B00BUGFFGW EBOK

by Megan Boyle

  i imagined rolling down my window and saying 'what's going on guys, can i party with you guys?' and wondered what it would realistically be like to party with them. we would probably get forties and hang out in someone's basement and it would be an okay time. i almost wish i would have done that

  today i took an exam. i felt strong feelings of 'i am a piece of shit, what am i saying, who do i think i am, i don't know these answers, fuck' during the exam. i sweat a lot. probably actually got somewhere between 86-93% on it

  my phone keeps making the 'text message alert' sound but i have no new text messages

  i hope cats can't die of a catnip overdose

  the friend i have casual sex with never logged out of his account on campusfoods.com. i could potentially charge a gigantic food order to his credit card. i know i won't

  2.18.09

  sushi disgusts me most of the time but i wanted it tonight

  what i ate probably wasn't technically sushi since it didn't contain raw fish

  most people love sushi

  most men seeking women in baltimore on craigslist say they like hiking, sushi, and movies

  most women seeking women in baltimore on craigslist like posting photos of vaginas

  today i walked around my neighborhood thinking 'baltimore. baltimore. i am in baltimore. this is baltimore'

  i'm not sure how the world outside baltimore perceives baltimore

  it seems impossible to ever objectively know what other people think

  my cat acts offended when i put wasabi peas near his face

  3.01.09

  i am kind of a disgusting person

  i do not do dishes for a long time

  shrimp and green peppers are shriveling in my refrigerator

  i do not clean my cats' food dishes regularly

  they do not seem to mind

  after lying in bed for awhile i like to smell under the covers

  if i see food in the trash that looks okay i'll eat it

  i eat old food

  i haven't cleaned my toilet yet and i have lived here for four months

  i pick my nose in traffic and wipe it on the floor

  3.02.09

  i want to fall in love or something

  i want to jump off a diving board into a large vat of pudding

  and the pudding fills my mouth and nose and asshole and vagina

  and there is just a lot of pudding and i feel full of something nice

  i will spend an afternoon in the vat

  the sky will turn from blue to orange to black

  i will still be in the vat

  sometimes a nerve will twitch in my hand

  a lamp post will light the vat

  my head will be covered

  i will have a straw for breathing

  'dancing in the moonlight' by king harvest will be playing

  there might be children playing soccer on a field nearby

  3.03.09

  i slept from 5PM until 2AM

  everyone is searching for something on petfinder and craigslist

  what does everyone look like after their 'after' pictures are taken

  bacon egg and cheese english muffin

  i feel like there is about to be a bomb attack, or should be

  i told myself to write a letter to someone at 5PM but slept for nine hours instead

  i have jet lag but i haven't been on an airplane in months

  i want to be on an airplane

  my life feels hopeless

  no it doesn't, i don't know what i mean

  there must be a fire somewhere near me, it smells like burning in here, helicopters and fire trucks

  living in a cave seems appealing but realistically it would be scary

  the only way to stop complaining is to pretend you're not complaining

  there is one light on in my apartment

  i hate my existence on the internet

  inbox (0)

  salty foods would be good right now

  3.10.09

  it feels like my hair has stopped growing or something

  i have had no sleep

  i stop thinking about my purpose in life when my life is filled with 'things to do'

  i am writing things

  i am rarely on the internet

  i might change my facebook relationship status to 'in a relationship'

  i am dating a man who is skinny but used to weigh 350 pounds

  he responded to a craigslist ad i posted

  i wish you could take a 'plan b' pill for after you eat a lot of organic cheese puffs and your stomach hurts and you don't want to be fat tomorrow

  i have to buy 'plan b' pills tomorrow because it's right before my period, i heard that's when girls are the most 'fertile,' and there were no condoms

  3.11.09

  i have a midterm for history and systems of psychology in two hours and i have not studied

  the study guide says 'the wise student will take time to prepare written answers to all these study questions and then study for them. prepare carefully'

  most psychologists/philosophers we've learned about have experienced severe depressions, attempted suicide, were considered 'freaks' or 'insane' by their peers, locked themselves in their rooms, felt socially isolated, were either celibate or extremely promiscuous, and rarely found 'love'

  most of them took a long time to finish school, dropped out of school, or never went to school and taught themselves

  edward titchener trained people called 're-agents' to do his version of introspecting which consisted of writing every thought they had, then assigning a positive or negative value to each thought based on how they remembered experiencing it. he was severely depressed. his brain is preserved in a jar at cornell university right now

  john stuart mill knew several languages, advanced math, and read many 'great books' before he was ten years old. his father taught him. in his early twenties he had a nervous breakdown and didn't leave his bed for three years. he read poetry and started to feel better. he was a feminist and cared about human rights. five people went to his funeral

  knowing these things makes it hard to study for a test in this class

  i feel like i would get along with a lot of these early psychologists

  my backpack broke and i am ingesting a lot of caffeine. i sat in a cafe for awhile writing 'i am so fucked' over and over in the margins of the notes i told myself to memorize

  3.21.09

  i'm reading 'the end of the story' by lydia davis. in my head the main character's romantic interest physically resembles someone important in my life, and their dynamic is very similar to my last failed serious relationship. i relate to 97% of what lydia davis says, but i'm not sure if it's because we've actually had similar thoughts, or because her style of writing makes me think we've had similar thoughts. i think a little of both. reading this book gives me thoughts like 'ohhh,' 'a-ha,' and 'yes, very similar to me'

  i was feeding my cats cheez-its and one cat threw up a little on my leg. now he's licking his crotch

  the other night i had four cups of wine, one gin and tonic, one 'red headed slut,' and two beers. then i threw up and felt better and drank another beer. this was over the course of probably four or five hours. seeing that written down feels bad. i feel excessive. i feel compelled to say 'this doesn't happen often'

  a girl aggressively hit on me that night. i was with three people. the bar was closing, so we left. outside, a crowd of people stood smoking cigarettes, probably wondering what was going to happen next

  a girl standing close to the door was alone and had a worried look on her face. i was drunk enough to approach her and ask if she was okay. she asked if i could walk her home because she was 'really drunk' and nervous about walking alone. she lived three blocks away. the three people i was with said we could walk her home

  the girl walked next to me and i asked about her job and housing arrangements or something. she answered my questions, then said i was 'gorgeous,' asked if i was bi, i
f i thought she was pretty, and if i wanted to hook up with her. i said i wasn't sure of my sexual orientation but she seemed too drunk and would probably regret most things she was saying. she kept telling me i was 'gorgeous' and that she really wanted to 'hook up' with me, and maybe more explicit things. i'm not sure what i said to her

  someone in the group noticed i was uncomfortable and stopped walking. then i stopped walking. then the girl stopped walking. someone said something about going to my apartment. i felt confused and probably said 'well,' 'i mean,' 'i don't know,' and 'what do you think, what are you doing' a lot. this probably happened over a period of two minutes, but it felt like maybe ten or fifteen to me. the girl wanted to come to my apartment. i said that would be okay, but someone else had a reason why that was not okay. the girl walked away angrily. i said 'okay bye'

  i was probably 75% drunk at this point. i was drunk enough to talk to strangers but sober enough to decline a sexual proposition

  after the girl left, we all wanted to eat something. i said i wanted pizza. my friend val also wanted pizza. a tall guy said he hated pizza. i have met people who don't eat pizza because it contains cheese or sometimes meat, but never because they don't like the taste. i told him this in a very loud voice and said he was probably an alien. there was a period where i was mostly making exaggerated movements and saying 'WHAAAAT!' and 'oh my god' in response to things he didn't like about pizza

  we started 'play-fighting.' he pushed me and i fell and skinned my knee and tops of my feet and was bleeding a lot. he picked me up and apologized sincerely. we were all laughing

  other things happened. there was a car and we got lost and were going to go to a korean place and then a diner and then i forget. we ended up at a deli in my old neighborhood and bought falafel. the deli employees remembered me. they speak with thick middle eastern accents and sometimes i can't understand them. i smile and shrug at them a lot. i think we like each other. i like them, anyway

  one person left and there were just three of us. we sat in my living room and ate our falafel. no one said much. i finished my falafel and went to sleep. it was around 5AM. the tall guy and val stayed awake and had a 'relationship altering talk' on my couch

  it was a good night. other things happened. those were the most notable. my cat is now 'spooning' my leg

  3.29.09

  life without the internet

  i would be moderately overweight and probably would have graduated college on time

  i would talk to more people and spend less time analyzing conversations

  i would have higher self-esteem but feel less inclined to question my purpose in life

  i don't know how many boyfriends i would have had, but definitely wouldn't have had one in particular

  i might get pleasure out of telling myself i was addicted to something

  i would write sci-fi stories about the apocalypse or cat-faced humans

  maybe i would be happier if i had unlimited resources and lived something like tom clancy's life

  but i don't want to be tom clancy

  tom clancy probably wears a baseball hat when he has sex

  people who own tom clancy books might sometimes accidentally see his name on a book while they're having sex

  that might make them like tom clancy more

  3.30.09

  my body is taking advantage of my ability to endure anything

  my cat is licking the other cat's head

  i want someone to lick my head

  i no longer wear shirts when alone

  i come home and remove all clothes but underpants

  there would be boundary issues if i did not wear underpants

  people might come over and sit where my bare ass and vagina sat three hours earlier

  ass and vagina

  i want to replace my vagina with something more practical

  but i still want to feel orgasms

  i wish i could just feel orgasms

  i would never leave my apartment

  i would have to sit in the bathtub, probably, and hold onto the edges, feeling orgasms until i died of starvation

  4.01.09

  i'm rating all ads on facebook as 'offensive' and it's making me laugh

  i took a break to look in the mirror to see if i am still attractive

  i moved my mouth from side to side to check for zits

  i raised my eyebrows high on my forehead

  the look on my face was suspicious

  i thought 'pink panther theme song'

  then laughed almost inaudibly through my nose

  laughing aloud when alone is strange

  the room is forcefully quiet afterwards

  laughing with others is somehow better

  sometimes my laugh in front of others becomes unnaturally loud, like something in my brain tripped over a volume cord

  4.03.09

  looking at the internet for more than ten minutes is the same thing as looking at the internet for three days straight

  i briefly felt compelled to write an epic poem about snack foods

  3-7 seconds later i realized this was a terrible idea

  i don't know where this idea came from

  i am in a race with myself to see how fast i can go from one website to the next. when i do this i feel like i am actually 'surfing the web,' then think about the phrase 'surfing the web' and kind of shake my head at myself without moving

  some moments are not meaningful at all

  'meaningful' is not the right word and neither is 'introspective,' it's a word that exists between those words

  i think some moments exist to be simple sentences that don't necessarily have a greater purpose than to be exactly what they are

  i think most animals experience life in simple sentences and most people do not. or maybe they do. it depends. i don't know. i am done thinking about this

  4.06.09

  i just felt a distinct urge to delete this entire blog and every presence of myself on the internet

  that urge was replaced four seconds later by an awareness of extreme tiredness, and an awareness of the smell of cigarette butts

  i am at my friend's house

  she smokes. i haven't smoked for three weeks, maybe more. not because i want to live longer or avoid cancer, i just realized how much i dislike the social encounter of asking for cigarettes, showing identification, possibly having small talk about cigarette brands or possibly feeling 'judged' by the cashier

  i stole candy from the bulk aisles at the grocery store today. i feel okay about it

  i thought if security caught me, they would either arrest me or ask me to spit it out, and both of those things would be funny to me, so i felt confident eating the candy while walking around the store

  no one seemed to notice what i was doing but i still tried to create a diversion by coughing

  5.09.09

  productive tasks of the day, in order:

  —woke at 9:05AM without an alarm

  —checked email, facebook, twitter, statcounter, edited things, responded to emails

  —watered plants, fed cats, ate a banana

  —wiped fingerprints off macbook, put face close to the screen to make sure i was being thorough, felt puzzled by small white dots that don't appear to be coming off, never seen them before

  —looked in mirror to see if i looked noticeably fatter from eating chipotle yesterday, kind of looked a little fatter

  —responded to text messages, sent text messages to be responded to by other people, didn't respond to one text message on purpose, felt spiteful and confused and unexpectedly sad and betrayed a little, wondered if i will ever respond to that text message

  unproductive tasks of the day, in order:

  —unsuccessfully tried to go back to sleep

  —laid in bed conscious of time passing at a slower than normal rate, looked at objects in my room, tried to feel satisfied but mostly felt 'i need to clean'

  —felt my face for zits to pick at, none really, mild dis
appointment

  —tried to mentally reconstruct the physical sensation of being kissed, via memories of good kisses i've had

  —realistically imagined showering

  —realistically imagined outfits i could wear today

  —realistically imagined going to a party tonight

  —realistically imagined getting an iced coffee and going to the library to do research for a paper

  —attempted to realistically imagine what my paper will contain but felt panicked and unable, tried to construct a productivity timeline to ensure i will complete the paper by monday at 2PM, failed at constructing productivity timeline, updated blog

  5.19.09

  i went to new york for the first time

  i missed my bus, so i drove

  i listened to 90's emo music and current hip hop music

  when i arrived i was dehydrated

  i was in my car in brooklyn somewhere

  there was a red light so i stopped and so did the car next to me

  a light-skinned black guy rolled down his window and gestured for me to roll mine down

  there were maybe three guys in his car i think

  i rolled my window down

  he said 'i think you gorgeous' and licked his lips

  i could tell he wanted me to notice his lips

  i said 'hahahahahaha' and was smiling and didn't know what to say

  i think i said 'thank you, that's nice of you to say'

  he said 'where you finna go?'

  i said 'i'm going to the bell house'

  he said 'where you finna go? you wanna get money?'

  the light turned green

  i gestured 'no' and rolled up my window, still smiling and laughing

  i drove away waving at him

  6.12.09

  i can't stop using my tongue to feel my chipped tooth