At the risk of sounding angsty or overly reflective, I have really
been hit by the emptiness bug over the past month or so. That
feeling of always needing some form of soothing. It's this quality that when people come face to face with it they instinctively recognize it and then feel hesitant of you. My old
approaches of dealing with this feeling is an unwritten comic book series. My next life-stage of dealing with the emptiness bug was all of this spiritual perspective, which felt amazing because the ideas were so new
to me and you just kind of had to understand the concepts and it would
make you feel better. That's when I named and chose the colors for this blog, which I now think looks like total shit. The returns on spiritual perspective can diminish
over time. A flimsier approach than I ever suspected. It was a time when "Answers" really seemed like an answer.
But lately, I have been kind of
mumbly, doubtful, numb, unsure of myself, uncomfortable seeming, etc. It's not amazing-feeling and good solid routines and habits are just not doing the trick. I don't know how to be so I am just going ahead and not knowing how to be in public. At least it's honest and genuine and so I can take pride in that.
And I noticed in conversations I don't really try to tell people "cool
facts about me." Which is so nice. I hate when I do that. I hate that I have told so many people about the one time I drank in a camera truck with a famous movie director and make it seem like we were total buds. Hate. And come to
think of it, my uncomfortable social behavior perfectly lines up with this other value of mine--that I
should never act like I know what the fuck I am doing in life.
Like Goethe's insistence that we should all remain an apprentice at
life. And that we strive to stay supple. I think I am right in being insecure, showing pain on my face, mumbling, not being able to make simple decisions like where we should go sit in a coffee shop, what to order, and what is an interesting thing to talk about.
But the expectations of your company may boo and hiss at that. Or at best, meet it with indifference. Maybe a grown man should be confident by now? That he should
have a feeling of security, even in a critical environment. That one should be an expert or
have a specialty at something by now? Well, fuck that. I insist that I am right in not being able to navigate subtextual expectations. I would rather just hold others to the standard of not having them. I want to be a scorned little boy. And sometimes if you insist on staying this way, you get taken aback by an alien sweetness.
Like
last night. Friday night, 11/15. Playing by the rules, I set up to meet this girl at a bar for an
underwhelming club soda. No charge, dollar tip. The soda-glass giveaway to my no-alcohol ways led to my having to make the justification of why I am happier in life drinking
club soda. And I really didn't believe myself at the time and so it sounded apologetic. I looked at other tables, and mind you it was still early and so 90% were laughing and happy at this point and the other 10% were couples. I had full intentions of joining the 10% of unhappy couples if that's what it took to make this feeling go away. And so she hears me talk evasively and then she
forgets to ask other questions about me and she had this admittedly amazing dog with her that everyone felt the need to interrupt our conversations to ask about. And then I absorbed an excuse about an early departure and came home and texted an
always-kind ex girlfriend because indifference has been feeling
intolerable to me lately. She is always so nice. And I think I might love her. I was telling you about all of those "might" feelings I have been having lately. But she was not on cell
phone this night. Checking the screens and my virtual social connections at an increasing pace, feeling the attachment-less mental processes starting to kick in, my practically-brother roommate and I start barking out forlorn tones of voice about the general conditions of being alive.
Cut
to us sitting at a French restaurant. Cut to him charming this
long-dreadlocked French guy who noted he was in a rock band. Cut to the
French guy leaving and coming back out with two truly beautiful women.
The kind of women you only want to remain visual input so as not to risk your stolen breath with a personality or something. Cut to social miscues, talks about
art, sixteen dollar burgers, talks about loneliness, extremely complex
techno-social dynamics and what it might say about the character of
people that reject you, and the best lettuce-only five dollar salad you
then say is the best salad you ever have. Cut to a hesitation for two men to make meaningful eye
contact, but then doing it. Cut to understanding and a feeling of being
loved and understood. Cut to the clock, just before midnight.
The ball is ending soon. The bills are being distributed. An extremely-dressed, under-impressed
clientelle overwhelms service workers hiding wine glasses in the host
booth and then this curly-haired blonde lady walks in and everybody
looks and wonders if she is famous. I think it's the rose lipstick. And I
wonder if she and her suited man friend have just come from a theater
production--that they starred in, and that was set in 1940's L.A. But
what I really think is they actually just came from their house. It
wasn't worth mentioning. I don't even think my dinner company noticed them, too occupied by a mind fixed on steak fat and cigarette smoke. There was a meal and I devoured
all of the grease and fat I possibly could. And the thickest mayonnaise I ever imagined.
Earlier, sitting in our living room, the seedling of a hunger for experience (and a second dinner) had driven us out the door and down the street to a French Restaurant. Hunger had whisked us away. The working men we are, we could go somewhere good. And so we did. My blood felt thick and full and I felt
relaxed afterwards. A restaurant, which was maybe a staged experiment in controlling others perceptions of who you are, felt suspended in this viscous mayonnaise-y atmosphere. I floated effortlessly in it and club soda. My old sweater and lazy hoody. Canvas sneakers laying flat among the tapping leather boots. A nice smile and the air of not giving much of a fuck about her appearance got the waitress a 25% tip.
If I remember it correctly, what I experienced was carefree fun. If I were to be a fully confident American male I'd go to lots of school and wear smarter clothes and eventually design a prescription pill to produce exactly this effect. Once in Miami, in fact, I did this harbor tour on a boat and one of the houses you could see from the boat was owned by the man who patented Viagra. His backyard had rare palm trees imported from Africa. His backyard, fully under the hot sun and with no physical shelters in sight, was climate controlled (?!) -- always adjusted to 72 degrees. That is a man truly wearing the man's man's rose lipstick. But nevermind that. My blood is thick and heart full and I'm feeling two steps removed from rose lipstick. Not wearing it. Not wanting it. Instead, going home to sleep. But not a dreaming kind of sleep. I felt like I had
everything there and so I just slept till morning.
