self pity. eww.

that sucks vicky. and somehow i am so wrapped up in myself that what do i do? i write about myself.

i spend my time chasing boys. boys i don't want to replace boys i think i want to fill some void that i don't know why it exists or if it really exists. what the fuck. something like that. because somehow, after a financially and careerly successful day, i find myself at home balling: throwing myself down on my stupid little mattress pad of a bed crying my brains out, wrecked with bitter disappointment and ugly guilt.

fuck. how do i manage to pull this off? to bring myself into such a loathsome place for no reason? what am i really after with all this shit?

Whoops

Ha. Never mind any mention of Andrew in previous posts. He broke up with me Wednesday night. More confused and somehow full of dread than anything else. Back to those halcyon days of whoremongering and solitary drunkenness.

Sex sober or with feeling is cheap and overrated. Let that be what I take away from my experience with the two guys I tried to date. Let that be my epitaph, for Christ's sake.

Between stale and pathetic, I don't even have scathing comments or a torrential outburst of words. Perhaps I have become passionless.

And I'm silly, stupid, childish, naive, for buying into that illusory kind of beauty.

How completely out of character.

(mark michael = markael)

i'm not invincible when it comes to markael. the phone tormented me yesterday. i cried in my bed. in naples, i can't use the pretty model boy or change of scenery to occupy my attention. i crave him in my life in whatever capacity i can get and it's driving me insane every stupid minute i don't hear from him telling me he's sorry for taking so long to get back to me and of coarse he wants to immediately come over or me to go to starbucks or whatever. just to be friends. i won't let myself want more because i refuse to be in any sort of on and off relationship, and he flipped it off.

fuck me.

just the shit that happened today.

i woke up to a warning on my car that without a decal, they'd tow it and i need to immediately move it. i drove it to a nearby grocery store where i went shopping for breakfast stuff for the next few days since i'm occupying my friend Chessie's apartment in Kendall, which is in South Miami about 30 minutes from South Beach since my normal apartment fell through. I've been thankful for the escape and, although i haven't spent any money on food in the past 4 days since arriving to miami...i prefer my supermarket bargain shopping for once to an awesome free meal from an older male friend; i feel a little insecure about the dependency.

but my card was declined and i've been so fucking nervous about money anyway that that is why i've let myself be fed by my friends every meal since i got here. but i was just nervous about it, not out of it, i thought since i had put $500 in my account three days ago. i now know why it was gone and my account was $295.53 overdrafted, but this morning i didn't know what to do with myself. my mom and grandpa wired $800 into my account by now, but i'm still so freaked out about it i don't know quite what to do.

my agent called and said i'm doing a commercial tomorrow morning. cool.

i scheduled a coffee date with a reporter from the naples daily news because they want to write a special about me winning the naomi campbell thing / is it real or a scam?

i scheduled my fitting for the swim association show for this thursday.

i definitely didn't book the oscar de la renta runway show i went to the casting for today.

i scheduled a consultation about getting a breast augmentation to be a small B for friday.

chessie said her roommate didn't want me in their place anymore, so i texted my friend quinto (a 40 something photographer i crashed with my first night here) to stay at his place tonight, and rescheduled my fitting for friday after the other appointment---my plan was that after the commercial i'd drive back to naples til friday morning. i could put more money into my account, check on my dog, see Michael (Mark), and drop off my mom's car at the airport the night before she'd arrive so i don't have to get a friend to pick her up since i won't be there.

Michael dumped me over an email. it was good. it made me cry. i didn't want to go back to naples now.

i went to borders and read three cups of tea. i watched the bachelorette. i was formulating plans in my head about places to stay here til next sunday after my show but talked with chessie and she said screw her absentee roommate, she didn't like the girl anyway so she gives me permission to continue crashing and we'll if i run into her, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

fuck. i have to pee. then i'll read a little more and wake up extra early tomorrow. my call time is at 6:30, but they serve breakfast at 6. i'm going at 6, obviously.

i don't know what i'll do with all my free time in miami and i don't want to be distracted by the shit it has to offer, like alcohol and parties. but maybe i'll see ivan again and let myself relax or something instead of like last night where i kept cheeking him. He is a hot, successful model i was vaguely dating before i met michael and who i never officially cut ties with. i think he's dorky, but miami is small. people know him, and they think otherwise.

i was crazy about michael and he wrote that AMAZING story about me and him and the Sea Turtle that i won't let myself read til i don't know when.

long day. tomorrow probably will be too. i now, more than ever, want to be in new york and start over.

To you, you son of a bitch

You call me out of nowhere and ambush me with your self-pitying questions. You emotionally manipulate me into sympathizing with you, feeling sorry for you. You call my words lies, you say that I cheated on you. The whole time, I have to choke back what I truly want to say to you because, still, I could never say the things you said to me to your face. Your words were designed to impact, to sting, to accuse, to confront. I still couldn't do that. You say I'm disgusting, despicable. You hate me. You regret being with me. I think you were the worst thing that had ever happened to me, romantically and psychologically. But I still can't say I regret being with you. I still can't say I never cared about you.

I know I promised not to talk about you here. But you called me, and texted me, with such venom that I feel others ought to know what you're like. What you're really like. Because you take the things I've told you in the past, the things that caused me the most anguish, and you twist them to suit your own intentions. I never felt worse about myself than when I was around you. And you know what? Nothing I could ever say would change your mind about what happened. Nothing I could ever say would make you understand that I didn't fucking cheat on you. Really, what do I have to gain by defending myself now? Nothing. Lying to you and saying I had cheated on you would just satisfy some sick part of your mind that wants to hear that and believe you were right all along. I didn't cheat on you. If I even knew Andrew had feelings for me back then, I would've stopped talking to him. Then you would've gotten what you asked for so many times. But that didn't happen, and all I wanted was to be his friend. Being your girlfriend made me the loneliest person in the world, even in your company, and I'd take whatever friends I could get.

And what right do you have to talk about Zach? He and I have spoken since you left, and we're still on good terms. Everything's gotten better since you left. Funny how that works.

I want to tell the world what you're like. I want every girl out there to know what it's like to be with you, and fuck help them if they ever decide they don't want to be with you anymore because you subject them to this bullshit. I want them to know that there's no kindness inside you, just the fear of social rejection that motivates every carefully calculated move. I want Erin, the waitress at Frank, to know how you would invite her to things that hadn't planned and then finally plan them-- and not invite me, your girlfriend. I want Sabrina to know you told me, specifically, that you would never feel about me the way you felt about her. I want your friends to know how you'd maneuver me into a guilt complex so I'd do what you wanted. Do they realize, really realize, what you are? I want all my friends to know how you said they liked you more when you were Sabrina's boyfriend. You started our relationship by saying you were going to break up with me when you leave, and you started our relationship by saying you've cheated before. I expected it the whole time. I still expect you to say you did, whether it's true or false, because last night showed me how angry and bitter you are.

Oh. And I'm going to marry Andrew. Whether it's in one year, five years, or 20. Getting down on one knee wouldn't even be a surprise, just a formality. We've already talked about it, and he makes me happier than you ever could. So fuck as many 19-year-olds with rowers' bodies as you want. I'm sure they're easy.

Still, I can't bring myself to say to you what I really want to say to you. Maybe I'm granting my words a certain self-importance in thinking they'd hurt you.

I'm sorry I said you have a huge vagina, that you are such a woman. That I couldn't wait for it to be over. The thing is, I didn't just say that to Andrew. I said that to everyone. Some part of me knew I'd be relieved when you left, because the other part of me-- the part that cared about you-- didn't want to leave you. So you were leaving me. But really, you're acting like the scorned woman you're trying to make me into. I loved you. I really loved you, but I never felt you loved me. I was just your emotional stomping ground.

But now, the noose around my neck that was our relationship is gone. Fuck you, you cunty motherfucker, because trying to make you understand any of this is futile. You're not worth the time it would take to communicate to you how unhappy you made me, and how I still NEVER GODDAMN CHEATED ON YOU.

You're sorry for ruining my night? Ha. You couldn't if you tried.

American Spirits and Marlboros

it started a couple weeks ago, the stuff that lead up to my phone call yesterday afternoon. I answered, and the voice said:

"Hey, is this Adrienne? Oh wait, sorry, Sabrina?"

"Uh, great start, man. It's Sabrina..."

It was Mark, one of my boys from Starbucks. He had just gotten my number from Art's girlfriend, Adrienne. Art had insisted Mark call me to go to their house for dinner with them. The other night, Art had insisted Adrienne get my number for whatever reason. Before that, Art had pulled me outside to tell me he thought his friend and fellow Starbucks employee Mark would be the perfect guy for me. Strangely enough, that was about five minutes after I had texted Ajna that I had decided to break up with Brandon. I don't want to go from a 32 year old server to a 31 year old pot smoking barista; but Art planted a fucking seed in my head cause somehow I got this little crush on Mark after that. I can't help but think that Art talked to Mark too, because Mark was surprisingly nice and attentive the next time I saw him.

Anyway, that's the cute little side story on how I ended up on the porch. You can't really call it a porch, it was small, concrete and cracked, a tiny trellis on one side and the plywood front door, when open, almost took up the whole thing. Adrienne and Art were sitting out there, smoking. The entire street is super dark except for this little porch with the little light above their heads.

There was no dinner, they pulled up a couple chairs for us, we chatted a little.

This guy rode up out of the middle of the yard on a bicycle. He was old and fat. Art said he used to be one of his roommates before he got pregnant and pointed in the dark somewhere to indicate the place they had shared, on this street.

The old man defended his ghetto bike and weak legs by saying he wasn't as bad as pegleg who was wheeling over.

Two minutes later, in the pebble driveway, I saw the reflection of a wheelchair, someone was actually wheeling up to the front porch in a wheelchair, this kid. The wheelchair got kind of stuck where the pebbles me the grass and concrete, and the kid jumped up and kicked the wheelchair and repositioned it on the sidewalk, plopped himself back in, and rolled up the the porch. He hurt his knee at work and is collecting workers comp for it; he said they might be watching him, so he's staying in the wheelchair so they wouldn't get him for fraud.

Two more minutes later and a poor farmer from Huckleberry Finn strolls up, I mean, he's white and skinny and too tan and wearing these jeans (no straw hat or anything) but he comes up and just starts on talking too. Another one of Art's old roommates from another place on this street.

So fucking weird. This place cracked me the fuck up--or was it the crack house across the street that I was told not to go to cause they sold some bunk shit?

And then Art and Adrienne's actual roommate comes out of the house. He's topless and older and too tan and has a beer belly. Didn't say anything though, he just smoked and went back in. Art said he was like a dad to them.

So this was the cast of characters for the evening. Art, Adrienne, Mark, Old Roommate #1 (looks preggers), Old Roommate #2 (topless Huck Finn farmer), Pegleg (ghetto kid in wheelchair), and me (current roommate is negligible.)

 Pegleg became a victim even more so. He didn't know how to defend himself and Adrienne was a harsh critic of all people, especially men. She made fun of him for not getting laid and being too awkward to get laid. She tells us about one time when they told him to make a move, so this girl he was hanging out with said she was getting in the shower. He asked to join her. Or another time, this same girl texted him she was in bed alone, and he said there was room in his for her. I quipped in that it was funny that Adrienne kept track of his sex life for him, or lack there of, and asked if she kept reports of his activity. Art then chimmed in that with this girl, Pegleg would need to be in a bedroom with her, shut the door, and just tell her to take her clothes off. Art said he knew this girl, she wanted to get laid but didn't want all the bullshit that came with it. His method was foolproof. Adrienne scoffed at her boyfriend and asked why he didn't do it himself before then. The conversation had moved on, and after a pause, he cuts back to it saying that it would have been weird since he found her kind of annoying and she lived across the street from him at the time, so that's why he hadn't done it. Pegleg was saying he was picturing it in his head, how it would go with him. I said I was too...that his wheelchair would get caught in the doorway or something like that. He didn't like that one bit and went off, with more detail, about how he was perfectly capable of walking or even doing cartwheels out in the field (he pointed) but didn't want to in case he was being watched.

After his smoke, current roommate went back inside to continue watching TrueTV. I said I wasn't familiar with it, and they said that it was shows with just facts, just true stuff, about murders and cereal killers and the court cases and shit like that. And anyone who watched it a lot would become crazy if they hadn't already. Art said that the mother of one of his ex-girlfriends used to watch it a lot and started talking to him about how she learned how she could kill her husband who was on an emphysema machine, and not get caught. Huck Finn then said it would be easy. He started going into detail about how you could do it and we said he was crazy. He said, no, that wasn't crazy. What's crazy is talking to a mobster's daughter for three hours and forty minutes about how to kill her enemy and telling her  what was wrong with her plan and what she needed to do to cover it up so she wouldn't get caught. That's crazy, he said.

Pegleg wheeled off, well started wheeling and then got up and fucked it, pushing the wheelchair and carrying it to his place across the street. We wished him luck on getting laid and he said he knew he wasn't getting laid tonight so he didn't need the fucking luck. Poor pegleg wasn't too witty or quick, and I felt a little guilty about how defensive he had been about absolutely everything, taking it all so seriously. Huck Finn said not to feel bad because Pegleg was an idiot and a one-upper. He always wanted to one-up you. (I realized that Huck Fin was actually describing himself at this point.) When we talked about how ghetto the neighborhood was, he said Detroit had it beat. Detroit beat everywhere he had been, and he started naming ghetto places around the US like someplace in Atlanta and Memphis. He said since he had been in Detroit in the eighties, and nineties, and even some of the two-thousands, it had been the ghettoest..and it was too ghetto for him to stand it now. This street was nothing. They all asked me about Miami but I said it wasn't that bad, I mean, I couldn't really contribute to the conversation since I hadn't been too many ghetto places.

We started talking about books, and how I lost The Boxman. Art went inside and retrieved the G.E.B. and I called it before I even saw it which he was excited about asking if I had read it or how I knew about it. I said he told me about it the other day at starbucks. He started talking about the artist, I said I knew who he was talking about and he asked how, and again, I said we had looked him up, together, on my computer at starbucks. Adrienne reiterated for maybe the third or fourth time of the night how Art had the memory of a goldfish. Art started talking about how it talked about derivatives and theorems, and how that was in calculus, and how calculus was in a lot of physics, and how there was a lot of physics (quantum) in the book. Adrienne then told him he wasn't talking to a group of idiots, that we all knew what calculus was. Art started reading from the book about Achilles and the Tortoise. After a bit, Art paused, Mark and I gave each other the look we had been giving each other the whole night, the sort of shrug your shoulders/what the fuck is going on? look. I think he felt a little guilty or awkward at times for bringing me to the porch for all this. Huck Finn looked at Art and said that was all well and good, but where was the Hare in the story? Art didn't shut stop with the book, which somehow segued into Tool, the band, and their song "4 degrees." He went on to describe everything as sublimation. I said I didn't get it, I didn't know what sublimation meant. He talked about how it was a very precise chemical reaction / perfect state of gas and liquid, a perfect balance. Somehow it had changed purpose, because he was describing himself and Adrienne at this point. She said he was going crazy and off, I said it was so cute and touching, and then touched his leg with my finger. Mark occasionally would chime in. He always looks tired and seems to have dark circles under his eyes which you'd think would make him ugly since I notice it and think of it all the time. But I am so attracted to him.

When we talked about who we looked like or whatever, I lamented how Michael McNeal at UT said I looked exactly at Rachel Ray so everyone would reassure me I didn't. They did. Adrienne, I realize, didn't have a person per-se, she just would cite Rocky when people fucked up her name. Art apparently got Ben Afflick (which Mark backed up mildly and Adrienne denied adamantly since Art isn't exactly thin). Adrienne looked at Mark and was like, we all know he get's Johnny Depp, and that was as far as talking about Mark got, no discussion. It's like this fucking light bulb went off in my head after that--like oh! that's why I think Mark is so fucking hot and I might like him more for looking tired and smoking the fucking cigarettes or whatever. Hmm.

The whole time we were talking, they were refilling my Grumpy water mug and smoking cigarettes. Oh, and at one point, Art had just called American Spirits and put them on speakerphone while he was on hold. He wanted to try to win something.

Art works today at noon at starbucks. It's Mark's day off, but he said he thought he'd be stopping in anyway and maybe would catch me if I was working there. I wanted him to leave with me, I wanted him to fucking say we could meet up outside of starbucks since it was, after all, his day off. I don't know if I'll go to Starbucks and/or see Mark. But this was, hands down, one of the most fun and entertaining nights I've had in Naples, ever.

excerpt from Mark Twain's "How to Tell A Story"

Mark Twain discusses the difference of a humourous story from comic or witty stories.

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"[...] Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years. The teller tells it in this way:

THE WOUNDED SOLDIER.

In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained; whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate, proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of it. In no-long time he was hailed by an officer, who said:

"Where are you going with that carcass?"

"To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!"

"His leg, forsooth?" responded the astonished officer; "you mean his head, you booby."

Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said:

"It is true, sir, just as you have said." Then after a pause he added, "But he TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG! ! ! ! !"

Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gaspings and shriekings and suffocatings.

It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form; and isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.
He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it; so he gets all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them out conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless; making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there; stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no real importance, anyway--better, of course, if one knew it, but not essential, after all-- and so on, and so on, and so on.

The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their faces.

The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art and fine and beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell the other story.

To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one were thinking aloud. The fourth and last is the pause."

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This one little excerpt makes me feel more 'American' than anything else I've known. I'm like a little ol' farmer.