Naked Truth

I feel like my heart is half-in, half-out of the water right now.
It can't decided to swim or stay dry.
I hate this indecision.

I feel like I am stuck on these feelings of "maybe something better will come along," just because Jarod isn't the stereotypical "steamy, sexy gay man" that I've become so accustomed to in recent bouts with my digital fucks.

I can't see myself deserving to be liked by anyone, but then I'm giving myself these ridiculous ideas of what I should and shouldn't be "settling for" when it comes to standards of beauty.

I fucking hate my surface level, vain, shallow self sometimes.

Looking and Looking

I feel like I'm not letting myself be satisfied.
Then again, aren't I supposed to be hard to please?
Isn't there some maxim that goes "never settle, never be satisfied" or something like that?

I'm really torn between feeling like I want to find something to calmly, relaxedly grow comfortable with and used to...and thus be contented.

It's evident that Jarod likes me.
I'm flattered by that.

I feel like some moments I like him while at others I am getting this painful sense of dissatisfaction. Like once again I'm getting into someone only because they showed signs of affection first and I feel the flattery of a longing touch.

During French class a couple of days ago I was attempting to capture some of the residual feelings from my reactions to the previous night (Jarod and my first date) and wrote something I find to be prosaic but very true.

"I feel inept in attempting to write down what it is that I experienced last night. I feel as if I stepped into a scene I thought I had memorized only to find I was in a completely different play." - Tues. Nov. 27, 2007

I guess I owe it to my literary honesty to explain what that previous section was referring to.

On Monday night Jarod picked me up to go find me something to eat after having a long day of class, work, then class again.
I was looking forward to spending time with him in person because we had had a really great phone conversation the night before.

We talked for a little over an hour and it was very smooth and involved. We both had meaningful input and laughed and I felt like I had a very clear, witty command of my verbiage.

I felt like a live and in person date would go much the same way and, in serving my hope of gaining trust and openness, I was very unguarded in my topics of conversation and personal disclosure.
I thought that if I made the point of being open and figuratively naked in front of Jarod he would experience the anticipated relief of knowing that I wasn't afraid of him knowing the intimate details of my own life thereby feeling liberated to exercise candor in his own self-disclosure.

This was dead wrong.

I found that after I broached the subject of past relationships and sexual mistakes Jarod began to visually shrink down and close off as seen by his self-contained retreating body language.
I immediately halted and he began informing me that he just wasn't ready to talk about such personal information.

I was a little flabbergasted.

This method that I had come up with- yes, it was a tried and true method- had failed me.
It was like I had gotten so deftly used to playing the part of the "first date mold-breaker", the "guy you could instantly be comfortable and open with," someone "everyone can easily and dependably trust."

All of these hoped for, and in essence, assured results were all but actualized by the time I was finished wolfing down my chicken sandwich.

As Jarod told me of his discomfort I felt the blood drain from my face. It was like my stomach just decided that it wanted to eat me from the inside out.

Everything was going wrong.
I was ruining a perfectly good opportunity.
I was burning a bridge before I had even crossed it.

Day 2 or 3

Something of a painful thick surrounds my body.
Inside and out.

Every motion feels like I'm pulling my appendages through gelatin. Nothing is easy, simple, or untroubled.
Everything about me just wants to curl up and let the tension pulse around me until it's through chewing on my bones.

I'm looking ahead right now.
Michelle is coming to pick me up and we're going to Rose's on 23rd.
I almost thought too far ahead and lost the excitement just from knowing that it would end at some point in the eventual future.
I had to mentally back up from the edge, thoughtstep by thoughtstep.

If only I knew some secret pathway where I could guide myself along its mulchy, soft, limited snaking wanderway.

I feel left out in the misty cold with no one to blanket me other than myself.
This will pass.
Perhaps.

Stabbed In The Kidney With A Blunt Object

It simply must be allowed for one to love his setting.
To embrace the lives he has constructed so carefully and finitely.

Yes, I'm materialistic.
Yes, I'm vain.
Yes, my idealism is filtered by a healthy amount of skepticism (sometimes I am seen as too imaginative, too faithful, too hopeful).

Yet I am happy with it.

I'm going to eat my processed foods.
I'm going to text message.
I'm going to check my Myspace and (God forbid) Facebook.

This is the life I have chosen and I am through with feeling the need to compete, repent, or silently, cruelly ridicule.

Be aware of your present self in order to revisit this point of reference once you have gained a better sense of maturity...yes, maturity.

Wisdom follows experience when combined with analytical thinking and comparative logic.
This is a concept of irreducible complexity.

The Point Of Willful Return

There's so much going on.
We're all just being together.

Do I want to be with them?
Do I will myself to just be and not be with?

They feel what I cannot feel and yet I find myself in a place where I do not want to feel with them.

With is so strong.
I remember telling Lance on the balcony in Anchorage that "with you" was one of the most powerful two-word utterances possible.

I continue to learn, more and more, day by day, what that really means.
Maybe I've come around to that place where I am beginning to see what, who, where I should and should not want to be "with you".

I have been so constantly searching for any and all ways I could be "with you" and now I am beginning carefully, thoughtfully filter.

I just want to go home.

Here's the Frank and Honest Truth

How can I be confronted all at once by two people with so much perturbation?
It's like that one-

(your sense of humor makes me want to scoff and gripe to others about your face and voice)

-coaxial moment where two people both hit their stride in a walk away from a house in exchange for a bar.

This is going to be the most interesting situation seeing as how I've brought together very oddly same and different people.

I need to make myself take a break.
I feel like everything is crowding in on me and beginning to fall inward on my head.
Even my arms get scratched up and dirtied by the debris as I try to protect myself.

I'm having this incredibly Woolf-esque moment of wanting to be alone to "write my first line."

I think that missing my writer's event this evening has soured me...quite a bit.

Collections Agencies Call Too Often

This is to every dinner interrupted by that annoying ring of impending awkwardness.
To every unidentified cell phone call answered out of curiosity immediately followed by an unmatched regret.
To every sinking, hungry feeling in the pit of a hostess' stomach when their table assignments turn out to be a large, potentially party-spoiling mistake.

I don't care a fig for your product, your perspective, your attempt at convincing me that my life is incomplete without you.

I want to curl up in a corner padded with 5 pillows and a little, too-tiny afghan.
I want to read the books I keep telling myself I'm going to delve into with unwaivering focus.
I want it to be just a little too cold so my form reserves all of its energies for the betterment of my sustenance.

You pompous, touting idealist.
Don't make me sick to my already disquieted stomach.
Be frank about your points and don't dress up your unnecessary thoughts.
They're extra to me, they're not wanted.
I already said so.

Get some Ritalin and leave my head and my hands alone.
Make everything about your posture submissive and original, you imposing bastard.

(I feel this odd sense of triumph as I spill these words with a decisive poise...like I've been waiting all these weeks for the moment of expounding and it has, indeed, arrived)

Your obliging nature is cut short by your disagreeable taste.

Peeling Back the Veneer

I'm really quite frustrated right now.
Granted, missing the writer's event this evening didn't HAVE to happen but I felt this odd condescension from Chris, as if he was saying, "what's the problem with you? Just go."

I didn't like it and I know I probably (most likely) projected it onto him.
But now I'm just being lame.

Traci is just now coming into Portland and needed someone to smoke with.
I'm looking forward to seeing her.

I'm also very happy that Anna is here.
I know this whole social mess is of my own construction but I kind of feel overwhelmed by all of it.

I think this financial aid money is going to provide me with a temporary but much needed sense of release.

I just need to tell myself to stop actually spending it.

I'm glad I'm writing.

Saxophones and Empty Fountains

As I set out, once again, on the all-too-familiar route to the place I call work I found myself wanting to pull away from everything.
To pull my veins back into my own body and let my lifeblood recirculate in some cheap, not-as-real warmth.

I just wanted to stay where I was so I wouldn't sink any lower.

I saw a man playing a ramshackle ballad on his saxophone, standing on a dry platform in the middle of a dry fountain.
He seemed almost as unsatisfied with his art as I feel with mine these days.
He kept halting to frown, shake his head at himself, then start again with another unpredictable, sad trill.

A woman with her child paused at the top level of the dry fountain, listening to this sad swan. It was as if she found someone who was just a little sadder than she and that made her just a little happier.
She was searching so intently for understanding, for companionship, that she was almost desperate in her want for this, her child, to understand. To feel. With her.

I wanted to stop, to take part in the feeling.
To once again reunite with the flaming leaves on the fall-kissed tree branches.

But on I walked.
Steady on to that foul restaurant.

Steady on to yet another evening of genuiness wasted on random, temporary nobodies.

I just want a somebody but I feel guilty.
I feel like I want to want nobody. I want to frown at myself, shake my head, and keep trying to play an original set of notes.

Heal Over

I can't understand this onset of downward motion I seem to experience to readily these days.
I don't get it.
I feel like I can't get it.

I don't look forward to anything.

I don't look forward to anyone.

I feel like so much is losing its luster.

It's not even money. I have money for now.

It's just that something about life is so disappointing right now.
I feel like I'm disappointingly boring.
Life is boring.

Maybe I'm just tired.

What To Do About David

Quickening,
still and slow
rapidly drawing
a subtle breath.

How was I to know?

How was he
to know
his palette calls
for something unfamiliar,
strange,
and yet so craved.

Pulling back my hair and exposing the skin of my forehead,
I see the scars and dents of time and thought.

Can he possibly see them?
Want them?

What calls from me
to him?
Body to body?

Body to body.

He asks for what I do not want to give
to him.

But I want to give
to him.

To tell the truth
means lying
to his face
and his heart.

It's such a painful honesty.
An openness only
comparable to dissection.

Cutting in and seeing
the bloody depths of
real and awful self.

He calls for a piece of flesh
or is it a piece of beating
fluttering
honesty?

There seem to be so many questions.
So many unknowns and yet
they call.
Body to body.

I want to be called and
I let myself.

I call a returned want.
A desire is not mine
and is made mine.

Is it really mine?

Questions,
posed
and delivered
and left.

He told me without his words
but with his mouth.

What will my mouth say
without words?

Considering The Rose's Thorn

I see what is happening with Nick and Tony as it pertains to Chris and it saddens me.

It makes me feel rotten inside especially because I knew it was going to happen and now I just wish I were wrong.
Wrong for everyone's sake.

Chris is slowly but surely (and possibly unwittingly) coming between Nick and his happiness with Tony. I doubt it if Tony knows the full extent of Nick's care for Chris.
Then again, I sensed it at the beginning.

I probably ought to be telling myself, "quit worrying about something that is none of your business," but I'm still allowing myself to be upset.

No, I don't have any right.
I don't give a twig for whether or not it's my business.
I still sense the pain in an overwhelming way.

The seeming remedy would be to stop associating with the situation as whole until it either blows over or someone brings me into it.

*sigh*

I think I need to pull out of a lot of concerns much like this one.
Concerns based in wanting to feel for others when my empathy is completely unwelcome.
I think that's a large part of why I end up getting so intensely emotionally offended.

I must focus on myself in a non-selfish way.
I need to be self-ful.

Perhaps it's just one of those "times of trial" you read about in the Bible and epic poetry.

The cruelty of fate's irony.

A Little Link

I spent the evening with Michelle and Julia this evening and really went into detail about my intense level of observation.
I think I may have given them a bit of a scare when they realized just how much I saw...not only in them but in all things.

Hmmm...I wonder how I am supposed to be using this descriptive ability.

Maybe I'm writing to be read again.
I don't like that.

If this journal becomes another town crier when it's supposed to be the candlelit scribblings of a malcontented sister then I will be officially angry.


Part of me wonders if I'm wanting to draw closer to those two girls because it will make me feel slightly closer to Drew...even though he's so far removed. So gone.

He kept coming up in conversation and the girls were showing pictures of old, good times with him. I just still feel so attached.
And that attachment has now become something I see as being against my better judgment.

I'm feeling like I am in the midst of having it proven to me, once again, that everything was just momentary and poisoned with passion. Like the things he said were just to fulfill the script in his head for the "perfect evening".

But I ache to think that that's actually the case.
I want him to have been as thrilled as I was.
As excited.
As peaceful yet crazed.

I'm not getting any messages of reply.
I'm not getting any phone calls.
I'm feeling accessory.

But then again, I sort of am.

Settling Into Diligence

Once again I find myself ready to sacrifice all eternals and buckle down.
To let go of the possible momentary excitements in exchange for an assurance of my own successes, both academically and emotionally.

I hope this pays off...and I am hoping I am not going to pull another "excited beginning into a half-assed follow through"

A Letter To Drew

I just spent a very pleasant couple of hours with our dear Michelle.
We reminisced about the past and recounted classic tales of our former renegade activities and joyful romps across the old Canadian campus.

Then, of course, the topic turned to you.
We spoke of missing you and how nonsensical it seemed to be that we were all brought into each others' lives at such odd times.
There's an order to everything when reduced to mere function and I think that the pragmatism of relationships tends to be an illusive study.

That being said I thought I would write you the first of my promised correspondences.
Life here turns toward a somber note as the trees begin shedding first their verdigris for a fiery bronze and then lose their sheets of pressed metal.
Sidewalks begin to resemble the littered floors of an art room post-class; clippings strewn about in an effortless shift and sway according to the wind's direction...or lack thereof.

That selfsame wind carries with it a voice, a whisper of pending gray.

We can only hope the gray will produce just a little white.

Of that, among many thing, I am quite jealous of your current location.
You'll have snow, oh so much snow.

Coming back around to the gray of the coming days, I look forward to spending brisk walks bundled inside the trappings of my winter's preparation. Evenings spent on the couch with a cup of coffee, a good book, a friend, and a conversation.

Michelle and I are already staking out certain sections of our break for movie nights, dinner parties, and cloves on my balcony.

Julia, she and I are planning on attending Cabaret this coming Tuesday night.
I'm really hoping we can get in.
If not I'll be purchasing tickets for the last week of the recently augmented run. A few of my work friends are going as well and look forward to brights lights and lap dances.

I grin to think of what is to come this season.
More academics, more talks of the finer points of life, existence, and our role in this massive social construction.

I left you a phone message asking this same question but I figure repetition ensures clarity:
What will be your new mailing address?
I have something I'm intending on sending you in the near future.
This of course implies that I'll have somewhere to send it.

Having just humored my random love of childhood cereals, I have a mostly-empty bowl which formerly contained a heaping mass of Cookie Crisp.
That's another thing I look forward to about this Fall into Winter season: breakfasts of sugar cereal and toast as the Sun comes up over the ridge.

How has life at your famed Soho bakery come along?
I hope you're enjoying it immensely and looking forward to your now unlimited access to pastries and croissants.
I know I would be.

Wednesday fast approaches.
For what it's worth, know that I'm thinking of you and hoping for only your best.

Michelle and I talked about your upcoming meeting with this director and were mutually giddy with the expectation of your charm and wit winning them over.

We're rooting for you.
It's like I told you in the truck right before slipping from the side door and descending to venture city-ward, "you'll always have people here who love you."

You're finding your feet.
You're doing what you love.
Never lose that, my dear boy.

I hope to hear from you soon,
With Best Regards,


-Noah C. Buck

Having Been Far Too Long

I'm sitting in the newfound relief of being told that I do not have to work this evening.
Not to say that money wouldn't be useful but I am so tired all of the sudden (again).

I want to take a nap and then do some homework and then possibly go to a movie.
All of this hinges upon just how fast I get my work done, of course.

I spent the evening last night with Allena and Evie.
Evie was absolutely wonderful.
I was incredibly attracted to her not only as a person but in a very sincere sexual manner.
Odd.

After the two of those lovely girls, I spent the rest of the evening with Michael Newman.
I know, blast from the past.
But the truth of the matter is that I really enjoyed myself.
We ended up staying up far too late (something close to 3am) talking and taking random pictures of cell phone keys and hookah smoke.

By the time we went to sleep I was beyond delirious and awoke in a cloud of dazed exhaustion.
I still made breakfast (because apparently Michael is not in the habit of eating in the morning) and then went to church.
I saw my sister and Ted there for a few minutes and that was a welcome episode considering the fact that it has become something of a normal thing to encounter one or the two of them.
I'm happy about that.

I also saw the Leisure family at Imago Dei and that was random.
It was lovely to get a hug from Diane.
I've always liked her.
Chelsae was there as well and she looked lovely.
Although she did mention that she's with Mode and I made a pointed effort to let her know about the inconsistencies of the agency and reps.

We'll see if she heeds my words.

I'm really tired right now.
As I previously mentioned.

I'm tired for many reasons.
I feel like I am in need of written output and yet I don't have my usual knack for it.
It's almost as if I have it until I really need it and then it's gone.

And I don't even know for sure if this illusive "it" is talent, ability to copy, natural and organic output...I just don't know.

I want to write all about Drew.
I want to write about Aleks working into the concept of Drew.
I want to write about me.

I feel like I can't.
Like I really am unable.

I think I just need sleep.

Waiting For 15 Minutes

Having spent the last 48 hours wanting nothing more than just a voice, just a word or two, I feel the most pathetic I've felt in ages.

This pathetic weight has been resting on my shoulders for the last little while and yet I wish I had had it for a long, long while.

These are the times when I fully embrace wishful regret.
I wish I had met Drew months ago, I wish that I had had more time with him.
I wish that I had had more of a chance to be with him and know him and just lay next to him...knowing him. Breathing the same air and stirring in the same midnight chills.

Waking in a cold, damp sweat and being happy to be in such discomfort because I would have known that it was due to his proximity, his closeness.

Now I am having to rest with the knowledge of his departure.
Having to hold to this hopeless romance which is necessarily temporary.

He's right. It will be easier for him than for me.

I'll be adjusted in the cupboard to find my place behind the cereal boxes and soup cans.
I'll be that cardboard corner poking out from behind the bag of sugar, just wanting to be seen, let along brought out. Opened, tasted.

I want him.
I want to be near him.

I just want this pain to stop and I want him to be the band-aid.

I'm going to have to let this heal in an open manner and I will scar.

Sipping A Cigarette

I just spent the last 10 minutes on my balcony, in the wind, accompanied by a cup of coffee with floating bits of cinnamon and a lone cigarette, listening to the haunting strands of desperate songs coming out from the warmth and safety of an empty apartment.

In that time I allowed my unchecked imagination to hope for the possibility of a romance like you see in the movies.
I would fly out, I would pick up and move.
I would continue to work, to finish what I've started while beginning something brand new.

In those moments of caffeine and nicotine my body responds to the lick of the passing gusts in a manner not unlike an infant to his mother's caress. Wanting to find comfort in the touch of a chilled hand. Wanting to slip into a sleep so deep that the dreams feel like the most brilliant reality.

It's in this momentary lapse of judgment that I find a truly awakening sense of freedom.
Perhaps I should hold myself away from this dangerous flame of passion, looking only to the solid, blocky corners of the set constructed on this stage of my life.
Platforms and framing nails are my strength and power.

My control is in the knowledge of my supporting places.
I am holding to a fastidious discipline of reality.

Throw me to this wind.
Let me sail about like a half-burnt fall leaf riding alongside the fiery brilliance of the butterflies I see inside myself.

Burst forth with new passion and embrace the bleak of now as the hard, flat road leading to the golden mountains on the horizon.

An Utter Separation

I am feeling that same sense of loneliness I remember having felt and forgotten...


...felt and forgotten.

...felt and forgotten.


And now I've come to a place of decision: sink into the depression so easily succumbed to or make the painful effort of learning from what I am in the midst of right now.

It's like Jenny tells me oh so often, meditate and be outside of the moment so that you might see the whole picture. Observe and take from it what you can.

A Quickly Developing Romance

I really like Aleks.

Granted I only just met him and only today actually had anything of a lengthy interaction with him.
After he picked me up from work the other night I had an inkling of how much I felt I was going to enjoy his company.
However it wasn't until I actually had brunch with him and then walked about the blustery, wet leaf-ridden boardwalks of the pearl today that I began to come into full realization of just how drawn I was to him.
It's so compelling, his presence.
It's so comfortable and appreciated and I just want to be close to him in the innocent and unassuming manner.
I want to cuddle up next to him with a book, blanket and fireplace.

The book will no doubt be forgotten as he grins over my shoulder with his teacup resting on the cushioned worn leather arm of the couch. I'll simply nuzzle into him and find a place of safety. A haven. A respite.

Rest.

Rest for me...and my name means rest.


I fear the distance and the timing and yet I will not let the fear continue.
I think he likes me.
I told him I like him...a lot.

I told him that I think he's adorable.
I actually used that word.

I feel like I'm being too sudden, too direct.
And yet that thrills me.

I want him to hold me close.
And closer and closer.

I'm sighing to myself as I write these words.
I hope so sincerely.