Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

lindsay

Disuse, Misuse, and Abuse

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Lindsay and I sat at her high kitchen table, comparing calluses. Hers, she said, had faded from disuse. “But,” she sighed, “I guess you wouldn’t know about that.”

I don’t, and was shocked to hear that Anthony, a particular six-string-slinging idol of mine, had similary forsaken his instrument for the better part of a year.

What is it about stupid me, who can’t reproduce four distinct lines of underneath harmony after a month of practice, who still can’t play the solo in “Say It Ain’t So” even with my spiffy new guitar, who has the least performance experience out of everyone who touched one of the five guitars we had with us on Sunday, that keeps me plucking and strumming away, while others with more talent have set their habits aside? Why do I care so much about something I’m not particularly good at doing? And, why don’t I have more new Trios to show for it?

In other news, my name is 796, “intuitive” edges “crushing” by 198, and “crisis” is only a hair more common than “conflict.” Not that there’s anything intuitive about any of these conflicts. All I know is, at the point tipsy is only electrolytes away from shogun blondes, we need to do something…

Second Floor Zero

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Funny how I miss blogging the most when I absolutely cannot do it.

Sitting here over a belated dinner of cold pizza and Cruzan Jumbie Brew at my meticulously cleaned and reorganized desktop, I suspect that ours was the smoothest move in the history of University City.

We discovered on Sunday that the previous tenants in our new apartment had moved out a day early, meaning we would have full access to our new home on Monday, a day earlier than we had planned. Monday was originally meant to be a day of packing – topping off boxes and putting them into the truck, with the brunt of the assault on the new apartment coming on Tuesday morning while I did shuttle-runs to campus to attend class.

Instead, Elise had her entire apartment packed into the truck and moved into our new home before I could even get to taking apart my desk. Moving the majority of my massive pile of belongings into the truck took only an hour and twenty minutes, and unloading less than a third of that. This largely owed to the fact that we have some of the best friends in the world. Ten of them, at various points in the day, not to mention several calls we received from other friends, who we sadly turned away, as we were already done.

It was unstressful, though I managed to hurt myself by powerlifting the wrong air conditioner. There were even highlights… the cheer that went up from our movers when I said I would cater their alchoholic needs after Elise offered to buy lunch… Craig and I serenading Kate with PDQ Bach’s “How Many Psychiatrists” after she jinxed herself into breaking a lightbulb… a hilarious but quite poignant conversation about the apocalyptic move that left Lindsay, Erika, and I as roommates, and how Lindsay flew to New York but could not come back, how all of the cars pulled over to the side of the road as she drove to the airport, listening to their radios, and how Jack and I huddled around the television, searching for clues.

Moving is changing – changing your environment, which can sometimes change yourself. I already feel different, without a stack of toiletries on my desk and guitars on my bed. I feel, finally, like everything in my life really does have a place.

Including me.

Look, my snake is eating its own tail!

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I am still working towards my weekend 10,000-coherent-word goal, but i have made some progress into my Senior Year death march of assignments. Again, if you live in China or have friends from Brazil, allowing me to interview you could save my ass in a dramatic fashion.

The current snag that i am working through is that, because my narrative voice and style tends to be consistently distinctive, i find that i am unwittingly quoting content that i wrote for the Blogathon site last year in pieces of my Senior Project. If you unintentionally quote your own uncredited writing, do you have to make a citation to avoid accusations of plagiarism? Or, alternately, to prove that you aren’t surreptitiously mining your own previous work in order to avoid writing new content? Furthermore, do i have to cite the sources of statistics that i compiled myself last summer for the Blogathon? What if the sources don’t exist anymore? Do i just get to say “cause i said so?” If were to wrap myself in a white sheet as if i were preparing to be mummified and then subsequently roll off my back roof, would i be distinguishable from the creepy thing that looks like a dead body in my neighbor’s yard that Lindsay and i were always too afraid to investigate from a distance closer than her back window?

So many questions, such a small attention span.

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When i was younger TGI Fridays was a fun restaurant to go to; it was a slice of Americana, with red and white striped server shirts and electric blue drinks. It was a restaurant nice enough to consider “eating out” but cheap enough to go to with high school friends.

Tonight we were looking for that sort of bargain eating, and so the bunch of us attractive twenty-somethings drove to a Fridays in the city. In a nod to the TGIF uniform of my youth i was in the red striped shirt i had coveted for months, and upon arrival i had a fishbowl sized Sunset Strip in hand. Feeling attractive and pleasantly tipsy, we were seated.

You need to understand something about me and restaurants: i can’t focus on anything written on the menu. It’s a sort of site-specific ADD … too many people, too much movement, too much smoke and clinking glasses. Though i may peruse, i either have a specific favorite in mind or i just flip through and choose the most verbose description.

Here i should mention that Fridays, inexplicably, has joined forces with 7-11 to become part of the low-carb Atkins revolution. The way Atkins re-entered the zeitgest has left me bewildered, especially as i watch people throwing away the buns to eat twice the hamburger.

Does anyone see where this is headed? In my quick perusal i chose the most colorful picture, a chicken dish, and when it was (finally) brought to the table the waitress bellowed “Atkins Diet Chicken!” I laughed, heartily, that she had mistakenly brought this diet dish to our table. When she proffered it to me i joked, “Do i look like i would order the diet dish? Look at me?” The description had made mention that i could “save five carbs by leaving off the peppers,” i calmly explained, but i did not opt in. I had opted out of the Diet Chicken

I was sober now, steely and serious, as if the drink had never existed. I wasn’t on a diet, i told her. This was the third annoyance of the night, i stated coolly, on top of the pineapple in the drink and the slow service. I’d really just like to mention it to the manager. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that i’m not fat. I will explain it to your manager; i didn’t order a diet dish.

Or, well, maybe i did. I thought i had ordered the tasty looking chicken with cheese and broccoli. Instead, i inadvertently turned to the page, the one where we are all in on the hip trend, and we are all on the hip and trendy diet. It’s been around for years; South Beach was so mid-2003. I’m not really fat, it’s just these pants.

I delivered a brief but ultimately trite complaint to the manager, who offered to replace my broccoli with carb-rich mashed potatoes, and then silently choked down the food, ignoring my friends. I could hardly taste it, could not feel it in my mouth. Instead, i was feeling it sinking inside me, bloating my stomach, rising in my throat as soon as it left the back of my tongue. The room was suddenly contracted; too small, too loud, my side of broccoli shrub-like in it’s massiveness on the plate, my chicken the cardboard cover of a lean-cuisine box.

The conversation from the table across from me suddenly rose, punching through our table’s idle chatter. I heard the man speaking to the waitress (“Oh, make sure that i get the diet version of that beer. Make sure you take your time with it, i want you to bring it slow.”) and to the inexplicable pimply balloon-sculptor (“Can you make me a light balloon? It’s got to be thin. And can you give it red on the shirt? A really gay red.”)

From there it is a blur, screaming something over Lindsay’s head to the man across from me and his rambling reply floating back at me as i stood and pushed Ross out of the side of the booth, pausing only to throw down all of the large bills from my wallet. I was not gay. I wanted to leave. I was not fat. I wanted my non-descript flannel clothes back, and the underweight body from beneath them. I wanted my fingers flirting seductively with my epiglottis, head resting on the side of the bowl. I wanted to escape.

I walked around and around in the slowly drifting snow, 17th, Chestnut, Walnut, helping the small woman hail her cab, 16th, Chestnut, smiling at the strangers walking to and from the pricey bars, Market, calling Ross to ask him to get change for my big bills, lying easily, “No, no, the bus is only two blocks away,” 16th, 15th, Waiting to let the gorge slip solidly to the bottom of my stomach, the rage lie still.

I take my life for granted sometimes. I live, have lived for five years, in a calm bubble, where the only one judging me is myself. I have allowed my figure to fill out, supressed my irascible nature, embraced the wispy charm of my character, and just made sure to stay calm. Now i have a dozen dozen days of that left until my bubble is burst, one hundred and forty four days from here until i step off that stage into the real world. Everybody judges. Everybody hurts. Sometimes i need to open my mouth. I need to make myself happy a little more often.

I know that wasn’t especially interesting, but it’s what happened to me tonight. I’m always told not to apologize for my art, but it didn’t feel that artful. Thanks for reading. To cheer up, you should check out the bit about S&M in the last post.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107440033006968402/