the diary of antoine roquentin

I should be doing my homework, but as usual, here I sit doing random tech tasks.

I’m totally fed up with how slow and terrible my phone has been acting lately, so I’m going to completely flash the firmware.

I used the little utility in Windows Mobile that supposedly clears out all the system files and restores it to default, but since this operating system is built on Windows CE (all of the system files still say Windows CE), and that only branched off of the main Windows build in 1997, I really doubt that it can fix itself.

I’m even going to format the storage card for good measure. And if this does not make it stop crashing and being UBERslow, I’m just going to bite the bullet, spend $250, sign the two-year contract, and get my damn BlackBerry. At least it has a damn flash on the camera.

I downloaded the pictures from my phone and I realized that I haven’t done that in a very long time. I had a bunch of pictures from the Folsom Street Fair that I went to with Megan and Steve:

Megan and Bell :)

When do you ever see ads like this IRL?

Jesus dildos.

You can’t see it well, but that’s Kelly (Liam Lynch) of “Shoes” fame.

Megan being a mannequin in her amazing dress.

These are from when I partied at Brian’s house with Jake and Brian’s mom:

Brian’s cute kitty.

Random pic of Christen being hot and pumping gas.

And some from when Terry and I went shopping at Macy’s last week.

Terry and I being hawt in the dressing room.

I.N.C. Clothes for the 1960s businesswoman.

From when Terry, Christen, and I went and hung out on top of the Macy’s parking garage for a few hours this week.

Categories: Ennui

I had the worst day today.

Missed my math class

Missed my geology class

Missed meeting Amanda at this comedy club, I couldn’t find it and she wasn’t answering her phone.

Almost got killed multiple times while driving.

Was freezing cold all day.

Fuck.

At least I got to have a cute snuggle session with Terry. The only good thing about today. God. It’s midnight, and I’m going to sleep. Tomorrow had better rock. I’m done with today.

October 10, 2007, you are dead to me. You hear me? Dead!

(I think I did ok on my geology test notwithstanding)

And I saw a GLORY HOLE in the American River College bathroom nearest my geology class. I wish I had a pic, but there was a guy in the other stall. It’s kind of hard to whip out a camera in the bathroom without getting some looks.

I’m excited about getting a BlackBerry Curve, even though I have absolutely no money to get one. My mom said she’d give me some birthday money (mark your calendars, it’s November 18) :P but I’m going to put a button on the sidebar where you can donate to my hosting. I can’t take any of the money out in cash, it all goes to the wonderful servergnomes at Dreamhost who make all this blogginess possible.

Hosting is about $120 a year, and it’s due all at once in December, so…yeah, birthday hosting! I made a funny graphic that displays once you donate…I was bored. lol

Anyway, after a few weeks of nothingness, I fixed my iPod…which is kind of awesome. Well I’m about to call Brian, I’ll be on later.

Categories: Ennui

I’m hanging out in the garage.

It’s really cold, but I’ve got Goldfrapp so it’s OK. I’m instant messaging with an old friend of a friend from Crescent City.

I’m down here because I don’t want my grandma listening into my voice-recognition sessions. I don’t know… maybe she can hear from me all the way out here, but I doubt it. At least I won’t be as egregious.

I did a whole bunch of math today… and I also was messing with my wireless router. My Internet has been really weird and fuzzy lately. For some reason I get 50% signal in my room (maybe three meters from the router), but on the complete other side of the house where I am now (four times the distance, and through more walls) I also get 52% signal. It makes absolutely no sense.

But I guess I shouldn’t complain. I repositioned the router so that it is very high up so the radio waves will flow down with gravity to me. I was even considering making a parabolic antenna, but I had a feeling that that was more due to my desire to not do my algebra then an actual desire to increase my WiFi signal.

So… Terry.

I put on Black Cherry so that I could more adequately write what happened…but as usual, this album seems composed of half remembered fragments of happy, loving memories.

I guess it’s not really appropriate. It was appropriate for when we met up. I told him that I missed him, and he missed me too. I made him couscous. We walked around McKinley Park for a while, had coffee at Infusion, and ate at Capitol Garage. I’m sure you all know how awkward it is to be around someone they’ve been so intimate with.

You want to just fall into the old routine… I wanted to kiss him so much.

Emotions are such strange things. They boil and curdle at the drop of a hat. When we were together, I wanted so much for it to be over, to be done with his tawdry music, the jejune outfits, and lack of sex.

But after it was all gone, the idea of never seeing his face again made me want to die.

I don’t know what made the shift so dramatic. The idea that I had hurt him? The idea that I needed him in my life? Or just the “idea” that I had in my mind of this perfect boyfriend that I had met on the most wonderful vacation of my life?

I try to wrap my brain to find out the reason why I like him. The reason that I don’t think that we are over yet. But I still come up with nothing other than the image of his face, and the desire for him to be near me again. I don’t really deserve it. But I still don’t know what he wants.

He was complaining today about all these guys wanting to have sex with him, but I mean, I would be lying if I said that I didn’t desperately want to have sex with him too.

I guess I just don’t know what this capital-T trait is that he is saying is so important. He doesn’t want people to want him for sex, but… what is he? I mean, he knows a lot about computers, and he wants to get a degree in nanotechnology. I guess it’s not nanotechnology any more, it’s something about chemistry. But that isn’t “him.”

I mean, he makes fun of all these minorities and stereotypical gay guys, and yet he does a lot of the same things. Megan suggested that maybe he is not okay with himself. I think I agree with that, the internalized self-hate of others. I don’t think that he has a consistent identity. I mean, he wears the Abercrombie stuff that doesn’t really fit in with that group either by his own choice. Maybe it’s just that I can’t find a convenient box for him.

It’s a terrifying fact, but people probably wouldn’t talk to him if he wasn’t cute. People probably wouldn’t talk to me if I wasn’t cute either. But then again, I put my ugliest picture as my main pic on MySpace. It has dramatically reduced the amount of people that message me. I wish he wouldn’t talk about all the guys that want to fuck him. He would always talk about wanting to “share things” with me and that I would reject them. And what I wanted to say was “As long as they don’t involve other guys’ cocks, I’m fine with it.” The Craigslist thing. I just don’t get it. He is completely “done” with webcam sex. Well that’s something I want to share with him. I feel like he treats sex as this holy thing that has to be meaningful and loving…and yes, it can be, but most of the time, I want to have fun with him. I don’t want sex to be this big, monolithic THING. I want us to be flirty and sexual. Patrick knows what I’m talking about. I want someone that will try new things and experiment…I dunno. I think a lot of my sexual dissatisfaction was tied to the fact that our relationship was in a downward spiral from the first fight.

I really admire Chris, that guy from Davis… the first time I met him in real life, I commented that he looked 10 times better in person than he did in his pictures. To which he replied “well, I don’t want people messaging me for my pictures.” I do get a clear sense of “him” from his MySpace. Terry, not so much.

I don’t quite know what to make of Chris… Terry hates him, and so did Mario (strange). I don’t know… I guess I admire him in that kind of way that you can admire somebody who has a sort of black-and-white morality. I mean, he says that he just doesn’t date people, but he’s twice my age and according to Mario, he has already dated everyone in the Davis area. I mean, we gone to some pretty heated discussions (and we have nearly identical viewpoints) about politics, I can’t imagine what kind of fights he would be able to cook up.

But that’s beside the point.

I need to be talking about Terry. So after we got together for coffee we talked online and he asked me if I wanted to date him again. And I gave him a long answer, something about wanting to be friends with him again before we rush into anything. And for a moment there, it felt like when we first met. Before all of our expectations were thrown asunder. I don’t know, I feel like he’s different now. Like we both know what we expect. And I am not moved to hold my tongue as much. If I want to say “God, you are such a stereotypical gay guy” I can just say it (we are all sterotypical to some extent) and it doesn’t fester and make me want to die. And if I want to say “Cuddle me, betch!” I’m more likely to say that too.

I do feel like he would be better suited by someone more… how shall we say it… “gay”. I don’t know, maybe that perception is just based on my reaction to his current style. He was talking about buying a whole new wardrobe of suits, which I would do in a heartbeat if I had the money.

Of all the things I can say about Adrian, I can’t say that he wasn’t a snappy dresser. I love that we always looked like FBI agents. (although he has been wearing the same fetid suit since about 1999) I felt proud that he was my boyfriend, even if we were always fighting… but he definitely looked the part. I have this feeling that Terry and I look so dissimilar. At first you can sort of convince yourself that it’s refreshing to date people who aren’t exactly like you, but after awhile it sort of wears down on you. I guess it’s not a very important issue except for the whole issue of “who are you?”

Maybe it’s just a river in Egypt, but I feel like I could write volumes on who I am and what I want to be. I want me and my boyfriend to be sexy space explorers in immaculate Armani suits, sliding through parallel dimensions, inseparable.

Most of all, I want a boyfriend who brings out the best qualities of me. Not just in being romantic, but I want to feel like I’m a better person in the relationship than out of it. I want to start reading again, I want to start doing yoga again. I want to keep going to college. And for once I’m not dating a college dropout, which is awesome. I guess the reading issue is just me. I feel like an illiterate American because the last novel I read was… god… I really can’t remember. I have this huge pile of really interesting Simone de Beauvouir novels that I haven’t touched… I read like three pages of The Mandarins last night, but that doesn’t count. Christen and I gawked at this one girl at Annie’s party who (in this game we were playing) put “reading books” under the “pretentious” category, but really, I am that girl. Well, minus her bad skin.

This Sunday was one of those Sundays where you open your eyes and hope to God that it’s a dream, because if it’s not your stuck in the same life. All I can think of is the story that we had to read in my English class called The Yellow Wallpaper about this woman who slowly goes crazy looking at this wallpaper. My room is covered in yellow wallpaper. And as I stare past my computer screen, that is all I see.

I’m going to be 22 in November. I had no idea I would live this long. And it’s going to take two more semesters before I can graduate. That’s a whole another year. I feel like I’m going to pass my whole youth in abject poverty. I don’t know… I thought that when I moved to the city I would become more…er…”loose”, shall we say? And I guess I have had my occasional indiscretion, but that lifestyle has death written all over it.

I guess it shows that I finally did win the battle with myself. Or not. I’m scared to get my HIV results… as I always am. But it would take a miracle for me to get it. I don’t know… it seems like I can never escape small problems like the $200 that I need to magically come up with in the next few days to get my scooter serviced.

I just feel horribly depressed today. I made the mistake of reading one of Kelly’s blog posts about how “honest” she is and how she absolutely can’t tell a lie and how all of these people are so busy lying in hurting each other that they can’t take the time to be a good person like her. It also really makes me angry that Becky is using this picture as her main picture on MySpace from this big party that we all went to when we were really young and it has her and Kelly and me, and it’s a painful reminder of how everything turned out. (read: how they decided not to be my friend)

Yes, I’m a catty bitch. I’m gay. It comes with the territory. But I really don’t know what I did to fuck things up between me and Kelly. I know it had to do with the fact that I was friends with Christen when that whole thing was going down when they lived together. I don’t know how to bring it up. “So… Kelly… I’ve never felt so distant from you… how do we fix that?” And all I can seem to do is leave bitchy comments on her blog.

I think about her all the time.

I always think I’ll run into her at ARC, and it never happens. Kelly was my reason not to kill myself for the longest time. And now I live here and I never see her. Oh well.

So after all this, here I sit. On a carpet remnant. On the floor. In my grandma’s garage. I’m truly cold, I’m only in these PJs Christen gave me and a t-shirt. My MacBook battery is down to 38%. It’s 2:55 a.m. I now know how to multiply, add, subtract, and divide polynomials.

So why do I feel so alone?

Do any of you ever have those days we think back on all your past actions and you realize that you’ve done a lot of really terrible things to people that you’ve loved, but you have to shrug it off. You’re really a good person…yeah. You’re not at fault for these kinds of things…you can’t be.

I guess I should go to sleep, it’s nearly three.

For a while I wanted nothing more than to get back together with Terry. But now, the more times he says the words “broken up” the more real they become. I just really want to know.

Are we over or not?

Categories: Ennui

I’m sitting on a grassy knoll. I think that’s what this is. It’s what the 23rd Magus would call it.

I’m charging my phone, depleting my laptop.

It’s become a $1,300 spare battery.

I need a spare soul. Another life.

Seven minutes late for my math class. Didn’t go. Ate an egg salad sandwich.

Saw Conor, we laughed and joked about LoveFest and Folsom Street. Felt like I was switching out ROMs to be able to interact with him.

I can’t speak. I can’t exist. I just keep staring blankly ahead…driving, eating, school…it all slips by.

All I can think is that I hurt him.

And that he’s making it all about me.

He was shutting me out. I didn’t know how long I was going to have to wait. How long does it take before you can unlock the cellar and let all the demons out. A month…maybe two? I don’t know.

I feel completely and totally evil. All I could think about…I cheated…I fucked him over…I betrayed him.

Some days I wish I wasn’t an atheist. It would be so comforting for someone to forgive me. I guess that’s why the Jesus cult is so attractive.

Having Jesus forgive you is easier than forgiving yourself. It’s another lock and chain on the demons.

I knew what would happen when I drove over to Mario’s.

I felt like Terry would never love me. For all his talk about “expressing his feelings differently than me,” I didn’t feel like he cared at all. He could never get over all the “my mother never loved me” stuff. Couldn’t even touch it.

His insistence that no one had ever wanted to hold him so much made it really clear. He dates soulless fags. And I feel like that’s what he wanted. Someone to pretend everything was fine, someone to get drunk with…I don’t know.

He sent me this song.

How conventional. How boring.

Everything he does…I feel like I could program him onto a ROM. I couldn’t help but think that our breakup could have been a script in a bad movie.

It was bad acting on both of our parts.

“Get out.”

My hysterical call to Christen.

We didn’t trust each other.

We didn’t take the time to become friends (or would we have even been friends?).

Doomed from the start.

As a good friend of mine said,

It’s really easy to expect “love” from someone and not have to give it in return. He seems to feel VERY uncomfortable with being emotionally open with someone, and really Darius, it wasn’t something healthy for either one of you.

For him it was a way to get just enough “love” to not have to face the things he would need to to really be able to be in a loving relationship and for you, it was a way to be in something you so desperately want. (both of us want something to truly be love with someone, and all we want is that feeling back.)

So, I understand.

Just take the situation as it is. You really shouldn’t worry yourself with what he thinks of you, simply because it has no impact on your life any more.

I guess that says what I feel better than I could.

Must stop listening to depressing Nails songs.

Stop acting like all the problems in the relationship were all my fault.

Start thinking about igneous rocks. I have a test Monday.

I don’t know andesite from rhyolite.

Wish I knew what it all boiled down to.

When I close my eyes, all I can see is the convection currents moving the plates of the world all around…America at the equator covered with water, chunks of California flying out to sea, the ocean floor gobbled up by countless continents…trillions of species now extinct…everything constantly shifting.

All these volcanic disasters that could happen in our lifetime. It just seems to make life so much cheaper.

I don’t know what to feel.

I’m going to go over to Christen’s.

Categories: Ennui

I haven’t wanted to write anything in here for days.

Terry doesn’t like it.

He doesn’t get it.

This is where I battle the demons.

the MacBook that can slay demons

they pile up if I don’t do it.

And I’m suffocating.

I’m listening to my ridiculously depressing playlist.

Deer Stop, Wandering Star, Beauty*2, Coma White, and The Persistence of Loss, and Adrift and at Peace.

I don’t know what to say to him.

Scared to death it’s over.

We talk and talk, and as much as I try to deny it, we aren’t the people we thought we were.

My grandma’s cat died today. They found it behind the lemon tree in the back yard.

Brian’s bird is slowly dying. We think it had a stroke.

I’m such a fucking pansy, but all I want to do is cry.

For Lilya, for my dreams with Terry, for my lies to myself, for my part in all of this.

I don’t feel like it’s time to cry though.

Made all this pasta…my mom sent it to me. She loves me so much. Pasta she bought me at the Italian store around the corner from her house in New Jersey. The little stuffed cow she won at the Boardwalk…

now I am crying.

God fucking damn it. Christen’s coming over.

I am such a fool.

I miss my mom…must stop crying. It’s her birthday this week and I don’t know if I’ll be able to get her a card. She does so much for me and I can’t do anything back.

All the times I had with Terry…when I looked in his eyes and knew that we would be together for a long time.

All these fucking tears.

This is such bullshit.

I’m being selfish.

I made so much pasta…made these little star pasta things that my cousin Alexis liked when she was little. Everything reminds me of the people I miss…I don’t know anyone here except Brian and Christen…I’m such a fucking malcontent loser…I just want to be happy but I don’t know how.

I just don’t want to hurt anyone any more.

I need to stop this revolving door of boyfriends…I don’t know why I thought it was a good idea…I thought it would make….I don’t fucking know.

Christen just got here.

I should go.

I’m not going to clean up my mess. Maybe I will.

Fuck.

Categories: Ennui