June 1997.

June 30, 1997.

"You and me, what does that mean?
Always, what does that mean?"
- Christian Sands, Tricky

Questions I have only begun to ask. Thought I knew... [insert self-pitying blues song here]

If you turned on a news appliance at all in the past few days, you'll agree with me...Mike Tyson should be repeatedly shot with a tranquilizer gun. He's giving social vampires like me a bad name.

This weekend I shook the gritty, mall-dotted dirt of my home town off my feet, and went for an extended stay at Sister Sunshine's haüs in Scarborough. Yes, we both hail from the suburbs - two places that are about equally devoid of culture. We call them the armpits of the universe (or perhaps merely of Canada - much of the U.S. that I have seen in my limited traveling experience has sucked pretty hard. If I ever get more experience in those parts of Ohio, I may have to develop a new rating system. But I digress.) We hung out in a typical teenager fashion - rented a movie, swam in her pool, hung out with boys (okay, not boys. Dream.) About the only thing we didn't do was buy a 2-4 and get loaded. (I'm trying to wean myself from the alcoholic torpor I sunk into this year, and Sister Sunshine doesn't drink. (She should hang out with Preacher, Palaver and Poet...she'll be sucked in so fast, she won't know WHAT hit her. (I put Poet on my meal card so many times last year, 'cause when it came down to a choice between food, cigarettes and booze, he always chose smokes & alcohol. I'm really lucky that I didn't come out of our "relationship" with a habit. (Well, if you discount my email addiction, that is. Which rages on to this day...send me mail!))))

Dream surprises me so much...before I met him the first time, I had heard about him for months from Sister Sunshine - that he was tall, skinny, pretty and goth. I couldn't wait to meet him, 'cause I have a profound weakness for goths. They interest me mightily. Ok, so Dream's not really a goth. What tipped me off? Well, he has a sense of humour, unlike so many goths. He doesn't take himself as seriously as most goths I know. He's actually funny. Go figure. (By the way, I take myself a lot less seriously in person than I do in writing. An alarming amount of pretension creeps in when I do these entries. Oh well.) So that was Surprise #1. Surprise #2 - I didn't develop a crush on him. Hey, that's an achievement for me. You're talking to someone who almost fell for the tour guide in the UK. It's fuckin' painful, the speed at which I fall.

I guess I'm just surprised to see a guy who looks like he's in the final stages of tuberculosis cracking jokes (although I have covert info that his underwear is not black - shhhh! Don't want to ruin his goth cred.)

On Friday I listened in disgust as two of my co-workers argued about the re-assumption of Hong Kong into Communist China. The combatants were Thomas, a HK native, and my supervisor, who is the least-informed person I know. Yikes.

June 28, 1997.

Yesterday I tried to replace the stud high up in my left ear with a hoop Maharet gave me. But I couldn't find the hole, so I asked my mother for help. She's a nurse, after all, and I thought it would be more accurate and painless.

Wrong.

I screamed like a woman.

But then, what did you expect?

"The me that you know, she doesn't come around much."

- NIN, the becoming

I think I made a really big mistake today.

What's that, you say? Bigger than skipping out on the check? Bigger than using alcohol to sort out my love-life that memorable Tuesday? Bigger than underestimating how much money I needed at an ATM and needing two transactions, each for $20, within one minute? Yes. Bigger than that. For you see, I followed my friend Edgar Allan's advice.

Let me explain.

Edgar Allan is the best friend of Mr. Blonde (my goober ex-boyfriend). Both Edgar Allan and Mr. Blonde now work at the mall. So when I gaily tripped into the mall today to pick up some sandals and a hoop for the piercing high up in my ear, I went by Edgar Allan's store to say hi. He's been remarkably civil since the breakup (even more surprising than you think, because we used to fight like rabid weasels when I was still with Mr. Blonde. But I digress...) We chatted about inconsequential teen stuff. And Topic A came up (the great thing about my friends is that none of them dance around potentially painful situations. They just wade in and apologize later. Especially Edgar Allan. Sometimes he has absolutely no regard for anyone's feelings...which is why we fought so much. But I digress again...) EA's of the opinion that Mr. B. & I will either get back together, or become best friends. So he suggested that I go by Mr. Blonde's store. And I, like a chump, followed his advice.

Warning bells should have gone off. You just don't go talk to your ex a) when the wounds are still fresh and b) he refuses to deal with my problems concerning his motives and method of dumping (the phone!!! He dumped me over THE PHONE!!!! THREE GODDAMN YEARS...Must. Stop. Hyperventilating. There...)

And it was horrible. Part of me was still crying out for him to say that it was all a mistake, and that he wanted this madness over. But he didn't. He just made a few remarks about his new band, which reminds me of the most hateful stuff about the breakup - the presence of that cheese-eating bastard Mr. Shoreleave, the absolute obliviousness Mr. B. displays when he's playing guitar, and finally, the idea that he needed to find validation up on stage with a guitar in his arms, instead of off-stage with me. In his arms. Well, he doesn't even have to divide up the time anymore. Good for him.

And he looked at me and I looked at him, and we both knew that it was really over. That we're never getting back together again. Neither of us said anything, though.

There was so much right with us for so long, but it's obvious that it went a bit sour near the end. As Gnossos Papadopolous said, "just a whiff of buttermilk, man." I know that I hurt him a lot when I fell hopelessly in love with the Poet last winter. But while I just wanted to work through the emotions and then forget about it, he saw it as a cry for help. I don't know why he didn't want to help me, though. In hindsight, he couldn't get out fast enough.

Ahh, hindsight...what a crazy bitch thou art...

Through you, I see my pregnancy scare in a whole new light. While I was getting blood drawn, he was "comforting" Jen because her boyfriend dumped her. When I was waiting for the results with Cordelia and Aphrodite, he was God knows where. And then there's the whole "I don't want to be seen with you in my new place of work" phenomenon. And THEN there's the fact that near the end I was compensating for his disinterest by being the sexual aggressor. But you probably didn't want to hear that.

Maybe warning bells should've gone off then. But they didn't. And here we all are, listening to Aleta whine about her ex. Sigh. If it wasn't for Nine Inch Nails, I would have no channel for this bitterness.

Excepting, of course, this one.

June 27, 1997.

Sister Sunshine (who is the sassiest person I know (besides myself, as I am, of course, Sassarella, Queen of Sass)) gave me a very valuable bit of advice the other day. She says that the problem with life is that if you don't have a job, you need a job, and when you have a job, you need a better job and while you're at work, you have a lot of time to think about stuff that you probably shouldn't be thinking too much about.

(Like getting a better job...)

I think work may be the worst possible place for me right now, if not forever. Not only am I feeling trapped in a corporate newsletter project that I can't fully come to terms with (work or slack? The debate continues), but I have a lot of spare brain-power to devote to thinking about stuff that I really don't want to deal with on an 8-hours-straight basis. Like how much I miss my goober ex-boyfriend. Or my continuing problems with the Poet (including the fact that my Leonard Cohen compilation and the fruit drawer from my little fridge are still at his house. No, don't even ask.) Or the fact that I skipped out on the check this week.

Oh well. At least I'm not checking my email on an hourly basis anymore. I've got 8 whole hours for the anticipation to build up...and then my box is usually empty, anyway. God, I was such an email junkie this year - but now my supplier's found a new & better me to write to. (One with an untwistable stomach.)

"They tell you the first one's free...and then they jack up the price!!! Oh, it's not fair, I tells ya!"

- Homer Simpson

If there's any chance anybody would like to be my patron, I'd be perfectly willing to throw over my job as administrative assistant to be a Victorian gentlewoman of leisure. I'll write poems, song & stories to mark special occasions for you & your family. I'm also willing to entertain dinner guests and visiting dignitaries, as well as escort any friend or relative to the theatre if the need arises. I will be a sparkling addition to any function, formal or relaxed. All you need to provide are lodgings, a clean suit of clothes, and an endless supply of port. Please send your offer by afternoon post...

(Who says that the youth today don't have ambition? We just aspire to positions requiring no enthusiasm or even effort, that's all.)

I tells ya, if I didn't have to earn real money for tuition this year (and if my finances hadn't been stripped barenaked by my trip to England), I'd be out of this place so fast that the suits would have to bypass the vapor trail. And then I'd take the job baby-sitting Mikey, for 3 bucks an hour (or less). Nap-time, food cut up into little chunks, and the freedom to watch gameshows...there's so much right with that. Especially when you're looking at it longingly from the coldest cubicle in the Western World...

June 26, 1997.

Last night I was feeling so sorry for myself, that I couldn't sleep. So I got up and put on "Oh Me" by the Meat Puppets, from the Nirvana Unplugged album. Although I have commented publicly that I consider Unplugged to be a pussy album, just between you and me, I find it very soothing. The arrangements are just beautiful...especially for the Meat Puppets stuff. After 3 or 4 repeats of "Oh Me," I was thankfully able to escape into my dream world. (By the way, it was well worth it. Last night I was a vampire...mmmm. I love that dream. Power, revenge, sex - it has it all. The only problem is the Van Helsing-like characters that occasionally pop up. I guess nothing's perfect - not even the Undead.)

Had a run-in with the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing yesterday.

Seems they want some of my superficial survey information for the webpage. So I can just hand it over, right?

Wrong.

He flipped (the Sales & Marketing dude, that is). Why didn't you tell me, it's so different, blah blah blah. I wanted to know what the difference was, because I had always envisioned the newsletter as a glossy production that could be shown to customers, and so on. That's what I had been working for, after all. So he starts to tell me horror stories about businesses and the Internet. How we could get sued for mentioning another company. That if we reveal our customers, a competitor could put in a lower bid & shut us out. That he should have been told. When I asked how I was supposed to know when to cut stuff out, he didn't even have an answer. So, basically, my balls got busted for something that wasn't even my idea.

I was within an ace of saying "Look, pal. One crappy business site is not going to get that many hits. The information is boring. Nobody will return write-ups on their division, so all the material is out of date, anyway. I have a webpage. I'm very comfortable in the web. And it's paranoid creeps like you who're wrecking it for the rest of us." But I didn't, of course.

If you want to be guarded and cautious, I don't think that the Internet is your place to be creating. Maybe it's just a clash of philosophy. The web is like a giant nude beach, and while he's putting on another suit of armor, I'd rather be naked in front of you all. But then I've always been a bit of an exhibitionist, anyway.

June 25, 1997.

"I'm celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo..."

- from the Mighty Kymm's Homepage

Yesterday I did something that I've never done before in my life:

I skipped out on a check.

It's so embarrassing. See, we were all at East Side Mario's, chatting & slamming back girlie drinks (or beer, as the case may be) and it came time for me to go home. Work tomorrow, blah blah blah. (I'm a baby about some things, and sleep is one of them. My optimum night is 10 freakin' hours, 'kay? Any less, and I feel perfectly free to commence bitching & moaning.) It didn't look like my ride (the lovely & talented Max) would be ready to drive me home any time soon, so I just called home for a pick up. And skipped gaily out. Leaving the bill for a girlie drink in my wake.

sigh...

If I ever needed proof that God never intended me to drink (and if this whole year wasn't enough!), there it is. As the Poet used to say, "you can't spell whisky without t-r-o-u-b-l-e." Except that it was Bailey's. Mmmmm...

So, if any of my friends are reading this, I'd like to heartily apologize. I am a jackass. Please forgive me.

Mega-thanks and bountiful sloppy kisses go to Max & Maharet for inviting me out last night. I got to eat über-good barbequed meat, drink cola, swim in a heated pool, and make disparaging comments about my goober ex-boyfriend. All in all, a pretty perfect night...

Except for skipping out on the check, that is.

June 24, 1997.

Guess what?

I've found a new Gus!!

The similarities are striking:

1. both write long, electronic documents about their life on an almost daily basis.
2. both depend on their fathers for living expenses.
3. and...uh...both are named Gus (although one is Gustavo (a.k.a. Poet) and the other is August (a.k.a. the Gus), I think)

There are many advantages to this new Gus. For one thing, we have the same musical-cultural background (heavy-metal teens and a flirtation with goth & punk, among other things). For a second thing, this Gus also paints very neat & vibrant scenes. Then there's the small but crucial fact that, even if we quarrel, electronic relationships lack the passion of "real" ones, and the split will be a lot less messy. And the final advantage is that the new Gus isn't in a snit, and refusing to speak to me.

Yet...

So if you also need a new Gus, or just want to add to your collection, go visit the Gus. You won't be disappointed...

It's like I always said; what's the use of a dear friend if you can't replace them quickly and easily when they grow tiresome?

Ok, I never really said that...

Think this entry will get me into trouble? Too freaking bad. I want my Leonard Cohen compilation back, you sponge!!!

June 23, 1997.

I know that this statement is hardly original to me, but Mondays are the children of depraved bitch-goddesses.

Started out the day in typical Aleta fashion: woke up ten minutes too late, questioned the universe & my purpose in it, took too long in the shower, got a little lost on the way to work, and here I am. Yikes.

Boy, was it ever a shitty weekend...

On Saturday the only other female cousin in my generation got married. This would be stress enough, because we still have a lot of competitiveness issues to work out, and I had to worry about looking good etc. But this wedding also comes at a particularly bad time for me, with my goober ex-boyfriend disappearing over the nearest horizon. Just attending the wedding as my normal...er...make that my usual self, would've been bad enough. But I had to attend it as Rebound Girl.

(See her date losers! See her agonize to her girlfriends over what went wrong! See her accept blame! And in an amazingly bone-chilling sequence, see her turn a platonic friendship into an inappropriate sexual encounter JUST TO HAVE SOMEONE TO LOVE!!!)

And not even the bouquet thinks I have a chance in hell.

In fact, the only neat thing was that while we were at the reception, lightning struck the hotel. The gods are displeased at this UNHOLY union...

Sigh...

my life is a living hell...

June 20, 1997.

Today is casual day at the office wherein I "work". This bothers me on two different levels:

Number one, it reminds me of how much in this world is geared towards the baby boomers. Okay, they're the biggest generation in the history of the world. So they used their power to improve the inevitabilities of life...like work & reproduction & mini-vans. And now that they're getting old, they're using their demographic muscle to make the world geared toward their aging asses. Hence the proliferation of easy-listening stations. And donut stores. And shows that started out about teenagers, but ended up about their parents. (Yes, I am talking about My So-Called Life). And they wonder why later generations are depressed & apathetic - they f*ckin' sucked up all the good stuff like drugs, sex & music when it was still healthy to do so. What do we have left? Cat, STDs and NIN. (Funny how all of it comes down to three letters).

Of course, the baby boomers used some of their powers for good instead of evil. Like casual day. In theory, there's nothing wrong with setting aside one office day a week where all the suits can relax & wear weekend clothes. In practice, I run into difficulties.

It's just that I only have 2 wardrobe speeds: dressy-semiformal-semicasual (what I wear to the office 4 days a week) and everything else. Preacher likes to characterize this second category as "whore clothes." (In fact, one of the first things he ever said to me was "You can't base your life on second-hand clothes and Anne Rice novels." Ouch.) Not that there's anything remotely slutty about most of my clothes. The dress I'm wearing on the Mirror page isn't even mine, for heaven's sake. I just own a lot of t-shirts and elegantly ripped jeans. Which means that I have to work twice as hard getting ready for casual day as I do the rest of the week. F'rinstance, today I'm wearing jeans (that I indeed bought second-hand). Jeans that I had to cut the bottoms off to fit my legs. And therefore the cuffs are now shredded ruins. And of course I can never find enough safety pins at 8:15 am...

So today I'm using three regular safety pins and a button from our vacation to Maine 8 years ago, which says "I escaped from Perry's Nuthouse." Which pretty much sums up my feelings about this office.

And this whole year, come to think...

June 18, 1997.

Thanks to all of you whom I contacted last night and came to visit. It was really bothering me that I so stupidly reset my counter, when I'd logged about 150 visitors. I felt like it was an accomplishment or something. And then I messed it all up...But the response last night was enormous!

And I got to be visitor "69" for the second time...he he he!

Second day in the office. I am supposedly designing, researching and writing the company's very first newsletter. It doesn't have a name or a focus or anything, really. So I'm approaching it like I would any other writing assignment. I know how company newsletters are supposed to sound & look. I'll just go from there. Then my boss said, "make sure it's funny & readable..."

Well, one thing or the other, babe. If you want entertainment, watch the Simpsons. If you want to read some asshole going on and on about their commitment to excellence in the workplace and their departmental milestones, pick up an employee newsletter. There's one and then there's the other. But never the twain shall meet.

The unsettling thing is that I'm a little too comfortable in setting up this kind of project. Y'see, at the beginning of last year, I got kicked off The Gargoyle, which is my college's newspaper. So I got talked into starting a paper of our own. (By "our" I mean it was only my friends for the first issue.) But it fell through, and I permanently shot my University College credibility all to hell. (Fortunately, most of us never had that much credibility to begin with.)

Ah, (R)evolution...

They say that it stalled in the layout stage, but I think that the far greater obstacle was the fact that my co-editor and I fell in love, to the dismay of everyone involved. Including my now ex-boyfriend.

"Baby baby baby, whatcha tryin' to do? Tryin' to love me n' some other man too..."

- Big Sugar

June 17, 1997.

On Sunday I was so bored that my eyeballs were drying up. (It was awful...) So I just got in the car and drove around. I ended up buying The Sandman Collection "Season of Mists" and Nine Inch Nails' "The Downward Spiral". Not only did those purchases make me extremely happy (beginning the euphoria which I previously mentioned), but they made me, unsurprisingly, feel a lot like Dream.

(In my first year at U of T, the Review Editor of the Varsity was named Don Ward (I suppose that's still the guy's name, but since he's no longer Review Editor, it hardly matters, now does it?) And he had a big poster of the afore-mentioned album. But the funny thing was that he blocked off the 'w', so the poster read "The Don Ward Spiral". Clever, no? Well, it made me laugh.)

But the REALLY neat thing was that today, after my first day in my dad's office 9-5, I came home feelin' crappy, only to discover that Dream unexpectedly gifted me with the incredibly evil & very very spiff title you see on the Front Page. I love my misfits...they be so cool...

Like I said in the above paragraph, I returned to work today, after about 3 months. It's a crazy, crazy place (almost as crazy as 89 Brunswick). And my God...two of the office girls got knocked up in my absence. TWO. Both unmarried. Both about 22-24. Both very cheerful & slightly wacky. And I'm thinking wow... You think it's something in the water? If so, I'll just stick to coffee from now on. (Black, of course.) Also, Valerie (one of the pregnant girls) turned the hose on a visitor last night. She blames it on the gestation hormones. What do I get to blame my nuttiness on?

Oh, well. Just blame it on my percodan addiction...

"And doesn't it make you feel better?"

- Nine Inch Nails

June 15, 1997.

I am so freakin' happy lately...

And I couldn't even tell you why. I've been having major man problems, I'm returning to the same sucky job I had last summer, and blah blah freakin' blah. For months I've been walking around like somebody died. And not just because I adore the goth lifestyle, either.

And then I figured out who died.

It was me.

And now I'm back to life. I feel rejuvenated. I feel like it's only a matter of time before the outside matches my inside circumstances. I feel reborn. I feel...giggly, even. How 'bout that. I haven't felt giggly since before I went crazy. But enough about that Tuesday. I blather enough about that stupid day. My point is that I've finally shaken off the madness that's been dogging my heels for so very long.

Anyway, I just thought you all would like to know how happy I am, for no apparent reason.

Or maybe the Sandman has something to do with it...

"Thank-you-for-inviting-me-to-your-party, Mr. Dreamy. I had a lovely time."

- Shivering Jemmy

Or, in the words of Scott, "Happy birthday Jesus. Hope you like crap."

June 14, 1997.

You remember in sociology class when they told you about the different types of people in every group? You know - there's the nurturer, who tries to make everyone feel comfortable. There's the aggressor, who makes the decisions. Etc., etc. etc. The interesting thing is that when I got to university, everything changed...

I'm not talking about the obvious things. I'm talking about the fact that the roles have entirely changed. Instead of the nurturer, there's the Man of God, who is studying for a career as a minister (that would be you, Preacher.) There's the Mysterious Heiress, who seems to live by an inexplicable source of money and an inexhaustible fund of charm & grace. Then there's the Melancholy Victorian Gentleman of Leisure. You know, the one who writes poetry, drinks heavily, and is continually depressed.

Well? Am I the only one who's experiencing this?

And they call me the psycho one...