This was the introduction to my earliest surviving diary from five years ago (I have a habit of burning any and all of my old writing and art if I feel like it’s not a representation of the best of the best. It satisfies my pyromaniacal urges and cleans out the clutter for a fresh start). I have a feeling that this says a lot more about me than I care to disclose.

“At first glance, from far away, I look like a deranged librarian – Hair disheveled, eyeglasses askew. I appear fiercely intelligent, yet socially unapproachable. This is the mas that does not exist. This is disguised femininity. This is the only thing that allows me a bit of dignity in the wasteland of humanity. This is the thing that keeps the whistles and the jeers at bay. Otherwise I feel as though I have nothing to protect me but sheer force of will. Or seclusion and booze. But I’ve already tried that once, and I wound up masturbating. You see, I am in an odd position, and I don’t mean the scissor hold or any other so-called bedroom acrobatics. I mean to keep prying eyes away in order to assess and claim my only true worth in this wasteland of humanity. I am strong and strong-willed. I own my sexuality. I own my mind, my soul, my heart as well. For this reason, I cannot let the general population see merely the blonde hair and the curvy body. Women have on e and only one currency at their disposal in the corner of geography where I have landed. And that is sex. Even if it’s just for the sacred institution of popping out children. Their, and our, worth is established by their resemblance either to a pinup, or how much the woman claims to love Jesus. Sometimes both… usually both. Anything else about her that cannot be used for cheap labor (such as with, wisdom, creativity, knowledge, strength) are ignored or used as bonus points on some sadistic wifey checklist. She is, for all intents and purposes, a walking vagina/uterus combination who “sangs purrdy” in the church choir. I see this in the eyes of eery attention-whoring female wearing cheap Wal-Mart t shirts emblazoned with the words “sexy” or “sweet like chocolate”, calloused tan hands dug deep into the pants of her boyfriend-of-the-week. I see this in the glazed-over expressions of young mothers who gave up all semblance of personality in favor of trading baby stories and coupons for diapers. It’s all some game to them: sex, marriage, the very act of snagging a man and continuing the cycle of life. But what kind of life is this? And this godamn pasttime isn’t even done well, for all prospect of romance is rooted in mere praise for the woman’s body. I cannot do this. It breaks my heart just to watch. I know that I and we posses something more. So I put on the disguise and draw the curtains. I lead a double life. I lead a double life. I hide behind long skirts and disheveled hair so people will leave me the fuck alone. But, behind those curtains, is something far more hedonistic and exciting and deviant than any of those desperate attempts at sexy I see on the street. It is real. It is perverted and pleasure-seeking. But, it’s not advertised, so it sits below the radar.

And it is not the fault of the men any more than the women. If shallow transparencies weren’t the order of the day, I wouldn’t have to keep up this ruse. But, for some reason, the game leads to the final conclusion of some sorority mentality – the sluttiest girl wins! All the while, the prize of the game is just the next round, and the next round leads to emptiness and eventually a murder-suicide. I just want no part in it. I am not sucked into their social and faked sexual atmosphere. I refuse to show and tell, but the things I do behind closed doors would make the seediest pornographer blush. I have the freedom away from prying eyes to become a raging sexual dynamo, seducing with something deeper than just a pretty face and a willing body. The best part is, no one but my lovers are the wiser. Everyone leaves me alone because they think that by not playing the game that I am a genderless asexual freak. I am excluded from the drinking games and necking in the corner. I have grown my heart, soul, body and mind so as to become a real person. And if I so choose, a real lover instead of an object. No one thinks to ask me when I am going to settle down and share in the joys of mindless domesticity. I am not one of the giggling girlfriends in the entourage of beer-guzzling adolescent jerks who cannot form a coherent sentence with their penises erect. What I have scares the pants off of the over-compensating majority. I have a chance for real human connection, and I will only combine souls with a man who sees the beautiful creature that I truly am. I exist outside the nerver-ending hodown. I am invisible because I am truly passionate. My heart is pure, my intentions are just. My VD tests are completely clean. I am a complete person and becoming stronger and smarter and more intimidating by the day. My flame cannot be extinguished, for the smoke clouds the vision of all those who would seek to tie me down in the stereotype of the helpless female. I am actually anything but helpless. I am labeled unsexy and therefore unmolested except by those who choose to look deeper. So I may look a fright: crazy hair, minimal makeup, deranged expression, but I am truly, truly free.

I’d always seen this phrase on hipster t-shirts, and chuckled to myself upon reading it, because it sounded like an oxymoron. The stereotype always goes that the guy or girl that goes after books instead of looks is always destined to remain a virgin forever and die alone in their parents’ basement. But, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it might be at least partially true, in an overly-complicated way. Involving math and other smartypants things.

This thought occurred to me recently after reading something that my ex’s current girlfriend wrote at the beginning of their relationship. She kept gushing about how he seemed to know everything about her, and could almost read her mind. She saw this as some sort of emotional depth, that she couldn’t wait to know more about herself through his eyes. It sounded very famiiar to me, but was the opposite of my own experience with this particular guy. When we were together, I was the one that amazed him by seeming to read his mind, and he would hang on every word I said. He made no secret about the fact that he would read everything I wrote and act like some sort of sexual detective. It threw him for a loop, as he was usually the one so in charge of his own emotions. But yet I seemed to be able to break him down in no-time flat, with little to no effort. In fact, the breaking down of his aloof veneer unhinged him so much that he got to the point where he would only ask me questions during conversation, and change the subject when turned the questions back around on him. He was trying to remain mysterious around me, but at the same time get to the heart of who I was. We were two enigmas trying to unlock the secret of one another, but on my side I didn’t break. I thought it was very amusing that something that I found sort of irritating about the guy was probably the one thing that reeled this girl into a deeper relationship. He is smart, but the right kind of smart, and therefore it makes him sexy to others.

Everyone knows that dateability is based on certain factors, of things that a potential boyfriend or girlfriend can bring to the relationship. Looks are one part, but there’s also emotional maturity and compatibility. Interests, skills, creativity, spontaneity. Those aren’t necessarily things you can learn from reading a book about physics. But, what if that doesn’t really make a person smart, after all? Smart is the ability to solve problems and learn, not just regurgitate facts. A person who is smart, at least the right kind of smart, can improvise and deal with situations very easily. Smart people are interesting, because they know at least a little about a lot of things, and probably have lots of interesting stories. And, smart people are good at experimenting, and that’s something that probably, at least in my experience, makes them very good sexual and romantic partners.

But, at the same time, that only seems to hold true for other smart people. Non-intellectuals, even those that aren’t “dumb” by any stretch of the imagination, seem to see intellectuals as one of two flavors: boring, or crazy. So, in that regard, smart is sexy, but only to other smart people. So, maybe all of these stereotypical forever-virgins need nothing more than to start picking up dates at the library. It might do them a world of good, to be able to flex their brainy muscles in front of their peers.

Favorite quote of the day, from Stephen Colbert: “And, most importantly, DO NOT USE GLITTER. Okay, that is good thinking, because glitter can be a real mess. You spill that stuff, it’s impossible to clean up. Total. Disaster. And God forbid that it get on any wildlife. There is no sadder sight than a glitter-soaked pelican. I myself had and accident at a craft fair in 1998 and I still have a bad case of the disco lung”.

Something I should file under the “introspective realizations” category: I don’t make friends. No, I really don’t. I don’t make casual acquaintances, or people to hang out with. My guardian angel instincts dictate that the people that come into my sphere of influence embark on a full-fledged emotional relationship with me. That makes me wonder: what the hell is it about me that keeps me invisible socially, but causes the people who are closest to me to fall in love? I’ve been struggling with the fact that I’m invisible for most of my adulthood, but now that I know some of the story with that phenomenon, I still just don’t get it.

This is the first time in my entire life when smoking a cigarette actually stops my lungs from hurting. I don’t normally smoke, but damn, that was a hellofa relief. Once again, my firebending ways save the day. (Oh, and before you get concerned, I’m okay, it was just an allergic reaction. I’m not dying. Yet, anyway.)

My creativity seems to be its own organism, where I need to constantly feed it to help it grow. I need creative people around me, to do crazy things together, and to bounce ideas off of. I haven’t felt very creative as of late. Well, that’s not entirely true, I keep writing down ideas and working on my artist’s eye, but I don’t feel like I’m getting anything done, as I did when I was around other artists. Maybe I need a motivation. Maybe that’s what being around creative people does for me. Maybe I’m just stir crazy.

I had a dream that my eye was bleeding. The rest of the dream was strange, but that was probably the most normal part. Every so often I would look down, and there would be blood on my hand. I would wipe it off nonchalantly, and go about the rest of the dream. I looked in a mirror at one point, and my eye was otherwise normal, but the white of my eye was completely red. I kept thinking about that all day. Now, I’m the type of eccentric that dwells on the meanings of my nighttime meanderings, and in fact my dreams and what they mean are so interesting to me that I’m probably more obsessed with it than I should be,  but this time it was a lot different. Life was imitating my subconscious.

First, when I told Micah about the dream, his first instinct was to look straight into my left eye, the one that bled in the dream, and sure enough, there was a big red blotch on the white of my eye. That happens to me from time to time when I get a migraine, as the dilation of the blood vessels in that part of my head leads to that sort of thing. But I didn’t have a migraine last night. Also, I realized later that my eye in the dream matched the draft of the mural Micah is painting on posterboard in the living room. He’s got an eye in the center, with a mushroom cloud iris and a grayish-red outer eyeball. When he was painting it, I asked him why that part of the eye was red, and he said that he was trying to do a design with bloodshot eyes, but he couldn’t get it just right, so he was starting over with red, to make it more stark-looking, and probably do the veins in black. Weird, right?

Him: (passing me in the hall) I love you, wifey.

Me: (kissing him on the cheek) I love you too… husband..ey?

         wait a second to figure out what just happened…

       (following him into the living room) Wait, when the hell did we get married? Did you put a roofie in my drink again and        take me to city hall?

Him: Maybe… (then chuckles to himself)

Me: You’re like the most ineffective rapist ever, you know that? “Yeah, I chloroformed you and then painted your toenails.”.

Him: Hey, hey, I also bathed you in pepto bismal and shaved your elbows with peanut butter. Don’t judge me. That’s what I like.

Me: Not judging you, well, except for that mental image. Ew. Just, next time we get married, can I be conscious?

These are the kinds of conversations we have in this apartment. I think this means that we’re both too weird to be with anyone else.

Does anyone else feel like they barely recognize their past selves, and that their personal anecdotes play themselves out like a movie? I kind of feel like I’m trying to cram as many lifetimes as I can into this one, whether first hand experience or just observing humanity secondhand, and the past, the memories to me feel like someone else lived them. And I mean that in the best way possible. I’m constantly amused at my own antics, and making mental notes to file under “the idiosyncrasies of an awkward extra-terrestrial”.  It’s like I’m collecting experiences and interesting tales of adventure, so that someday I’ll be telling these tales around a campfire to someone who likely won’t believe me. These lives and experiences and observations are as cherished to me as gold to a tycoon. I’m a collection of words, images, and philosophies.

I planted basil today, with good, rich, uphill-from-the-parking-lot mud, gathered in the middle of a thunderstorm. I separated the roots gingerly between the plants, and supported the whole trio of plants with a pair of chopsticks and embroidery thread. When we bought the basil, Micah kept making jokes about “this basil makes everything smell like weed”. It was funny when he first said it, but now it just kind of seems lame. All plant-based things don’t have to be chalked down to a weed joke. *Shaking my head*

Estrogen. Estrogen is making me nauseous and disturbing my sleep. Might as well entertain my fleeting thoughts.

Non-melodic is a deal-breaker for me when it comes to music. I can listen to the harshest, most ear-splitting music, dark as the bottom of the coffee carafe, but as long as it has a discernible melody, i’m okay. I’ll never understand that. I’m also super-picky about how well the lead singer sings. That’s a given, though, as I’ve been singing for two decades now.

My inner Celt is coming out, and insisting that I roast some corned beef and make Col-cannon. Col-cannon is mashed potatoes and fried cabbage. I’m pretty sure at some point my inner Celt is going to make me go out and pick flowers to weave into a wreath soon too, as spring comes and everything warms up.

Why is my view of the arts so different from that of other people? Take theatre for example. I’ve been the stagehand for the past show. For the next show I’ve been promoted to lighting designer *excitement* and that will be completely different. In all the years of my training in theatre, I’ve known the art of stagecraft to be this dirty, slightly dangerous, gritty thing that I sacrifice blood and sweat for. Never really thought of it as glamorous, even when I’m an actor. Friday night, though, someone showed up that challenged that view for me. She’s the mother of one of the actors, and I guess has been with the company for a while. She was following her daughter around, and the girl always seemed pretty down-to-earth. Not the mom, though. The woman, for a community theatre production, was dressed like she was ready for a one-night-stand with Clark Gable. Glittering stones and furs from head to toe. Her heels were so high she walked like a one-woman kickline. Geez. I was sort of uncomfortable being around her, as she trounced around backstage over spilled paint and sawdust.

Until all the other compressors are ready to compress,

Rae Rae the Magnificent

Plum-mouthed and articulately pronounced.

Three things I’ve decided I’m probably more than passionate about: art, the natural world, and my spiritual path. Any other interests I enjoy, but they don’t consume my every waking thoughts like those three.
My first opening night in three years. And I had a part in the play, although it was only one line, and I was pretending to be a man. And I got a laugh. And I was treated like an actual part of the group, not a pariah. It was like a dream come true. Although, I gotta say that this is the first time that I’ve had dealings with theatre where almost everyone was untrained. I kind of felt like I was the go-to answers person, but I still had fun.
I’ve also decided that if someone were to make a slice-of-life comedy that was something closer to reality, at least in this economic climate and targeting the under-30 set, it would be more likely that one of the main characters is living out of their car, or in some other non-traditional, borderline-homeless situation. My thinking about that led to me making up a rather awkward romantic comedy in my head. Here’s how the plot goes:

A guy and a girl meet in high school. The guy is super-popular, while the girl is kind of a nerd. They both have feelings for one another, but don’t say anything. The girl is pretty shy at first. The guy’s friends don’t approve of him dating the girl, so he mostly just makes fun of her a lot. He secretly asks her to prom, and tells her that they’re going to play a prank on his friends. His friends find out, and confront him. The guy lies and says that he’s actually playing a prank on the girl. The prank gets played on the girl, and she’s humiliated. Fast forward ten or so years, and the girl is a librarian in a town in West Virginia, far far away from where she grew up. She is going to her favorite cafe for lunch, and her server is none other than… the guy who stood her up at prom. He has no idea who she is, but she knows him, and acts very sarcastically towards him. When he figures it out, he is completely blindsided, and figures she hates him. The guy has grown up a lot, moving from place to place after college and his family falling apart after his father’s business tanked. He moved to West Virginia to take care of his ailing great aunt. The aunt has a lot of animals in her house, so he stays out of the house, in his car, in the cluttered garage. He’s working two jobs, one as a server, the other delivering newspapers.  He tries to make it up to the girl, but she’s still pretty untrusting. He plays his guitar outside the library, trying to get her attention, and gets picked up by the dopey town sheriff for vagrancy. After the guy and the girl get together, they get into some sort of fight over something, so he goes out and gets drunk at the town bar. He doesn’t want to drive after drinking, so he tries to sleep in his car in the bar’s parking lot. The next morning he wakes up in the county jail, where he’s been arrested for vagrancy, again. He gets one phone call to the girl, and apologizes. The girl has to tell the whole complicated story to the police while she’s posting bail. And everyone lives happily ever after…

Do I even know what it is to be honest with myself when I put words to paper, without censoring my feelings later? What the hell is it that I fear, that I cannot say what’s going on in my head? Upsetting someone? Who? Anyone I would be confiding in will still love me either way. Do I just think that the words about my emotions aren’t good enough, so that my topics turn to something more general? It’s not like I’m in the pits of despair here, I just have some sort of aversion to talking about myself. Like, maybe I think I’ll become self-centered if I pour out what’s in my heart. But, that doesn’t make sense. So, the next step of the lifelong healing process that my soul needs to go through is just… beautiful catharsis.