Tearing at the Roots/ Dec. 2006

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Breathe.  Stop.  Let it sink in.

My room is a mess of small clutters.  Papers, cables, boxes filled to the brim but not yet sealed; never sealed. Could I ever seal them? I’m getting whiny and should stop.

Move-out is in eight and a half hours. Dad will come by with a truck from the store and give me an encouraging hug before getting to work.  I can’t expect much from him, but I can expect something, and it’s more than Mom will offer.

The walls are bare; painted a dusty light-blue, the wall along my bed–at my back–cluttered with small cards, a poster, train tickets.  I should take these down, but I won’t, not yet, not until the very last hour.  I will carry them with me, and these walls, and this dust, and this oppressive air, and the sourness between the woman who is my mother and myself.

Books for Lovers

I was obvious about my intentions when I started this blog. I wanted to talk about sex. But books are better than sex sometimes. Not better, but different, and sometimes easier to handle.

A turn of phrase can get me unexpectedly horny for no good reason. Inappropriate places, too. I always turn to the line from Before Night Falls, where Arenas discusses how one of his partners and potential persecutors “dismissed him with his penis”. For a long time I took a cucumber and held it to my crotch, using my fake dick to try to dismiss others. It turned Arenas on; his prose salivates as he describes being dominated and tormented by his oppressors. Punishment and control can be sexy. Extreme control and punishment can be even sexier, something that produces resistance so sweet that the misery is almost worth it.

When I was young, I turned to books for emotional release. I needed to be loved. If not, I wanted to perceive others being loved. Different books held different promises of love for me. I turned to Dickens when I wanted to hold my ribs from being cracked open. I loved the Brontes (sometimes) for keeping me in the throes of real outrage. I adored Austen for her cool, clever quick-witted humor that hid quiet poignance.

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Shock

from free-extras.com.

Every time I think I know the feeling, I don’t.

The first time my life tore open — really open — was the day my grandfather died. It was in 1996. I’m not sure what happened, except I saw how I cried in the mirror before I even felt it.

The second time it happened it was when I saw the bloody lump of a girl named Christina, strewn outside a rusty Indian gate, bitten half to death by stray dogs.

The third time it happened was on the 22nd of February, 2006. Someday I’ll talk about what happened then, but I can’t now.

And this is just the fourth time.

On (Jersey) Accents

(by f & DRM)

We have always wondered where accents come from. What differentiates, say, a Jersey accent from a Brooklyn one? Or a Southern accent from a Boston accent from a Valley Girl’s speech? Different groups of immigrants, a variety of loan words from other languages, and cultural specificity creates distinct language and sound patterns across the country.

However, there is no accent more dear to us than the Jersey accent. Often put up for ridicule in shows like Jersey Shore and the Sopranos, it’s an interesting beast. Not quite the New York accent (come on, ask someone from Brooklyn to say fuggedaboutit, you know you want to!) it’s a more laid-back animal. “Water” is like “wudder” and “Orange” — as pronounced “Ah-RAHNGE” — becomes “Aww-RUNGE”. It’s thoroughly unsophisticated, fits crudeness like a glove, and stands rough around the edges. According to us, it’s the funnest accent in the world, if only because it’s the only appropriate one to use when telling a motherfucker in a Cadillac to do some anatomically impossible things to himself.

A tribute to an old friend, (part 1)

As I read D’s narratives from fifth grade, I was pulled back to that brisk May morning when I set out for my middle school orientation. I wore a pleated skirt and a dress shirt which was the standard uniform in my old school. My father and I were expected at the guidance counselor’s office to discuss my academic schedule and arrangements. The car ride to the school was nerve-wracking to say the least. A wave of nausea and a string of questions jolted me at each traffic light. Will I make new friends? How are the students here? What if I get lost? What if the teachers hate me?

Since I had already finished my seventh grade, my counselor had suggested that I attend classes with my future classmates for a month till the school officially ended. My father and I pulled into the parking lot. As I got out of the car, I noticed that there was a stain on one of my black shoes. I got out a napkin and began scrubbing it clean. It was futile. This made me even more anxious. My father motioned me to hurry up and we entered the main door. I looked down at my shoes as we walked up the dark blue carpeted corridor. What if the counselor tells me to go home because I had a stain on my shoe? I looked at my father. What would he say then? I bit my lip as I felt beads of sweat trickling down my temples.

why subterfuge: an apology

Yesterday, I went a little crazy. For those of you not expecting any posts from me for a while  — you know, because sticking a fork in one’s eye is not good for posting — I’m sorry I scared you so much. I’m still around, my eyes have not gone the way of Oedipus, and I promise they won’t anytime in the near future.

Yes. I should have toned down the language. I shouldn’t have discussed self-injury in the (cavalier) way that I did. My heart goes out to people who have lifelong struggles with self-injury.  You have no idea how awful I feel about the strength of my emotions and the way I expressed them.

Yet, in some bizarre way, this is proof that Subterfuge is working. It’s working because it’s a place I trust. I yell and rave and confess here as I would in an empty room. I did not hold back.

The point of the post, the parts about being incapacitated by my performance anxiety, are real. I always have been. Many of my future confessions will star my inability to cope with my demons, and my anxiety is my demon king. It always lurks at the back of my mind, stomping through the hallways of my brain, taking phone calls for me, running my life.

Something as deceptively simple as leaving a comment on a website can cause me so much anguish. And that was the perfect moment for me to write about it, because it’s like a fingerprint — a snapshot — of how I am feeling. This is what I’ve always intended the confessionals to be. Raw and present. Sometimes the distance is necessary. Sometimes it’s impossible. In this case I wouldn’t have been able to move on, blunt the edges of my rage and sadness, without writing about it.