LTD and the attack of the Superpants!

It's a Wednesday, and I'm feeling limber. The week has been pretty slow, and I can easily imagine myself doing something other than sprawling in my room in my underwear, watching Television and feeling sorry for myself. I can easily to that elsewhere, spend some money and get the same result. On Monday, my cool bartender friend Jen recommended that I pass through a special event at the club she works, at Club Five, because some drum and bass gods, (LTD) would be there.

Dupont is Dc's gay central. This is an undisputed fact. However, whenever I go out, I wear my 'superpants', a slick pair of French Connection designer jeans. These are the closest to tight pants I have. In Jamaica we'd say they are borderline, white guys might say they are normal, and most African-Americans would say they are tight. Regardless, when I wear the superpants, my confidence boosts by a factor of maybe 10%. Something about feeling snug in my garments gives me a sense of power, like maybe how Leonidas feels wearing his mask, or having Spartan-esque sex with his supermodel wife. I'm heading to Dupont in these pants, and no doubt most hetero men might look at me with a raised eyebrow, but whatever.

I have a quiz in the morning, and I print out a small sheet of facts to study while I take the bus to Dupont. As nerdy as this sounds, if I didn't do this, I most likely would stay at home, studying while i'm sprawling about in my underwear feeling sorry for myself. Once I get on the bus, I don't feel so bad, (but as the night progresses this feeling would vanish) and I read my factoids until I know all about the origins of Radio.

When we reach Dupont, I pass by a small restaurant called Japone, where a friend of mine works. Two cute Asian girls tell me he left work early to head to Five. "Five is having a really big night," they said. "Everyone is going there!" I told them that's where I was going as well. "Ah, so we'll see you there." I think one's name was Jess, and one was Bess. Or only one was Bess.

I walk past a band of kids playing melancholy music near the Dupont Metro station and snap a few pictures. Then I head to five. The guy at the door tells me my name is not on the list. I sigh inwardly for a moment, because I saw him let not one or two, but FIVE girls in for free. I tell him I know Jen, try and schmooze a bit, but he says there's nothing he can do. Eventually I get Jen to come down, and I pay my reduced price of ten bucks to get in.

I love drum and bass. The way the bass kicks and the variations of the sounds layered over these beats always makes me zone out. It also makes me relatively anti-social. Even though i'm wearing my superpants and a shirt that looks fresh out of Ricky Martin's 2001 wardrobe, I'm not feeling that confident. There are two modes I'm generally in when I go out:
(1) Meet girls mode (2) Observational super-existential mode

I realize after two minutes that i'm in mood number 2. When i'm in this frame of mind I feel like a sponge. I suck in all the details, and the little nuances of everything around me, figuring out how well it would sound typewritten. The club isn't very big, but it has a sort of bat-cave vibe to it, with a massive screen hanging precariously over the DJ area, with funny lighting that makes everything look like its covered in flowers. The first thing I notice about the drum and bass crowd, (as I always do) is the number of really cute girls of 'other' races with white guys. I'm not sure what the reasons are, but whenever I head to these events, I tend to see very hot black/asian/indian/mixed girls with pretty average white guys. I stand in the middle of the dance floor for a few minutes with my hands tucked into my pockets. I close my eyes and feel the bass make my ears tingle. A guy steps on my foot--this happens at least twenty times for the night--and apologizes to me. I barely nod in response. He seems really out of sorts that he stepped on my year and a half old Aldos. "Hey, is this LTD?" he said. I nod in agreement. He seems a little put off by my indifference to his upbeat attitude. A strikingly attractive brunette sipping on what appears to be champagne is holding his hand and eyeing him lovingly.

I dont' feel sorry for him.

Earlier that evening, I met up with my cool Japanese friend and headed over to Andalu, a bar right beside Five. The music was jumping, but no one was there. I only followed him there because I realized that I most likely wouldn't be meeting anyone at Five, and I had school in the morning. We met up with Ania, a gorgeous Polish girl and headed inside. My superpants were losing their power... nothing was indicating this would be a good night. My 'Happy Mondays' theory seemed to be losing steam after two days. Ania and Mr. Japan talked excitedly amongst themselves for a while while I stood up surveying the bar. After a few minutes I headed back into Five by myself.

These outings are always interesting for me. It surprises me how lonely one can feel in a place filled with people. I thinks its a mental loneliness, mixed with the frustration that comes with people not really knowing you. Sure, I can stroll into the club like a penguin in five-inch heels, but that doesn't mean much if no one knows you. I found it sad that I was standing in a club thinking of ways to write about how I was standing in the club.

After a few minutes, Ania, my Japanese friend and the two cute Asian girls I met earlier at Japone are all lined up at the bar. They laugh and giggle amongst each other. I'm standing somewhere near the corner. A flash of sadness runs through my system as I see their beaming faces as everyone holds up shots and downs them. "Am I a social pariah?" my mind says to me.
"Nah." it replies, you are just having an off day.
More like an off life.
Before I saw them at the bar, I ran into them upstairs, following them mindlessly as they had fun. The only person that approached me was a drunk-looking blonde holding a white t-shirt and a permanent marker. "My friend is getting married, what would you say to her?" she asked. I thought about it for a moment, thinking of my torturous relationships and what I thought was neglected the most as it relates to me. I scrawled, "Always remember the small things." On the left sleeve. She beamed a smile, and dissappeared into the crowd.

LTD, the main act comes on at about 1:05 a.m to much fanfare. I move into the crowd for a few moments, then realize I have no desire to hop around and scream "Whoo!" for a group I've never heard of. They play good music, but my energy is too low to enjoy myself.
I float outside the club without telling anyone goodbye and walk towards the bus station. I'm having one of those moments, when everything seems dark and blurry and I feel as if i'm alone in the world. These moments usually come during Christmas, when i'm walking home and the wind is biting my ears and I can't feel anything other than pain in my toes and the stinging that frigid air causes with my skin. Tonight I feel like that, as if i'm in a weird void where i'm not really in the world, but existing around it. Observing but not participating. Its very disturbing.

I trot about in my superpants some more, looking dejectedly at the ground. I look at a large LCD display on the side of the road. It shows 81 degrees. I get a flashback of hanging out with my ex-girlfriend (before she was my Ex, or my girlfriend) during the winter in 2004. Back then, the panel said 13 degrees. "Fuck," I say to myself. "I can't escape."

I head to the bus stop, knowing no buses are coming and sit down. It is now Thursday morning in the middle of the week, and i'm sitting at a bus stop in my Superpants. I feel winded, but i'm not tired. My legs don't hurt, my mind is clear and I'm staring into the darkness of the DC cityscape. I watch cabs go by for twenty minutes, before I decide to stop one. The first cab I approach, the man hurriedly locks his doors and tells me he doesn't drive to 1st street, where I live. Just great I think. A black man in a shiny shirt and tight pants has a gun tucked in an unseen orfice, just itching to rob a random middle-eastern taxi driver. I am annoyed for fifteen seconds.

The next driver takes me home. On the way back, watching buildings flash by in a blur of light and sound, I still feel like i'm in a daze as if I never really went to Dupont or stood up in the presence of all those people. I felt like I was still in my room, projecting my thoughts and existing outside of myself. Nights like this I realize there is a deeper, darker sadness inside me that I must tackle. I'm on U street, fifteen or so blocks from my little apartment, and I think that there isn't much that gives me pure joy. For some people eating gives them pleasure, or the pursuit of a woman, watching a movie, cooking, helping people, even hurting animals or breaking glass. I still can't pinpoint my source. The last time I mentioned anything about Joy, it was to my ex-girlfriend. "You are one of the joys in my life." I had said.

famous last words.

Now I reach home, walking towards my door in my superpants. Its 2:00 a.m and I still have work to do for class tommorrow. I may not sleep, but I want to escape this mood i'm in, and awaken, a different person, with a different direction.

RETURN OF THE MAC... PART 3

Having dreams about your ex-girlfriend can be really trippy. Partly because, your mind creates these amazing, Mills and Boon-esque scenarios, with you, a stormy night, an old mill, and of course your Ex. In this dream, everything feels so real, you can almost taste her lips artificially kissing you while you roll around like ruminants on fresh hay. This dream wasn’t one hundred percent real.

I was in a tower of some sort, in a massive city, that felt very futuristic and alien. This realization was a subtle one, as I didn’t use any weird devices or super-quiet public transportation. The city felt very polished, with the kind of man-made architecture that speaks of a more advanced intelligence, maybe, twenty to fifty years from now. The background in this city was flat and gray; quiet like the back of a Church on a Monday Morning. Somewhere in the dream, my sister was a part of it. I think this is because she was the last person I spoke to for the night. We had chit-chatted about making sure to be careful online, and I was an overly protective big-brother mode.

Then there was my ex-girlfriend. Something was different about her. Her hair was wet-looking and disheveled, and she seemed a few pounds heavier. Just enough weight to give her a little more shape, but there was no gut, no protruding skin. Her eyes had a smile in them that spoke of something far away, an inner happiness that had nothing to do with me. Yet, we spoke. About what specifically, I can’t remember, but if felt very real. In this dream, like in real life, I felt slightly sad as I was in her company, because I believe my waking self remembers the real situation, where we do not interact or speak that much with one another.

As realistic as these images were, my heart was being pulled into another plane of thought. The futuristic cityscape I could see outside the window of her apartment scared me. The look in her eyes scared me, because I knew it wasn’t real. I felt like she didn’t truly know me, and my mind was playing tricks on me. Everything began to ripple around me and she held my hand, asking me something I cannot remember. Then I woke up.

I don’t like dreams like these, because I wake up feeling foolish most of the time. Like most people, I tend to assume no one else dreams about me, so if I dream about someone else, I think I’m putting too much of them in my subconscious. Even though the subconscious is a roaring sea that people seem to be able to navigate with the help of psychedelic drugs and shock therapy, I feel that sometimes we can affect our own subconscious by being the usual, sappy-type. This is the second dream I’ve had about my Ex In the last three days, but the first dream ended with her lovingly hugging a short, chubby Latin guy.

Alas, the main point of this is obvious anyways. A person can feel strange, or foolish should they dream of someone they loved, because in their mind they assume that person has so little of them on their mind, they would not dream about them either. I know what people might say to this. “So, what if they dream about you, and just didn’t tell you about it?”

Well, that’s almost like them not dreaming about you anyways. If it wasn’t for this blog, no one would know I had this dream, and since so few people read this blog, only a handful of individuals will know I had this dream. And Even so, out of that handful, MAYBE one person MIGHT… (I do mean might) understand the references in this dream. I wouldn’t mention this dream to my Ex, because that’s a pointless exercise. If you think dreaming about an Ex-girlfriend makes you needy, trust me, the phone call to her after you wake up, filled with odd pauses and stilted displays of affection will make you want to toss your cell phone into a bowl of cereal, hoping it drowns in that brownish-white pool of milk. Maybe it has to do with the last vestiges of love rearing their ugly head. But I came to a realization (on my own, so it is not founded in academic theory, just madness) that one of the hardest things about loving someone is that you can’t really just stop. You can’t bottle it up like some old Sake and put It on the shelf. You can’t just run ten miles a day and do pushups and flush all the memories of that person out of your mind. You can’t meet someone new and immediately feel saved because you have this “new” person to think about. It doesn’t work that way. A person you love gets into the fabric of your being. Many aspects of them are delicately interwoven into your subconscious and conscious mind, and this framework of thought developed over a few years. It’s like my ex-girlfriends are all a part of my skin, like little scars I can rub and fondly think about and trace their origin to a certain moment. But a girl you love is that fat, ugly scar that stands out the most. It makes you smile the most, because you can pinpoint the exact moment you got it. As that scar is forever a part of me I can instantly remember, so is my Ex.

For example, I cannot look at anything labeled “Mac” and not think of my ex-girlfriend. This will probably stay with me for the rest of my life. Also, if I think about certain moments in my life, I may NEVER not think of her during these moments. This doesn’t mean I can’t love someone else mind you, (like that will happen anytime soon), but it shows the impact people can have on you. Now I know why people are really afraid to love. It’s not the blissful happiness they are worried about, or those love-romps that make you feel like an elite athlete. It’s that after-period, when you are single, alone and traipsing about trying to live your life, filled with feelings you can’t deal with, thinking about someone you can’t be with. THAT is what makes love really scary.

Trippy eh? Alas, it is the early morning and school work beckons. My little discourses on love will have to wait till I have another dream, which hopefully won’t be anytime soon.

The Last Chapter Is Always the Hardest

I'm writing the last chapter of my book "Three Weeks and a Hurricane" and it isn't easy. I still have some edits to do, and a filler chapter here or there to write, but the book is pretty much over. This last chapter is hard because in the last bit of this book, i'm summarzing my feelings about love.

Its so hard to think you have lost something really special. Its hard to think that someone you really loved probably didn't see you in the same light. Its hard to know that you can easily express certain aspects of yourself to someone, and they can't do the same. I'm not talking about writing prose worthy of Proust, or drawing me naked on an easel using some Rennaisance technique. I'm talking about merely being able to acknowledge me as a person and my feelings. This is bothering me as I write this last chapter. My challenges in love have often led me to think that maybe I'm the type of person that a person won't "fight" for. Naturally this statement sounds a little negative, but in the face of trying all that i'm trying, I can get book rejections, no problem. I can get a million assignments and handle them, no problem. I can be in groups of strangers and interact with them, and be fine. I can handle the inevitable twisted ankle, scraped knee or broken nail. I can deal with the uncertainty held in my next few steps in my life, but sometimes, just sometimes, Its hardest for me to be hit with a huge emotional blow.

This time, I feel like I'm saying goodbye to a person I didn't have to say goodbye to. I had a chance to acquiesce to the person inside me, and I could have weaseled my way back into my ex's life under the pretense that everything was fine, jim-dandy. But I wasn't jim-dandy. Even though love can make a person destroy themselves, and do almost anything for someone I can't be self-destructive. I can't be hurt and then allow myself to look as if I was hurt for naught.

I can't be tossed aside and then come happily running back to someone with my tail wagging and my tongue out like a dog and its master. Try as I might, I have to be proud of myself. If i'm not i'll be open to the same situations time and time again, and I'll lose.

I did lose something recently, and for the last three days it has been eating at me, day in day out. But there isn't anything I can do. If someone truly loves you, they can show it. If they don't really love you, it shows as well. I'm at the stage where I'm feeling that after-effect of learning the truth, quite like Neo after taking the red pill. I'm partially in shock, and for what seems like the second or third time, i'm completely starting over. Book aside, writing is a reflection of life, especially non-fiction based on yourself. So here I am, writing this last chatper, summarzing my feelings about love (at this moment) and trying not to sound like a wounded, overly jaded twenty something year old.

But that's hard, because I'm trying to write truthfully without being hurtful. If people read what i write, I want it to show them that a person can move on, a person can take a few blows and crawl out of the rubble, I want everyone to be Superman. But we aren't aliens. We are human, flesh and bone, finite. We have diseases, issues, wars and stresses everywhere. Life is a FIGHT.
We fight for love, for food, for occupations, education, sex, pleasure, money and a host of other things. Its a batttle between how good you feel and how much you want to have. I think love is one of the lulls in that battle, a little thing that allows you to remember life doesn't have to be as chaotic as it is. You can look into someone's eyes and see your future in there. You can hold their hand and feel like you dissappear into their consciousness, even for a moment. You can dissappear blissfully for a while, and escape the raging madness of our Ipod-filled, overly political, caffeine amped world.

Then you come back to reality and there's the pain and suffering, the joy and the ups and downs.
So maybe losing love is just stepping back into the real arena of life. Maybe its just being what a human really is: almost animalistic, fighting tooth and nail to find what he/she wants in life. Maybe I've lost a skirmish this time around and I have to REALLY fight the next time love shows its face. Then maybe, I should cling on for dear life, invest properly in my emotions and pray that the person's eyes I look into, see's the same thing in me.

Wishful thinking? You bet.

Endings are Introspective

I haven’t finished my book project “ Three Weeks and a Hurricane “ yet, but I think I’ve figured out an aspect of its ending. In my life, there are certain things I think that most people eventually want, something they discover within themselves that gives them a sense of self-worth. Something that makes them say, “Dammit, I DESERVE MORE!”. Whatever this “thing” is, be it a desire to have more respect from people, more income or just more food on the table, I think at some point people have that point they reach when they become aware of what they need. A lot of times when I’m writing, like most people I focus on the story, and I focus on the characters, the plot, the outline, the ins and outs of their lives and their perceptions. I feed those things into the characters to make them become more real, more alive. But in this project, its non-fiction. Its all about me, my thoughts, my views and expectations. In this story, I’m the protagonist, I’m the man with the plan. The situations are all mine, the pain real and whatever desires true. Its not a character sketch I did up in Word in fifteen minutes. It’s a representation of a person who’s been alive for twenty-five years. Its truth in its most pure form.
The ending to this story I believe is not just a search for meaning in my life as it relates to what I want to achieve, but how I want to be treated as well. I’m sure you’ve all heard the stories about models or actors or business people who are very successful talk about those time periods when people told them they couldn’t do it, or they wouldn’t make it. Everytime we see these interviews, or read about them in one of our magazines, we laugh, because we don’t believe it. But its true. Most people have to hear they can’t do it before they really try, or life breaks them in two. I think I desire that as well, for people to know who I am to some extent, to have a basic consideration that comes with being a person who’s alive and trying to do what’s right. This is probably writing more suited for the pages of some unwritten screenplay as the monologue of some jaded character, but it’s the prevailing thought in my mind right now. A large aspect of “Three Weeks” dealt with some personal challenges I was having at the time, and how I felt and reacted to them.
New situations can always stir up those past emotions, and pain and regret can flood your system constantly, but that's an aspect of writing that's the most powerful. These thoughts and feelings are the things that can lead us to the paper with pen in hand, or to the keyboard. Maybe some people have bad situations so they can write about it. Or maybe some people need to write about certain situations so they can move on. Who knows.Maybe in a later blog I’ll go into details. I can see what I want as clear as day, but its on the top of a mountain and I’m in the middle somewhere and I’m almost out of rope, but I’m smiling because I’m still hoping.
I shall return anon.