Aftermath of a Partial Letdown.

I do feel that I get lonely sometimes, and I mean the kind of lonely one gets when they’re single and want that deep, intimate connection with someone. Some female that I can trust and share my secrets with, someone who can rely on me as much as I can rely on her, someone to hold as I sleep rather than hug a pillow, someone who compliments or compensates my character, as Carl Jung put it.

More often, however, I’m only incredibly horny, and that isn’t a good reason to get into a relationship. Or even date, perhaps. I’ve found that when one is horny enough and can’t bear to think of oneself as so primitive and shallow their private parts disguise their demands for sexual satisfaction as yearnings of the heart. As a consequence, I can’t even be entirely certain that when I feel lonely its truly loneliness; to the contrary, there is good reason to suspect that its just my dick’s last-ditch attempt to drive me towards the ol’ in-out via a false flag operation.

That may have been behind the whole Kara thing. And maybe that was truly what was behind me accepting Mary’s request for us to go out sometime and actually following through with it despite my isolationist tendencies and the ongoing global pandemic.

The evening I spent with her a few weeks back was nice enough, and I didn’t even manage to get my geographically-dyslexic ass lost on the way to her apartment. Actually, its her brother’s apartment, which he let both her and her daughter live in with him. It was a small but cozy place, and the only off-putting thing I eyed on the tour, or throughout the night for that matter, were two little Jesus pictures hung beside one another on the wall just behind the door.

I made the decision not to ask, but to pay close attention if she indicated any religious persuasion. And I tried to be conscious of my tendency to mock religion, as I didn’t want to offend her with any jokes poking fun at religion. I didn’t consider this self-censorship, either, so much as courtesey. If she asked me my angle on religion, I would oblige.

Later on in the night, in the midst of conversation, she referenced “getting right with god.” I held my tongue and let it bleed.

After the short tour, we ultimately rested our wary asses on the couch. The first member of her household — apartmenthold? — that I met was a little black cat named Spooky, who, unlike all other names in this blog that aren’t celebrities or political figures (fuck, is there a difference anymore?), I will not use a pseudonym for, because I fucking like the name. Spooky was a nice and delightfully weird little creature who occupied my attention throughout the night.

Next, her daughter came in, who I never really remember talking directly to me, but seemed sweet enough, and did occasionally laugh at things I said. Ultimately her brother arrived, who in some ways seemed like a more extroverted, motivated, and trusting form of myself. He seemed very giving, very welcoming, which I feel I might be like if not for the underlying suspicion and fear of being used or judged. He also had broadband empathy devoid of my fears of forgetting about my own emotions and being consumed by the other person’s.

If that makes sense.

He had all the good qualities I feel in me without the embittered obstructions I erect as a self defense mechanism, to put it another way. On top of that, he’s an excellent cook, but that came later. When he first came in, he was talking about the elderly landlord who wasn’t looking so good and had run out of his medication. He also hadn’t bought any food. So he had run some errands for him, but because he was tipsy he didn’t want to use the landlord’s car, so he did all the food shopping and whatnot on foot. As he told this story, he offered me a 24 of Bud Ice, which I gratefully accepted.

We had all been in the area just outside their apartment where they smoked when this incredibly skinny guy came in, and I quickly pieced together that he was the daughters boyfriend. While he certainly had a distinct feel about him in comparison to the other three, he fit in quite well with them: he was generous, trusting, welcoming. We smoked weed in the kitchen, where the brother began cooking.

The boyfriend had a lot of carts, but no vape pen, and I had my own pen in my bookbag in the truck. Sometimes I take a hit or two on break, as it tends to elevate my mood. I needed to offer it: they’d been so kind, and I had thus far only donated by awkward presence and cranberry juice for the vodka. I offered to go get it, and eventually I did. It was only on my way to car that I realized how moderately drunk and incredibly high I was. I got back and they passed it around. Talking a little, mostly listening, I couldn’t get over this group. Really. I liked them. All of them.

There was some talk of Gypsies among them in conversation, I believe regarding their family, which made me think of Hemlock Grove. It also made me remember a conversation Mary and I had had earlier while on the couch alone together, where we were talking about dogs and I mentioned a former collie my parents had had named Gypsy. She seemed to light up and told me how cool that was. It makes sense that they’d have some gypsy in them, too: they seem nomadic, very family-oriented, with true friends brought into the fold and considered to some degree as family.

At some point, as we were out smoking alone, she tells me how her ex-husband was schizophrenic. She didn’t know when they first marrued, but over the years it became painfully evident and she finally handed him the divorce papers. She had at least one live-in boyfriend before moving in with her brother, and it seems she — as with her brother and daughter — have been moving from state to state, town to town for most of their lives. To someone like me, who has lived in Ohio all throughout this life, I found that fascinating.

I waited till I was sober, gave her a hug, and headed out. Shortly before I did, I realized that though I really liked her, really liked her whole tribe, there was nothing there between her and I romantically, even sexually. Part of me did feel let down, and I immediately began to worry that she might feel differently. In either case, I had gained a really cool friend, if I could secure her as one, and a really cool friend who wed me to a circle of equally awesome people, but subsequent hangouts would never again be confused with dates.

She texted me back the next day and said that what she was really looking for right now was a friend, which was a profound relief. Even before the “date,” I had been driving myself nuts, as if it turned out I wasn’t interested, I didn’t know a kind way to express that to her.

Now, I realize this hardly constitutes trying in the realm of finding a girl, and in fact hardly constitutes dating, and that if a child were to give up after he’d fallen multiple times as he’s trying to walk on two feet, that kid would remain crawling on all fours for the rest of his life. But maybe that’s the wrong analogy. And even if its not, this “child” is 42 fucking years old.

If I could just get laid by a girl I find fascinating and attractive, no strings attached, and get all this out of my system after a sexless decade, perhaps I’d find that’s all it was. Just a biological impulse to scratch that instinctive itch. Or maybe, after I’d get it out of my system, I’d find that sex was only part of it, and while I need it, I also need something more.

Maybe maybe maybe. Maybe I’ll never get laid again, and I’ll have to pick up the mystery in my next incarnation.

Sometimes its hard for me to believe I’m a member of a social species.

Anne at the Gathering (2/5/21 Dream).

During the early evening today, at the tail end of a wicked hangover, I lay down on my bed and finally got some sleep, during which I had a dream.

I’m inside what seems to be a massive building, making my way towards a huge room where people are assembling for what appears to be a gathering or party of sorts. While I don’t know why I was invited, I find that Anne, my exgirlfriend from years ago, is here, and that at least some of them are evidently her friends and family. Anne hardly acknowledges my existence, which has been a feature of her in my dreams since we stopped talking shortly after the breakup a decade and a half or so ago. Her daughter, Allie, and I speak a little, however, and she seems like a cool kid. I accidentally call her by my little niece’s name at one point, I remember, then laughed, shook my head and corrected myself. Given I last saw Allie when she was five years old, I’m not confident she remembers me — she gives me no indication that she does and I don’t feel its right for me to bring it up.

Despite having little to no contact with Anne, I appear to be getting along fine with friends and family members of hers, none of which I remember having met within the context of the dream, and none of whom exist in real life. We’re talking and eating and I’m amazed at how well I’m getting along. At some point, someone walks out of a closet door with a plastic Trump mask on, evidently in an attempt to scare me.

At some later point, there was what seemed to be a murder somewhere in the building, perhaps in the same room as the party, though I couldn’t get the details through the crowd outside the door in the hallway.

I recall trying to get my cell phone where some of us left them, in the party room just beyond the door, and mistakenly grabbing the wrong one, and at least for a time utterly unable to find my own. It was during this period of looking for my phone when I came upon one guy who I think I also saw at the party. I don’t know if he took my phone or I accidentally took his and tried to return it, but in my interaction with him — if you could call it that, as he wouldn’t look at me, his head always hanging down, and seemed reluctant to say anything to me — it became abundantly clear that he was determined to be a total asshole.

All of a sudden we’re both at the fast food joint where I work. There are managers at the fryers up front and I’m walking away from them, alongside the tables that separate me from the kitchen, where I’m taking something which I think is a small table with wheels. I see the asshole in the kitchen, his head down like before, cleaning the area around the backline fryers with a rag. I say something to him and he offers another response, or perhaps a lack of one, that pisses me off.

“I don’t like you much, man,” I tell him.

“Well, I don’t like you, either,” he needlessly informs me, never glancing up or turning around as he continues cleaning with the rag.

“What’s your problem?”

“My uncle died,” he says.

“I feel sorry for you, man,” I say to him, “but I didn’t do it.” I look up at the managers around then, and one of them communicates with mouthed words and hand signals that I should drop whatever I need to off in kitchen and then get out of there.

So I do, and then I wake up.

Of Drive & Direction & Fucking Philadelphia (2/1/21 Dream).

“Sometimes
I feel the fear of
Uncertainty stinging clear
And I, I can’t help but ask myself
How much I’ll let the fear
Take the wheel and steer.”
— Incubus, Drive.

2/1/21

It felt as if it had been one of those busy dreams filled with activity I couldn’t remember. At some point I looked out the window of what seemed to be the second floor of my parent’s house and peered out at the various cars parked in the driveway turnaround, covered in snow from what I recall, none of which were my own — and then it hit me. A kind of terror crept up from inside me.

It was my car. I couldn’t remember where I’d left my car, and this localized amnesia bothered me to an extreme degree.

I asked my mother, who was nearby, where it was. She said it was parked outside of some building in Philadelphia. Confused, and apparently assuming I could rely on someone to take me there, I told her I needed a detailed map of how to get home from there. In response, my mother says nothing, just hands me a piece of paper and a pen, never providing me any directions at all.

On the ride there, with her and I both passengers, I think, I’m speaking to my mother about something, and though I don’t remember the subject I do recall that I was cussing wildly, being domineering, putting my foot down, talking over her, not even letting her get in a word edgewise, yelling at her at one point to “just get over it,” speaking to her in a manner that even I felt at the time to be cruel and unjustified.

I could feel her pain as I said these things, spoke this way to her, just as I assume I would in real life. I felt deeply, incredibly guilty for expressing all these rage-fuelled things to her — but for some reason stubbornly persisted in doing so.

It bothers me that I’ve now had another dream that seems to suggest that on some level my anger towards my mother remains. I like to think all that bullshit is behind us, water under the bridge, that I’ve forgiven her for treating me the way she did when I was a kid and that I’m grateful for all that help her and dad have given me, particularly in the last few years.

Still, as this dream reveals, some stubborn part of me clearly can’t let go, even after all these years. Vice grip on that too-old anger remains strong.

Then there’s the matter of the car. In my dreams, cars generally mean one of two things, at least as far as I can tell: they either reference my body or they reference my motivation or “drive” in life. Cars breaking down, smoking under the hood, getting flats or losing tires completely — these are recurring symbols in my dream life. Clearly, I have motivation issues, and these issues almost always come down to my anxiety. I don’t need dream recall to know that, but my dreams clearly feel that its necessary to hammer it in anyway.

So in this dream, I’ve yet again lost my car — lost my drive, in other words. And I needed to get my drive back in order to get “home,” which may suggest I need motivation in order to get where I want to be in life, either internally or externally.

The external has been on my mind quite a bit for some time, though this may also reference the internal. A day or two before this dream, I awoke from another busy dream I can’t remember where I was in charge of people, helping and directing them as some kind of authority. That was my sense, anyway. What amazed me was how I still felt for a short time after I awoke, the mood or state of being that carried over into my waking life like some kind of dream residue.

I felt like I had a stable, sturdy, independent, confident place within me — I wasn’t in this chaotic, raging storm state of flux that has become my psychological baseline. I had some ground within me to stand on that no one could take away. It was a weird yet awesome and beautiful feeling, and it was weird because it was so foreign to me. Its like I didn’t know what I was missing until I had it, albeit transiently, and only then could I see my former state, to which I promptly returned, for the chaotic, hellishly unstable state that it was. Given it was a recent dream, it may have been related.

To get back to my current dream, however, there is the matter of my car being parked outside a building in Philadelphia. As for what Philedelphia means, it beats the hell out of me. I’ve never been there, so far as I can recall, nor can I imagine why my unconscious would elect my car to be there — not my actual truck, mind you, but evidently the cursed car I previously owned.

My drive resides in a foreign place? Maybe thats the general message.

In the dream, I had to rely on others to get my drive back, however — as well as rely on my mother specifically for directions on how to get “home.” In other words, that dreaded dependence on others, always. And while the dream ended with me being a passenger, and presumably me hitching a ride back to my “drive,” I still had no bloody idea how to get “home” once I got it.

I find it curious what my mother did when I asked her for detailed directions on how to get home (after I apparently selfishly assumed they would drive me back to my car, which also bothered me): she handed me a pen and a blank piece of paper, yet said nothing. Gave me no sense of direction whatsoever, let alone the detailed directions I’d asked for.

It reminds me of another dream I had years ago. I hope I’m remembering it correctly. The relevant part of it involved this room in which there was this incredibly complex machine, one in the style of a Rube Goldberg machine. These kinds of machines are unnecessary complex contraptions that rely on chain reactions to do an incredibly simple task.

In the dream, I was using it in the vaguest way — to “find the answer.” In the end, the machine, from what I recall, spat out a plush puppy dog and a pen. Inside the plush dog, I found a small pad of paper. Or maybe it spat out the small pad of paper and the plush dog contained the pen. In either case, the result was the same as asking my mother for detailed directions in the current dream.

The message in the not-a-message, the answer in the not-an-answer? Its up to me. The answer lies within.

After this old dream, while still in that twilight state of consciousness, I asked the dark of my mind what the answer was. I saw my parents driveway from much the same perspective that I did in this current dream, only it was filled with black triangles. One triangle became prominent, and within it, it contained a spiral. Then a voice said, “The answer lies within.”

Evidently my mother communicated the same message: the answer lies within.

Figure it out for yourself.

So I’m just supposed to wing it? Not even my unconscious can provide a direction for me in life? That’s my answer — that’s still my answer, after all these fucking years?

I know I’m stuck in life. I know I don’t know how to get un-stuck. And I want to be independent, to make my way home, wherever that is — to make a home — but I’m still stuck here, lost and frustrated.

I don’t know what the fuck to do.

I know this is pathetic. And that I don’t want to be pathetic. And that its pathetic that I don’t know how to not be pathetic.

The answer lies within, I guess.

Chicken Gun (1/22 & 1/24/21 Dreams).

1/22/21

I’m running toward a building and this blond-haired little kid steps out from behind something, seemingly out of nowhere, and runs at me. I quickly run around him and he pretends that he’s shooting me. I dramatically act as if I were shot and he laughs, and the older maintenance guy that works mornings is nearby, but away from the building, and he’s laughing, too. Then the kid proudly announces that he shot me with what I think he called a “chicken gun,” which I repeated, laughing, amused at the cute little guy.

1/24/21

I’m watching television — some documentary, I think — when I suddenly see my face on the screen. It was an interview someone had had with me which I’d forgotten about, and I remembered having been excited, wanting to tell family and friends to watch it. As I watched it myself, however, I was uttey disgusted by the way I looked — old and sickly, almost freakish, with this loose, pale skin like the flesh of an uncooked chicken. I had very thin, sparse hair on top of my bald head and where my beard should be. Suddenly I became terrified at the thought of anyone seeing this.

Still No Setup For a Potential Letdown.

On the first day of the New Year, I kept waking up, eyes still closed, as I felt the lingering headache, and elected to do my best to descend into slumber again until the hangover fell away. When I finally gave up, I opened my eyes, reached for my phone, and checked my bank account on the off-chance that I actually got my stimulus check.

I’ll be damned. Somehow, I got it, and just in the nick of time. Now I won’t be struggling financially all week.

I should have been happier, but I was still sick over the circumstances the day prior — and I suppose credit should also be given to the alcohol consumption it inspired upon arriving home.

All week was like that — feeling like a piece of shit, that is. I didn’t drink for two days, and slowed down thereafter. I stopped watching porn for a few days, too. I thought to myself, as I have considered so many times before, that maybe I should just resign myself to sexless singlehood for the remainder of my days. At this age it has become obvious that I simply don’t know how to navigate this space. I could hurt someone else emotionally. In a frightening addition to that, even the smallest fuckups are emotionally devastating to me and potentially catastrophic to my life.

At work, Gillian has seemed fine, and had finally stopped teasing me, as would be expected. I sensed no discomfort from her around me, which makes me feel better, but I still get the sense that she thinks I’m angry at her and that this, and only this, is what truly bothers her. I’m so fucking confused. I sense her looking towards me sometimes, then confirm it in peripheral vision, and the vibe I get suggests doesn’t understand why I’m keeping my distance and avoiding eye contact. I still politely say hello as I used to and lend help when its requested, as I do with everyone, but I’m extremely cautious with her. I never even want to approximate that feeling I felt from her ever again. How can she not get it?

Ultimately, it took me eleven days to look at what I wrote on New Years Eve, edit it slightly, and post it, all the while still terrified that people who read it might think me an asshole. I still don’t know what I think about it myself.

Then there is Mary, the new girl, the one who seemed so strangely pleased to see me from the first day I met her. All throughout the week we’d make eye contact, mutually smile, and then wave to each other. On Thursday, a week after that horrible last day if 2020, I was doing fryers and decided to help them out by putting away a tray of food in the cabinet. She was nearby, and she turned to me.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Do you want to go out sometime?”

Wait, what?

“Fuck yeah,” is how I responded. Immediately she did that thing with her arm that people do, extending it and then bending it, drawing your fist towards her body in accompishment and She sort of whispered “yes!” She was surprisingly happy. I was entirely blown away — not only by her question, but her response to my response to it.

As she was leaving later on in the shift, she stopped by me and wrote her number on a little sheet of paper, but told me her phone probably wouldn’t be on until Saturday. We began texting Sunday and we’ve been texting ever since. The texts mostly involve her asking me questions, trying to get to know me, and with her telling me about herself.

She’s 47, five years older than me, which is in itself interesting. Originally from Minnestota, she’s been here in Ohio for the last eight years or so. Parents are deceased and she has six living siblings, one deceased. That’s a big fucking family. She was married for a decade, had five kids (again: big fucking family), and has been divorced for eighteen years. She decided to go back to school to be a veterinarian and shares my love for animals, the forest, and bodies of water. She seems introverted, likes to smoke cigarettes and reefer, and is allegedly a homebody — all which she shares with me. She currently lives within walking distance of work, where she lives with her brother, who is my age, and her youngest daughter.

We’re meeting up at her place tomorrow at six.

How quickly my tune changes. Back now, exploring this space I can’t navigate, though careful not to get my hopes up, as was the case with Kara. Terrified at the prospect of making a move, given the rare act that happened recently with a girl I’m not even attracted to. Trying to relax myself, telling myself that this is not a test I have to pass: just get to know her, see what happens. She seems cool, and you need this. You need to get out there. You need to give this a chance — without expectations. Without feeling pressure. Without worrying about everything.

Without being a pessimist, but still: without setting yourself up for a potential letdown.

All She Was Convinced You Were Not (The Worst Kind of Asshole).

1/1/21

Today’s incident made me think of when I first met Anne, back when we were still young teenagers. My cousins (particularly Maddy), who lived some distance away, wanted to get together with me outside of the holidays, which was really the only time I ever saw them. They were planning on bringing me and their Taekwondo teacher, if I remember correctly, to a waterpark, but the teacher fell through at the last minute. Instead, they brought their neighbor, this interesting and hot girl with auburn hair. For some time that day, as we all meandered around the park, it seemed as if the girl hated me, but all of a sudden something clicked. All I remember is that by the end of the day, we were laughing and hanging on each other, truly enjoying each other’s company. I couldn’t get over how much I liked this girl.

It didn’t take me long to sense Maddy’s jealousy, however: the attention Anne and I were giving each other made her feel as though we had betrayed her in some way, though she seemed to blame Anne more than I. The vibe of the day changed drastically, and rather abruptly, and Maddy is not one to bottle up her emotions for long before the inevitable explosion. The end result was a very emotional end to our water park excursion, one that made me feel incredibly guilty. On the way home, Maddy and Anne talked it out in the car. There were tears and apologies.

Maddy then changed her tune entirely. She wanted to set me up with her, so there was more of her jealousy and my resulting pangs of guilt when she discovered that Anne and I were already two steps ahead of her. Anne and I had began exchanging letters through the mail, though I was pretty bad about writing back at the same frequency. We spoke on the phone, too, and then we decided to go on a date. We hung out at the house, mostly in my room, and climbed a tree together out in the woods. There was a lot of nervous gazing on my part, from what I remember. Then we went to go see a movie.

When Maddy called a short time thereafter, she did so to give me Anne’s review of our date. According to Maddy, Anne, to my surprise, had actually had a good time, and said I acted “like a gentleman.” It was apparently unheard of in Anne’s life that she would go with a boy into his bedroom and he didn’t jump on her the moment the door behind them was closed.

Despite this five-star review — or rather because of it, strangely enough — I was a mess inside. She seemed to interpret my good behavior as meaning that I was a good person, but I knew the truth: I wanted to make out with her and so on, I was just too damned anxious to make a move, too fucking worried that I might feel those emotions of violation from her. I had to wonder: if it weren’t for my anxiety, would she have seen me as the typical male asshole? And more importantly, perhaps: would that assessment have been accurate?

Granted, I am nervous and withdrawn, and I always have been, but that’s not my central issue when it comes to women. My greatest fear is saying something or making a move on the Her in Question that ends up making her feel uncomfortable, even violated, particularly in the sexual way. That’s the last thing I would ever want to do, as I’ve always said and to this day stand by, and if I ever did so, I don’t know that I’d be able to live with myself. I would be, not just feel like, the worst kind of asshole.

So there’s this girl at work. Legal, but young, and she’s a flirt. Always waving. Getting my attention and then grabbing her boobs or slapping her ass. Giving me the sign for a blowjob. Saying dirty things to me. Always asking for hugs. Pinching or slapping my ass. At one point, as I was cleaning dining room and she was on register, she was constantly saying dirty things, so I stuck my face between the two, large sneeze guards and said, “You’ve got to quit teasing me.”

“Or what?” She said, teasingly. I sighed in frustration and walked away.

Within the week, as I was giving her a hug, she said something dirty to me. It turned me on and I instinctively grabbed an area at her side, sort of at her back, along her pantline. It was all I could do to stop myself from grabbing her ass.

“If you’re going for my ass,” she said all too eagerly, clearly anticipating my intent, “you’ll have to go lower.”

It should be known — and this doesn’t make me look better, I realize, but in fact far, far fucking worse — I’m not at all attracted to the girl. The attention she was giving me, the way she was teasing me, however, seemed like an advertizement, an open invitation I kept declining. But its been a long fucking time since I’ve experienced anything beyond a hug in terms of physical contact with a girl, and she kept advertising, kept suggesting that open invitation.

This isn’t an excuse, let me be clear, but it is a reason.

All of this culminated today. Today, New Years Eve of 2020, a shithole of a year that I hope ends at midnight, bringing the bright, new dawn of a new and far better year — but I’m sure as fuck not holding my breath. As the ball drops, as the clock turns, I’ll instead be in my third-story, one-bedroom apartment holding a cigarette instead, sipping from my can of Labatt Ice, hitting my vape pen or hitting my bowl, perhaps as I’m still writing this shitty fucking blog post about my stupid, mindless, perverse and unforgivable fucking behavior.

Our fast food joint was going to close at nine instead of eleven in the evening. As detail maintenance man, I have specific duties on particular days throughout the week, and on Thursdays, my duties are to clean the dining room. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, lobby has been either open for a few hours or, as it stands now, entirely closed to the public. Only drive-thru, curbside orders, or doordasholes. In short, there’s not much to do in lobby. So I’ve been trying to help my coworkers out the best I can by sweeping, taking out trash, and doing dishes.

Trying to inspire empathy and teamwork — two things I deeply feel this society so very desperately needs, and now more than ever in my current lifetime — by means of leading by example.

So I was doing dishes. She, the girl in question, came back to the dish-room and stockroom to gather sauce packets to feed the chicken nugget purchasers. She asked me for help and I obliged. I wish I could remember what she said specifically, but I can’t remember, but she said it after she asked for a hug and I obliged. And in response, I grabbed her ass. I grabbed two cheeks with both hands. She giggled and said, “stop,” though playfully, and I stopped immedeately.

Partially during that and partially afterward I felt from her the feeling I loathe, the feeling that is utter horror to me: that feeling of discomfort, violation. Following was that definite sense of having done something wrong. i exited the situation and resumed doing dishes. I still felt wrong. Had I done wrong? She came up to me once, twice more, asking for help with respect to where she could find things in the stock room, and I obliged. I made no further moves.

After sensing that from her, though, I should have asked if it made her feel uncomfortable. Violated. But I did not. She seemed different afterward, and that should have prompted me. I don’t think that would have excused my behavior in my eyes, and by no means am I proclaiming it should have, but its nonetheless an impulse I should have acted upon — particularly given the former, utterly insipid impulse I acted upon.

She said nothing. I went on my half-hour break, smoked a cigarette, and decided to call my parents. I wanted to call them on break as I didn’t know if they’d be awake at midnight and I didn’t want to disturb their sleep if that happened to be the case. Amidst my phone call, I see manager Steve walking from the building toward my truck, which was parked out by the dumpsters. Once he saw I was on the phone, he said he would talk to me later. That aroused my curiosity — and in the pit of my stomach, some concern, though I don’t believe I was connecting the dots at that point.

So I came back, clocked in, and started gathering trash — but then stopped for a moment as I walked passed the office. I needed to transfer my eight bucks in quarters and two dollars to a ten dollar bill. I wanted to buy beer on my way home and not use the twenty I had and I hate being one of those assholes that stands at the counter of a convenience store like Circle-K (or a fast food reseraunt, for that matter) who tries to buy something with change that the already stressed-out cashier has to take her or his time to count, holding up a potential line of people behind him. Steve’s son, the closing manager, said he was more than willing to exchange my change and two bucks for me, so I made the pit stop. Steve was also in the office, so I took the time to ask him what he had wanted from me on break.

Then he said her name. The girl in question. He said she came up to him and he didn’t believe her, he said, because he knows how I am with girls.

Had what I not known full fucking well what was coming, I certainly would have asked him: “What do you mean, exactly, ‘how I am with girls’?”

The way he phrased it hurt, but essentially he said that she said that I touched her. That it made her feel uncomfortable. That she might have provoked it, though he didn’t use those exact words, but that she was afraid to confront me because she thought I might get angry at her.

What the fuck.

“I did it,” I told him.

He seemed to shrug it off and then immediately told me how she had come up and grabbed his son’s dick one day recently. It was like nothing to him, and I’m fucking dying inside. Drowning.

I tried to ignore, bury, all I was feeling. I asked Steve if it was okay if I could go talk with her, and he said fine, that he told her I’d probably do so. I left the office and shortly thereafter asked if Steve could cover for her, as they were busy up front and I didn’t want to fuck them over in the process. He was cool with it. As cool and casual as I could, I went up front and asked her if she’d come with me for a minute, that Steve would cover for her. I was shaking, walking in that manner I walk when I’m anxious, and she followed me to the back of the store, into the break room. As soon as we were both in that doorless booth of a breakroom, I turned to her.

“Look, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. Honestly, that’s the last thing I wanted to do, and I’m sorry. I will never do that again.”

This is, I confess, a summary. I said “I’m sorry” at least three times. At the end, I asked if she accepted my apology. She seemed surprised, sympathetic, almost perplexed by the intensity of my reaction, which in turn confused the ever-living fuck out of me.

“Its okay,” she said.”You’re good.”

My next question felt deeply important, and I needed to ask it. “Do you accept my apology?”

“Yes,” she said, and I believed her, but to he honest, that didn’t make it all better. She didn’t want to confront me about the incident out of fear of angering me, so how more fearful might she be when put on the spot about accepting my pathetic apology?

We parted ways. She went back up front, I went back to do dishes, were my mind ate me whole, breaking me down, digesting me via guilt.

Dishes, dishes, I told myself: fixate on cleaning dishes. My external focus fell on cleaning the dishes, but my internal focus was absorbed in emotions. There are times when you invest your conscious mind in defeating those automatic negative thoughts, and there are times when you find yourself siding with the inner demons who utter those self-flagelating whispers into your inner ear. I was siding with my inner demons, but then a contrary voice erupted. There’s always a contrary voice.

“Relax,” it told me. “Stop thinking you’re a bad person, a pervert: the worst, worst kind of asshole. You’re just too sensitive. You take shit too seriously. This isn’t a big deal.”

“But it is a big deal,” I said more than once to myself. “You violated. This is the worst of the worst.”

Since my issues with Effexor XR, namely the withdrawal symptoms I experienced when I ran out of money and consequently had to stop taking it, I’ve had periods where suicide has come to mind. Not to the point that I feel confident I would go through with it, mind you, but certainly more intense that I had ever felt beforehand. Its been awhile since that self-destructive impulse has hit me so strong, but my period at the sink was intense.

I tried to pace the cigarette smoking. I have been doing so, as its going to be tough making it to the paycheck unless that measly $600 stimulus check kicks in. But I kept needing to go out to smoke, to stare at something on the pavement outside, to stare into nothing as my inner eyes gazed, scrutinized myself for his epic fucking stupidity. Letting the inner torture me.

You are a shallow fuck. You did wrong. You are the worst of the worst.

Why, for a solitary moment, would you think that that kind of thing was all right; that doing That was okay? Have you learned nothing? Are you this goddamn naive?

So just: go.

Go home, celebrate the new year. Drink your drink, smoke your smoke, increase your longstanding practice, your perfected art of punishing yourself. Contemplate and write your heart out: it doesn’t change what you did. It doesn’t hide who, what you are.

You fucking pig.

And she told Steve, who is traditionally both a liar and a motor mouth. He’s got something real to chew and spew: you don’t think this will get around? You could loose your job.

You’re already in a state of financial fuckery, struggling to get by: imagine, just imagine you lose your job over this, which is conceivably possible if it gets to the store manager.

Suicide. Dead inside. Make it so the outer matches the inner.

You’re a piece of shit. So fuck suicide. That’s mercy, and you deserve pain.

Live on, wayward wanderer. Suffer on.

You’re not who Anne thought you were. You’re no goddamn saint, not by far. You are the worst kind of asshole.

All she was convinced you were not.

No Setup for a Potential Letdown.

I think it was last week sometime that they held a few interviews at work in the lobby. Two of the girls, who’s faces I never saw that day, registered as potentially attractive, and one almost looked like Kara. The other, taller and skinnier, looked appealing as well.

I came in at some point thereafter and saw a girl being trained on back booth. I,immedeately recognized her as the aforementioned taller and skinnier girl. As I was collecting trash just after clocking in, I said hello to her quite blatantly and directly as I also said hello to her trainer. She looked at me directly in the eyes. Attractive eyes. I warned myself not to get too excited, as for all I know she may not be age-appropriate. Until I saw her later, without the mask, I didn’t realize she was older — which is to say around my age, even older than me.

For awhile that day, being the pervert I am, I occasionally looked her way, studying her like a goddamned creeper. The pigtails were cute and she had this curious habit of placing one hand behind her back. She had a cute butt, too; the kind that plumps out and down and under a bit at the bottom of the bottom, as if chiseled in such a way that instinctively inspires the hand to grab it.

And no, I did not, would not, as I am not that bold. Even if I was, I am too aware that this post-#metoo culture is not at all forgiving in this area.

And it is, after all, not my booty. If it were, I would not have developed the habit of simply putting one hand behind my back, but positioning that hand lower, below the base of my spine, where it would grip my own cheeks as a default mode.

Yes, I have problems.

It was Christmas Eve, and we were busy as hell, and when I knew I had to go passed the area of the back drive-thru booth, were she was being trained, I made an effort to say something to her in the hopes that it would open the lines of communication between us.

“You picked a hell of a day to start working here,” is what I went with, and we exchanged some friendly words, so it appeared to have worked.

I then did whatever it was I had to do or got whatever it was that I needed and had to go passed that area again. In doing so, I inadvertently brushed against one of the women training her. This was an elderly, obsese woman who I don’t know too well, though we’ve exchanged friendly words and she’s spilled to me more than once. I felt bad about it, so was quick to apologize.

“Sorry if I brushed passed you,” I said.

“That’s okay, I liked it,” she responded in what I took to be an only half-joking manner.

“All right,” I said in intentionally-exaggerated enthusiasm as I exited the area, “now we’re talkin’.” Laughter from her and the rest ensued.

For the rest of the day, there was murmerung, glances in my direction when I went by back booth. I felt the vibe of attention. Something secret, covert. Good, bad: I couldn’t tell. When I looked to see if anyone was looking at me from that area or attempted to subject the new girl to further analysis, I always found the big lady looking my way.

My sudden fear, from out of nowhere, was that the big lady took that as me flirting with her, that maybe I had misread the situation and had sent her the wrong signals given what I said. As a consequence, I avoided that area until I realized I was avoiding it out of fear of being awkward, which was itself making me feel awkward, so I faced that fear by deliberately walking passed them again — this time, making certain there was a clear, unobstructed path of entry and exit.

Sometime thereafter, I snuck out the back door in the stock room, crouched down against the wall, and lit a cigarette. In the process, I saw the side door to lobby open and the new girl step out. I didn’t want to overdo it by calling her out or approaching her, and anyway, I was feeling rather anxious at the moment. Best to avoid looking in that direction and pretend I didn’t notice her.

Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw her approaching my direction, and she said hey. Her mask was around her chin, but I can’t remember if she was smoking. In any case, I stood up and we began talking.

In the midst of our conversation, I learned that she has kids and had formerly worked at Gabes. She had to quit when her and her boyfriend didn’t work out, so she moved back in with her brother in town and picked up the job here. She had worked here before, she told me — 2016, she thinks — but she can’t remember how she left, which is to say if she put in her two weeks or walked out. At least, that was the story she was going with, but I sensed that she did indeed remember, and she knows she had walked out. Admitting that may gave prevented her from getting hired, that’s all. In the effort to make her feel better, assuming I was right, I told her I had essentially walked out of every job I’d ever had before managing to stay at this place for over a decade and a half.

At end of night, she came up to me and said she thought she remembered me from last time she worked here. She explained she had worked mornings doing prep, clearly trying to trigger some recollection, and I felt bad that I didn’t remember her. She seemed very happy, almost excited to be talking with me, and made some references to things that she said she’d tell me about some other time.

Maybe that vibe I’d felt earlier on in the day wasn’t from the big lady after all.

Even so, I’m not jumping to conclusions here. For some reason, people seem to enjoy talking to me, trusting me with things they have told few others, perhaps no one else at all — and this has happened with total strangers, too. I used to joke that I was a walking confessional with a pulse. People also tend to remember me when I can’t recall meeting them at all, despite having been told more than once that I have a fairly good memory. So I’m well aware that just because an attractive girl remembers me and likes talking with me does not mean she has any sexual or romantic interest in me.

Even if she does, I don’t know the girl yet. Maybe I’ll find I’m not interested in her, or that she’s not interested in me. So there’s no certainty here, just like everywhere else in my life. And I have no interest in setting myself up for another epic letdown.

Highs & Lows of an Isolationist Bastard.

I have had an extremely low people tolerance since as far back as I can remember, and I’ve always felt guilty about it. It doesn’t matter who the people in question are, either; if I’m around anyone long enough, I begin to feel drained. Not only that, but I feel a sensation akin to someone who is claustrophobic being pushed impossibly hard into a corner. The pressure is unbearable; the sense of discomfort, relentless. It’s like my soul is being crushed, like I’m suffocating, and if I don’t run away to the freedom of silence and solitude I might lose myself.

I need to reserve space and time when and where there is no need to attend to the needs of others or serve the interests of a person or a place I’m employed at. I need to be left alone in an environment that I control. An environment that is mine.

This is how I recharge my social batteries.

I’ve always been rather nocturnal, too, enjoying the alone time that comes when darkness falls. Before I began engaging in what I call “active insomnia” in my teens, where I would get up and do things until exhaustion hit, I was constantly a practitioner of “passive insomnia.” Though in bed with the lights off, with eyes open or closed, I was awake, thinking or daydreaming as a kid until I tired myself out. In my teens and twenties, I’d have the lights on and I’d read a book, watch a movie, write, engage in artwork, or just stare into space and think, think, think without interruption or distraction. Often I’d listen to some music, look at myself in the mirror, and lip sync, pretending I was the lead singer in a band.

Now? Now I either drink and smoke pot or vegitate before YouTube or Netflix. I used to be so much more productive in my solitude and I enjoyed it so much more. Of course, I was consistently thoroughly caffeinated, too, which probably, at least in part, explains that increased productivity.

In any case, this people-tolerance means that after an average work shift, I’m pretty much done with people. It sucks that I’ll refuse to hang out with friends I truly value or cancel plans I naively made with friends because, when the time comes, it turns out that I’d been around people in general too much and simply couldn’t take it anymore. And I know how impossible it is to get my frkends to understand this about me and to not take it personally. And I know it sounds like a lame excuse, but I honestly feel as though this is simply how I am, how I’m wired, and there’s not much I can do about it.

I’m introverted. I’m hypersensitive as hell. This is simply how I operate.

When I’ve tried to battle against this and hang out with friends anyway, I’ve been irritable, angry, downright ragey — that, or I just shut down, withdraw, inevitably leaving early or pressuring whoever took me there to take me the fuck home. On weekends, I’m always reluctant to go out as well, as I won’t have an opportunity to be alone for such a wonderful stretch of time for another week.

This has irritated friends, ruined friendships, and has certainly played a role in fucking up the rare intimate relations I might have with a girl. Anne understood this about me, anticipated and accepted when I wished to be alone, but I could feel it bothered her, and that made me feel guilty as fuck. It wasn’t her fault, of course; she was just doing her best to make us work. When she tossed around the idea of eventually moving in together, she said she knew we’d have to have a room or place I could have all too myself. Perhaps yet another reason I should have fought to hold onto her.

Any long-term, live-in relationship would require me having a study. That’s right: a study. Fuck the “man cave” bullshit.

I often wonder if I could ever make a true relationship work, being how I am, who I am, particularly given how long its been since I’ve actually tried. I’ve tried to write off the possibility entirely, but dreams and the unprompted meanderings of my waking mind seem persistent that the desire for intimacy with a woman is there, that its something I need, whether I like it or not.

Is it just my nature to constantly wage war with myself, are these extreme contradictions within me as immortal as they are persistent in their nagging, or could these opposing forces within me actually be reconciled?

Perils of Snowses.

On my way to work, it was about 50 degrees outside with heavy cloud cover, but there was good visibility, good road conditions. On my way home? It was in the mid-20s with relentless flurries of sky dandruf obscuring my vision as I treaded home along a long, dark stretch of road coated with a thick layer of slush and snow.

Fucking Ohio.

A white Christmas? Didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it. Anyway, that’s kind of Christmas-racist. A Winter wonderland? Nay, you snow-loving knaves, ’tis a frosty hellscape.

Despite driving in a truck with four-wheel drive, I didn’t exceed thirty miles an hour all the way home, trying to focus on the road and to keep breathing deeply and slowly in the attempt to keep the anxiety attack creeping up inside of me at bay. As is typical, I was also involuntarily thrust into the role of Snowses — a knock-off Moses of the slushy tundra, leading all the cars behind him all the not-at-all-merry way.

In the past, it has come down so hard that the snow was hypnotizing, akin to how it looked out the window of the Millinium Falcon when Han Solo made the jump to light speed in Star Wars. Even when I could see through the chaotic and entrancing mess of flakey white shit, the snow coated the ground so thick I couldn’t tell where the road ended and the land began — particularly given there were no tracks in front of me. I was plowing the path for those lined up behind me.

This time, at the very least, it wasn’t that extreme.

I was so focused on the road, so fixated on driving with extreme caution, however, that I didn’t even notice passing the two major roads that typically serve as signposts for my progress on my way home. Time seemed to disappear. When I saw myself approaching the bridge I drive under shortly before arriving home, I was honestly amazed.

When I finally got into my third-story, one-bedroon apartment, closed the door behind me, locked and bolted it, took of my shoes and grabbed a beer from the six pack I bought, I sat down and let myself exhale a profound sigh of relief. Like, yay. I didn’t die and stuff. Its Christmas Eve and I’m off for two days for the first time in two or three weeks.

And while it saddens me that I won’t see my family this year, at least I didn’t have to drive all the way to my parents house tonight. The distance between work and the apartment generated anxiety that exhausted me enough.

As was the case with Thanksgiving, my family is social distancing this year due to the virus that the majority, at least in my country of birth and current residence, don’t seem to be taking seriously enough and some epic dingbats continue to believe is as benign as the flu, or even a hoax. I’m not naming names — like, for instance, the name of a narcissistic douchebag that still thinks he’s going to serve a second term as the supposed leader of the allegedly free world — but I assure you, fine reader, such ignorant, unempathic, self-serving and delusional fuckfaces most certainly exist.

In any case, my parents are making food and generously bringing it to my two sisters and I, but given the weather, I won’t be seeing them until Saturday. I miss them and my sisters terribly, and I feel like dog shit that I haven’t bought any gifts or cards due to lack of money — despite my overtime.

I thought I’d be in the clear after this check, but I have increased insurance for the truck, I have to pay my phone bill, I have to pay my rent (since a new company took over my apartment complex and we no longer have the ten-day grace period we used to have, starting this fucking month) and I have a delinquent cable bill of two hundred bucks or so that I can’t pay with this check, either, because, well, rent and food and phone and insurance and gas to get to work to make more money that will vanish the moment I get it is higher on the hierarchy of importance.

Of course, I also just bought beer and cigarettes on my way home, but I need to try to enjoy my life to some degree lest I go utterly mad, and enjoyment has been a depleting element in my life as of late. Does this make Snowses a piece of shit?

This may indeed make Snowses a piece of shit.

In any case, he wishes the readers — or reader, or the nonexistent audience — a happy holiday, a happy zombie Jesus day, a happy whatever, nonetheless.

How Did He Do It?

I don’t know how he did it.

My father’s retired now, but he worked at a factory up until around 88, when we moved from the suburbs to a more rural area where my parents still live. That’s when he became a postal worker. Even when we were at the first house, he was always taking overtime, trying to make life better for his wife and three kids. He didn’t really like the job, and you could tell.

At the second house, I often remember him coming home, greeting us all, and then going upstairs to take a shower. He would often be up there for awhile, so on occasion I’d go check on him. I almost always found him, still in uniform, laying on his back on the made bed, having fallen asleep. He was always so goddamned exhausted.

I’m sure he wasn’t entirely thrilled working at the factory, either.

Despite this, mom always gave him shit. He was working too much, she said. He needed to spend more time with the kids, she said. Even then, I felt defensive regarding him. He was doing the best he could, giving it all he had, pushing himself to provide for us, and then he came home to a wife that tried to instill guilt in him over it. It infuriated me.

I work an hour or two overtime, I pick up an extra day at my shit job, and I feel miserable and raped of my free time, my freedom in general — yet I get to come home to a quiet, third-story, one-bedroom apartment where I live alone, no one there to nag me or kick me when I’m down, no one to guilt trip me — and still I find myself utterly loathing society and hating my life. I find myself needing to be alone, isolated from the world, to engage in my true passions.

So how the fuck did he do it?

The mindless minutae, the meaningless patterns, the mind-numbing redundancy: how did he survive psychologically all those years, all the way to retirement?