Entry 000013; 09.18.01

You know that part in Fight Club, when Edward Norton is talking about the loss of his furntiture? About how he had always thought that section of his life was OK, even if everything else fell apart, he had the couch situation handled.

Then, of course, his couch was blown to smithereens. It happens.

I felt the same way about my living situation for the next three years. It was stressing, all last year, not to know if i'd be able to go to school, all over the stupid reason of not having any place to live. But then I got through it. I pleaded and begged with Nathan, and Orgasmic, and whomever needed to be pleaded and begged to. So for a little while, i had everything all figured out. For the next three years of my life, even if everything else fell apart, I'd have the living situation figured out.

I knew, of course, that Orgasmic would bail out within the first year. I knew this even when he still loved me and I was still his best friend. I knew it because i knew Orgasmic. For people like me, Orgasmic is the baling-out type. This was my error margin, and i was willing to risk it. I figured If I just had another year with him, I could find someone else to replace him in the rent-paying department.

What I had not counted on was Nathan leaving. And what I had not counted on was Robert leaving. And what I had not counted on was the evil way I sense Rach__l looking at me sometimes. I mean yeah, I knew Nathan wanted to transfer last year. But I thought that since he now lives with his two friends Rach__l and Robert, everything would be ok. I hadn't known that having a girlfriend was so important to him that he would change schools to find one.

I knew Robert didn't like WPI, and he didn't like being a tech major. But I figured, with his good friend Nathan, and his girlfriend Rach__l, he'd stick around.

And Rach__l, well, i kind of expected her to get around to hating me sooner or later. I have that effect on people.

But the thing is, that I had that section of my life all planned out and stabilized. It was one of the few things that couldn't be ripped out from underneath me, it was one of the few things I would defintetly not have to worry about.

Then my proverbial couch blew up. It happens sometimes.

So as of now, i'm sitting here, trying to plot ways of staying in my apartment, plotting ways to stay here in school, and not having to go live with my mom and go to Salem State or whatever the fuck is on the northshore. I mean hey, I don't like Worcester any more than anyone else does. But I don't exactly have the same choices everyone else has. And I've worked my ass off for at least a year maintaining a decent scholarship so i can stay in this damned place. No one can just come along and fuck up my perfectly set up (if precariously set up) situation. I was supposed to have this fucker settled.

So i'm sitting here. Thinking. I hate not being in control over these things. I hate having to sit and wait and wait and wait for other people to make up thier minds, or get things done. I it when other people, people who don't even give a shit about me, have control over my life.

In other news

Last night i went to bed happy, thinking happy thoughts. Before i shut off my light, I smiled at myself in the mirror. You would too, if your life wasn't being crap at the moment. And really, it isn't crap at the moment. It's this nice little comfortable purgatory, this flux state in which I can't get any further down, but I have all kinds of reasons to go up. I'm relishing my flux state of non-horror.

So as usual, I lay in bed, half awake, reaching out for someone to hold me and not finding anyone. Thinking about how much I wish there were someone to hold me as i fall asleep. Thinking about how un-right it would feel to have someone holding me other than drooly. Of course I realize it's just me regretting breaking up with him, and that will pass over time. I mean, it never felt wrong falling asleep in Orgasmic's arms.

So I went through this routine, which I go through every night, these emotions and logical conclusions occuring to me in an almost linear-but-not-quite sense. And I lost my happy little thing I had been holding onto when I originally set out for bed.

I started thinking about death, not death itself so much as what happens after. I thought about what my version of heaven would be. Everytime I think of heaven, I think about how as soon as I get there, I rush to wherever Marcus is and i just hug him and hold him and never, ever, ever let go.

I guess I started thinking about Marcus last night because earlier I had been talking to Nathan, about loving and losing vs never loving at all. And I of course introduced my idea to him, the one that I think about a lot, about having something and not appreciating it, and losing it. And then realizing what you've lost. And as anyone who lives in my head knows, I think about that a lot. I probably...no...definitely think about it more than I should.

But the thing is, if i don't think about Marcus, who will? And doens't he deserve to be remembered? Everyone wants to be remembered. God knows if anyone owes him more, it's me, and i deserve any kind of pain that remembering might bring.

So I thought about heaven. I tried to play it out in my mind, the first scenes of what it would be like there. I thought about seeing Marcus, as I tend to picture him, in his red swimming trunks and his dark short hair plastered agaisnt his skull, pieces of sand coating him like a seashell. I thought about just standing there in front of him and the next moment hugging him and begging his forgiveness, and burying my face in his neck, my closed eyelids feeling the gritty sand on his neck. Of course I can do that easily, because when I picture him at the ripe old age of seven, I picture myself at the ripe old age and height of six.

So for some reason, as soon as I got to the sensation of hugging him and feeling the damp sand covering my clothes, the image turns to hell.

I have a lot of versions of hell, just like i do a lot of versions of heaven. Most of the time, my versions of hell resemble Sartre's 'No Exit.' Sometimes though, they are worse. Sometimes, Marcus doesn't forgive me, and rejects my embrace and my apologies. Sometimes, and these are the worst, Marcus isn't there at all. He just ceases to exist. He never existed.

The one that kept sneaking into my head last night was between the middle and the last. It started out with me at the cottage. Then there was this achingly terrifying walk to the beach. It was terrifying partly because I wanted to run, and partly because I knew that Marcus was at the shore waiting for me, and i was afraid that if i didn't get there in time, i wouldn't catch him, and he'd be gone forever.

So when I finally get there, there he is, amoung the throngs of people and laughing running children. Except all the people seem to be on mute. The only person in focus is him, standing there in his red trunks and his sandy hair, a big smile on his face. So i run to him, and it's like heaven--almost. I wrap him in a huge, steel iron hug and bury my face in his neck and smell him and sob and apologize, for everything, and I hold him just like i do when i picture heaven--i never intend to let go.

Then he starts to feel sandier. And he kind of loses his substance. My arms fold in on each other, slowly, as he gets softer almost, and starts to sink. Except he's not really sinking. He's turning to sand and melting into the beach. And this tight grip I had on him, it just fades to nothing. When the last of him is noting but flat wet sand, I fall to my knees, screaming and grabbing clumps of sand, insanely trying to dig him back up, looking for him in the pools of water that start to form. i don't find him. He just dissapears forever. And it's like he was never there.

That's when it starts to replay. I start back at the cottage again, and over and over it goes. I don't remember it stopping, so I must have fallen asleep while it played in my head like a broken record, or a song you can't get out of your head.