some of the time. Rest assured that i mentioned the pointlessness that is life and how much i hate everyone at least three times at the party, lest you think my depressed-cred is waning. And, now that i just gave an hour long tour to perspective students while slightly hung over, i’m off to locate something resembling breakfast.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5995858/

by

And, oh, hi, i also have a life. I think this week was one that was ripe for all sorts of essay-length posts from me regarding what i mentioned in Monday’s mammoth post, but then Tuesday happened.

In 1996 i was 14, and i had just created my first website when TWA800 crashed. For the entire summer the footer of my painstakingly hand-coded splash page bore the visage of Mr. Benjamin, a favourite teacher of mine who had died on the flight.

I remember my reaction very clearly… how i was unable to tear myself away from Good Morning America that day before heading out to camp even though i didn’t know yet; how my mother was silent when she picked me up all the way until Broad Street; how the bottom dropped out of my stomach when i heard; how loosing someone who i didn’t even think about every day had a huger impact on my entire life than i ever could have imagined. I took a day off from camp so that i could go to our too-empty high school to sit with friends who understood how i felt, and when i got back the next day everyone had heard. It felt like they were all at once telling my how sorry they were and asking me through our van window how i was feeling and treating me like i was some fragile thing in a china shop that you are always afraid to brush up against because you don’t want to have to pay for it.

I don’t think i had ever known anyone else who had died of something that wasn’t related to age, and i wasn’t braced for the emotions that would result. Or for the consolations. I was utterly wrecked by both, but i kept it churning inside of my stomach because i didn’t know i was allowed to let it out. I thought that just knowing someone who died and was mentioned on teevee was not enough for me to have the right to be sad in front of anyone but people who shared my own position in the matter because my grief was so different than what everyone kept expecting.

Flight 800 is the first “Do you remember where you were when you heard…” that i had in my life, and it just so happened that i had a personal connection to it. For other people in my generation that event might have been the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, or Oklahoma City, or Columbine, or Princess Diana … there was no single across-the-board bookmark in our memory. Until now.

The funny thing about nationally (and internationally) televised tragedies is that we all feel like we have a right to react to them no matter how large, small, close, or far they may be. Everyone certainly does have a right to their personal feelings on anything that goes on in America, but with any other national event our collective obsession with being involved in the investigative process is only dwarfed in its tastelessness by our insistence that we be involved in the mourning process. Of course, this event is different in scale, scope, and national ramifications. But, after i got over my attempts to ascertain what was going on i stood back and realized that i have almost definitely not lost anyone i know… and i realized that at this point in time there is no place for my emotional or personal reaction to the tragedy that has befallen us here or anywhere else.

I remember how people thought they were being comforting when they offered their thoughts and prayers to me when really they just made me feel more fragile than i already was. This is not my tragedy the way it is for people who lost friends and family, or even for people whose cities were permanently altered. I can’t ignore the awful politics inherent to this situation, or that some people i know suddenly feel the need to discriminate again people with a different skin color or accent of their own.

What i can leave out of my reactions, although certainly not ignore, is my emotional and visceral reaction to Tuesday. If you are gushing about Tuesday, or if you are delighting in watching the investigation continually unfold on the news every night, i want you to take a strong look at what your interest is. Over the years i have learned to separate my emotions from my voyeurism because i don’t think it is my right to want to grieve on the behalf of anyone else, or to hear news that doesn’t pertain to me.

Yes, i am a Journalism student who hates the nightly news… every invasive investigative informational minute of it. There is something to be said for staying abreast of the current state of the rescue efforts in New York and in Washington, and on stories about the victims and their families. However, I think it is safe to say that the majority of America is partially or wholly ignorant of the motives behind the horror we’ve all been a witness to, and i very much hope that most of my readership is mature enough to focus on educating themselves before wallowing in the network’s excessive coverage.


You might disagree with everything i just said, but ultimately i think that anything else i could say couldn’t ever mean as much as my respectful silence on the matter. My thoughts are with everyone this has affected and, for now, i’m going to leave it at that.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/09/5692813/