June 20, 2000

So, my legs are sore in that way that they're sore when I have copious amounts of sex, yet I have had no sex to speak of for years and years and well okay months. My inner thighs, they are very strained. It is peculiar to be experiencing this sex soreness without having, as they say, earned it. Kind of like when you wake up one morning to discover an oblong bluish black bruise inexplicably encompassing 60% of your right calf. It looks so neat, you think you must have done something cool to deserve this badge of pain, but the only mildly strenuous thing you can think of that may have bestowed this mark upon you is that you had to stand up six separate times to let people into the row of seats you were sitting on the aisle of at the opening night of Jesus' Son, and the backs of your legs were consequentlly smooshed up against the rocker-back stadium seats far too many times. After you sat back down for the last time, some very worthwhile and entirely not without merit young man filed into the row behind you, bumping your head with, apparently, his impressive crotchal endowment, and spilling popcorn and a nacho or two onto your person, but that would have very little bearing on the bruise on your leg.

Yeah, so my legs are sore. Come to think of it, I've been a might sore all day. As in, grumpy. I've been grumpy because some guy, this guy, this guy, who I guess is some semblance of a friend to me, though I'm not quite sure, has been basically trying to psychoanalyze me, despite my protestations. Aw, hell, I'm not even going to pretend to not tell you who it was -- he wants me to write, so I'm gonna damn well write. It was Harris. Yeah, Harris. Yeah, Harris. He's been wearing the friend hat these days, I guess, though I'm not quite sure if the style fits him.

We were just riffing on each other via email today, and suddenly I got all serious on his ass, and then, as a way to acknowledge how bizarre and insane my seriousness was (although, let's face it, it wasn't bizarre or insane -- just too heavy a topic for a light-hearted conversation), I asked him if he could recommend a good therapist. So, he takes me seriously. He says he could ask around if I wanted -- he wouldn't tell people he was asking for me -- and I was like, um, no, that's okay, and, oh yeah, could we not have this discussion?

Then he asks me if I keep a journal (other than this one, which, he is right, doesn't really count, although it is rather cathartic writing about him, at least) -- obviously, he is trying to "help" me with my "inner turmoil." I tell him no, but I used to. I lost interest because I wasn’t sure if I was using it to help my writing, or as a psychological aid. He asked if there was a difference. I said yes, there was, very much so, and proceeded to explain how when I write as therapy, I just vent, ramble, yell, and it's really not very good. When I write in order to improve my writing, I think more, I stop and stall, I choose each word very carefully, and, because I have to think about it so much, it does not really help out my psyche. He said I should vent, then edit. I told him I didn't edit. Then, he said, you don't write.

That's when I got pissed off. Who the hell is he to tell me I don't write? Fuckin' sysadmin. Fuckin' VP of Technological Head Up Your Ass. Even though, of course, I know what he means, I also know how I write, and, y'know what? I don't edit. Maybe I should. Maybe that would make me all the more fabulous. Yes, maybe it would. But to hear him preach to me -- to hear him preach to me about something I really care about -- i.e., my writing -- when he has never once opened up to me about a single goddamn thing that he actually cares about -- well, I just wasn't havin' any of it. To have Harris, whom I still don't trust, still don't understand, still don't know what the deal with is, gettin' all "you need to write…it's who you are…blah blah blah," with me -- I know it sounds like he was trying to be supportive, but damn if I'm not suspect of his motives.

I said all this to him, and his recently reformed self said he understood, and the reason he doesn't open up about stuff he cares about is because he doesn't really care about much. I have heard this before. I just don't know how honest it is. I have no idea what's an act and what isn't. And I'm not sure how much I want to have to do with someone who doesn't care about much. Because you know I fit into that much category, and even if it's just friends, even if it's all platonic, all the time, even if we are just the most peripheral of acquaintances -- I'm gonna care, and he isn't. And I'm gonna get hurt. Again. No matter how much I pretend I don't care, and that everything is fine. Call me crazy, but this is not the sort of relationship I want to cultivate.

Yeah, I know. What he said really wasn't that bad. I know that. But you have to know the back story. Have to see the subtext. He was sounding like a Jehovah's Witness. Very Stepfordian. Perhaps that was the fault of the medium. Email can be tricky to read.

Oh, all right, fine. You want me to say it, I'll say it. The reason he pushes my buttons so effortlessly, the reason I read so much meaning into so little content, is that part of me is still, for lack of a better term, in love with him. And that's really what pisses me off the most. Because there is no good reason for me to be. Absolutely none. I exist solely to pump up his ego. I find this position to be wholly unfulfilling.

So, there you go. There's my unedited, purging rant. My legs still hurt, I'm still grumpy, and this will make various personal relations all the more strained, but I don't really care. As long as I write. Because, y'know, that's what I do.

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