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// "I Married Alanis" \\
(( 30/12/01 by Infernal anada499 ))
\) ________________________________________________________________ (/
I'm squinting and tearing up as the dark turns to boiling gray murk
to kick another chilly late-fall Ohio day into being. I'm trying once again
to wrestle my nocturnal tendencies back into the posthole of the real
world's schedule -- I'm pulling an all-nighter, fueled by the guilt of
actually having slept until eight the fuck o'clock today, missing work yet
again and waking up in a gummed-mouth stupor in sweat-clammy sheets, furious
and stiff-backed, head aching, neck sore.
Minor cataclysms like this are usually good for about six straight
hours of angry, grim-jawed work as I attempt, by sheer stomping bluster, to
eradicate the slothfulness of my oversleep by Getting Shit Done. Tonight,
the victims of my steely, work-determined gaze included a pile of dirty
dishes, now sparkling as they drip-dry, and a mountain of neglected emails.
Being self-employed means there's always work to do, so I had the bright
idea (when I passed the four o'clock mark and was still burbling with vigor
and caffeine) that I'd pull an all-nighter, open up the shop on schedule at
noon, and force myself to stay up until I collapse into a well-deserved coma
at a decent hour tomorrow night. Tonight. Whatever.
Of course, a lot can happen between four and seven, as any student of
the all-nighter is well aware. This is always the point where I convince
myself that if I go to bed RIGHT NOW, I'll happily scamper back up when the
alarm rings in four hours and get my ass in to work on time. I probably
told myself that last night, too, as I hunkered down for a quick nap that
turned into a thirteen-hour thrashfest of fucked up sex dreams and
absenteeism. Now's when I have to be strong, even though my stomach is
churning more than the cloud-stuffed sky outside, and I keep feeling like
the room is tilting when I'm sitting perfectly still, and every little tiny
aggravation irritates me to the point of a temper tantrum. I'm sure there's
a second wind in here somewhere, I just hope I get to it before I convince
myself to go lay down "for a few."
I don't focus well on the best of days, so when my mind is running on
one cylinder and I've got the internet at my disposal, it's a safe bet that
any online work I do will be perforated by long, meandering stretches of
wandering around nooks and crannies, checking out long-forgotten websites of
bands no one cares about but me, perusing the sinking fortunes of once-
promising actors and reading all kinds of people's online journals and bad
poems. This particular night, I've stumbled across the quite interesting
site of New York writer and performer Maggie Estep, who you may remember
from a couple of funnier bits from one of her spoken word albums. The radio
industry seems to lump spoken word albums in with parody songs and novelty
tunes about football teams, so Estep's more comedic rants -- "Hey Baby" and
"The Stupid Jerk I'm Obsessing Over" -- made it into a few alt playlists
when that dear, expiring format was still getting its legs under it and
leaning heavily on the "Reality Bites" soundtrack and the Nirvana
discography for support.
But the point of this tirade, if there is one, isn't about Estep's
blips on the radio chart radar. She's writing, doing readings, presumably
not washing dishes or changing stiff sheets at a HoJo to make ends meet.
She's got projects in the works, others in the pipeline, and she seems to be
living a creative, interesting life without stepping on anyone or ruining
things for others. Of course, it's her web site, so if she's torching
orphanages or tripping the blind in her spare time, she may just not be
fessing up. But you get the general idea.
This dovetails with a thought I had earlier this evening, when I
passed by a radio where a snatch of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know"
snagged my ear. I will shamefacedly admit to having a brief fling with her
debut album, having been seduced, as is my lot, by Alanis's dark hair and
eyes, and her pseudo-intellectual grunge-lite, and her wounded, it's-not-
fair-to-deny-me stance. The bit of the song I heard in passing tonight
struck me, and for the first time ever (because I am really, really slow on
the uptake) I realized how most of the bad relationships I've had in my
adult life have been, basically, with Alanis Morissette. Younger, dark-
haired, dark-eyed, waving a supposedly traumatic past around like some kind
of bullet-riddled banner (and using it as an excuse for all kinds of
dishonorable behavior in the here and now, like surviving a bad stretch of
life is some karmic Get Out Of Jail Free card), bloated with self-importance
over imagined and barely-sketched-out creative and artistic endeavors,
patently full of shit, whiny, self-absorbed to the point of delusion,
obsessed with their own needs and convinced that, due to that checkered
past, this obsession was not only acceptable but laudable.
I am not ducking any of the blame for falling for women like this.
It's the most obvious line in the pond and I bite for it every time. A
month after I've had the hook ripped from my bleeding mouth, as I revel in
hindsight at what a jackass I am, I'm out looking for another one just like
the other one, and lucky for me, there's some stamping plant around here
(smelling of stale cigarettes, condom rubber, cat box and the last-call dust
of blotted lipstick and smeared makeup) spitting them out with alarming
regularity. I amuse the latest one with post-coital tales about the last
one, sending my war stories like nonsmokers' smoke rings to gently bounce
off the ceiling tiles of her battlefield bedroom, and every year I spin
another chapter, Scheherazade writing in semen and bile, putting off that
much longer the inevitable end of another fifteen rounds with another lithe,
raccoon-eyed cauldron of faux hipness and daytime-talk-show-worthy issues.
So where are the Maggie Esteps? Am I just in the wrong town? Would
someone with her act even somewhat together linger here long enough to even
fill out a change-of-address card before kicking the cowshit off her shoes
and heading for places where people who Get Things Done hang out? Or am I
just looking in the wrong places, when I bother to look at all? I'm like a
guy in line at McDonald's griping about the lack of a good steak on the
menu.
Or is the truth a lot more mundane and less flattering than I like to
think about when I'm awake and my guard is up -- that I'm getting the women
I deserve at this point in the game? That until I can fill my own unwritten
resume with more accomplishments and less bullshit, until I give myself more
wholly to my muses and embrace a real, unequivocating, fully-realized life,
until I stop pissing my trunks in the shallow end of the pool and finally
get the nerve to leap off a couple of high dives, that I'm going to pass
right under the radar of people whose lives are meaningful? And meaningful
to whom?
Aha. There's where the bloodshot third eye finally peers. It's that
old fucking saw again, 'living well is the best revenge.' All the steps I'm
describing aren't even about impressing and attracting a soulmate, a fuck-
buddy or -- heaven forbid -- a friend. They're about making my life, and
its work, mean something to me. About scraping away the plastic and
pasteboard and getting down to the bedrock, then building something I'm
proud of, something I know in my heart the world was sorely missing, only it
just didn't know it yet. They're about using the fifty or so years I
hopefully have left to take great big bites out of life and leave monuments
in their place, testaments that will hopefully at least give someone else a
kick, if not make them take some big bites themselves.
After that, the rest may or may not take care of itself. But I'll
hopefully be too busy living my life to diddle with the intrigues of my
series of Alanises (Alani?), too uninterested to fall for their off-brand
cynicism and Hot Topic bravado. I'll be happier, and they won't miss me,
because there's an endless stream of cannon fodder where I came from waiting
to be mulched into fertilizer by their callused hearts. I was never
anything special to any of them, anyway, and I never could be, playing on
their grubby level.
I - uh - I - uh - I - uh - oughta know-ow that much by now, at least.
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