Keep My Words

We were at the duck celebrating Braden’s one year anniversary of living in New York. It is so Brades to celebrate that. I know this about him, and I haven’t even known him the entire year. Additionally, I was thrilled to be the only non-Omahaian on the email chain discussing this celebratory event.

“You haven’t heard about Brades typing ‘tonight’ into Craigslist? Brades, explain to Ashleigh why you do this,” Mitchell said.

“If you type ‘tonight’ into Craigslist,” Brades began, “you can get tickets for all kinds of things, like Knicks games and stuff. Just type it in the general search on the main page and-”

Q interrupted. “Do NOT type it into personals. You’ll just get cocks. Big black cocks. Real big. Mid-thigh. I saw it. It was real.”

And then he walked in. We didn’t say hello. I’m sure we both saw each other. Of course I know why I didn’t say hello. Clearly there is no way for me to know why he didn’t acknowledge my presence. Does it matter? Depends on who you ask, I suppose. The non-greetings made me think of two people who are very close but never talk. Both will claim that the other never calls, but the phone lines go both ways, so who really isn’t calling who? I can go ahead and be upset that he didn’t say hello, but I didn’t address him either.

The real tragedy here is that I had glued myself back together, but the glue didn’t hold. I’m broken. Actually, it’s partly the glue and in some ways the reassembly. I’m pretty sure I dropped a few pieces of myself down the storm drain, and let’s be honest – who the fuck knows what to do when that happens? Call 3-1-1? Talk to the closest business owner? Ask a construction worker for help? I figure I’ll just let the rats have that bit of me. I’d rather be incomplete and creative than whole and dispassionate.

I spoke with Ian about it tonight.  “I’d say this whole thing has made you a much better writer, and shown people how well you can write,” he said. “Most people I know around your age and mine can hardly manage a complete and logical sentence most of the time, written or spoken.”

This seems a fine opportunity to make clear that this blog is not a diary.  At times I am altering my reality into what I hope is entertaining. It may seem more often dismal than blithe, but I am far from misery. (Those who know me best understand this to be true.) However lately, despondency has been dominating my life. I told Ian I was tired of feeling sad. “When these emotions come up, put them in writing, get them out of your head, and bury them on the page,” he said. “If people don’t like it, they don’t have to read it.”

Although I do hope you keep reading. I am confident that there is an audience for my bleak and ominous words. (My Grandma would be so proud. Morbidness runs in my family, I assure you.) Undoubtedly, there is always a public for macabre, sorrow, and all monstrosities of the human world. Hence why Mitchell and I finally got around to seeing Halloween 2 last night.

“I just don’t get why some people don’t like horror movies,” Mitchell was saying on the walk back to 14th Street. “Maybe the gore…”

“Obviously I agree. The horror movie genre is my absolute favorite,” I told him, as if he didn’t know that about me. “I guess I do understand how, like, when Michael Myers went into the strip club and bashed that stripper’s head into the mirror over and over again as she screamed until she finally died. Maybe that would disturb some people?”

“Maybe? I like that though, I think it’s entertaining,” he admitted.

I couldn’t agree more. “Me too,” I said, “me too.” Thank god I have Mitchell to go to movies with.

In conclusion, if anyone knows Rob Zombie, please let him know that I adore his films and would be honored to work for him, even if it entails mopping up fake blood on movie sets.  And I promise my next blog will be about something other than my stupid life, like the theremin.  I want to write about the theremin and lightning bugs, both of which I consider magical.

Since the break-up, I haven’t been the same.  I’ve obviously been writing more.  I drink a lot.  (I know, I know – how is that different from before?)  I wander down the streets aimlessly with my head down.  I stare at the walls in my apartment and think, what have I done? Even though it was one of the longest, greatest relationships I have ever experienced, I had to end it.  It gets a little easier every day.  Still, I don’t know if I will ever stop missing the great love that was cable television.

Without cable around, I have been spending more time with my DVD collection.  The other night I watched Faces of Death before I went to sleep, which resulted in some glorious zombie nightmares.  Upon waking, I felt immediately pleased with the adventures that my subconscious mind had created.  But last night when I watched Faces of Death III prior to bedtime, I was not so lucky.  Instead of a lovely dream where I was on the run from the living dead, my nightmares were more personal.

I remember two of them fairly well.  They both starred the boy who is quickly becoming the bane of my existence, yet at times I want nothing more than to hug him.  Figure that one out for me.

In the first dream, I drove to his apartment to drop something off.  (It was one of those mats given out by Top Shop in the VIP section at the McCarren Pool Parties last summer.)  My plan was to make the delivery and leave immediately to drive and visit my grandmother in Maine.  Even though my mind knew she was dead, in the dream I had spoken to her and she had told me to come.  He wouldn’t let me leave.  There was another girl at his apartment.  She wasn’t familiar to me and didn’t speak to me, but she saw me.  I felt insecure and confused.

My alarm went off.  There was no way I was getting out of bed on that note.  I adjusted my alarm clock to allow myself an additional hour of sleep.

Back in my dreams, I was hanging out with Kyle in the neighborhood.  We were outside of my apartment, and he was angry.  I had lost my phone and was searching through garbage and storm drains.  Kyle was yelling at me.  I decided to go by the bar and see if my phone was there.  I walked up to the door and pressed my face against the glass.  I saw that the boy was there, and so I didn’t want to go inside.  I remained watching while my thoughts became everything I didn’t want them to be – angry, resentful, and hateful.  I wasn’t sure if the boy saw me through the glare and it wasn’t a concern of mine either way, but I sensed that he did see me.  He knew I was there.  Finally, defeated by something undefinable, I walked back to my apartment.  Kyle had found my phone in a garbage can.

The alarm again.  I wasn’t feeling much better about things than I was an hour before, but I got up, got dressed, and went to work.

One of my biggest fears is commitment.

Besides recently, the last time I thought I might be able to tolerate someone enough to be in a relationship with them was the summer of 2007.

I met him at the bar by my house. I liked him and he liked me. It was easy.

One time when I was at his apartment, I noticed a shoebox by his bed full of letters. I didn’t read them, but I did notice that the return address was from a girl in his hometown. This was a bit curious to me. With all of the technology we have today, someone is still handwriting letters to him? And I assumed that he responded in the same manner. There was a young girl I had seen on his MySpace page while posting a comment. I thought maybe that was his pen-pal, a little cousin or something.

So the days went by and we existed quite happily. Then the time came for his band to go on tour. They were going to be gone for a week and a half, and they were going to pass through their hometown. The time apart could be good, I considered.

The band played a show to kick off the tour a few nights before they left. I met a lot of his friends. He came up to me at one point and said, “My friend asked me if you were my girlfriend.”

“Aw. We don’t have to talk about that now, right before you go on tour,” I told him. And so we didn’t, which was fine. Everything remained as it was – wonderful.

The plan was for him to get back from tour, and the next day leave with me to go visit my family. While he was gone, I received scattered text messages and phone calls assuring me that the shows were successful and that I was missed.

On the evening of their return, I was at the bar when he called and said that he was too tired to come and see me, and he was too exhausted to go visit my family the next day. The disappointment was consuming, but I told him that I understood and that I would see him when I returned three days later.

The day I got back, we decided to reunite at the party of a mutual friend. When I got there, he seemed strange. I figured that it was all in my head, that it was because we hadn’t seen each other in two weeks, and that once we were alone together everything would fall back into place.

We drank. He drank a lot. We went to a rooftop. He put his arms around me. He fell down the stairs. We went back to my apartment and he got sick. He sat on my sofa and I gave him the gift I got for him when I was away. We got into bed and turned out the lights.

That’s when he said, “I have to tell you something.”

Now? I thought. “Okay,” I said.

“When I was home,” he started, “one of my friends and I realized we were in love with each other.”

I remember going numb. I remember telling him that I was happy for him, happy he found someone to love. I remember him saying he was sorry. I remember telling him he should leave.

The girl ended up being the girl who wrote the letters. She was also the girl from his MySpace page. She was 19-years old. She came to visit him a few weeks later, and he took her on the same double date with his brother and his brother’s girlfriend that he had taken me on.

He moved back home to be with her by the end of 2007.

When I told him how I felt, my honesty was answered by him saying he didn’t know what he wanted. And silence. He assured me that he cared.

We don’t talk anymore.

I was at the bar by my house the other night, and I met a boy named Matt.  We were having a lovely conversation, and then…

“I have to leave.  I’m going to my friend Mike’s house for dinner,” I said.

“Why don’t you ditch your friend Mike and come to my apartment and make out with me?” Matt suggested.

“Does that really work on girls?  I just met you an hour ago.  I don’t make out with boys that I just met an hour ago,” I replied.

He looked shocked.  “Really?  You’re a prude.  I’ve given head to people I just met an hour ago.”

“Oh, well that’s really nice of you.  I don’t consider myself a prude.  But I’m still not going home with you,” I told him.

“You’re so cute,” he said.

“Thanks.”