FROM SAWAH, TO THE WORLD: VOLUMES I and II
VOLUME I
So, objectively speaking, it seems as though just when everything is falling into place for everyone around me, my life is going to complete shit. And I’m not feeling sorry for myself; these are objective observations.
Ramma is so caught up on work, she’s catching up on work from three weeks from now. Plus she’s semi-involved with SMS again, V-man’s up her ass, and she’s got a screw date with hot Raphael (who, might I add, is a dirty-looking filmmaker; more my type than preppy hers).
Bookie is having a hot teasing thing with an Orlando Bloom look-alike. I don’t think that requires any more explanation.
And Cheese? Cheese’s biggest problems are: 1) The play in which she was cast (on her third audition) has too much stage intimacy, and 2) Her boyfriend is doing so much for Valentine’s Day that she feels uncomfortable.
God should grant me her problems.
Like, I don’t want to seem like a whiner. And it’s not like I begrudge Cheese her success. But…I wish I could get a little luck floating my way. I don’t need to get cast. I need a sign. A call-back. I don’t need a boyfriend. I need a sign. A flirty smile. Do you know? I feel like…I feel like I would give the proverbial right nut to have Cheese’s problems. Not specifically—I’m not interested in the Gordster, and I don’t love the part she has. But to be able to bitch about, God, the play I’m doing, or my boyfriend? Like, Jesus Fucking Christ. To quote Eliza Doolittle, “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”
Everywhere I turn, I’m getting rejected, passed over, or made fun of. Between guys, giving up on the drama thing (which is its own trip—I really did love it), and having Ramma and the entire familial crew bust on me for being messy and not having my shit together, I feel shitty, and then I feel attacked for feeling shitty and not having my shit together. It’s like, Okay, not everyone dusts every week. And sometimes you forget about shit. And my area wouldn’t be so messy if I was allowed to do anything besides sleep in my room. Horseshit, my room. Calendar’s fucking room. Fuck, I even put on my underwear in the common room. My little corner is the only fucking space I have in all of Yale, so cut me some fucking slack, all right? If I had my druthers, my mess, my shit, all of it, would be in another room. I don’t like having the common room look cluttered, but I’ve got nowhere else.
I’m PMSing, which means my boobs hurt, I’m zitty, and I’m bitching out everyone in America. I don’t have a screw date, whereas my non-single roommates have multiple options. Let’s not even talk about having a Valentine. I’ll cry. Really. I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven’t started writing, and a to-do list as long as my arm. I’m having an ugly, awful period, and it shows no signs of abating.
Hold out hope for me, guys. You’ve got to.
VOLUME II
Being a virgin (let’s just get that out in the open), and reasonably practical in spirit, I recently decided that it would behoove me to make a mix CD; the playlist would consist of only those songs to which I would conceivably like to lose my virginity. First was the classic of the 90s—“Crash Into Me” by Dave Matthews—and next on the list was the iconic 80s-losin’-it tune, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Remember? In “Say Anything”? Lloyd Dobler? Oh wow.
In any case, after those two, it started to get a little more difficult. After much deliberation, I decided that “Leather and Lace” by Stevie Nicks was okay; so was “Dolphins Cry” by Live. All right; now a little Boyz II Men, “Water Runs Dry”; maybe that Billie Meyers song that was big in, what, 1998; Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”; Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather.” The last two are just so beautiful that they make me cry—and hey, they’re about love!
Or are they…
I kept looking through my playlist. Ooh, I know: Edwin McCain’s heart-ripping cover of Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet”; that line, “Oh Romeo, you know I think I used to have a scene with him” just tears at your soul. But it wasn’t until I considered Bonnie Raitt’s classic “Can’t Make You Love Me” that I realized I had a serious problem. Namely: The majority of the songs I find really sexy and romantic and beautiful are about (you guessed it) break-ups.
Now, this might seem normal from the Queen of Perversity of Feeling (Motto: Say One Thing, Do Another—Every Time!). At the very least, it’s not surprising. But at the same time, how fucked up am I?
So now I’m worried. Do I actually think that breaking up with someone is better (in any way) than being with someone and being happy? Is it, what, somehow more noble? Is that mental image of the abandoned woman, the betrayed woman, the leaving woman, the resolutely stalwart woman, the weeping woman, somehow more beautiful than the happy woman?
I can’t possibly think that, can I?
I want to be happy; I want to be with someone; I want to have a life with someone; I don’t want to be alone. Really.
Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been happy that often; maybe I’ve convinced myself that sad is beautiful, that heartbroken and miserable and hungry for something is ennobling and exquisite in its own way. I need not to wallow in my sadness and tell myself it’s beautiful. I need not to justify my misery. I need to seek joy, and trust in joy’s beauty. Maybe what I have to remember is that happy can be beautiful too.
So, objectively speaking, it seems as though just when everything is falling into place for everyone around me, my life is going to complete shit. And I’m not feeling sorry for myself; these are objective observations.
Ramma is so caught up on work, she’s catching up on work from three weeks from now. Plus she’s semi-involved with SMS again, V-man’s up her ass, and she’s got a screw date with hot Raphael (who, might I add, is a dirty-looking filmmaker; more my type than preppy hers).
Bookie is having a hot teasing thing with an Orlando Bloom look-alike. I don’t think that requires any more explanation.
And Cheese? Cheese’s biggest problems are: 1) The play in which she was cast (on her third audition) has too much stage intimacy, and 2) Her boyfriend is doing so much for Valentine’s Day that she feels uncomfortable.
God should grant me her problems.
Like, I don’t want to seem like a whiner. And it’s not like I begrudge Cheese her success. But…I wish I could get a little luck floating my way. I don’t need to get cast. I need a sign. A call-back. I don’t need a boyfriend. I need a sign. A flirty smile. Do you know? I feel like…I feel like I would give the proverbial right nut to have Cheese’s problems. Not specifically—I’m not interested in the Gordster, and I don’t love the part she has. But to be able to bitch about, God, the play I’m doing, or my boyfriend? Like, Jesus Fucking Christ. To quote Eliza Doolittle, “Wouldn’t it be loverly?”
Everywhere I turn, I’m getting rejected, passed over, or made fun of. Between guys, giving up on the drama thing (which is its own trip—I really did love it), and having Ramma and the entire familial crew bust on me for being messy and not having my shit together, I feel shitty, and then I feel attacked for feeling shitty and not having my shit together. It’s like, Okay, not everyone dusts every week. And sometimes you forget about shit. And my area wouldn’t be so messy if I was allowed to do anything besides sleep in my room. Horseshit, my room. Calendar’s fucking room. Fuck, I even put on my underwear in the common room. My little corner is the only fucking space I have in all of Yale, so cut me some fucking slack, all right? If I had my druthers, my mess, my shit, all of it, would be in another room. I don’t like having the common room look cluttered, but I’ve got nowhere else.
I’m PMSing, which means my boobs hurt, I’m zitty, and I’m bitching out everyone in America. I don’t have a screw date, whereas my non-single roommates have multiple options. Let’s not even talk about having a Valentine. I’ll cry. Really. I have a paper due tomorrow that I haven’t started writing, and a to-do list as long as my arm. I’m having an ugly, awful period, and it shows no signs of abating.
Hold out hope for me, guys. You’ve got to.
VOLUME II
Being a virgin (let’s just get that out in the open), and reasonably practical in spirit, I recently decided that it would behoove me to make a mix CD; the playlist would consist of only those songs to which I would conceivably like to lose my virginity. First was the classic of the 90s—“Crash Into Me” by Dave Matthews—and next on the list was the iconic 80s-losin’-it tune, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.” Remember? In “Say Anything”? Lloyd Dobler? Oh wow.
In any case, after those two, it started to get a little more difficult. After much deliberation, I decided that “Leather and Lace” by Stevie Nicks was okay; so was “Dolphins Cry” by Live. All right; now a little Boyz II Men, “Water Runs Dry”; maybe that Billie Meyers song that was big in, what, 1998; Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You”; Bob Dylan’s “Boots of Spanish Leather.” The last two are just so beautiful that they make me cry—and hey, they’re about love!
Or are they…
I kept looking through my playlist. Ooh, I know: Edwin McCain’s heart-ripping cover of Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet”; that line, “Oh Romeo, you know I think I used to have a scene with him” just tears at your soul. But it wasn’t until I considered Bonnie Raitt’s classic “Can’t Make You Love Me” that I realized I had a serious problem. Namely: The majority of the songs I find really sexy and romantic and beautiful are about (you guessed it) break-ups.
Now, this might seem normal from the Queen of Perversity of Feeling (Motto: Say One Thing, Do Another—Every Time!). At the very least, it’s not surprising. But at the same time, how fucked up am I?
So now I’m worried. Do I actually think that breaking up with someone is better (in any way) than being with someone and being happy? Is it, what, somehow more noble? Is that mental image of the abandoned woman, the betrayed woman, the leaving woman, the resolutely stalwart woman, the weeping woman, somehow more beautiful than the happy woman?
I can’t possibly think that, can I?
I want to be happy; I want to be with someone; I want to have a life with someone; I don’t want to be alone. Really.
Maybe it’s just that I haven’t been happy that often; maybe I’ve convinced myself that sad is beautiful, that heartbroken and miserable and hungry for something is ennobling and exquisite in its own way. I need not to wallow in my sadness and tell myself it’s beautiful. I need not to justify my misery. I need to seek joy, and trust in joy’s beauty. Maybe what I have to remember is that happy can be beautiful too.
posted by Joe @ 12:23 AM
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