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May 15
Getting drunk off my ass graduation night in Worcester. I've seen my
parents, my bio-dad, my grandmother; I've met the parents of the
people I've spent the last four years hanging with and living with;
I've gotten my degree, gotten over having my last name mispronounced
by the jackass reading off the names. ("MY-lard" is what she said.
No one has EVER pronounced it like that; no one probably ever will
again.) I've gotten through all that, on a glorious May day, the kind
of day when Worcester actually seems attractive and good, and now I'm
getting drunk off my ass, with my friends and neighbors and friends
thereof, and it's a good thing. There are mysterious concoctions
poured by inebriated computer geeks, and some of these improvised
drinks actually taste good. Music is playing, somewhere, and people
are talking and laughing. Late in the night, when my girlfriend is
already in bed, I'm downstairs, where another party is running in
parallel, and I'm sitting on the floor with my guitar playing a
mockery of Freebird that teeters, like my own drunken frame, between
hilarity and melancholy, and the next day I'll remember singing but I
won't remember any of the words, and wrapped around all of this is a
growing pit of regret and loss that my time spent living with these
people who have been my friends is nearly over.
June 27
I find out, from my friend Wilder, that our friend Emma Howell died on
Sunday the 24th. She was swimming off the coast of Brazil -- an Emma
sort of thing, she was a traveler and a romantic -- and she got
snuffed out by some fucking indifferent undertow. She was gorgeous
and kind and an agent to some very close-knit friendships. I find
myself trapped between missing her very much and being the least
affected, by a considerable margin, of the people I know who knew her.
I visit her mom briefly, with a friend, meet her current boyfriend,
reply that yes, I'll definitely be around, and then don't have the
guts to show up to a funeral where I'm afraid of feeling like the big
faker, the tourist. Later in the summer, I'll write a song to her,
and with that finally feel I've managed to find an honest way to
grieve.
September 11
WTC collapses; Pentagon gets hit; UA Flight 93 goes down. My
girlfriend and I watch this, mostly after-the-fact (waking up at 10 in
the morning PST, her mother calls us from work to tell us to turn on
the TV). I'm struck by the enormity of the image -- the WTC towers,
buildings about which I'd never thought much of anything, destroyed
by hijacked commercial jetliners -- but not particularly hit by
empathy for the recent dead. I wonder at my own selfishness; I worry
about what will happen to the country, what could happen to me and my
friends if the shit cranked up fast and hard and bad and we managed to
get back into Draft territory. I marvel at the fact that something so
awful as this attack, with sudden and unexpected loss of life, can
also be such a stunning sight.
November 14 & 28
Writing a novel, with Tom & Merry and then Tom & Rebecca, at Chopstix
Express. Karaoke bar, full of folks drinking and singing and
laughing, and every half hour or so asking us what, exactly, we were
up to with our row of laptops. This is my first and second time doing
the karaoke thing, and I'm as entertained by it as -- maybe more so
than -- I had originally hoped to be. I find myself a little bit
stiff early on, singing with my hands in my pockets and my eyes
alternately half-closed -- as they usually are when I'm in front of
a crowd with my guitar, when I'm Really Performing -- and fixed on the
monitor feeding me words. But as the drinks march down my throat --
the second time we go to Chopstix, Tom buys, and I'm grateful for this
but confronted by the ongoing realization that I have no sense of
social graces, and feel quietly confused by the situation -- the
alcohol strips away my sheepishness and I get loose, get funky, start
swaying and swinging the mic stand, mostly intentionally, and the
blessed crowd of drunks and drunkers are a receptive audience, a warm
gathering of shared musical/theatrical carelessness. And I write,
when I sit down, I really write like I haven't most of the rest of the
time since I burned through the first week and lost my steam, and when
I'm not writing I'm playing with a cigarette and laughing with Tom and
Merry and Rebecca and the funny (Ha Ha and Strange mixed up together)
regulars, and it's wonderful.
December 21
I send an e-mail in response to a usenet post directed toward me on
May 26, 1996. I let kentr@mdex.net know that "Green Is The Colour"
was off of one of Floyd's soundtrack albums from the early 70's. The
e-mail is not successfully delivered.
December 31
I e-mail my college friend and ex-apartment-mate, Sean, shortly before
midnight, PST. I'm stinking drunk, off of cheap imitation JD (Ezra
Brooks -- for some reason I remember the names of cut-rate alcohol),
and the e-mail is a mess of typos. I tell Sean what a great guy he
is, and order him to get laid. All in all, I close the year with a
horrendously (gloriously?) drunken diatribe, illegible and eclectic.
I mention my novel:
< Now would be a good time to add the literly drunklen chapter
< too my novel, if only I could remember what it was supposed ot
< bea bout about..
I lament the death of Emma:
< I miss you mor e than lmosat everyboyd. I miss Roger very
< slightly more, because of the inexplicable bodn to the ded girl,
< E,mmma , wtih whoke, all else aside I would be partying this
< very eve. God damit. God fuc,ing dami.t
I observe my own state:
< Hi~! My siter, fghg vu k.
< vu k
< fruck, that is. Oh shit. Soooo, drunk.
I try to embarrass my sister, and give Sean advice:
< I like you, regardless,and th this is an emnbarrassing letter, but
< no less than my sister, the one who at late=teens ran around
< the hous with nothing but lingeree and bowling pins
< prentending to be a horse, telling me that I trashed. she
< 9is right. I am right. Dom not take shit from no one.
I mention some other things, too, but I'm going to keep those.
January 1, 2002
Hangover.
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