Archive for January, 2004

Nights Like This…

Friday, January 30th, 2004

I can be, at times, too intense for people… particularly as they get to know me and I start to soften or lower the walls that surround the intricate details of my life.

I find myself bored, unmotivated, and rather lonely. I drew out a painting that I might do, depending on my motivation level… I just don’t know.

Really, my core depression is still at work, it just can be easily hidden amongst the happiness that I’ve had lately, of course without that constant stimulus, well, it pokes through, particularly when I’m unable to do what I want to do, whatever that may be.

I make these emotional attachments so easily, and I find myself questioning the wisdom of such… but, I think that’s what life is really about when it all boils down.

So, I’m sitting here, after several Smirnoff Citrus Twist & Tonics… and I miss people… several people really.

I miss Cole, the Cole he used to be… and I miss davey, and the future we would have had together had he not totally flaked on me… and Jake, I don’t really know why, but there was always something about him that just drew me toward him… I guess maybe I loved him… or still do? There’s just so much that was never resolved, so much that was so close to happening that never happened… and, I don’t know… I want to talk to him.

Adam… hmm… I still wish that I could have given him what he asked for that one night… I guess I should leave it at that… but… he’s like an entire chapter in my book of life… that spills out onto several other chapters at the same time. I remember him and me trying to figure out a way to work out seeing each other right before Stephen flew in… it was back when we had this mutual passion for each other… I just miss him, I wish we could talk and see each other like we used to.

Mostly though, I sit here… and I’m thinking of Patrick and just how awesome it is to be with him… I feel respected and appreciated, and, while I can’t say that’s particularly a new thing, it still feels… new, it feels good, and… I don’t know… I rather wish he were here right now.

I’m also thinking of Jon & Sam… somehow they seem to get lumped together in my mind… I guess it’s the friendship that… could easily be so much more so if fate and circumstances were different. Sam… he’s someone I’ve known for so many years, and it’s like I’ve watched him grow up into this great guy… and, while I’m not really sure when it happened, I developed these feelings for him that could only be described as love, but I always held back, I’d flirt, he’d flirt… but there’s a certain safety in distance. I remember asking him when his birthday was back around my birthday, because I just want to spend it with him. There’s a certain beauty about him… it draws me in… I find myself constantly wishing that he’d be closer, so that we’d actually be able to spend time with one another. I found myself wanting to ‘take him out’ a while ago… maybe I quietly fell in love with him why I wasn’t paying attention… someone safe, that I didn’t particularly need to worry about anything ever really happening if only because of distance. Still, when I experience great joy, I find myself wishing that he could experience it too. I think, basically, deep down, I want to make him happy. Then there was that one night, when he blurted out that he loves me… and… in a way I felt this massive relief… I guess, because I’d been wanting for so long to tell him that I care for him that much, that he’s special to me… things just grow… they develop, and sometimes they blossom.

And Jon… there’s something… without description. I asked myself, rather subconsciously my regret question.. and that one night, I found my lips pressed against his… and it felt…. there was something, something amazing there… something that defies explanation in words, I don’t really know exactly… it felt right, it felt like what love feels like, even though I knew intellectually it was not such.

So, I miss these people… Patrick, Jon, & Sam… I saw Jon a week ago, Patrick only a few days ago, and Sam… I’ve never had the pleasure of actually meeting him yet.

I don’t know when I’ll see Jon again, and the cynical side of me says ‘if I ever do’ ….but I want to, he’s just good company, even if he tends to be overly quiet… I know he’s thinking and would share if he felt comfortable enough… and I guess I want that time to eventually arrive. Foolish me for growing attached so quickly, but that’s my way… I’m either on or off most of the time, and, well… he found my button and pushed it. Likewise… I so very much look forward to seeing Patrick tomorrow night… that man makes me happy in ways that I’ve always wanted… ways I know I’ve made other people happy, but they’ve never quite been able to return for whatever reason. I feel like he’s healing me… It’s goodness.

I must go, because I think I’m about to do something incredibly insane… one for the record… the adventures of Indigo Meridian.

Prom & London

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

Lastnight Sam mentioned his prom and wanting to take a guy and his options, etc… and just sort of randomly I was like “ooooh! take me!” not exactly serious, but not exactly jokingly either. I never went to the prom with a guy, only took this girl that I wasn’t even dating to my jr Prom, just because… I never bothered with the senior prom, mostly because the jr prom experience was so dumb, it was this heterosexual right of passage that just didn’t seem to fit with me in any way. The idea of going to Sam’s prom was somehow appealing in more than just the totally crazy sort of way, and, really, getting to St. Louis for the weekend isn’t difficult, , so it was kind of like, well… if he doesn’t find a proper guy to go with, I’d go with him, why not? It’d be wild… and, well, a lot of other more delicately lovely things.

So, the other thing that has me actually a little concerned, is well… I’m talking to Jon lastnight, because I really wanted to hang out tonight and he blurts out rather matter of factly that he’s going to be looking for places tonight because he’s moving to London. Now, we’d briefly talked about that when he was here and had one of those ‘aww’ moments where we ‘decided’ to move to London together.

I looked into ‘defecting’ quite a few times and, realistically, it’s a hell of a lot harder to leave the country than one may imagine. There are very few countries that will accept US Citizens moving there, period or without all sorts of documentation and being sponsored. There are even fewer countries that will acknowlege dual-citizenship, with most requiring one to choose upon turning 18 if a US Citizen happened to be born abroad.

In my rampant way of immediately planning out a future, upon spending time with him I thought he’d be fabulous to move away with… to Pittsburgh, because there would be so many opportunities available to him as a graphic designer there for one thing, and, well… I don’t know, the whole idea is somewhat ludicrous, but when we were talking about moving lastnight, when I said ‘someone fabulous to live with’ he was the person foremost on my mind. I can totally relate to the idea of being unhappy, bored, and wanting to get away, of course I now know that moving away doesn’t really solve anything that might be wrong… it changes the situation for certain, but one needs to find their own happiness, moving doesn’t guarantee it by any means.

I suppose one could surmise that I am concerned for him, which could seem a bit out of place too, but every now and then I meet someone, though quite rarely, that just manages to wedge themselves into my thoughts and heart in such a way that I start to care rather immediately. Then, I am rather deliberate in the Thoreau sense about who I actually talk with or meet too, if I don’t see something very much worthwhile I don’t generally bother at all. There just seems, and I’ve felt this from moment one, that something isn’t quite right, there’s something going on under the surface, with some of the things he’s asked me bolstering that idea; just reinforces the fact that I feel we just need to treat people better.

Oh well, it looks like I’m going to be spending tonight here by myself, heh, not that it’s a catastrophy, but I was looking forward to seeing him and I guess his reasoning for being busy doesn’t exactly sit too well with me, it makes me antsy; I’d venture to say in rather a similar way as my mentioning moving back to Pittsburgh would prompt Patrick to be a bit antsy about it too.

Indi the Shopper.

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

After buying the fabulous lighter and remembering how awful it was to sweep snow & scrape ice off a car was, well, I needed to work on a bit more style again. I woke up with a mission: Leather gloves & a scarf, if nothing else. After primping I ventured off to Hagerstown to the Outlets, I figured out of all of those stores I should be able to find something worthwhile.

I stopped at Wilson’s, figuring since they’re a leather store I’d be able to find a decent pair of gloves… Ha! Everything they had was crap, total and utter crap. I stopped up at Banana Republic, a bit leary of Matthew being there, thankfully I didn’t see him, otherwise, well, there would have been a scene with much bitch slapping. I did find a decent scarf, pair of fabric gloves and a little hat. The scarf is actually very nice, but I still wanted leather gloves so I went just about everywhere. I really would have thought that Brook’s Brothers would have had good gloves, but they only had the same shit that Wilson’s had… only three times more expensive. Finally, after being quite near the point of giving up, I stopped at the London Fog store… with only a bit of hope left I found near perfect gloves. Finally leather that was stiched properly! They were lined with this sort of gray furry material, but I could live with that. So, yay, mission accomplished!

I also received in the mail, out of one of the magazines we get, a 20% off coupon for BB&B, so I decided I would just go ahead and get my Sango dinnerware I’d been wanting too. Now I have a fullset, plus the espresso cups and onion soup bowls, not much else needs to be purchased apart from other random completer pieces. I also picked up this Yankee Candle (boo-hiss) potpourri, it’s rather amazing; apparently Patrick’s company prints the labels, hehe.

Since no trip to that area of town would be complete without a stop at Pier1 I also bought a tin of Asian Spice incense, shrugging off the fact that it is the kind that Davey likes, a leaf shaped burning tray, and a candle snuffer.

Needless to say, I had a rather successful little trip of it. I’m totally styling now, haha.

Awakening.

Thursday, January 29th, 2004

Saturday after an absolutely ludicrous amount of ‘primping’ I ventured off to Patrick’s in Harrisburg using the Festiva. Uber Swank The goal was to ‘look sharp’ and of course I did my best, hah… I did realize somewhat too late that my pants were rather on the overly large side, apparently they were mislabeled or I had some sort of blow to the head while purchasing them, considering they were basically two sizes too large! I still love the pants though so I’m considering altering them so they actually fit properly, imagine that. We picked up his friend Angie on the way to the party, she’s quite amazing. Angie! The party ‘thing’ itself was interesting too, I kept thinking I was glad I knew about about printing, otherwise I’d probably have been rather lost in the conversation.

Patrick was dressed so swank, I felt rather underdressed compared to him and Angie, lol… This is him next to this amazing fireplace at the hotel, of course. Patrick Mr. Uber Swank Of course, as compared to some of the people there, well, I wasn’t so concerned about being underdressed, lol. :-)

There was this ‘straight bar’ in the hotel where the party was at to which we migrated to after the main festivities were concluded… it was so hilarious how this one guy was totally wasted, dancing around… sadly. At this point I’d only had one cosmo during the party, so I was quite the sober boy compared to most, heh, which made the drunken people all the more hilarious. Later on we headed to The Cobblestone where I proceeded to have two Long Islands to make up for my lack of drinking beforehand, heh… I still didn’t feel anything though, oh well. I have this general rule about not drinking when it could ‘make a scene’ anyway, lol… of course it takes A LOT of alcohol for me to appear intoxicated.

Due to lateness, and, well, mostly because I wanted to, I stayed up in Harrisburg Saturday night, which was nice as predicated. Sunday morning it was, err, well, Sunday afternoon we sort of doddled around a bit, went to Best Buy, Target, and BB&B (where I FINALLY found the warmer that’ll work with my tea & coffee presses!!!). When it came about time for me to leave the woman called and told me the snow was already laying on the roads and somewhat urged me to spend another night, which of course I didn’t mind at all, more Patrick! ;) I started into his music collection, which is vast and awesome, basically having an mp3 ripping extravaganza, whoo! We had a spectacular night, ahem. The next morning, err, afternoon of course, well, honestly I can’t really remember what we did, lol. The snow had not abated in the slightest, he called off work, and we just hung out, being trapped, the term being relative, in the apartment together. I spent a third night, which was again, spectacular. It’s truly amazing how the two of us, both Scorpios (which I didn’t realize until the weekend), both so easy to annoy to incredible levels, could find nothing about one another between Saturday and Tuesday morning bothering.

It was really nice to just be able to spend so much time together without much of any outside distraction, because we got to spend a great amount of time just getting to know each other. I did my work as usual, and, of course, as usual, Monday’s work load was ridiculous…. and I did have a phone call from Cole, which ended up with me getting quite… ehhh… agitated, so in a way Patrick got to see me being my special kind of articulate pissy. I really want to take a 2×4 to that kid’s head sometimes! I also exchanged a couple emails with Jon, which was just nice. At least he’s better at replying to emails than most people, heh.

The only bad thing about the weekend was that I had only the clothing that I was wearing… I *almost* packed a change of clothes, but figured since I’d at ‘most’ be spending a single night it wouldn’t be a big deal, hahaha… I’m glad I took my overnight ‘kit’ though, and, well, I had my iBook, thereafter five gigs heavier, and all my other technology.

I did take several amazing photos of Patrick Monday night, he’d wanted some ‘nice’ photos of his tattoos, and well, we worked from there. Mmm! Adorable! That one is definitely my favourite, the beginning of a smirk, the colour, lighting, and, well… everything, it’s just perfect.

I ‘finally’ …not that I was relieved to leave of course, left Tuesday afternoon. The trip home was still a bit terrifying, though not overly so. The over & underpasses were sheets of ice, ack! Since I knew I’d probably be stuck at home considering the state of the roadways, I decided to stop at the Pipe Shoppe, figured at least I could get a decent pack of cigs… Nat Sherman Mint, yum! I also picked up a Colibri Quantum Talon lighter, with an indigo blue butane chamber, it’s so awesome! Yay, I finally have a lighter worth using with my Colibri case and of course the occasionally pretensious Djarum Blacks I tend to often smoke.

It was decidedly odd to sleep alone… it’s always weird to go from sharing a bed with someone to not, and apparently this is a mutual weird feeling. The weekend felt like an awakening. I’ve been feeling thus far this month, this year, an awakeness I’d not felt in a very long time, at least all of last year, and it’s just nice, that’s really the only way I can describe it.

There’s a Time for us to Shine.

Monday, January 26th, 2004

Me and Patrick

Genuine Happiness?

Friday, January 23rd, 2004

I was thinking, on the way home yesterday, after Patrick had called, that for the first time that I can remember in a long time I feel actually happy; moreso I believe it to be genuine, versus being resultant of some grand delusion. I feel at ease, that I’ve found a balance, and it feels good, Patrick is a big part of that. Having a friend I can adventure off with on a random weekday is also contributing quite a bit too.

Jon and I decided Wednesday night to just go ahead and take the Festiva to IKEA on Thursday (yesterday), turned out his schedule conflict wasn’t happening and he did have plans for Friday, and given that we both had plans for the weekend, seemed like the best thing to do… I know I both really wanted to go to IKEA and also spend time with him; likewise.

Like a good boy, I went to bed when I should have and woke up at a quarter ’till ten, noticed that Jon had been up until approximately five in the morning (silly boy, I told him to go to bed, lol), got ready and started my journey. Driving the Festiva up, down, and over to where Jon lives wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be, so that reassured me for the rest of the day.

I’d told him that I would call as I was leaving, but I decided to give him more time to sleep, and turns out that was for the best, as he was, from what I gathered, still sleeping when I called being about a half hour away. He’s like me, it seems, once I start a project I just need to keep working on it until I can no longer stay awake, heh.

I received a text message from Patrick as I neared where Jon lives, so I responded to that (letting him know I was going to IKEA mostly) as Jon met me at the car. It was amusing to see that he had a burger with him, as that was pretty much the only thing I’d seen him ever eat, lol… a burger at Denny’s Monday night, and likewise when we went to Hardee’s the next day. He couldn’t finish so he offered it to me, heh… I was kinda ‘errmm… sure, why not?’ hehe.

Cole also phoned while leaving from York, asking me if I was on the way to Ohio and then giving me a twenty questions deal about who I was with, to which I didn’t quite answer, lol. I meant to call him back, but by the time I had the time free it was rather late.

I’d never gone to Philly from the York area, so it was a bit of, hmm, a challenge of sorts, and with the construction and ‘new traffic patterns’ (that incidently seem to have changed between Tuesdays and yesterday) I did screw up twice, heh. I accidently get off of I-83 onto ‘Business 83′ so we had to turn around. Also, somewhere on either 30 or 222 we missed the exit so we had to turn around again, heh, but thankfully from that point on we were fairly well set. Once I was on the turnpike I knew where I needed to go and it was a pretty uneventful trip.

IKEA was quite fun, we kept running back and forth between stuff trying to make decisions about exactly what we wanted to get or not get, trying to find things, etc. I finally bought a duvet cover, they didn’t have the gray ones that I wanted most, but I figured I could always get that one later so I bought this green/blue block pattern one. I also bought a set of three of the spherical paper lamp shades and the corresponding lamp parts, bulbs. Most everything else was more of the random and small nature. We did find, in the as-is, section, a black slipcover for the couch I want to get, which was probably the best thing I bought, because for $10, versus $50, that was a steal! Jon bought a set of these cool little football shaped lamps with the curly cords and a curtain, along with some other misc stuff like I did. Oh, I also bought a cd case, since I had a few loose cds, so he put the cds in there for me, yay!

Upon leaving from IKEA getting food was the top priority and I knew that there were a few places nearby, though as I was driving I realized that I really didn’t know how to get to them. I had Jon call my brother Matt, but he just got voicemail. I put the phone back in my pocket and a moment later it vibrated to indicate I had a voicemail message… it was Matt. Third try was the charm and I got a hold of him to find out how to get to where we wanted to go. We stopped at Ruby Tuesday, I tried his ‘boneless chicken wings’… which were supposed to be mild, ha! We both seemed a little frightened over what the ‘hot’ ones would be like!

Since we hadn’t been able to find the Keith Haring print at IKEA we were thinking about just making it, and trying to figure out when a good time to do that would be. We were thinking of just going back to my place, but given his tiredness and the time we’d get back we later decided we should probably just do that another time.

We’d also stopped at B & N, looked around for a while in the music/dvd section, and I actually for the first time in practically forever bought a cd! Apparently Toad the Wet Sprocket released a sort of ‘best of’ type of cd, with remixes and new versions, and, well, I just had to get it. We also spent a lot of time looking in the art sections… there were rather a few books that I think both of us would want, heh. There was also a two DVD set of 2001 & A Clockwork Orange, two Kubrick classics of course… he’d not seen 2001, and commented on how I liked 2001 and he liked A Clockwork Orange. It just struck me as the apotheosis of how we like different things, but those different things come together as one package.

We stopped at one of the turnpike plazas and had dessert, heh… tcby shivers, of course they were far too big and it was absolutely arctic outside too. I did get to enjoy a Caramel Macchiatto (or however the hell that is spelled).

The trip home was relatively uneventful, Jon was visibly exhausted and even though I suggested he recline the seat, to which he declined, and rest he ended up nodding off anyway. Once we got back there to his place we started to unload the car, but of course as luck would have it another car came in right behind us. We got back in, moved further up that street and parked by the garage, unloaded the car, said our goodbyes, and in theory were to be on our way.

Of course, seemed fate didn’t quite want us to leave that way. As I started to turn around I immediately knew something wasn’t quite right and as I applied the gas I didn’t move — stuck on ice. I tried in vain for a few minutes, but called him and asked him to come back outside to give me a hand. Now, he doesn’t drive, and given that getting a car unstuck from the ice isn’t exactly the safest thing to do, I decided without doubt that I’d be the one to push, because I absolutely knew whomever was pushing would fall. Since he’d ‘fallen like an old man’ the other day, cosmicly it was my turn anyway, lol. I gave him the quickest crash course on how to make the car move as possible, lol… I could tell he was rather nervous about it, but I knew he’d do fine, and that he did. Apart from stalling it once while I was showing him what to do, he did an excellent job, and I did, of course, fall flat on my face, so to speak, heh, which I think only managed to add to his terror. Once I got back up, walked over to the car, laughing, he told me that he was really scared, understandable. I gave him another hug, thanked him for the help, and managed to get out of that icey area without any more difficulty. Really, I was impressed with his handling of the situation, and made sure to tell him once I returned home.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable time and look forward to more adventures with him.