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Sheryl Crow "Begin the Beguine" |
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Oh guys. I have apologized to you many-a-time before about being late with the entries. This entry will be no exception. It's been nine days. Nine days... that amount of time is so crappy they named a shitty band after it. Anyway, much has occurred since last Friday... and I will probably be terrible at remembering all the details (Alzheimers in this family seems to settle in at about 18 years old). But I will try to make a super-duper review that doesn't eat up all my time at the home computer, which has officially become the most messed up, pop-up ad consumed machine of all time. It's an adventure trying to get through an entire paragraph without something popping up telling me I need viagra. I don’t need my computer to tell me I need Viagra--just my impotency. Which I have plenty of.
Alrighty. Pardon how much detail I'm trying to cover in this paragraph. Last weekend, I went with Alyssa to the Coralville mall for some party-at-Panera. I’ve already said everything I think about her… she’s SO cool, so easygoing, so respectful, so funny too! We ran into Abby Reiter and her friend, and it turned out Alyssa knew the both of them. Heart Abby so much… she’s one of those saving-grace people in Acting I who's sincerely down-to-earth about acting. After I got home from the mall, like later in the evening I hung out with my usual flock of Iowa peeps until midnight or so, then as I was shaving (that's right, I shave in the middle of the night), Phil knocked on my door with Will & Grace DVDs and wanted to watch them with me. That was random enough... and so we watched them for awhile, and eventually he slept over. He acts so fucking grossed out by me sometimes, and then he has no problem sleeping in the same bed as me. As a matter of fact, Phil couldn't have more hard-ons when he sleeps there. I sometimes fear the fucking thing will impale me in the night. It was of course pretty difficult to fall asleep in the twin bed with another person there, and I ended up getting not that much sleep once again. However, the following morning, Phil and I had to prep for a GLBTAU kickball game happening at Hubbard Park... but before that happened, we stopped at the May Daze semi-festival happening behind Burge. "Behind Burge" must be the most alluring phrase of all time. There was a dunk-tank, waterballoons, snocones, and plenty of Burge food to kill yourself with. I ate so many cookies that the following kickball game seemed like it was going to be a continuous series of me almost throwing up (how out of the ordinary). Phil had like, never kicked a ball before so I had to teach him how to kick the thing properly. I knew all that intensive training I had during my AYSO years would come in handy. Eventually the both of us were acquainted with the rest of the kickball players, and I already knew a few of them. There was Ryan, the short but determined guy who facebook-friended me awhile back… Daniel from the GLBTAU meeting… Jessica from my floor and her girlfriend Claire… Thang (aka Asia Japan from the drag show at the Siren). Anyway, we played the best of three games, and though our team won the first game after a phenomenal comeback and a winning kick by Phil, we lost the other two games. Frowny face forever. However, in GLBTAU kickball, everyone was a winner since we all got to run around in the lawn sprinklers afterwards. I got so tired eventually and kind of sauntered back home for a shower and nap… well that nap took an epic turn and suddenly I woke up and it was like three hours later. My journalism buddy Elaine enlightened me about a house party happening at some girl’s house… and she said Alyssa was going, so I was game. Of course it turns out Phil was going to the same party. A bunch of us caravanned it on over to the house… and (believe it or not) I as a non-drinker got bored pretty fast at the party as did Phil, another non-drinker. No one at the party was really doing anything. It was all pretty unenergetic and blah. Our posse all left the party early and trekked on down to the playground over near our dorm. Alyssa, Sara, and Tracy all walked home for a little while, but Phil and I sat on the swings and chatted … mainly he talked about his crazy family and stuff. During that conversation it occurred to me how much I’d like to be able to speak out more for the sake of gay rights. Be more of a public figure about it. It’s a fucking life-or-death matter… public acceptance (NOT tolerance, all-out acceptance) of homosexuality is necessary to save lives. How many stories have you heard about the drastic measures taken by a closeted homosexual in order to avoid how ashamed he is of himself? Incredible the amount of progress we still have to make. I know this is the same old song-and-dance you’ve heard a million times, but Jesus… the horror stories are still happening. Moving on… Phil stayed over and watched Ghost World with me, and that movie was enjoyable. Steve Buscemi is such a good actor… not to mention I’ve never seen Scarlett Johannsen in anything before, and I thought she was a stand-out. Phil didn’t sleep over this time around, and I spent the majority of Sunday prepping for finals.
And guess what, finals were a joke. Earth History had me up at 7:30 AM on Tuesday, and even that ridiculous timeslot couldn’t stop me from finishing that test in seventeen minutes (so the TA told me). I actually didn’t mind being up that early; believe it or not, it’s pretty outside then! The last time I was up at 7:00 AM I think it was because I was couldn’t sleep after going to bed at like 5. My History of Jazz final at night was exactly what I expected… minus the fact that by this time I had contracted a major cold and my nose ran wildly during the test. During one portion, I had to sneeze, and so I clamped my nose shut with my fingers only to have the sneeze like… find its way out my mouth. It was pretty sci-fi. Totally embarrassing, especially since I sat at the front of the room with a TA to my right. That night, I hung out with Phil one last time at Java House. We shared some delicious orange cake which I half-tasted. He was in one of his “I need to talk a lot about me, Louis” fits, and when we went back to my dorm to watch my Margaret Cho DVD, he delivered a pretty painful verbal blow to me. He said, “Well, I’m not sitting with you in your bed because last time I got GROPED.” Let me explain. When Phil and I sleep, we sleep with hands on each other because that’s really the only way you can be comfortable. I could see him thinking my touching was more sensual I guess, but he really does the same thing… REALLY. So I asked him, “Phil, if you’re so grossed out by me, then what’s with the thousands of hard-ons you have when you lay down with me?” Then he looks at me like I’m an idiot and goes, “Because… you’re a boy.” Good to know I’m just an objectified piece of maleness whenever he wants me to be. I just told him to leave eventually because I needed to sleep and because I needed to be away from him. God, we’re such functional friends.
My last final was on Wednesday, and it was for Language and Formal Reasoning. It was everything I expected it to be… and more than that, it was over quickly. I walked out of Chmetzsky’s room a bonafide college sophomore. The wind (and cigarette smoke from nearby students) was in my hair. Being done with a year of college is so much different from being done with a year of high school because no one finishes at the same time in college… not to mention you’re so much more independent in college that when you’re done with everything, you don’t celebrate so much as you pack up your stuff and go. Kind of… a lonelier triumph than in high school, really. Nonetheless, Alyssa and I celebrated being done at the same time by going to Chili’s in Coralville. The girl had never been to a Chili’s before… thank God I was here to strip the veils from her eyes. I was starving so much that all the Chili’s I ate actually didn’t make me feel ill (like it can do a lot of the time). Afterwards, we dropped by Best Buy to feel in tune with modern civilization again, and I had no choice but to purchase The Bad News Bears for $6.99. Alyssa and I headed back to the dorms and torn down my room together… it was really fucking hard. There was so much junk…and everything was dusty or dirty (or if we’re talking about the bagels in my fridge… moldy). Alyssa, Sara, and I watched the movie I bought, and it was a total hoot as I remembered it to be. After that, Alyssa stuck around, and we chatted as I burned her a bunch of cds she needed to own (Alanis, Liz, Aimee, REM, the Police, etc)… it got to be about 4 AM when that party came to an end. I ended up getting about 2 hours of sleep, though when Gloria came the next day and all the teary goodbyes went down, I did manage to stay awake. I was on the road to home at about 11:30...so strange to be heading full force back into my old life, but at the same time, there was a real sense of relief in being done with the workload. Though, actually, I guess it’s just begun.
I said what’s up to Rachel and Sarah at home (Sarah and I sure made puppy chow together… mmmMMMM)… and then I ate dinner and took a nap at 8’clock… only to wake up at 7 AM the next day! I NEVER sleep in that much! It was supposed to be a fucking nap! Anyway… the Lemont days have been already lazily slipping by… I went and saw Anything Goes at LHS the other day, and it was great to see Lauren Dearcangelis change from the Liz Phair of LHS to the Madonna of LHS… she was phenomenal. Bitsky totally stepped it up as well, and Sean Driscoll was of course a delight. I really liked the lead girl Amanda… she was so… well, likeable in the role of Reno. Not to mention her voice is like wo. And Justin Ercoli… very cool to see him do something outlandish. After the musical, I went to Chili’s with a few handfuls of musical cast and crew, only to follow that with a trip to Baskin Robbins with Rachel, Jen Neve, Lauren Neybert, and Katie Jacobowski. Heart all of them. Jen had me laughing pretty fucking hard… and Lauren Neybert is so cool; I hope we’re friends at Iowa next year. The most important discovery of the night was that in the program of the musical, the song “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” was printed as “Blow, Gabrielle, Blow”… which just happens to be one of my favorite films.
And yesterday I went to my brother Greg’s last mass as part of the children’s choir. I didn’t think it would be that big a deal… but at the end of the mass, the choir directors acknowledge all the 8th graders who are graduating. My mom had the honors of acknowledging them this year, and since Greg was the only one graduating… she just started crying. Then the rest of my family in the pews was crying as well (including Dad… good lord…). So that was cute… pizza happened afterwards downstairs, and then way later in the night, after I unsuccessfully went to Orland to see if I could find good badminton gear at any open sports store, I went with Sarah and her BF Steve to Baskin Robbins, and I had a scoop of Jamoca. Not bad when served to me by my man Tiramisu, or Cokenail, as he’s now affectionately called.
And that brings me to today. This computer is so fucking god-awful… it just told me that if I don’t download some registry-pro thing within the next ten minutes, my computer would crash and everything would go to hell. Like a truly smart person, I ignored the concern and kept on typing this. I can’t ever tell if those prompt things are for real or if they’re just elaborate pop-up ads disguised to be my friends. I think my real friends should be just as sneaky. Next time I hang with Feej, I expect her to put down her ice cream and ask me, “How about a subscription to Reader’s Digest? I accept Visa…” and then she opens her mouth waiting for my card. But enough with the silliness.
I was pretty dead-on when predicting what coming home would be like… I arrived at home and thought, “Well. Here I am in Lemont. I’ve already done everything there is to do.” It’s so weird how I’ve… anticipated summer break for fucking ever, and yet all there is when I come back is exactly what I expect. Of course there still is that pesky getting-a-job thing that I’ve racked my brain enough for already. The other day when I drove to Orland, I was thinking about how weird it feels to be back. Lauren Neybert mentioned how when her mother would come back from college, the three months of summer went on forever. I can already sense how true that’s going to be. Weird, though… it’s really not like I think Iowa is any sort of promised land. Hell, I get so cooped up and so insular there sometimes, I wonder why I’m not transferring. I also don’t have too many friends that I really have gotten to know very well. But all of that seems secondary to the fact that Lemont is a former way of life (no matter how cushy, comfortable, or laid-back it may be), and going back to how things were a year ago seems just… weird. I don’t even know what to do with myself when I’m here. I love hanging out with friends… and I sure wish I had a job… but I can already tell my routine in Lemont is going to be a random assortment of the four or five things to do in Lemont again and again and again. I told myself I was going to meet new people this summer… and that really does sound like a good plan; meeting Jen and Lauren and Katie was already a breath of fresh air. Alyssa and I both decided this would be a make-or-break summer… make-or-break as to what our final judgments about going home will be. If I was really fed up with going home by this time next year, I really have no idea what I’d want to do to break up the monotony. Get an internship somewhere? Like New York? Chicago? Your mom? Uggh. I will cross that bridge when I get to it, I guess.
In the meantime, I don’t have too much of a problem jamming to Kylie and pretending I’m saving the world as I do it. I have a harder time actually believing it’s summertime in Lemont… it still feels like it should be like right after January. Guys, I am a motherfucking sophomore in college. I’m never supposed to get that old. When I started this journal, I was a sophomore in high school… look at me now. Hotter than ever, for one, and two, fucking confused like it’s nobody’s business. Good God. That’s really all I can say… I am so caught up in how much everything has changed/is changing and yet so passive in letting everything run its course that I’m both overwhelmed and under-whelmed at the same time. Not a heck of a lot of middle ground. However, I’ve just found one big thing to look forward to: Rachel’s godmother bought her two tickets to the Aimee Mann show at Navy Pier on July 30th, and so I’ll probably be seeing Aimee Mann from the front row of her concert. So excited. I wonder if she’ll bring down the house with a rock n’ roll blast of “The Moth.”
It is so about time I finish this entry. If I can in any way fend off the evilness of this computer, I will be back more often with sexy updates about my decadent sex life and snowballing drug habit. It’s all scandal in the life of Louis S. S. Virtel. Love you guys… and we will tango again shortly.
“All that I need now is someone with the brains and the know-how to tell me what I want anyhow…” xoxo,
Louis.
P.S. Here are my fave cdzinc songs of the moment:
-"No Scrubs" by TLC (it is becoming a lifestyle)
-"Music (HQ Club remix)" by Madonna
-"Spanish Harlem" by Aretha Franklin
-"Take a Message" by Remy Shand
-"Death Letter" by Cassandra Wilson
-"Killing Me Softly With His Song" by the Fugees
Let's do coffee.
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