Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

stories

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The oddest thing happened to me wednesday night. There was a knock on my door, and i immediately was ready to scream “Jesus, Matt, how the hell did you manage to lose your keys?” but when i looked out the peephole i saw something that was definitely more girl-shaped than Matt (Josh chimes in: Dude, I’m more girl-shaped than Matt.) Sorry, anyway… I opened the door and there was a girl there. I asked timidly “Am i being loud?”, and in response i was handed a wine cooler, and the girl doing the handing said “I just wanted to tell you that i love listening to you through my ceiling and i wanted to give you something, so here.” I sorta just stood there dumbfounded for a second, opening and closing my mouth, and then said “Wow… um… thank you.” We chatted for a very strange minute or two during which i found out she lives directly beneath me, and then she left. I put the bottle down on my stereo and started working on my new song again, but the bottle was staring me down. It felt weird sitting there.

Bottle in hand i went downstairs and rapped on her door, and she opened it with a sorta bemused look on her face and i said “I don’t really take liquor from strangers, but i’ll come down and play you some songs this weekend and drink it then.” We wound up talking for an hour, during which time i learned that i’m “famous.” My next door neighbor apparently turns off his teevee at night to listen to me play, her entire family knows who i am from her commenting on me while on the phone, and her boyfriend was totally ecstatic to hear me bleeding down through the walls one day when he woke up. “I’m sorta like a teevee character, huh?” “Well, I didn’t want you to think i wanted to hook up with you or anything, but i just had to come up and give you something or say something. So, both”


We sat on her floor with her door wide open for a while and figured out that the weird italian looking guy in spandex from her dorm was actually Joey, and she even knows Selina from working in the language department, and i wound up promising to communicate through notes slipped under her door, and that i’d show up with my guitar over the weekend.

And to think i thought she was going to complain about me being loud.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3185795/

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Let me tell y’all a story. Boy meets girl. Boy thinks girl is adorable but doesn’t say a word, because he never says these things (in person). Girl reads boy’s website and then asks him if he wants to do something over break. Boy leaves the state, and doesn’t get to see girl at all when he returns (not realizing she lives a stone-throw from his own house). Boy falls madly in love with someone else, and stops thinking about girl as much as he had been. Girl goes on with her life and starts dating a really sweet guy. Boy falls madly out of love. Boy and girl meet again four months later, and they realize they missed their chance one or two too many times for their own good. They hold hands for a while and then say goodnight. The end.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3114035/

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Nearly a week passes with nary a word from my fingertips, and i’d hope you’d be worried about me. I mean … when i flew to Florida for four days i nearly cried when i last closed down my Blogger screen, and here i am flitting around Philadelphia with hardly a regret? Well, it didn’t work out quite that way… although that was the net effect, wasn’t it?

Last Thursday i was sick. I was totally fine on Wednesday, and on Thursday i was sick. Actually, i’ve been sick for about as long as i’ve been dating my girlfriend, on and off. (That’s sick on and off, not dating on and off). Last Thursday was awful, though. I slept on a tiny green room couch for hours, i dragged my feet through my acting class, and i slept through much of my rehearsal until finally it was my turn to rehearse. Thankfully, my director Bill drove me home, as while i spent the whole day sleeping in the theatre several inches of snow accumulated.


Friday was more uneventful, though i did lose my voice in my first class (that was rather unexpected). The eventful bit was having a largish fight with my darling girlfriend, in which i was a big meanie the whole time because i was convinced that i was supposed to break up with her. It’s funny how in a situation like that my spine is the last thing to come into play; i told Matt i was going to break up with her, i steeled myself against easy reconciliation, and i tried to burn bridges before they could be recrossed. So much for that. All we wound up with was a really hurtful fight that will always be a mark against me. Good job, Peter.

Perhaps as a result of the intense back and forth on Friday (or perhaps it had to do with the small amount of vodka i consumed that night), i was sick on Saturday. Very very sick. Every time i would fall asleep i’d wake up two hours later having soaked through my clothing and the sheets in sweat. My temperature kept spiking and falling, with each spike bringing on a spectacular headache and on the way up or down from it a tremendous amount of sweating or chills. What a spectacular way to spend a Saturday.

By Sunday my body was out of ideas of what to do with itself. Unbeknownst to me, i was completely dehydrated (which was indicated by the fact that i couldn’t muster the nerve to touch solid foods like crackers or granola bars), and running a 102degree temperature. Somehow i crawled my way to rehearsal (a grueling journey for someone in the shape i was in), but once i got there i was a total wreck. I’ve done full dress rehearsals with high fevers before, but i was sweating and shaking and in no shape to sing or do anything else. Plus, there was the coughing. It hadn’t seemed like the central element of my sickness the night before, but it felt pretty damned central at that point.

My director Bill (aka: Guardian Angel) told me that he wanted me to go to an emergency room and come back healthy Monday or Tuesday, so into the scene came Mother. Mother picked me up, carted me to her emergency room, where i had lots of blood taken from me in addition to a trip to x-ray (they wheeled my bed there… wheeled it!). And, the pinnacle of fun and enjoyment was when i was given an IV and hydrated with two litres of saline. I came home that night in better shape that i had been in, and in the possession of Robotussin with Codeine. Yeah.

The capper was yesterday – the day i had earmarked for “catching up on my soap operas and blogging like a whore.” And that didn’t happen, because i was back in the ER, because my chest films showed i had pneumonia! Whee! This time my ER visit earned me my very own room, lots of wonderful breathing treatments, two more litres of hydration, a hospital issue turkey sandwich, and lots of warm blankets.

So, erm, yeah. That’s my excuse. I’ll shut up about my life now. Just wanted you to know that, um, i’ve alive. Which had been in doubt by some people lately. Love ya!

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2555824/

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So, yeah, theatre. First i bitched about it, and then i got sucked into it, and here i am bitching about it again. I don’t like to act. Maybe i’m good at it, and maybe i’m not, but i only really like the attention i get and being able to stand on a stage above everyone else. That’s it, though. And, yet, somehow i’ve managed to have rehearsal every night and a song i have to arrange and sing and now i’ve got to learn how to method-act my hand being crippled for half of the show. And i have to learn how to scream.

I’m thinking that last bit won’t be to hard. In the show i get struck hard with a hot curling iron, and it both breaks the bones in my hand and burns me badly. My director keeps trying to give me suggestions on how i could perfect this prolonged scream of anguish and despair, some of which were: “Haven’t you ever put your hand into a fire before?” “Go home and try pouring hot wax on yourself. I can give you some pointers on sensitive spots to try.” “Stick your head into an oven later! And make sure to vocalize through the pain.”


Good direction, isn’t it. It’s like in high school … i had to play these two brief minutes of being drunk, and i just didn’t know how to do it. I was straightedge, i was innocent, and i had no idea what alchohol did to human body. My director coaxed and fixed and pointed and when it came time for performance i still looked like some foolish kid who was a little bit dizzy. In retrospect, he should’ve just bought me a bottle of vodka and let me learn the easy way. So, i’m off to find some hot wax… yum.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2110463/

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My life weebles and wobbles but it just doesn’t fall down. I can’t explain it. Despite the most awful things happening, they always turn out for the best in the end.

My mother and i were essentially kicked out of our house at the end of my Junior year by the owners because they wanted to sell it. I had lived in that house for all but three years of my life. I refused to leave. My mother wanted to buy a nice little house somewhere verging on suburbia, but there was the small matter of my attending the best highschool in the state, which i would hardly have left just for senior year. In the end i convinced her to rent a house on the verges of South Philly, because i know that when she actually buys a place it should be one she loves, not one she settles for. It was all very depressing at the time, but Senior year wound up being one of the best of my life, despite all the shitty parts. I wound up living within walking distance of Gina and Anastasia, and i could actually take a shopping trip to South Street at my leisure. I had my own room on my own tiny third floor. Our kitchen was nice. I was happy.


Lots of other things have righted themselves over the years to keep my life going at its usual pace. I only got into a local university but they gave me lots of money and inexplicably wound up happy there. I almost didn’t find an apartment (chronicled at length in the first week of the archive) but wound up in a super-cheap and easily accessible one. But, life doesn’t always work out so perfectly. For some people, it doesn’t work out at all. I have too many friends who got into a local university and got zero money who are now unhappy and in debt. I know too many people who had to move home because they didn’t figure out where to live in time for the beginning of the semester. I know too many unhappy people.

Yesterday i confronted the fact that my smile might have finally become used up. For years and years i just glided through my occasional problems with a grin pasted onto my face, because they all got fixed eventually and life moved on. Suddenly i’m starting to realize that not everything fixes itself, and that i don’t know how much good cheer i really have left to get me through the bad spots


Imagine that… i’m 19 and just learning that “happily ever after” only really happens in fairy tales and first-date movies. I’ve never had to confront the possibility before; i always assumed that bad things only happened to people who weren’t thinking positively. Now i’m starting to realize that keeping a smile on my face isn’t the best defense, and that sometimes it cuts as cruelly as any situation i might be unsuspectingly plunged into. But my life is still all-good, and that scares me. No one is continually blessed. The gods only have so much attention to give.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2097862/