chapter ten.

how do you do. indeed, *how* do you do? huh. strange.

the boyfriend brought indian food home after work last night. forget anything i've said about nausea instead of hunger, when my nose smells indian food, i go into greed mode. i could eat buckets full of butter chicken sauce. it is rather of a mystery to me why they would indeed put chicken in the butter chicken - doesn't that take space away from the yummy, yummy sauce? i was in such a mood that i invented a wonderful song: nan is nan, na na na na na. in which of course i replaced all the na's by "nan". it wasn't very rich perhaps (the sauce was), but i don't give a shit. yummy onion badjees. and that little sauce that isn't quite tzatziki but almost. and the radioactive carrots from hell. it was a feast on the floor, a grandiose orgy of yumminess.

after that i had weird dreams, obviously. but for some reason, i had a few classroom dreams. me telling a teacher off and slamming the door on my way out and i was going straight to the principal's office to tell my version (because i'd been offended in some way...) and as i was getting ready to do so, other students came out in the hallway and gave me their support, and then we were all going to the principal's office but we had wasted a few seconds and the jackass teacher had passed behind us and was already at the principal's office, probably feeding him lies about the "true" story. perhaps you can tell that i have trouble trusting schools and teachers too. the weirdest thing in that dream is that i actually thought the principal would help, or at least take my side. that's not quite how i remember my life going way back when principals were something to worry about, or at least were some element in my life and reality.

i'm back home now. the boyfriend and i walked here last night after the feast. it was a nice evening, not quite cold but not warm either, and there was that clean pure smell that announces winter to me, and a nice roundish moon that made me sing that i was followed by a moon shadow, even though that is quite impossible in the city - unless the street lights all go bye bye. a nice thought.

i don't like sleeping elsewhere than my own apartment. well, for one night, sure, but not much longer. i am not sure why this is of any significance to me: i don't have pets, and the few plants i manage to keep are used to being ignored, and if they weren't able to survive for a few days (weeks...) by themselves, they would already have met their doom.

i live by myself. well, i don't count the occasional mouse in the walls or curious squirrel walking in from the side window. and i don't count bugs and spiders. or objects. so i live alone, what people mean when they say they live alone. and i've been enjoying it. up to a few years ago i had roommates. a few men, friends or boyfriend, and one girl, who led me to say "never again". the bitch - alledgedly my friend at the time - left the place just before christmas, leaving me to find a roommate right in the middle of the holidays - yeah, that's going to happen. she was a screwed up sad little puppy, surviving on cigarettes, coffee and popcorn, lest she lose her trim figure. poor thing doesn't know that her skin is wrinkling and aging like crazy. mind you that should be the least of her concerns, with her lying stab-ya-in-the-back for a good lay attitude. even though she fakes liking sex, and even though she's had way (way) more than her share of std's. okay, so i'm visibly still upset about this whole ordeal. visibly. even years after, i can hardly think of that bitch without launching into a mega-rant that nobody really cares about since, obviously, she's only part of my past. she is the reason, though, that i don't keep or want girlfriends. fuck them. i don't even think i could be a lesbian anymore, and that was a fun time i had for a while. that's how badly the bitch screwed me, and how much it notched my trust in women. pretty much, if you're a woman and i met you before that episode, we're still okay, but if i met you during or after, we have no chance of ever becoming more than nod-in-the-hallway acquaintances. if you want to send her a bag full of dog shit to thank her, i'll gladly give her address. or even that of her idiotically blind parents, who keep throwing money her way, as if money could fix a lifetime of screwing up and hypocrisy. as you can tell, she's on my shit list. quite. i won't do anything active to get her in deeper shit than her birdbrain will land her in, but if i can extend a foot to trip her at any point along the way, i will. so it's perhaps the first smart thing she's ever done, not to be in my path at any point since that debacle. bitch.

anyway, the bitch's departure meant to me that i would never again live with a woman. and looking back, i could tell i had been foolish: living with my mother, living with my sister or with both, none of these situations were good ideas or led to great results. men at least i could handle - i get their "logic" - yeah i use quotation marks, because a man's logic is usually rather far from what i call logic, but still, i can function with men. and usually if they have a problem, they tell you, or they make you know it: they don't run off and leave a stupid coward note telling you not to contact them ever again, and then when you want the rent paid to you, start screaming that you're harassing them, stalking them, because you called three times over the course of a week. men have more sense than birdbrain bitches. most men anyway. so i put an ad in the paper and i made a mental note that all responding women were automatically rejected (sorry ladies, but you probably wouldn't want to live with me either).

i really didn't enjoy the "selection" process. actually i enjoyed nothing about this. i hated the idea to have to share my space with anyone. but at the time it was a choice between a roommate and another apartment and moving is something i have raised to a phobia, and it was out of the question. a few people came to visit the place - basically i was renting one room, the room that is now my nondescript lounge/second living room/meditation space/guest bedroom, and the rest was all furnished. they called, they made an appointment and they came, and i hated them right away, each and every one of them. except, of course, the last one, because there had to be a last one if i wasn't going to move. he turned out to be my roommate, but he also turned out to be a sociology experiment, of you'll believe it.

perhaps i should have known better, given the huge mind gap between my sister and i, but i thought, at the time, that generations were defined as thirty years. yeah. maybe so at the time the book i looked that up into was printed, but no more. now, as i found out, generations can last as little as three or four years, and people on either side of the divide will not be able to communicate properly. perhaps that's why he raised none of my warning bells, because i had no filter to decipher his signals and they didn't register on any scale of mine. he was something entirely new.

my roommate was in his very very early twenties. i thought i could relate, y'know? well i can't. he was nice and all - nothing to say about his personality, to the contrary, he was smart and he did what he had to do. and to live with me, man, you have to know what you're getting into. well, i was probably a lot smoother and easier to live with back then. it was before my shit hit many many fans. and after some other shit his some other fans. i was in my mid shit period, you might say. my brown period (and as we all know, brown is the color of poo). no, it was other stuff, way to live life, that i found flabbergasting in his way to behave. i thought i'd been raised with computers and that was that. well i didn't have the teenage years with internet that he did, so i didn't meet all my friends in chat rooms, and i didn't make dates online either. now i realize how out of date i am, with my memories of a texas instrument 64k, of atari 2600 games, with my very clear idea of how life was, before microwave ovens were in every kitchen, before vhs and cds were the norm (so imagine dvds). no, i discovered with him that i'm totally cut off from "youth", and that calling somebody young who is thirty-five is beyond ridiculous, because no one who is thirty-five and in their right mind could relate to those people now becoming adults (whatever that means - i often ponder upon that word, because i very rarely feel adult myself... but given that i have no mother or father figure to take care of all the shit i wish i didn't have to, i guess i am in every relevant sense, an adult. every sense relevant to those outside me - because in me i'm a young bird with a strong will to put her head in the sand every so often.

but it wasn't even the technological stuff that set him - and all his friends i met (boy did he have lots of friends... like a normal person i guess... it's just that my network hasn't been that populous or tight in years uncounted... no actually, it never was, but i imagine that it is for a lot of teens and post-teens. and good for them. there was a time when i would have given everything to appear to be that popular. or even a little.) apart from me and my life. it was little things. like a warped (from my point of view) perception of sex. see, i didn't understand (and still don't) how someone can be into couples exchanges and orgies of various kind (eh, to each their own - i'd never judge that!), yet consider that a woman menstruating should not have sex. well, mind you maybe it was only the guys who wouldn't have sex with a menstruating girl (i wrote woman just now, but that was inaccurate: becoming a man or a woman is something more than being an adult - and for a woman, that can take years. for a man too, i guess, but they tend not to ask the question from within, and take the name automatically when it comes from without). that baffled me and still does. see, to me the very definition of a man, a real man, is one who will perform oral sex on a menstruating woman. but at the very least the sex part - by which he probably meant penetration mostly - shouldn't be a problem! i mean a whole week a month without sex? that is ridiculous beyond words. for me. for me, of course.

there was other stuff, related. the focus on appearance. even young, i never had that ego thing, that pride and illusion that appearances matter. which of course they do, more than i'm willing to submit to, and that has caused some of my share of problems. but we're talking about guys who shave their chests here. and their armpits. and their genitals. bravo. that is so far beyond anything i can understand (i don't even shave! nowhere!) that i'm having trouble finding words to discuss it. gross would be one. but i assume and understand that those boys are not quite doing it to attract me, but rather nymphettes who trim and shave and wax and pluck a whole lot more than they do. still, i can't imagine chest regrowth feeling good against my breasts. disgusting. other stuff, like never leaving the house without looking like a japanese animation character, with every hair and fabric just so. i'm from microserfs, and they were straight out of shampoo planet. and if that reference escapes you, pick up a few of douglas coupland's books and find out, because i can't explain it better. it was just a cultural shock, with someone of my geographical background, but a few years and a universe of distance.

it felt like my so-called wisdom - not mine per se, but that which is assumed globally to be attained with years of life - was useless there. those kids didn't play by any of my rules. they had unwritten ones, a whole slew of them, about which stores sell cool clothes and which should be avoided, about how to spend all your money quickly and in clothes, accessories and games, if not suped-up cars, about how everyone should admire them for their style. but really, a twenty year old always thinks he has style. and they oh so think they have all the answers. that's what will never change i guess. and it's a form of comfort, to know that even though i have no idea what they are about, they are in a way like i was: clueless, but ready to defend their so-called and self-proclaimed depth to the extreme. and if there is one time that allows for that particular kind of stupidity, when most people will simply excuse it with a shrug and a smile, it is youth. so good for them.

i just said i have no idea what they were about. that is a lie, but it is also where i meet my empathy limits. because the truth is, i was unable not to judge them. perhaps every generation has that problem with the next? it sure would explain a lot. it's not that i think my way is better - i don't! for one thing my way is my way and i actually know of nobody else who lives my life (if there are, i wouldn't know: they wouldn't want to know me any more than i know them), but it just seemed to me like a whole lot of empty. worse than generations before me and worse than mine. everything on the surface, everything to look hot, to get laid. working on a relationship is ridiculous, talking about politics uninteresting, reading almost a sin, and being simply honest and available and vulnerable is simply a weakness that should be picked on. hard. but then again what do i know, an outside observer spying down on ants, not knowing that the ants are also conducting their own experiences on the onlooker. i don't know. they all seemed peculiar to me, and me to them, and that doesn't change how the world goes.

anyway, eventually he moved on, as they say, and he moved out. that was after and during some of my shit. if i must dot my i's, he left during my hospitalization in which the clowns appeared. and as it turned out, i was happy to reclaim my space as my own and to be here by myself, and to cleanse his room from all signs of a youth that frightens me just as teens have always frightened me. turns out young adults do to, is all.

when i got in last night i put the phone back on the hook but i unplugged it. after i had deleted all the messages on my voice mail. there were five. i assume they were all from my sister, but i still refuse to deal with that and with her, and fuck the shrinks who'd say i should, simply, deal with it. because says who? who gets to decide what i do and when? me. and only me. my sister would say i'm acting like a child. i'd say she should too, because she'd see that children have it all figured out sometimes, and that if we didn't interfere to make them fit into a mold, they'd end up a lot happier. sure it'd be chaos, but chaos is natural and if lived peacefully it can work. well for now, it works for me. everything in its own time. i also unplugged the doorbell. and i'm now locking the second lock, because i never believed that she lost the key i lent her. it's too like her to just keep it "in case". in case what? in case i kill myself in here and the neighbors start smelling my rotting carcass? perhaps. but given my neighbors, i'd rather they had to smell me as long as possible. it's not like my body needs preservation for embalming - no thank you! but in any case i'm far from suicidal, and she is insane. or we both are. doesn't matter. same difference.