the diary of antoine roquentin

Of me riding my scooter.

Taken by Annie.

Categories: Ennui

Must.

Go to sleep.

Before I kill all these stupid fake-ass fags on MySpace and DList fall asleep at the computer.

Categories: Ennui

Oh my God. Annie and I had the most incredible Valentine’s Day ever!

OK, let me start by saying that everything they say about driving a two-wheeled vechicle is SO TRUE. It is SO fun! On Friday I drove my Metro to work. I even took Fair Oaks, and it wasn’t tremendously scary. It was so incredible… at this one stoplight this guy on a motorcycle sort of pulled up next to me through the traffic and gave me like, a nod. I was like…oh my god! It’s so weird… it’s like we’re members of this weird subculture that the whole world ignores. I don’t know. All I know is that I’m completely hooked.

My coworkers loved the scooter and thought it was ridiculously cute. After work, I drove around downtown rather aimlessly until Annie called me. We had been texting earlier in the day about me going over and fixing her computer, so we met at the downtown mall and had Jamba Juice. She loved my scooter too. I accompanied her to her bus stop and we talked for an hour or so about our crazy exes :). Eventually, I went ahead to her apartment in West Sacramento and she caught up on the bus. I tried to hackz0r her computer that had been locked out by some odd malware, but it was beyond my powers to fix (without any software at my disposal).

We got ready to go out, and I walked her to the bus stop. After her bus came, I met her on my scooter at Old Ironsides, a bar downtown where there was supposed to be an open mic night. We were talking on the phone when I parked in front of Old Ironsides. Annie said that she was right there, but she couldn’t see me. I kept walking closer, and she still couldn’t see me, so I ran right at her and screamed and freaked her out! It was SO funny though, we couldn’t stop laughing. Unfortunately, because it was Valentine’s Day, it was “couples crooning” night at Old Ironsides. Lame.

So, plan B was to hit up Club 21. We did this thing of me waiting with her at the bus stop, and then following her bus on my scooter, as (1) I didn’t have another helmet, and (2) the owner’s manual says you’re not supposed to carry more than 270 pounds (two people, specifically)…and I think we would have been a bit over. Waiting for the 30 on J Street, we ended up running into this extremely cute coworker of Annie’s who absolutely loved my scooter too. We were talking about wanting vintage Vespas but not being able to afford it. After he left, Annie and I kept talking about our crazy exes…and oddly enough, her girlfriend in Spain had a lot in common with Adrian. Well, the common thread was that they both didn’t want to work…ever.

By the time we got to 21st Street, we were starving so we hit up Hot Rod’s…which, despite being a sort of cool place, I generally avoid due to all of the very high-level fags that frequent the place. You all know who I’m talking about…the recreational meth-using group-sex-having Midtown crowd. That is one crowd I hope to never fall into. But I was with Annie, so we made the place cool. We had sandwiches and fried mushrooms, and talked at length about everything… mainly about relationships and friendships, the kind of people were attracted to, etc. During our stay there, Christen called and said that she was sick. We were Hello looking forward to her coming, but we agreed that she should get better and that we should have a movie night the next day. We were disappointed that she couldn’t come, but also at rather complicated things because Annie didn’t bring her bike and she was sort of counting on Christen to give her a ride home.

After a while we walked over to the club. When I parked, we had stowed our coats, sweaters, jackets, etc. in my scooter so we were very cold! I was in a white t-shirt, my scarf, tight black pants, and my retro Nikes. I’m sure I looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. We went into the club and scoped out the dance floor. There was a twenty-something Asian guy with bad skin gyrating like it was going out of style, and the usual Club 21 riffraff…the Ghetto Fags, the Skater Lesbians, the Abercrombie bois… but the place was really empty for it being ten though. Lately I am of the opinion that people that go to clubs to find people have sex with are too ugly to find sex partners through normal channels (friends, the Internet, etc.). Or maybe I just really notice people with bad skin…it was hella an Edward James Olmos night. Anyway, me and Annie danced for a while, having so much fun! They were actually playing relatively good music… some Gwen Stefani and, of course, that retarded “gasolina” song. I just kept praying they wouldn’t play the 45 minute long mix of “Don’t ‘Cha.”

We had great fun between dancing and retiring to the bar area (and outside, when we were too hot) to talk. I showed Annie pictures of Taggart, Scott, and me with long hair on my smartphone while we talked. Patrick called me when we were outside and I gave him the short version of the night’s events. We ended up buying dollar water (Annie thought this was outrageous, but I remember paying five dollars for water in some other venue) and talking until about midnight. The music wasn’t really that great, so we just decided to leave because I had class the next day.

So. Annie really had no way to get home save for walking (a LONG ways), and I had been joking about her riding on the back of my scooter of all night, so we just decided to bite the bullet and see if it would work. We both climbed on, and even though we both thought that it would end up looking incredibly Charley Chaplinesque, we were able to manage it. It took a lot more time to stop, and when stopped we were a bit unsteady, but it worked. So, we were driving along West Capitol and we came to a stoplight. On the scooter, stoplights are really weird. Some of them will detect you instantly and turn the light, others won’t detect you at all and you just have to run them. So I waited a good 10 minutes and the thing wasn’t changing even though there were no other cars. Right when I was going to just turn right on the red and loop through a parking lot, a cop stopped at the light across from us. I was freaked out, because Annie didn’t have a helmet (hella illegal!). She was all hiding behind me, and a cop went through the intersection without a hitch. I turn right, and was going to a different way to her house then I normally go, when I realized there was a car following us.

Yes. It was the cop. I could tell because beside the beam of the headlight there was that odd grille that I think they use to pop people’s tires or something. I turned on Annie’s street and right then the spotlight came on and he pulled us over. I was FREAKING OUT. After buying the scooter, I have NO money. At all. I am praying that I don’t get an overdraft before I get paid next Friday. So yeah, the writing of the ticket, the shame is all flashing through my head. I get off, turn off the scooter, and he starts asking questions. “What does she have that you don’t have?” he says. We were literally across the street from Annie’s house, so we gave him our sob story about being stranded downtown and guess what? He actually let us go! I was SO relieved.

We went into Annie’s house and had tea and watched the beginning of this great movie from the thirties, and then we said our goodbyes: *hug* “Best Valentine’s day EVER!” and I was off into the night.

I couldn’t wait to ride down Fair Oaks at night. I don’t know what it is about that street. I fucking love that street! There are trees down the middle of it and it just seems really cool. I can’t explain. Anyway, as I was driving down J Street toward Carmichael, at around 40th, this car comes up next to me. All of its windows are down and these guys are screaming out the window at me: “MY FRIEND WANTS TO KNOW HOW HAIRY YOUR COCK IS!” they yell. Laughing, I flip up my visor and yell back “Medium!” They screamed at me more, imploring me to go to their house and do a whole bunch of drugs, but I just laughed and put my visor back down. I thought they might edge into my lane or something (I ran a red light to gain a lead on them), but they didn’t do anything bad, and they turned off at CSUS. As soon as I got home, I called Annie to let her know that I had gotten home all right (and the story about the guys in the car) and then fell right asleep.

So that was my Valentine’s Day. Incredible, isn’t it?

Categories: Ennui

It’s around one in the morning and I have this splitting headache.

It is made worse by staring at this screen, but I want to say something.

I feel like I’ve been hiding from my feelings. I have sort of written Adrian out of my life, and he did have an impact on me. I’ve been having a lot of dreams where I’m cuddling with my exes during the time when we were so in love…maybe it’s that V-day is approaching, but still…I mean, all the people that you’ve loved so deeply and wanted to spend the rest of your life with and they just turn out to be insane assholes…what’s the point?

I can’t even imagine the kind of guy I’d like to be with right now.

I’ve been feeling oddly sentimental about Patrick lately…we talk a lot lately. Well, we always talked a lot. Did I mention he’s coming to visit in a few months? I know this is the refrain of everyone, but I just want to snuggle up next to someone.

Someone who isn’t so…Byzantine about sex. I’m sorry, guys, but sex is a big part of any relationship. Without that component, it all falls apart. An ex of mine who will remain unnamed was just so…well…Catholic about sex. It was never about discovering what gave each other pleasure, it was about guilt. Everything had to be about guilt. And about that he was better than me for not watching porn. Every guy that thinks that they are cultured for eschewing video porn for nifty.org (text-based) porn is pretentious. To everybody in the fucking world, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that guilt didn’t turn me on. I’m sorry that I enjoy being spontaneous and honest about what I want to do. I don’t think talking about sex should be taboo. He did. And fuck that.

I guess I just can’t say this enough. For all my “fuck Adrian” mask, there’s a part of me that loves him so deeply I would almost give anything to be with him again. I know, I know…you all know he’s insane. I mean, God…I’m so embarrassed for the Chico incident, the Kelly’s house incident (I’d lost count of those), the Naked Coffee incident….

God, my brain feels like it’s being stabbed with a million needles through my eyes. I just turned the contrast and brightness all the way down on my monitor, that helps a bit. Still…fuck. I don’t know what to say. I feel like I’ve completely shut down emotionally…I can’t respond to e-mails, I can’t do my homework…all I can do is hang out with Christen and pretend that my life is peachy keen when I think that I’ve been sublimating my despair. I always imagined myself crying my eyes out for him, calling and begging him to come back to me, but I’ve transcended that. All I can feel is contempt and loneliness.

I just don’t know what it’s like to be him…adopting all his history it’s hard being me. I mean, doesn’t he wake up every morning (and I can picture this clear as crystal) and just say “woo, how can I be the most crazy today?” I mean, I would think I was the crazy one if everyone I knew didn’t agree with me. God, I have stories. He’s the master of reverse psychology…it’s just a subset of his customer service mind games…I don’t think he does any of it intentionally, though. The day I do believe that is the day that I lose faith in the entire human endeavor.

I’m humiliated and I am shamed. But still. I was wearing this pair of pants that I sort of adopted from him and it just flashed in my mind how good he looked in them and this trip that we took to Ansel Hoffman park when he was wearing them and I just wanted to kill myself.

Six months with him…what did I get? What am I now?

I don’t know how to finish college. I don’t know how to live. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for my higher education without taking out loans.

This week I was considering becoming a community college dropout. Do a bunch of drugs, fall into the club scene of booze and sex and HIV…but that’s not me. It never will be. I just don’t understand how the whole world just goes on fucking and drinking and snorting and shooting up and going to boring jobs day after day after day.

I feel like my life is slipping by. I’ve been in Sacramento for six months. What the fuck do I have to show for it? I haven’t made any friends here…if anything I have less friends here than when I started. Christen is the only person I hang out with any more. I have no idea what to say to Kelly and even less of an idea what to say to Becky. I see her online all the time, but I just…don’t know. I feel like I can’t relate to Kelly or Becky any more. That the person that I once knew is somewhere deep inside the skin…under a cocoon. But I must look the very same to them. What is there to talk about in my life? We’re all so busy…I just can’t remember the last time I was happy that didn’t involve Christen or Patrick.

Okay, it’s one and my head is pounding so I’m going to do a “drunk text” and just spill the beans: I’m sort of in love with Patrick. I know, I know, you say, you only met him once for like five minues…but still. He’s been there for me…more than anyone. I don’t really know why I like him so much. We just…get along, which is more than I could ever say for anyone I’ve dated. For the past few weeks, when I’m falling asleep, I just imagine him holding me, and everything just sort of feels all right.

*takes two more ibuprofen*

I just miss being loved and having someone to do nice things for. Doing romantic things for Adrian just seemed like a rediculous proposition. There was no telling what kind of a mood he’d be in and I would probably just end up crying. He used that once in an argument we had. He said that Hannah/Nick was a better person than me because he would never expect to wake up to breakfast in bed from me or something like that. Hannah would usually give Adrian a few hundred bucks whenever she came through town, so that might have tipped the scales a bit. I don’t know why I feel the need to re-hash all of this. The tidy way to sew all this bullshit up into a neat and tidy little package sealed with a bow is to just say that Adrian is crazy. Which is, of couse, true…but that’s not the whole story. He’s as loving, charming, and giving as he is malicious, hurtful, and needy. The crucial difference between him and everybody else is that he’s nice only about forty percent of the time. And even during that forty percent, you can’t tell whether he’s being sarcastic or not.

I’ve been watching Firefly all night…

and I need to go to sleep

I guess what I’m trying to say is…

falling in love with part of a person is more hurtful than hating all of a person.

And I am feeling SO lonely lately.

And that I’m stagnant.

I just need to get some sleep, that’s all.

Did I tell you I got Hello Kitty band-aids at Target? That’s the only good news of the night. Oh yeah, and I did my taxes. And cleaned my room and clothes. But those are only temporary victories.

What I need victory over is the nothingness of my life.

The Nausea.

Categories: Ennui

This weekend was sort of a blur. Well, aren’t they all?

I hung out at Christen’s house almost all weekend… and I didn’t get much of anything done except for writing out a whole bunch of valentines. Well, I only wrote out like three of them, but I made them all adorable and customized.

I would have written out more, but I’ve realized that I don’t have anyone’s address (for adorable valentines, email me your snail-mail address at arthur at arthur dot net).

I’m feeling a sort of odd ennui today. I cleaned up my room (I got a cool stainless steel letter holder thing at Target), I’m washing my clothes, and feel rather productive… but it is undeserved. I’m a chapter in a half behind my math class, and I’m going to have to drop it Monday unless I catch up, because we have a huge test on Tuesday.

I keep listening to this retarded dance song by Fedde Le Gran, but it’s too repetitive to get it out of my head. Maybe I’ll try to listen to some ATB.

I posted another ad for my car… maybe I will get some bites.

Me and Christen watched Pink Flamingoes last night, it was her first time seeing it and she totally loved it! I just feel like I have some kind of deep bond with people that can laugh at such a disturbing movie ;).

Other than that, I just really have no idea what I’m doing with my life. How much time have I spent trying to get my act together down here? Six months?

The world as I knew it is over. I need to get shit done. I need to always catch the early bus. I need to catch up in my math class (impossible).

And for some damn reason my phone isn’t getting service at my house. Grr!

All right, I need to go for a jog. I’m too stressed out.

Categories: Ennui