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(Not-So-)Quick Jabs
05 May 2004
4 13:00

Just a few quick thoughts, since it's been SO BLOODY LONG since I've said anything. I've been REALLYREALLYBUSY, though, so I'm excused. Right?

The ad said, "Meet Other Singles Just Like You." I find this so unlikely as to be laughable. There is nobody, and I do mean NO-Body "just like me". It takes FAR too much time and effort to get this way, and the idea that anyone else might have done the same? Ludicrous.

However good or bad the show, when you go from wild applause and loads of hugs afterwards and people telling you how incredible you are home to your lonely, empty-despite-being-quite-filled-with-stuff, and messy-'cause-you've-been-living-in-rehearsals-and-the-office apartment, it hurts. The crashing realisation that you're alone? It's sometimes a comfort, but sometimes it's soul-crushing and leaves you sleeping on the living room floor next to your unfinished (crystal) glass of cheap bourbon.

And in these hours, lying on the floor watching an old episode of The X-Files at 2.30 a.m., the demons come and whisper things in your ears like, "Wouldn't it be easier just to die?" And for half a second, before Good Judgment and Reason have a chance to have heard and understood the whisper, you almost entertain the thought, but then realise, "It isn't that I want to die, for I don't. Quite to the contrary, I want to live; I just feel like I'm not really doing that just now."

A disturbing relisation: If I died, it would probably be three days before it occurred to anyone that something might be wrong. At work, I think it'd be at least two days before anyone thought that perhaps I hadn't just gone off on a vacation somewhere or decided to dedicate more time to work on some show and began to try to track me down. The choir would notice my absence immediately, and I'm sure someone would phone me, but would anything really be done? Doubtful. At least not on the first day. Friends? Patrick would notice that I wasn't on AIM (or wasn't responding to him if I was) and would probably be somewhat alarmed by my continuing failure to answer the phone or return his calls, which I almost always do for him, though not for anybody else. And who would miss me, really? I wonder what my funeral would be like, where it would be, who would attend. I don't think I have the sort of connections that would make it a major occasion around here, but I'm not really sure, and I've disconnected myself from everyone around whom I grew up. It would really be a terrible thing to have to arrange, what with someone having to go through my cell phone and call the numbers of a hundred or so people (s)he doesn't know to tell them I'm dead. My demise would be an abolute logistical nightmare! That thought alone, to say nothing of all the as-yet unfulfilled ambitions, is more than enough to keep me going. I'm much more convenient and manageable alive, despite my complications.

If you spend your life worrying, you're not living.

Watching Queer as Folk (and while out at Bar last night with all the fags), I realise I don't want to be the morally bankrupt Brian Kinney anymore. But it also occurs to me, thinking of the lovely lesbian wedding ceremony in the aforementioned series, and thinking of my friends' rather similar commitment ceremony last spring (to which I could not find a date to save my life, so I went alone, the same way I do everything else), and hearing early Sarah McLachlan and k.d. lang, I think, "I will never be in love that way."

And of course, that's ridiculous. I'm still quite young, easy on the eyes, and excruciatingly smart and talented. Perhaps unfortunately, and more than a little as a result of the above, I'm also very particular about whom I'd consider. I'm also an incredibly judgmental fuck. But someone will come along. One of these days, one of those women who eye me striding down the street in the evening, well-dressed and -coiffed, with cell phone to ear, or one of those men who check me out as I'm browsing among the new releases and best-sellers in the bookstore on my lunch break, will have the gumption to say hello.

For now, I sit and listen to Tears for Fears and dream of a modern apartment in a new-ish Manhattan tower block and driving an $80,000 BMW 6-series (though I can't decide between the coupe & the convertible) and not needing a day-job. Enough for now.

r

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