WHY I AM PRETENDING MY NAME IS DARCY
My real name is awful. The only thing I like about it is that it's Latin and I'm a classics major. But the thing it means in Latin is "a person who deserves to be loved" which is pretty cheerful and dull. I was excited when I found out it literally means "a person who will be loved" which conjures up a suitably downbeat image of me plodding through life with love, like tomorrow, always a day away. But that doesn't change the fact that it's the name of almost everyone on the whole planet.
The writer was 23
so please, just sit on your hands
and your sickness will drop, down like a ship
and you will surface, always
is God imbuing your soul
with His heavy and sugary gust
that will smash you right through every time you burst
to the center, of the earth
are we proud. are we going to make strides
are we lonely. if my heart keeps pounding
with this thick driven insight, so grim and surrounding
I want to get off the ride. I want to go home.
to: the softness of your wrists, the potpourri,
the potluck and St. Leo's Fair,
the carnival lights and no gashes yet.
I will not tell you this, just let
your softness open in my memory,
the easy mess you'd be.
HOMO REVIEWS
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a wonderful poem. It's kind of like a Flannery O'Connor story because it goes like this:
I feel like this is the only thought process I ever have and it's nice to know that knights have it too.
A dykey-looking girl walked in holding hands with a pretty girl and I thought "good for that lesbian getting a hot girlfriend" but then I realized the lesbian was comforting the pretty girl about her breakup with a boy. Poor lesbian.
HOMO REVIEWS
King Dork by Frank Portman is a book where nothing happens. I read it during my dark night of the soul in 11th grade. My parents made me take down my Amazon.com review of it because they said it made me look immature and colleges wouldn't accept me if they Googled my name and found the review. I love it so much. I read it whenever I am bored or scared or sad. It's the literary equivalent of a baked potato.
WHETHER I SHOULD SAY THE WORD RETARDED OR NOT
I don't know. Anything else sounds like a euphemism and I'm not embarrassed or upset about retarded people so why would I use a euphemism for them. Besides, I've heard people say words like "mentally challenged" in incredibly insulting ways. The only reason the word retarded sounds harsh is that people use it as an insult. I still call myself gay even though people use that as an insult. (Update: I have stopped using the word retarded a lot of the time, because it sounds so harsh. Besides, I know that some retarded people don't like it, and those are the people whose opinions really matter anyway. On the other hand, some retarded people don't care or even prefer the word retarded. As I said, it bothers me on principle to stop using a word because it is used an insult, and I still use it a lot, but with people I don't know well I usually say "intellectually disabled.")
Although the screed is rather dull, I feel weird not explaining what I mean by saying that no one agrees with me. I feel alienated by organizations like the HRC because they seem like they're for people who look a certain way and have certain jobs, but I'm afraid that groups claiming to be against this are just the same in another direction, acting like everyone should identify as pansexual and live on an anarchist farm. Everyone seems disingenuous and only interested in their own particular problems. I also feel that despite lip service both groups pretty much ignore transgendered people. (To be specific, lots of radical queers are "trans-identified" because they like to cross-dress or something, but don't waste a lot of brain space on the concerns of people who want HRT, SRS, and/or a job at the bank.)
GIRLS
My friend and I tried to escape. Whenever we saw each other each of us was worn down to the bone by their heavy unintelligible weight. I was coughing, sometimes I threw up into chairs, garbage bins, my friend's math textbook. As for my friend, he has seizures, and I held him while his lousy legs and arms stormed out from under him. The answer was clear: no more girls.
We decided not to kill them, even though jail is a place without girls, at least for him. Instead we worked hard on making our own place without girls. A fort, a sanctuary. The fort was made out of cold hard pizza. Inside were sleeping bags with video game characters on them.
We needed entertainment for the fort but we had to be safe. We burned all the books we could find that were written by a girl or about girls. At the end of that we had my friend's math textbook that I had thrown up on.
Then we went inside the fort and were happy for two and a half days. That's when we realized that girls were inside us. Like tuberculosis they couldn't be stopped. Looking at my veins, I saw girls boredly sauntering up and down them. My friend found some girls in his earwax, taking a bath. We went to the rabbi and he said, "Girls are a vital part of who you are, you guys. There will be girls as long as you have hearts and lungs."
My friend and I looked at each other. It was the worst day of our mutual lives.
SOME OF AN UNFINISHED LETTER TO MY BEST FRIEND
2 guys are talking about how gay guys aren't allowed to give blood, or rather they're talking about how much money they could make giving blood and then they're talking about how they better not accidentally lisp or wear "old gay man sandals" to the blood drive.
I hope the 2 gay guys are in a relationship because they seem awesome. They keep talking about their creepy childhood math teachers. OMG they're cuddling. I feel awkward because I keep wanting to look at them because they're so cool but they might think I'm a weirdo. I guess I'll go get a sandwich.
I'm supposed to be writing a paper on "Gawain and the Green Knight." I'M NOT DOING A VERY GOOD JOB!
YESTERDAY
Liam and I watched All Creatures Great and Small on the roof of Dascomb and a lady saw us so we hid behind a noisy machine for an hour!! I watched Sweeney Todd with The Girl in Question but kept adjusting pillows because of my tailbone. I'm quite a loser.
DARCY'S GIRL TRAGEDY
I was watching a movie with the girl who likes me, WY (her initials should be WHY which is a good summation of my feelings about a girl liking me). I had to leave so she could go to sleep. She was grumpy about not knowing what she wants to do with her life, or something, so I was snuggling up to her and she tried to kiss me and I turned my head to accommodate her and we bumped and I said "I don't kiss people very much" by way of explanation, but she didn't try again. I sent her apologetic texts and she said "it's fine."
DARCY'S BOY SUCCESSES
James Bell an old man who had a stroke and can't talk so well and visits the Wellfleet Flea Market every day. I worked there last summer and we would communicate using drawings. Then he started trying to ask me on a date and buying me presents. At first I felt bad, but then I just got mad.
Frank M., a middle-aged man who can't move or talk very well, who lives in a nursing home and goes to the vocational day center for retarded people where I volunteer. Frank was hit by a car when he was home on his first break from college, where he was planning to major in industrial art. He lives in the same nursing home as his parents. Frank always says I am artistic and creative and asks if I like "new wave rock music" because I have blue hair. He also says that he loves me and asks for my phone number and I feel really bad, because Frank probably feels like his life stopped when he was my age. It's not gross or inappropriate for him to have a crush on a college student, and he seems so lonely and gets all excited when he sees me and I just feel incredibly uncomfortable and guilty about the whole thing.
Update: a taxi driver said I should be his girlfriend and gave me his number and said he would teach to me to ride a bike. It felt sort of uncle-y, actually, but I guess it wasn't. Also, at the train station a 42-year-old guy engaged me in conversation and said "I love your red hair. Do you like long or short hair on guys?" and I said "I don't like guys" and he asked why and I said I didn't know, and he asked if I liked girls, and I said yes. He informed me that he had dated a woman who liked girls and guys.
(Some being mean about my mom is cut, because I am fond of my mom and she is good at lots of things.)
Band names: We Are Castles, Paul Reverie, The Absent Fathers.
My job: I used to like it, but now it makes me sort of angry.
The good news: I actually like WY a bunch, now that I think about it.
Disclaimer: John said that the Duhks didn't actually mean to ask for all that stuff. He said they were nice.
The best commercial ever is this commercial against gay marriage that shows a really cute little confused blond boy warbling, "Gwamma, my teacher says, if Grandpa was a girl that's okay. You can still be married... (suddenly panicked) If my dad married a man, then who would be my mom?"
Noah: That kid is a genius.
I thought the Whomping Willow seemed like a creep in We Are Wizards, when he was singing about scoring with groupies in front of 10-year-old girls, but I have to admit his music is great. I'm so stressed. I have to finish packing and write 2 papers tomorrow and I'm fucking doing arts and crafts! Well I gotta go watch Pushing Daisies with John. I love him so much.
I hope you like this okay.
Coming back from John's I saw a girl crying really hard outside (it's 2 AM). I said, "Hey. I'm sorry you're upset." I wish I could have said something better. I need a haircut.