chapter fifteen.

sometimes i feel like buying stuff all day. it doesn't matter what, as long as it answers to a need or a wish or a whim of mine and makes me happy for a few seconds. i just wish i could hire someone to return all the crap the next day though, when i feel like an idiot for overspending for crap i never needed. i assume some people can just consume, day in, day out, and not get the guilt and disgust i get. i assume that's how our world turns round right now. i guess i should be happy to have that capacity for guilt - it keeps me from being a rotten consumer who is part of the problem not the solution (or whatever else your leftist cousin would say). but it prevents me from getting the irrational bliss of the shopper. that tiny moment when everything is better, more beautiful, shinier, just because you spent fifty buck on the cutest t-shirt or the classiest bra. and if you can shop all day, you can extend the moment and carrying all your big and tiny and paper and plastic bags over your arms, you can feel like a magical princess whose every wish comes true instantly. when that happens, i avoid shopping for shoes, because i usually end up depressed and upset and tired and i rant to myself about all the stupid manufacturers and the so-called trend-setters and i can ruin a good day of spending in three shoe store visits.

i haven't been on a binge of that sort in years now. but i get my fix nonetheless. sometimes i raid a dollar store and i end up happy for a few hours with only a few items and a few bucks spent. it's stupid, and i don't know why spending brings happiness, but i know it can often give me a boost when i have enough energy to decide i'm getting dressed and going out for it. the boyfriend just rolls his eyes at me when that happens. i don't care. i'm not spending his money, and even if i was, it wouldn't be much of it, so why not.

i guess i'm in limbo right now and that's why i feel like i'm going in circles. i'm not quite in hell and not quite anywhere else. i'm floating and floatingly talking about my floating (all this talk of floating has made me think of root beer, which is gross and now i'm grossed out - none of that stinkin' root beer!). there's good stuff going on - things are going well with the boyfriend, meaning we hit few bumps and we collide mainly voluntarily, and i'm realitively healthy. and i have been able to distance myself from most of the worst shit i've gone through, and i hope not to go back. but all i've known was extreme, and now i'm in limbo, nowhere near any extreme, and i only have old wounds to lick and pick at. and the thing about extremes is that you feel alive. trying to sleep in the rain behind a stinking dumpster because they release you from the hospital but you have nowhere to go that you want to be at, sure you feel like shit, but you know you're alive. and you do too when you quit your job and leave for mexico for a few weeks, knowing that when you get back your appartment will have been renovated, and you can live there all you want and never go out again if you don't want to, because money is no real problem anymore and you know you'll always get by. good or bad, but mostly bad, extremes have always defined my aliveness. floating like i am now, i don't know for a fact that i live. if i bit my forearm (and i do), eventually i'll feel enough pain to convince myself i'm feeling something, and feeling something is a good indicator of life. and i have to be content with that kind of evidence.

a month can feel like a million years when your days are empty and that you don't feel like filling them, but rather like watching them drip one by one until the dripping noise drives you mad. you know, to see how long it'll take. sometimes i have a very scientific patience. the boyfriend suggested i should get a dog, to keep me company and give my life meaning. no way. i can't have a being that depends on me like a dog would. i'm not trustworthy. the poor thing would be quite miserable on all the days where nothing could make me get out of bed or get dressed. i'm not dog owner material right now, unfortunately. i love animals. but i love them too much to treat them less than perfectly, and i'm just not in a place where a dog would be good for me, or me for it. i can barely take care of myself, i'm not stupid enough to add to my burdens, like those people who get married to save a dying relationship or those teenage girls who have a baby to have someone whol loves them back. what a load of crap. i'd love a dog. i'd adore my dog. but then i'd let her down and i'd want to kill myself and frankly, i'm honest enough to know that and smart enough not to take one step in that direction. call me columbo.

i used to watch a lot of movies. then i got tired of seeing only stupid ones, since i'd seen most of what i knew i wanted to see already. i was just watching brain fodder. then i took to getting as high as i could, and watching soap operas on foreign channels. spanish is a bit too close, a bit too easy to figure out, so i preferred turkish and arabic soaps. i didn't always know what they were, or in what language, and i usually could not figure out exactly what things were about. mostly the same crap as our soap operas, i'm guessing - love and treason and fake evil twins coming back from the dead after years of silence, when their twin is already married to their mistress and has adopted all the illegetimate sheep on the first. glitzy glamour and rich people in comas, crying over which daughter will inherit the family fortune and bitch slapping each other about the go-getter handsome brown haired dude from south america who only happens to somewhat look like their dead mother's lover that they know nothing about but all of a sudden somebody sends a picture in the mail, and lo, it is the mother, back herself from the dead, or perhaps some lost island in the pacific where they inject botox at will and shape up those boobs at need. some days i'd turn my tv set upside down because that way the radioactively colorful makeup on the female stars did not scrae me as much, and it all looked like some abstract art with an incomprehensible soundtrack. but even that got old eventually. and i get headaches when i watch tv for too long. something about having lost the ability to see perspective. other days i'd stare at the turned of tv set and blink until i saw something. other times i sat in front of the window and made up stories about the passers-by, which is i guess what gave soemone the idea to invent tv, so that at least someone out there would have control over who passes by and who doesn't, cause honestly some pedestrians are simply uninspiring, and what am i going to do with a blank piece of flesh if there's a storm out and i won't get another pain in the ass innocent bystander for another half hour?

one by one, i'm exhausting my ways to exhaust time. masturbation doesn't take that long when you do it enough to be good at it. sure, you can do it over and over. but even that is a charm that quickly fades. so i spend most days in a daze, mixing pills and liquids and powders and herbs, and i keep adding to my internal mix until i feel comfortable enough that i won't need to move again for a few hours. sometimes i don't reach that. but trying is most interesting anyway.

i read the personals. that got the boyfriend nervous. it made me laugh. and sometimes i called. my favorite ever was from a woman seeking another woman, who said her boyfriend would come along, but that it was ok, because he liked to be tied up and pretend to be a dog, so "we" could just tie his leash to a corner while going at it. not that it was the weirdest ad i saw, but it made me laugh. i kept it. i was never very interested in any nomal personal ad, you know, man seeks single white female, proportional weight, clean, no children, for walks on the beach and wine by the fireplace. yawn. fucked up people interest me a whole lot more. or perhaps in understand them better? i don't know, but a lady who posts a picture of her eight-inches heel squishing a realistic if oversized penis and balls dildo is simply more attractive to me that one who pouts and squishes her boobs together to play ingenue. the men tend to be a little more pathertic. like they don't know what they really want, or they know it but for decades we've bashed their skull sin when they did, so now they're confused and they don't dare. but what's masculine about a guy stroking his limp tiny cock while sucking a finger he inserted in the gaping whole underneath his mustache? mind you, men who show off their dick to attract women always puzzle me. i think they don't get it. they're like that ex-lover who wanted me to say how much i liked his. poor guys.

on the other hand, all those people who feel the need to put a personal ad not for a relationship (i can believe that is hard to find, although i'm not sure personal ads help much) but only for sex kind of leave me puzzled. is it so hard to find free sex? perhaps if you're in a remote area and looking for something kinky and specific. in that case, perhaps you should get out of your remote area to get some. just a thought. but otherwise, i don't get it. getting sex is easy. for a woman at least. and she doesn't have to be super pretty or well shaped - just wanting sex will usually get you some. at least that's what i've always found. that's the kind of discussion i have with myself, because the boyfriend becomes very uncomfortable. he thinks i'm about to spill the beans on my past sexual history, as they say in cosmo, as they say on tv. no way. there isn't that much to tell and i'd rather slip things out one by one and keep some anecdotes to make him blush for a few more years.

i stopped reading the personals a few months ago. it was a cold wet gray day and i was alone and i had nothing to do so i set up a bunch of newspapers on the table and i was getting ready to start, with three colors of pens and two markers, one yellow (gasp!) and one blue (d'uh). i decided to make some popcorn, so i found a bag, and i put it in the microwave. it clearly said "this side up", but as i perhaps have already mentioned, i'm not too good at following instructions. i put it wrong side up, set the time to however minutes it takes (i actually don't know because i have a popcorn button and i usually push it and walk away so i have no clue how long popcorn takes...), and went back to the table, to start reading my post-modern harlequin novel type filling. well believe it or not the microwave went something like "kaplow, bang schlinling". i went back to the kitchen and the popcorn seemed to have exploded. the microwave door had held on, but barely, and its hinges were stretched, and the inside was black, with here and there in a popping sound a grain of corn that would pop. i made a mental note that some instructions are better left unquestioned. i abandoned the idea of having popcorn. i took a giant garbage bag and filled it with the microwave, popcorn and all, and brought it down to the garbage bin. and there i found a half burned out diary, half covered in potato peals. so i left my microwave, took the diary, went back home and forgot all about reading personal ads for a while.

after i tired from watching all the soap operas, i spent a few days blowing soap... bubbles (guess where i got that idea...) through the window. i'd stand in the shade, though, so all the people looking up to see the bubbles' origin could not see me. the first day i had a lot of fun. the second day, i bought a few more accessories, to be able to blow more bubbles at once, or to blow in more comfort. the third day i had less fun, and fewer people were looking up. it seems people adapt very quickly to something that doesn't bash their skull in or destroy their life savings. the fourth day i did something else. but the sidewalk in front of my window was really, really clean.

for a while i was into orange. well, in my apartment, orange and blue. so i'd go out at night and i'd find orange traffic cones and i'd rescue them and set them up all over the place. yes, rescue them: traffic cones are not awarded the proper amount of respect from city workers, and they often get crushed or stabbed or soiled by people who simply do not care. whereas a mint condition orange traffic cone is a thing of beauty. well, i, at least, can find the beauty in mass made urban design objects. and the cool thing about the cones too is that the boyfriend could walk in and get upset that he wasn't able to walk around because i had stolen (liberated, stolen, same thing) so many cones, but then in a few minutes i could have all the cones one on top of the other, making a few towering orange pillars, but leaving him with all the room he requires to deambulate, and i could then go "see?". in the same way and others, the cones also kept my nephew very entertained, and for a long time. the end of the cones came when i was away for a few days, although it was one of those extendable stays, and nobody knew how long i'd be gone before i was released, and my sister came in and got rid of them all. somehow. that was before i asked for the key back and she pretended to have lost it or whatever. she never really admitted getting rid of the cones either. i got upset and she didn't deny anything but she never quite admitted it either. bitch. i'm still avoiding her. last night someone tried the old lock on the door and tried turning the handle and barging in. then when the second lock resisted, the person simply retreated. i'm having a new bolt put in. and i'm still not picking up the phone or plugging the doorbell back in. as for mail, i only get my mail to recycle it once in a while. all my bills are on prepayment plans, and what else could i get by mail, adverts? gee, thanks. the few that the dense mailman still puts in, i recycle as well. so what i get by mail is mostly crap that was put in the wrong box (which i recycle automatically as well) and unrequested credit cards and the like. straight to recycling, thank you very much.

as my godmother used to say, never fall in love with a korean boy. and she knew what she was talking about then, even though now she's assembling three rags to a plastic bags, close the top with a clip and toss aside. people buy those for a small price and clean their cars with those rags, i'm told. she doesn't care. she's not all quite there anyway and she doesn't know what the rags are for and why she fills the bags, but she knows it's better to fill bags in that room than to be back in the unit, locked in with psychos and compulsive urinators. the last time i saw her, she took me in her arms and sobbed and wouldn't let go, and she seemed scared and she said, "i couldn't find you to tell you where i was!" and i hugged her and i said it was okay, everything was okay (while at the same time wondering why those stupid empty words seem to comfort approximately everyone, and most importantly, why those stupid empty words come to absolutely everybody when the time comes to comfort another - what a wasted language, if the most comforting and reassuring words we can find are "it's okay", whether it be true or not. and when we say it, we know that really, very few things that make the person panick like that will, in fact, ever be close to okay), and it calmed her down and she started staring into space and her amrs went numb. it's a side effect of one of the pills they give her. she just stares, sometimes, for hours at a time, and people around her ignore her then, and they only acknowledge her existence again when she starts showing off a certain level of mobility. they don't allow me to visit her anymore. they said i disturb the other patiens too much. i say if some asshole wants to grab my eye patch without warning, that's his right, but my right in return is to kick his shin, and then his groin. and then his face. whatever he leaves near enough. jerk. the head nurse stopped me from further kicking, and then he took me aside and said, rather quiet-like, "you have to stop being an ass magnet". it's only later, when doctors got involved, that iwas told not to come back. but really, as soon as the jerk dies or gets transfered to another unit, i'll be allowed back in.

i'll tell you a secret. when i close my eye, everything is blue.

time for a song now, because i'm not good at the mushy stuff, at telling secrets and then not running off or not starting to talk loudly in a screechy voice because i touched upon somethng too emotional for me to deal with very well and it's confusing for others because i just trail off after i say something intimate, just ask the boyfriend, but i simply can't deal with self-revelation and intimacy. so i'll sing a stupid song instead. and if it makes no sense, even better.

there were four
who wanted to fight
against three, who didn't want to.
and the four
who wanted to fight
told the three, who didn't want to,
there are four of us,
who want to fight
against three, who do not want to.