loose

.


Reading: Closer, Patrick Marber; Diary, Chuck Palahniuk
Listening: Soulwax; Fleet Foxes
Watching: Skins




I think back to my childhood and I remember barbecued chicken and fruit pie, never getting along with my younger sister, and reading because real-life people were generally much less interesting than those I met in books. I remember going to the bookstore a lot. I remember fighting with my mother a lot. My mother’s the kind of mother who doesn’t see/know a difference between “doing this to her” and “doing this for me.” But really, I grew up on Kerouac and Kesey, Palahniuk and Bukowski, Vonnegut and Heller. I never had anything that I could call a relationship with my father, but I was raised by men. In spite of all my mother’s Presbyterian teaching/preaching, I was raised by men. Of the beatnik/post-war/nihilist type.

I think back to my adolescence now and mostly remember only the feelings; numbness and provocation, feeling lusty and wanting to be close to the next boy, and eventually girl, that I came across and found attractive. Feeling wonderful. Feeling high. Feeling attractive. My friend theorized that a “social buzz” scale existed—the higher the number, the more fucking awesome you felt. I don’t clearly remember ever reaching that ten, but I’m sure I have several times. That’s basically how I remember adolescence, at least, that’s how I remember the parts of it that I want to remember.

The parts that I don’t want to remember come to me in emotions too. Feeling like I want to run away from home. Feeling like drinking myself to death. Feeling like the scum of the earth underneath my parents’ noses, making them sneer. Feeling judged, wanting to say that it takes one to fucking know one, so don’t judge me because I’m sure that if we were to lay out our honest opinions of each other, I’d figuratively cut your pretty little throat and bleed you dry. I remember miscommunication and fat culture gaps that made me ashamed of who I wanted to be, confused and unaware and frightened of who I wanted to be. I still want the same things, but I haven’t quite gotten rid of the feelings yet. My vision for the future is relatively the same, it’s just the present that I live differently.