Lapis Lazuli

My friend Akbar and I have been through some rough times during the almost 9 years that we've known one another. We've had incredible ups and devastating downs, and there have been times when we were both sure we would never speak to each other again. In late high school and early college, he garnered the nickname Captain Jackass for all of his relationship shenanigans. He did things so stupid that you wouldn't believe me if I told them to you; I'll just let you think about how you would feel about a guy who broke up with his girlfriend while his best friend was hiding in the back seat so he could listen in (yes, she caught them). He is also the biggest procrastinator of anyone I ever met. You may have known some procrastinators in your life, but I promise you, Akbar takes the cake. He went so far into Procrastination World that he actually began to cease turning in any papers in his college classes. It began as starting his papers the night before, then became three o' clock in the morning before, and finally turned into an hour before class, which of course became not finishing the paper at all.

I was thinking about all of this today, and all that I have been through cleaning up after this guy's insanity, and I was shocked to realize that I have more respect for him than most of the people I have encountered in my entire life.

Why?

If there is one quality I think I value above almost all others in another person, it is the ability to love someone and be at peace with them on a deep level WHILE he/she is violently disagreeing with them. This is a very rare quality to find in a friend and even rarer to find in a lover. Some people think that this shouldn't be a quality to value at all, that it only means the other person doesn't care about you and isn't affected by anything you say. I disagree, obviously. The point, my friends, is this: Akbar possesses this quality to a degree of perfection that can only be called an art, and for that reason he will always have my deepest respect. I have fought tooth and nail with this man about everything from politics to religion to deeply personal issues, and as emotional as we got, we knew and could feel that on some unshakable bedrock of friendship, we were still okay. For that reason, we have developed one of the most refreshing and brutally honest friendships I've had the pleasure to enjoy, and there is nothing one of us could say or joke about that would offend the other.

And don't mistake this situation as something that developed over time and experience with one another. We've been through a lot, yes, but I've been through a lot with many people and it still seems like it takes nothing but a puff of wind to knock over our entire friendship. It just is, it was, and it always will be, kind of like God. I find myself seeking this quality in everyone I meet, but Akbar is a diamond in the rough, I'm afraid. Something about the relationship between us is set apart from the way humans seem born to interact.

Why am I going on and on about Akbar, you ask? Last night I got into an online spat with Ed, and I realized that every time he and I have disagreed or fought, I have felt a very deep anger and violent disgust coming from him. It doesn't mean he really hates me or that we won't really be okay someday, but I don't feel like we can disagree and still respect one another. Last night's issue was very personal, but one time I remember we were in Tulsa and we were arguing passionately about Wal-Mart and its effects on local communities. He was so upset by the end of the conversation that it made the rest of dinner with Laura uncomfortable. I was fine. I didn't see how disagreeing with someone about a political issue, even to the point where you think what they're saying is stupid, irrational, and flat-out wrong, means that at the end you have to dislike each other. I suppose if it's some issue about racism or homophobia and you really feel like the other person is a bad human being deep down because of how they feel, you might be justified in feeling that way. Otherwise, however, I just don't stop liking someone even when we're on completely opposite sides of the fence. In fact, the harder someone fights and the more rationally and evenly they try to break down my own arguments, the more I end up respecting them. I hate the feeling that I have to sugar-coat things and dance around an issue just to avoid a fight. I even offered to Ed never to talk about anything again if we disagreed on the issue; I would rather do that than fight with him. He signed off AIM before we could settle that point, but I think that's just what we'll have to do in the future.

I'm sure you've all had these conversations before, and like me, you've probably been on both sides of them:
Person A: The opinion that you hold about x is completely wrong and not a little bit ignorant.
Person B: How dare you call me ignorant!

You see what happens, Larry? You have to walk a fine line when you tell someone that what they're saying is stupid, because they will illogically conclude that if they are saying something stupid, they must be stupid, therefore you are calling them stupid. But intelligent people are still apt to say stupid things sometimes--I should know.

So the fight was a complete disaster. You remember my post long ago about the way people act on AIM, and last night was no exception. Ed made sure to type two long paragraphs of rebuttals before quickly signing off in a huff so I couldn't comment on what he said. Only on IM are people this rude; I hope it doesn't star spilling over into the rest of society. I tried to talk to him about it again later, and was treated to a nice "fuck off" and another signing-off right after yet another lengthy paragraph. His arguments can be like drive-by shootings.

If you're still with me at this point, I hope you will go here: http://quotations.about.com/cs/poemlyrics/a/Lapis_Lazuli.htm and read this poem. At the very least, read the last stanza. It may help you understand Akbar, because as Yeats put it, his "ancient, glittering eyes, are gay."

I need to post this quickly before they break up again.

Giles and Laura in Dallas. Aren't they sweet and happy? This is right before I went to bed with an extremely sore throat, a fever, and a cough, and they went to bed to have sex on Laura's stepsister's expensive sheets.

My new t-shirt design. I think I'll make a million dollars.

Check it and see. I got a fever of a hundred and three.

I think this my be my first time ever to blog while sick. I woke up this morning (with the sun down, shinin' in, I found my mind in a brown paper bag within) with a fever and a cough. I called into work bravely asserting that I would be there in a few hours to teach my class, but I gave up on that not long ago. C, our program coordinator, is going to teach the class for me, which filled me with enough relief to rest here comfortably at home. I was worried that J, my sweaty, awkward, lisping, male co-worker would end up teaching both my class and his, which would be bad for my poor students. His classes are already horribly slow and uncomfortable, and if you add 12 students to his roster, things are only going ot get worse.

I'll have to cancel plans this evening at the Spiderhouse with Andrew (Rachel's friend), which makes me sad. I've been looking forward to hanging out with him all week. He's turning out to be a very interesting, funny, intelligent person, and I regretted waiting so long to call him. Rachel must have given me his number about 10 times since I moved down here, and I was just too shy to call him up. Now, he's a great new part of my life and every time I see him, I meet about five new people. It's really exciting. Oh, and he has curly hair, which as you all know is one of my favorite things in the world. I reached up the other night to pull one out and watch it boing back, but doing so made me think about Courtney and I had to pound a beer to keep from choking up. I saw her picture on facebook the other day; she straightened her hair. That made me sad, too, although she looked pretty.

On a happier note, my new co-worker M is a delight! I hung out w/ her Saturday night, and we had a blast. She plays the guitar, loves singing in harmony, loves bluegrass, and is, like me, a semi-fallen Christian. I couldn't have dreamed up a more ideal friend. I've always wanted someone to sit around and sing in harmony with; Laura and I used to do that sometimes, and it was quite enjoyable. Since I was raised in a church where everyone sang in four/five part harmony all the time with no musical instruments, I grew to love harmony in a way that I think most people can't grasp. I'm looking forward to getting together with her and harmonizing to Ricky Skaggs tunes with her and her roomies, who are also apparently good singers. Yay!

Alright, I'm getting back in bed. Once again, thanks to Laura for Saved by the Bell; it's getting me through this day, too. You rock my socks off.

Alright Already

Just when I thought the Elliot pain had died down a bit, here it comes again. Yesterday, I was trying to free up some space on my hard drive because it's getting overloaded with videos and mp3s. As I was deleting a bunch of stuff from my documents folder, I came across two different files that Elliot had left there, both about philosophy and probably both relating to his dissertation. At first I thought I should delete them, but then it occured to me that he might have forgotten about them and needed them for his dissertation work. I still thought, "Who cares? I should just delete them, it's not my problem," but I really didn't want to be petty and mean despite all that had happened. So, although it was so, so, SO hard for me, I wrote him an email telling him what was in the files and asking if he needed them. I offered to send them to him before I deleted them. I felt like I was being very mature and gracious, and I was glad that I hadn't let all the pain between us stop me from doing what I felt was the kind and decent thing to do.

Well, that was stupid. He wrote back with the most curt, terse, unfriendly email I have ever received, telling me he didn't need the files. He didn't thank me for offering to send them, and he didn't even put a greeting line with my name and a comma. I suppose this is all pretty dumb, but it really did hurt my feelings. Whatever Elliot's faults, he was always a gracious gentleman when it came to certain things. I thought he would at least be polite and respectful in his reply, but instead he ended up making me feel like he was angry with me. Perhaps he is, but for what I don't really know. I did tell him not to call me anymore, but at the time he seemed to understand why I did that. Even then, I told him that if he ever really needed someone, I would still be there for him, because I had made a promise once to be there if he needed me for the rest of his life. I don't promise things that I don't fulfill, no matter how hard it is when things have changed. I just couldn't believe that he would hurt me so much by cheating on me, and then add to it by avoiding common courtesy when I tried to be mature about something difficult. I cried for the first time in a while; God, this is so, so hard. Is it not enough that the person I loved had to hurt me, now he also has to hate me, too?

Elliot and I always had a deep respect for each other, no matter what our problems were, and that respect kept us from falling into traps that many other relationships seem to encounter. To think that even that is gone is almost more sad than thinking about how our love is gone. Ugh. Why can't I be petty and angry so that I can get through this easier? Why couldn't I have seen those documents and said, "Fuck him," and deleted them? Why did I have to be stupid to tell him and then expect him to be kind about it?

What is wrong with me?

Drag Kings 'n Things

Well, my body is still hanging on to the whole sleep 5, awake 2, sleep 1 schedule, so I'm doing some early morning blogging. This doesn't happen every single night, but it happens often enough that I can call it a pattern. Perhaps my body has just decided that it only needs 5 hours of sleep from now on, and the only reason it goes back to sleep at 7am is that it's sick of lying in bed awake.

In other news, things have been getting rough for my friends Laura and Giles lately, and I've been worried about them most of this week. I strongly dislike that a lot of their relationship issues sound eerily similar to ones that Elliot and I had, because I feel like I have to stop them from doing whatever we ended up doing wrong...and I'm not sure what that was. Anyway, I'm starting to wonder if Giles will regret ever meeting me. I tried to set him up with Cathy the Communist last year, and that crashed and burned; then he met my friend Courtney and made out with her, which would eventually come back to bite him in the ass when he started dating Laura, and now he's having problems with Laura. Maybe it's not a good idea for me to introduce people--I should always keep the people I know separate from each other.

I wish I had some exciting news, but the truth is I'm just trying to keep busy. E at work is in a drag king show tonight, and we're all supposed to go. Perhaps I will get to dance with some hot lesbians, preferably after having a few beers. Last time I went to E's drag show, I was a bit toasted and I ended up taking off my bra and throwing it on stage at her. She was surprised and delighted, and since then she seems to think of me differently. I suppose you can't get much of an idea of what someone is like from working with them--she thought she was the only party animal in the office.

I put new batteries in my digital camera that I haven't seen in months and months. There were four pictures of Elliot on there that I had forgotten about, and...it was sad. It wasn't too bad because they were mostly pretty terrible pictures, but it was still another one of those minefield moments. I hope they will stop soon.

That's about it for now, except...7 days until Lewis Black!!

Finding Love in Austin

My favorite new pastime is reading the Personal Ads in the Austin Chronicle. Some of these people are so completely insane that I'm not entirely sure they're serious. Perhaps it's just an editor on the night shift coming up with phony ads because he thinks the entertainment value will sell more copies. Here are some of my most recent favorites:

"GARDEN VARIETY SOUTH Austin hippie, employed slacker, 45, seeks all-cotton hippie chick honky-tonk kozmik kowgrrll, for lifetime of picking, grinning, shovelling turkey manure, dodging the IRS, subverting the dominant paradigm, and generally enjoying the ironic, absurdist Pink Flamingo worldview from the narrow regions of the Bell Curve in 78704." Just think about how much this ad must have cost the poor nutcase. I almost called him for a date, but I don't live in 78704. Oh, and I have this weird aversion to turkey shit. Other than that, we were meant to be.

"OBSESSIVELY FANATIC CHRISTIAN idealist seeking buck-wild, punk-rock, cyber goddess with a nose ring. Must love Jesus...but not too much. Amen." I don't know what a cyber goddess is, but I have a feeling I don't fit the bill. I also love Jesus too much; I would never desecrate the temple that Jesus lives in by putting a hole in its nose.

"SOUTH AUSTIN ROCK 'n roll guy, 52, got a straight job now. Seeks soul mate. I'm good cookin' and good lookin'." Why doesn't he just say, wanna date a recovering crack addict?

"CAN A FABULOUS , 50-ish fashionista find a faithful, fulfilling, fall-in-love forever kind of romance? Attractive, articulate, agreeable, artsy, animal adoring SWF seeks an aesthetic SWM who appreciates acumen, and abandon." Yeah, lady, there's nothing hotter than fucking alliteration. The truth is, you're sad, single, and sagging, and we all know it. Translation: 50s-ish = 59.

"CHRISTIAN. LIBRARY 11/27, green bike. You answered my ad, left unworkable email address. Intentional? If not, please call again." Yeah, I'm sure the whole email thing was an accident, and I'm sure it was very encouraging that she gave you an email address instead of a phone number. Good Lord, people are depressing.

Double Your Pleasure

My mom just left this morning; we had a fantastic weekend. I'll get back to the details of our adventures later, but first I wanted to let my four faithful readers know that I figured out some valuable things during Mom's visit. Prepare yourself for brilliance.

I realized something about all the weird little quirks, habits, and idiosyncrasies of your significant other: they are a double blessing, or at least they can be in certain circumstances. George Carlin once did a bit about the frightening, moldy leftovers he found in his refrigerator: "Leftovers make you feel good twice. Leftovers give you two separate good feelings. When you first put them away you feel really intelligent. 'I'm saving food.' And then after a month, when hair is growing out of them, and you throw them away, you feel…really intelligent! 'I'm saving my life.'" Likewise, I've figured out you can get two separate good feelings from the eccentricities of your lover. When you're happy with someone in a relationship, all of those funny little characteristics can be incredibly endearing, even if you wouldn't have necessarily found them cute in other circumstances. When you sincerely love someone, their bizarre habits and irrational beliefs can be adorable and make you love him even more. There's the first good feeling. And then later, when you're sad about breaking up with said person, you suddenly think again about a lot of those quirks and how much they annoyed the living fuck out of you.

And there's the second good feeling. :)

At one point this weekend, Mom and I took a wrong turn somewhere because of an inaccurate road sign and we were unsure where we were headed for a few minutes. It turned out just fine, but while we were lost, I kept waiting for Elliot to appear and turn into a restless, teeth-grinding, arrogant stress-case and sit next to me in the passenger's seat sighing and practicing his "long-suffering" look like our time in the car was a prison sentence. Whenever I'm alone, I drive very well, rarely have any close encounters with other cars, and can almost always find my way somewhere. When he was in the car, at times I was so stressed out I didn't know my right from my left and every five seconds we came close to death. This weekend I realized that despite this persistent sadness I feel, I'm glad to be rid of the constant feeling that I couldn't ever do anything right. Every time he knew how to do something I didn't, I had to feel like an imbecile whose pathetic attempts at helping him or learning more about it only annoyed him more.

The next incident that brightened my day was when Mom and I left the movie theater AFTER THE MOVIE ENDED. We didn't have to wait in the seats while everyone in our aisle stepped over us awkwardly, and we didn't have to sit and watch ten minutes of mindlessly boring credits until the theater was completely empty and the employees came in to clean up the trash, looking at us like we were insane. I think for at least the next year, I will bound out of the movie theater as soon as the final music begins to swell and the couple starts to kiss. I'll kick down old ladies and children if it means I'll get to the exit faster. It'll be good therapy for me, as will fastidiously avoiding watching any of the following movies: blacksploitation films, unimaginably dull films from the 70s in which the actors never change facial expressions and spend most of the movie walking or driving somewhere, mindless horror films, and Woody Allen's Sleeper. It'll be easy to avoid renting any of these movies because I won't have to walk around Blockbuster for a solid hour before I can take a movie home. I won’t even see most of them!

Okay, my hands are shaking, I think I need to stop now. That felt so good, though. Gotta love that second good feeling!

It Just May Be a Lunatic You're Looking For

Steev's Survey

Choose a band/artist and answer ONLY IN SONG TITLES by that band (you pick your own band or artist, dont use the same one as the person who did this before you):

artist/band: Billy Joel

Are you male or female: She's Always a Woman

Describe yourself: You're Only Human

How do some people feel about you: She's Got a Way

How do you feel about yourself: Got to Begin Again

Describe your ex girlfriend/boyfriend: And So It Goes/Don't Ask Me Why

Describe your current girlfriend/boyfriend: The Stranger

Describe where you want to be: New York State of Mind

Describe what you want to be: Honesty

Describe how you live: Only the Good Die Young

Describe how you love: Shameless

Share a few words of wisdom: Get it Right the First Time

Loved by the Bell

I received an unexpected package in the mail last night. I didn't recognize the return address and there was no card inside. Imagine my surprise when I opened it to find Saved by the Bell seasons 3 and 4! I was overjoyed at first, and then my heart stopped momentarily. A few minutes later on my way to meet someone from work, I called Laura and said, "Please tell me you got me a present." She said yes, she had, and I breathed a sigh of relief before thanking her jubliantly. For a moment I thought it was from Elliot, and that would mean I'd have to cry.

I had a sad thought after I got off the phone with Laura. I should have known that Elliot didn't send me that package, because it was the kind of thing I would do, not him. I think if you want to be happy in love, you should find someone who not just loves you, but figures out how to show it in ways you'll understand.

I could go into a long story about my mother right now, but I'll spare you. :)

Please believe in me when I say I'm spinnin' round round, round round

How do you know when you've officially become insane? There aren't any definite or complete answers to that question, but I'm pretty sure a 2:30am phone call to Rachel is in there somewhere. Thanks, Turbo. They're coming to take me away, ha ha!