2003-04-19 - 5:00 p.m.

I woke up Wednesday morning without an agenda. I do know one thing though; I was going to try to destroy myself – just enough to call it an adventure. I feel the most alive when I know that I am dying.

On Wednesday I couldn’t find anyone I know on the Quad. I could have just introduced myself to someone, but I didn’t feel like it. So I went and signed up to be a volunteer at KDVS. As always they were disorganized. The girl that I talked to, Theresa, came clean on their disorganization. At least they are honest. Honest and lost down in a basement with more music than a person can listen to in a lifetime all at their finger tips.

I’m given a tour and shown some forms. I really don’t know what Theresa is talking about half the time. She uses jargon that I don’t know, but one day I too can be pompous DJ with a smile. I’m not saying that she is, I’m just saying that one day I’ll arrogantly be able to follow one of the jargon filled conversations.

I went up to get something to eat. I also signed up to have A Write Club performance on the quad. I went over to put a plug in the pager for Write Club. I ran into Fitz Vo – he said that he read my letter about Zach’s column. Then he hurries off – I think Fitz is afraid of me.

I run into Aisha at the M.U. We watch some Persian dancers and then sit down on the Quad. She says that I can’t talk to her because she has to do schoolwork. I keep my mouth shut but if she talks to me then she can’t blame me for talking to her. She doesn’t get much schoolwork done.

I see a girl on the quad that I went to church with a dozen years ago. I go over and ask her her name and we talk for about 10 minutes. She didn’t press me about my church attendance because she hasn’t been going herself. Good. Dependence on God is a weakness that people need to break the habit of.

I go back down to KDVS at 2 and start to volunteer. I ask what can I do to help. I see Jordan and this punk rock girl Stephanie. They invite me to sit-down with them and put together "premium packages." What the fuck are those. Exactly, see what I mean about jargon? They are tying CDs together that they will give away during their fundraiser next week. I look through all these boxes of CDs. I have heard of 10% of it and have heard a song by one of the bands from 1%. They know about nearly all of it though. I tell them that I don’t have a clue. I look at the metal section and I know a lot of those bands. But I’m not allowed to fuck with those CDs because only Metal Gina and Paul Wilbur can fuck with those. Whatever – then I’ll waste hours away in ignorance.

They are so elitist there. It’s like an old boys club. It is all about making the new people suffer. It’s more of a subtle suffering but they want me to know that I am a bitch. KDVS is the punk rock fraternity. I don’t want to spin records on the airwaves. I don’t want to prove to the world that the music that I like can validate me as a person so everyone has to like it. Fuck it. Music is like religion; you don’t have to force it on other people just to make you feel better about yourself. If no one knows about your favorite band, go ahead and tell people, but KDVS so is pompous about their music. They think that every top 40-radio artist sucks. Yes, like the Beatles and Marvin Gaye – they all suck.

I spend 2 hours putting together these packages. Scaring the people around me by going on rants about how I don’t like happy people.

At one point they really just want me to know that I have to do what they say when they tell me to get tape and hang up the posters they want on the walls. Like the decoration of the place is so important. They point to exactly where they want it and say put it up. I know it sounds like no big deal but I can’t replicate the tone.

At around 5 pm I was done. I couldn’t go on. I have to volunteer for 40 hours to get a show. I should be so lucky to only have to endure 40 hours of purgatory. Dr. Andy shows up right before 5 because he hosts a show then. I had sent him an e-mail asking him if I could be a guest on his show to promote Write Club. He just told me to have a seat and I could be on the whole show. I chose a W. H. Auden poem for him to play. He said he had to do a phone interview but I said hello at the top pf the show and I talked to him during the short breaks. I essentially was the co-host. People have to volunteer for all this time to get on the radio. It was my first day and I was already sitting in on a show. People were passing by looking at the booth and mumbling, "isn’t it that guys first day." Yes it is you arrogant pricks. And who is on the radio?

Dr. Andy is a genuinely nice guy and we talk about my influences and what not. He interviews me on the air. I plug writeclub.net I don’t know how many times. After the show I go to the computer lab and 30 people clicked onto the website while I was on the air. Great. I also got e-mails from people. My friend Gina, the best friend of Jenny – the girl that I wanted so bad for a while, I still want her bad, but now I’m not so pathetic. Aisha did do me a favor in distracting me to put some sense into me. But I have to pursue someone. Well, not just someone – several people. But rejection is inevitable. One day though, a woman will forget to reject me, and then I’ll wake up the next morning with her.

I also got an e-mail from Zachary Amendt. The guy I wrote the letter about. He’s a decent guy. I disagree with him, but I would have no problem shaking his hand.

I run into Dan and we go over to Delta Venus. We buy some beer and critique it. I buy some satanic Canadian beer (because all Canadians are Satanists) called Maundite.

We wait for people to show up and Chris and Theresa do. But the crowd is very thin. The performances go fast. This neurotic guy named Gary plays a few good songs. The kid named Jessie butchers the idea of music by sitting at a microphone. He’s too nice of a guy for people to tell him that he sucks though. I pity him. Everyone laughs behind his back and calls him a friend to his face.

Dan gets called and he reads an epic poem and his father. I go up and read the two poems that were in Exposed 2. I also read my Picnic day poem. People liked that one but Chris pointed out that my delivery was better when I was drunk (and everyone else was drunk.)

We hang out until it is over. As I walk out with Chris Gary tries to have a conversation with me. He is desperate. He asks if I think it will rain tomorrow. I tell him that I don’t know and if I did then I couldn’t do anything about it. He laughs and I walk away. Chris and I go toward his car. He runs into his friend Melanie and we help her carry some boxes inside of her place. I’m introduced to her and her roommate Jenn. We convince Chris to have a keg at his birthday. She busts out with a 5 spot, so so do I. We give it to Chris and now he has to.

Chris and I go back to his place and pick up booze. We drive to Kristin’s because we haven’t hung out with her in a while. She is sleeping. It not even 11. Whatever. We go back to Chris’ and call people. We walk over to his neighbors looking for someone to drink with.

Dan calls and he comes over. We finish a few brews, a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bongload of weed. We talk about a shit load of stuff. About Faith at Delta, how seems to like the poets. I’m a poet – maybe I’ll give her a try. But she is far too beautiful for me. I still have to try. We talk about Aisha and the two of them agree that it is good that I know she isn’t going to date me. It’s good that I’m not dating her. Chris doesn’t like Aisha because she fucked with is lizard in his car. No one fucks with Chris’ lizard. It hung in the same place on a window for 5 years until she messed with it one drunken night. Chris holds a grudge. I say I’ll still be friends with her but I know now that Aisha and I could never date. We then start walking the streets of Davis. We go to Safeway to buy more booze. We buy some Vodka right before 2 Am.

We walk back to Chris’ place. Once there we talk more about women. That is all we talk about, but what do you except. Only one out of the three men in the room are getting pussy. Chris and I are still working on being closers. Because its easy to approach a woman and start talking to her. Her even a date is possible on occasion. I can’t remember the last real date that I have been on. Society doesn’t let me be one on one with a woman. We all smoke some more pot. We start to wander around more. We walk up the greenbelts a little bit. We end up back at Safeway. We Dumpster dive in the BlockBuster trash can but all we get is some socks from the shoe store around the corner.

In Safeway we want more booze. Our goal is to stay awake and drink all night. Why? Why not? We decide on wine. We’ve had beer, we’ve had distilled beverages, now lets round it all out. It’s 5:55 so we have to wait until 6am before we can buy alcohol. We steal some Pringles and munch on them while we criticize popular culture by way of its magazine covers.

Then we buy the wine and walk back to Chris place. We watch the war on TV. Chris believes that the one thing everyone can agree on is that explosions are cool. Look at fireworks. Everybody likes fireworks.

I doze off for a second here or there but we keep getting up and walking around. I have a mid term for viticulture at 10:30 so we walk to campus. We stumble around the bookstore so I can buy a scantron and we stop by the art building because Dan needs to develop film. Chris isn’t attending classes this quarter. He just comes to campus to look at Women, but all college men are really Women’s Studies majors.

The test I take is crazy. Everything is so specific. I didn’t study, but its viticulture and I did have wine in my belly. Genius by osmosis. My friend Sarah agrees that it was a crazy test. We walk over to get some food. She talks about the schools anti-Semitism. I say what do you expect, our chancellor’s name is vanderhoff.

I go to poetry and can barely stay awake. I keep swaying back and forth. My neck muscles going limb in spastic intervals. The people sitting around me are giving me awkward looks.

After class a girl approaches me about the Letter I wrote that appeared in the Aggie. I talked about yellow ribbons and how I didn’t know what it meant. Her "ex"boyfriend is in Iraq right now so she tells me that it is for supporting the troops. How the fuck am I supposed to know. Am I supposed to keep a card in my wallet telling me what every ribbon color means? This girl is still totally caught up on this guy. I sat next to her one day and she kept checking her phone because he said that he was going to call her as soon as he landed in Iraq. She checks her phone every 3 minutes. Ex-boyfriend, yeah right.

I need to wash my hands so I go to the M. U. in-between classes. I don’t know how I did it but I covered my left hand in gunk. I’m unaccountable because I’m drunk.

I run into Chris and Dan and Jessica and I can’t remember her name. We sit and talk. I skip my Mexican American history Class because I’ll just fall asleep. I talk to them about my theory on choosing your fetish. I usually suggest something disgusting, like dead bodies, but today I’m nice. I say that it would be brilliant to teach yourself to be sexually attracted to tables. They’re everywhere and if you rest your hands or head on them they don’t complain. You can’t rape an inanimate object.

Then we all sit on the grass. I’m going to go to Hemmingway but we all run into Lisa and Vickie. Aisha also shows up but she is rather quite. I don’t know why, maybe because I wasn’t giving her much attention. She’ll deny it but she loves attention. Because she still thinks I want to fuck her.

Lisa and Vickie sit down and the five of us talk about the House we’re going to live in. We all decide (except for Vickie) to go visit it so we go to my car because no one else has a car nearby. Thankfully I stopped drinking at around 9 am. But I did have one or two sips of the Vodka that Chris and Dan had. Equivalent to a beer. Legally speaking I was able to drive, but I was very tired. I had to clean out my car to fit the passengers in there.

We go to Lisa and make a phone call. The house we want is gone. We go through the ads looking for others. We were so hopeful of the other house. It was on Diablo Street, it was to be called the pentagram. Or other house could be called the Pentagram though because we’ll still have five people.

At one point I say hat if things get really bad and we can’t find a place then I’ll curl up in a ball and crawl into the vagina of a really fat woman. It’s warm and self-cleaning. Lisa points out the once month havoc. I say that fumigation is necessary. Then I say that we could live on Russel at the empty lot between the Greek house. We could make money for making organic beer. I could walk up and down the streets with a bucket and a bag of q-tips asking sorority houses if anyone has a yeast infection. This is my kind of disgusting. This is what I think of when I don’t sleep. I’m fucked in the head.

I go to my discussion class at 5 PM. Now in a lot of classes I'm in - I'm the load guy. But I like to do it in discussion sessions because I like to frighten people on a more personal level. When there's only 20 people in a room, in theory, I could hide a gun on my body that has enough bullet capacity to kill everyone in the room. So when I say crazy things directly looking at people it scares the shit out of some of them. this last Thursday this girl said that she was having a really good day. I asked her why she thinks that she deserves to have a good day. The whole class looks our way because that is a crazy question to ask. She says why she had a good day. But I asked her why she thinks she deserves to have a good day. Why should she? So many people have horrible days and here she is flaunting her good one. It’s rude. Then I start talking about all things being even. When someone has a good day, someone else has a bad one. When someone smiles, someone else frown. When two people share an orgasm, two other people spend a lonely night alone and apart from the world. So when I see people laughing I hit them in the face and yell, "Why are making people miserable." My class at this point thinks I'm crazy. I didn't sleep the night before. One person asks if I've been drinking. I actually had been. My last drink was at 2:30 because I had a friend with a bottle of Vodka. I tell people that I'm a practicing Alcoholic. they don't know how to take that. then I say that I know the booze is killing me. I feel my liver cringing. But I feel the most alive when i know that i'm dying. My class is freaked out. But this one girl, Katelyn – the good day girl, is unfazed and says that I sound like the lyrics from a third eye blind song. "I never felt so much alive." I then get really fucking wound up and get about a death into a diatribe when the T.A. breaks it up. The T.A. knows me. I've talked to her at a bar and actually smoke pot at her boy friend's house. So i calm down, and we all get to talking - about poetry.

I have to continue this later because the lab is closing. Just a reminder I will be co-hosting Br. Andy’s Radio and techonogy hour on April 23rd at 5pm on KDVS 90.3.

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