Before we get started, for the record, I still have a problem dealing with attractive people in person; I lose basic motor skills, my IQ plummets to disability-check-worthy lows, and, although I’m technically unconscious at the time, I’m 98% sure that I physically mutate into an equine anus during these encounters. This is something I hope to cure with time but, honestly, I’m not too optimistic about a full recovery.

However, back in my high school adolescence, I used to hate a few specific women who were beautiful… and the funny thing about this was that I actually thought I was hating them because they were beautiful. (Y’know, just like every other catty, insecure adolescent female being raised in this insane modern American society.) The weird thing was, though, that I only really loathed a couple girls specifically and then viewed/judged all the other beautiful girls around me objectively. For example, some of my closest friends at the time were “those girls” who were traffic-stoppingly/crowd-hushingly gorgeous and, while I sometimes cried with envy at the attention they were so easily able to garner, I never once actually felt any ill feelings toward them because of their staggering beauty. (Additionally, I never fell madly in love with any of my beautiful friends and thank God for that because aaaaawkwaaaard.) Similarly, there were other girls around me that our small community saw as “beautiful” but whom I genuinely couldn’t stand because of the horrible characters they actually were just a scratch below their coveted surfaces. I can honestly say that neither of these two varying types of beautiful acquaintances ever received anything other than objective emotional responses from me, which is pretty damned impressive now that I think about it, given how tormented by incessant, relentless insecurity I was at the time.

In my endless reflection on who I was (which is ongoing and consistently updated) you’d think I would’ve caught This Great Epiphany sooner, but, instead, it took me ten whole years to realize that the few girls I supposedly hated with every fiber of my being were, in fact, the ones I was in love with.

I know; it’s painfully obvious from where I’m sitting now as an “out” bisexual who has comfortably had relationships with women and has no problem identifying women I find attractive and acknowledging/praising the beauty in every woman. In fact, you would’ve thought I’d have come to this conclusion, oh, 7-8-ish years ago when I stopped being genuinely afraid of beautiful people (even completely inaccessible celebrities) after the realization that, just because someone else is physically beautiful, it doesn’t mean that I’m somehow not or am less of a person or should feel threatened/intimidated in their presence, etc. (You know… Normal coming-into-adulthood-after-a-bunch-of-therapy stuff.) Around that time (2003-ish), just like now, I just got shy and idiotic around pretty people (‘specially women) but my first response wasn’t to automatically loathe them; that was reserved for just a few people.

There’s one recently recovered memory in particular that brought about The Great Epiphany. In high school (as in every high school) there was this One Girl in my class who was just outlandishly gorgeous and wise beyond her years and incredibly vulnerable but unabashedly assured in her sexuality (moreso than the rest of us, who were still trying to figure out how to admit that we were sexual beings without being labeled “sluts”, ’cause we thought that matteredAAANYWAY) and, while her character drew me in and made me a bit obsessive in my observations of her, I just looooaaathed her with an intensity normally reserved for terrorists and abusive exes.

I know the moment it started, too. She and I were invited to a slumber party of a mutual friend and, although I remember nothing about this party except for who the hostess was and that we listened to a lot of Shonen Knife, one instance stands out as A Defining Moment of My Identity. We were all gorging on ice cream and whipped cream (maybe icing?) like you do when you’re 15 and won’t gain an ounce from anything you ingest and, for some reason, She turned to me out of nowhere, in apropos of nothing, and said, “Hey, try this; it feels really cool.” And then She put some whipped cream (maybe icing?) on my tongue and sucked it off.

Don’t get excited; literally NOTHING else like this happened at this or any other slumber party I ever attended in my youth. There were no ensuing make-out sessions, no admittances to deep, love connections, no scantily-clad pillow fights, no comparing of breast sizes – nothing. She closed her eyes and slowly sucked the cream off the length of my tongue and then perked back into Her normal self, exclaiming, “Weird, right!?” and then went on with the rest of the night with no idea that She’d just changed my whole entire fucking life.

See, I knew I’d had inklings of being “into” girls before then but, you know, a girl isn’t “supposed” to get giggly and giddy and infatuated over another girl the way she can over a boy. Girls aren’t “supposed” to doodle other girls’ names into their notebooks or whisper to her friends about how cute the female object of her affection looked on any particular day. Sure, there had been female acquaintances during my previous 15 years that I’d been attracted to, but I would just bashfully shy away and ignore them, lest I found myself giddily blushing in response to their attention and wanting to ask people if she’d talked about me or what she was wearing, etc. And, so far, I’d been keeping a pretty good cover… Until the tongue-sucking moment.

Being that there’s no handbook on how to handle keeping a lid on homosexual attraction when you’re barely able to define your sexuality at all (and/or even believe that bisexuality is a real thing and wasn’t just made up for “My So-Called Life”), I took the 5-year-old-boy-on-the-playground approach and decided to publicly hate Her. Passionately. For years. Actively. It seemed totally safe and foolproof; if I loudly proclaimed how much I hated Her, there was no way anybody would possibly think I was actually infatuated with Her, right? As far as I was concerned, I was a genius in my ruse.

And this embarrassingly immature/textbook scheme lead to me being a complete moron about it for the next 4 years, being reallysupernice to Her face (because I actually liked talking to Her and being around Her energy) and then overcompensating to cover my fondness by saying truly awful things about Her to my friends. (Years and years later, when I apologized to her for being suuuch a cunt, I explained that my insecurity was such that I genuinely never thought someone like Her could possibly give a shit about what someone like me might be saying about Her, which is honestly/pathetically the truth. I really never stopped to think that She would/could ever be hurt by anything I was saying, just like everybody else I talked smack about in high school. Seriously, I was nobody; who would take offense to anything I had to say? I know; pretty messed up… Uhhh… however, I left the part about the infatuation out of that conversation with Her; I figured the aforementioned statement was fucked up enough. No need to pile on unnecessary levels of fuckery  this far into the future when it’s no longer relevant, you know?) What a totally awesomely foolproof plan I had concocted!

This actually happened with a couple other girls I was very seriously attracted to (if you’re reading this and somehow still hold onto the idiotic/ignorant belief that gay/bi people are wildly attracted to everysingleperson in their preferred gender(s), I’m going to need you to stop reading this and maybe do a little research on how human attraction and this stuff all works. Come back when you’ve taken some time to understand human sexuality a bit more thoroughly. It can wait.) before the inevitable monkey wrench appeared in my seemingly foolproof system.

I should’ve seen it coming; after all, I was in college by this point and I was in an area where “alternative” sexual preferences weren’t so horrifying and bizarre in the public eye. At this time, I developed a colossal, maddening, unabashed crush on this unbelievable, enigmatic beauty who was full of wit and eroticism and style and confident sexuality. But before I had a chance to start actively hating her (as per habit) she… she noticed me. And… and flirted with me. Me! And wanted to get to know me and would call me and she asked me to go out with her… like, on dates…

… and I didn’t know whatthefuck.

Like with any overwhelming attraction to someone who inexplicably seems attracted to me in return, my first instinct told me, “RUUUN!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!!” (Seriously. Ask my husband. I met him at a meeting for the student magazine years after all this, we locked eyes a few times, and that was enough to have me sprint out of there like I was racing for a prize. It took the poor guy a whole semester of chasing me to finally corner me long enough to express himself enough to get a date.) but, for whatever reason, I didn’t run [and good things happened that I won't describe in full here.] And, since then, I’ve had the ability/comfort to admit when I’m heavily/very much/OMGwhoa attracted to another female.

Admitting it to other people is a different story, however. For the most part, I kept my crushes on other girls quiet around my friends, for fear of making them uncomfortable and I NEVER told anybody in my family when I was dating a woman; I figured I’d save that for “if it got serious” because, frankly, they had enough to worry about with me being literally-clinically-psycho and alcoholic without confusing things with my “sinful” sexual practices. (Plus, they might’ve confused my preference for both genders as a symptom  of my mental illness or a phase and I certainly didn’t want to perpetuate those misconceptions.) Over time, I kind of casually mentioned it to friends here and there but there was never a day when I decided, “I’m going to COME OUT!!! HOORAY FOR ME!!!” I mean, I never felt the urge to publicly announce that I was into light bondage or having loads of casual sex with people I didn’t care about when I was shamelessly doing so (and I’m still not ashamed of that, btw) or that I really liked to be spanked; that sort of crap is none of anybody’s business, right? So what makes the gender of my sexual interest so important to other people? I dunno… So I never really made an official proclamation about it.

And I’ve rethought that over the years, especially after I got married. Once, my husband and I were discussing my bisexuality and he said, “Well, that doesn’t really matter now because you’re with me.” and I took great offense to that. To me, that’s like saying, “Well, I’m right-handed, but since we’re all using computers to write these days, it doesn’t really matter.” because it does. Being right-handed AND attracted to both genders are both part of my identity, whether or not I put those to use everysingleday. The whole idea of it made me feel like someone was trying to discredit a part of my identity just because I’m not implementing it at the moment and that felt wrong to me… I didn’t stop finding women attractive just because I legally committed myself to a monogamous relationship with a man, the same way I don’t stop reading/loving “Peanuts” just because Charles Schulz is dead.

Anyway, the important thing here is that I have stopped hating women when I have crushes on them, which is really liberating and healing and, frankly, way more fun than the alternative. That being said, I still don’t know how to handle myself around beautiful women who acknowledge me fondly (this became screamingly apparent last year at Burning Man, when unrealistically gorgeous human beings would reduce me to low, rumbling, staggered chuckles simply by making eye contact and holding it while smiling/passing me a hookah tube/dancing with me/making a joke/touching me in any forum/offering me fresh produce, etc. I spent the whole week drooling and muttering “Huhhuhhuh…” in response to half the people I encountered for this very reason.)

But at least I don’t have the knee-jerk reaction to hate someone just because she’s beautiful and/or likable, which I believe may put me ahead of the curve. Honestly, when it’s all said and done, I’d rather be an awkward, pervy, socially-inept weirdo than a stereotypical, catty woman who hates the beauty in other women because of her own messed up psyche. Seriously, sign me up for the Creepily-Leering Dykes League over the latter any day.

* This isn’t me actually “coming out” so much as just a story of my relationship with femininity and this recent epiphany I had about hating certain people in the past. I don’t really believe in “coming out” and I look forward to the day when nobody has to because nobody gives a crap who or how other people are loving/screwing/whatevering.

I hate Adam Levine. Not because I loathe his music (although I do) or I think his band is overrated (again, I do), but because that sonofabitch has looked dead into the eye of an interviewer and, without so much as a hint of irony, stated, “I believe Maroon 5 is the greatest band in the world.” And instead of being laughed out of the industry, he turned around and had even more millions of fans support such a ridiculous statement that completely validated this delusion that he happily resides within and effing profits from. What a jackass.

But honestly, I kind of want that. I want to be so full of myself and so fully subscribed to this delusional myth of myself that I just hurl myself forward, so convinced of my own greatness that I just arrogantly laugh at those who would dare to question me. And I want to be able to do all this and actually be successful solely because of it.

That’s the thing. We all know those completely delusional people who believe themselves to be brilliantly talented musicians or actors or whatever who are simply audacious in their grandeur self-proclamations of greatness who, really, aren’t that good. They may be “talented” in that they can play an instrument or recite lines, but they aren’t actually creating anything new and different that would render them an “artist”. Nevertheless, they plow forward with their juvenile, inflated sense of their own self importance, brushing off those of us who think they’re insane and pompous and holding themselves with what can never be confused with simple humble confidence. It’s gross.

But the woooorst part is when those idiots go on and somehow become wildly successful and have all these legions of people who stand behind them and go “Yes! Yes you ARE the greatest artist/architect/singer/model this world has ever seen!” and, thus, they find vindication for their mentality and success. And, because art is totally subjective, who am I to argue with the bazillions of fans who are busy convincing Adam Levine or Avril Lavigne (heh, they rhyme) or Nickelback or Creed or Limp Biskit or Amy Poehler or Slipknot or Flo Rida or Scarlett Johansson or Kid Rock or Jimmy Fallon that all their arrogance wasn’t for naught? These people, in all their egomaniacal bliss, have been given exactly what they wanted, all from being delusional.

And, even though it’s really annoying to be around one of those types of pretentious douchenozzles, there’s a part of me that really really wants their ability. I want the ability to convince myself that I’m undeniably awesome and that everyone who thinks otherwise is just socially, intellectually stunted and “One day they’ll see! One day they’ll appreciate me for the great forward-thinking genius I really am!” and just plow forward in my convictions. And even if I never find success with my apparent genius, then I will live happily in the assumption that I’m a real bohemian who is before my time and will only be revered in my postmortem career.

God, wouldn’t that be nice? Just to eliminate all that doubt and fear with a genuine sense of insane arrogance? It would get rid of all that time I waste on hesitation and kicking myself when I get rejected and really just pave new paths for me. I mean, even if people effing hate being around me and my Kanye-esque mentality (not behavior) there are bound to be sheeplike people who will totally buy whatever I’m saying and believing because that’s just what people do when there’s someone out there who’s completely convinced of their own awesomeness, even if that idol has no effing idea what they’re doing. (Oprah, anyone?) And with that diva-like (HAAATE that word) egomania, I’ll become this great self-fulfilling prophesy, able to convince others that they SHOULD think I’m awesome or else they’re just a bunch of morons with no taste. What an incredible trait/ability/feat.

The problem with that is that it’d be a lie for me and I’d feel like I was playing a part. I know I’d constantly be going “Why are these people listening to me? Do they have no minds from which to draw their own conclusions?” and then I’d start resenting my fans for being sheep… but not as much as I’d hate myself for feeling like my entire professional persona is just a big lie that doesn’t represent who I really am, and what kind of life is that?

So, I’ll keep trudging along in this hyper-self-conscious/aware creative process I’ve set out for myself and I’ll continue to spend weeks talking myself into submitting work that my friends have told me is really pretty good. Because at least that’s who I am and how I feel most comfortable functioning. At least from that point I can write from some sense of genuine self-actualization without having to create some self-inflated alter ego to speak for me.

I dunno, maybe I’ll at least make an effort to not immediately assume those who give me positive feedback are just being nice or have no idea what they’re talking about…
Baby steps.

I am severely, noticeably awkward.
And not in a way I know how to classify.

A lot of people say that about themselves, mostly because “awkward” has somewhat become a trendy form of humor these days like in “The Office” with the painfully social ineptitude of those characters or the bumbling awkwardness of Lemon on “30 Rock.” In this new post-technological society where nerds are ruling the world, “awkward” has suddenly become a mainstream form of “genius” entertainment, bringing back styles similar to those created by Andy Kaufman.

There’s the cool awkward where a cute girl is klutzy or emotionally crippled in some adorable, faux-needy way.
I’m not that.

Then there’s the “nerd” awkward where the social ineptitude leaks over from adolescence into the real world and LARPers and Trekkies still think it’s important to violently argue about Asimov’s theories. (By the way, it’s weird how geeks across the planet have the same awkward speech cadences and ticks, or how they have identical gestures or facial quirks… it’s like a gene.)

That’s not me, either.

There’s the random-humor-and-obscure-loser-reference awkward that Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island guys like to play with.

Not me.

And then the painfully-insecure-overcompensating-Michael-Scott-epic-fail type of awkward.

Ehh… Used to be me. Then I stopped drinking, so not so much anymore.

And there are countless other subcategories that aren’t really publicly illustrated but are definitely noticeable to the average person. There’s the fat-girl-lost-a-lot-of-weight-and-doesn’t-know-she’s-hot-so-still-acting-self-loathing-and-sell-outty awkward. There’s the 40-year-old-math-teacher-divorcee-trying-to-reclaim-her-youth awkward. There’s obligatory-creepy-lecherous-perv awkward. There’s the-gay-guy-trying-to-cling-onto-the-coatrack-in-the-closet-even-though-everyone-KNOWS awkward. The list could go on forever.

Again, none of these are my type of awkward.

I’ve known about my type of awkward since I was little and started listening to my deeper-than-everyone voice on my parents’ tape recorder. I noticed that my cheeks encompassed a majority of my face and the corners of my mouth stick together when I’m talking, which has caused more than one person to remark, “You remind me a lot of Melissa Joan Hart.” (…awesome…) My nose spreads endlessly across my face like a tribute to Bill Cosby, my arms have always looked like turkey legs even at the peak of my weight-training regimen, I have more facial hair than anyone who isn’t Italian should legally have and for whatever reason, I’ve always been at the very least a leeeetle heavier than my doctor says I should be.

And that’s just the physical stuff. I literally can’t leave any social situation without having at least one moment I look back on and think, “Why in the hell did I do/say/wear that?! What the eff is wrong with me!?” Fortunately, these actions are never part of a major disagreement or conflict (God blesses me with good judgment and the ability to only say what I mean during those moments) but the other 96% of my life is fair game for my social uselessness. Actually, the only place I don’t immediately flinch at my actions in retrospect is in text and I accredit that to my ability to edit. This same questioning-of-actions is constant and is heightened when I revisit old performances or photos or memories of defunct relationships or any era when I was really reeeeaally dysfunctional and/or inebriated. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of forehead slapping involved in my self-analysis.

And honestly? Yes, I am always amazed that I’m able to have/keep better-than-amazing friends and even more amazed that I’ve ever been able to trick anyone into finding me attractive. That’s the truth.

Don’t get me wrong here. When I say that I’m awkward, this is not me being self-depreciative or loathing, if you can believe that. I’m not saying I’m socially inept or incapable of any sort of productive, enjoyable existence. And I’m definitely not saying that I don’t have any redeeming qualities about myself, physically or otherwise. I’m really just saying that even after spending years upon years watching myself and finding that, even after years of therapy and tankerloads of introspection, the Awkward is the one thing that remains constant. It’s mine to keep, apparently.

The problem with having recognized my awkwardness is that, unlike performers like Rachel Dratch or Chris Farley who seized their awkwardness and entertained the masses with it, I have no idea how to make any of my Awkward appealing or humorous… or if it’s even possible. At all.

Even though I worked a lot of the “Who am I?”s and the “What the hell is going on with me?”s out in my younger years, I’ve come to realize that I still waste a LOT of time grappling with this ongoing resistance to the ultimate notion that I’m a bit left of center. I still play dress up and take pictures of myself to try to convince myself that I’m extraordinarily attractive when really, even the one usable photo out of every 200 that I take is only satisfactory. I still fling as much of myself “out there” as I possibly can even if I have absolutely nothing informed or relevant to bring to any table at which I may be aiming. I recognize that I did a lot more of that in my adolescence, which is really strange considering how much I haaated myself. You would think that someone who was completely convinced she was a hideous moron would hide under a rock but for some reason, I still enjoyed being a bit rogue and outspoken when I could… I know; it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.

Now, though, I don’t have all the disgust and hate for myself that trails around with me through all my actions, so I’m really just looking at myself objectively. I’m awkward, not ever going to fit into some battleax role, nor am I ever going to be a lusty object of desire. And, despite all my flailing idiocy, I’m 99.9% sure that I’m always going to slide into average obscurity with the rest of the masses. That’s just how it is and I’ve become happy with that. (And yes, for the record, I do blame this celebrity-crazed society of ours for trying to convince everyone that if they aren’t wildly famous or publicly lauded then they aren’t worthwhile. It’s all lies that I’m happy to avoid.)

However, the underlying question that keeps nagging at me after all these conclusions is simply “Where the hell does that put me?”

What does my type of Awkward qualify me for? Where would my Awkward be best utilized? How can I get that to work for me? How do I even start figuring all that out?

I was once in love with a man who exclaimed that I was quirky. Like most of his statements, his tone was nearly impossible to decipher and, after he left me, I opted to think that he saw these quirks as flaws. So, I hid these away for a few years, terrified that these same quirks would drive away other loves that crossed my paths [instead of maybe admitting that he was just a cowardly, self-servicing, calculating man without the slightest clue how to connect with humans on an emotional level because he's too busy trying to fling everything into a logical, scientific forum... No, I'm not bitter.] When I met my husband, I was petrified that my dark past, in addition to my plethora of seemingly harmless quirks, would inevitably drive him away. They didn’t. (When I tried dumping all my flaws and quirks and neuroses into his lap to try to sabotage things, he finally looked right at me and calmly stated, “You’re not going to scare me off if that’s what you’re trying to do.” This is among the higher numbers in the Top 20 Reasons I Married Him list. He’s that good.)

Since we’ve been together, I’ve started recovering these quirks and exploring them, weeding through them and seeing which actually embody my tendencies and which are unhealthy habits I could do without. Here are three that I’ve recently rediscovered about myself that I’m hanging onto:

I love driving around and looking at Christmas lights… by myself…for hours.

This personal tradition started with my father, who would always take the time for a detour on the way home from anywhere during the holiday season to look at Christmas lights. My mother never allowed any outstanding Christmas decorations and limited our household holiday decor to a tree, a wreath, and candles in the windows. Every time we passed a gaudy, overlit house, my dad would chuckle to himself and stare in childish wonder of every Griswoldian spectacle, the envy of such freedom sparkling cheerfully in his eyes. As I got older, he and I were the only ones who enjoyed driving around for hours as it seemed everyone else had someplace more important to be. Soon, we were having to schedule annual dates a week before Christmas for the exclusive purpose of looking at lights and then there were years where we never saw them together at all.

When I moved home in 2003, I found myself very very alone in my drunken insanity. I had successfully pushed all my family away from me and staring at Christmas lights seemed too intimate and a little too embarrassing to share with anyone else. For many many December evenings, I’d fill a Nalgene bottle with Bailey’s and ice, wrap up in a warm coat, find my Charlie Brown Christmas CD and take myself for a drive, often staying out for more than 3 hours, driving, smoking, singing, and crying into my chilled wassail at the beauty that surrounded me and the joy that seemed to elude me. It was dangerous and reckless and unbelievably pathetic and kinda insane in retrospect, but those nights were the highlight of that dark year. In years following this, I would sometimes “treat” myself to a night off the wagon, slowly perusing quiet neighborhoods and parking my car in front of the tackiest of houses to bask in the lights and try to immerse myself in whatever Christmas was. AGAIN, it was dangerous and reckless and unbelievably pathetic and kinda insane in retrospect, but those nights were the highlights of my darkest Decembers.*

In the time I’ve actively embraced sobriety (you know, without just telling everyone that’s what I was doing), I’ve found that I can contain my excitement for Christmas lights about as easily as I could for a surprise gift of a million bucks. I’m always grateful that sobriety has brought my family back emotionally, as they now ride with me enough to allow me to take indirect routes home to ogle the various electric expressions of holiday celebrators.

Say what you will about the ridiculous overcommercialization of Christmas and how a giant, inflatable Mickey Mouse-dressed-as-Santa has nothing to do with the “real meaning” or how computer-programmed twinkle lights are impairing society’s ability to focus on Our Lord Little Baby Jesus Christ. Nothing makes me feel more childlike than staring at the sparkling spectacles created by overzealous Christmas fans, beseeching passing cars to take a moment to crack a smile and remember joy in it’s most basic, ridiculous, aesthetic form.

Last year I took myself on my solitary drive to sing Christmas songs to the baby inside me and explain to her what this swelling joy was in the atmosphere around her. This year I cannot wait to capture her reaction as she experiences it for herself.

*I don’t advocate drunk driving and I fully acknowledge that my doing so on so many occasions was extremely selfish and wrong. Even though I was never caught and never hurt anyone, it is still something I’m very ashamed to have done so willingly and frequently.

I have a problem with false nostalgia

The fact that I’m a Memory Lane junkie is no secret. I could sit around and reminisce everysingleday with those who inevitably haven’t thought about the past in years and years. In the advent of networking sites, this habit of mine has gone into overdrive in the last few years, seeing me delving into old relationships and old scenarios that simply don’t exist anymore. Gross. Anyway, I’ve curbed my need to indulge in memory so often on a public forum (even though “The inward eye is the bliss of solitude”, you know) but I think I’ve channelled that need for nostalgia to revisiting the past that I wasn’t a part of.

Heh?

I’ve always liked looking through old photos of my family during times that wasn’t around, which I don’t think is entirely unnatural. I love looking at my parents when they were younger and going through the drawers and boxes full of cluttered photographs at my Gran’s house to obtain clues about who my family were and eventually are. I kind of become manic about it, actually, taking time every other year or so to just peruse through forgotten photos and scrapbooks for an entire day and getting lost in memories and eras that I was never a part of.

This weird desire lives on a bigger level, too, in that I love watching old movies for their social commentary and the reality that Hollywood wanted us to embody and remember about this time. Additionally, I love reading about how people lived in their day-to-day lives in the past. It feels voyeuristic, but I love learning about people’s various quirks or the things that made them outstanding or boring. I love reading about what made Lucy and Desi Arnaz actual pioneers in both comedy and television even though their show seems so silly and trite to me today. I love trying to understand the mentalities of the average person during the most tumultuous times in history and how every one of society’s heroes had normal neuroses and quirks just like the rest of us. Like that Beethoven was apparently filthy and wouldn’t leave his room in the palace for weeks, covering the walls in scribbled music and covering his floors in rotting food and feces. (The royal administration would move him to a different studio each month to clean and air out the old one.) Or that Juliette Gordon Lowe dragged Rudyard Kipling out of a party she deemed as boring to go fishing in their formal wear.

A couple years ago, I came across an old 8mm projector and about 80 reels from a family that lived in Miami during the late 1950′s. I wanted to make a project of acquiring clues from the videos and eventually finding the family that would know those involved in the film, but this massive undertaking only lasted a few months before I became distracted by outside influences. However, while I still plan to eventually find the family eventually, I’ve found that I love watching these reels to peer into the past of a genuinely average mid-century American family. It’s amazing how they all look exactly like all the fake reels that cinema and television have recreated in the years since this era and I delight at watching women leave the house in pearls, dresses, hats and gloves and tinsel-covered Christmas mornings and burly men wearing short shorts and heavily-gelled hair while smoking a cigarette next to some infant. It’s fascinating and I hate that these videos contain no sound as I’d love to hear the dialogue and language of these people as well. This voyeuristic collection of mine is by far one of the most intriguing possessions I own.

I don’t know if I enjoy looking into the past for purely voyeuristic reasons or if I’m some sort of whacked-out history buff but, either way, this is a part of myself I hope doesn’t fade. I just wish there was some sort of career I had immediate access to that would allow me to explore this further. Like being a video librarian at a massive archive. Although I’m sure I’d sit in an editing room all day waiting to hear someone say something inappropriate or laughing when someone farted. This, I feel, is the humanity that unites us all.

I need to feel like I have enough.

This one doesn’t warrant an essay, but I’ve always felt like I can’t let things run low. I have to keep my possessions stocked at all times, I have to feel like there’s enough of something when I need it. I can’t let my gas gauge get less than a half-tank full without refilling it, I can’t let any makeup or bathroom products or food supply reach anywhere near scant proportions, I can’t let the laundry go without being done for over 4 days…

I think I have a problem with dealing with the tail-end of things. I always write in notebooks until there are a few pages left and then I abandon them, I never eat the last slice of bread or Lean Cuisine in the fridge, I can’t finish one tube of toothpaste unless there’s another already laid out.

Hunh… I’m weird.