I am wearing the skin of a Normal, and tasting the way the air moves around them.
I don't like it.
I don't feel the glow.
I had a blast cleaning house last night with Paul and Riz, and I woke up in terror this morning, wondering where the hell I was.
Unrecognizable... Even with the looming shadows of the canopy bed that hasn't moved, the light falls differently on my eyes, reflected off neatly lined up books, a shining floor, dustless everything...
Suddenly there's room for all my bookcases in my room, somehow with a flick of the wrist Paul figured it all out.
And Riz did something indescribable to my bathroom, that this morning I was turning around to check the hair-dye stains on the shower curtain to make sure that it was mine.
Then we watched "O.C. and Stiggs" and they passed the test, and realized The True Brilliance of said film.
Then we got them sloshed on italian wine and polish liqueurs (made 'em myself, I did!) and stuffed with greek food, and sent them on home.
I've spent all week following normal pursuits, going to the gym, watching movies with friends, working late and coming home tired.
I'm bored listless, all this moving about and doing stuff, yet none of it means anything.
Killing time, almost. When there's never enough time in a day, here I am wasting precious moments when I could be discovering things.
Then I woke up this morning to take my car to the bodyshop.
And now I'm fucked, and my head is so filled with the mundane that I have no urges left but to go home and watch TV. They handed me some obese american car that doesn't share on the highway, and I have to pay the rental because my insurance company decided last minute that I have to pay, and they'll reimburse me.
Argh. Fuck.
I forgot my point, as I wandered out for lunch an hour ago, and came back to my desk in a selfish fury.
I don't feel like going to the meeting this afternoon. I don't feel like worrying about projects that other people need me to work on. I don't feel like playing EQ tonight, I don't feel like putting up with the bullshit facelessness of the gym.
I want to get some sleep for the first time this week, and I want it right now, at my desk. I don't want to think about the extra $400 for this, the extra $180 for that, I don't want to think about acid and sex this weekend, about Hallowe'en costumes for the party at work and lending my gear to everyone on my floor, I want you all to go away.
The mundane is drowning me now, and it's not just sore muscles, or lack of sleep, or work or social pressures, it's the way I realized that when the mechanic was late this morning and I shrugged it off with a smile and told him not to worry about it, I was silently screwing myself.
And I don't like thinking that way.
And when I displayed my array of quirky mannerisms for the secretary while we waited and discussed her kids and her car and the neighbourhood, when I waited again for the car rental lady to show up so I could sign her papers and find out that my insurance company doesn't deal with their account... When we talked and laughed all I could think was
"take it out on her, why are you being so polite, all they've done for the last two hours is shit on you and shit on you some more and here you are making some receptionist smile..."
I've never wanted to be needlessly rude to someone before.
I've never looked at a person as if they were inconsequential, I've never thought of a receptionist as "just a secretary", I've never had the urge to play scapegoat ego games.
And so I'm hating this glimpse into human-yet-not-very-human thought processes.
I'm hating myself for feeling the weight on my shoulders.
I'm hating myself for not being able to shake it.
I'm hating myself for being just as bad as every selfish, arrogant, manipulative prick that I boggle at every day, wondering how they can't see the patterns they're leaving in their wake.
You fuck with her, she fucks with the next guy, and on and on until absolutely everyone, even the waitress with the beautiful smile down the street, hates the system that they're sacrificing their inner selves for.
I'm hating myself, but maybe, just maybe, this is the reminder that I needed of the "why"s.