Because I think I should just go gay.

Girls are fucking ridiculous.



Delaney and I had a hang-out day scheduled a few days ago. We were supposed to watch Cool Hand Luke and maybe Up. It was a cool idea. We haven't spent any time together since we broke up so I had high hopes for the day.

Then she told me that Jason was coming over. Okay, Jason is great and I love him, but already I began to have my doubts. See, she does not treat me the same way when other people are around. When we're alone she's the sweetest person in the world and she reminds me of whatever it was I ever saw in her. When other people are around, she goes out of her way to annoy me to the point of eliciting a response which she can then turn against me as some kind of pathetic joke, what she calls my MDQ (melodramatic drama queen) mode. As if my friends and I don't give each other shit constantly. I can take a joke, trust me, but there's a line between sarcasm and being a dick. It's all fun and games until someone trivializes another person's emotions.

Boys and girls will always have separate systems of logic. It's not sexist because I think they're both stupid. The only thing that they have in common is that both genders hate most in others what the hate most in themselves. Only the most glaring issues of self-conscience - those of a tendency towards melodrama, a physical discrepancy, or a fault of personality - are always the traits that people are quickest to point out in others. If someone is especially prone to lamenting about a life that is in fact nowhere near as difficult as they make it out to be, and they're aware of this self-induced misery, why, then they're sure to throw around the term "melodramatic drama queen" when they realize that they've upset someone.

So I was anticipating something bad. I was afraid that one of us might upset the other in front of Jason and it'd get messy. I couldn't find Cool Hand Luke anywhere - we searched for an hour or more - and I finally texted her saying we'd have to watch up. The response was her infamous "..okay" which haunts my dreams. See, there's "okay," which is a conversation-killer on its own, but at least it's emotionally neutral. Then there's "..okay," which is just her lazy way of saying "...okay," which is the now forcibly neutralized "okay" prefaced by the thoughtfully degrading ellipsis that essentially means "Well, you fucked up, so here's an ellipsis to indicate that I've been disappointed and/or irritated."

People aren't nearly as complicated as they'd like to be. It's basic psychology - there are only so many responses that genetics and experience can derive from a single stimulus. Annoyance can be detected by a mere handful of verbal or body language cues if the subject is well-known enough to the experimenter. It's a wonderful triumph over that painfully robotic double-blind.

I sensed exasperation in her response immediately. Ever wary of my potential to disappoint I asked if she wanted me to go rent the movie. She said that she would prefer for us to get there as soon as possible so that she could go to sleep early. We left forthwith.

Upon arrival she invited Jason to play Rock Band with her, without so much as a hello to me. Okay, I can deal with that. Good friends don't even have to address each other directly in greeting. I open my door for my friends without a word all the time. Maybe it's a mark of respect. I don't know. Regardless, it's endurable.

So after five or six songs her mother, being perhaps the warmest person in the household to me (she called me hot when I wasn't even around!), asked if I wanted to play. Delaney quickly responded saying that I didn't need to play since I do nothing but play Rock Band in my spare time anyway. Okay, bitchy, but whatever. Predictable, at least. I said it was fine; I didn't really feel like playing anyway, and I dove into my phone. Mrs. Moghanian asked if I was able to play the drums and I said I was awful at it. In a fit of mock rage, Delaney shoved her guitar in my hands and said I could play it "if I was going to be such a sore participant about it." Yeah, okay. Once again, it was jocular for the most part, but so is calling a friend ugly. It's not really necessary, is it? Oh well. I wasn't going to be MDQ'd tonight.

So we played, and after a few songs (which I completed on Expert with ease - a fact that was received with plenty of snide commentary from the other side of the couch) we started to watch the movie. I nestled into the other couch next to Jason and Delaney begged for someone to sit next to her. Jason, being the gentleman he is, obliged. So now I was alone with my phone. Cool. I'm never going to an ex's house ever again.

I cried during the movie. It's really sad on level one because Carl's wife dies and throughout the movie he's talking to her as though she's there and Russel is like the son he never had and all that junk. But it's even sadder if you've ever really cared so much about someone that they became a natural part of you, as much a given in the world as breathing or gravity. Carl's old and somewhat decrepit, and he got there with Ellie. To have her taken that way is like losing gravity. That loss and loneliness is hard for a lot of people to really understand. I myself have never really lost someone whom I loved that deeply, so I can only imagine what it would be like to lose some of my friends. But I guess that's not why I cried. That hypothetical isn't enough to drive me to tears. What makes me cry during Up is that I want someone to become that much a part of me, so much that I can't even imagine losing them. You don't regret the love that Carl and Ellie had for each other. It breaks your heart but only because of the fragility of that beauty; it is beautiful nonetheless. I want the safety that lies in that vulnerability, the security of knowing that if everyone else stops caring about me, they'll still love me. I want someone to care about me as much as I am able to care about them. And that doesn't seem to want to happen.

They both loved the movie, despite it skipping quite a bit (even in the face of claims of my irresponsibility in its quality, I didn't bother to mention that it's worked just fine in two other DVD players so far. I guess I must hate the cold even more than I think because I'm sure used to taking the heat). We started watching Bruce Almighty, which is another movie that speaks to me just because of how difficult it is for Bruce to get someone to love him despite his flaws. No matter how much you care about someone, you just can't make them care back.

During a commercial, I, still buried in my phone for fear of saying something out of anger that I would regret later, was chastised for my anti-sociability. Delaney was quite vociferous in her accusations, saying I'd said nothing all night because I was so preoccupied with texting. Restraining myself I said it was nothing. She laughed, saying something akin to "Look how mad he gets at me! Gosh, I'm just asking a question!" I said I wasn't mad. She laughed and came over to sit down on me. She casually asked me what was wrong and I said that nothing was. She persisted and I continued to reaffirm my claims through grinding teeth. She asked me if I was retarded. Jason mumbled a surprised "Wow.... bitch," from the other couch. She did not hear him and continued to mock me for my reticence. "My sentiments exactly," I said to him. "What, symptoms? You have the symptoms of retardation? Ahahaha." That did it.

I can take shit. My friends dish it out all the time and it doesn't even phase me. But if you've ever been the brunt of not one, not two, but every joke made over the course of the day, it tends to get pretty fucking annoying. You want to yell at them. It's old. Drop it. You're not funny at all. You're just a bitch. Well, that's what's going through everyone else's mind, trust me. You're being a bitch and that poor guy is dealing with it. Maybe he did something wrong, or said something messed up, but it must've been pretty bad to warrant this treatment. Except I generally don't wrong people so deeply. I may be a disappointment, but I sure as hell don't go out of my way to degrade people by listing to them their flaws. So I told her that she was being totally indifferent to my emotions in the name of humor.

My feelings weren't hurt. It's the principle of the thing. I'm not insecure about my nerdiness or my lack of coordination, but that's no excuse for someone to turn it those things into faults. Especially when it's completely hypocritical. I don't make fun of people's weight, or their attractiveness, or even the fact that they sit on their asses and do nothing all day. That's cool with me. Live your own life and I won't joke you into living the right one. It's an extremely shitty thing to do to someone to make light of things that they may take to heart because it's not just cruel, it's deliberately cruel. You know you shouldn't say it. So don't. Remarking about something you perceive as bad in someone is NOT sarcasm. It's casual insult and it's awful.

In true ironic spirit she took extreme offense to my claim, mostly because she is just another person who is so insecure that they not only comment on their own ineptitudes but also react in desperate defensiveness whenever they are accused of being wrong. It's an entirely transparent characteristic, and therefore one on which I would never comment in conversation simply because of the explanation in the above paragraph. We did not talk for the rest of the night. For once, though, I felt no remorse. I knew I had done nothing wrong; I had acted in my own defense. If she thought that was wrong, then she valued my subordination more than my feelings.

And she did. The next day she reprimanded me for the inappropriateness of acting out in front of Jason. It was an immature and cruel move, she said. I told her that I would've said nothing had she not persisted so much. I had not been mad until she had disregarded the possibility of me being mad. Then I reacted. That was her fault, not mine. She asked what was wrong and I told her. She told me that she knew I was mad; she knew me better than that, and so how was she supposed to know that it was because of her? I told her that she was the one who claimed to know me so well so she could figure that out on her own. My acknowledgement of her contradiction infuriated her, and by now I was getting more heated than I ever want to be in an argument. This was bigger than a few jokes: I was finally standing up for myself after months of sacrificing my own integrity in order to make her happy. As many MDQs as she threw at me, I knew that I had done nothing wrong. Even Jason, who is friends with both of us and was therefore able to observe objectively, uttered that single word - "bitch" - and from then on I knew that my hypothesis had been correct: any outsider observing her constant treatment of me would be appalled by what I endure. That's no glorification of my deeds but a condemnation of hers. I have no need to seek moral salvation; I have been the best I can be. But she has made no attempts at an Ellie, that's for sure.


She asked if we were no longer friends, which is a highly immature reaction, in my opinion. If a friendship is so unnatural that it must depend on a title and constant stability to remain extant, it is not worth having. I told her I was angry but I'd get over it. She said she didn't know why I'd want to be her friend if I thought she was a dick - the kind of passive-aggression that she herself hates so much manifesting itself in her defense. I told her to stop treating me differently when people are around and we'd be fine. She told me to stop ruining her Christmas and we bid each other adieu.

The next morning - Christmas - she asked to stop fighting and we've been shakily conversing since. But my ire remains. I am filled now with a detachment that I hoped never to have, the kind that is born from faithlessness for the possibility of a love like Carl and Ellie had. It's the kind that makes you hate stupid love songs and consider emotions a simple chemical reaction and reduce people to statistics. Maybe all of history has existed only to drive people like me to this point. If so I hope to God for an apocalypse swift and soon.



This is my rant. Don't take it to heart. I'm mad. Thanks.

We stand here, back and forth in ships of silver.
Oh but silver never saved a lung.
I stand here, bearing gifts of gold and silver,
Waiting for this tragedy to come undone.

Sand sleeps there, blankets for the Sunday masses,
Temples built on backs of luxury.
Like fire it burns away what life is left here,
Paper, silver, you, it all just tears at me.

And there it goes, floating out in vengeful little bottles,
Gone to find some welcome shore.
And there you go, blowing out that spark of liberation
Where we made a torch before.


Victorious with red-gold linens.
Flashing bright, an island in the
Archipelago of deep-seated desire and,
Oh, it doesn't get much worse than this.
It doesn't change as much as
You think you know, a fragment of archipelago.

This distance between what's there and what we wanted,
Oh, it seems so great we've lost it all.
No island do I need to face this summer stench of life left barren, haunted.
Painted palm trees on the wall.

And there it goes, floating out in sinful little silence,
Sweeping all across their shore.
And there you go, compensating for inertia with violence,
Where you stayed a hand before.


Victorious with red-gold linens.
Flashing bright, an island in the
Archipelago of deep-seated desire and,
Oh, it doesn't get much worse than this.
It doesn't change as much as
You think you know, a fragment of archipelago.


And here we go, taking every single little measure,
A paid vacation set in stone.
And here we go, letting gold and silver choke our treasure.
For all our contact, we're alone.

A glorious gift we've been given,
Manifest, not buried in the
Archipelago of love over desire and,
Oh, it doesn't get much worse than this,
You'll never know as much as you think you know.
We've broken our archipelago.

So I really love this shirt. I thought it was so funny.

http://www.splitreason.com/product/820

EDIT: Annnnnd, this one. I'll probably just keep adding more. Haha. http://www.splitreason.com/product/538