the diary of antoine roquentin

I haven’t been writing very often this week. I wanted to very much, but my family is starting to fall apart.

On Friday last week my uncle went absolutely nuts and screamed at my mother for about an hour.

My roomate just came in, so I can’t finish this post.

But basically, my mom isn’t going to take care of my uncle any more. He has to either get a home health aide or go to a home. He will not treat my mother like shit, and he will not send my grandmother to an early grave.

Next weekend is going to be totally awesome though. I’m going to see A Place To Bury Strangers and Junior Boys (<3!).

Some days, I'm glad my dad was an electrician. I have a good handyman side. in preparation for having a home health aide, my mom and I went to Lowe's and bought locking door knobs for every door upstairs.

I spent the entire weekend (no, seriously) working on my Spanish workbook that was due on Monday. I literally finished the last page at 9 PM on Sunday.

I had no time to do any work that I get paid for this weekend, so I'm trying to do it in between classes. It's not working well. I'll have all Thursday and Friday to work though.

This week I've mostly been listening to Juventud En Éxtasis and this fantastic song from the new Simian Mobile Disco album, Bad Blood. I think it’s the ultimate breakup song.

say I’m what I seem to be
and we left with something torn between
a moment’s love can be forgot
but a moment’s pain stains our cuff

Say what you will about SMD, they have excellent lyrics.

Also, I ran a seven minute mile today at the gym. I rock. I was blasting The Presets so loud that everyone must have heard it, but I was in the fucking zone.

My ultimate in-the-zone song set is Discotraxx (such a beautiful and sad song, I listen to it all the time) to warm up, then the killer combo of This Boy’s in Love, and Together.

There’s always a moment during Together that I think I’m literally going to run so fast I leave my body behind. The song builds to a crescendo, and then the love of my life shouts:

Who do we think we are?
Running ’round all sweaty?
Baby I will wait for you
If we could be together

Such a lovely face
Such an ugly city
Baby I will wait for you
If we could be together forever

That is my ultimate workout moment, and I had it today.

I guess running on the treadmills isn’t bad for my knees, ’cause they feel fine so far.

So the fallout from my uncle’s meltdown is that my mom moved downstairs. So no more blog posting, no more privacy. Basically, in three letters, FML.

I’m going to go distract myself with okcupid.

Categories: Ennui

I’m sorry

I haven’t felt like writing

Or rather I’ve felt like it

But wasn’t sure what to say.

It’s an auspicious day for technology.

A new e-book reader. A new multi-touch mouse. Quad-core processors in the new iMacs.

And yet, I’ve been watching Deep Space Nine nonstop.

Jadzia and Miles seem more real to me than anything.

I started reading the first few pages of Cocaine Nights. Ballard’s world is terrible and wonderful, the seductive underbellies of Cadiz and Riyadh.

I’d like to be anywhere but here right now.

Going to see the new Lars Von Trier movie on Friday. Antichrist. With Yevgeny. That’s pretty much the only thing getting me through this week.

I want de facto, not de jure, monogamy. Maybe I don’t even want that.

I want a lasting and meaningful relationship with someone.

The problem seems to be, that there are guys I want to fuck, and guys I could fall in love with.

They are rarely in the same body. Sex, for me, has to have a devious element. A subversive element. A dirty element. There has to be an element of sleaze to it.

Guys I’m in love with, I don’t want to fuck them. The thought of fucking the hell out of them—anal sex—is revolting to me. I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where I wouldn’t give a shit if I never gave or received anal sex again, I wouldn’t mind at all. It’s just so—revolting. I mean, I could suck dick all day long, but anal is just—weird.

I just had a beer, maybe that’s why this has become so scatological. I suppose it’s better than my occasional maudlin burpings.

I can feel my heart breaking when I’m naked with a guy and he just doesn’t really turn me on the way he should, and I know I have feelings for him, and I know that it’s going to end. Some guys turn me on endlessly—even after I finish I’m ready for more. It would probably be indecent to name names, but you know who you are. I just wish I could couple my emotional responses to my sexual responses.

There are guys that I can have great sex with but that a relationship is out of the question, and there are guys that I feel like I could easily fall in love with (or have already fallen for) that I don’t click with sexually. I find it difficult to decode the calculus of desire, but it doesn’t have much to do with attractiveness—it’s many variables that I don’t understand myself.

A guy showing a tender side of himself—reading an old love letter—something to that effect, can endear himself to me in ways that are ordinarily impossible.

I don’t know what I’m trying to get at here. I’m feeling unhappy this week, although I’m doing much better at my studies (I finally logged into the Spanish supersite for that $160 book and have been doing a bunch of the exercises). But still, no good concerts this week. I’m probably going to miss Midnight Juggernauts on Wednesday, since I have Spanish until late. The earliest I can get to the city is 9:30. There’s four opening bands, but doors open super-early at 6pm. I can’t imagine it would all be over at 10 though, I’m going to try my hardest to make it. I adore Midnight Juggernauts, and I didn’t ask anyone to go with me.

Oh, weird, this is the first show I’ve gone alone to in a long time. It will be therapeutic.

I wish I was as good a writer as J.G. Ballard. All I need to do is be put in an internment camp for my childhood. Well, I guess you could call Crescent City an internment camp. You can burn that fucking place to the ground.

I am an only child.
I have no friends from primary school that I still talk to.
I have no friends from high school that I still talk to.
I have no friends from community college that I still talk to.

If my experience with Jon taught me anything, it’s that I have a hard time empathizing with those that have strong connections with classmates and siblings.

Shit, I think I just broke my macbook’s power cord. I had it tangled up in my blankets and it was very hot, now it won’t charge my computer. Shit. It’d better work when it cools down. Or something.

I’ve been reflecting the past few weeks about how important it is to my personal mythos to be the outsider. I’m not sure if I’m really trying to be Meursault, but a large part of my identity is reflected in my aloofness, my inability to enjoy or understand the value place in things like the endless discussion of sports, network TV, etc.

It’s just the the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. We all have our mindless distractions, but when we have nothing to talk about but distractions, I think there’s something seriously wrong with our society.

If I ever base my life around network television, kill me. I’m serious. I do not want to live a life where I can’t wait until the next episode of Dexter.

Cut my head off and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that stupidity comes with too high a price. Look up into my lifeless eyes and wave. *waavvee*

Nearly everything that other people do, I put in the category of “distraction.” Distractions from the immense power of the rich, distractions from how much every aspect of our lives gives more control and power to those who have money.

I want to live to see the day where we storm the Lower East Side and kill every single hedge-fund manager.

I get my story back tomorrow. I hope I got a good grade, but I doubt it. I despise that story now.

I feel gross, I’m going to take a shower.

Categories: Ennui

I think I’m going to create my post titles by mixing the names of my favorite novels.

I couldn’t really sleep tonight, despite being physically exhausted from riding my bike to the train station and then from the train station to my house. I totally crashed into a fence because the gears slipped. I didn’t get hurt, but I need to get that damn bike fixed.

Thankfully, I have a bunch of work to do tomorrow (yay money!) so I don’t think I’m going out. it’s also supposed to rain for the next three days. I’ll probably work during the morning and then get that chore over with so I can do Friday’s chore (book-finding) unimpeded by the bike.

Instead of sleeping, for the last hour I’ve been writing that story that I can’t speak of. Until it’s done, anyway. I’m on the third page, which is impressive progress. Still, I should get back to bed.

I did have a funny thing happen on okc today: I was looking at Taggart’s page, and under the “similar users” column, Brian appeared (luhlz!).

Categories: Ennui

It’s like a moment I had dreamed of. I’m all alone in my dorm room. I had planned to go to sleep at three, which would have been the sensible thing to do. But I realized that I hadn’t brushed my teeth and I was very hungry so I had a glass of almond milk.

Today, I think, was a realization of what fantastic shape I am in. I rode my bike 3 miles (mostly uphill) from the train station in Hawthorne to the University. I keep looking in the mirror, and I’m developing this lean, muscular frame. It’s like I’m having a second puberty—discovering what my body can be like without the laziness-inducing bullshit of driving everywhere.

I’m also realizing I’m having a lot of dreams that take place on public transit. Most of my dreams where I’m going somewhere I’m either on the subway, on a plane, or on a New Jersey Transit train. I’m enjoying the novelty of dreaming in subway.

I’ve long had a love affair with trains, started by my grandpa. He owns a real caboose that’s on his property. He would make model trains from scratch, and the caboose was full of them, with tracks and dioramas winding around everywhere. It was such a fantastic sight. I would always make fantastical tracks for my model trains to go on using my legos and blocks.

I also need to start getting to sleep at a reasonable hour. It’s really bad when two o’clock in the morning rolls around and it feels like it’s still early.

Tonight I went to Marseille with Yevgeny. We were going to go to that organic burger place, but it turns out the reason that I could never find it was because it went out of business. At least I’m not crazy.

I think next weekend we’re going to my aunt’s house. I’m not sure whether I’m excited or not. I love seeing my aunt and uncle, and (especially) my cousins, but I have a hard time getting comfortable there. As my grandpa once exclaimed, there isn’t a comfortable chair in the whole house.

I don’t know why I was in such a bad mood this weekend— when I was at lunch today my mom asked if she’d done something to offend me. She knows me too well to be able to lie. I might have been in a bad mood because I wanted to see Jon more. I also haven’t and terribly thrilled with thinking about the sheer depth of poverty I’m in. However, next month that’s going to change. My cell phone bill should be about $30 less. Taking the train should save me $16 a month, and I’m not drinking until my credit card is below $4,000. Also, I’m going to try to ride my bike around the city instead of taking the subway. Is that too cheap? I don’t think I could really do that, since I don’t think I’ll be locking up my $400 bike to anything and hope to find it still there hours later. That’s stupidity, not frugality.

I would like to do more biking in the city though. Next week I’m going to ride my bike into the city and go to my bike shop to have it tuned up. The gears are slipping like crazy, which they said would happen and I need to bring it to them to have them tune it up. I’m really glad I bought it at that store because they basically will maintain it forever for free. Toga Bikes = awesome.

Then I think I’m going to see how many times I can ride around Central Park.

Can I just take a second to say

OH MY FUCKING GOD I LOVE NEW YORK CITY

Sometimes I’ll be walking down a street, fiddling with my phone or something, then look up and realize I’m in MANHATTAN. I have to say, moving here has benefited me in so many ways. I absolutely LOVE L-O-V-E love the city.

Oh, it was my mom’s birthday this weekend. Let me post the video I took of her cutting her (third) cake. It’s pretty hilarious.

Also, here’s a pic of Nomi I snapped at the party on Saturday.

And a few of the New York Times building at 3a.m.:

And, last but not least, graffiti. Because everybody fucking loves taco nite.

Categories: Ennui

The show was so-so, Nomi only sang one song. She’s sitting across from me as I type this, but she’s surrounded by her friends and I can’t think of anything to say other than she’s not as pretty as she looks in the You Belong video.

The quality of the DJing dropped off considerably…before it was immaculate space disco, now it’s just ho-hum untz-untz-untz.

I’m on my fourth PBR, and it tastes like the runoff from rotted garbage. Suzanne was here, we talked for a while, but then I lost her in the crowd. I should just go, but I’m loath to walk back to the L train. To go back before 2am will mean defeat.

The worst kind of defeat, that brings me closer to the dehumanizing, all-conforming suburb of the soul.

I don’t enjoy the things that other people do. I feel like an alien.

Neo-Luddites who can’t miss a show

Scabies-infested silver medals

Transgender superstars with bad skin

Shitty hip-hop act that just won’t end

Let’s do some free associations from my childhood.

Ahem.

I overanalyze myself into oblivion. What’s going through his head? Indifference? Boredom? The biggest insult is to not be thought of.

Also, for the record, you are pathetic for going back with him. At one point I thought you had a future. Now I know I was wrong. He isn’t a person, he’s a disease. An all-consuming disease of the soul.

I’m going to wake up tomorrow alone. And Tuesday and Wednesday and Saturday and Monday. It never ends.

I need a fucking cigarette.

Categories: Ennui