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| I wish they sold self-confidence the same way you sell shoes or books or movie tickets, and it would be just as easy as flashing a brand name or spouting one-liners to make yourself a person you felt proud of in the morning. Self-confidence is waking up to your naked body in the mirror and saying “I look good,” versus getting dressed and saying “I look good.” And I’m sorry, I can’t look at myself naked. I’m too busy trying to catch up to the cool kids I went to high school with six, seven years ago, because they’re still around, giant headphones, smirks on their faces, asking “what are you listening to?” “Taking Back Sunday . . . old Taking Back Sunday.” You have to say it’s old, because it gives you a history, a credibility. Self-confidence is saying you were born yesterday because you were and you have a long way to go, versus saying you were born last week, even if you don’t have an alibi for it. I think religion is a good way out of trying to keep up with the scene, because it comes pre-made for you. I like the idea of a God that doesn’t care what records you listen to or how much your shoes cost but totally knows what records you’re going to buy next week or when your shoes will finally come apart after years of abuse and stepping in dogshit. I leave my shoes under the bed so I can soak up all the places they’ve been to when I wasn’t paying attention. I haven’t seen the movie everyone’s talking about, and I probably never will. I don’t know how to tell jokes or how to keep up in conversation between people I barely know. I don’t know why people spend two hundred dollars for things they’ll use to step in dogshit. I don’t know why I’m proud of my records from six, seven years ago, the ones I associated with those kids I hated but, eager to co-opt their tastes and personalities, adopted as my own. I don’t know why I am so tall. I don’t know why I straighten my hair. I don’t know why I’m only happy with how I look every once in a while, and only if I slept well and haven’t talked to anyone before three in the afternoon. I don’t know why I’m never happy, not in the depressed sort of way, but in a frustrated, why can’t I keep up with the scene, any scene, any group of people in any sort of way. And if I’m always behind you, I don’t know why I keep trying to trip you so you’ll walk next to me instead. | | |
| I felt the anger burbling inside me as I waited for my food to arrive at the take-out counter of P.F. Chang's China Bistro in White Flint Mall, which is in a town called Kensington, but prefers to say it is in North Bethesda, because the white women will not bring their BMWs to a mall in Kensington to nearly mow me down with, as they did today. Like the ambiguity of its postal location, the place where I stood was similarly awkward; not quite the dining room, where people dressed in their best T-shirts and sneakers chowed on Chinese fusion cooking, and not quite the bar, where young men with winning smiles attempted to pitch jokes at their female counterparts, who solidly rejected their advances. I grew quite frustrated by this arrangement, and by the entire concept of White Flint Mall, or Kensington/North Bethesda, or driving to and from such a place to feed my mother and brother all the way back home.
Yes, it is good to be back on livejournal. I am scrubbing the place (and its sister place) of its adolescent dirt and grime, preparing it for a lovely future as a home for my considerably more mature thoughts, be they about Chinese food or white women, or poops, but I refuse to elaborate on that as it is inappropriate too.
The summer is long and friendly, and I await its end patiently but reluctantly. I realize I am alone quite a lot, and a day will go by that I speak to but a few people, and not until late, late, late in the day. I have had a few exciting days this summer - driving up to Baltimore to visit friends from college who live in places flung far across this state and nation; or taking the Metro down to U Street with good friends from high school (Gili and Adrienne among them, or solely them) to see an indie band called Tilly and the Wall.
It was unclear to me whom among the seven performers on stage were Tilly, or the Wall, and I found this fact quite confounding. There was a young woman who tap-danced upon a platform with great exuberance, like Sarah Silverman - exactly like Sarah Silverman, in my mind, and nothing else - but it was unclear if she was the Tilly of the band's moniker. I soon discovered that the Wall was right in front of my nose; a large gentleman, drunk and excited to see his favorite band, he eventually explained, had elbowed his way in front of me, blocking my view. And that is a difficult thing to do, as I am tall like the willows, and my eyes are like a panopticon that can see in many of the directions at once, if not all of them.
But this gentleman was indeed the Wall, and he danced like the Wall, arms akimbo, head strutting in and out like that of a peacock, or an owl with a neck. In time, it became more of a show to watch him profess his love for Tilly through the dance than to watch the tap-dancer herself.
Oh, yes. An indie band is one that I would seldom watch, preferring instead my traditional emo bacchanals at the 9:30 Club or the Recher in Towson, with its many youthful emo children. But like all things, I must grow older and increasingly elitist about my tastes, all part of the great separation of one with the mainstream that America is built upon. In this act of seeing Tilly and the Wall, I become a part of something more than dinners at P.F. Chang's China Bistro and quabbles over where Kensington begins and North Bethesda ends. Lo, from the power I have gained from saying I went to this show alone I could smite both locations into oblivion, and the BMWs that would hit me would instead sink into an abyss not unlike that of a reservoir's outlet into a dam.
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|  A year ago I was a misunderstood filmmaker; two years ago I was such a sap I decided to start a band with my [then-six-year-old] brother; and three years ago I found out the girl I liked already had a boyfriend. It is very convenient having all of these important life milestones laid out for me - on the Internet, no less. I realize that I've been doing this for over three years now, save for the past four months, where I more or less fell off the face of the Earth.
Tonight after midnight, I walked down to CVS to buy some soap. It is exam week; a lot of people have 8 a.m. exams tomorrow morning, and College Park is dead. It is depressing, and I didn't see a single person until I left campus. Everyone seemed to be at CVS, in line for Red Bull. On the way back, I decided to walk past Allegany Hall, a dorm with these huge leafy bushes in front of it. "Hello!" said a voice from the foliage. "Uh, hey," I said, moving closer, trying to make out the figure squatting on the ground. Maybe it was somebody I knew.
I saw she was holding a phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and I figured she probably wasn't talking to me. Then I heard the trickle of water, and noticed the dark puddle on the ground between her legs. She wasn't laughing or crying; she wasn't humiliated or proud, but maybe surprised. And so it's come to this, I could see her thinking.
"I'm in front of a dorm, peeing in the bushes," she said to the person on the other end, putting a cigarette to her lips. "And some guy is walking past."
I tried to walk faster. Three years in College Park and I've never seen a girl peeing in the bushes in front of a dorm while smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone. You'd think it happened every day here from the way she acted. I was horrified as a freshman, green about college and overly self-righteous about everything.
"Who's walking past?" she kept going. "Just some random-ass guy."
"Yo, tell her Dan Reed is walking by!" I yelled. She didn't hear me because she was still peeing, and I was embarrassed to have seen it.
These are the stories I will tell my kids one day, when they ask what college was like, and this mythical place called College Park, where even the night before 8 a.m. exams you can find people too drunk to enjoy God's gift of shame.
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|  For quite a while this afternoon I was hopped up on a drug known to me as Percocet. Upon popping the little, bitter pill, I knew only one emotion: "useful." I did a great many efficient things in the minutes following, such as making a phone call, checking facebook, writing an e-mail, and checking facebook again soon afterward.
I have been in the house for at least two days now, having had my wisdom teeth removed on Thursday. I remember little of the surgery save for the smalltalk I made with the dentist as he shoved the IV in my arm, explaining that there was valium seeping through the little tube that went inside of me, and I thought of The Princess Bride and Prince Valium, and . . . then I was swollen, being led to the car, which was parked next to a trash can with a sticker on it for a local band called The Spotlight, and they were everywhere, I thought, even on Main Street in Laurel.
The Percocet is a glorious drug, and do I ever feel inspired as it courses through me. On occasion, I will want a cigarette to bring me down from the pillowy heights, but the doctor insists that I cannot smoke for it will loosen the stitches in my mouth.
And I do not want those stitches loosened, for I want the healing to be quick and effective, so I can get up without feeling faint, and drive the car without going limp at an intersection, and eat foods other than the applesauce. God, I love the applesauce. I bought twenty-five dollars worth of applesauce and pudding in preparation for the surgery, but I am already tired of both. | | |
|  When I am behind the counter of the shop, or hiding from the cameras through which the corporate office is watching me, I will be stricken by the unavoidable club of Tha Hongry. I begin to savor for something more than ice cream, or even a fro yo.
The Peruvians make a chicken that I am quite enamored by. It is called Pollo a la Brasa in the Spanish, but I do not know its meaning in the English. There are a great many Pollo a la Brasa restaurants in this area, and they are not hard to find. When the smell of the rotisserie wafts into your nose holes, there is little you can do to stop yourself from swerving across several lanes of rush-hour traffic to reach the source of such a smell.
For a year, I have longed to eat a Pollo a la Brasa that was nearly the stuff of legend. The restaurant was called El Pollo Rico, and it made Wheaton a legitimate place to be in, as opposed to just that shopping mall where a fellow was stabbed two years ago. I have had serious Tha Hongry for it, despite never having eaten there.
But, alas, El Pollo Rico was raided by Immigration last week, and its owners were thrown in jail for harboring illegal aliens. I cannot help but wonder if the Immigration people are vegans, and they do not approve of chicken that falls off the bone. My heart is broken! If it is a crime to make such a spectacular Pollo a la Brasa (as I have been told it is), then perhaps I am a criminal, too, for wanting to enjoy it. | | |
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