Hubris Comes Before the Fall, or: Learning to Just Shut the Fuck Up Because You're Not That Smart

I'm not very original in that I think I'm an advice genius. I know what's wrong with everyone and I know how to fix it, if only they would listen. It's so obvious because I'm an objective observer, you know? They can't help it because they're too close to the problem. Poor fools. If only they could just back away enough to see that I'm just trying to help!

I AM, however, original in that I've gone to the lengths of putting a time stamp on advice that I think is particularly good and taking note of how long it takes my friends to come to the realization that I was right (no idea what happens when my advice was wrong, no surprise there either). I've concluded "it takes 3 years for anyone to realize that I was right all along", of course said with a tone of disdain for people's myopia and obdurateness. I usually follow this up with "Human nature, you know? Haha so sad", SUBTEXT: "I'm above this even though I too am demonstrably a human". This statement is the result of two different friends acting on points I said might be important 3 years prior. They eventually agreed with me, which should have been enough, but the fact that they did it in their own time, by their own means was somehow an affront to me. Like they didn't agree with me fast enough so it doesn't count. One of these was advice I gave a friend about her relationship (he's not right for you in the long-term because you have fundamentally different life goals), the other was about a job (you should work in a field that has to do with your major, your passions, or your strengths, because languishing around in sales is beneath your intellect).

Well, today I was thinking about my problems, feeling stupid because a lot of the root causes were so obvious in retrospect. I was thinking, "Why I didn't see everything coming sooner?" I went into my journal to read my thoughts at the beginning of the process, trying to make sense of it all, and realized that it's been 3 years since I didn't take the advice I gave myself in those pages, before everything got so complicated and confusing.

FFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Want to Believe

Boyf and I have been watching a lot of X-Files lately.

I tried to find a better Season 1 pic but people seem to be way more interested in pics of Gillian in vinyl bodysuits or Scully and Mulder kissing. Anyway - look how young they are! Babby Scully and Babby Mulder. Aw.

We started at the Pilot and have been moving pretty steadily through Season 1 for the last couple of weeks. My old friend Owen watched all the X-Files from beginning to end a couple of years ago and it had the negative effect of making him insane and paranoid about everything, but he can be kind of dour sometimes to begin with, and he was going through a very solitary, dark period at the time...a period during which he was apparently doing nothing but working a job he hated and watching X-Files and generally hating life. It's easy to see how nine straight seasons of X-Files dramz might freak a person out. 


I, on the other hand, am enjoying this thoroughly. First of all, I'm not in an especially dark, hating-everything life space right now (no more than usual anyway). And then there's all the other factors to consider: 90s nostalgia/ middle school memories, Scully (and Scully's unflinching poker face, Scully tucking a gun into the front of her pants with straight grace and skill, Scully getting shot/punched/kicked in the head and being like "ALL IN A DAY'S WORK BITCHES" etc), Scully and Mulder, and so on. Plus, I already know that the news is fake so the basic premise of this show isn't a shock to my system. Another thing: characters are constantly referencing all these cute little pre-PATRIOT ACT restrictions on the FBI. For example, in an episode I just watched tonight, a suspect smugly told Mulder he couldn't tape their phone calls without the suspect's express permission LOL isn't it darling? That keeps it from being too #dark for me. I can't wait to get further into it so we can re-learn all about the Cigarette Smoking Man, the Smoking Gun, and Scully's Mysterious Alien Cancer Baby!

Are you ready?! Let's DO IT!!!!!!!!

Anticipating 2012

God. I remember the post I made about being confused about what to "call" 2011. And now this! I'm never going to catch up. This year, I graduated from college, celebrated a lovely anniversary with Boyf, traveled a bit, made new friends, strengthened bonds with old ones, and started my MBA candidacy on the right foot...it was a big year for me and I'm so, so grateful to everyone who helped make it so.

To my readers, I hope 2011 was as good to you as it was to me - and I trust 2012 will be even better! I really can't wait to see what this year will bring.

Love,
-Priya

PS. SEE YOU NEXT YEAR! LOL

Encouragement

Devon: well, if it makes you feel better...
i counted your tweets this morning and you had tweeted 41 times in the last 24 hours
lets say an average of 100 characters a tweet
4100 characters
maybe average out 6 letters per word
you tweeted nearly 700 words yesterday
without even trying!

me: HAHAHAHAHA
that's heartening and sad at the same time

Devon: WHY SO SAD

me: BECAUSE I CAN'T WRITE A NOVEL ABOUT ZOOBOOKS
(or my obsession about zoobooks)

Devon: sure, but you can work in zoobooks
btw, i had a SHITLOAD of zoobooks

me: ME TOO
apparently loving Zoobooks was not that strange
noel had them too

Devon: i think a lot of people like us and our age had them

me: i think a foundation of zoobooks turned us into this
hahha

Devon: hahaha i can believe that
zoobooks x carebears / froot loops = us

me: hahahahahahaha
basic interest in science x socialist liberalism / toxic chemicals = us
absolutely

Devon: hahahahahahahahaha
holy shit

me: i am 100% on board with that assessment

Devon: that is such an accurate representation of our generation

me: hahahaha i think so too
you had it more since you were a Montessori baby
i went to WASPy preschools

Devon: the fact that we turned out similar just strenghtens your equation, though

me: hahaha yeah that's true
a zoobook is a zoobook, no matter where you read it

Free Press Summer Fest

Hay.

This weekend was Houston's second annual Free Press Summer Fest, which is a two day music festival. This year was fucking mind boggling. Right now I need to go take a nap to recover from the four hours that I've been awake. The weekend was exhausting, is what I'm saying. Also, it rained. Also, oh my god.
I will be back later to talk about the weekend, and I'm currently working on a list of SUMMERFEST PRO TIPS.

While I'm doing that, here is a picture of Heidi Montag pondering her recent breakup with her husband/exploiter Spencer Pratt. She kind of looks how I feel (painfully frozen in a rictus of shame and horror at one's own existence).



PS. Yes, she is still wearing her wedding ring even though she is "broken up with" her husband. Also, a shocking lack of ice cream/crying.

PPS. Also.

Throwing it Away

Those of you who live with your parents still know how important it is to have a place to hide your shit - your cigarettes, fancy underwear (why do you need that, Priya? I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT), and other sentimental whatevers that just wouldn't stand up to mom's inquiry - and the underwear drawer has become mine. It's where I stashed the left-over Vicodin from my oral surgery a few years ago, for example.

Yesterday I was digging through it idly, waiting for a phone call, and randomly caught up a red ribbon, tied lovingly in a bow. It had been folded delicately against the far side of the drawer, hidden under something else. I stared at it - it had obviously meant so much to me at one time, that I took so much care to keep it away from prying eyes. I know I must have held it to my nose and breathed deeply, or even kissed it, before I put it away. Maybe it had come tied around a vase of flowers, maybe it had kept a gift bag securely closed. I don't know anymore.

There are things in my lifetime which I'll never forget - certain phone calls, confessions, inside jokes...the sensation of a certain hand on the small of my back, the inner-ear pattern which is starkly unique to an individual - and there are sensations which I think will mean so much, forever, whose brand of import will fade away while I'm not even thinking about it, worrying that it's a possibility.

I find that this is a great tragedy of the human experience, that moments fraught with personal significance, seemingly permanently, will often lose that significance while we aren't looking. When I put that ribbon away - whenever that was - I know I had a deep conviction that I would never, ever forget what it meant to set eyes upon it for the first time. And now I have forgotten.

Maybe the person who gave it to me has forgotten too, and I am just a silly girl who can't throw away a piece of piercingly scarlet trash because it once was attached to something else which I have forgotten also. But I'm keeping that ribbon. I can't help it. The knot in that bow is still important, because I tied it. And it's important because I'm keeping it. Maybe it doesn't say anything about the ribbon itself anymore, but it certainly says something about me. It says that I won't give up. And I don't mind that.

Unfortune

Last Thursday, in the afternoon, I found out that a former classmate of mine - someone I'd known for 11 years - was dead. I'd had some inkling that there was something wrong that morning, when two or three of our mutual Facebook friends referenced his name (which I won't publish here, in deference to his family, his memory, and the fact that I really don't want to be the one they find when/if they Google their youngest son) in their status updates...but you can never really be sure until you're sure.

On Friday, we found out that he had committed suicide.

This weekend was pretty fucked up for all of us from my middle school and high school (he'd been my classmate in both levels). Of course you realize that life is intrinsically just a razor-thin mistake away from death. A meteorite could fall out of the sky and kill you at any moment, and that's just something you have to accept, or you'd end up living in a bubble. But death takes on a shade completely unfamiliar when the victim is your peer. That, too, is expected: oh sure, it could happen to me. But it was the fact that it happened to The Boy I Knew specifically that shocked me, shocked us all, I think.

The broad strokes of his character were that The Boy I Knew came from a happy family, and was a star athlete, valedictorian of our class, Ivy League educated. I'm pretty sure he was even fucking HOMECOMING KING. He was a golden boy. But there were things about him which you would have to move in closer to see: at the memorial service, yesterday, his father described him so appropriately - "The Boy I Knew abhorred a vacuum." If the room was ever silent, the conversation ever static, The Boy I Knew would suddenly speak up: Once, in History class (sophomore or junior year), he raised his hand and asked our young, female teacher, "I don't have a date to Homecoming. Will you go with me?" When she turned him down, he asked if it would be okay to bring an escort.

(There are so many stories about him like that...I'm saving mine for the letter I send his parents. It seems like they should be the first to know that their son impacted me in a way I'll always, always remember.)

But this isn't about the popular boy in school - the guy every girl wanted to fuck and every guy wanted to be. On the contrary - nobody wanted to have sex with him when I knew him in high school: he was notoriously bad with The Ladies. And nobody that I was aware of wanted to be him, either, unless they were envious of his athletic ability. The Boy I Knew managed to always be distinctly left of center.

Of course, we're all quirky and different and downright weird, and the amalgamation of all our foibles makes Normal. Despite that fact, every one of us is in a constant battle to shake what makes us odd: every single one of us is fighting every day to fade into the middle. Part of that comes from the fact that Man has always been a social animal - to linger outside the crowd meant vulnerability to predators - this was, of course, back in the time when humans had predators. Check out any ad on TV - the advertisers are preying on the very human need to be one of the crowd. Now our predators are not physically dangerous but psychologically and emotionally: Bullies.
It's easy to want to fade away to avoid being recognized for a freak or a spaz or a queer or whatever. But not The Boy I Knew. He was different, special in so many ways...the most important of which (to me) was that he embraced his oddity, his position on the Outside. Everything that should have made him ashamed made him proud, instead. That notorious failure with the girls in my class? In college, he wrote a bi-weekly opinion column in the school newspaper, and almost always included self-consciously terrible dating tips ("You may be tempted to give a girl flowers, but this is the new millennium - give her something practical. Like cash"). To acknowledge one's weirdness, to embrace it, to even wear it as a badge of honor, takes a bravery only a few will ever touch.
It seemed as though The Boy I Knew was aware of, able to see, a bigger picture...one that I am only now beginning to see for myself.

Names Redacted for the Sake of Future City Councilmen

Usually sifting through saved emails from years past gets me nothing but heartache and regrets. And yet I continue to do it anyway. I mean, there's a reason I save everything to disk - I think I'll be interested in it in the future. Most of the time I'm not interested: not interested at all. Sometimes, though, I am. Hence this conversation, about 10 months after we had it in the first place:

lorne: meanwhile i'm like I PUT MY WIENER WHERE?!?!?

me: hahahahahaha
YOU WANT TO DO WHAT WITH THAT?!

lorne: i mean knowing me i would actually call it wiener
to a girl i was about to hook up with

me: THANK YOU I'M SORRY

lorne: so, uh, gretchen.....you like my wiener, eh?
FUCK

me: hahahaha
"eh?"
that's hot, lorne
really sexy
at least you didn't call it a pee-pee tail
though knowing me i'd let it happen anyway because i think that phrase is FUCKING HILARIOUS
like, without bounds hysterical

lorne: WAIT
WAIT

me: ?

lorne: pee-pee tail?
i have never heard that

me: hahahahahahahaaha
WELCOME TO A NEW LEVEL OF COMEDY

lorne: oh my god i leveled up

me: HAHA YEAH YOU DID

lorne: i'm a level 7 wiener comedian

me: hahahahahahhaa
ahahahhahaa

lorne: now with pee pee tail spell

Wedding Fever

I've been thinking about love a lot lately (obviously, I've only posted about that topic like six times this week...stupid), because my cousin got married this weekend, and I've been hearing about this for like a year and a half, while she planned and planned and planned and planned and I don't have the strength to continue even thinking about how much work a wedding is. The point is that the wedding finally happened! Last night!

Most of my thoughts and impressions about the whole weekend-consuming thing have to do with scandalous family interactions and/or the relative efficaciousness of the various events within the weekend, so I'll skip that part. Basically I'm glad that it's over because that shit is stressful. I mean...all the (shudder) interactions with (shudder) other people and the (twitch) going outside my comfort zone.

(For those of you who are wondering, my comfort zone basically is limited to the perimeter of my bed. But hey, it's a queen-size!)

HOWEVER. I guess I must be growing up or something because I actually managed to talk to some people without breaking out in a flop sweat and dry heaving - we talked about writing, Milton, cross-country relationships, and being a cantankerous 45 year old at heart. Which was all really great (except for the bits which were fraught with my palpable - only to me, I'm sure - insecurity for not being a brain surgeon or working at Google or whatever). I even got to say, "Oh, CONRAD? Conrad can go to hell" to my uncle, who everyone agrees is a super-genius.
Short version: I Friend Requested some family people today. Yeah. I know.

A semi-downside (or at least a concern) courtesy of this newfound friendship with a few of my family is that the inevitable topic of "what I want to do" came up, and while I usually hedged and talked about law school, occasionally it would boil down to the fact that I want to get paid to write. So now some of them know that I have this...blog, and then I also let it slip once that I'm on TWITTER (fuck!), so now I have to, like...ugh. I don't know. I probably shouldn't even worry about it; they won't follow up on any of the blog/twitter stuff because they are adults with jobs and spouses and stuff and I am a social retard with a lot of free time.

So now that I've worked through all that, my main concern is all the pictures of me that are going to crop up on Facebook over the next couple of days...I'll try posting a couple here to counteract whatever gets out through other means.

Your Cat is Tripping BALLLLLZZZZZ

Gabe at @videogum (on the Twitter, see) likes to remind us of hilarious old posts sometimes, and recently he reminded us of this one about a Friskies commercial. I know some of you don't read Videogum (WHY, I don't know, since you'd love it) and so I am here to spread the wealth, so that you can deposit it into your LOL(k).

Man: Honey, what happened to the cat?

Woman: Oh, she is gone.

Man: What do you mean, she's gone?

Woman: Well, I gave her that Friskies you bought on Sunday, and she just started tripping balls super hard. She ran around the room in circles for awhile, foam building up in the corners of her mouth, her eyes open so wide I thought they'd fall out of their sockets. And there was just this deep, prehistoric noise emanating from her. Then she laid on her back and started scratching at the air frantically, just thrashing. Meanwhile, she was opening and closing her jaws crazy fast and somehow I swear her teeth got sharper. It was actually pretty terrifying. And then she died.

Man: Oh my God.

Woman: Yeah, I was going to wait for you, but I didn't know what time you were getting home, so I just said a few words in her honor and then flushed her down the toilet.

Man: This is really unexpected.

Woman: Yeah. That Friskies you bought on Sunday is crazy.

Man: No kidding.

Check out the original post here.

The Texas BBQ Day Tour

A couple of weeks ago, Devon got this idea to take a Saturday to sample the best BBQ within driving range of Houston (meaning, within a couple hours of the city), and posed the idea to Noel and me to see if we were interested. We thought it was a good idea, so he invited like TWENTY other people, some of whom had an ounce of sense and said, "uh, no." For those of you still recovering from that day: I salute you.

We all got together at 8:30 at Devon's apartment; the idea was to get started as early as possible because Snow's, our first stop, is only open on Saturdays, from 8AM to "whenever we run out of meat."


This is Snow's.


Here's our group at Snow's.


This is one of Snow's BBQ pits. That's the owner there, showing us how everything works. As I understand it, the smoking process goes something like NOM NOM NOM NOM okay I admit it, I was not listening at all.

We arrived in Lexington (after many a false start, because of course) at around noon, and they only had brisket left at that point. They had gone through 800 pounds of meat - pork, beef, and chicken - before we even got there. I hesitate to say "only" brisket though, because OH MY GOD you guys. This is the best brisket I've ever had. This is some of the best food I've ever had, full stop.


And here is what 2 and 1/2 lbs of meat looks like.

One of my favourite things about the trip was the standardization of certain practices within the BBQ Restaurant Industry. For example, the restaurants never had plates: they just gave us each a square of butcher paper, a set of dinky plastic forks and let us have at it. Here's a picture of my plate at Snow's:


Aren't you glad I made you wait for the colour pictures?

At this point I was fully aware that we had three more stops, so I decided to just have a couple of bites at each place after this. Not everyone was as smart (DAVID). Our next stop was in Lockhart, which is about a 20 minute drive from Lexington. And of course we all had to get on our phones to look up directions...



...or (in my case), Twitter-document our experience:


"Thank god for Crackberries."

The drive to Lockhart was just gorgeous - we were all perfectly satiated, and on the freeway, we got a great show of of really lush fall colours in the trees; it was the kind of nature display you rarely see in Houston.



Of course, Noel's photos are all in sepia tones. Meanwhile, in our car, I chose to do this:


That's helpful.

Even though he had a badass GPS navigator IN HIS VERY PHONE, Devon eventually had to pull over and look at an actual map to find his way:



David saw us from the other car and sent me one of the best in-the-moment-texts I've ever received:



Oh, here's a picture of David from when his car pulled up next to ours in the parking lot while Devon consulted his sextant...doesn't he look like a drug dealer?


Who wants some crack?!

Finally, we got there. Smitty's!



The food here was really good, too, but it didn't have sauce like Snow's - and the saucier, in my opinion, the better. Even if some (unnecessarily combative) places do consider it "cheating". The sausages were delicious, but were really...explodey. Like when you bit into them they had a defense mechanism. A tasty defense mechanism that did not deter me at all, really.


Here is a guy preparing the sausages. MMMM.


Here's one of the meatcutters. He just looks like a badass, doesn't he?

Another standardized procedure of the BBQ Industry was to tie the sausages into these little U-shapes that each weighed a pound (or maybe half a pound?). Think about how much food we've eaten even this early in the game, and Jessie and I decided that it would be a good idea to buy some ice cream. I don't know why. But it was fucking just what the doctor ordered and I don't regret it at all.


Mmmm. Thick...meaty...explodes in your mouth. That's what she said.

After Smitty's, we noticed that our next stop, Kreuz Market, was a mere jaunt away, so we decided to walk it - "to try to burn off some calories" as though that were possible. As it turned out, the route we chose took us under a freeway into this terrible ditch and we had to cross a river and I was like AUGHHH and everyone had to wait for me, OF COURSE. But we did manage to find some cool (if you're 15) graffiti:



So obviously everyone had to have a picture with it:


This explains a lot, when you think about it.

We finally got to Kreuz and saw the following sign that we were in for no sympathy whatsoever:



There was another sign next to this one that said, "No sauce: We've got nothing to hide. No forks: They're at the end of your arms" and then something along the lines of "no napkins: you're wearing one on your back" and "no mercy: you came here for meat and we're gonna give you some goddamn meat so stop your crying, you little babies! What, are ya worried about your daily caloric intake? Take your $200 dungarees and go back to your mama in the city! (spits in the dirt)" You can tell just how much of a wall we were hitting at this time, because look at the sad little amount we ordered here:



But it gets worse. After cramming that down (and a second helping of ice cream - I CAN'T ANSWER FOR MY ACTIONS I WAS OBVIOUSLY CRACKED OUT ON BEEF), we had just one more place to visit. At this juncture, we'd all just started sweating grease freely, and none of us were smiling. Noel looked up after finishing off the ice cream and said, "does anyone else feel like a marathon runner? Like, we're just working through the pain?" and just as he said it I wondered if there was such thing as an eater's high. And then I wondered just how angry an actual Kenyan marathoner would be if he had heard what we had just said.

NEXT UP: City Market, in Luling. This is what we ordered.


Just PATHETIC.

After we picked away at this tiny pile of meat, we wiped our faces and hands as best we could, and packed up our stuff. Devon thought we should commemorate the event with another group picture - kind of a before and after thing, I guess? And here we are:


This is our group (minus Devon, who was holding the camera), wishing that we could all just lie down. Right here in the road, maybe.

As we dragged ourselves back to the cars, we passed a table stacked high with Girl Scout Cookies. A brownie poked her head out from behind a pile of Samoas and said, "Would you like to buy some - "

"NO THANK YOU" yelled David, almost tonelessly. That should paint you a vivid picture of our respective states of mind: David - DAVID - yelled at a little girl for offering him one of the most delicious treats known to mankind, and we couldn't even muster up the energy to chastise him properly. And yet, stuffed though we were, to the point of not being able to comprehend even ONE Thin Mint entering our collective system, the lesson of the day was: "NEXT year, we'll pace ourselves better."

untitled

I see the world
It makes me puke
But then I look at you and know
That somewhere

there’s a someone


who can soothe me

Saturdarn

Today a bunch of us went on a BBQ Day Trip. I'm going to describe it tomorrow, when I'm not under the heavy influence of "the itis". For those of you who don't know what "the itis" is...just...ask someone else. I can't tell you. Go away.

Other than that: I also want to talk about how FUCKING SHITTY Google Chrome is. But again...later.

YAWN

Happy Diwali!

You guys, I'm not a religious person. But this gives me EPIC SQUEE Syndrome.

Shades of High School

Hey, do all you EHS people remember when Ms. D made us draw the whole world from memory for our World History class freshman year? I still have that map lying around. I got a great fucking grade on that shit. You better believe it. That was back when I had half a liver and hope for the future. Anyway,



That gave me a huge, unexpected hard-on. Sorry. It just did.

I will just let this speak for itself.

(Sob)

This is What They Call Self-Awareness

The following is an excerpt from a Videogum review of Margot at the Wedding that was posted earlier today:

Oh, white people. Will we ever tire of complaining about the aches and pains of our petty bourgeois existence? Boo hoo hoo, the line at the iPhone store was too long. Boo hoo hoo, the barista got the ratio of espresso to ice in my iced Americano wrong. Boo hoo hoo, the cuff-links I ordered on-line weren't shipped overnight, and then they went to my apartment when I meant to have them delivered to the office, and I don't have a doorman at my apartment, so I had to call UPS and give them an alternate address and they said they couldn't redeliver until tomorrow morning. This is worse than apartheid!

Makes me sick to my stomach (which is full of foie gras and root beer floats and money).

The following is an excerpt from an email conversation that Marion and I just had:

Marion
SRSLY.
haha, have you read infinite jest?

Priya
SRSLY yes i have.

Marion
OMG NO BIG DEAL
can i kiss your feet? you've endured more than gandhi.

We are Clockwork Oranging you right now, as a matter of fact.

David
DUDE
I TOTALLY DOWNLOADED THIS NEW APP
I WANNA TELL YOU ALLLLLLLLL ABOUT IT
AND ALL ABOUT THE NEW SOFTWARE AND BASICALLY JUST HOW FUCKING AWESOME MY IPHONE IS
are the voices in your head telling you to kill me yet?

Priya
oh, the voices in my head are screaming that i should make you watch as i throw your phone off a balcony into a pool of sharks
THEN you die

David
hahaha
just kill me first
spare me

Priya
bahahaha
oh no
you're watching.

David
clockwork orange me for that shit

Priya
i'm going to make you watch it, and then i'm going to brainwash you into thinking it was a good thing.
that will be my ultimate victory

David
haha now THAT will never happen
you can never undo the brainwashing that steve jobs has inflicted already

Priya
that's how i'm going to clockwork orange you

David
oh my god
can we PLEASE popularize using that as a verb?!

Priya
hahahh
YES
DONE

David
ok
tomorrow night
we are going to drive it into everyones head

Priya
you mean we're going to clockwork orange them?

David
HAHAHAHAHA

Seriously, What's Wrong With Me? (UPDATED!)

John and I had a really funny and poignant conversation the other day about the way we became who we are now. I thought that it was nice, and important for us to be speaking so candidly to each other because we do write together, and bonding shit like that is good for people who are working creatively in a kind of partnership, I think. And also because if you're going to write with someone I think you should know them. Like, really...know them. As it turns out, we already knew each other pretty well - we're not very different when it comes to the big picture. But I still felt really good about it, so I published it.
And then Marion texted me today saying that she was reading this marathon conversation and she could see our SOULS, and it was just so honest...and it began to dawn on me that maybe I shouldn't have published the conversation without John's explicit permission, even with all the edits and redactions I had made to the content. I posted it in the first place because I thought it was important for you to know me, too - for a different reason, obviously, but still - but I didn't think that when I revealed something significant about myself, John reciprocated, and maybe his part of the conversation might have a more appropriate home at his website, or...just out in the ether between us. So I took the post down, and I told him I was sorry, and I asked him if I could post it again. And he was like, "You need to calm down. Yes, put it back up. Jesus." So...here it is. Again. Enjoy.

John: man my diaryland is embarrassing
like atomic

me: dude, TELL ME WHERE TO FIND IT

John: dude
no
you don't even want none of this
trust

me: yes i do

John:
lemme check something
it might be locked

me: okay

John: [URL]
ugh
welcome to the darkest part of my soul

me: hahaha yessss
i think it is important to learn this about each other
hence...i will return the favor (?)
[URL]

John: haha yes!
oh man but you were such a better writer than i was at about the same time
i've made a terrible mistake

me: er, no, because you ended in 2003 and i ended in 2007

John: wait when did it begin?

me: mine began in like 2002

John: november 2001

me: okay, sure

John: you were much, much better
it's actually kind of astounding
probably because i didn't read anything at around that time

me: you also probably weren't trying as hard as you possibly fucking could to be as esoteric and snooty as possible
i don't see where you're coming up with these comparisons though

John: i guess i wasn't spending any time with anyone who liked to write, too

me: are we comparing 2003 to 2003?

John: yeah
what kind of fucking mongoloid do you think i am

me: hahaha well i'm struggling with these links, okay

John: yeah i'm comparing your entry yesterday in your blogspot to my first diaryland entry
THAT WOULD BE REALLY S-MART

me: i was super good about the HTML for like three of these years
and now all the fucking archives are all messed up
aghhh

John: hahaha
I'M GOING TO START A DIARYLAND DEVOTED TO POEMS ABOUT MURDERING YOU

me: hahahahahhahaha
I'M GOING TO START A XANGA ALL ABOUT HOW FUCKING DEAD YOU ARE TO ME

John: priya,
priya priya priya,
stick a finger in my
ear -------
will yield the most painful consequences



tell your family your time was good,
your luck will soon change.

that's my first poem

me: hahahaha
my first poem is JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN JOHN IS DEAD

John: that's more like a chant you fucking dildo

me: hahahaha whatever i'm bad at poetry

John: speaking of which i'm going to kill you with a fucking dildo
just beating you upside the goddamn skull with it

me: HEY now whose taunts are taking on an uncomfortably sexual tone?
hahaha

John: til your brain looks like a jelly blue penis
FINE I CAN'T SAY I'LL BEAT YOU TO DEATH WITH A FAKE PENIS
WOW JOHN MUST REALLY WANT TO DILDO ALL OF HIS FEMALE FRIENDS
RAIN ON MY PARADE, PRIYA

me: sorry i was a little closed-minded about what you would DO with the dildo

John: RAIN ON IT!

me: i never thought you might just straight up beat me to death with it
i guess that's my problem

John: pfft
check yoself b4 u wreck yoself

me: okay okay
but only because you asked so nicely

John: (i'm going to put you in the dryer)

me: (i'm going to stick you in one of those huge drums that they use in marching bands)

John: i'm going to turn you into mulch
and grow a beautiful garden
that smells like vindaloo
BOOM DOUBLE BURN

me: i'm going to send you through a wood chipper but when i sprinkle your remains on the ground everything will die
and nothing will ever grow there again

John: hahaha
so yeah
enjoy the festering boil that is my collection of memories from high school
enjoy it

me: haha enjoy mine

John: ugh i want to napalm my past self

me: i spent a lot of time trying to be cryptic, just so you know

John: hahaha
most of lauren's journals were the same way

me: they were like really thinly veiled hate messages to someone i dated in high school that didn't even read my diary
it was pretty pathetic

John: ooh who was it?
was it [redacted]?

me: sigh
yeah

John: YEAH!

me: i'm glad you know about that already

John: haha

me: so i don't have to explain how fucking idiotic i was
you just already know

John: haha
lauren has taught me well
in the ways in which you were a dipshit
haha kidding

me: i really wouldn't be surprised
nor would i really mind
it would be kind of a relief not to have to pretend
i escaped relatively scot-free, though i'm kind of pissed that he never told me that he loved me
i guess that was a special present for those who deigned to go down on him
hahaha

John: ugh i think i have pathologies about the fact that my first girlfriend...of three months, mind you...never told me she loved me

me: OOOH STILL A FONT OF FUCKING BITTERNESS AND SELF-LOATHING, HUH PRIYA
anyway yeah, is 3 months a long time?

John: haha no
but i was fucking kicked in the wiener that it never happened

me: hahaha i know!
i know exactly what you mean
i'm still all TELL ME YOU LOVE ME about everything

John: hahaha

me: though i don't know if that has anything to do with him directly or just my general insecurities
or if those two are connected (yes they are)

John: i mean that experience basically caused my first "i love you" with lauren to be this massive, gut-wrenching experience

me: was that your first I Love You ever?

John: no like i told [redacted] that i loved her

me: [redacted] from your diary?

John: but she said something like "we need more time"
haha yeah

me: BURN!!!!
what a whore

John: BURN
yeah
hahaha

me: jesus didnt she know you're just supposed to say it back even though you don't necessarily feel it?
and then you force yourself into a long term relationship with the person and eventually convince yourself that you DO feel it?

John: but anyway yeah that basically told me that saying "i love you" is a one-way ticket to getting doused with gasoline and set aflame

me: god, really...i see how you may have gotten that idea

John: so yeah when i got around to wanting to tell lauren
after dating for a good six months or so
i was a total wreck

me: that seems like a more normal time frame

John: oh yeah totally
i mean i totally acknowledge that i was the weirdo in the relationship with [redacted]
but it still sucked

me: yeah well, she should have just said it back
i mean...high school
whatever

John: [redacted] actually did read my diaryland for a while
just fyi

me: does that matter? did you address certain entries to her?

John: god, i lived inside an odd limbo where every girl i had ever had a fraction of a feeling for shared space in my thoughts and rhetoric when i was in high school
um, kind of
i kind of...slanted...some entries for her
or something

me: i get that
i would write love notes to guys i liked and never use their names
it was really really sad

John: yeah!
exactly
i actually don't think i knew anything about myself until i was totally fucking alone and depressed in college my freshman year

me: man, one of my saddest moments was when i wrote an entire entry backwards and put spaces between every letter so it was all one paragraph
and later i found out that everyone - EVERYONE - had fucking figured it out

John: hahahaaaaaaaa
that is epic

me: i didn't use names or anything but i was just...i don't know, looking for attention or something
yeah

John: yeah

me: i don't think i knew myself until freshman year either
why were you alone and depressed?
just a new kid, new town situation?

John: oh man
i don't know
i felt totally alienated when i went out
people didn't exactly line up to get to know me
and i was totally obsessed with [redacted 2]
by the way
not sure if you knew that

me: i knew about that

John: ok

me: well, i knew you liked her a lot
lauren didn't use the word "obsessed" or anything

John: and she was busy fucking this total schmuck who lived upstairs

me: UGHHHH HORRIBLE
that is THE WORST

John: and i was still kind of hung up with [redacted], too

me: also pretty American, right?

John: haha yeah

me: living in the dorms, being in love with someone who's fucking the schmuck upstairs

John: haha yeah i know what you mean

me: i'm just luxuriating in it
hahaha

John: i mean i can look back and see that it was really great
from a cinematic perspective

me: GOD YES

John: and i think i even appreciated it then, to be honest
which is maybe why i buried myself in it

me: hahaha well, people of a certain disposition often do appreciate melodrama
i know that you're one because we can smell our own

John: haha def
so yeah i just hated myself
and i gained like 20 lbs
looked like a lesbian

me: i think hating yourself is like, hells of important for character growth though

John: things were just awful for me
yeah
totally
i mean i really did grow from it
OH MY GOD MORE EXPLORATION
i just found a huge folder of saved emails from a few girls i had crushes on from 7th grade until college
un. real.
i'm bleeding out of my eyes

me: i used to save AIM conversations

John: haha
yeah i used to, too

me: like...files and files and files of saved convos
and emails
and all sorts of other bullshit
and i would hide them in other folders
and mark them in ways that only i could possibly interpret
i was, like, extremely paranoid about the whole thing

John: haha yeah

me: rightly so, obviously
christ

John: hahaha
HOLY GOD ON A CRACKER
read this

me: ?!?!?!

John: [redacted]
WHAT A DICKHOLE I WAS

me: oh my god, sounds DRAMATIC AS FUCK
why is that a dickhole thing to do?

John: i mean and for what????

me: hahahahahaha

John: no i mean just like "jesus h who gives a shit?"
that kind of dickhole

me: hahahaha i get it now
it's sweet though
at least you fucking cared
i know so many guys in high school that just didn't care at all

John: haha
well at least those guys GOT LAID

me: oh come on

John: hahaha

me: it is a GOOD thing you didn't get laid in 8th grade
imagine what a fucking dick you'd be now

John: i don't mean that
haha i know

me: christ
i'd murder you even more
no. it's better to be laid for being a nice guy than to get laid because you bullied someone into giving it up
which is what those guys did

John: that is totally true
i mean honestly i wouldn't change anything
but jesus it's weird to revisit

me: yeah, i know
but 15 was a terrible year for literally every single person i know
i mean, to whom i've spoken about it, i guess
actually all of high school was pretty much a terribly awkward phase
and i grew out of it when i was...uh...22 and 7 months
so that's good

John: hahaha
i know what you mean

me: i'm not even kidding about that last part
i've only felt moderately human for the last year or so

John: i think that's fairly normal
at least for people who really have a grasp of themselves
you know?

me: yeah...i kind of wonder what it's like to not really be as stuck in my own brain all the damn time
obviously this way is better, but still. it must be an easy life

John: fuck never thinking about yourself
about your own consciousness
i can't even imagine what it would have been like/would be like if i didn't live at least a little bit wrapped up in my own mind

me: hahaha no, me either
but i wonder
i mean, i can't even conceive of a life where i didn't obsess about every fucking thing everyone said to me

John: haha

me: i'm exaggerating a little bit
but obviously i AM pathologically insane, as you said

John: yeah but fuck people who aren't.

Incidentally, this conversation can only hold a flickering candle to the experience I had at John and Lauren's apartment the other week, when I was staying with them in Austin: John walked in on me washing my face at the end of the first day and acted all embarrassed about it, but I told him to come on in because I didn't care. And then we proceeded to brush our teeth together in a really strangely, unintentionally uncomfortable silence. The memory of it is cracking me up - I kept trying to catch his eye in the mirror and wiggle my eyebrows at him in a cheeky way, but he was studiously avoiding my gaze (apparently John's last roommate was really anal-retentive about people watching him brush his teeth? And now John is all trained to not look at other people?) which made it even weirder, because then I was suddenly aware of the fact that I was staring at my best friend's husband brushing his teeth...Seriously, you guys...what's wrong with me?

I Don't Want to Live on the Moon

This song from Sesame Street was one of my favourites when I was little. It still is.



When people around me have kids, my usual gift is "Love You Forever" (that book about the mom who always tells her son - no matter how old he gets - that he'll always be her baby). But I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I shouldn't be doing something to ensure that Sesame Street stays around forever and ever...