This is NOT Over

Sun Nov 5 – Sat Nov 11, 1989 The Recipe

…but we’ll see about that. My one night of drinking last week (Sat) went well. If I stick to it, this could be great. People are getting curious about me skipping Thursday tradition but to be honest, I’ve been embarrassed around John and Tom since Susan found my journal. I don’t think she read it to them, but I don’t care. The fact that she’s read it and she is what she is to John makes me uneasy. And my guts feel better without all the beer.

But last Saturday was amazing. Confessed to Megs (my friend from home) that I was only drinking one night a week and could we please, please, please make it anything other than slivovitz….? I begged her. I said I’d buy whatever she wanted, we could do whatever she wanted…just none of that sick shit. It was a cold night so she said she wanted those hopped up hot cocoas like we used to have with some of the kids from St. Joe’s Youth Group. I was happy to oblige.

The recipe: Swiss Miss (or is it MS now?) vanilla ice cream, peppermint schnapps. We drank and had a nice talk, although it didn’t start out all that nice. Megs said I was different and weird. She said she was disappointed to hear that I no longer answered letters from friends. She thought my room was weird and asked me how one guy can play two Nintendos, to which I responded, “I have a roommate.” She made fun of the reading mess on my desk. I gotta start hiding those books and things. They’re worse than leaving out a bag of skunky/skanky weed.

I didn’t answer any of her charges in a substantive way. I just let out phrases like ‘been busy’ or ‘yeah, I’m a bad friend’ at semi-regular intervals. Really, what do I care when it comes to people from home? They’re at home and I came here. When we dealt with each other every day that was different, there was a lot to say. We needed the same shit…wanted the same shit, or wanted to explain why we wanted different shit, had the same problems, enemies, crushes and/or all of that junk but now all that was over. I’m here. I got away for a reason. Not that anyone back home or from my grandma’s old neighborhood was bad (except for maybe me)….I just thought ‘that’s enough of this, then…time to go out and meet different people’

Didn’t tell any of that to Megs. It’s not because she wouldn’t understand it. She would totally understand it and then everyone would know what a piece of shit I am. Besides, there may come a time when I need folks from home again and I do not want to close that door forever.

Just like the ‘you know what’ that I am, I am always ready to find a way to come crawling back. Sounds about right. Megs and I got pretty toasted and we put on Desire. My little stereo did the automatic flips on the cassette for us so our drinking and cuddling would not be interrupted. It was nice, and not empty in any way to have my old friend in my arms. I pulled her head to my chest and we smiled as Romance in Durango played…

Hot chili peppers in the blistering sun
Rain on my face and on my cape
Me and Magdalena on the run
I believe this time we shall escape

Sold my guitar to the baker’s son
For a few crumbs and a place to hide
But I can get me another one…

And that’s all I have to say about that night.

It is possible this supposedly well-spent sober week was, in fact, ill-spent. Worked on the James’ “Art of Fiction” piece and ended each night reading the Phaedrus in the library stacks. Wed night was tough because people were fucking two stacks over. I wanted to say, “Come on you two, it’s supposed to be the Dewey Decimal System not the Screwy Decimal System!”

I think it is better for all involved that I did not say that.

Back to the Phaedrus. Socrates says some pretty amazing (or possibly stupid) stuff about writing. He says if a writer thinks he has left behind anything of any value in his written words then that person is completely delusional. It’s like that time-traveling motherfucker has already read this journal. I wonder how it all turns out?

But if I read that portion of the Phaedrus correctly, I think I read a written critique of writing. That is the craziest shit I have ever heard of and I have heard some pretty fucked up people say some pretty fucked up things in my short time on this rock.

Either this is all a bunch of nonsense or there is something pretty serious going on underneath all the mumbo-jumbo bullshit. I am nothing if not a connoisseur of beautiful things flanked by mounds of shit. After all, that is what I humbly believe my life to be. Now I am making myself sick. Sorry.

Talked to Jen-O. There are no classes that touch on the Phaedrus on the political theory slate for the Spring Semester. She thinks a better introduction to this kind of writing is the POLS Floor class (you live on the political science floor you have to take certain classes in Douglass with fellow residents each semester). Prof Sorrenson is reading Xenophon’s Hiero with the kids on the POLS floor and Jen-O says she can get me an invite. I will probably take her up on that offer because I can listen to smart people talk about a smart book and not have to take a test covering all the smart talk. I hate being tested on smart talk. I’d rather process the smart talk and see if I understand it at all in my own head first before I profess knowledge of it in written form *i.e. a fucking Blue Book exam!!! And, if Socrates is to be believed, writing has this “very strange quality”.