Infinitely Complex...

A recent realization that bites

2008-04-05T18:51:00.002-04:00

Right. Confession time.

It's a little shocking, this whole thing. I've finally realized that a lot of my "emotion" is fake. I don't really feel half as much as I think I do. I can't handle a relationship because I don't feel enough. I don't care to be around him. I don't care whether he's there or not. I have no desire to kiss him, hold his hand, even talk to him.

See, I have this modus operandi.

Step One: I like unattainable men. Damaged, mysterious, unattainable. Any combination will do.

Step Two: I chase. Oh, I love the chase. It makes me feel like a woman. I fawn. I blush. I write poetry. I cry. Everyone, myself included, thinks I'm either head over heels or totally insane.

Step Three: The unattainable becomes interested, or otherwise attainable.

Step Four: I lose interest instantly and walk in the other direction at a brisk clip.

It's happened so many times I've lost count. I know why I'm so detached and distant, and it's a natural reaction, all things considered. But everybody has hurdles in life. I apparently tripped on the first one and am still lying on the ground waiting to be pulled up. But you know, it doesn't work that way. If I can't pick myself up, nobody will.

So there we go. This is my plan for the future, as of this realization - have friends, go without sex all my life (shut up, it can be done), have children via artificial insemination, and chase unattainable men by way of recreation.

Talk done.

Family ties

2007-03-06T17:05:00.000-04:00

What is family? Is your father the man you grow up with who nurtures you and loves you and teaches you to walk and talk and tie your shoes? Or is your father the stranger who donated half your genes and then disappeared? These are questions I'm planning to explore - and perhaps answer - in this story...

Devon Marsden is nineteen. Her mother Deirdre has just died. Devon wants to find the father she has never met. All she has is an old picture and a last name. The search takes her across the Atlantic and to the Isle of Skye off the coast of Scotland, where she arrives at the door of a secluded mansion. The man who answers has black hair, blue eyes and a lilting accent. He's the handsome, wealthy, intelligent, arrogant (and Irish) Declan Moriarty, and he has no idea who she is. The conversation goes to the effect of the following:

Devon: Don't you remember? Her name was Deirdre Marsden. It was twenty years ago.
Declan: Please. Do you have any idea how many women I slept with twenty years ago? What month?
Devon: I was born in October, so...January.
Declan: Hmm. When in October?
Devon: Twenty-second.
Declan: So...mid-January. (pause) Got a picture?

When he sees her picture, however, he agrees that he probably is in fact her father. She explains that her mother's dead and that he's her only surviving relative.

Declan isn't what she's been expecting, and Devon soon realizes that he's nothing like any of the possibilities she's imagined. He's not a criminal or a drunk or a wife-beater, not sleazy or a lowlife. He's also not a warm, caring man with a wife and a bucket of kids.

Declan is an enigma. He drinks only whiskey, rolls his own cigarettes (with licorice-flavoured paper) and used to be so careless with women that he now lives in the relative isolation of the mansion and has been under a sort of self-imposed celibacy for the past year. Devon is also probably not his only child. His moral compass is decidedly askew. He's suave, charming, almost dangerously charismatic, and she doesn't see him as a father. She understands why her mother fell for him - and she begins to do the same.

Declan understands that there is a difference between an addiction and a problem. Tobacco, alcohol, coffee, the harmonica, painting - they're all addictions of varying degrees, but they're not problems because his desire for them doesn't negatively affect the quality of his life. Women, however, have always been a problem...hence the reason he lives where and how he does. He's messed up the lives of so many women that he came to the island to be away from it all, and now he's messing up his daughter's life as well. Devon tries to keep her distance, Declan contemplates suicide...

This is not a happy story. But it's not going to have a traditional ending - they're not going to realize it was just distorted familial affection and have a normal father-daughter relationship happily ever after. Oh no. It's all or nothing for these two.

"Declan."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"Your tongue must have bite marks from all the things you never say."

Eulogy

2007-03-03T10:21:00.000-04:00

I’m here to tell you a story. Not about my father, but about a woman. The world took no notice when she died, not like it has now that he’s gone. She died in a hospital not far from here, four years ago, on a cold day in April.

In case you’re wondering what relevance this has to my father, let me explain. I had to tell her story today. I promised him. And even if I hadn’t, I would have had to tell it anyway, because of something my father always used to say to her.

“The only stories in my life worth telling are the ones that begin with you.”

My father didn’t die yesterday. He didn’t die of the lung cancer that had been eating him alive without his knowledge or permission. He died four years ago on that day in April when the woman that meant everything to him closed her eyes forever.

That woman was my mother.

She had an unusual name. That’s actually how they met. He was taking auditions for a role in a movie that was his first attempt at directing. It was a movie that would win him three Academy Award nominations and a Golden Globe. Anyway, he was reading through the list of names, and she was next. Everyone else had been called by their full name, first and last, but he wasn’t sure whether he could pronounce hers. So he said, “Miss Scott.”

She stood up. She was tall and dark-haired and had brown eyes. Brown was always my father’s favourite eye colour. But there was something else about her. A quiet strength, maybe. It was something none of us were never able to isolate and identify. She was like that. You could never categorize her, never put her in a box or just tick the qualities that she possessed. She always had something more, something extra, something indefinable and beautiful that seemed beyond our comprehension.

And then she said her name. Leilani. My father would later say it was the most beautiful name he had ever heard, even after he found out that it was Hawaiian for ‘heavenly flowers’, which was a little too sentimental for anyone’s taste. He would also say that that was the moment he knew she was the one.

My mother didn’t get the part, although not for lack of interest from my father. His producers overruled him, said they wanted someone with star power. When she left the auditions that day, he didn’t know whether he would ever see her again. But my father had never been the kind of man to wait on Fate to work her magic. He decided to be proactive. He called her up the next day, asked her if she wanted to have coffee with him at a small café on 14th Street. She said yes.

When he walked in, she was already there. They talked for hours, about music and philosophy, about art and religion, about politics and money. The owner of the café finally had to boot them out at nine o’clock in the night, half an hour past closing. He walked her home. According to both my parents, they never ran out of things to say to each other. And as far as I know, they didn’t run out of things to say even after fifteen years of marriage.

They started dating in the fall of 1986. She was nineteen years old, a struggling actress and writer who was putting herself through college on a barista’s salary. He was forty-three, an accomplished actor with several critically acclaimed roles under his belt. Nobody had the faintest inkling that it would work. Nobody dreamed that she would marry him, have children for him and stay with him until she died. Nobody dreamed that he would be true to her even after her death from complications of pneumonia in 2004.

My father married my mother in the spring of 1987. There was no doubt in his mind as to whether he was doing the right thing. She was everything to him, and it was as simple as that. They loved each other. In fact, they redefined love. Love was the ultimate surrender. It was giving yourself wholly and completely to someone else without fear or reservation, and having that person accept you without question. And that’s what my parents did.

I was born in the winter of 1988, in the same hospital where my mother would later die. They named me together, they brought me home together, they raised me and nurtured me and loved me together. And when my brother Daniel was born two years later, they were more than happy to repeat the process.

My mother was a beautiful woman. It’s easy to see why someone would have loved her. But it was more than that. My father says she had a wisdom in her eyes that was beyond her years, that she saw the world in a way nobody else did, that she saw things not as they were but as they could be. Beauty where there was ugliness.

She changed him. Being with her made him feel immortal. He felt like he could write sonnets to a leaf blowing in the wind, or epics on a dewdrop frozen on a single blade of grass. Everything around him inspired him.

When I was twelve, my father decided that he wanted to write, direct and star in a movie. He’d never written a screenplay before, but he also never walked away from a challenge. And so for hours and hours he and my mother sat together at the computer. I was still a child then, but I saw the way they looked at each other and I hoped that, one day, someone would look at me with that much love in their eyes.

The screenplay took six months to finish. I remember the day, the exact moment. It was January 17th, 2003, and I was ploughing headlong through the second Harry Potter novel. My brother, next to me on the floor in our reading corner of the living room, was on the first. We were both wondering if our father would ever finish this screenplay. When you’re a child, six months seems like an awful long time to be working on one thing.

When he opened the door, though, I knew this was it. I knew it was finally finished. The joy on his face was incredible to watch; the cool, calm collectedness of my father had all but vanished. My mother stood next to him, one arm around his neck.

“Yes,” she said in answer to the unspoken question in our faces. “He’s finished.”

I’ll never forget the way she said ‘he’s finished’. Not ‘we’, even though she spent almost as many hours on it as he did, and surely had been his muse. He.

They didn’t let us read it. They did one better than that. They performed it, a little impromptu play of sorts, right there in our living room. The easy chemistry between them was beautiful. And she was a good actor. Better than good. She was great.

The movie, however, was never made, because later that year my sister Serena was born, something that nobody had expected, least of all my parents. My father was fifty-six, and now he had a newborn daughter. So the screenplay took a backseat as they set to work bringing up this new arrival with the same care and attention which they had shown to my brother and I.

In February of 2004, my mother contracted a chest infection. It got so bad she had to go to the hospital. They gave her antibiotics, antivirals, steroids. Nothing seemed to work. The doctors knew what was wrong with her, they just didn’t know how to make it right.

It was hard, watching as our beautiful, vibrant mother faded away before our eyes. My brother’s grades slipped, and I dropped out of school entirely so I could spend time with her in the hospital. My father had suddenly found himself with a dying wife, two troubled children and a baby that he was going to have to raise alone. My mother would not be there to share Serena’s first steps or her first word. It was an unthinkable situation.

We were all around her when she breathed her last breath. It was the 3rd of April, 2004, and it was cold outside. But that did not stop my father from a solitary walk through the hospital grounds without a coat. Perhaps part of him wanted to get pneumonia as well, and to die, because life would not be worth living if she were not there.

As it turns out, he didn’t get pneumonia, and he didn’t die. He realized that while my mother was gone, she had left him three children. So he sent me back to school. He tutored my brother until Daniel was getting straight A’s again. And he raised Serena singlehandedly. My father had always been a good man. But I think that after my mother died, he became a truly great man. He always put us before himself. He was never short-tempered or curt, but infinitely patient and understanding. We had been blessed with not one but two perfect parents, and now that my mother was gone, we still had my father.

He was diagnosed with lung cancer in the spring of 2007. It was too late for treatment, and he didn’t try to postpone the inevitable. What he did do was turn the story of their love into a book. He wrote it, and from his deathbed he oversaw the editing, the format and the overall presentation of the memoir. He had specific ideas and nobody dared cross him. This was a thing in which he would not yield.

Unfortunately, my father could not be with us today as the book is launched worldwide. He had other commitments. If only death could have waited one more day...

But death does not wait. It did not wait on my mother, nor my father. And at any rate, he would not have wanted to be here. I have been entrusted with the care of my brother and my sister, and while it sounds like a heavy burden, it is not too much to ask. For I learned how to be a mother from the best. Wherever my father is, he knows that I can handle this. He knows I understand why he didn’t undergo agonizing chemotherapy, the loss of his hair, the bleeding gums, the infections.

The truth of it is that he wanted to be with my mother. No man wants to die, but my father didn’t fight death. Because he knew with absolute certainty - as I do - that wherever he is, my mother is also. There isn’t anything else for it. My parents’ love defies death. My father didn’t promise to be with my mother until the end of her life, but to the end of his. My mother didn’t say she’d love my father until he died, but until she did.

Dad, I understand. We all do. Give Mom our love. Tell her how handsome Daniel looked on my arm at the prom, how beautiful Serena’s growing up to be. And tell her how I love her. How I’ll never forget her.

I love you. Both of you.

Reunion

2007-02-28T19:46:00.000-04:00

The girl in the café had been stretching her latte for the last fifteen minutes. Wearing just jeans, a T-shirt and a light jacket, she wasn’t dressed warmly enough for the winter cold, and the way she wrapped her hands around the tepid cup showed she felt the chill, even indoors. The look on her face was a lost one, and none of the people getting on with their lives around her seemed to notice or care.

I noticed, though, and I cared. There was nothing outwardly special about her; of average height and average build, brown-haired and brown-eyed, she was no different from any of a hundred girls I’d already seen for the day. But her sadness was singular. It permeated the air around her, drenching her in a sorrow that seemed to weigh more heavily upon her than any sorrow had ever weighed upon anyone I had ever seen. This was no teenager’s angst, no divorcee’s distress. This was surely the sort of melancholy of which Keats had written.

I watched as she listlessly stirred the last few drops of coffee that remained in the cup, and then drained them. She brushed a stray lock of hair behind one ear, and resumed her empty stare out the frosty window.

My attention was diverted momentarily by the faint click of the door, and I turned my head to see a man whose face had obviously been ravaged by a grief as great as this girl’s. He was older, perhaps in his forties or fifties, with greying dark hair and deep lines carved into his face. He was haggard and worn, as if he had fallen too hard and come too far, and inwardly I winced in sympathy for them both.

But then a truly extraordinary thing happened. By some miracle of fate, perhaps, the girl turned her lonely eyes from the window, and they locked onto the stranger at the door with a fierceness and an intensity that shocked me. Her eyes flashed with what might have been anything in the world, and her lips parted as though she were lost for words that desperately needed to be said.

The man, for his part, returned her stare with every iota of barely restrained emotion. He didn’t move, and his face didn’t change, but his dark, haunted eyes burned. I could hardly look at him. Every moment seemed an eternity, like looking into those pools of anguish was a burden too great to bear.

The girl stood, and now her expression was completely different. I read fear and pain and endless longing, but great waves of relief were also washing over her face. Her lips trembled, and she began to move with what seemed frustrating slowness towards him.

I found I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I had nothing to do with any of this, but there was a deep ache in my chest from just watching this incredible thing about to happen.

The girl was walking normally now, halfway across the café. I waited with bated breath. One solitary tear glistened on her cheek, and the setting sun fired it as red as blood. She broke into a run, and the man took a single step forward to meet her as she hurled herself into his arms.

How those two held each other I may never be able to describe. Limbs intertwined, their bodies pressed so tightly it seemed the two merged into one. And whether the tears they shed were of joy or sorrow, I doubt either could have said.

I thought they would never part, and in truth, I didn’t want them to. I was perfectly content to stay enraptured in the sudden and surprising warmth that seemed to spread from the spot where they stood embracing. In all the English language there is only one word to describe what I know they felt. Relief and happiness are good words, but they are overshadowed sadly by the simple and succinct word ‘love’. And their love was so great it enveloped not just the room, not just the café, not just that suburb of London, but the whole world.

And I was watching when they kissed, the kiss to shame all kisses that I shall not even attempt to depict. When they finally separated, they stood there for a moment, just gazing at each other, each basking in the glow of the other’s presence and all-encompassing love, and then she took his hand and gently led him back to the table where she had been sitting. And they turned their chairs at right angles to each other, and just sat there without saying a word.

When the words finally came they were slow and halting, and so soft I could not hear them. But how could words matter after what had just been shared? Silence fell often between them and did not bother them, and I could only sit there with a smile on my face. Sometimes they spoke, sometimes they only looked, and while he was almost old and she was almost ordinary, the way they looked at each other was enough to make everyone else uncomfortable, because it was so obvious that she was the only person in the room for him, and he the only thing she saw.

I don’t know what circumstances brought those two together, nor what may have driven them apart, but I do know this: no matter what it was that tore them asunder, it could never have been as strong at that which holds them together still. For this is the tenth year, and they are still as one. Each year on the anniversary of that astonishing reunion, the memory of which still makes me smile, they come to this old café together and sip their lattes and sit in seldom broken silence. Sometimes they speak, and sometimes they don’t, but always there is the look. He is greyer and more lined and she is only thirty, and often people stare and criticize where they have no right, but I think the two little ones with them speak volumes for the sheer consuming power of pure, enduring love.

So...

2007-02-25T23:41:00.000-04:00

So the Firefly fanfic (wow, I just typed that as Firefy fanflic, which takes Nathan Fillion's "Firefy flan" to a yet another level) is finished at four pages. It also has a truly horrifying name - What You Expect And What You Need. Yes, the naming fairy deserted me in my hour of need. I do apologize.

I put it up on FF.net just for the sake of doing something with it. I'm a bit restless lately, and I can't say I'm really feeling to leave my writing lying around gathering virtual dust on my harddrive. So if you're feeling bored, go to http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3413858/1/ and have a bit of a read. Just don't click that link if you find homosexuality in any way offensive. (For the initiated - yes, it's slash.)

Started another one a little while ago, and have finished the first chapter of it so far. It could stand on its own or be a sort of sequel to What You Expect. I just hope I won't run out of steam before it's done. And yes, it's very likely that it will be slashy as well.

And in case anyone's been having doubts: I'm bisexual. No, not really even bisexual. Omnisexual. Genderqueer. Whatever. I don't see the need of a label to define me, nor do I see the need for gender to figure into my romantic relationships. So there.

And just to clarify as I trot off to sleep - Joss Whedon is a god. No, not a god. The god. I admire this man to the point of sheer idol-worship. Not only does he not mind fanfiction about his creations, but he encourages it. Not only does he not mind slash, but hell, he incorporates it into his shows. For example...

Spike: Angel and me were never intimate. Except that one -

Yes? Except that one what? Indeed.

"They couldn't take the sky from them, our big damn heroes made a film..."

Crush

2007-02-24T22:24:00.000-04:00

Well, here we have it. My latest celebrity crush - Nathan Fillion, best known as Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Mal) in the most amazing series to be cancelled ever, Firefly, and the subsequent movie Serenity. Just as an aside, is there anything Joss Whedon can't do?

So yes, Nathan. The important stats: he's Canadian, thirty-five, and six foot one. Supposedly single, although I can't figure out how. What girl could not want a guy who looks like this? And not only is he gorgeous, but he seems both witty and very down to earth in interviews. I'd love to meet him for platonic reasons alone. This is one guy who'd make an excellent liming partner.

Nathan can be seen in Sundance favourite Waitress.

And just so we're clear, I've started an as-yet-untitled Firefly fanfic. And in a couple weeks I'll be the proud owner of the single season of Firefly and the movie Serenity. Yep, I've become a fangirl. But there's no shame in going all fangirly over good stuff!

Big damn heroes.

Big damn movie.

Nuff said.

Dream

2007-02-22T20:02:00.000-04:00

What would you get if you threw Gabriel Byrne, Scotland, lobsters, muppets, Samuel L. Jackson and the Oscars into a giant blender? Well, you'd get this dream.

It starts with Gabriel Byrne coming home by me and my godmother limping up the stairs on ill-fitting transplanted feet. She'd apparently cut off hers as a sacrifice (he was the devil). He comes up the stairs in full navy blue suit, waistcoat, everything, then does an Irish jig in the kitchen and proceeds to extol the virtues of recycling while my mother and I argue about which one of us he wants.

Cut to: me, Gabriel and a load of people in wetsuits watching lobsters off the coast of Scotland in outrageously warm water while our guide complains that it's been a horribly cold summer. Meanwhile, the lobsters turn out to be muppets and burst into song. Gabriel, who is now miraculously in trunks, pulls me out of the water and onto some semi-island where we get splashed in the face by the mother of all waves and stare awkwardly at our soggy pizzas while incubating sexual tension.

Cut to: concert, with Gabriel and I just offstage washing dishes and tossing them across the stage to someone offstage on the other side. Onstage, Mario does his usual groove thang at a piano while Marc, plus a lot of badly cut black hair and minus the gimp, channels Stevie Wonder at another piano.

Cut to: gigantic epic indoor chase scene going on - and through an airport, it looks like. It coincides with a bunch of other movies as we pelt along (somebody's holding a gun to Bruce Willis' head, there's a shootout between Benicio del Toro and Michael Douglas, a bunch of badly dressed teenagers including a much younger Leonardo di Caprio and I think Shane West as well are cussing out some airport security).

I'm apparently Kevin Spacey in glasses, chasing Samuel L. Jackson (who is snarking about my glasses) to see who gets to host the Oscars. So I catch up to him on a set of narrow spiral stairs and trip him. As I'm opening the door, he asks, from the floor, "So what are you wearing?" As I turn to tell him I was thinking Armani, he goes, "No, fucko! You're wearing glasses!", kicks me in the face, laughs like a maniac, and gets through the door first.

But apparently this is like an RPG, because I can continue from my most recently saved point, and fortunately I remembered to save when we reached the stairs. This time I know that he's going to kick me so I grab his legs but I go headfirst down the stairs anyway. So on my last try, when he asks me what I'm wearing, I turn, say, "Glasses, fucko!", kick him in the face and run through the door laughing.

What the fuck? Anyone?

Wow.

2007-02-17T18:20:00.000-04:00

It's been too long since my words have touched the virtual pages of this blog. And I wish I could rectify that by filling in the blank piece of my life that is missing. But now is not the time.

I will say, however, that I spent Christmas in England, which was an experience. An experience that unfortunately had to go hand in hand with babysitting young children to whom I am related. I've also been working as a law clerk since September of last year for approximately one-tenth of minimum wage. I enjoy it tremendously despite my salary, and start law school in September of this year. In other news, I finished a ninety-page screenplay in ten days. My first screenplay ever.

Say it with me - wow.

Sad to say, I've become disillusioned. My best friend is a whore. Why is it that I'm nineteen years old and have never been kissed whereas she came within moments of getting laid on my bathroom floor by our mutual "brother" last night?

Don't get me wrong - I appreciate the fact that I'm the kind of friend a guy could pour out all his shit to. I don't mind that. But is that all I'll ever be? A nice enough girl to hang out with, but hell no when it comes to a relationship? A good listening ear, but that's about it? Look, I'm all for conversation. I'm all for soul-baring and soul-sharing. But not that alone. I need something more. I need a connection. I need chemistry.

I want a relationship, goddammit. Why is it that you have to be blonde and skinny and dressed in short skirts and high heels with six inches of makeup on your face to be considered worthwhile? Why is it that my style is weird? What is normal and why should I be forced to be normal in order to be girlfriend material? I don't want to be the best supporting actor forever. Why can't I be a leading lady in my own right?

But alas...I fear I'm already typecast.

Fuck it all

2006-08-28T21:50:00.000-04:00

So Cambridge is done, my results are AABC12, which means little or nothing at this point. This is my year off, but I have to decide what I'm going to do and where I'm going to do it before December. I write SATs in October. I'm getting a job in a month or so, working as an assistant to an attorney. I won't be getting paid...my "pay" will be the "experience" I get.
I've been informed by my parents that I'm going to be doing law. I'm going to be a lawyer. What bloody fucking fun.
I didn't get the grades to get into UWI to do law, so I'm probably going to end up doing it outside, at some shitty little place in Chaguanas or something. Which means there's no point in doing SATs. We don't have the money for me to do abroad anyway. But I'm still set to do them. Weird. It's not like I have any chance of getting a schol - I've forgotten all the math I've ever learned. It took me ten minutes to remember how to find the area of a triangle last week. Go figure.
Someone get me the fuck out of this country. No, really. Christ, I'd checked out this place in NYC where I wanted to go do a two-year acting course - Esper Studio - because I'm just psycho and creative like that, but noooooo.
"You're not going to New York. You're just wasting time because you don't want to make decisions about your life."
Well, fuck you. Every time I decide what to do with my life, suddenly it's wrong. Suddenly Fate kicks in and I realize that choice is an illusion and that I'm not allowed to make any decisions for myself. So what's the point of it all? Why live when I have to follow the straight and narrow path set between exactly these rigid white lines?
Fuck it. Fuck it all.

Newness

2006-07-24T13:56:00.000-04:00

When we meet Matt Rainey, our protagonist is nearly forty. He's a guy who's always has casual relationships and casual sex. He's never been committed. He can't seem to settle down. He meets a girl, he has sex with her, they spend a couple weeks together, when things fall into a rut, they part. That's how it's been for him since he was in college. The girls pass in a haze of long legs and names - Frankie, Natalya, Melanie...

He comes back to them occasionally - every girl has a place in her heart (bed) for Matt. So, one day, he returns to Alexandra. Alex is a peculiar girl. He's still not entirely sure what he saw in her, or what he still sees. But he comes back. And as he walks in the front door and sees her on the couch, a child asleep in her arms, he knows he's really done it this time.

Alex doesn't ask him to change his life. That would be the one surefire to get him to walk out and leave her for good. Matt tries to be a decent father while continuing his usual activities, but he soon realizes that this is not working, and his relationship with his son is suffering. He knows he has to change, and Alex knows that the way to get him to stay is to let him change himself. So that is where we are, following Matt as he tries to come to terms with what he was and who he's now become.

It sounds like a good plot for a movie, actually, now that I think of it. Thoughts?

Brief update

2006-06-14T17:34:00.000-04:00

Exams finished on the 8th. Am having extreme fucking trouble writing, since I had to deny the muse for so long I think he's gotten bloody fed up and gone off to have a couple drinks with his fellow muses. Sigh. I have tons of ideas, don't get me wrong...but I can't put them down on paper. No great dialogue, no lovely prose. Just...average writing. Plain, normal, average writing. And one thing I am not is average.
Current soundtrack: Evanescence - Hello. Get it if you don't have it. Beautiful and sad.
Will update again when I freaking have something to write. I'm so frustrated right now.
In other news, Trinidad drew with Sweden in our first game of the World Cup, and we're playing England tomorrow. Our match with Paraguay is on the 20th. If we hold a draw with England and beat Paraguay, we go forward. In further news, after we get sent home, I'll be supporting Germany all the way. Two words: Philipp Lahm. Nuff said.
If Trinidad beats anybody at all, I'll pierce my ear again. If we make it to the next round, I'll get a tattoo.
Having said that, let's hope I don't actually have to take multiple needles to my skin...

Political turmoil

2006-05-12T14:54:00.000-04:00

It's been a long time. And so much has happened.
First, the leader of the Opposition, Mr. Basdeo Panday, has been sentenced to two years' jail with hard labour for failing to declare the existence of a bank account. The $1.2 million in this bank account was confiscated and he was fined an additional sum of several thousand dollars (probably between fifty and seventy-five). Let us please bear in mind that testimony was heard before the court from reliable sources - Lawrence Duprey, who is a businessman of impeccable good character and who is in excellent standing in the country - that this money was not stolen or otherwise acquired via any questionable means. He in fact testified that he personally gave this money to Mr. Panday in order to assist in financing his children's education.
The man is seventy-three years old. He is a heart patient. If two years of hard labour does not kill him, nothing will. He has also been forced to resign his post as leader of the Opposition as a result of his conviction. Could this by any chance be a political ploy on the part of the ruling party (the PNM) to destroy the country's only viable opposing party (the UNC) and create a de facto dictatorship? Because if there is only one party to vote for, only one party can be elected. Mr. Panday is currently appealing his conviction. We shall see how it goes.
But the government's tricks are not limited to the legislative arena. The judiciary is now under attack as well. A certain magistrate has insinuated to our Honourable Prime Minister, Mr. Patrick Manning, that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court attempted to interfere in the integrity trial of Mr. Panday and force an acquittal of sorts. The Hon. Prime Minister has ordered Chief Justice Satnarine Sharma to resign or face charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The Hon. Chief Justice has refused to resign and has returned allegations of his own towards Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicolls, who is well-known for being, shall we say, unusual in conducting his court. It is doubtful whether the Hon. Prime Minister will investigate these allegations, for he has already initiated impeachment proceedings against the Hon. Chief Justice. If the impeachment is indeed carried out, it will be left to the Hon. Prime Minister to supply a suitable candidate for the new Chief Justice.
Is it that all the long-standing corruption in the machinery in the political/judicial arena has suddenly been exposed? Is the government attempting to purge the administrative section of the country of all the sleaze and impose a righteous moral code instead? Or could it not be coincidence? Is the PNM in fact attempting to pave the road to absolute power in the removal from office of persons who have been deemed possible obstacles to such power?
This is a most serious problem. Especially when one takes into consideration the fact that our Hon. Prime Minister once conjugated the Trinidadian verb "to tief" in a most disturbing fashion.
"I tief, you tief, all ah we tief..."
I believe this of all things should call his own morality into question.
I need to get out of this country. For my health.

Update

2006-04-17T01:33:00.000-04:00

Update on what I've been up since my last post: nothing.
I studied, I studied, I got results of my mock exams (68 in history and Communications, 72 in literature and geography) and I studied. Oh yes, and I went hiking in deep central Trinidad to see some twelve acres of land we own that we've never seen. It's in the middle of dense forest. The nearest settlement is three or four rudimentary dwellings a mile or two away - no electricity, no water, and I doubt any sanitation. I think our next step will be selling those twelve acres...
I am so frustrated and stressed out, and by a number of things.
First off, I've been studying. I really have. I'm reading my textbooks diligently, highlighting the important things, repeating the facts and statistics, trying to have flashes of insight into the works of Keats, Walcott and Ngugi...and I'm remembering nothing. Nada. Zilch.
Second, exams are all of three weeks away. They last a month, but they start in a week. And I know nothing. I am so dead.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, I've been spending so much time studying that I haven't been able to write. And I'm used to being able to write whenever I pleased and how much I wanted, so having to restrain my creativity - to deny the muse, as it were - is a new thing to me. And it's extremely frustrating. I don't know how ordinary people, people who don't write, cope. How can you handle something as complex and screwed up as life without writing? I guess we all having our coping strategies, but I've seen hard times and I'm still here, so I figure mine ranks up at the top.
Anyway, no time to chat. Must be off...there is much work yet to be done...

Sigh

2006-03-19T00:58:00.000-04:00

I sit here in the dead quiet of morning. No dogs bark, no birds sing. The birds are sleeping in their cosy nests, the dogs curl together beneath the car, tails on noses. Beside my left hand sits a cup of the strongest coffee imaginable, liberally doused with soymilk and what now seems to be too much sugar. The darkness surrounds me, warm and thick and threaded with tendrils of cooler breeze that waft the scent of guavas to my nose from the tree next door. The laptop hums quietly on my thighs.
I should be studying, but I can measure in a teaspoon how much I care. What matters is the word processing screen that glows in front of me, the story unfolding behind the blinking cursor, the tale of simmering rage and sweet revenge. Cliched, perhaps, but, well, old cliches die hard.
His name is Sebastian. He likes dark-haired girls. Her name is Nadine. She has dark hair.
He's already killed her sister, a hooker named Lorraine, when we meet him. He dumped her body in a rough wooded area near the border of Detroit. He lets Nadine into his car three days later. She's a hitchhiker, she's got an accent. She's also got a knife strapped to her thigh under her pleated Catholic-schoolgirl skirt. He has a gun in the glove compartment.
Method meets madness, and so begins the tug of war. I don't know who will win. I never do until it is written. As for Adam...Adam is still with us. He's a little faded, like the spectre of something that once existed in vibrant technicolour, but he appreciates the rest. He needs it, more than he knows. And where he lounges in the corner, one long leg thrown over the arm of the chair in a decidedly sexy manner, his wry half-smile tells me he won't be silent for long. I know he won't. I feel him stirring in my mind...three months, Adam. Give me three months and I'll continue your story. For now, Sebastian and Nadine have the voice.
In the distance, an insomniac cock is crowing. A man yells shut up! and the bird falls silent, perhaps for good. In this hell we settle disagreements with cutlass blows - permanent solutions to temporary problems. I could use a permanent solution to my problem, the problem of staying here. I won't. I just will not.
Write, Adam whispers, and gives way to Sebastian's fuzzy insanity. Sebastian has a remarkable inability to form a coherent sentence, it makes life very difficult when trying to write prose. He has more voices in his head at once than I've ever had in mine. Sometimes it's refreshing to write about someone crazier than you are...

Nadine smiled a long, slow smile. With that colouring she could have been Spanish or Italian; Sebastian's hazy mind set the odds at ten to one that she wasn't Scandinavian. "Do you think we'll be more than friends?" she asked. The combination of slurred British accent and five-pack-a-day voice made his throat go dry.
Sebastian opened his mouth to say something relevant in response but was thwarted by his mind going blank. All he could think about was leaving the imprints of his fingers on her tanned, glowing throat...
She leaned over so that her skirt rode up her left leg almost to heaven, and her hand came down on his thigh, sliding slowly north. The speedometer mimicked the movement, inching up from twenty-five to thirty-five. Sebastian thought he would have a heart attack.
Nadine pressed her mouth against his ear, and her tongue did a slow, wet flick. "I have a feeling we'll be so much more than friends..."

The choice

2006-03-11T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'm posting to reinforce my recent (today) decision to stop eating meat. And not just meat - dairy products, eggs and seafood. Yes, I'm going to turn vegan.
I've considered this before, and I was vegetarian for a while, but I've consciously made the decision today to do the whole shebang and flick the switch straight onto vegan. First of all, I'm allergic to seafood and partially allergic to milk, and I don't like how eggs taste. But giving up meat is a big thing for me, considering my favourite food has always been hamburger.
I love animals. I've always loved them. If I had enough money and land I'd pick up all the stray dogs and cats in the world and give them food, affection and a place to sleep until I could find them loving homes. But I realize that it's hypocritical to say you love animals and then willingly and happily eat beef and chicken. Why should I love a dog and not a cow? Why should I treat any animal differently from any other? They all deserve the same respect - not to be treated brutally, killed and eaten. There are plants. Eat the plants.
So from now on, no more beef, lamb, pork or chicken. No more honey - honey is stolen from bees who worked so hard to make it to last them through winter. No more gelatin made from animal bones. No milk, no cheese, no butter, no yoghurt.
Instead, vegetables, fruits, whole grains and soy. No preservatives. Nothing artificial. Not only am I going vegan but I'm doing it the organic way.
No ifs, no ands and no buts. I've made my choice.

Mocks

2006-03-08T12:04:00.000-04:00

Mock exams start on the 13th. My schedule is horrible, I have five consecutive days of exams from the 20th to the 24th - and in those five days alone, I have fifteen hours of exams, with five hours on the 23rd and five on the 24th. Anybody wanna shoot me?
My real timetable isn't much better...for the actual Cambridge schedule, I end up with five hours of exams on one day as well - lit and history, one after the other, and then Communications and history on another day - five and a half hours. I foresee my hand falling off...too bad I'm not ambidextrous, I could write with the right hand for one exam and with the left for the other...
Education is structured so as to destroy all promise of creativity and youthful spontaneity, I swear. After such heavily structured high school, with rules like American schools have never seen - earrings are regulated, height of socks and shoes are regulated, hair colour is regulated - one's enjoyment of life is left considerably reduced...and one is released into the real world, which has no such rules, entirely bewildered by society and not sure how to proceed. They say they're preparing us for life - they lie. Nobody cares about whether I can solve a quadratic equation. Nobody wants to know about the development of the peasantry in the British West Indies after emancipation. Nobody cares about the Caribbean anyway. Sheesh.
If I manage to get myself into the States and I get married more than sixty days after I arrive, and I can convince the authorities that I entered into the marriage for love and not citizenship, I can get a green card, I can become a lawful permanent resident and eventually I can get naturalized. It's my only hope. I cannot, I will not stay here. I don't know how many times I have to say that.
Somebody...please...get me out of this place.

Adam's story

2006-02-27T17:00:00.000-04:00

The nightclub was smoky and dark, and half the girls Gordon found himself looking at couldn’t have been more than seventeen – not legal to be drinking the alcohol in the red plastic cups they held in pale thin hands, and certainly not legal to be smoking the marijuana he smelled in the air. The clothes were short, tight, revealing or any combination of these, and looking around he saw Versace, Roberto Cavalli, Valentino and other notable designers he couldn’t name offhand mixed up with leather, PVC and torn fishnets.
They all looked the same – black, white, Hispanic or Asian, they were all bored rich kids trying to get away with whatever they could. A group of bleached-blond girls in pink miniskirts that revealed spindly legs huddled together in one corner while grungy-looking boys wearing ties and eyeliner watched them furtively from across the room. Joints passed around freely, and Gordon’s sharp eyes saw track marks on the forearms of some of the kids.
He cleared a path fairly easily through the partygoers, most of them ignoring him completely, and made his way over to the knot of blond girls. “Hi,” he said, and held up the sketch of Alistair Dawson. “Any of you seen him?” The girls looked at one another uncomfortably. Their faces were all alike, right down to the hollow cheeks, vacant blue eyes and fashionably sparse eyebrows. “It’s none of my business what you’re drinking,” he added, nodding to the cups, “and I don’t care what you’re doing here on a Monday night or how old you are. I just want to know if you know him.”
“Sorta.” The girl who spoke was an anorexic-looking wreck of matchstick limbs. Gordon found it remarkable her collarbones hadn’t actually pierced her skin. “Albert or Alfred or something. I think he was here on Thursday.”
“Was that the last time you saw him?” he asked her, and she nodded. He looked at the others. “Any of you see him since?”
“I saw him on Saturday,” came a voice from somewhere behind the group.
The girl who had spoken rolled her eyes. “Oh please, like you would know anything about a boy.” She turned to Gordon, one hand on her bony hip, elbow jutting out like a dangerous weapon. “She’s just a dyke, she doesn’t know anything. If he was here on Saturday, I would have seen him.”
“He was here.” Another girl stepped out from behind the group. She was taller than them, dressed in slouchy, comfortable-looking jeans and a green turtleneck, with dark hair and brown eyes. “His name is Alistair,” she said, looking directly at Gordon. “He was here on Saturday.”
“Liar,” the first girl hissed. “He wouldn’t have come within thirty feet of you.”
“Shut up, Heather,” the dark-haired girl snapped. “He was here, you were just too stoned to notice.”
Gordon cleared his throat. “Did you see him leave with anyone?”
“He wasn’t here!” Heather had her skinny arms folded across her chest. “Don’t listen to her. He was here on Thursday and nobody’s seen him since.”
The dark-haired girl looked like she was ready to retort, but Gordon took her by the upper arm and steered her away from Heather and her minions and onto the dancefloor. “Do you want to dance?” he asked. The song had just changed to something slow and dreamy, and all around them teenagers were using it as an excuse to make out.
She shrugged and moved into his arms. Gordon himself was light on his feet, and he loved to dance. Besides, on the dancefloor, nobody could hear them. “He was here on Saturday,” she said. “I danced with him, that’s how I know.”
“What did he do?” he queried.
She shook her hair back from her face. She wore no makeup, and she had a light tan. Under the bright lights of the dancefloor, he could see sun-streaked highlights in her hair. She was, he thought, beautiful. “He came over, bought me a drink, asked me to dance. We danced, he came onto me, I got pissed off and left.” There was an edge in her voice. “He seemed disappointed I wasn’t cheap and easy like most of the sluts that hang out here.”
She was a good dancer too; Gordon was pleasantly surprised. “Why were you here in the first place if this isn’t your crowd?”
“My brother Fritz is the bartender. I don’t get to see him much, and his phone got stolen a couple weeks ago. When I want to talk to him, I have to come down here.” She glanced over at the bar, where a lithe young man in an open white shirt with spiky blond hair was performing acrobatic feats with glass bottles. “My name’s Max. Maxine.”
“I’m Detective Adam Gordon.” He shook the hand already clasped in his. “Pleased to meet you. How well did you know Alistair?”
She hesitated, and her eyes darkened. “A little too well,” she said. “After I left, he followed me outside to the alley. He showed me a knife, a big one – a switchblade – put it against my throat. Said if I made a scene he’d cut my head off.”
“He raped you?” Gordon asked softly.
In answer, she removed her hand from his and pulled down the neck of her sweater. The light golden skin of her throat was marred by a long, shallow cut. “That was my warning. I didn’t fight him after that.”
Gordon was suddenly acutely aware of how close he was to a recent rape victim. He drifted back from her a little, tried to keep some distance between them. “Did you make a report?”
“Didn’t need to.” Maxine’s eyes met his, and flashed. “Whatever happened to him, Detective, wherever he is – I’m not sorry it happened. He deserved it.”
And Gordon knew. He exhaled, looking over her head at the slowly swaying crowd around them. Across the room, a girl whose back was against the wall had a boy’s hand up under her skirt. Her eyes were closed. Maxine’s body moved back against his, and this time he didn’t try to create distance between them again.
“Any idea where we should look?” he asked her. “He might have been a scumbag of the highest order, but he had a family. They want closure. They deserve closure.”
“You could check the storm drains,” she suggested, “but somehow I think you’d have more luck searching the dumpsters. Maybe in the meatpacking district. Garbage belongs with garbage, don’t you think?” She smiled ever so slightly, and stepped back from him as the song ended. Her dark eyes glittered in the light. “Thank you for the dance. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”
Gordon watched as she slipped through the crowd and disappeared up the stairs into whatever lay out in the night. He waited five minutes, and then he too made his exit, pulling out his phone to place a call to whichever officer had the unhappy luck to be patrolling the meatpacking district at this hour. Sometimes, justice had a way of sorting itself out.

Without You

2006-02-24T14:14:00.000-04:00

RENT - Without You

Without you, the ground thaws, the rain falls, the grass grows,
Without you, the seeds root, the flowers bloom, the children play,
The stars gleam, the poets dream; the eagles fly without you,
The earth turns, the sun burns, but I die without you.
Without you, the breeze warms, the girl smiles, the cloud moves,
Without you, the tides change, the boys run, the oceans crash,
The crowds roar, the days soar; the babies cry without you,
The moon glows, the river flows, but I die without you.

The world revives, colours renew,
But I know blue, only blue, lonely blue (within me blue),
Without you.

Without you, the hand gropes, the ear hears, the pulse beats,
Without you, the eyes gaze, the legs walk, the lungs breathe.
The mind churns (the mind churns),
The heart yearns (the heart yearns),
The tears dry, without you.
Life goes on but I'm gone, 'cause I die without you...
Without you, without you...
Without you.

Answers

2006-02-14T20:41:00.000-04:00

I'm posting this to answer some of the extremely weird questions I've been asked today by people who swear they want to know this for purely educational purposes. Due to time constraints, I can only fit ten. Yes, how sad.

1. Do you own a little black dress? No. I do own a little black skirt, though. Full, swishy, looks like the hem was attacked with a scissors. To be worn with heeled boots - without the Parental Unit's knowledge.
2. What's in your CD player? The CD that's actually in my CD player is the Rent soundtrack. The song I'm currently listening to - shame on me, I know - is It's Raining Men. Hey, it's Valentine's Day.
3. What's your favourite flavour? Coffee. No lie.
4. Fuzzy handcuffs or edible underwear? Oh please. Handcuffs, no contest. I could see myself getting into the bondage thing. Besides, you can use those over and over again...
5. Short and tight or long and loose? Long and loose. Preferably black silk. I'm morbidly romantic.
6. Favourite flavour incense? I had no idea incense came in flavours, I rather thought it came in scents...anyway, I like vanilla and sandalwood.
7. What would you rather lick off, whipped cream or chocolate? Hmm, that one's hard. How about wine? Drench him in wine and I'll be more than pleased to use my tongue on every inch of him.
8. What plastic surgery would you rather have - liposuction or breast enhancement? Well, liposuction is dangerous and I definitely do not need breast enhancement. I do not like the idea of plastic surgery, period. I'll keep my imperfections.
9. Where do you want to have sex most - kitchen table, bathroom or hot tub? Another hard one. If we're talking realistically, I don't have a kitchen table or a hot tub, but I do have a bathroom. That having been said, if he has a hot tub I'll be happy to come over.
10. Spit or swallow? Tell me who I've gone down on and I'll give you the answer.

Righto, then. I hope that was educational. Valentine's Day, I swear everybody goes stark raving bloody mad.

It's raining men...go get yourself wet, girl, I know you want to...

Tired

2006-02-11T13:03:00.000-04:00

I got this theory about latent immaturity - well, some people call it the inner child. Anyway, right now, I don't care about being immature. All I care is that I've written twelve essays in the past three days and I could either use eighteen hours of sleep, the best cup of coffee in the universe, or some really great sex.

Irony

2006-01-27T23:50:00.000-04:00

Imagine spending two valuable hours of your time doing homework for the last period of the day when you could have been furthering your creative ambitions. Imagine going without lunch because you're busy working on this essay. Imagine working in sweltering heat, sweat beading on your forehead and smudging the ink, your stomach rumbling like distant artillery and the acid eating away at the lining because you're so hungry.
And then imagine the stupid woman not coming to class.

End it on this

2006-01-25T20:40:00.000-04:00

You see, in the past I had a dream, a fantasy. I thought that we would last, become a little family. Then one, two, three, four, the years were flying by, they soared and it's my gut feeling it's not happening for me. So...
Let's end it on this, give me one more kiss. Let's end it on this, let's end it on this.
You see, it's hard to face the addict that's inside of me. I want to fill my glass up with you constantly. I've been here before, but I never ever felt this sure and now I know I've been dreaming and your actions have inspired me.
So let's end it on this, give me one more kiss. Let's end it on this, let's end it on this. Just one more wish, one last kiss. Let's end it on this, let's end it on this.
I open up, you ignore me. No, you're not listening at all. And if I could turn back the pages of time, I'd rewrite your point of view. Washed up on the shore, given one last chance to try some more, but I'm tired, I'm freezing, man - we'll stop and call it history.
Let's end it on this, let's end on this...

Goodbye. I don't like you anymore and I never loved you. So stop looking at me like that.

Tomorrow

2006-01-16T18:54:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow I have a test. A test of my proficiency in understanding the "sophisticated English" of Caribbean Nobel Prize winner Derek Walcott. A test of my tolerance of a man who is obsessed with the past, who will not let go of colonialism. Given by a teacher who preaches "the Caribbean experience" of having "no identity" to me. I was born here. I grew up here. Don't give me that bullshit about having no identity. I have an identity. It's people like Derek Walcott who won't let themselves acquire the good parts of someone else's culture because they're too busy whining over what their ancestors lost generations ago when my European ancestors enslaved them.
For God's sake, it's not my fault. I played no part in it. Don't punish me by being racist. Hating the white people is not going to get you anywhere in a world that becomes progressively whiter and whiter with each generation.
I'm not saying to be completely assimilated. I'm not saying you shouldn't retain parts of the culture and traditions of your ancestors. But at the same time, why do you want to start a "back to Africa" movement? You would hate it in Africa, just as the Indians here would hate it in India. Anyone would hate it there - they're more third-world than this goddamn place. And that's saying something.
I hate this country now. It was beautiful to me once, with the long curved beaches of Mayaro and Manzanilla where the waves crash onto the shore and the water is colder than you'd ever think it in a tropical climate, where coconuts litter the shoreline and where if you're not careful while you're running like a demon on the sand, you can step on a jellyfish and seriously hurt your feet. This mad country with its hills and its vast undulating plains, where everything is green unless it's dry season and if you're not careful you could twist your foot in a crack in the ground. I almost broke my ankle like that in my own backyard one hot year.
But now? Now the people have made it ugly. Who isn't racist is too concerned...good God, this furor in the paper about wanting to change the name of the football team from the Soca Warriors to the Soca Chutney Warriors because they think soca is a black music form and it doesn't adequately represent the 40% Indian population of this country - which chutney, an Indian music form, does. Christ, if you want to be all-inclusive, you'd have to call them the Soca Chutney Steelpan Carnival Hosay Parangsoca Ragga Soca Calypso Rapso Warriors. And I mean, come on, that would be ridiculous.
The people here are ugly. They're narrowminded with a vengeance. They won't look past their own noses. They say there is tolerance and acceptance, they speak of Trinidad as a cosmopolitan place where all ah we is one, but they lie. I know the truth, I live it every day.
Here the Indians marry the Indians and say the "Creoles" - the common term for black people, generally used by those of Indian descent - are barbaric. Meanwhile the blacks deride the Indians as greasy and stupid (this is because of, I believe, the tradition of Indian women staying with their husbands through years of abuse) and say the Syrians are running the country - behind a black government with a black Prime Minister - and of course, everybody hates the whites. We're the cause of every evil this country possesses, because we colonized it with slaves. Betcha anything if we gave them all free one-way tickets back to their homelands of Africa and India they'd be crying to come back in a week.
I'm so sick of it here. I want to leave. When I'm finished A-levels in June (so close, so far), I want to forget formal education. I can get a job as a barista, behind a counter in a deli, in a bookstore, it doesn't matter. A normal nine-to-five with a salary that lets me pay my rent and survive. I don't have to be rich - I don't expect to be...or want to be. I measure my success not by the balance in my bank account, the rung I occupy on the social ladder or the person who designed the clothes on my back, but by what I've achieved for myself internally. Whether I'm happy with the person I am, whether I like that last paragraph I've just typed. Whether I think tomorrow's going to be a beautiful day.
Tomorrow I turn eighteen. Tomorrow I am legal to do anything in this place. The age of consent passed at sixteen, driving at seventeen. At eighteen I can drink, smoke, vote and leave my mother's house and she will hold no claim on me. She will not be able to tell the police to bring me back.
Tomorrow, I see freedom. It will not be until June that I can grasp it.

Proof that I am evil

2006-01-15T17:06:00.000-04:00

These shots of my (much older) brother and myself were taken by my cousin's digital camera at her house on the 10th of December. For proof that I am indeed an evil creature born to serve a diabolical purpose, look at my eyes.

Convinced? I know I am.

Adam speaks

2006-01-06T16:55:00.000-04:00

Leon Schmidt, twenty-six, was a handsome man once. He is tall, his hair done in neat cornrows, and his skin is mocha-coloured, impossibly smooth. His open, staring eyes are light brown. He has awesome facial structure, with high cheekbones and a once-straight nose which is now a bloody mess. Judging from his current attire, he was a snappy dresser. He could have easily been a model.
According to what I find in his wallet, he attended law school prior to his sudden, violent and untimely death in this dark alley. His body lies where it fell when his killer finished beating him, sprawled over garbage bags and trash. My flashlight catches a pair of glowing eyes for a moment, and then the rat vanishes into the shadows with the faintest scuttling noise as the rain comes down.
The cause of death isn't immediately apparent - Schmidt had the crap beaten out of him, and his injuries are many and severe, but judging from the frothy dried blood at his mouth, I'm betting on a punctured lung from a broken rib. I am, however, not Sutherland. She's the one with the degree, she'll be able to say for sure what killed this man. But there is a sinking feeling in my stomach, because the markings on his body are commensurate with knuckles. Someone killed this man with their bare hands.
I shouldn't even be here. Freezing rain soaks my hair, and through my sweater and my leather jacket I can feel the biting cold of a New York pre-winter. Miles away, in a hospital where the fluorescent lights are glaringly bright on the green walls, Ashley is in labour. My beautiful wife, who I love more than this city or this job. She's out there, and my cell phone rings with reports of complications and distress and insufficient dilation.
What do you want to do, Adam? Trent asks me. Poor kid, he's probably scared shitless. He's only twenty-five, what does he know about pregnancy and the obligation I have to the job? The doctors want to cut her. But it's dangerous. You have to give them permission.
He wants to know what I want. What is more important, my twenty-three-year-old wife or our unborn child. I don't know how to answer those questions. I can't answer them. And the decision I make seems like the easiest decision I've ever made. I dial Russell, get him out of his warm bed, and tell him there's been a murder. I tell him Ashley's in labour and I tell him I'm putting my faith in him and in his partner Bates to get this done.
Russell knows me. He knows Ashley. He understands what this means to me. He'll be on the wet, cold crime scene within ten minutes.
And then I'm sprinting to the nearest cab and telling the driver to get me to my wife. My life, my world. My earth doesn't turn without her. I die without her. My phone rings. They couldn't wait, Adam. They're taking her into surgery.
The rain stops falling as my own tears begin.

Musings

2006-01-05T16:13:00.000-04:00

I find myself in a reflective mood this rainy afternoon. Outside the sky is cloudy, grey, wet. It's rained for most of today already - tomorrow there will be the usual headlines about some village or the other left stranded after the collapse of a bridge, the boys who died after swimming in swollen rivers, the stories of farmers whose crops have been destroyed and want compensation from the government. As though the government caused the rain.
I'm sick of love. Sick of empty words and broken promises. Right now I'll be happy if I never fall in love again, if I stay single and alone for the rest of my life. Life's so much simpler that way. And even as I say that I see Adam from the corner of my eye and I know that life isn't simple at all. I'll always be in love. Whether anyone else can see him is the question.
And I don't care. He's mine. He'll always be mine.

OMFG

2005-12-27T00:34:00.000-04:00

My mother is insane. I swear. I bring up the topic of New York, of the possibility of me going there next year - not necessarily forever, just a chance to breathe, a chance to be myself at long last - and what does she say? She says - and this is a direct quote, no lie - "Well, honey, why don't you meet some nice boy there and you can get married when your exams are finished and you can get citizenship? You can always get divorced after the two years."
There is no emoticon created in heaven or hell that can even remotely describe the expression my face is still wearing.
But it means she'll let me go to NY. For two years. On my own.
Faced with the prospect of not only absolute freedom but potential happiness, what am I supposed to think? How am I supposed to feel?

Roses are red and carnations are pink.
I want to get married...
What do you think?

Nightmares

2005-12-24T01:50:00.000-04:00

Nightmares. Bodies. Thirty, forty bodies, piled one on top the other in a clearing. Thrown carelessly over logs, half-covered by broken branches...dressed in funeral suits and fine satin dresses but their flesh decaying, fluids seeping from liquefying tissue in a putrid soup. Petechial haemorrhages, ligature marks, rigor mortis. Decomposition. Blood. Corpses rotting into each other. Walking through these killing fields and seeing death all around...what the hell is happening to me?

Random insanity

2005-12-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

Fuck. This is what happens when you drink too much and let yourself loose on the Internet. Christ, there oughta be a law against blogging while intoxicated. Thank God I only saved it as a draft and didn't actually publish it. So, edited, spell-checked and grammatically corrected, below is a draft post I typed while mad. I tried to reconstitute it as best I could. Large proportions of it make no sense and much of it is inane blathering, but hey.
Yes, I'm insane. Enjoy.

I feel like minus a hundred and fucking twenty, but I think I'm allowed negative numbers and obscene language after consuming twice my body weight in alcohol. Yeah, I drank too much. Family came over, and I realized rum, Scotch and vodka go down fine with creme de menthe on the side, la de fucking da. Wow. Heheh, I see my wow and raise myself a holy shit.
Adam is so infuriating. I'm making an effort to be angry with him, but Ashley's making eye contact while eating a banana and I think all in all nobody knows what the fuck I'm on about. Including me. So just shut up, Mr. Foot of the Bed. And great, I can't think of an insult, so I just describe where you're fucking lying. Shit.
No. I'm not drunk. If I was drunk I wouldn't be able to spell my phone number. But I was sick so I took Nyqil, then realized I was having people over and took some Dayqil...I kinda hoped they'd balance out to like Afternoonqil, but next thing you know I'm lying on the driveway contemplating the meaning of asphalt. Well, I guess you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it fuck.
Don't you think I'm beautiful? I think I'm addictive. And you do too. I'm made of sugar and spice and crack cocaine, baby. You can't resist. You know you want to be tangent to these curves. Shit, math. Math was always Mickey Mouse x squared bullshit to me.
How do we know reality's real? Maybe Adam's the only real thing in this universe because the rest of us are all wasted and disillusioned by life and the material. And speaking of real, was anyone there to witness the miracle when Jesus rose from the dead like a pop tart from a toaster? We can't convict on circumstantial evidence. I give you not guilty, but only because I don't think you merit being fucked up the ass when you drop the soap. But the people shall be merry and rejoice for the Lord is miscalculating every time a child is raped or a rapist born...'cause, see, God's too busy gettin' his drunk on to pay attention to stuff like creation.
This is my coffee. Dig it? Mine. Touch and I'll tear out your intestines, tie 'em around your legs, sink you into the nearest lake and make sure swordfish rape your bloated corpse. You may now resume conversation, but I'm pleading the fifth. Hell, ain't the fifth amendment like thou shalt not steal or something? Heheh, look at that...Bible, meet Constitution.
Want a drink, Adam? I got Jack in the fridge. What do you mean, like cranking a handle and a shot pops out? No, I mean Jack Daniels. But green's the new pink and pink is the new black and I am the worst possible result of an orgasm. But at least I know for sure the chicken came first 'cause if God made the egg first he'd have had to sit on the friggin' egg for it to hatch and, you know, God's got shit to do. Important shit.
But none of that matters because I am fashionably brilliant. And I can churn out bullshit and have my way with your body and your brain and you will love it. You will want to fuck it.
Because I'm the best acid trip ever.

Good God. I'm seeing brief glimmers of depth and sense lurking within the monstrous collection of bilge, but right now I'm too tired to give a shit. I will say one thing, though: in vino veritas.
In wine there is truth.

Lyrics

2005-12-15T19:49:00.000-04:00

Seether - Love Her

I met a girl who hated the world - she used her body to sell her soul
Everytime they'd break her and pay - tear out her heart, and leave her in pain
I never found out how she survived all of the sadness she kept inside
I never found out how she could lie with a smile on her face, and the scratches she'd hide

You could love her if you paid, you could have her everyday
You could love her if you prayed, you could have her every way

Down on her knees, she wept on the floor - this hopeless life she wanted no more
Dead in her mind and cold to the bone - she opened her eyes and saw she was alone
She never found out how much I tried - all of the sadness she kept made me blind
She never found out how much I cried - the rope so tight on the night that she died

You could love her if you paid, you could have her everyday
You could love her if you prayed, you could have her every way

I never found out how she survived - a life lived in lies is a life of denial
I never found out how she could lie - with a smile on her face and the darkness inside...

Frustrated

2005-12-09T23:31:00.000-04:00

I'm fed up. Just fucking pissed off. And I guess it's understandable, given the circumstances and what I've been through with guys. If I was as cynical as I sometimes seem to be I'd denounce the entire gender and turn lesbian, but I guess there's hope for me yet.
Nothing happened to set me off - I guess it's the fact that nothing ever happens that's getting to me. I'm sick of stagnating, frustrated by the lack of progress in my life. In any sphere of it.
My brother's out on bail, having been charged with attempted murder for a self-defense shooting. The shot guy has ten witnesses saying my brother attacked him without provocation. My brother has nobody to support his claim - which I believe - that he was hit over the head with a beer bottle prior to his shooting of the man. Attempted murder carries a life sentence. My brother is a white guy in a black country. Enough said.
I'm becoming increasingly schizophrenic. I might be able to function normally in society if I didn't have the stresses of upcoming Cambridge and my brother's trial to deal with in addition to all the drama that comes with being me.
No time to type. Sigh. I'm outta here.

School blues

2005-12-07T19:22:00.000-04:00

Yes, I went to school with a broken rib and a torn muscle - definitely not the most brilliant thing I've ever done. And I sat in an auditorium full of shrieking girls and watched boys in baggy clothes and too much jewelry breakdance on stage. Christ, you'd swear the ninnies had never seen males before.
Okay, so it is a single-sex school and we have no male teachers. But for the love of God, there's a single-sex school - of the opposite sex, mind you - right next door.
Yet still...boys enter the compound and miraculously shirts start unbuttoning, skirts start hiking up and socks sink down into sneakers to expose bony ankles. Presbyterian schoolgirl uniforms suddenly being transformed into every guy's erotic fantasy at the faintest whiff of testosterone...no wonder they won't bring a man on staff.
We're isolated, shut away on a hill, trapped behind barbed-wire fences and iron gates. And teachers kick up a hell of a fuss if they catch you in the mall with a guy - on a Saturday, just sitting, talking, drinking coffee. I guess we're supposed to be lesbians, hmm? Far less if they catch you smoking (anywhere, even on a weekend): well, they'll call in your parents and offer to transfer you somewhere else if you don't want to abide by their rules.
Been there, done that. Thank God this shit is going to be over in June.
I cannot wait to get out of this place.

Wounds

2005-12-06T12:36:00.000-04:00

I broke a rib on Sunday, coughing. I didn't think it was possible, but then again, the weirdest things happen to me. I'm living proof that nothing is what it seems.
So yes, it is possible to crack a rib by coughing too hard.
Since then I've been in intense pain. And to add to that, I pulled/strained/tore a muscle in the upper left side of my back yesterday. Isn't it fucking beautiful? Aren't I just fucking amazing?
So now I'm high on codeine cough syrup to stop me from breaking any more bones and Tylenol to try to kill the pain of my current injuries. And the half-finished cup of peppermint tea that sits next to me here as I type with my left hand; my right hand is propping up my chin. My shirt lies discarded on the bed not far away, my back glistening with the muscle relaxant gel I have just awkwardly and painfully spread on it.
There is pain. Much pain. Great pain.
Inspiration always comes to me when I'm in agony. So the ideas flow into my aching brain in a swift-flowing river of muddled thought, and Adam awakens. I gaze into those deceptively sleepy-looking eyes and I know my pain is subordinate to my will to write.
What else can I do? I write.

Fuck you

2005-12-03T22:06:00.000-04:00

Fuck you, asshole. Doubly for telling me you heard I told everyone about us and how you're hearing stories about us from my personal friends. Fuck you triply for telling me I screwed everything up and now we can never be together.
Where the fuck do you get off judging me? What gives you the right to accuse me of "weaving a tangled web of betrayal"? You're the one doling out your phone number, the one who wants to fall into Kristi's enormous eyes. Who the hell died and made you ruler of all?
Fuck you, Avalon. I'm glad you'll never be in my life now.
Dipshit.

What I really want

2005-11-30T18:21:00.000-04:00

I've been doing some thinking. Introspecting, really. Thinking about what I want. What I really want, more than anything in this world.
Love. Ah, but let's define love.
I want to be made to feel beautiful - not for whatever thrills my body promises to offer, but for the eccentricities of my mind. For my obscure sense of humour, my extensive repertoire of facial expressions. Because you will never meet anyone quite like me. Because there is no one who does anything in the world quite like I do.
But I want you to love my body. Oh yes. With all its many flaws and faults. Because that is my life, etched into me in a way my voice can never reproduce. There are stories in my skin, in the curves of my body - (too many curves, I hear them whisper) - and in the resolute set of my jaw, the careless fall of windblown hair onto slightly hunched, scarred shoulders.
I want you to love me even though I am not and will never be heroin chic, will never be slender and achingly graceful like the blonde Hollywood girls. Tell me I'm beautiful even when I swear out loud in front of your family - (I'm not the kind of girl you take home to meet your parents) - or accidentally spill coffee on your favourite couch. Make me come alive in your arms even when I bitch and whine because my day has been shit. Take all my pain away with your sweetest kiss.
I have fantasies about sunsets and wine and black silk sheets, of candlelight and rose petals and the fading light turning your hair to burnished flame. I dream of my fingers drawn inexorably to satin skin upon which goosebumps rise at my touch, of long hair, full lips and a mind as razor keen and cynical as my own. Someone who understands, or at the very least accepts me for who - what - I am.
I want crazy love, something to make me weak in the knees. I want everything to remind me of you when you are not there. I want to sink my teeth into your beauty, to be enveloped in your warmth, your strength, to let your scent surround me in a haze until I am weak with desire and cannot breathe for needing you. I want...
Truth. The reality of who you are. No airs, no mockery. I want to see the bad with the good, the cruel with the gentle and every other side of you there is. I want...
The spider-touch of pale fingers on my skin in the cyanide half-light of the backseat of a car. Cold air tempered by the heat of your body above mine. Silence broken by gasps, words only half spoken, caught between a shuddering breath and a groan of desire. Fogged-up windows. Your skin against my skin, slick with sweat, something dark and sensual latching its claws around us and tightening its grip until we can never let go...
I want forever. I want more than meaningless words, more than material lust, more than intellectual camaraderie. I want all of you, whether you're willing to give it or not.
And this is why, I think, I'm destined to be alone.

Losing control

2005-11-29T20:03:00.000-04:00

It's quarter past twelve in the morning and I think I'm dying. I feel like shit warmed over, and it's a mystery to me how nobody else in my sphere of contact was sick before I passed on this disgusting virus. 'Tis the season to be coughing. Right.
Adam, seated calmly on the edge of my bed as though he has every right in the world to exist outside of my head, doesn't understand. "Why are you doing this?" His head tilts as he regards me with curiosity. I am a lifeform he cannot quite figure out. "Don't you want me to be happy?"
Happiness is relative. I want you to live, I want you to be complex instead of flat, I want a three-dimensional, infinitely complicated individual. And you, my friend, are shaping up to be everything I ever dreamed you would be.
"Yes," he says patiently, as though I am a child, "but deprivation is so clichéd. My troubled past, my childhood. It's all been done before."
I know. But not like this. Never like this. Never crafted with such delicacy, such exquisite care taken with every detail, every intricate niche of your life. Even I do not understand you. I don't think it's possible to really understand anyone, even yourself.
"And I don't understand you." He leans his chin on his hand, looking at me. "You're practically in love with me, I can see it in your eyes, written in every line of your face, yet you take such morbid pleasure in setting me up, watching me fall."
No, Adam. You can't blame me for this. You fill in the details. You mould and shape your character as much as I do. You were right the first time. We did this to each other.
He is off the bed now, crouching in front of me. He has what promise to be gorgeous shoulders, huge under the black shirt. His hands are on my knees, and my chest tightens unbearably. I cannot help but want him, and I think to myself, I've finally gone over the edge. I'm full-blown crazy.
"Let go," he whispers. His eyes could swallow me whole. "Let me write this one." His hands slide with excruciating slowness up my thighs. "Surrender to what you can't resist. Relinquish control, Ariana. Defeat, capitulation, yielding...it can be so beautiful."
Yes, you want power. And I have so little. I feel it slipping from my grasp, ephemeral, less real than the man on the ground before me. If it was ever real at all.
He kisses me, his mouth as hot and his tongue as skilled as I could dream, and I surrender. I give myself to him along with what control I have left. What else can I do?
"I'll show you," he whispers. Where are my clothes? I lie beneath him, long and pale, my hair falling across my face as my head turns. His weight on me is comforting, arousing. "Let me show you what it's like to be controlled and powerless."
And our roles are reversed. Now I am the one who speaks in italics.
Now he is the one with the voice.

Sick

2005-11-28T17:58:00.000-04:00

Eurgh...throat infection. I think I spread my germs to five people today. But hey, it's the season of giving and all that, right? And surely 'tis better to give than to receive?
I rest my case.
Am progessing with The Gordon Series. Episode III is taking longer than I thought it would, but what the fuck. As long as it gets done. As long as I don't run out of inspiration. Whatever the hell is inspiring me to do this.
Here's the list of suspects so far: Trey Dalton, Dominic Chandler, Cody Burton, Eric Furlong, Marco Lynch. For starters.
But it's not any of those. Adam's barking up the wrong tree. And from his seat in the corner of my room, he knows it. I can see it in the way he folds his arms, chews thoughtfully on his lip. The faint touch of humour in his eyes as he watches his inkblood self travel in circles.
this one's longer than the others
They're getting longer. The first was fourteen pages. The second sixteen. This third promises to hit twenty and still have the murderer not in custody. This one is serial, you see. This one is five girls, one after the other. Raped and then killed with electric guitar strings. I know, I'm morbid.
and you call me crazy
He's not crazy, though. So his father was an alcoholic. Not a bad parent in the classic sense of the word, not abusive. Just indifferent. Half the time I wonder whether he knew he had a son at all. And his mother a killer...married his stepfather - a sweet man, really, and they say he really loved her - and stabbed him so he bled to death on the kitchen floor. Adam was ten. She's in prison upstate, she'll be up for parole in a couple of years.
i don't want her out, he whispers, and it breaks my heart.
I'm sorry, Adam. I really am. But you know I don't write these stories. I close my eyes and summon the muse, and the words flow from my fingertips. Writing is second nature to me. If I cannot write I may as well die.
no happy ending
For you? Never. I love you too much to see you happy. Because you see, when one is happy one becomes constant. And without emotional upheaval, without change, there is no drama. Without drama, there is no interest.
a high price to pay for interest
I don't write your story, Adam. You did this to yourself.
"No," he says, claiming his voice, and I start bolt upright in my chair. He turns his head to look at me, and I know I am the reason his eyes are dark as if with secrets and his skin is pale as if with death. "We did it to each other."

Outing

2005-11-26T22:52:00.000-04:00

Yes...I have left the house.
The drive up the highway to my brother's place in Glencoe was long and rainy, but worth it. I spent several hours maneuvering and holding ladders while Cris put up cameras in an effort to protect himself and his family from the fuckers in this country who possess in firearms what they lack in morality.
I think his name is Kevin.
He is a late-twenties white dude - so rare in this country - shirtless, with long sun-bleached blond hair and a good body, walking his dog. He smiled once, carelessly.
It was lust at first sight.
But that's not what I want. I want impossibility - I want love. Blind, mad, inexplicable love with someone who's as insane as I am, who will at least try to understand my infinite quirks and eccentricities. Someone who will care enough to ask me what I want.
I want...
Deep emotion. The ultimate true love. Slow, measured strokes. Gentle touches. To be treated as though I am as fragile as glass.
But that's not enough.
Back against a wall. Rough hands on bare, smooth skin. Torn clothing. Harsh, fast. Bruises. Swollen lips. Carpet burns. Physical reminders of a good, unsentimental fuck. Anything goes.
What do I want?
One day I'll know. One day he'll show me.
Whoever he is.

Christmas is coming

2005-11-25T20:23:00.000-04:00

And I have spent my day putting up a Christmas tree. Left to my own devices, my Christmas would be spent observing other people's antics and activities, not celebrating it myself. But when one is trapped under the roof of one's mother's house...well, one is often forced to do things one does not want to do.
So I have unfolded plastic branches that raised allergic welts on my forearms and hands, and I am currently listening to Green Day on headphones while "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas" wafts through the house. Ah, the smell of religious fervour is in the air, tempered only by the stench of commercialization. What joy.
No white Christmas for me. No snow in this damned place. Just sun and sand and ignorance. And death. Black Christmas.
Listen. Listen to the man say racism is the cause of this country's problems. Listen to him preach tolerance and equality - empty, meaningless words. Watch the newspapers chart our progress on a downward spiral.
Yes. This is hell.

Another day

2005-11-25T10:33:00.000-04:00

The headline today reads: "Mom's throat slit; daughter, 11, finds body on porch." Makes you wonder what the hell's going on in the world, and the purpose we all serve. I firmly believe that the majority of the population of this godforsaken country consumes valuable resources and uses up oxygen all the while contributing nothing but death and destruction.
Some people are alive only because it is against the law to kill them.
My schizophrenia's acting up again. I know I'm out of touch with reality. There was never any doubt about that. But then there's this.
I know he's not really sitting on a chair across the table from me with his elbows on the table and those brown eyes fixed on me...intense, intelligent...I know he doesn't exist but in the confines of my head. But my head isn't so confining anymore. He's in my life now. In the air I breathe.
For God's sake, Adam -
you don't believe in God
- why don't you go away?
you want me here, you know it
You don't belong in this world. You don't exist here.
i'll give you everything
You can't.
i will

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the battle of realities. Stay tuned for the showdown between the last vestiges of my common sense and the irascible Adam Gordon as they fight for control of my brain. And please, do enjoy the show.

"Reality is relative. And this is yours."

This thing

2005-11-24T15:52:00.000-04:00

I hate this thing. This jealousy thing. This bitterness, this empty blinding hatred.
So he says he loves me. He says I'm everything he's ever wanted. He promises me heaven come June, he says he doesn't want to say goodbye to what we have - whatever it is that we apparently have. He tells me he wants children, he tells me to trust him.
Why should I trust him? Why should I believe anything he says when he says it to everyone else too? Why should I care when he and Kristi are meshing so nicely that he barely has time to look at me?
Tell me. Tell me why I give a shit. Tell me why I care about him, this egotistical bastard. This...thing.
They deserve each other. Kristi and her big head and her loud mouth and her arrogant, bossy attitude. And that thing. That Avalon thing who took my advice when I told him to cut his hair and who let me pick his wardrobe, who wore grey when I said to and black when I suggested it. That damnable creature who pulls his belt too tight and who has teeth to frighten children.
Fuck you. And your hair.

You could have been my heroin...before I heard this.

Skeptical

2005-11-23T15:42:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm sarcastic, I'm cynical and now I'm skeptical too.
So much for your sweet words and your empty promises. You said what you wanted and you meant nothing except to hurt me. As though my heart hasn't been broken enough times already. As though I'm not fractured enough as it is.
You're just like the rest. Beautiful lyrics, a lovely tune, but no substance. No fire.
You're not going to break me. I'll never let you buckle your collar around my neck. Because that's what your "love" is, isn't it? A collar and a chain. Restraints. A cage. I could never live like that.
So walk on. Just pick up the pieces of your pride and your shattered ego and walk away.
Me?
I turn my face to the wall. Away from you.
I will never love you.

"I love you. You're everything I ever wanted."
Lies.

Pictures!

2005-11-22T17:06:00.000-04:00

Right. Well, I'd say it's time for some pics to go up, aye? *clears throat*

I love dogs. They don't waste their time with the petty concerns of people; they're all about living life and having fun. It's my dream to one day own a black Lab like the one in the picture above. Sadly, she's not mine, but isn't she beautiful?

Vincent D'Onofrio, the basis for my character Adam Gordon. Pure sex. Irresistible. I want him for Christmas, d'you hear? Wrapped and with a neat little bow on top of his head. Thank you in advance.

My good friend Joel. Only a friend, but a good friend nonetheless. This is a shot from my cameraphone, which might account for the bad quality.

There's a nice blurry shot of me and Andrew McIntosh, who's a celebrity in these parts. He's the lead vocalist of local rock band Skid"Nevely - check out http://www.skidnevely.com for details. This was taken back in July of this year, and it was like ten o'clock in the night, so pardon the dim lighting. And yes, he does have a lip ring.

So there's me again, three years ago when I had longer hair and braces. Thank God, I no longer have silver orthodontic work gracing my smile, but my teeth are still by no means perfect. And by the way, the cross at my throat means nothing.
There's my life for you in a nutshell. Dogs, Vincent D'Onofrio and my friends. Not much of a life, but I adore it. I like who I am.

Adam dreams about kissing someone so hard his mouth hurts. He dreams about kissing someone so soft his heart hurts, so long his neck hurts, so deep his throat hurts. Adam dreams about kissing someone so...completely...that nothing hurts.

Poetic justice

2005-11-22T13:45:00.000-04:00

Isn't it saccharinely beautiful that when you type the word failure into Google, the first page you see is a biography of George W. Bush? Same thing for miserable failure. Forget Google-bombing - that is justice. Sweet, poetic justice. And I care not what other people say, the man deserves to burn in hell. Nuff said.
The stories of lost youth around me...tales of sex in dirty bathrooms, lost virginity in the backseats of cars, coke inhaled through a crisp hundred-dollar bill. And yet I remain pristine while surrounded by this filth.
Or do I?
No bathroom sex for me, no backseat sex, no drugs. My vices are coffee and cigarettes, and the occasional drink of Scotch or rum. My vices are too much reading and even more writing. My overactive imagination that means that my characters come alive for me. I could reach across this table and touch Adam's face if I wasn't so afraid he'd disappear.
Enough crazy talk. No more hallucinations, Ari. You can do this.

"You want me to fall in line? Sorry, I've never learned to follow. I'll make my own way, and I don't care if you say it's the wrong way. I'm not damned because you believe I am. Fuck you and the God who leads you."

Pain...

2005-11-20T22:43:00.000-04:00

My period came today in a whirling kaleidoscope of bright fluorescent lights and pretty colours and proceeded to take hold of my intestines and tie them in a knot. It sank its teeth into my womb and played cricket with my ovaries, all the while refusing to bleed more than the faintest drop. It's times like these I wish I'd gotten that sex change I occasionally think about.
"Go away!" I scream uselessly, unable to find a position that will allow me the vaguest hint of relief from the blinding agony of this curse, and the damned thing has the audacity to laugh.
Yes, it's definitely times like these.

"One of us has been found not strong enough..."

Wasting my time

2005-11-17T21:53:00.000-04:00

No, I'm not wasting my time. I'm writing something that carries the working title The Gordon Series. Granted, it consists of two completed stories of an episodic nature, and I've only now begun work on the third, but hey. I'm being optimistic and calling it a series.
The first story kicks off with the body of a drug addict being found and descends into the darkest and most twisted depths of human perversion. We are chaperoned on our journey by the enigmatic and infinitely knowledgeable Detective Adam Gordon, a six-foot-four giant with a soft, hypnotizing voice and a knack for getting confessions out of suspects, and his erstwhile partner Detective Hannah Johnson. Other characters along for the ride include the spaced-out and foggy Trent McAllister, the latest victim Ashley White and certain sundry villains whom I'll refrain from naming lest I spoil the plot.
The second episode begins with Gordon and Johnson taking on a cold case and tackling the mystery surrounding the deaths of three four-year-old boys ten years ago. During the eight months between the end of the first story and the start of this one, Gordon and Ashley White have become romantically entangled to the extent that she is now pregnant. There is much sleuthing being done and the killer is duly caught, but woven into this is the plotline involving Gordon's proposal to Ashley, who accepts. *sings* Love is in the air...
The third story entails rape and murder and is sufficiently bloody to warrant a fair feeling of ickiness. But more must not be divulged, for the masterpiece is not finished.
Fare thee well. I return to writing.

"Congratulations, Mr. Gordon. You have a beautiful baby boy. Have you thought of a name yet?"
"Vincent. Vincent Elias Gordon."

I miss you...

2005-11-12T05:44:00.000-04:00

To see you when I wake up is a gift I didn't think could be real. To know that you feel the same as I do is a threefold utopian dream. You do something to me that I can't explain. So would I be out of line if I said I miss you?
I see your picture, I smell your skin on the empty pillow next to mine. You have only been gone ten days but already I'm wasting away. I know I'll see you again, whether far or soon, but I need you to know that I care...and I miss you. - Incubus, "I Miss You".
Time to be honest. Time to stand up and say what should have been said several weeks ago. Time to confess...
I'm attracted to Avalon. It is not love, which is good. But it appears to be a chronic condition that so far does not seem to have a cure. This, dear friends, is bad.
However, I think I know what could possibly salvage my sanity and reverse this horrible, horrible disease before it becomes debilitating and entirely incurable. *lowers voice to a whisper* If I screw him, I think it'll go away.
*in normal voice* Never. Gonna. Happen.

Life is not a journey to the grave with the preferred end result being to arrive neatly in a prettily preserved body, but instead to skid in haphazardly amidst flying gravel and shards of broken glass, thoroughly burnt out and utterly exhausted, saying breathlessly, “Fuck me, that rocked!”

Poem

2005-10-30T21:16:00.000-04:00

I stand on the steps with my heart in my hand
And this is not turning out how I had planned.
I never expected this friendship to change,
To metamorphose into something so strange.
I didn't think I'd love you this way,
I never thought you'd turn my night into day.
I didn't believe that this would feel so right,
I hadn't planned on this flame burning so bright;
Never dreamed that your touch would ignite such a fire
Or that you'd be my one and only desire.
I never thought I would experience such bliss
Brought forth by the simplest hug or kiss.
I never expected this passion to cool,
Never thought you would play me for a fool,
I didn't dream it was over, that he was the one,
Didn't think that you'd leave me and take our son.
Never dreamed I'd be standing here listening to
Your dulcet moans as he makes love to you.
I couldn't believe it - you were my life.
Why is it now that you are his wife?
You used to be pure, you used to be mine.
I see shadows on the wall of you two intertwined.
I can't believe that our relationship is done,
And I don't know why, but I'm loading this gun.
I slam the door open, I see I surprise you.
Did you expect that I wouldn't despise you?
You hurt me, you bitch - now I have no choice.
I hear you tell me to lower my voice,
But the first gunshot rings and you stumble back,
Your eyes open wider, your jaw has gone slack.
You whisper my name and you see the blood,
It drips to the carpet, then becomes a flood.
He's screaming aloud now, he's crying with fear.
He wants badly to kill me but he doesn't dare.
He takes you in his arms but you're already dead,
Now I turn to him and I blow off his head.
I hear violent crying from the room next to this,
I go to our son and I give him a kiss.
I vaguely understand that what I've done is wrong
But I have to go now, I've lingered too long.
I head for the door, knocking over some chairs,
I trip and catch myself and run down the stairs.
A siren whines in the distance, my blood runs cold.
I'll be sentenced to life and never paroled.
I reload the gun with a fresh magazine,
Press the muzzle to my head; I feel so serene.
The siren is screeching, I hear running feet,
But my thoughts are of you, how you made me complete,
How peaceful you looked the moment you died;
In that instant you again were my beautiful bride.
I close my eyes now as the police tell me to freeze;
One more shot, officer, and I swear that I'll cease.
I pull the trigger and I feel no pain,
But the bullet makes such a sound as it tears through my brain.
My body falls sideways, I slump to the ground.
The police and the onlookers gather around.
I didn't mean to hurt you, or him for that matter,
To blow off his head, or your breastbone to shatter.
I know that I cannot undo this whole night,
I know that I've never done anything right.
I just hope you'll forgive me, and him as well
Because the demons are coming to drag me to hell.
Know that I love you, but after all,
No man can resist that instinctive call.
The desire to kill lives in every heart,
To rip, to rend, to tear part from part.
Violence is natural, and cannot be denied;
I tried to, my love; believe me, I tried.
So unload the bullets and be sure to sheath your knife;
You never know when you may feel like taking a life.
Whatever you do, don't end up like me -
Surrounded by fire and brimstone for all eternity.

Damnant quod non intelligent

2005-10-28T00:48:00.000-04:00

The name of this post, by the way, means, "They condemn what they do not understand."
Here I am, wrapped up in summarizing Caribbean history essays on the black middle class in 19th century Jamaica...and on the other hand, writing a comic tale about Rome. Well, it's not meant to be comic, but it is anyway because I'm writing in old English - "On the contrary, sire, what would put another man past all redemption is becoming in thee, for thou art Caesar, and in my eyes all others pale in comparison." - and simply because of the very essence of the story: it's a romance. A romance between Gaius Julius Caesar (he of the infamous, "Et tu, Brute?") and a slave.
Before you ask, no, it's not a Mary-Sue.
Her name is Callisto, born to a Greek general father and an Egyptian aristocratic mother. With this high birth behind her, then, how did she become a slave? Well, she grew up in Gaul, which Caesar managed to conquer. His men raided their villages, rounded up the younger population and brought them back as slaves. Caesar chose Callisto to serve him and sold the rest to the slave traders who had accompanied them on the journey to Gaul - after, of course, his battle-frenzied men had pleasured themselves with the women and boys. Yes, boys. Don't watch me so.
It's not a romance in the truest sense of the word. Callisto is not in love with Caesar. She holds him in high esteem as he is a great man and a great leader, and, of course, power is extremely attractive. And Caesar wields more power than any other single individual in the known world, so obviously she is more than willing to be used as an outlet for his sexual frustrations.
Caesar is also not in love with Callisto. She is beautiful and more cultured than any slave has a right to be; having been raised as a member of the upper Gaulish class, she was taught the arts of music, dancing and pleasant conversation, and is more learned than most women of the time. She does not, interestingly enough, have the slender, sylph-like form considered fashionable at the time, but this does not prevent her from being savagely, irresistibly beautiful.
Yet he is not in love with her. This Caesar as described by me is electrified by a primordial need for dominance and has very little room for human emotion. He can be witty, charming, warm or caring at will - these qualities in him are always performances, produced as needed and rarely if ever prompted by genuine feeling. He is amused by Callisto and admires her unusual ways, and he converses with her freely about the affairs of his masculine, military world, yet this is not love. And when he sleeps with her, the joining of their two bodies into one complete whole - that is not love either. Sex does not create a bond between people in the Roman world; it is merely an act that must inevitably occasionally occur.
Enter into the fray one of Caesar's legionnaires, a man named Titus Rufus, and a centurion called Lucius Lepidus. These two show Callisto varying degrees of kindness as they become more and more involved both with Caesar and with her. Rufus is a man of great and uncommon courage but with the morality of a pirate. He is an impulsive, generous and congenial fellow, possessing huge appetites and wild passions. Lepidus on the other hand is the essence of a professional Roman soldier, honourable and severe, though pitiless and unforgiving when crossed. He is not unnecessarily cruel, and will show kindness where it is needed.
How shall this turn out? Only time will tell. And in honour of this story, a Latin quote.

In vino veritas - In wine there is truth.

In love...

2005-10-21T16:00:00.000-04:00

My God. I've really gone and done it this time. I'm in love. *swoons*
With Jessica Alba.
Okay, didn't mean to shock anyone, but wow. How is it possible for one person to be that hot? Go see Into The Blue. I haven't seen it, but her and Paul Walker...I mean, I'd look at that screen and be unsure of who I want to fuck. Seriously.
That's all I really posted to say, lol. Bit pointless, eh?
Ah well.

Warning: decaffeinated writer.

No sólo de pan vive el hombre y no de excusas vivo yo...

2005-10-19T00:07:00.000-04:00

Oh Lord. Why can't Avi just bring the freaking American book for me? Why must there be all this melodrama, all this accosting in the hallways and covert looks back and forth in the cafe? And now, most unsurprisingly, rumours are abounding that we're together - or, at the very least, that I like him. Oh, I have such a bad reputation with teachers now.
Dammit.
My God, I've just noticed how casually I type "Avi" rather than Avalon. And that I think of him as Avi rather than Mr. Ali. Christ. Anyway, I don't like him. Or so I tell myself. We'll see how that goes.
And today is Varune's birthday, he's twenty-eight...and this was me lying on my bed not very long ago in an emotional mess, trying not to remember the last two years...the last two years that have been so, well, memorable. I'll never forget him. Years can pass, eras can come and go and kingdoms rise and fall, but I'll never forget him. Never stop loving him. It's quite pathetic, actually.
I seriously hope stupidity isn't genetic - I'll curse my children.
I'm stuck on Nickelback's song Photograph. And it fits. There are pictures of him in my photo album just as there are in my memory, and yes, I look at them. I don't want to forget. Maybe it's a foolish impulse - to remember the beauty and the pain - but it's how I feel nonetheless. That's life for you anyway; sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's beautiful, but more often than not it's both. So if you want the beauty, you've got to learn to handle the pain as well.
And on that note of wisdom, I'm off.

“You know what I figure about hell? I figure that hell’s going to be filled with a lot of like-minded people and the odds of actual punishment rather than a party going on 24/7 are pretty bad.”

Exhausted

2005-10-18T02:54:00.000-04:00

Too fucking tired to type much today, just finished three Caribbean history essays on the development of middle classes and health services and that sort of shit. Jesus Christ, I can't believe how much I hate my subjects now. And I used to love them. What happened?
Oh yeah, I remember...my teachers happened. Jattansingh happened to literature, Jattansingh who says eppytome instead of epitome and shitsophrenia instead of schizophrenia, who defines the phrase "without cultivation, without refinement" as "uncultivated and unrefined"...and Mohess happened to American history, Mohess and her mountings instead of mountains and Tuscany instead of Tuskegee and her way of not believing you did the research when you say you left it home - and you actually did leave it home...
And Dinnoo and Caribbean history, mother of God...five essays due next week, twenty marks each going up for end of term when your ass already has two geo essays, an American history essay and a lit essay due around the same time...Dinnoo and her biases and her undying love for Bill Clinton and talking American politics and current events just as I actually begin to comprehend the nonsense she spouts about sugar duties and metayage...
Ramcharansingh I can live with. Poor thing, she has our class to deal with. It's not her fault half of us are asleep and the other half don't notice she's talking. But I pay attention. I'm a nice child. Well, sometimes.
Friest. My hand feels like it's going to fall off. And I honestly think it will. Yes, I'm fucking exhausted. I'm not coping very well with this lovely part of life called A's...no, not coping well at all...
Right. So I'm going to bathe and then try to get some sleep. Emphasis on the 'try'.
Peace out.

A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

Quiz results

2005-10-16T16:33:00.000-04:00

You are an Elementalist. Your magic stems from the
forces of nature. You might be a forest
nuturing Druid, a storm-creating Weather-Wizard
or any of the many Elementals, but one thing is
sure-- your bond with nature is strong. You can
rely heavily on nature to support yourself
aesthetically or physically for it lends you
both comfort and strength. Your instincts
rarely fail you. You are vibrantly passionate
but are sometimes carried away by your own
emotions.

Which Magical Order Are You In?
brought to you by

Emotional

2005-10-16T10:56:00.000-04:00

So sometime last month I finished a story called To Never Leave You. Now I'm making headway with the sequel, If Love Could Save. When I'm finished that, I'll probably write a prequel to the first one, but that's open for debate still. It's not as though I've been contracted to do it.
If Love Could Save is where the emotional bit comes in. I don't write in chronological order, so without having much of the plot in place for the middle of the story, I'm working on the part where they have the epiphany about the draconium and realize Nyx is irradiating herself from the inside out and there's no way to stop it. And as though that's not hard enough, I'm simultaneously working on the piece where she's been brought back to life and sees Beckett again for the first time. That part is good emotion, but it's also mixed with bad emotion from the draconium thing. *sighs*
I should really, really start doing this thing in chronological order.

"Radiation poisoning? I've died from that, that's...oh man."

A prejudice rant...

2005-10-16T02:58:00.000-04:00

All right, so I'm a bitch. I'm cruel, I'm brutal, I hurt people. I'm a sinner. I have a thousand faults and possess few if any virtues. But one thing I am not is prejudiced. One thing I will never be is prejudiced.
People are the same - black, white, red, green or any other colour from the universal crayon box that you would like to choose. Brothers and sisters under the skin. I believe that.
I am the girl kicked out of her home because I told my mother I am a lesbian. I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room. I am one of the lucky ones; I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year the doctors say I may be able to walk again. I am the father who never hugged his son because affection between men is not acceptable. I am the people who both church and society have turned their backs on with equal disdain.
I am lesbian. I am gay. I am black. I have AIDS. I am an atheist. I am an alcoholic. I am pieces of everyone, I am part of this world just as he is and she is and you are. I am the God that instantly forsakes you when you tell the world who you really are. I am the family that breaks down when the truth comes out. I am the boy who hides everything inside and who resorts to the razor to take away his pain. I am the girl who starves herself so she can be beautiful.
I am a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. I have every right to be here.
And you have no right to tell me what to do.

Every so often I drop a stone into the well of human ignorance. I have yet to hear one hit bottom.

Memories

2005-10-15T15:26:00.000-04:00

Life is a funny thing, you know. There are some days when the sun slants through the window and falls on your face, searing your eyes through the lids, and you want more than anything in the world to rip it out of the sky and throw it into a black hole so that it never finds its way out. But then the next day it seems like the most beautiful thing you've ever seen.
How things change. Life has a funny way of making things blow up spectacularly in your face in a dazzling explosion that leaves spots dancing behind your eyelids in a mockery of Russian ballet...and then moments later it can help you out in ways you'd never imagined.
So out of sheer idleness today, I typed a URL I hadn't thought of in months into my browser and hit enter. And I remembered all over again with crystal clarity why I used to like this boy.
Well, he's not a boy anymore. He's all grown up now, and ain't it just the darnest thing? I wonder if he still looks the same, if he still sings songs from Phantom of The Opera, if he still employs an Oxfordian accent in those dulcet tones of his. Wonder if he remembers my existence at all. Wonder why I care.
His writing is breathtaking. That I can never forget. Elegant turns of phrase, crisp expressions that communicate their meaning easily - and, shockingly, he's also learned to spell, guess med school must do that to you - all steal my breath and blow my mind in precisely the same way they always have. His poetry, his prose - everything perfect.
You may never read this, but you know who you are. And if there was ever any doubt, let me erase it: I still care about you. I still think about you. I'll never forget you. Every time I hear anything even remotely Andrew Lloyd Webber, every time I hear an English accent, every time I say something I know you would have taken entirely the wrong way - I remember.
I like what we had. And I know you're far away now, and I know you have your own life - a life I am no longer part of. But yet still I find it within myself to tell you that I'm sorry, once again, for everything I said and did that I shouldn't have. I'm not that person anymore. I'm better than she was.
Don't forget me. That's all I ask.

Everything loved can be lost.

Breathe

2005-10-14T05:19:00.000-04:00

Two a.m. and she calls me 'cause I'm still awake - "Can you help me unravel my latest mistake? I don't love him. Winter just wasn't my season."
*sighs*...
No, I don't love him. Don't even come close to liking him. But whatever. Rahil's in the past. And the past is dead. The past is the ashes of the present, and today is the tomorrow I worried about yesterday. Ah well.
Cigarette count is two for last night, one right after the other. Got lightheaded, actually had to hold on to the bars of the wrought-iron so I wouldn't fall. Kinda fun. I think it took like five minutes to go through each cigarette. I know one's supposed to last half an hour...that's kinda eerie...
Life could be worse, I guess. Had a partially freaky dream last night and remembered it when I woke up but of course my memory has since made it foggier and foggier and more and more corrupt. So now I'm not sure whether it actually had a purple rhinoceros or whether that's just my imagination filling in the blank spaces in my cottage-cheese memory. That tends to happen a lot...sucks, really, but hey - at least I haven't inserted a gigantic cat and some pyramids...my dreams have been rather Egyptian in theme and alarmingly long in scope as of late...
My song of the moment, as should be obvious, is Breathe. Which is what I'm trying to do, more or less. Cradle my head in my hands and breathe. And try to force myself to remember that this world is fucked up enough without me having to add any more complications.
I don't care what you think. Any of you. I am who I am and I don't see why it should affect you. So what if society thinks I'm a rebel or a goth or a whore or a lesbian? I could be all four or none and it'd still be none of your business. Why should your opinion matter to me? Why should you tell me how to run my life? I don't have long enough on this earth to waste time with conformity and rules. I'll damn well make my own.
And on that note, I think I'll be off. But wait...a quote...

“Nyx’s MRI-generated hemispheric surface display shows evidence of aphasia caused by corticobasal degeneration.”
“I dare you to say that again.”

Welcome to my world...

2005-10-12T20:30:00.000-04:00

Well, since this is the first post, I suppose it should be about me. Too bad there isn't really much to say.
I'm female and seventeen, the creative and depressed type who prefers to dress in all black and sneakers and who would die rather than wear pink, high heels or makeup. Of course, this world being ruled by the evil beings known as Pu's - Parental Units - I've been forced to do such unspeakable things several times. But it won't happen again. I swear.
I'm kind of scruffy, I guess. I bathe and everything but I don't like brush my hair or make my bed or any of those pointless things. Left to me I'd just go ras and done. But the Pu's disagree. Second point of conflict.
I like animals. I've got three dogs. I listen to rock and write poetry.
This poem was written a few days ago for Varune, who will turn twenty-eight this month, bless his heart. I hope you're happy, my friend, and I hope you will always be happy no matter where you go.

TWENTY-EIGHT
You are not beautiful.
It is a truth accepted by all in your acquaintance,
Including yourself.
You have no silken hair of gold or eyes of the bluest sky
Or skin that is satin to the touch
And you do not speak in measured, dulcet tones.

You, my friend, are far removed from beauty.

You are rough hands and dark skin,
A scarred face and an obscure sense of humour.
You are a lopsided grin and tucked-in shirts,
And the scent of cologne that follows where you walk.
You move from incomprehensibility to ultimate truth
Without ever distinguishing between the two.

And indeed, you have a beauty all your own.

You may not possess conventional attributes –
Money, power, astonishing good looks –
Yet thoughtlessly you drew me to you,
Captivating me so I can never escape.
Now I brood daily on your perfection,
Your imperfections.
I love them all equally.

I am trapped in your web, bound within your spell,
And I may never escape these chains that hold me,
And the part of me that whispers your name in the night
Is content to be held captive.
Yet at the same time I yearn to be free of your ghost,
The vision of you which haunts my dreams
With fleeting touches and stolen kisses,
Imagined issues of your world
I can never share.

For love is worth nothing
When it is not returned.

Twenty-eight years into your life
I kneel before you and swear to love you
As long as we both shall live
In a mockery of a vow we both shall never make,
Not to each other.
How sweetly you smile for her,
How raptly you listen to her pronouncements,
Though they be not as wise as my own.
Wisdom is but a source of sorrow.

I look into your eyes and drown,
And as I deny Mnemosyne my memories
I know I have found the place I must be.
Yes, I am content to die for you though you request it not,
I am in bliss to watch you walk,
Absorb like gospel the words which tumble hurriedly from your lips
And love the things you love
Simply because you love them.
And I willingly drown my heart
In the swift river of this love,
A love that can never age, nor die, nor corrupt,
But which instead becomes more beautiful as the years wear on.

Beauty is, after all, in the eye of the beholder.