Dirty Magazine

I must say, I am rather pleased with the status quo these days! On the surface everything seems bright and clean and scented with crisp early autumn sunshine and freshly baked goods, but it is in the deep down where things are a bit more, shall we say, interesting!

House of Ill-Repute.

In a desperate attempt to save my friendship with Hamlet, I found myself at the town's adult book-store. Right. I'm not going to remove that, typed as it was in naivete! In truth, he's frightfully busy with architecture, and I am up to my eyes in work both academic and otherwise, we barely see each other these days! Thusly, (thusly?) we decided to meet each other at this charmingly cavernous espresso bar downtown. I felt positively debauch: here I had stolen a few hours from my day to meet my friend, as if in secret, and my judgmental Physics homework would never know! I still giggle at the memory.

As far as the adult book-store is concerned, I found myself standing before a rather affable gentleman asking for directions to the venue where I was supposed to meet Hamlet. The gentleman was the proprietor of the shop: clad in black, smile on his face, he greeted me with a cheery, "What can I do you for?"
In a puerile moment, I did think on the lines of, 'Do me for? Are you for real?' But that moment passed, thankfully.
I phrased my inquiry rather oddly:
"You probably don't get this a lot..."
There was an imperceptible change to his friendly features: he suddenly had his work-face on, a work-face that said, 'Oh here's a new challenge: there isn't much I haven't heard of friend...'
I was almost tempted to pipe up, "Do you have 'Dirtpipe Milkshakes Vol. 12'?" just to see the extent to which I could faze him. But I was afraid that he might actually have what was just asked for in jest, then I'd have to buy it so as to avoid looking like a doofus, and however would I explain the presence of enema porn at the residence hall without appearing like someone with a bagful of issues?!
But I digress...
So I asked him for directions to the coffee place, and he more than obliged, he actually called the coffee place to get rather detailed instructions, cheekily telling them to expect a "well-dressed young guy" soon. I would have blushed if I wasn't doing so already. The whole place had that midwestern friendliness to its depravity: the magazines were less, "You know you want to..." and more, "It would be nice if you did!"
As I walked past one of the aisles, I received such a genial smile from a patron, you would think we were both
buying groceries at Target! A cheery wave and a "Do come again!" from the proprietor marked my exit and I emerged dazed onto the street, but with a fairly good idea of where I was going.

Hickey.

Hamlet has acquired a girlfriend. Yes, he really hit it off with Mary Wollstonecraft- a kindred spirit who was of great solace to me during 'My Year Abroad: Part Une' (Yeah, we don't talk about that.). I am happy for him, for them. It's charming to see them engage each other at an intellectual level so suited to one another: her fire is his smile, his intensity reflects itself in her winsome visage: it's all very sweet, to the point where I want to throw them some odd variant of the Engagement Breakfast, and invite all my friends to fawn at the couple. Ah, but as becomes a good friend, I have been keeping a healthy aesthetic distance: power may be in threes, menage a trois's may be fun, but no-one likes a third wheel!

One evening, after my meetings were done with, and I was adding the final flourishes to an immunology lab report, trying to gloss over a rather tragic murine demise, my whore of a phone vibrated in that delicious way it does when it has something undeniably juicy to tell me, and I found out that Hamlet had been spotted sporting a rather monstrous hickey! As becomes my title, I posted a rather bitchy-revealing-but-not-too-revealing status message on Facebook. Oh we enjoyed that immensely! In a conversation with Hamlet (one with a very post-mortem-esque air) I threw in a few barbs on the lines of, "I think a hickey is a great accessory, now, *I* never could wear one!" Ah, but he's an astute one, my friend is! He caught me right out: I do believe he called me a "horrible jelly-fish serving bitch". Good times! Good times!

Oh, but constant reader, the truth is deeper than all these shallow fables: I am alone. Barring a few instances of unspeakable nastiness, I have nothing to show for my (alleged) youth. But boldly do I lock my skeletons in their walk-in residence, and judge away to glory. Oh of course I am happy! I shop, I befriend, I laugh, and I judge. They like me, and I like myself for a while! My own version of Cunegonde's ditty would go:

"And yet of course these trinkets are endearing, HA-HA!
I know for a fact my Gucci is a star, HA-A-HA!
If not myself, I do love what I'm wearing, HA-HA!
If I'm not pure, at least my shirts are!"

Wanton.

A few nights ago, I found myself swaggering (and I swear this is true!) through the halls of our neighbouring all-woman's residence hall striking up conversations, and generally being a whore. The R.A.'s at that hall had put together a programme in which they allowed unaccompanied males to stroll through their halls just to see how many of their residents would be willing to call them out on the escort policy. I dressed the part: baggy shorts, overpowering perfume, a neck-piece of sophomoric cool, a V-necked T-shirt layered with a plaid shirt, hair rising up in quills: I looked like the stereotypical freshman. I seriously considered the exposed boxer bit, but I lost my nerve at the last minute. Some lines should never be crossed.
To my pleasant surprise, I was hit on. Constantly. I came very close to collecting a few phone numbers, but didn't because I was on a mission: a mission that entailed me playing the part of a wanton, unescorted boy(!) with loose morals. I have never felt so objectified before, and I liked it.

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!

Mirth

So there I stood, a pile of brightly coloured envelopes in hand. All of these were in my mailbox. All of these were addressed to me.

"How very odd." I enunciated carefully as Hamlet looked on.

Hamlet had that look about him, that look that told him that he knew that I was standing en pointe on that line between Public Sanity and the neurotic/cathartic breakdown.

"Well!" I continued with a frightening sense of cheer in my voice. "Let's go back to my room! Yes! Let's do that."

Hamlet nodded: this was familiar, the strange propriety, the rambling...

My room seemed larger for some unfathomable reason. There was something magnanimous in the air. As I breathed it in, it burnt and was caught in my throat.

"Why..." I pronounced, my words gelatinous.
As Hamlet proceeded to calm me down, I begged him to leave. To leave, because I thought I was going to cry...O God! I couldn't possibly cry here! I never have! Not even when I moved away from the Eternal City! But that THING that was caught in my throat was debilitating me! I had to do it, I had to...cry.

Hamlet (bless him) is a gem, and so he left me to exorcise my insecurities.

I was alone. In my big room. The Thing in my throat squeezed tighter, and I gasped loudly. The rains came then, the dessicated fields of my eyes were a-flood, and it. felt. so. good. I was trembling tremulously, the kind of trembling that accompanies an object on the verge of explosion. I gripped the side of my desk, and I made out the colourful envelopes through the teary haze that obscured my vision. The pleasant shower amped itself up to a tempest, and by God, it was the most alive I have felt in a long, long, long time.

If you imagine things the way I do, then imagine this: a foreign kid of average build, weeping piteously as 'Never say Never' by The Fray plays in the background...It was very 'Grey's Anatomy'!

As beautifully tempestuous as that was, it was now time to compose myself: I washed my face, applied cooled Earl Grey tea-bags to my eyes, moisturised, refreshed my perfume, readjusted my scarf, made myself some coffee, grabbed a few Lindt bonbons and sat down to read my mail.

There is an infectious mirth about those cards: almost the entire RA staff wrote how much they valued me, how much they enjoyed having me amidst them. I laughed at their witticisms, in my mind I hugged every single one who had taken the time and the trouble to write to me. Such kindness, so much more than I deserve...

That very afternoon, my therapist, Dick Diver II, had asked me if I had ever been truly, truly happy. I said that I had come close, but every time a foreboding sense of 'oh-this-is-going-to-end-soon' spoilt it for me. But this was different: for once in my overly analytical, worryingly neurotic existence, I was truly, truly happy: it was an invincible happiness, and for that one moment, the world was mine.

One of my R.A. friends, also a part of the project, told me that my gracious Lord Kengleson had facilitated the whole thing. I struggled with myself: I wanted to go thank him, but I was afraid I'd break down again. Who needs that kind of drama? I went up to his door three times in an hour, and each time I came back trembling, on the verge of fresh tears. Finally, I did make it up there and gave him the warmest, tightest hug I could muster. He kept saying that it was no big deal, he kept reducing the fact that he had gone around campus to the different buildings to collect the mail to a mere trifle, but he shall always have my everlasting gratitude. You see, it gets very cold here in this Spitsbergen, and Lord Kengleson has given me my own private sun...

Until the next time,
GossipGuy!

Contradiction Triangle

I am just so fucking pissed at this point! Oh! OH!

Friday was the day of Three Contradictions. Sounds like one of those horrible 'let's-have-99c-sundaes-on-Sunday' things, does it not? I hate the fact that I get to sit, as pretty as you please, in the midst of the triangle that the Three Contradictions so fluidly form around me. Let's make our visit, shall we?

1) "You really need to work harder. Or not so hard. Or maybe, just channel the hard-work in the right direction: the direction of the stuff that is actually going to be on the test."

This is what my Biochemistry test told me this morning. It's hateful to stay up till ungodly hours going over such a frighteningly large amount of material, and then just...blank out the next morning. Of course, it came to me. The furtive 'going over' from the night before did manage to seep in through the crevices of this brain. But that moment of absolute silence between the arrival of the test on my desk and the seeping in, left me chilled. By the time the slow seeping had hastened to a steady flow, the test was done with, and I was in Physics, trying to speak Newton. In three dimensions.

This semester is officially my semester of exotic, foreign languages.

First, there's Biochemistry: my spoken Amino Acid is stilted, and has a learned quality to it. My written Amino Acid is conscientious and full of scratched out functional groups. Hell, there should be a course named 'Translating Amino Acid- The Language of Protein Architecture'. Oh I just made such a vilely geeky joke there, that I just want to douse myself with cheap beer so as to mask the self-righteous stink of Eau De Pseudo-Nerd.

Second, there's Immunology with its abbreviations: TNF, PRR, PECAM, C3b-Bb-Bb, C2aC4b: Gaaah! These make sense to me individually, but when they are all thrown at me with the vigour that only IgTinaFey (my professor) has, I feel like a destitute non-sportive, ex-fatty trying to catch a whole swarm of angry, abbreviated volleyballs. I'm pressed against a wall, and they crash right at me. Bruised, but smiling: Ah, it hurts so good...

As far as Physics is concerned, I have never spoken Newton. Never will. That's that. So there! Ah-ha! And other platitudes of over-enthusiastic affirmation, that I shall use to mask my disappointment into myself.

I am turning into a Freshman: I am disorganised, and my diet includes a lot of soda and cereal. I had this down to a science last year: bustling and harried? Yes. Messy and disorganised? Not so. O God, O God! I can only wish that things look up...

2) "You really need to stop being so hard on yourself."

My therapist, Dick Diver II, is a charming lady. She's supportive, she listens, and, so far, has no intention to start mind-fucking me. I find that I am happiest when in therapy, because when not in therapy, I dream dreams that have me in a French maid costume, bent over Sigmund Freud's left knee, talking about my issues as he spanks me with a feather duster. After a talk with Hamlet, it turns out that Freud now says, "Why are you having this dream?" within the dream. It's all very artsy with "No-you-won't-get-it" yearnings. And let's face it, constant reader, non-pretentious neuroses are hardly neuroses at all! You don't go to therapy for those, you seek hugs or food or something.

At any rate, Dick Diver II, told me what Dick Diver I told me too: "Stop being so hard on yourself." You see how this is a contradiction? If you don't, I suggest you read #1 again. Hard on myself? Oh! OH! I should be fucking horsewhipped!

3) "Of course, you can get into Georgetown!"

Dr. Transposon, my academic advisor, is an all-round great guy. He's a brick, he's the cat's meow, the bee's knees, and I really think that the dated slang is getting a little demeaning. But you get it right? Given the day I had had, the last thing I wanted to talk about was grad school, because my chances of getting into one of those recondite places seemed very, very unlikely. As Dr. Transposon and I talked of grad school, a few fancy names (much like the one above) were thrown around, and I disdainfully went "Yeah right!" and even "As if!" I don't know if I actually used the latter. It's very unlike me. But hey, I was conflicted, so it could have happened. Even though I hope to God it didn't! But Dr. Transposon rejoined with a very pragmatic, "Why not?" And that's all it took, really, for the sun to emerge defiantly onto the livid mindscape of my contradictory day.

"I don't know" is something that I say a lot these days.

I don't know if I will ever fluently speak those avant garde Sciencey tongues.
I don't know if I will ever be truly, truly happy with me.
I don't know if I will get into Georgetown.
All I know is what the little boy in 'I Am David' knew and held so dear: I am me. That is all.

Until the next time,
GossipGuy.

Cinéplex

So it has been 2 weeks, I think, since I posted last. It seems as if more time would have elapsed. Or rather, more time should have elapsed. It's not fair! The dawning of each day is like start of a movie. Yes, that is how it has been, of late: a fine amalgam of some rather fine films.

American Graffiti.

"Oh, no, not me. The night is young and I'm not hittin' the rack till I get a little action."

What started as a frisson built itself up into a wild, vivifying rush of ebullience, and fired up the blood in my veins as it skipped nimbly between one synapse and another. The result? A whoop, a gale of inexplicable laughter...it was an ungodly hour and I was in a convertible with the ever-agreeable Rosalind and the convivial Gabriel Oak: co-R.A.'s and dear, dear friends. The wind weaved its way delicately through my hair leaving them tousled, disheveled, but trendily so. Every cell in my body pulsated to the electro-pop ministrations emanating from the car's music system. Almost organically did I join the two in shouting out lyrics to the night:

And if I notice you I know it's you. Choose you don't wanna lose you're on my radar (on my radar) on my radar (on my radar)

It was all us- one with the night, teetering on the edge of ecstasy, madness...Oh to be there again! Laughter, such laughter, as the Taco Bell attendant looked at me uncomprehendingly as I asked her for a vegetarian gordita. Oh! Oh! The banter was crisp, the persiflage was pungent, and oh...the laughter! Never mind the revelations that would come to pass as time strolled right along, never mind the mis-communication, the heart-break...Right then, there was no night but that one. None at all.

Mean Girls."You're wearing sweatpants. That's against the rules! You can't sit with us."

The Residence Dining Centre, these days, is oddly reminiscent of my idea of Valhalla, and the primary reason for that would be The R.A. Table: a long table, by the picture windows, with high stools and R.A. Royalty. Each day, I'd sashay into the Dining Centre, orange juice in hand, stopping at practically every table to exchange frothy, phatic nothings, until I'd finally weave my way to The R.A. Table. And there, amongst the other Anointed Ones, there would be laughter, stories, clever one-liners and-oh! A wonderful, wonderful time! Don't look at me like that! Being a voluptuary is hard work, I'll have you know!

But, in all seriousness, this particular episode left me a little shaken: am I really this shallow a person? Imagine my surprise when, one afternoon, I get back to my room, having barely survived the First Installment of Wrathful Wednesday, log into my Facebook and notice that Hamlet has posted the following:

"Hamlet wishes that he had an army of R.A. friends the way some other people do."
Seeing as I have an admiration for all things bitchy, even if they are directed towards me, I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. Oh, it was priceless! It was so acerbically bitchy, I had to hand it to him! Despite my rather exultant first reaction, I found that this little barb prickled me all day long as I went about facing the Second Installment of Wrathful Wednesday.

Now, imagine my surprise as I go back on to Facebook and find that Hamlet has vented his spleen to Helena! Oh! It killed me! There was such anguish there! Had I really forsaken the one guy who had given me the most tender bromance ever for the glitz of The R.A. Table?! Oh no no no! This had to be remedied at once! I called him over and a reconciliation was had. It was a quiet affair, there were hugs and borderline tearing-up. Oh what a cauchemar life would be without my friends....

The Others

There are things your mother doesn't want to hear. She only believes in what she was taught. But don't worry. Sooner or later... she'll see them. And everything will be different.

I was on my rounds a few days a go and I couldn't help but wonder this: why am I not carrying a lantern? Why am I not wearing a permanently paranoid expression and clothes that belong to the '40's? No, really! As an R.A., all I do is hear things. I hear whoops and yells, the clink of glass and an aluminium baritone, I hear giggles, I hear the whooshing of wheels in hallways...But when I emerge, I find...nothing. Oh, I've caught the odd miscreant, but really, otherwise, I only hear my residents and they only hear me. Maybe the noises are like a seance that carry out to confirm my presence. Oh no you don't! I'm not dead! This is my house! Of course it was foolish to think that they'd take to me instantly. Yet, the disappointment I have in myself doesn't seem to ebb...

Yet, constant reader, things are looking up. I have started aligning names to faces and phatic conversation is, well, a start at least. My fellow R.A.'s, fellow phantoms, if you will, have been very encouraging as well. Perhaps it is all in my mind. Because I see them now, without wondering if they really see me, and yes, things are different. In the best way possible.

Brief Encounter.

It's awfully easy to lie when you know that you're trusted implicitly. So very easy, and so very degrading.

I...can't talk about this. I thought writing about it might be easier, but it's not. Every time I even think about it I get that horrible lingering pregnant feeling in my nose, the kind that signals a sneeze or sobs. O God, O God! Such a foolish harlequin, variegate with regret and an undefinable somethingelse.


Until the next time,
GossipGuy.