the diary of antoine roquentin

> Garbage – Queer
> Chemical Brothers – Let Forever Be
June 20, 2003: Today was kind of cool, I woke up at about one AM, but I didn’t try to go back to sleep. I wanted to read more on Atlas Shrugged (I’ve been reading it for months on end in Dad’s cheap-o 8pt font paperback), so I looked at my page in my small-print version, and found basically where I was in the big-print one I had gotten at Barnes & Noble, and read it for a long while. I came across this part that made me really question myself, I’m going to reprint it, let me get my book…okay…Hank Rearden and Fransisco d’Anconia are talking, and Hank said something about Fransisco portraying himself as a womanizer chasing after floozies. Fransisco replied “Well, the man who despises himselftries to gain self-esteem from sexual andventures–which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.” Hank asks him to elaborate. “[some people] think that your body creates a desire and makes a choice for you…they say that sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a man’s sexual choice is the result and the sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself….He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself,…The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strogest, the hardest to conquer–because only the possession of a heroine will give him the sense of an achievement, not the possesion of a brinless slut.” I think of some of the really disgusting (to me) people I’ve had *relations* with, and it makes me think that I have no self-esteem, in the deepest inner reaches of my mind. Well, from now on you have to have read Of Human Bondage, Atlas Shrugged, and listen to Nine Inch Nails, Orgy, and…eh who am I kidding, I’d better just stick to no sex until college. Anyway, while I’m grappling with the psychological and moral implications of this, I should continue with my narrative. Anyway, after reading Atlas Shrugged for a few hours, I picked up Of Human Bondage and read a few pages of the introduction by Gore Vidal. I think Philip’s club-foot represented his homosexuality, not his stutter. Cretins. I just love that book. Anyway, my mom came in and wanted something, then left. I retired to the basement a while later, with a stack of books and my CD player. I listened to CDs for a time, until I decided I was tired and went back to bed, to sleep until eight or nine. I got up, and had some toast for breakfast. I played Caesar III for a few hours, until Rose started bothering me. I was still in my PJs, so I walked her around the back yard for a bit. She wanted to go for a walk walk, and I wasn’t dressed for one, so I put her back inside. Luckily, my mom was back from her interview. I asked her whether we could walk to the beauty supply for my hair color and Lowes’ for a pot for Navarre (my tree seedling), she said yes, so I turned off Caesar III, and took a (lengthy, of course,) shower. I shaved the top half of my right leg like, above the knee. I don’t know why, I guess I like showers and any excuse to make them longer is never turned down. Anyway, I got ready and we walked Rose around the block first. Mom was getting damn annoying in her strange insistences on which streets to walk down (it’s our routine!) Dogs are animals, as in they adapt. Especially to not going down a certain street. Entry #10 on my who fucking gives a shit? list: dog walking routines. She kept making me walk faster and shit, I was like this isn’t a race, goddamnit. Bitch. Anyway, we got done with the walk, and my mom took a like, four hour nap (from walking the dog? wuss.), and I played Caesar III all the way through it. She woke up, and we never did go, because her boxes came and she bitched me out for eating pizza with no plate. Fuck her. I’ll eat pizza on a flying trapeze if I want to. Anyway, we never did go anywhere, but supposedly we’re going to the library (i.e. internet) tomorrow, I hope they let people use floppy disks, so I can post my posts I’ve been typing in this notepad document (or I could burn it on CD if they don’t). I think the latter seems more likely to succeed. Well, I’m a bit tired, I have the A/C blasting in my mom’s room (where the computer is) and I’m watchin the video for “Let Forever Be”, it’s so trippy. Anyway, I’m done with my post so I think I’ll get ready for bed (god, this one is like a page!).

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> Basement Jaxx – Yo-Yo
June 18, 2003: I woke up late, at about 10PM, and watched moronic sitcoms and early morning news all night until about six when Mom and Grandma were up. They had kind of a bit of an early breakfast, I think I had a waffle or something. I bugged my mom to do my hair the whole time, which she loathed. They told me that my aunt Gail and little cousin Alexis were coming to the house (in North Bergen) from their house in Mont-something I want to say Monticello, but I know that’s wrong. Anyway, I finally got Mom to do my hair, after an inexorably long wait while everyone had gone back to sleep. It turned out that the color we got wasn’t black enough, it kinda pissed me off, but it didn’t ravage my hair too bad so (I’m writing this on the 19th) today my mom and I are supposed to walk over to the beauty supply here and get black black. Anyway, Gail and 2 1/2 year old Alexis arrived, she didn’t seem too eager to talk to me, but Mom had told me she was shy. Gail was a bit surprised with my fashion change (I had shopped at Old Navy last time she’d seen me), but was still herself. I think we went somewhere–oh yeah, we went out to eat at this diner with this weird eclectic decor. Yes, my use of the word eclectic in this sentence equates to “random shit”, but I suppose “random old shit” would be their theme. But, I digress. People were staring more than usual, I thought it a bit strange, but I got this hella-yummy pastrami and swiss triple-decker sandwich that kept me occupied for a while. Alexis had fries and chicken nuggets, Gail had this weird thing called like–umm–gosh I don’t remember but the name was kind of French and it was french toast with cheese and ham on it, it looked yummy. Mom got a Greek salad, it looked a bit fetid. After late lunch, we journeyed to Barnes & Noble in Edgewater (NJ). They were building condos there like it was going out of style, there were only two hulking steel frames last time I was there, now there were six buildings, counting the ones that used to be frames, and four halfway-completed ones nearer to the waterfront. Anyway, we went into B&N, Alexis in tow. Mom, Gail, and Alexis went into the childrens’ book section, while I headed straight for Fiction/Literature. I picked up everything I loved, and ended up spending 74 bucks. I got a normal-print version of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” (it is absolutely huge), a volume of all of Franz Kafka’s stories (The Metamorphosis being one), a copy of The Scarlet Letter, a normal-print version of W. Somerset Maugham’s “Of Human Bondage” (huge as well), a copy of Slaughterhouse-five (I felt guilty about stealing one of the school’s copies), and a book of H.G. Wells’s stories (The Time Machine, The Island Of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and War Of The Worlds). I’d read every story in that book except The Invisible Man, I hope it’ll be good, I love all the others. Alexis seemed to be getting tired/cranky, so we started the voyage back home instead of going to any other stores. Unfortunately, Alexis had other ideas, she wanted to go to McDonalds and Old Navy, so we took her to the park to tire her out. It was kind of fun, but I was ravenously thirsty. But, then again, the swings never get old. They’ll still be fun when I’m seventy-five. Anyway, we went home, and I played Caesar III for hours on end. I conquered Syracusae! Barbarous Italians, Psha! Taste my legions. Anyway, after that, they were putting Alexis to bed (in my room, unfortunately, and I was hella-tired, so I grabbed a blanket from the cedar chest downstairs and crashed on the basement couch, with a pile of books surrounding it.

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June 16, 2003: Flipped through the channels for hours, caught a Seinfeld, a Just Shoot me, and later in the night a Beastmaster. God, the guy that plays Dar is so fucking hot. I wrote in the book I was using for an abbreviated journal “You know you’re going crazy when you’re watching BeastMaster at three AM simply because he’s scantily clad, ripped, hot, and you want his cock.” later in the night I added “You know you’re in a fugue state when you start picturing Dar and his “buddy” screwing in every scene. In the middle of the grinding silence of the night, I caught a short film program on Thirteen (New York/New Jersey’s PBS), it had this amazing film called “Why I don’t go to the movies”, written by Paul Karlin. Amazing doesn’t even begin to describe it. Then there was this really amusing one called “Invaders”. I felt like masturbating to the memory of Dar. Anyway, I flipped to the “news” after the great short films, and saw this cool program about a National Women’s Football League, it was so cool, that would be sports I would actually go to watch, they don’t get paid or anything, they just go and play because they love the game. After that, I watched the news on mute, and listened to music. I tuned in for a few “human interest”stories and whatnot, but mostly rocked out. In the morning, I ventured into the kitchen, and Grandma was up. We talked for a while, then I retired to my room, where I got tired and fell asleep early in the morning. I woke up late in the day, my mom was bugging me to help install this air conditioner, it was still light out, but Grandma and Grandpa said that we needed to wait until tomorrow. I stayed up all night flipping channels, hella-bored, listened to music for a while, wrote some poetry about the vapid media moguls, drank three diet cokes and had two mugs of tea to stay awake during the day.

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June 14, 2003: I woke the next morning about twenty minutes from checkout time. I freaked out and had a hell of a time finding everything I needed to brush my teeth, get dressed again, etc. I had the disturbing realization that on both of my boots, one side of each lace had been severed. It made donning them singularly impossible. Halfway to San Fransisco, however, I succeded in lacing them by using gum to seal the frayed ends of the severed laces. My mom was “tired” the whole way, and kept drinking this iced tea crap to try to stay awake. Hello, ever heard of COFFEE? But nevertheless, we got there in one piece. My impeccable sense of direction got us to the airport without a hitch. San Fransisco was particularly beautiful that day, it was completely sunny and all the buildings were pastel colors, I just wanted to live there forever. Anyway, we sort of took a wrong turn at the airport, but we just kept going and found where we needed to go after all. We got to the car return place, and cleaned out all our stuff from the car. We succeeded in fitting 200 pounds of stuff into a 100 pound bag (no, not literally, of course, but we still should have gotten the Nobel Prize in suitcase-stuffing. We loaded up two luggage carts with our stuff and Rose’s kennel (with her inside it) and headed off to the AirTran, San Fransisco International’s inter-terminal transport system. It’s basically a computer-driven monorail that circles the terminals. We got on at the parking garage, and circled to Terminal Three. The AirTran was very futuristic, with all the computer-generated “doors opening”s and “now approaching terminal two”s. We got to the right terminal, and rode the elevator one at a time down to the terminal level from the AirTran level. We met my uncle Jim there, and we had brunch in the International terminal. They had chinese something and I had Thai pizza. It was a different experience. It tasted exactly like pad thai, but it was pizza. May I reiterate: weird. “James” was called by one of his friends during our brunch, and he described my fashion and hair to his friend while he thought I was busily listening to my Discman. We then went through security (I was wearing my boots, so I had to whip them off. I thought they might give me crap about Navarre (my tree seedling) but they didn’t. As I made fun of my mother’s (lack of) intelligence one more time, she got all mad and stormed off and left me. I went and scouted out an empty bench. While sitting there, I noticed this amazingly hot guy walking up and down the terminal. Immediately I popped in my Closer To God CD, with NIN’s “Closer” as the first track. Absorbed in sexual fantasies, the time passed quickly. He had shoulder-length, slicked-back black hair, a black trenchcoat, black pants and skater shoes, and a guitar case. Label: Suffering artist/goth/hippie/skater/ maybe stoner. Well, he was delicious, and in my absorbtion with him I almost missed the announcement that the gate was changed from 72 to 73 or something like that. I had to go ask my mom whether we were checked in, and she said yes. While I did that, someone stole my seat. That pissed me off, so I staked out one side of one of the support pillars until they started boarding. Listening to Deftones’ “Change”, I entered the boarding line when my “seating area” was called. The hottie was right behind me! AHHHH!!!!! I could have died, but like, up close he wasn’t as hot, I got glimpses from a few reflective surfaces around the terminal and the jetway. I hadn’t seen my mom boarding or anything, but as I approached row 16, there she was. I was sitting right beside her. Oh well. She had wanted the mp3 player earlier, and I had said “fifteen minutes” because Mr. Hottie’s struts up and down the terminal had to be to “Closer”, or else the sexual fantasies wouldn’t have been as vivid. She asked me about the player, and I replied quite simply that she had never come back and asked for it. She obvously thought that I should have returned it after the fifteen minutes. I’m not her motherfucking butler, if she wanted it, she should have come back over and asked for it. Anyway, I started to go krazy around the third hour of the six-hour flight.

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