why so sullen, edward cullen?

words pt 4.

2009-05-22T05:26:23Z

this piece was another short story I wrote for my CRW3111 class. it was actually based on true events, I just added a few white lies here and there to make it into a fiction piece.

It’s not a matter of will-he or won’t-he. The boy practically glows. Or maybe that’s just her eyes playing tricks on her again. He’s a god in purple. She keeps her back against the rickety CD shelf and please, Lord, she doesn’t want him to notice her. Her name or what she’s wearing isn’t all that important except that she’s not looking too inconspicuous. For Christ’s sake, her shirt has his name on it. The sort of name that you don’t find on every page of the phonebook. The kind of name you don’t grow up hearing on every grade school attendance roll list. It’s not like he isn’t going to know. She did this for him, anyway, but now her hands won’t stop shaking and she’s all but diving under the nearest DVD display to keep out of his sight.
It’s five minutes after four and her pulse has been racing since two. They’re a little late showing up. Just waking up, stumbling down bus steps and into a mall that may as well have been in the middle of nowhere. This is not Buffalo, or Chicago. This is March and sunny weather-- take a guess where. This guy she’s got her blood pressure up over is twenty-one, five-foot-barely-anything and he could have combed his hair a little more. He’s got a tattoo on his left forearm-- a Japanese print under a set of broken piano keys inked into his thin wrist. She knows it’s there because she’s seen it before, hidden under hoodie sleeves, sliding out into view between embraces and quiet hellos. All of this is important because while she’s standing there running out of air in a room full of no one, this boy is ten feet away, sending her into cardiac arrest.
She first saw the sign for his arrival four days ago, complaining about cold toes under her blankets and breath stopping hard in her chest when her roommate turned the laptop screen in her direction. Time, date, place of where he would be and when. Time, date, place of her breakdown. She marked her calendar in six different colored pens and toyed with the keys on her cell phone until his face was erased from every photo on there. Every dark club, every touch of lips to jaw lines in an attempt hear each other over the music. For four days, she could feel the bass pounding in her memory. Sound check, front mic, center stage. His fingers calloused and pressed into guitar strings and her skin in the backs of buses. They were months of separation, weeks of too much of one another. He was never the popular one, but she knows now they’re all eating their words.
Right now, she’s a wreck. Overhead, the store’s got their goddamn CD playing like they’re some kind of spectacle, some kind of big deal. She knows differently. The whole six people that actually showed up are all watching them like they’re animals at the zoo. Cue the tour guide talking about natural habitats, and mating rituals. The tall, awkward one with the killer voice has four video games in his hand, like this is just a pit stop. Like this isn’t the most important moment of her life.
Like she isn’t about to self destruct.
Her palms sweat, and she’s wiping them on her jeans. Her friend, the one with the dark skin and the dark hair and the great legs, she’s making her feel inferior again. Like always. Like next to her, she’s just another face in the crowd of six. Her friend is so perfect, it’s disgusting. Even the way she laughs like she’s just swallowed a gallon of helium. Even the way her make up on her left eyelid is smeared just enough to be noticeable. Even the way she looks in the ridiculous shirt she made her wear so they would all go through this together. Our heroine, she’s watching her friend now like an enemy soldier, gun poised, ready to shoot.
This isn’t about her, anyway.
By the time he’s meandered up to the table, a handful of middle school girls have taken their place in line, twelve-year-old hands wringing out shirts with his band’s name on them, twelve-year-old hearts beating behind twelve-year-old training bras. She notices all of their flaws-- silver eyeliner, forgotten sections of hair falling out of their messy ponytails-- and she cringes at the way they’re looking at him.
He’s fucking oblivious, on the other hand. His mind is somewhere back on the bus with the bong they just passed around, wondering if maybe he left his phone somewhere shoved under a pile of clothes. He’s plucking lint off of his purple shirt and thinking maybe there’s a rock in his shoe, or maybe that’s a piece of popcorn from four a.m. last night. Either way, his mind is not on her. The brunette at the back of the line. His band’s CDs clutched to her chest, pressed against the shirt with his name on it. Like he won’t notice. Like he isn’t going to find out soon enough.
It’s her turn, and the tall awkward one is in full blown conversation with the store manager about his camera phone, musing about mega-pixels and memory chips, like this moment doesn’t matter at all. The middle school girls are lingering by the store window, like they’re magically going to turn eighteen and get invited onto the tour bus, have their first taste of liquor and lose their virginity. She doesn’t even notice them, anymore, though. Her Perfect Friend is standing on the sidelines, bottom lip between her teeth. She steps forward, heart in the middle of what feels like a full blown heart attack.
He notices her, now.
It takes a split second or two but in half that time she’s about six inches away from throwing up all over him. When he finally looks at her, she’s crying but it’s that kind of crying that doesn’t make any noise, just tears and a stuffed up nose and a throat too tight for her to speak through.
Three years pass through his memory and she’s handing him her CDs, teeth almost chattering with the effort it’s taking to keep her jaw shut and hold the sobs in.
She’s shaking. He’s staring. The middle school girls, they’re all watching like this is an episode of Laguna fucking Beach. Cue the upset soundtrack. Cue the tight camera angles, the dramatic lighting, the dialogue that’s so canon, it can’t not be scripted.
“I didn’t think you’d be here.” He spit out, voice unsteady, words coming out of left fucking field. Like they just ran into each other in goddamn Egypt. She shakes her head, and the middle school girls are so enraptured they’re all about to bust.
“I didn’t think you’d leave.” She answered through her teeth. The tall, awkward one is watching them now, losing interest in mega-pixels and memory cards. The whole place is silent. Her Perfect Friend is even just an extra in the Hollywood blockbuster unfolding in the middle of a mall in the middle of nowhere. His guitar solo is coming through the speakers in the store now and before she can lift her hands to either wipe her cheeks or cover her ears to block it out, he’s got his fingers between hers and he’s tugging her out of there.
This isn’t what she had been expecting, out of him. The god in purple has his arm around her waist, hoisting her through the bus door and up the steps before she even knows her feet have hit pavement in the parking lot. Her Perfect Friend is back inside, watching the middle school girls scatter for a better look, jealousy in their eyes.
His lips, they’re warm in a way she doesn’t remember them being. Spine even against the hard wall of bunks behind her, he’s steadying her with his hands on her hips and promising her with teeth and tongues that this isn’t over.
Three years pass through her veins. Indie labels and broken guitar strings, no cell phone service and the way he never stopped loving her. The ketchup packets he would steal from the restaurants they stopped in, like souvenirs, that first tour.
Backstage, pants down, mom-catching-you-with-porn sort of moments when the roadies would stumble into the back rooms and yell, “Five minutes, bro.”
When playing to a crowd of ten became playing to a crowd of two thousand. When MTV first aired their video and the Top 40 kids all looked puzzled, lost as to why they weren’t just listening to mainstream rap, one liners pumped out over catchy beats.
When he pressed his mouth against her throat and his palms into her hips and promised he loved her in the middle of Texas with their bare torsos pressed up against sheets that hadn’t been washed in weeks.
She’s his again before she knows it. Her god in purple with his rough hands and tattoos.

words pt 3.

2009-05-22T05:19:40Z

this piece was a short story I wrote for my creative writing 3111 class this past year at college titled "Injuries"

My brothers and I never really grew out of climbing trees. I was climbing trees until the day I left Topeka at 19. There was this one tree, though, right behind the old barn I nearly burned to the ground when I was sixteen and angry, that had the best branches for climbing, and it was wide and tall and sturdy. All three of us Cole boys could climb up into its limbs and disappear from the world without much effort at all. I had this particular branch that I liked to sit on, about a quarter of the way up, where I could rest my back against the trunk and peek through the leaves in the greenest part of summer and see the lake not too far out. The lake we used to throw each other in, where we used to sit and tell scary stories on its banks about the dead bodies that probably lurked beneath its surface (we were convinced that old Mr. Lyman was a cold blooded killer and stashed his victims in that lake). My older brother would always climb up the highest in that tree, and from his favorite limb up there he would yell down at me and my little brother, "We really oughtta build a tree fort up here."
It was the summer of 2001, and the Kansas heat was brutal and fierce. My older brother and I were the ones carrying the hammer and nails-- we didn't want Joe, twelve at the time, hammering his stubby little hands to the tree trunk by accident. Anything to avoid a whooping. So there we were, lugging boards and nails up into the limbs of our favorite tree, sweat dripping into our eyes despite the shade of the summer leaves. The air smelled like overgrown onion grass and barley, and we wasted away hours with that taste on our salty lips. We spent four days straight in that heat, bruising our fingers and straining our eyes in the sunlight. We had gone almost five days without any of us falling out of the tree or dropping shit on each other by accident. We were nearly injury free, which, even on five normal days, was a pretty big feat for us Cole boys. It had been mine and my older brother's intention to keep those nails and that hammer away from Joe, and thus far we thought we had accomplished that. We were working on the ladder when I realized that Joe had hammered a few nails through one of the skinnier branches just below my favorite one. I was going to sit there, needing a break from the heat and the sun. I reached up, ready to pull myself higher, and as I lowered my hand down onto that skinny branch, one of Dad's old rusted nails we had stolen from the stash in the garage went right through my palm and out the back of my hand.
It was mostly the blood that shocked little Joe. He was running around the thick base of our tree, screaming bloody murder like he'd just been stabbed in the neck, flailing his skinny arms around above his head. He screamed his high pitched scream until Jason got down there and shut him up. My older brother helped me down from the tree, as my hand shook in pain but no noise left my heat chapped lips. Jason set me down on my feet, but I wobbled, blood pouring down my palm and leaving red rivers down my wrist, dripping from my bent elbow. Jason ripped off the bottom hem of his shirt, wrapping it around my bloody hand before he scooped me up again. We were a good three mile walk from home, and our bikes were stashed a couple hundred feet away from our tree, in the shade of the old barn. I can still remember Joe crying as Jason carried me to our bikes, my skinny body slung over one of his strong shoulders. Joe was the only one with a basket on the front of his bike; he had a paper route that covered a few streets around our house. So, Jason dumped my ass into that basket and pedaled as hard as his legs would take him. I must have been knocked out a few blocks from home, because when I came to, our mama was hovering over my limp fourteen year old body on our kitchen floor, pressing a cold pack of peas to my forehead and screaming at Jason for being irresponsible.
Dr. Lewis stitched my hand, and stuck a tetanus shot in my ass and I healed pretty well. We never did tell mama about our tree fort, or that it was actually little Joe's fault that a nail went through my hand. We always figured what mama didn't know wouldn't hurt her. That's why I never told her what else happened in the summer of '01. My hand was still bandaged, sore as all get out, so I was sitting out on summer training for lacrosse and football until I got my stitches out. I was hard into sports back then, and all the way through high school. Lacrosse was my favorite though. I figured any sport where boys were given sticks and let loose on each other on a playing field was good by me. I couldn't close my hand properly around my stick with that hole through my palm, though, so I sat on the sidelines while my teammates ran suicides and watched them sweat their way through the end of a Kansas summer. I was pretty good buddies with most of the boys on that team, especially Kale and Peter Lewis, the doctor's kids. Our moms were both in the ladies' Prayer Group at church, so we had grown up spending afternoons writing bad words in chalk on the sidewalk out front and giggling as we washed them away with bottles of cream soda. Most of the other boys I was friends with were strong believers in Christ, like the good boys their mamas brought them up to be. But that suburban Topeka religion was a narrow minded one, and when the Nelson's son Gregory turned out to be gay, it was all those people could talk about. Pastor Dan even gave an entire Sunday sermon on the topic of Homosexuality in the eyes of Christ, and the ladies in Prayer Group were fanning themselves with their church programs and shifting around in their pews.
Kale and Peter Lewis were outraged. Gregory Nelson played midfield on our lacrosse team, first string, a position that both Kale and Peter had lost out on at try outs the previous spring. With rage and Christ balled up in their fists they asked Gregory to meet us out by the lake, for our usual Friday night after practice bonfire on the banks. And as I watched them throw Gregory to the ground, strip him of his clothes and beat him to blood, I stood still, and I listened to him cry. I didn't help him but I didn't help them either; but which was the lesser of the two evils? I had my first ever cell phone clasped against my palm, but I couldn't tear my eyes away long enough to dial any numbers. My bandaged hand throbbed. I watched Gregory scream and cry for help as they threw his bloody, bruised body into the shallow water on the edge of the banks. And as I stood there, while Kale and Peter high- fived each other with their knuckles beaten raw, I had to wonder if that was Christ's real intention. Of course now, that I'm grown, I know it wasn't.
That summer, when I took the bandages off my hand and got my stitches removed, the ladies in Prayer Group gasped and shook their heads because I had told them all it was stigmata.

words pt 2.

2009-05-22T05:15:59Z

the premise of this piece was to take characters from the book "a home at the end of the world" and put them ten years into their futures, after only reading the first chapter of the book. this is my interpretation of that assignment.

In the summers, I have time to visit Mother out in Tucson. I hate Arizona in the summer, though; the sun is harsh and I miss the shade of the trees we left behind nine years ago. I can almost mark her breakdowns from the day our father brought home that God forsaken car; her hands haven’t stopped shaking since then. I had to play Father to Bobby after Dad lost it. Without Mother around anymore, he lost everything it seemed. His job, his mind, his car keys. The doctors always tell us she might come back to us one day, that she’s just hiding somewhere in her mind, but we know better. She’s not hiding. The warm, perfect woman that used to slide pancakes onto our plates in the mornings now sits cold and thoughtless, her body now a mere empty vessel to the happy person it once carried. She is not Mother anymore. She is the woman we visit in Tucson in the summers.
Bobby won’t talk much anymore. Not since Mother left us. He keeps to himself and his studies, despite the girls that call the house every night looking for him. His hair got longer, it falls into his eyes now and when he flips it back with that gentle ease that only my brother could possess, they all swoon and melt into puddles of romantic nonsense on the floor at his feet. He brushes me off when the phone rings, mouthing “I’m not here.” at me every time. It’s a hobby of mine now, thinking of wild excuses to give the broken hearted girls on the other end of the phone.
Today, Bobby has his head back against the front seat of the convertible, and he’s telling me his sunglasses are too big for his face. The drive takes a few days, but with the top down, and the sun out, it won’t feel so long. With his sixteenth birthday just a few days away, he doesn’t smile about spending it in Tucson with Her. He presses his lips together, rolling them over one another before he says, “I just hate how hot it is, that’s all.”
Bobby unbuckles and re-buckles his seatbelt a few times, and for a while, the only thing we hear is the late June breeze. With Tucson getting closer every exit we pass, Bobby still won’t smile. We don’t say much on these trips. We don’t say much about Her, even when she’s all we’re thinking about. We know that when we get there, she’ll look out the window of her bedroom, see that car and say, “Another year gone, and you still have it?”
She won’t speak to us again before we leave.
Tucson isn’t all that far away, really.

dear friend

2008-07-24T16:57:40Z

i wish you could realize how beautiful and perfect you are. you had nothing to prove to them. you are a princess and you are a goddess and you are the best friend i've had in a while. why did you do this to yourself?

i still love you, though. every time you fight, the scars are gonna heal, but they're never gonna go away.

snippets.

2008-05-18T04:16:47Z

oh and by the way.

tonight, at the gas station, the boy in front of us in line was buying one of the new size red bulls.

i told him, "it's about time they put out a bigger size. those little ones just weren't cutting it anymore."

he said, "i know, this is like, my third one of these today. soon enough i'm going to have to start doing like, crystal meth just to stay awake." and laughed.

sometimes i really love these tiny conversations.

sometimes life is like a movie.

2008-05-18T03:16:10Z

"This is therapy."

His feet were hitting the pavement, steps faster than mine, strides longer than mine, so I was practically jogging to keep up. Flip-flops, an old Ryan Cabrera t-shirt, some tiny shorts and an over sized hoodie with my fingers shoved inside the pockets. In Maryland, it was somewhere in the seventies outside, but still I was already shivering. Back home, it was already muggy and summer was weaving its way into the mornings, leaving the windows of my car steamed and foggy before school. Home. Was it really, though? Or was home this place, the place I left? Who knew. I was lost, sort of torn between them both. And even there with him, I had to wonder.

When my fingers pulled the door handle open I knew I should stop, there on the curb beside his car, and change my mind. Not get in that passenger seat. I knew I was making a mistake. This entire night was a mistake. I could see the future, and in that future, I was crying. Over him. I knew this would only make it harder to leave. To go back home. Or, to the place I lived.

But still, I slid into the seat and shut the door. The interior smelled like any old car from a used car lot would smell, but his scent was laced with it. Cigarette smoke and cologne. The fabric softener from his clothes.

"Seatbelt."

I clicked it into place as he spoke the word, my muscles shaking. Shaking so hard, I had to press my hands against my knees to keep them from knocking together. I felt like I was eleven again, being strapped into my first rollercoaster ride. I remember even my insides were shaking. That was happening again now.

"Where are we going?"

"For a drive."

I was terrified of the unknown. Especially with him.

"We can't be too long, Shannon will worry."

I knew my best friend was in the basement of her house, wringing her hands already. I knew she was wondering if I was going to come back alive. I knew, because I was wondering the same thing. He started th engine and the radio came to life, blasting terrible techno beats through the speakers. I lifted my hands to cover my ears. He smiled over at me, and threw it into drive.

In the basement, against his chest, he had slid out from under me and sat up.

"Let's go for a drive," he'd suggested, or, demanded, getting up off the bed and holding out his hand to me. I looked at his palm, then at his face.

"No, I don't want to leave, it's 3 o'clock in the morning."

"Come on, we're going."

"No, seriously, it's stupid."

He was a trouble magnet. Police could sense him from miles away. That was just what I needed, for him to get pulled over at 3 o'clock in the morning, a week after being arrested. The perfect end to my night: a stint in the Anne Arundle County Police Department with my Two-Day-Boyfriend.

Three years away from him had made all the difference. Last time I'd seen his eyes that close to mine, it was out front of my old high school, freshman year.

"I just... think we should... go out with other people."

Last time I'd seen his eyes that close to mine, he was telling me it was over.

His voice was all I'd had for the three years after that. Eight hundred miles separated us after the move and his phone calls kept me alive. I listened to him change. Three years into it all, I was back beside him again, the tension of those years and those miles now lingering between us as he sped out of Shannon's neighborhood.

I wasn't fourteen anymore, and niether was he. We were nearly adults; him a week from eighteen and me halfway into my seventeenth year and completely aware of his power over me. Three years was a lot for us. And it all came down to this.

"Listen, I love you, but if we get pulled over, I'm gonna straight up kill you."

He laughed but I barely heard it over the noise. I kept my palms against my ears. He reached over and grabbed one of my hands, lacing his fingers with mine.

Cut to us, three years before, in the hallway of our high school. I brushed my fingers against his, hesitant but craving the contact. He pulled away.

"I don't do that." He'd told me.

Fast forward three years to now, in his car, and he's grasping my hand in his, the spedometer inching up towards fifty. My heart was beginning to rattle inside my ribcage. With fear. With overwhelming insecurity that was building up more and more with each passing second.

"Please just take me back." I yelled at him over the music, my voice strained, tears welling up. Angry ones. Not like the ones I'd cried for him before. "Take me back to Shannon's and leave me alone."

I was yelling so loud that the music seemed like a whisper. I tried to pull my hand away, but he held on tighter. A tear escaped, and my throat was burning.

"Liam! Take me back! This is ridiculous! What the fuck is your problem?"

He hung a left, nearly fishtailing the back end of the car with the sharpness of the turn. I went rigid in my seat. I shook, harder, more violently. My jaw was chattering.

"What's wrong?" He was screaming right back at me, and finally freed my hand. "Why are you always like this?"

"I just don't want to get killed!"

And somehow, it was a screaming match, and his eyes were barely on the road, and my heart was barely staying inside my chest.

"I fucking hate you sometimes! I never wanna see you again!"

"No, no, fuck you, you don't know what you're talking about."

"Are you yelling at me?!"

"Yes I'm fucking yelling at--" His hands returned to the steering wheel, and he shut his lips, hard. I was breathless. My blood was pulsing in my ears. The music stung my senses. "No, I'm not." His voice was soft again.

"Take me back, now."

He touched his foot to the brake and pulled off the main road. The road we were on was dark, unlit. The clock in the dash read 3:22. I swallowed.

"Just one second."

His foot was hard on the gas again before I even had time to breathe in. I saw everything I'd built for myself, every second of it, start to fall as he wove through the dark street, the threat of an oncoming car beginning to make my heart speed up again. I shook. And shook. I grabbed his arm, nails digging into his skin from fear.

"Stop the car!"

"Why can't you just live?"

"STOP THE CAR."

I thought I might have been drawing blood by the time he turned around in a driveway and eased back onto the main road. I tried not to watch the spedometer. I stared quietly out the window.

"This is therapy," he had said as we'd walked out to his car. "You need this."

Our old middle school passed by. I breathed. I could feel him fuming. His knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel.

"I love you," I heard my voice come from my mouth, and I wanted to press my lips together and shut it up. "I really do, I really love you so much it's digusting. Even now, I love you. Even when I hate you, I love you."

His grip loosened. He stopped at a red light.

"I know."

"I just don't know how I'm going to deal with this, come Sunday and everything goes back to how it's been for the last three years."

He took my hand, our fingers brushing the gear shift between us.

"I'm sorry."

He killed the engine in front of Shannon's house, and my heart had slowed, finally. We sat in silence, seatbelts buckled, listening to our own breathing.

"Sometimes I wish I would just die in a tragic accident, so I won't have to kill myself." His voice moved smoothly through the quiet of the car, engine ticking quietly as it cooled down. My insides dropped to my flip-flops.

"Why would you say something like that?" I didn't mean for my voice to sound so unsteady.

A breath of a laugh escaped his lips. The air in the car seemed to go a little stale. Before he could answer me, his phone was vibrating in his pocket, and he sighed, fishing it out. The number on the screen sent a look of frustration over his face. Angry, even. He flipped it open.

"What the hell do you want, you've got ten seconds," he snapped into the phone, and I could hear the girl's drunken laughter from the other end of the line.

"Liam, mmm, Liam, we just wanted to say we loved you," she was slurring, loudly enough for me to hear. His lips were pressed into a hard frown. He snapped the phone closed. The car was quiet again.

"Let's go inside."

The future I saw began to unfold itself by the time he was laying beside me again, in Shannon's basement. I was crying, hot tears falling down my cheeks and dripping off my chin and onto his shirt. He watched me, listening, breathing.

"I'm always waiting for something to go wrong. When everything is right, something always goes wrong."

"You can't think that way."

"How can I not? You just told me you felt like you didn't even know me. What do you call the last three years? Was that nothing?"

"I don't know."

"Please know."

"Sara, come here."

And I was against his chest, crying, wondering how three years of praying for this very moment could somehow become such a mess.

On the plane ride home, I touched my lips and wished for one more kiss that I would never have.

memoirs.

2008-04-11T02:40:06Z

FOREWARD.

I always swore I would never write about my life. I refused to be another autobiography tucked on a back shelf in a corner bookstore on Nothing Street in Nowhereville. I always assumed that my life was never as interesting as the ones of the people who wrote autobiographies (save for a few people I was forced to read about in high school, whose lives were more dull than watching someone brush their teeth, for three hours). But here it is, my life, slapped onto a few blank pages, falling out of my mind from the backseat of the terrible toaster-shaped car I deemed the Embarrassment Wagon from day one. When I really got down to it, I decided that I didn't have to write about all the bad times and all the drama that made up my life in order to make it sound interesting. Instead, I decided to write about the seemingly average moments that pieced together the core of my existence; the little pieces of laughter, and the broken bits of late nights out that sort of comprised the elements of, well, me. And as I wrote them all out-- the music, the laughter, the screaming, the long drives, the cups of coffee, the stupid high school jobs, the countless shows, the new shoes-- I realized: nothing about these average, ordinary moments was average or ordinary in any way, shape, or form.

For seventeen years, I have believed that I am a little fish in a big sea, and up until now, I let it belittle me and discourage me into thinking that I had nothing to share with the world. But now, I realize that being a little fish in a big sea just means that I have that much more to explore; that much more to learn, and that much more room to grow into the person I will eventually become. I figured that the end of my senior year in high school was a good time to begin this epic tale of nothingness, seeing as how this point in my life is definitely a milestone, and ultimately a good place to start looking back on how far I have come. In retrospect, there were, of course, a lot of things I wish I had chosen to do differently. But for the most part, I am thankful for every step I have ever taken in all the directions I have ever taken them in, because all the twisted, messed up paths have all eventually led to me being who and where I am today: strong, and where I belong.

About a month ago, I came across a book in my friend's closet while I was helping her clean her room. The cover was your overly typical black and white photo of a boy on some stairs, looking sullen and serious, but it was the bright yellow type across that photo that caught my eye. "A Life Deliberate, Memoirs of an Unbreakable Boy," it said. "By Christopher Gutierrez." His name struck me as familiar, and the book suddenly took on a new weight in my hands.

"Christopher Gutierrez?" I asked outloud, interrupting my friend, Lauren, as she shuffled through some loose papers. "Where do I know that name from?"

"It's HeyChris." She clarified, shrugging. I looked at her.

"HeyChris, as in, Fall Out Boy's HeyChris?" I had to laugh a little bit. Up until that very moment, I had assumed the boy who wrote the book I was holding was an internet famous, good for nothing, fame-sucking leech who hung on bassist Pete Wentz' every word. I assumed, from what little I knew of him, that he had written the book just to brag about his awesome times touring with the band and being their go-to guy, and over using quotes from their song dedicated to him. The lyrics were already playing in my head-- "Hey, Chris, you were our only friend, and I know this is belated, but we love you back." From that song on, Chris Gutierrez became HeyChris, and to most cynics like myself, lost any future credit he might have ever had.

Lauren nodded. I was hesitant to put the book down, though. Something about the title made me think twice. "Memoirs of an Unbreakable Boy." I ran my thumb over the pages, pressing the spine of the paperback into my palm, and asked Lauren, "Can I borrow this?"

That night, I indulged in the words on the pages of that book. I fell into stories of seventh grade embarrassment, fourth grade war games, and ridiculous past fashion trends. I read aloud his tale of an impromptu trip to Barcelona, just to run with the bulls and nearly losing his life in the pursuit of living it to the fullest. HeyChris was suddenly Christopher Gutierrez again, and I was suddenly not a cynic anymore.

I fell in literary love with the boy who wrote those words, and I deemed the book my holy bible of sorts. I carried it around for weeks, refusing to give it back to Lauren, adopting the paperback as my own. I copied lines from it onto sheets of paper in drawing class, adorning the blank sheets of white printing paper with colorful interpretations of the words -- his words -- the ones I had come to live by. I scribbled 'LIVE DELIBERATE' on every blank surface I happened to come by, and spread the gospel of my little holy bible to every ear that would listen. I kept the book safe in my Anberlin tote, pulling it out in every class to re-read bits and pieces of the life I suddenly wished to know more and more about. Every time I opened the cover, I was truly hoping that somehow, if by magic, more pages would have been added to the end, letting me read on into the epic story that was this Christopher Gutierrez. To some, an average sort of boy with too many tattoos and a foul mouth, but to me, and everyone else the book may have touched, a special person who had truly defined the meaning of living.

Thus, I was finally inspired to let go of my hatred for writing about myself. The book led me to realize that, to myself, my life may be mediocre and average, but to someone else, it could be magic. And so, I felt it only right to document the things I have experienced, so that other people might read my words and come to the realization that they, too, are special and extraordinary. Every walk down the street, every silly dream, every afternoon out with a best friend, every drive to the mall, every night at every show-- everything we ever do is worth remembering. So here are my memories.

--

Half the time, Lauren could barely lean out the window far enough for the person on the other end of the speaker to hear her yelling out our orders. Maybe it was that she was too short, or maybe it was because of the obnoxious and unnecessary screamo music we always had playing in the car, but either way, she was always yelling. And Kayra would be in the backseat, talking over me, demanding another strawberry milkshake and trying to reach over my shoulder to grab Lauren's iPod and change the terrible music to something inevitably indie. The three of us, we were from three different universes, but we were three verses of some awful song that only sounded good when sang together. We had all sort of stumbled upon each other, brought together by fate and music, ending up crammed into Lauren's mom's Solara at a Burger King drive-thru window.

"We don't even have any onions," the crackling voice from the speaker was barking back at Lauren's demand of "no fucking onions on one of those double cheeseburgers." Lauren sat back in the driver's seat and I was still trying to keep Kayra in the back and away from the iPod.

"Strawberry milkshake!" Kayra's shouts were sort of falling off into these giggles and insults at me and the music that was playing.

"Oh and a strawberry milkshake," Lauren added, yelling out the window, and I was thankful that no cars were behind us. We had been sitting there a good eight or so minutes. Yelling, debating, talking over each other. Just another night out. "Why do you need a milkshake? You're already getting a sweet tea."

"I just want both!"

And then Lauren was pulling around to the next window, and the tire was bumping up over the curb, and the side mirror almost got ripped off by a near-collision with an oncoming wall, but we were all too busy laughing at the terrible Arma Angelus song that was blasting through the one not-blown-out speaker in the Solara to really notice.

my true story, if you really want to know.

2008-03-18T02:28:43Z

I try to remember how I used to step outside myself when I was thirteen, and lay on the floor, and watch my wrists bleed and mix with the salt from my tears. I try to remember how I used to take a step back, and watch it all happen, hear the music playing but not really comprehend the lyrics or which part was the guitar and which part was the drums. I try to remember what it felt like to watch myself crumble. To be wise beyond my years and still fall to pieces like every other little girl I ever knew back then. I have tried for ages to figure out how she held herself together like she did. How she was able to stay beautiful and get more beautiful as the years went by us. I grew into my hips and my nose in an ordinary sort of way but she grew into a Venus and I sat back and watched her be better than me with a smile rather than jealousy.

I try to remember unscrewing the little blade from a brand new eyeliner sharpener, fresh out of the package. I remember stealing it from my mom's make up drawer, and for some reason, she never noticed it was gone. I used my thumbnail to unscrew the tiny little screw that held it onto the plastic, and I dumped the glinting metal into my palm, sharp and new, and tossed the plastic casing aside. I can't remember what music I had on, but I know that whatever it was, it was slow and loud and heartbreaking and I was crying over that music before I was crying over myself. I turned my wrist over, stared at the pale patch of skin and the road map of green veins exposed just under it, and I thought about where it would hurt the worst to cut. I pressed the sharp side of the little razor against my wrist, felt it sink in, that little shock of pain against my nerve endings, until I gasped and it was gone, and I sank into relief. I dragged the metal lightly, my tears drying on my cheeks as I watched the blood bloom up behind the razor, and drip quietly down the side of my wrist. I remember thinking that for a simple eye pencil sharpener, it was pretty dangerous. Pretty sharp and pretty destructive. The red was light and it fell in a tiny drop onto my crossed legs, and I felt free. I drifted somewhere above myself, moved out the window, into the cool air of early spring in Maryland. I sat on a tree branch and stared into my bedroom from outside, and breathed in fresh air.

I must have laid there for a good few hours, and that CD was on repeat, and I was soaking the music up into my skin and bleeding it back out through the hole I had cut in myself. Not enough to die, just enough to feel weightless. That first time, I slipped, I caved, I fell into something worse than an addiction. I feel into desperation. I had been standing on the edge of growing up and staying young and I threw myself off into the oblivion of an adulthood that I wasn't really prepared for. I told myself, the past four years, that everyone has this same story, locked up in their brains to look back on when it rains, or when the sun goes down on a particularly unpleasant day. I told myself that I was one of millions. I was a face in a crowd of lonely people, all crying and screaming for attention and for a savior.

But I was the silent one. The one who had no desire to be rescued. I was content in my misfortune, in my ruined skin, in my bloodied wrists. I was content in my self-destruction. Best friends would come to school and slide off wrist bands and boast their tiny marks with faux frowns and crocodile tears, and I would console them while I kept my deep scars hidden under long sleeves and laughter.

I don't need to listen to sad songs while I write this. I don't need to reminisce about terrible times by putting myself back into them. I am free of what I once was. I am standing on the edge of an oblivion that I am finally ready for. I am toeing the line between the here and the there, and I am one step away from someone new.

I remember my back against a mattress that wasn't mine. I remember his hands and the way that he tasted-- like cigarettes, and it stuck to my mouth. I remember clothes on the floor and leaving inhibitions somewhere down the street with my bag of clothes I had packed for that particular sleepover. I remember exchanging phones five days before and laughing as we programmed our numbers and blushing when he winked at me and blushing when he actually ended up calling a few hours later. I remember throwing myself into a love that I only wanted because I craved the experience. I know what I gave him. I knew what I was giving him. I let him take it like it was a plague that was making me sick, but after it was taken from me, I was still doubled over in sickness.

But now, with his name out of my phone and out of my mind and out of my thoughts, I am free of what I once was.

I am seventeen. I am in a place I barely know and was hesitant to accept, but now I've got one of the best friends I could ever ask for, and somehow, things here just seem right. On May 27, I will walk across a stage, shake my principle's hand, and step back down a new person. I will spend my summer with my foot to a gas pedal, exploring the world around me as much as I possibly can over a short three month span. I will spend my summer with my hands in the air, singing along with bands in the summer heat, laughing and going deaf for hours after, practically yelling at my friends at McDonald's at three in the morning afterwards. I will spend my summer writing and drawing and painting and swimming and dancing and singing and living and exploring and growing. I will pack my things, I will take all my posters down from my walls, I will paint over the words I so carefully chose to paint on them. I will move into a new house and before I can unpack there, I will move into a dorm room at the University of South Florida. I will embrace my life. I will breathe in new air.

After all, today is a new day. I try to remember when I last felt this brand new.

letters.

2008-01-14T02:11:10Z

letters to a congressman
letters to a dead sister
letters to self
letters to holden caulfield
letters to an absent father
letters to a misshape

You sat there on that old couch with a sweating plastic cup in your hand half filled with liquor and you asked me, what sort of person would hate their own son? I shook my head and you shook yours and we would laugh about the whole thing later, but right then, it still hurt too much. You downed the rest of that drink and then three more before I saw you smile that night, and even so, I knew it was foreign to your heavy lips after everything that happened. Your father would eat his words one day, you kept telling me. Your mother would love something more than her Bentley one day. One day, things would be right and they would realize they were wrong about her. The girl you told them you loved. You know, the one in the red skirt with red painted lips and black hair that was always just right. She was a train wreck, they warned you. You marry her, and they would never allow you back in their home. Four drinks and you were holding a ring in your palm, telling me how you told them to go fuck themselves and then went to find her apartment empty. Cleaned out. How could the universe be so cruel to you, you wondered, in my lap, crushed plastic cups littering the floor and the music shaking your insides. I asked you if she left a note and you shook your blonde head, but no dismay was clear on your tired face. Karah was music. She was what you listened to in your headphones up in the DJ booth, as you slid another CD into the stereo to play for the bodies moving down in the crowd. You never heard music, you told me, just her speaking to you in it. She was from Washington, and her skin was porcelain and breakable. She bent like putty in your hands when you held her and it terrified you, you told me. I never understood why you liked her so much. She was just a girl. Just a girl with no real attractive qualities other than that face of hers. How her hair fell over one eye. How her legs looked coming out of that tiny red skirt. She was barely shorter than you, and she would braid your long mess of blonde hair into french braids and kiss your nose and tell you that you looked like a little girl that used to live down the street from her when she lived in Washington. You always hated when she told you that you looked like a girl. I would always remind you of those androgynous features and that smooth nose, and those ice blue eyes that she barely ever spent any time staring into because eye contact make her squeamish. I never understood that. Or her. Or you. I still don't. Right now, you're back on that couch. Maybe experimenting with boys now that she's gone. Now that she's not here to keep your fragile attention. You're back on that couch and I'm listening to the music you picked-- the music that isn't her anymore. I wear flats around you, so that when we look at each other, it's eye to eye. I never wore heels like her. She wore heels and your foreheads would brush when you kissed. She was always one for dressing up, even in this stupid place that no one else dresses up for. Karah, she would kiss you and kiss the bottoms of bottles of cheap wine that sent her spiraling onto your apartment floor at dawn. You used to sleep in my bathtub and sing to me when the sun came up but then Karah was born. Born into your life, anyway. Born into an existence I recognized. Before she met your eyes, she was nothing. She was vapor. I didn't care that she was across the country breathing in our precious oxygen and wasting a good thing. But now I care. I care that she's somewhere else and not here, tonight, watching you drink yourself away from her pitiful memory. You bled onto her bare apartment floor the night you defied your own family for her love. You took out that old pocket knife and dug it into your forearm and carved her name into your skin until red drip-dropped onto the dirty floor. Until your tears were just dried up salt water on your cheeks. That night, I cleaned up your arm in the club bathroom before anyone else could see it. I put a band aid over her name and pulled a hoodie over your skinny arms so you could hide from everyone. You learned so quickly. You learned from me how to smile and make people believe it. I loved you for it. I loved how well you faked it. When you came home with me that night, I knew your circumstance. I knew the liquor on your breath-- I poured a few of those drinks myself for you. I knew the band aid on your arm, I put it there myself. I knew that bruise on your inner thigh; you told me how she'd left it there. I knew those hands on my body. I knew you. And once she was gone, you knew me, too. That night you slept in my bed and not my bathtub. You slept with tears on your cheeks and her name on your lips just after they had kissed my own. Karah could be in India selling her body to dirty old men right now but it wouldn't change the fact that you're drunk on her memory again.

you breathe my air, here.

come and take a walk with me.

2007-12-31T04:04:22Z

dear mr. president,

what kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away?
and what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay?

head underwater, and you tell me to breathe easy for a while

2007-12-29T04:51:22Z

i think time has begun to spiral into a form of counting that i can't follow. six days away from routine and my head won't stop spinning with HOW MUCH TIME IS LEFT????? cause it's all i can seem to focus on. how much IS left, anyway? it's been six days of laughing and crying and congratulating my brother on finally getting the guts to get down on one knee in front of that girl. everyone's talking into one ear and i'm waiting to hear some other voice in the other one. some voice that sounds like this boy, who i know, who wears a lot of black but not in a sad sort of way. this boy that yanks our desks closer and doesn't really notice how i laugh over it. or does he? who knows, i mean, i probably couldn't even tell you my foot from my elbow from my heart that's been sitting in the bottom of my ribcage and wishing to be swallowed up by my stupid stomach so that it won't feel so lonely anymore. maybe that's why i keep on counting. because it's this TIME that's keeping me from what i wanna feel the most. his backpack falling over onto mine. his jacket thrown against it, brushing my foot. HIS desk pushed back against mine. HIS freckles on the back of his neck that i connect into perfect freckle constellations. HIS STUPID FACE IN MY HEAD. time is uncountable! unmeasurable! and this entire thing is so breakable! tangible! un-do-able! it's imperfect and wrong and i bet his girlfriend feels the same about him as i do, but at the same time, i have to wonder if her feelings do every inch of him justice, like mine do. for instance, my feelings go right down to his shoelaces-- now what does she have to say to that? i bet hers go down to his tshirt, and not even the tshirt that he wears the most, the one i recognize the smell of. my feelings go down to his backpack and forgetting his cell phone in his seat in class and i laugh at how worn out it is before i return it to him. my feelings go down to stupid love songs on my itunes playlist because they all REMIND ME OF HIM AND HIS STUPID SHOELACE LOVE HE'S GOT ME IN. it's not even logical, or reasonable, but it's real and even if he doesn't know it exists, i have to wonder if he does, because of the way that he'll smile at me when he turns around to make some smart ass comment about what the douchebag teacher just said. how he's so excited to tell me about his weekend every monday morning and doesn't even realize that as he's telling me, i'm filling in the holes of his story with little moments of us us us that won't exist didn't exist haven't existed? i dunno. words come easy when you're not thinking, and when i look at him i'm all tangled up in thoughts so the words get stuck in my mouth like peanut butter. and i used to be able to eat that stuff with a spoon when i was a kid, but then i grew up and found boys and peanut butter lost its innocence to silly metaphors relating it to my words when i'm tongue tied around some completely oblivious boy. i spend two hours with him every other day, and somehow, i have enough of all this bottled up to be able to spill it all out right now. and to who? maybe people i don't know, who find my writing to be easy! fun! carefree! or maybe his girlfriend, who might come to tears when she realizes that some other girl is so perfect for her perfect boy and she can't even measure up, even with a smaller waistline, and bigger bra size, she just can't measure up! or maybe she won't even realize i'm talking about HER perfect boy because she doesn't love him down as far as i do, to his shoelaces and backpack and freckles, so she wouldn't even be able to realize this was describing him, and therefore only go to prove her unworthiness to have him like she does! oh god. sometimes i ramble. and sometimes? it makes sense. to me. and to him, i bet. if he ever saw this one.

nothing.

2007-12-24T03:07:57Z

CHARACTERS:
Joey
Hayley

SETTING:
Outside, in late evening. Cold weather. The two of them alone.

JOEY
You're gonna make me catch like, mono or something.

HAYLEY
Whatever.
Pause
You know..

JOEY
Hm?

HAYLEY
You’re my best friend and I love you.

JOEY rolls his eyes at HAYLEY’s playful attempt at trying to make him smile. The two walk on in silence when their laughter fades.

JOEY
How do you do it?

HAYLEY
How do I do what?

JOEY
Make all these people just... fall in love with you.

HAYLEY looks at him skeptically.

HAYLEY
No one’s in love with me.

JOEY
Yes they are.

HAYLEY
Like who?

JOEY
Uh, like Noah, and Jon, and whoever else has been obsessed with you since we left LV?

HAYLEY
That’s all.

JOEY
Well, whatever. Every time I like someone, they shut me down.

HAYLEY
It happens.

JOEY
All the time, every time.

HAYLEY
I’ll find you someone.

JOEY
I don't want... blind dates or introductions through friends. I want.. running into someone on the street. Ordering the same thing at Starbucks. Tripping over myself in front of them.

HAYLEY
You’ll find it.

JOEY
Nah, I think I’ve just accepted the fact that I’ll always be everyone’s friend.

HAYLEY
That’s not true.

JOEY
Yeah it is, but it’s okay.

HAYLEY
You can live with me forever?

JOEY
No thanks. (playfully) I'll live alone in that smelly apartment that everyone left me in, til I'm 40, and when I'm 40, I'll move into an old folks home.

HAYLEY
You can't move into an old folks home at 40.

JOEY
40 is old.

HAYLEY
No, it isn’t

JOEY
Do you know how ugly I’ll be when I’m 40?

HAYLEY
Not ugly.

JOEY
Very ugly. And hairy.

HAYLEY
I’ll wax your back for you.

JOEY
No, you'll be too busy with... whoever you'll be with at that point.

HAYLEY
No, I’ll make time.

JOEY
I don’t think I ever wanna get married.

HAYLEY
You will.

JOEY
Who will ever want to marry me? Bigfoot?

HAYLEY
It’ll be a classy wedding.

JOEY rolls his eyes and sits down on the ground, thinking for a moment as HAYLEY joins him.

HAYLEY
Can we become vampires, maybe? Like Edward Cullen in Twilight? He stayed hot and young forever.

JOEY
But dead.

HAYLEY
He wasn't dead. He was.. a vampire.

JOEY
Dead.

HAYLEY
Shut up. Would you still love me if I was a vampire?

JOEY
Yes.

HAYLEY
I swear I wouldn’t suck your blood.

JOEY
Yes, you would.

HAYLEY
Nu-uh. Edward didn’t suck Bella’s blood. Even though she smelled so tasty.

JOEY
That’s just creepy.

HAYLEY
Haven’t you ever read that book?

JOEY
No.

HAYLEY
Read it.

JOEY
No thanks.

HAYLEY
Please? I’ll read it to you.

JOEY
Maybe.

Their conversation calms into silence. They sit together, staring around them.

HAYLEY
Tell me a story.

JOEY
About what?

HAYLEY
Anything.

JOEY
Okay, lemme think. (pause) Once upon a time, there was a boy, and he had a best friend who lived down the street. And they were like, so tight, and did everything together, right down to like, tying their shoes and stuff. They grew up together and when times got rough at home, they could escape with each other in the field behind their neighborhood and wish that things would get better for the both of them. Until finally they both got out, and ran away, and left that shithole, and went away to someplace sunny...
He waits, glancing at his friend.
But even there, things just got harder, because they were growing up too fast and soon enough, that little boy was all alone in an empty apartment wondering what happened to playing cowboys and indians in his backyard.

HAYLEY
Can we play cowboys and indians still?

JOEY
(sadly shaking his head)
... And one day the boy woke up, in that apartment, and decided he wanted to go home.

HAYLEY
Will you take me with you?

JOEY
No.

HAYLEY
Do you not love me anymore?

JOEY
I do. That’s why I want you to stay.

HAYLEY
I don’t want to.

JOEY
You have to.

HAYLEY
I don’t have to do anything.

JOEY
Yes you do, Hayls. Be a grown up. You have a responsibility to Noah.

HAYLEY
But.

JOEY
Could you honestly go up to him and tell him you're leaving?

HAYLEY gets quiet. JOEY waits.

HAYLEY
Do you think I really love him?

JOEY
I think you love the security that he provides.

HAYLEY
Is that reason to stay with him? Would I die for him? Would I die for anyone but my self? And, you. I mean, is there someone ... who could be my boyfriend that I'd love more than myself? No, probably not.

JOEY
I don't think you would die for me. But, it's not like I ever expect you to. Everyone is selfish in their own ways. Sometimes it's okay to be. Sometimes I think that people would rather watch the one they love die than die with them, just so they can linger behind and have reason for people to feel sorry for them.

HAYLEY
Jo, I am a selfish jerk. But, you're my best friend and I'd die for you. I may not be in love with you or want to marry you, but you're the only person I can keep around without wanting to strangle. You're like part of me and you being part of me, it follows the whole ....selfiish-pattern.

JOEY
Maybe you're right. But that doesn't change the fact that you don't care for him like you wish you did.

HAYLEY
I don't care for anyone really. I think I'm a big enough person to admit. I care for people, but not more than me. I'm a needy girl. That's all.

JOEY
I think you cared for someone, once, more than yourself. Even for the briefest moment, I think you did. And I think it was Dawson.

HAYLEY
And then he screwed me over.

JOEY
You screwed each other over, if you want to get technical. You took turns hurting each other. But it was only because both of you are so insecure and have such trouble believing that someone might love you as much as you loved each other. So you tested one another.

HAYLEY
Joey, can you please stop psychoanalyzing me?

JOEY
Sorry. You're just wrong sometimes and I feel the need to point out that you are sometimes to blame for things. The world isn't always working against you.

HAYLEY
I know. What should I do?

JOEY
What’s right.

HAYLEY
And that is?

JOEY
Be honest. With both of them. And, with yourself. Maybe stop thinking so much about what you need, and what's best, and start considering what you want-- what'll make you happy.

HAYLEY
I’m not sure I know what really makes me happy, anymore.

oh snap.

2007-12-13T23:50:20Z

you guys remember that time i got into the university of central florida?
i do.
because it happened twenty minutes ago when the letter came.

we're doing it.

2007-12-12T01:55:14Z

you're a waste of breath so i'd rather just hold the air in my lungs than speak your name. where are you going? out of here? california to find peace? europe to study art? canada to feel winter? somewhere quiet where no one will judge you? i pity the ones you'll live amongst. i hold my breath and laugh it out while i watch you leave. but where are you going? nowhere. nowhere at all. you're stuck; a fossil to remain imprinted in this godforsaken town until the day you die. and as you breathe your last breath you'll laugh and wonder, what ever happened to that girl? the one that used to be everything and then suddenly was nothing. the one that was worth my life and still i barely gave her a brief moment of my life to remember. you'll choke on your last words as you say, i wonder if she's happy.

you're toxic waste i can't shake. plaguing these veins. reminding me why i keep to myself. i don't answer my phone, not because it isn't working but because i don't want to hear your voice. i know you'll see me in every single face, hear me in every lyric, feel me in every touch from a stranger, taste me in every kiss you steal. you're gonna miss me when i'm gone.

"life itself is just a joke with a really terrible punchline."
his way with words was absolutely and completely awkward. they never fit in just the right way, they never clicked like the ones she left on napkins and the backs of chairs for him to find. he laughs and yanks their little desks closer together so that she's back in his comfort zone. she wonders when he'll tell her the truth about those coy little glances. he ponders the next test and she traces the outlines of his shoulder blades through his t-shirt. he'll smile and say her name, just enough to keep her close until the next time he'll pull her desk up to his own and remind her that, "i dunno, it's just weird if they're not close."
his way with words was absolutely and completely off balance.
she drank them in like water.

no one, not even you.

2007-11-28T01:02:45Z

your credibility is shrinking with every misspelled word that falls from your fingertips and soaks through my eyes. you're wrong, all wrong, you make no sense, you have no idea how real life feels wrapped around your throat. your troubles are petty, your life is closed, your doors bolted and locked to all that's outside your walls-- all that matters. music notes and clever words on a cd jacket can only get you so far. seventeen ain't so fucking sweet but you don't see me crying for sympathy into a blank space that no one will ever acknowledge. he owned me, threw me around, burned me in ways no fire could and still my heart is higher than ever before and life is coming at me full force and my smile never falters. i'm grown up, with much more growing to go, but you're light years behind and i can't listen to your nothing anymore. you're a broken record from a band i stopped liking ages ago, and your songs are mediocre and overdone. i see right through your fancy cover art to the fake you are while you pretend to listen when really you're just waiting til it's your turn to speak. the world is full of people and you're just one of them. get over it.

summer faded three nights ago, seated at a best friend's kitchen table, hearing the news about that voice from the stereo that i wouldn't be hearing anymore. the world hurdled into winter, left me shivering in the front seat of my car, trying to understand why those words were making my hands shake. i'd never seen his eyes on mine, heard him laugh at my words, never touched his hand or heard him speak my name but still he spoke to me. he spoke to me through headphones on nights alone, reminded me of reasons to wipe my eyes. he mended old wounds and got me up off the ground and back onto my feet, blind to his own saving. was it honestly true? closed his eyes and didn't wake up? rolled over in a peaceful dream and lost himself to the emptiness of eternity? truths are usually heavy in their seriousness, dark in their brutal honesty. his name rolled off my tongue so easily that first day of his disappearance as i spread the sad word but now it sticks to my teeth and makes my lips bind together in silence, those syllables not coming easy anymore. my words hold no weight there; he is gone and the earth is still turning. my stereo plays his memory on until i'll forget his name and the words to the songs he saved me with.

i'm saying sorry outside your window in ohio and i have no words left.

In Memory of Casey Calvert

the rubber-glue mentality.

2007-11-11T01:34:04Z

Tall, Dark and Italian is fussing over a scuff on his freshly polished shoes again. That stupid curb gets him every time. He’s got another Palahniuk novel in his hand; he’s promised himself no more art history for a while. He wants something new. A sigh over his shoes and he’s walking to the elevator. He usually takes the stairs– eighteen flights to get up nine floors twice a day is enough to keep his personal trainer off his back, but there is no way he’s risking another scuff. God forbid.
   Small, Pale and Vegan stubs the toe of his (very scuffed) shoe into the marble floor, shifting what little weight he has onto the other leg. Blue stained fingers wrap around the strap of his messenger bag and he purses his lips at their color. The blue on his fingers matches the splotch of blue in his hair, covered mostly by a ratty old beanie that he had a nervous habit of tugging on. Another kick of his shoe into the floor and a body moves up beside him just in time to slip into the opening elevator doors in front of him. His brown eyes peel up from the floor to take in that chiseled figure, those designer clothes, that pair of shoes that probably cost more than his first car– which was a Corolla. He follows him, his 35 dollar Vans falling into the empty steps of His 350 dollar something-or-others. He recognizes the face. Not only from living two floors below him for two years but from the covers of the fashion magazines he keeps in the top dresser drawer. The Guy is legs and hair and skin, designer clothes and a pretty face– the polar opposite of the skinny, blue-haired seventeen year old he’s now sharing an elevator with.
   Small, Pale and Vegan shifts his stance. The doors close. Cue that awkward ‘who-speaks-first’ silence; one that Tall, Dark and Italian doesn’t even feel the weight of. So of course it’s Small, Pale and Vegan in all his PETA supporting glory who breaks it, pursing his lips and pointing a blue finger at his elevatormate’s scuffed shoe.
   “You know, a cow had to die somewhere for you to wear those,” he pointed out simply, rocking back onto his heels. Tall, Dark and Italian looks at the scuff, seeing as how that’s all he seems to be able to see when he looked at his shoes. He mentally curses that God forsaken curb before he retorts.
   “I’ll be sure to pay a little homage to him next time I eat a steak.” Such a sharp tongue coming from such a beautiful person, but Small, Pale and Vegan hardly feels it. Must be that rubber-glue mentality he’s built up since the hazing in freshman year. He looked over, scanning him from his dead cow shoes to his elegantly dissheveled brown hair, a lopsided smile on his wind chapped lips.
   “You don’t really strike me as much of a meat eater,” he drawled, tugging the zipper of his jacket up and down with two blue fingers. He waits for a laugh, some flirtatious shift of his eyes or bow of his perfect head, but instead he’s met with a pointed glance, cold composure and that runway frown.
   “But you wouldn’t know that,” his accented words come. “You don’t even know who I am.”
   A lock of blue twisted around an equally blue finger, Small, Pale and Vegan doesn’t let his coy twist of a smile leave his lips. He wonders if all models have that ‘You don’t know me, I’m too good’ mentality. He considers writing them all a nice pamphlet explaining his rubber-glue alternative. It’s much more fulfilling.
   “You should really learned to talk to people, not at them,” he advised, with a tug of his beanie. Nervous habit. At this point, Tall, Dark and Italian is watching the floors pass, counting each ‘ding’– one, two, three. It seems to be going much slower today– of all days for the elevator to slow down. Slower. Slower. Four... five... stop. Oh, God, please, no– the first four words that slip from his Cherry ChapStick smoothed lips in a barely audible whisper. Small, Pale and Vegan leans himself against the back wall, letting out a quiet laugh as he shoves his hands into his jeans pockets, watching the back of his head with a look of sheer amusement. Of course this would ruin his evening. Or, maybe even his week.
   “Oh, well, shucks,” he sighs almost teasingly, letting his thin frame slide down to the floor, corners of his lips twitching with a waiting smile as he watches Tall, Dark and very upset Italian turn around to look at him. Of course this would happen tonight, he knows he’s thinking. Of course this would happen with him. Even his sigh sounds like it came from Rome. Soft but frustrated, laced with the threat of oncoming mumbles of Italian curse words, which inevitably do come as that perfect slender figure of his eases itself against the corner.He lifts his hands to press his fingers into his temples, as if it will help; as if he expects to warp himself to some other time and place. Small, Pale and Vegan knows without asking that he’s wishing for just that. Or maybe he’s wishing for the elevator cables to snap and send them both into the oblivion he would probably rather be in right now. As if the little blue haired kid in the corner was that unappealing. Tick, tock. Another Roman sigh.
   “So,” Small, Pale and Vegan chirps from his place on the floor, picking at a loose thread in his shoes. “You come here often?” Another grin, his eyes still on his shoes as he waits for the chortle that should follow but instead, that perfect slender figure slides down beside him, close enough to his side for him to smell his imported-from-France cologne. Tugging on his beanie, he considers telling him to mind those tailored pants on that dirty floor– who knows whose feet have been there? But he keeps to himself, boney knees tucked against his boney chest, skinny arms wrapped around them.
   Tall, Dark and Italian is wondering why Small, Pale and Vegan hasn’t thrown himself at him, slurring about fashion and ‘I saw you in Vogue ’ as he begs for an autograph. Maybe the kid really doesn’t know who he is, after all. Though he seems the type.
   Something about this boy, the little ball of blue and worn jeans on the floor beside him, makes him lean in closer, for a better look. His eyes, the shape of his face, the way he bounced his chin on his knees, so seemingly lost in thought. Something made him want to know what he was so lost in. He moved back before the boy noticed, trying to place a name with that would-be hard to forget face of his. He’s seen him before, in stairwells and hallways, a new splotch of color in his hair every time. He’s the ever changing back drop to Tall, Dark and Italian’s otherwise stationary life. The one noticeable extra in his over done Box Office blockbuster. And for a reason he can’t place, that elevator floor is slowly becoming a little more comfortable.
   “You stare a lot,” comes that quiet voice beside him, and now he realizes those brown eyes are locked with his. He has no idea why his stomach suddenly flips.
   “You give me something to stare at,” he admits without thinking, dark eyes dropping to the floor, heart sinking somewhere behind his stomach, hiding embarrassment and blushing cheeks. Maybe it was his genuity that drew him in. Being treated like an honest to God normal human being was a nice change from what he was treated as behind cameras and bright lights. He makes a mental note to become a vegetarian. And to never buy another pair of leather shoes.
   Click, beep, click. A jolt breaks the awkward silence for them as the elevator wakes up, tugging them up to the sixth floor, seventh floor. Ding. The doors slide open.
   Small, Pale and Vegan gets to his feet, taking two small steps towards the open doors before he stops and turns back. Without a word, he draws the latest Vogue from his tattered messenger bag, a familiar chiseled face adorning the glossy cover.
   “It was nice to meet you, Romeo Farelle,” he says, handing him the magazine as that coy smile returns to his lips and he steps from the elevator. “Maybe we’ll meet again sometime. You know. On a broken escalator, or something.”
   Another flash of his smile and the doors have closed, leaving Tall, Dark and Italian, Romeo Farelle, international male supermodel, wondering if he just let something good get away.
   It’s amazing how far apart two floors can really be.

i think maybe we all just need something to be addicted to.

2007-10-26T02:37:40Z

i wanna see art. i wanna see real life on canvas. i wanna walk the naves of the cathedrals i see on the fronts of postcards and in the beloved books i dream from. i wanna see statues of jesus and mary and joseph, wanna see bronze casts of the crucifixion, wanna see greek ruins and the supposed bones of long-dead saints. i wanna touch frescoes on chapel walls, wanna see egyptian tombs and neolithic cave paintings. i wanna climb the steps of the fortuna, wanna run my fingers over the arc de triomphe, wanna see the place where ann boeyln took her very last breath. i wanna step where great caesars stepped, wanna stare up at the ceiling of the sistine chapel, wanna write down everything i feel as i'm standing in front of the nike of semothrace in all her stone decapitated beauty. i wanna walk the entire length of the bayoux tapestry, wanna see the stone floors of chartres turned colors from the lux nova through the rose window. i wanna hear the bells of notre dam, wanna go to the top of the eiffle tower. i wanna see the world through its art.

a year from this day, i can see myself a college freshman, hidden in back aisles of the massive library (no doubt my favorite building on campus), buried in books telling me of how things used to be, what they've come to be, and what's changed them. art is a process, it's a steady time line, it's a gorgeous progression through history that i've come to adore learning the ins and outs of. i used to dream of new york city streets and chicago taxis and california lattes but now i think in terms of european cathedrals and egyptian artifacts and byzantine illuminated manuscripts. my life has taken a turn to remind me of the dreams i once had-- dreams of a life of happiness and spontaneity, not one of routine and banal procedure.

i wanna write. i wanna write about life and god and death and the earth and the future and the past. i wanna write about love and disaster and perfection, about the bible and serial killers and high school. i wanna write about mismatched shoes and forgotten schoolbooks and missed planes. i wanna write about first kisses and last breaths, about here and there and then and now. i wanna write, and i wanna write well.

but most importantly, i just want to live this life, and live it well.
that's where art steps in and takes the steering wheel.

university of west florida waits for me. its books about art in its library wait to be opened in my hands, some dorm room waits to be where i sprawl out on my twin bed with a week's worth of homework and indulge myself in my learning. its lawns wait for me to spend cool october days on them with groups of classmates, talking about everything from life to poetry to film to architecture. the life it holds for me waits to swallow me up and turn me into everything i ever wanted to be.

to show me art.
to let me write.
to let me live.

the scene is dead.

2007-10-19T14:16:18Z

A few nights ago, as I was pressed against the barrier at House of Blues, staring up at William Beckett with the same look of awe on my face as the 2,200 other kids around me, it dawned on me that I was probably one of the few kids left who isn't in it for the singles, anymore. Surrounded by teeny boppers who came just to hear 'Big Mess' and 'Everything We Had', I was completely swallowed up in a sea of sellouts and single-freaks, the ones who knew the songs they heard on their friend's myspace, the ones who tuned into the local Top 40 radio station and caught the latest single from some up and coming indie band. The day I first heard Boys Like Girls on the Top 40 radio station as I was switching CDs in my car, I felt like crying for their lost credibility. From that moment on, their shows would be infested with thirteen year olds only singing along to 'The Great Escape' and not even understanding the well-crafted metaphoric lyrics that were coming out of their drooling mouths as they stared at Martin Johnson in tight pants. The moment I saw the first commercial for Now 25, featuring 'The Great Escape' by Boys Like Girls, I knew they were completely done for.

It's a sad situation, really. Bands that came from thin air being shoved into the limelight only to be leeched on by the pathetic, blood-sucking preteens that stick their Bop Magazine pin-ups of Pete Wentz all over their pastel walls. I remember being thirteen, listening to the local rock station and enjoying bands like Three Days Grace, Story of the Year, Lost Prophets, Staind, and Linkin Park. But apparently four years is a long time in the world of music and the people that listen to it. Now, thirteen year olds throw on a Paramore t-shirt from the Hot Topic in the mall, slip on some Vans, and call themselves "scene." Girls in ninth grade sit at the front of the line at The Academy Is... shows dressed in outfits that bear uncanny resemblence to a few Jac Vanek had worn in a recent photoshoot, and they talk of how much they hate scene queens like her as they chat on their Sidekicks. Then of course, there's the grown-up (or would-be grown-up) versions of them: eighteen year olds who name drop unimportant people like HeyChris that serve no purpose to anything just to say they knew them for a brief moment. Girls in college who take a picture with Tom from Cute is What We Aim For and claim that makes them best friends. Wake up call, kiddies-- he took pictures with 20 billion other girls at Warped Tour, what makes you so special?

Music is no longer about music. Music is about names and competition-- not even amongst the bands, but amongst their pathetic wanna-be fans. It's a fight over who's gone to more shows, who's known about the band for the longest, who met them, who took a stupid photo with them after some shitty show at The Social. But it kills me, because that's so completely the last thing that should matter. What matters is hearing it, feeling it, enjoying it, living it. Respecting them as people just like ourselves who just happen to have incredible talents that they can use in their life. They put their pants on, they breathe and their hearts beat just like ours, so what makes it so hard for people to understand that they make music just for the sheer joy of making music? They don't make music to please the single freaks or the teeny boppers. They make music because they love to make music. Plain and simple.

Shows aren't about "Oh my God, am I gonna get to meet them afterwards so I can post pictures of me trying to act all suave and cool with them on my MySpace for all my internet friends to think I'm cool?" No. Shows are about jumping up and down, screaming your heart out, laughing singing dancing moshing getting sweaty losing your voice. They're about living inside the music they made, the music they LOVE to make, and letting it take you over. Plain and fucking simple.

Music is music.
Fuck the scene.

liar, if we're keeping score

2007-10-15T01:24:38Z

Everything in life is a lie, it just takes a special person to realize it. That's what makes you special, he told me, come one of the Saturdays I spent in his shadow, your cynicism. Real life cannot be converted into some fairytale. Fairytales are what exist to prove the utter flaws in real life; to help them sink in. You can't just turn the other cheek to the things in this world that matter, the real things, the pain and suffering and the doubt. Ever wonder why books end? He asked me. Because the writers stop caring. They stop giving a hell about what happens to these fake, made up people that only live in their minds. He said, people only write these interesting, spell binding stories because their own lives are too empty. The one who writes of drugs, sex and scandal in the city resides in a suburb home with three charming children and a cat. They know nothing of reality, because they block their own out. That's what you do, he told me, on one saturday in the backseat of his Volvo, you make shit up because your life is a joke. Your life is nothing. What do you even do? He questioned. Wake up, pay an overpriced cab fare to get to the bullshit you call a job, you go home, and you go to sleep. What the hell do you even do? You're a slave to the Man and you're so brainwashed that you don't even care. Against the stained and cigarette burned backseat, he sighed a breath of alcohol and said to me, you're just another lie. A hypocrite to your own worthless realizations. He always had verbiage on his side but still he could barely articulate those fancy, philosophical words on those Saturday nights. Your life is a tool that mends the machine that you were born into. Your heart only beats because it was programmed to do so, not because you're loved. Your blood only seeps from your cuts because that empty organ that is your heart pumps it out. You're a machine, just like the society that owns you. He was always a cynic at best but that was the role I was supposed to assimilate into in my silence, agreeing with him while he spoke his own cynical words in descriptions of me. He barely read one sentence I ever wrote, his eyes saw the words but never comprehended them. He never gave himself time to comprehend them before his tongue took over and he was spitting out witty, carefully crafted metaphors in the form of criticism at me. It wasn't my job to speak, or to ask questions, only to listen and pretend I agreed with the nonsense he spoke to me. He would hold my journal in his lap, slender fingers curled tightly around the hard binding, as he verbally abused the words written inside, words he could only assume were not worth his time or care to actually read. I never went back to read what I had written as I wrote, I just wrote without thought or maybe too much of it and closed the cover when my pen stopped. I let him be the judge before I could. He was better at it that I was, without even glancing over the nonsense I had written. You think too much, he would say. You think too much about things that shouldn't be thought on. Do you even know how to smile, anymore? Or is that something else that you suck at? Another sigh of vodka scented breath and he slid the book back over to me, off of his lap and onto the mall patch of worn car upholstery between us, a disgusted look on his face, as if the book itself carried my cynic disease. Try harder, he said quietly, to try less. Nothing he said ever made sense. You would think he spoke the words right off my pages-- the ones he never bothered to read. The ones he never really had to read. The ones he never really got a second chance to read. One of the Saturdays in his Volvo, he was back in the drivers seat, taking me home. I barely spent an hour with him on those nights, or ever. That night a man whose name I'm told was Mitchell ran his F150 into the drivers side door of the Volvo at the intersection of 8th and Walton. My journal fell off my lap in time for him to be thrown into it, limbs broken and skin seeping blood from the places the glass had sliced wide open. When the noise died down, he was still, his machine having shut off, leaving him silent and broken in my lap. The empty organ that was his heart stopped beating, and all the words he left unread soaked into his quiet soul and finally made sense. Mitchell in the F150 had four stitched put in his right cheek. I had firefighters pulling me from the wreckage, pulling me away from his broken down machine of a body, and even as they did, I promise he was smiling. The only way to cure the disease of this plagued existence is to die, he had said on more than one Saturday. I left my journal where it was, beside him. One Saturday in the front seat of my Jetta, I found a receipt in the glove compartment. Twenty-eight dollars for a bottle of liquor and a pack of Newports. I smelled that vodka sigh from the backseat as he whispered over my shoulder, everything in life is a lie.

dismantle, repair.

2007-10-13T04:16:12Z

don't

be

so

blind.

sorry, vampire.

2007-10-02T01:23:38Z

it's not even about finding yourself anymore it's about being yourself and that's the hardest part in all brutal honesty because everyone's so lost in their own psychotic bullshit masquerading as normality. concrete and uneven sidewalks and burnt out street lights are the guidelines of the life i pretend to lead while it's really the words they spark in me that make me the mess i am. everything's a metaphor and nothing feels real anymore. nothing's tangible. nothing's warm nothing's right. nothing feels like something i used to know back in eighth grade when all i wanted was to be left alone to grow up into the person i am right now, writing this with tired hands and wondering why i can't seem to spit out the words i really meant to say, the words i have the potential for finding and placing in just the right order to make them sound how i want them to. summer time came quick and god it fucking lingers here and it's not what i'm used to, will never be what i'm used to. i used to hang onto the idea that there was home and here was where i lived but now the card's been flipped and there is just a place i used to know, here is where i am, where my heart has finally settled however lonely it still may be. this is probably me saying goodbye to you but you'd never know it. i don't know much about him but he's something, a flicker of hope in the dark tunnel your false pretenses and meaningless promises left me in to rot. i'll never be the person i used to be and some of me believes that's a good thing while most of me wishes i could go back to being happy, even if that meant it would be for the wrong reasons. what i wouldn't give for an honest boy who i could trust and who would hold my hand while he drives and wouldn't mind just laying together, just just just laying together and not bothering with the afterthoughts. what i wouldn't give for a boy i'm not second, or third, or fourth best to. a boy to wrap his arms around my waist in a stupid prom photo. a boy i could cry over when he's not around; a boy my mom would smile about. a boy who isn't afraid to speak his thoughts and be true to himself. what i wouldn't give for a boy who wasn't just like the rest of them. pathetic, utopian ideas of how boys should be are plaguing me now and it's making me sick. there isn't a boy out there like that. those boys are the ones that are trapped inside the assholes i meet, begging to get out but being beaten down by useless canons of masculinity and the threat of appearing weak. weakness is strength though, right? weakness is what makes us human and there should be no shame in it but there is and always will be. congratulations for making it this far in this endless stream of consciousness that seems to be going off into oblivion, even though i know the one person i want to read this won't even know these words exist. it's sad, but so is life. get used to it. i have.

lost for words but somehow they're spilling

2007-09-28T00:07:42Z

she wrapped her car around a tree the night he told her she wasn't enough. it's a sob story and we'll sob til tears burn like acid and smear that tattoo you got of her name on your battered wrist. age old ink and sweat and blood and the grime you laid your head on at night while you cried over her sick sad existence. nothing mattered once the steering wheel broke her rib cage and pierced the heart you'd already tasted in the palm of your hand before she snatched it away from you. you can't sleep at night, can you? you can't sleep without her scent; you sleep alone now and it's killing you to wake up. the sheets are stiff and smell of her stale memory gone bad, leftovers left on the kitchen counter for days after you ate them while you're spending days under the covers with her ghost. august 21 and it was just peaking the summertime in ocala, ninety degrees and even the grass was warm at night under your feet on your way to her; past the overgrown palms and over the fence behind her house. you showed her what it was like to feel and she showed you what it was like to lose.
your mind won't stop moving, will it? you can't lay still anymore but without a will to move you have no choice but to suffer your restlessness in her bitter absence. you're still breathing in her empty spot beside you but you breathed her in already, her scent has faded into yours and you're getting sick of failed attempts to preserve her in your broken memory. too bad so sad you claw at the letters in your skin; they itch with her and burn through to your veins and pulse through you with the rest of your tainted blood. her name is needles that you sleep on, etched into every inch of you and you can't lay still.
you watched him get into that car from the fence behind her house, bare feet cold on the fallen palm leaves. ocala never felt so empty.