I really mean this.

Lets not use such strong language, shall we? We won't say words like "existential" or "crises". We will use other words that suggest a subtler feeling. Instead of "existential" we will say "funny" and we will consider replacing "crises" with "matter".

I'm having a funny matter. Do you know what a funny matter is? I'll explain.

A funny matter may consist of, but is not limited to, a special feeling of neurosis. The kind that swims in circles in a downward fashion until you reach a ridiculous low, sitting somewhere starting a hole in the back of a chair wondering if all cab drivers have esp and if your life's work is valid enough to be referred to as your "life's work" or should you be putting more time and effort in to your work and if you do that, does it really make a difference in the end and what is the end and does it justify the means and if cab drivers are indeed psychic than did you say anything dark or evil when you were sitting there or were you just humming your own song in your head like a whelp?

You come to just in time to find yourself rolling pennies in your mothers apartment thinking about the logistics of depositing all these hundreds of rolls in the bank and you realize that the only reason you're even rolling these coins is to distract your mind from the way your family makes you feel at christmas time, all fond and vulnerable and annoyed like when your best friend tells a joke you made up at lunch and gets a huge laugh for it and as you roll and as you ruminate and fall deeper and deeper into a depression padded with food and darkness and forced smiles and small talk and subtle annoyances and temperature shifts and germaphobia you realize...

...we all feel this way once in awhile and it's ok.

The Stall

Pissing in the ancient, 24 hour single stall of the women's washroom at the lakeview restaurant. 2am. Tired and mullish. I didn't lock the stall because the metal latch looked bent and i didn't figure on anyone bursting in. Voices loud outside the door. A young woman preocupied with fun opened the door to the restroom proper.
I fumbled with the lock absent mindedly with one hand while i rested my chin in the other hand, nearly done pissing.
"Fuck it", I thought when the lock wouldn't slide closed. I put my hand against the door to prevent her from barging in. I grabbed a fistful of toilet paper and began to wipe when i felt her shove against the door. It opened a crack. I pushed it closed. This goddamn woman pushed back even harder and caught a rewarding (and unfortunately prolonged) glimpse of my ass, mid wipe. She closed the door as I said, "what the fuck?!?!".
Humilitation was sinking me down the toilet with my own urine. "Well who doesn't lock the door??", she asked rhetorically, aiming to point out my own idiocy and how all of this was really my fault. Fair enough.
Once I was standing pants pulled up, I managed to lock the door no problem. I took an extra moment to allow my mortified shoulders to relax after stiffening with surprised embarassment. I didn't look at her when I left, but thought to myself, "Who the fuck shoves open a door in a washroom that has just been agressively pushed closed against them?!"

The Parkdale Coke Wizard

It's time for another "Stories from Parkdale"

So check it. Last night a spirited group of youngsters (myself included) gathered at the Rhino to play some pool. Standing against the wall closest to the pool table, in a black leather Neo-from-the Matrix-meets-Count Dracula-meets-priest get up was who we refer to as, the Parkdale Coke Wizard.

Here is a man of no discretion. A man who constantly held a glass of whiskey in one hand while half heartedly masturbating with the other. And every so often he would stop beating off, do a huge bump of cocaine, sip some water from a pint glass and then grab his dick again. At one point during a game I had to make a shot right beside him. When I got the ball in he let out this quiet "aahhmmm" moan thing. I stared at him for a sec and was going to say something to the effect of "is your hand on your dick right now, man?!" but one of his eyes wasn't fully open and it looked like he was getting snow blind so I just left it.

Anyway, dude stood there for upwards of two hours, just repeating the same motions while we played around him. Not sure what that says really, I guess if you do something and refuse to apologise for it, sometimes you get away with it. Like masturbating in public while doing hard drugs and moaning at strangers.

Days 14 and 15

I kill roaches with a vehement disinterest. I am indifferently disgusted. It's not a hatred, or a fear, or a pleasure. I simply Do Not acknowledge their right to exist in the kitchen bathroom or bedrooms of the apartment and every night around 2:30am when I come home I do my best to eradicate them. Some days I only kill a couple. Some days I kill like, 25. Most of them are so small... baby roaches. But the (fuck I just killed one running across my keyboard) worst kind are the huge mama bear roaches with their floppy ecru coloured egg sacs. So nimble.

This isn't so much a preamble (though I will make a weak segue) as it is an entry in itself. Roaches. Ick. No court would convict me. Except cockroach court and ain't no way in hell I'm going anywhere near there!

The point is that I called my ex tonight on my way home because her bedroom light was on and I didn't want to put my squashing gloves on just yet. I was greeted with the sound of a phone being dragged though (what honestly sounded like really comfy) sheets, a soft murmur of voices and then a disconnected signal.
Oops.
Completely owning up to it being my fault for calling. Completely. And also acknowledging how crappy I felt after she hung up on me. And that feeling you get when you've relinquished your place in someones life and you find that their whereabouts are a dismal surprise. Or not a surprise per se, but certainly dismal...

But then you shrug your body and go home to take it out on the roaches.

Days 12 and 13

Ok so fuck yes.

I wanted to call a few days ago and I didn't. Like I REALLY wanted to call. But I didn't. And this is the payoff! This is it! I woke up today and was reminded of what having a life felt like. Of how being alone can be really good and spending time with people that think you're awesome can make you feel yourself becoming more awesome.

I am aware of the downer reputation this blog has gotten. It IS a fucking downer. It isn't meant to be upbeat because this is the salvation army of my mind where I go to donate all my unwanted crap.

Suffice to say my life isn't deadly blue all days. My love is now an echo and I'm listening to it fade. With each dimmed call my life looks a bit brighter and that ain't so bad, is it?

I even wrote a poem.

In this crucial time I stay away.
I want to posses you in the night and
be held accountable for
your swollen legs in the day. But
I think I know what love is now-
I am making broad strokes,
wanting it to appear.
I can tell you aren't
the love as I sense your heart's
a liar.
I wait for the day to come when
we can be content as strangers.

Days 9 ten and 11

I wonder how to put this as evasively as possible:

I sang "Cocoon" by Bjork all day today.

You don't need to know what that means. If I can delicately express this, it's going to be a rough week. And if my phone rang this evening I would have answered it, probably.

It's odd watching as your perception of what your future is changes while your present stays the same. Seeing things you thought were permanent shift and alter on the horizon while your heart stays in the same place. I'm still in love in this moment, where I'm eating stupid chocolate covered pretzels on the bare mattress of my youth. I'm still thinking about someone who isn't around but in the mind of my future I'm questioning more and more.

Days 7 and 8

Denial is a funny thing. I've had a few people in the past while suggest-not too subtly, I may add- that I am struggling with an addiction.

More and more I agree with that theory because of this one erratic behavior pattern I've been forming. Basically what I do is I call my ex with a more or less innocuous ruse... "Hey, just calling because I wanted to know when that thing is due this month" or whatever. I then proceed to make small talk and listen absent mindedly not even to the words but to the voice. It's the strangest fucking thing. I don't even know what to call it; sitting there with the phone pressed to my ear talking about and listening to nothing but feeling like I'm being kept company better in those ten minutes than at any other point in the day.

So that's strange. And it seems like an addict move on my part because I get jittery in the moments leading up to speaking with them, then I feel this euphoric release when we talk, then I tense up when I know my "high" is about to end and once it does, I feel cold and empty. Like I just masturbated in a highway motel room by myself.

I am approaching that place where I piss my self off.