Ah, Old Memories

Flashback time! A couple of people from my past contacted me recently and sent me back in time--way, way back.

First, my grade-school crush from fourth through sixth grade, a Puerto Rican I'll call "Rita," contacted me Saturday through Classmates.com. The first flashback was just seeing that I received an e-mail from Classmates.com, which made me gasp in fear of my high school girlfriend, "Giselle," trying to get back together again because Classmates.com is how we hooked up for a one-night stand almost five years ago. Then once I realized it was Rita, I remembered how crazy I was about her. She had straight hair and Bugs Bunny teeth from first through third grade, then she transformed into a curly-haired chick with straight teeth thanks to braces and, I'm guessing, a hair salon. I remembered trying every trick in the book to get next to her, from being nice and conversing with her to lifting her skirt when she wasn't looking, but she just wasn't interested. Then I remember when I got together with Giselle in high school, and since Giselle wasn't very attractive to say the least, some folks had some rude comments toward me, including Rita, who told me that I could do much better even though she totally rejected me at every turn. As my dad eloquently put it at the time: "Is she gonna suck your dick? No? Then why is she worrying about who does?" That's my dad for you.

Rita was e-mailing me because she wanted to find people who were part of our high school's theater club, The Company. The teacher who ran The Company, lovingly called Mr. C by his disciples, is retiring, and Rita is helping to organize a send-off bash. This sent me into the second flashback in as many weeks concerning Magic Johnson's announcement that he had the AIDS virus. (The first flashback was because the 15th anniversary of the announcement came last week, and ESPN was all over it.) When Magic made the announcement in 1991, it occurred late in the afternoon on a weekday, and I happened to be at practice for the play Our Town. Mr. C actually interrupted practice to tell us of the news that had just came out. This was because he was a hoops fan and wanted to share the sad news, right? No, this was because he was a racist bastard and he wanted to gloat. The motherfucker couldn't keep the smirk off his face when he told us, "Magic had to retire because he got AIDS." He was a world-class jackoff the whole four years I knew him. A second flashback about Mr. C is that in the summer of 1992, the annual Company picnic took place near his residence along the lake, an area that I knew nothing about because I was just a poor West Side kid at the time. But some friends--not Mr. C, oh no, he never mentioned anything about a picnic to me--gave me the directions to the beach and a time to arrive there. Now, I admit that the kind of kids in The Company, the snotty, Hollywood wanna-be types, weren't people I wanted to socialize with, but there were a few people there who I wanted to see. But basically, I sat there alone the majority of the day watching the water...until Mr. C ran out of buns and, instead of disturbing the fun of one of his favorites, sent me four blocks to the nearest store to get more buns. And we were all sitting around eating at the time, so it's not like he saw me by myself and decided that I could run the errand since I wasn't doing anything. He decided that I could run the errand because, well, what other purpose would a black kid among a throng of almost all white kids serve except to run errands? In other words, he didn't tell me about the Company picnic because I really wasn't supposed to be there. I'm shocked he didn't make me run to the fieldhouse bathroom and wash my dirty hands before he served me any food. Rita said that he's not as arrogant now since he got "that grapefruit-sized tumor in his head." Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Needless to say, I'm not going to anything honoring him.

One more flashback about The Company didn't involve Mr. C, but I believe the atmosphere surrounding The Company led to this incident happening, and that's Mr. C's fault because privilege and thinking you're more deserving than others are what made The Company what it was. In 1993, Giselle and I were going to have minor roles in the production of Les Miserables (as I said in My History (4th In A Series), the tryouts for Les Mis is where Giselle and I first met), but my grades prevented me from staying in the show. Giselle stayed, though, and after the last show she, like many others, took a piece of the set as a souvenir. But a crew member, a white female, threw a fit about Giselle having the nerve to do that, and called her some choice names to her face. Giselle wasn't aware of this crew member having a problem with anyone else taking a meaningless hunk of wood, just her. And they didn't know each other, so it wasn't a personal issue, but rather an issue of Giselle not being a full-time member of the clique known as The Company, and how dare she put her filthy hands on something the clique helped build. I sure hope whoever takes over The Company isn't as much of a prick as the former leader and his cult followers.

Rita also told me of finding a couple of grade-school ex-classmates through Google. One was Shane, who was the popular jock and also mixed, so he was seen as kinda exotic-looking, and that just added to his popularity. The last I heard of him, he was a very good high-school wrestler, and I assumed he went on to some kind of athletic career. Rita says that he's a state trooper in Iowa and a born-again Christian. Somehow, that didn't surprise me, not that he was religious, but he seemed to be one of those guys always trying to do the right thing no matter what. Rita also said that she discovered Ben, who was just a wild, blond-haired free spirit kind of guy. Last I heard of him, I had called him in high school because I was going through old phone numbers, and he had taken a stereotypical black-guy style of speech, like he had a crash course in Ebonics or something. Rita said that he recently died suddenly, and that apparently he has a child due to be born. How sad. I believe his family had a history of health problems, or at least his older brother, who I think had a heart condition. What a terrible thing to have happen, to drop dead at the age of 30, and he was expecting. Wow. My flashback about Ben should tell you a lot about the kind of guy he was. This was either fifth or sixth grade, and we knew something was wrong with Ben because he had been quiet all day. Turns out he was complaining of a headache, so I think a teacher may have given him an aspirin, but it didn't help. Finally, towards the end of the day, he sits out gym class because his head is killing him, and the gym teacher decides to examine his head because he's saying that it's not an internal pain but rather something in the back of his head, but he didn't remember hitting his head recently. So the gym teacher peels back that wild mess of curly blonde hair...and discovers a safety pin sticking in the back of his head. Apparently it had been there all day. Naturally, he had no idea how it got there, nor had he thought to reach back there to see why it hurt so much. Damn, I'm gonna miss that boy. He redefined unique.

Sunday, "Laurie" shocked me by calling my cell phone. (You can search "Laurie" within my blog to read all about her.) Like all of the other women I had been chasing the last few years, I assumed she lost my number once I sent her money. But she was going through old numbers at work and found mine, and I happened to be off work Sunday to watch some football, or else she would have caught my voice-mail. Where's Laurie's mind these days? Where it always is--meaningless teasing and flirting. She asked how things were with my girlfriend, and as soon as I got finished telling her that I'd like to see her more but otherwise everything was fine, her immediate next sentence was, "You should come to Detroit." Wha?? She explained that I could get the money she owes me if I came up there, but she could easily mail me that money if she ever intended to give it back, which she doesn't. She talked about the Michigan State Fair taking place next year, which is good because she's an organizer there and she was worried about losing her job if they made cutbacks or eliminations to the Fair. I said, politely but as a brushoff since I have no intention of going, that I'm sure I'd have a good time at the Fair, and she responded, "I'd make sure we have a great time." This is what fucked me up so bad with Laurie. She didn't realize last year when she spouted her useless flirtatious lines that someone like me, desperate to be loved by anyone much less a thin, attractive blonde, would be at the starting line in a three-point stance ready for her to pull my trigger. But she never did. Three different times I had my suitcase half-packed and was looking up airfares on Priceline.com waiting for her to give me the okay. Every time she either canceled or didn't contact me at all. When I hung up Sunday, the flashbacks about her didn't last long at all because my mind is in a completely different place than it was. Laurie got off on playing the game, never intending to make good on her promises. She can't play anymore with me, though. I've declared this game over a long time ago.

Why I Will Always Be Alone

Below is an e-mail in its entirety that I just received from "Torrie."

"I absolutly can hardly believe your nerve. I am so mad at you. I have been sitting here all night trying to come up with the words to say how i feel and there just are not enough! I have two words for you and that should explain everytrhing. ..."BLOG" "TORRIE". I was cleaning out my PC, because I had a virus. And found the link you sent me around this time last year, when you wanted me to read about the Wisconsin chick. I cannot believe i fell for your sincerity, and your lies. So i am not even goiung to begin to tell you how pissed off and hurt I am. I think you have the basic skills to figure that out for yourself. So if you think even for a second that this weekend is going to happen. You are out of your damned mind!!!!!! You know someone commented on your blog about you and karen deserving each other, and after all of this i agree. You DO get what you DESERVE!!!! I am not going to waste another minute of my time on you, and just end this email now."

I had arranged a trip to Minnesota for this weekend to see Torrie again. I missed her. I realized that after I put my trust in women who didn't like me and only wanted to use me, I had ran off the one woman who never asked me for money, never tried to use me for anything, and I always enjoyed myself with her, and after everything else is factored in, the major reason anyone should spend time with anyone is because it is an enjoyable experience. The funny part is, the blog is public, and as she pointed out, I had sent her a link to it long ago, so I wasn't trying to hide anything. The plain truth is right there: This summer, after professing my love to Torrie and not receiving it back, I decided that other avenues would be better for me to pursue. And because I had no good reason to dump her, I decided to give her a cold shoulder until she got sick of it and dumped me. That's the story. There's an ugly aside to it--that I chose to pursue "Laurie" because I wanted to date a slim, blonde woman as a change of pace--but if I wasn't attracted to Torrie, I never would have agreed to come back up there to see her again. It was never about Torrie's attractiveness. She is very attractive, the most attractive woman I've ever dated in fact. I just flew off the handle once I gave her my love and didn't get it back, and I decided that I might have better luck going after this thin blonde telling me that she felt strongly for me. But that didn't work out, because Laurie and I still have never met, and even if we had, I don't know if I would have had nearly as much fun as I did seeing Torrie.

So after this summer, and after my adventures in dating recently, I contacted Torrie just as a friend, and we talked about how much we missed each other, and soon it was like I never stopped thinking about her, which, really, I haven't. She's all I've been thinking about this week, as I prepared to fly to Minneapolis Friday. I couldn't believe that I stopped seeing someone I cared about and liked being around simply because she wouldn't tell me she loved me the 3rd time she ever met me and because she wasn't slim. I was going to tell her all of that this weekend. I wasn't going to push things too fast and tell her I loved her again or anything like that, just that I really missed her and I wanted to see her again. But unless she has a major change of heart, that won't happen.

And now I'm sitting here wondering, what has happened to me? The thing is, I always grew up thinking that I would never cheat on any girlfriend I had, and let's face it, I was dumping Torrie because I wanted to cheat on her with Laurie. That would have been the 3rd time I cheated, after hooking up with "Sarah" while seeing Karen, and then spending a night with The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Unnamed while seeing Sarah. I have absolutely no rationalizations for cheating that would make sense. With Karen, the sex was bad, but the solution to that is to talk about it with her, not to get better sex elsewhere. With Sarah, the sex wasn't bad, but she was fooling around with her regulars back home in Springfield, and my self-esteem was so low at the time, I felt that I had to take advantage of being with a slut because I couldn't get anything else. But the solution to that is to not screw anyone until I get my shit together mentally, not to just screw anything to make myself feel better. And with Torrie, the sex wasn't bad and I felt as good about myself as I had in a long time. I'm getting straight As in the college classes I'm taking, I can see a future for myself, I'm starting to stand up and be a man for the first time in my life. But it was so weird. When I told her I loved her and got nothing back, it was like all the old feelings started flooding back. I'm not good enough. No one understands me or gives a fuck about me. I will always be alone, which I should get tattooed on me somwhere as much as I say it. Laurie was an outlet for my frustration, but the point is, I shouldn't have been so frustrated. Yes, no one likes to spill their guts or put their cards on the table and get no response. But there's no excuse for me feeling like Torrie was abandoning me. I'm so afraid of being abandoned that when I feel the slightest chance of it happening, I either cling on helplessly (like when Torrie dumped me the first time in March) or I wander away looking to be consoled somewhere else. And that's why I will always be alone--because I still don't understand that no one can forget about everything else to make me feel loved, and when the moment comes where she has to hesitate before she gives me her love or has to tend to something else in her life, I start feeling abandoned. So I guess I'm not standing up and being a man like I thought I was. A man deals with the people in his life straight up, as they are, and accepts things as they are. I keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off, desperately searching for someone to love me. But if I loved myself, I wouldn't have to put that pressure on everyone else.

Happy Kill-The-Injuns-Rape-Their-Women-And-Steal-Their-Land Day

CEDA is a government organization, and Columbus Day is a government holiday, so the offices are not open today, so I'm just sitting here at home watching sports highlights and wondering if those fumes from the construction next door are always that strong or if it's just my lucky day. I can't make up the missing work hours with overtime anymore, because CEDA has hired even more temp workers for an evening shift and for Saturdays and Sundays, so they made the announcement that overtime hours are no longer an option for anybody since theoretically they now have enough personnel that OT shouldn't be necessary, even if we want to do it. But OT means time and a half, so I'm not surprised that they outlawed it. Those of us in the main computer area that work the 8:30A-5P shift actually have to get up at 3:30P, when the 3:30-10 shift arrives, and move to a different area adjacent from the main area so that the new shift can all sit together. Whatever. I'm just pissed that I could have taken advantage of OT last Saturday and Sunday and chose not to because I was tired and I figured I could just do it next weekend. Now there is no more OT. Those six or seven hours at $15 per made for a nice little bonus in the regular weekly check. Oh well.

"Laurie" and I have communicated better lately, although it looks like nothing is going to happen between us for the forseeable future. She says she needs to straighten out her life first, and that she doesn't "feel it" with me right now, which I can't blame her for not feeling it after I almost hooked up on a booty call with a stranger a few weeks ago. Not much else to talk about here. She's dealing with her situations where she is, and I don't fit in her life right now. There's so much tension and nervousness in our phone conversations that I don't know if we would even make good friends right now. That could be because I can only talk to her when she's at work, since her cell phone is still not on. But since we're not getting together anytime soon, I'm not sure what we're going to talk about when she turns her phone back on. She e-mailed me telling me that she's going to be asking for my address so she can send me the money she owes me instead of having me come up there to Detroit and see her. Ouch. Nothing I can do about it, though. If she doesn't want to see me, she doesn't want to see me. She also told me that she's not stopping me from continuing with my life, meaning that I could go try to get with someone else, I suppose. But my heart's not in it. When I stopped seeing "Torrie" a couple of months ago, it was because I thought I was going to step up and build something with Laurie. Now that that's out, I don't want to go somewhere else. The thought of another relationship right now makes me sick (or is that the fumes??). The big 3-0 is looming in a couple of months. Right now, I feel like starting over and going from scratch in pretty much all aspects of my life, considering how badly I fucked up my 20s. That would mean no more internet hos, no more cross-country attempts at love, no more begging women to love me. I can easily see myself going six years without a date again, like I did from 1996 to 2002. It's not worth the aggravation, especially (most importantly, those who know me would say) if it's a situation where I don't feel good about myself and I don't feel that anyone with any respect for herself would want to date me, so I find myself dating someone that I don't like or respect. That's part of what made me go mad when "Karen" screwed me over--I felt like I was going out with a drunk, ugly, boring woman who was horrible in bed, plus she was dating me so she had no taste, but I stuck with it because she said she loved me and I wanted love so bad, but she was a lying skank all along.

I'll end this with a few words about the White Sox and their push for the pennant. I am so proud of them. I've been wearing this Sox ring that I bought after I first started working for CBOE in 1995, even though it's bent and no longer fits my ring finger because I keep getting fatter and fatter, so I'm wearing it as a pinky ring like I'm auditioning for the Sopranos or something. I've had to wash my Sox cap twice since they clinched a playoff spot a week and a half ago because I've been wearing it everywhere. I have a Sox jersey too, and it's personalized with my name and the number 00 (because I'm a big nothing), but my apartment is so messy, I can't find the damn thing. And yet I'm not bragging or talking about the Sox every second like I would be any other year. The reason? Simple: I don't feel I have the right to be yelling and screaming about them because I completely buried this team before the season began. I said they wouldn't be shit. I was very angry that they traded Carlos Lee, a powerful OF about to hit his prime, to the Brewers for a light-hitting 30-year-old guy who could run and a no-name RP for no other reason than Lee's free agent year was this year and they wanted to get rid of him before it became obvious that they were not going to pay him. I was very angry that they pretended that they couldn't re-sign Magglio Ordonez, another powerful OF who was actually their most consistent player the last five years, because the knee injury he suffered to end last season was just too questionable. A bunch of other teams were lined up with contract offers (Ordonez accepted the Detroit Tigers' offer because, with incentives, he could make more money there than with any other team), but not the Sox. Oh no, they couldn't risk signing a guy who might not recover from his injury. So who did they sign to replace him? Jermaine Dye, one of the most injury-prone players out there. But Dye's market value was very low, or, as I put it when the Sox signed him, "Do you really think Dye would sign with the Sox if there was a good team out there that actually wanted him??" And to top it off, they signed a 30-year-old Japanese guy named Tadahito Iguchi to play 2B for them. The guy had never played major league ball in his life. There's usually a big bidding war for good Japanese players that want to come to the majors, and you know if there was a bidding war, the Sox weren't going to be involved. But no one wanted the guy, so he signed with the Sox. So all of their moves this past offseason, in my opinion, were made because the price was right and they didn't want to spend the money, and that followed hiring Ozzie Guillen as their manager the year before because he had no managing experience and therefore would be cheaper than getting someone that, you know, actually managed in the majors before. I angrily responded by cursing them and vowing to not buy any tickets to any Sox games this year, which I haven't. I didn't count on their moves all actually working out. The skinny guy they traded Carlos Lee for, Scott Podsednik, led the majors in SB most of the season before his legs gave out, and he was a big-time catalyst at the top of the lineup. That offset the fact that Carlos did have the breakout season he was expected to have, making the All-Star team for the first time. This Iguchi guy seems to have a habit of hitting clutch opposite-field HRs when you least expect it, and he's a decent fielder, too. Dye shocked the world by staying healthy all year, and he had some huge hits as well. Ordonez couldn't come back from his knee injury until about a couple of months ago, making the Sox look like geniuses. And Guillen is absolutely fucking nuts, which is a good thing, because opposing managers have a hard time managing against him because they don't know what the fuck he's gonna do next. Clearly, having no experience works well for Guillen, because he can do whatever he wants whenever he wants and he doesn't have to have an answer for why he does it, just that he "had a feeling." This team really is just like the Boston Red Sox team that won the World Series last year. The Red Sox earned the nickname "The Idiots" because they didn't know why they did half the shit they did, they just knew that it worked. So who did the White Sox sweep in the first round of the playoffs this year? The Red Sox. The Idiots were swept aside by The Morons. And The Morons are too stupid to know better. They're not done yet. And while I might not be yelling about them at the top of my lungs, I am watching from afar with a great amount of Sox pride.

Why The Fuck Is Love So Complicated???

I am very lonely, and I've made several choices lately that reflect it. I'm not going to whine and cry about how unfair life is like I usually do though. I'm supposed to be a man, so I'll take the results of my actions and move on. I will say that for someone being mature and not sulking over things, I sure still feel like a big loser.

"Laurie" has been very hard to find since she canceled on me a couple of weeks ago. She said that she had major money problems and was basically bouncing between staying at her niece's house and hotels until she could find a place to live. I sent her another $50 and told her that I would be there for her. She told me that the weekend of Sep. 24, last weekend, would be ideal for me to visit because her niece would be out of town and we could use her house and boat on the lake. But every single time I tried to call her at work, she wouldn't speak for more than twenty seconds before hanging up and promising to call me that evening using the free minutes on her niece's cell phone because her phone is still cut off. (When I call Laurie's cell phone, I get the following message: "At the subscriber's request, this phone does not receive incoming calls." That's the exact same message I got when Cassandra had her phone cut off for a week because she lost it, so Laurie's phone may not be off after all, she just may not be taking calls.) But she never called me. Not at night, not on the weekends, not at all. She doesn't leave me e-mail or IMs either, although almost every day she checks in to the MSN site where we met. It's like I'm a dick on layaway, waiting to be used when she's damn good and ready.

So hell is where I've been mentally all month, wondering just what Laurie is doing up there in Detroit that she can't keep in contact with someone who has loaned her $250 but she can leave little cute messages to everyone and their mother at the MSN group. I patiently tried to wait on her, but my patience isn't as strong as I had hoped. I put a personal ad on craigslist.com the first Sunday of the NFL season a couple of weeks ago. The ad wasn't for a date or a fuckbuddy, but for someone to do what I wished I was doing with Laurie that day: Watching football while making out. It was a very specific ad, so I knew that if anyone responded, it would be an aroused female football fan, and someone finally responded two days later. "Crystal" wondered if I was for real, a guy that preferred cuddling on the couch to smoky bars while watching football, and I'm thinking, what guy wouldn't prefer that?? She lived several blocks from me, and she was chunky and white, so combined with her love of football, she was exactly what I was looking for. So my curiosity was piqued and my expectations high for the coming weekend, as well as for the Thursday night that we agreed on for a first meeting.

Predictably, she canceled. She postponed our date 45 minutes while she got ready, then she called back and told me that a friend was having domestic issues with her man and that she didn't want to abandon her in her time of need. I think she came to her senses and realized that normal men don't put out an ad to make out with a total stranger, even if watching football is the premise the man uses, and that normal women don't agree to meet those kinds of men. She left an e-mail apologizing and asking me to get in touch with her so that we could reschedule, but I haven't called her since that night. I think we're both waiting for the other to make the next move so that we don't feel like the more desperate of the two, but the fact that I put out that ad and the fact that she responded to it pretty much blows mutual respect out of the water, in my honest opinion. So we'll probably never speak again, each taking pride in not having to stoop that low for a date. I still have her phone number saved in my cell phone, but I can't imagine a circumstance where I'd dial it. Drunk dialing is not an option for me, since I never get drunk.

That leaves me still out on an island where I can't see Laurie and I have to wait for her to decide to contact the island and let me know that she still wants me in her life since I can't contact her. One problem is that I had heard from her so infrequently that I made the decision to put that personal ad out there not as a piece on the side in addition to her, but as a way of looking for a piece period. I really don't see how I could be "cheating" on Laurie since there has been no agreement of exclusive dating, simply a request by her a while ago to inform her if I do get with someone. So that's what I did. I called Laurie at work the day of my date with Crystal, and I calmly told her that I was (or so I thought) hanging out with a chick that night and watching football with her that weekend. Her response: Sort of a laughing, nervous accusation that I was fooling around behind her back. My response: Sort of a nervous, laughing denial that I had anything but honorable intentions. She actually apologized the next day through IM for thinking that I was going to get some, before she found out from me that Crystal and I didn't meet and that I didn't get any. But I'm still very, very confused. If Laurie and I are an exclusive item, she sure acts funny for someone that's supposed to be my girlfriend. I never hear from her. I can't come see her anytime I want. I was prepared to go last weekend, and I told her this as early as last Monday, but she told me that instead of the weekend that her niece's house and boat would be available to us, she would rather me come up this coming weekend because she had a chance to work overtime last weekend. If this weekend comes, and a) she gives me another excuse why I can't come, or b) I don't hear from her at all, that's about the end of my patience. For good. Crystal or any other backup plan be damned. Enough is enough.

As for the rest of my life...the job still sucks, although I'm no longer seated next to the woman with B.O., but now we are tallying our output upon orders from the vice-president every day despite a worldwide acknowledgement that the system we use slows down drastically or completely crashes every time the full number of computers is in use...the classes are going ok, I just turned in a paper for social science and breezed through a quiz for lit today...I won the Central Division for the second year in a row in the franchise mode of MVP Baseball for PlayStation2 (but I play the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs), and my Madden team started 3-0...a woman from Connecticut I've never met but I've had phone sex with a couple of times keeps calling me and telling me how much she'd like to meet me (not gonna happen)..."Torrie" told me that she needed to change things for some unknown reason, so she's now blonde...and I've at least taken advantage of not having anyone to make out and watch football with by working overtime hours the last two Saturdays. I'd like to, you know, hang out with someone who cares for me like a normal human instead of going to a place I hate immensely, but that's not an option. They relaxed a lot of their silly little rules because it's the weekend, however, so I was able to work with headphones on, and it made things much more enjoyable because I was able to do what I am very, very comfortable with doing: Isolate myself from everyone else in this cruel world and be all by myself. I'm way too used to it, but I seem to be powerless to change it.

Perspective

Short post today, I'm tired. Not only am I still adjusting to working every day, but Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday I came to work at 7A, meaning I woke up just after 5A all of those days. Showering when it's dark outside is not fun. Hell, it actually reminded me of Saturdays showering before I left the house at 5P a couple of winters ago to take a Metra train to Kenosha, WI, to date this girl named "Karen" that I was crazy about. Bad flashbacks. Not all bad, actually; we had some fun back when I thought she was an honest person, and she was the first woman I dated since becoming an adult, so that was significant. I'm rambling. Anyway, CEDA kept bouncing schedules and telling us one thing and then another, and that's why we wound up working at 7A. They told us all to come in Wednesday from 7A to 3:30P, the same eight hours that we agreed to when we were hired but at a different time. But when we showed up Wednesday, they tried to say that now they wanted us to stay until 5P, which would be a ten-hour workday. Most people stayed just to get the extra money, but I had classes Wednesday, and I was already beat, so I lied and told them that I had an appointment at school scheduled and I had to leave at 3:30 like we were told we could. Again, just the principle of the thing. I'm not agreeing to shit like staying longer hours when there's nothing in it for me. A bonus and/or a possible promotion, sure. The same bullshit payrate we're getting anyway? Fuck no. When I came back Thursday, my co-workers told me that at the end of the day Wednesday, everyone was given a choice of working 7A to 3:30P or 8:30A to 5P. Having more time after work to set up my fantasy football teams was more important than sleep, so I decided to come in at 7A yesterday. But I'm leaning towards taking the original 8:30A-5P shift next week. Waking up that early is just ungodly.

So I was sitting on the can earlier starting to feel sorry for myself again. I wasn't supposed to be home this weekend; "Laurie" targeted this weekend a while back as the weekend she would come meet me for the first time, and I was going to rent a room downtown because I'd rather not host her at my small, dingy apartment. But she told me Monday that she wouldn't be able to come because she's still having trouble finding a place to live, and her money is short again, so short that her phone has been cut off, and her father in Florida is sick and she might have to go there. She also said that I could come see her in Detroit, but if she's still staying at her niece's house in a couple of weeks, I might want to wait until then because her niece will be out of town and we could stay there on her niece's boat. She told me on IM Monday night that she would talk to her sister and niece that evening and figure out exactly what's going to happen this weekend and she would let me know. That's the last time I've heard from her, but she has been posting messages at the MSN site where we met all week, so she has computer access at her job, she just hasn't seen fit to e-mail me and let me know what the fuck is going on. So I'm feeling down, thinking that I could be there with her this weekend but I'm not, and I could be hanging out with a Mexican hottie at work that is a sports fan and loves the White Sox and wants to make football picks with me (um, can you say my dream woman???) and is single and lives not far from me, but it's up to her if she wants to hang with me because I gave her my phone number but she hasn't called, and I could be hanging out with friends but I don't have any, and I could be getting ready to go to the club tonight and find some companionship there, except I have zero confidence that I would have any success...so it's going to be another weekend all alone watching sports and getting fatter. Woe is me, cry, whimper, cry...and then a thought bubble came over my head that said, "Hey, you can catch a flight to New Orleans and see what tough living is REALLY all about." So there's a little perspective. Whatever I'm doing this weekend, it's lonely, it's pathetic...but as an alternative to being with a loved one, it's what I want to do. At least I have a choice of doing leisurely things. I don't have to pick up the pieces from a storm that ruined my life. I don't have to look for housing. I don't have to worry about not getting a paycheck due to my worksite being destroyed. I don't have to worry about my loved ones getting robbed or raped by hoodlums with no fear of police since they know the cops are busy with other tasks. I don't have to worry about the health risks of dead bodies floating in the water, contaminating everything with E.coli and other bacteria. How sad to think about what's going on down there. I've never been to New Orleans, but I worked with a couple of guys who have attended Mardi Gras, and the stories and pictures they had made me vow to experience that town just once. It sounded like New Orleans was just one big party. A sports columnist who was there when a Super Bowl took place at the Superdome with his favorite team wrote an article wondering if New Orleans would ever be the same. If it won't, boy am I sorry I missed it. Here's hoping it will, not just for the future partying tourists like me but, most importantly, for the locals whose lives were uprooted.

Livin' For The Weekend

I am very tired as I sit here typing this entry. I had forgotten how hard it is to wake up early in the morning and, instead of lounging around in the bed until the urge to use the bathroom becomes immediate, have to get up and start my day. As a result, I was technically "late" my first two days on my new job. I showed up three to five minutes after the 8:30A starting time. Of course, it has not been a big deal yet because this place is so disorganized, we did absolutely, positively NO work our first two days, then lost the second half of yesterday to a crashed computer system. All I can say is, I now understand why there was practically no interview process when I went to the agency that hired me for this job Monday. They just want warm bodies. You, the reader, could send a 4-year-old up there to bang around on the computer, and he or she would be asked if an actual paycheck would be fine or whether direct deposit would be preferred. (And the agency failed to tell me that they were charging a $1 processing fee for direct deposit--I read it on the brochure way after the fact--or else I may not have chosen that option.)

As I said, I was a few minutes late arriving for my first day Wednesday, but I caught the group of temp workers as they headed up one flight of stairs from the 19th floor, where we were told by our temp agency to come, to the 20th floor. Once there, we were led into a snazzy-looking conference room, where we sat in stone silence for about a half-hour. Someone named Janet informed us that the training materials were still being worked on and that we would start training shortly. But we would not be trained for the data entry position that we all thought we were there for.

My attempt at a brief description of what this place does: It's called CEDA, and I don't remember what it stands for, nor do I give a fuck. It's located on the 19th and 20th floors of the Federal Reserve Bank building, 208 S. LaSalle, a block and a half from CBOE, my place of employment for ten years. It's a place that gives out assistance to low-income and disabled people in Chicago. They have two programs. One is called a cooling program for people who don't want to go through a Chicago summer without power. The counter to that, the heating program, just started this past Thursday, September 1, and will last through the end of December. In both cases, people who want assistance provide proof of income, proof of Social Security numbers for everyone in the household, proof of disability if they're disabled, and a current energy bill, and those that fit whatever the requirements are receive credit directly to their People's Energy and/or Commonwealth Edison accounts. I only put the monthly income into the little boxes on the computer, I have no idea what the cutoff is as far as how much income is too much.

At least that's what my job is supposed to be. This place is tremendously understaffed, which was punctuated by the several long periods my temp group had sitting in the conference room or the lunchroom waiting for someone to come speak to us about the importance of the program, which is all they could do because, since the computers were not ready, we couldn't do any actual work. But when Janet finally finished preparing our training packets, she explained that we were being trained to do intake, which means we were being shown how to take the applications of those wanting assistance, which is not what we were hired to do. She explained that some people may be asked to do intake instead of data entry, and of the twenty or so temp workers in the conference room on Wednesday, she was even taking two of us with her to the emergency intake area, which is where people who have not paid their energy bills for so long that they have been cut off go to bitch and moan about such lovely things as why they can't get assistance because their proof of income is not acceptable. (One woman was chosen to go to emergency because she spoke some Spanish; I don't know who else was chosen, but I was doing data entry yesterday with everyone else, so thankfully it wasn't me.) Janet also explained that we had to pay attention to the intake process because we needed to know what to look for to verify the applications before we put them into the computer to be processed. That's what made up the bulk of the training packet--different examples of paychecks, Social Security proof, official income documentation...it all seemed like a lot for temp data entry workers to have to learn, and it was. We learned from other temp workers that worked there before that this was the first year that they were asking data entry clerks to verify before they entered the applications; verifiers in the past were separate workers, and the data entry clerks would receive the apps only after they had been verified. So they combined those two jobs this year to save a buck, presumably. Hey, they can't get too upset with me screwing a file up while I try to verify it; they only gave me a two-hour training session on what to look for, and not only that, but many scenarios came up yesterday when I actually received some apps to put into the computer that were not covered in the training, and it was hard to find anyone in charge to ask what to do because they were all busy running around performing other tasks. And even then, some advice from those "in charge" was different than what other people "in charge" advised.

Then there's the flak over hours. Janet, who's not really in charge of anything but was our trainer so she tried to tell us what she thought was going to be the deal, said that 8:30A to 5P sounded correct, which is what we were told by the temp agency, Smart Resources. Everyone else that spoke to us, even the vice-president, a Botox-looking blonde, said not so fast, it all depends on what kind of production was happening and what was desired. Vice-president means only one person in the whole organization is over you, right? So you should know small things, like, I don't know, what hours and days we're working. But when I asked her as late as 10A yesterday morning if we were working Monday, Labor Day, she told me that she didn't know and that there should be an answer to that question hopefully by midday. About an hour later, a woman who spoke to us Wednesday and was recognized as someone employed full-time by CEDA but who isn't really in charge of anything announced to us while we attempted to do our best to enter these boxes and boxes of apps that, according to the vice-president, we were being told to work longer hours today (Friday), until 10P(!), and that we were to come to work the next day, Saturday, from 10A to 4P, and that all of this was "mandatory." I laughed. CEDA does not employ me. Smart Resources does, and they told me 8:30A to 5P Mondays through Fridays when I was hired. I knew that I was leaving at 5P and that I wasn't showing up Saturdays, no matter what CEDA thought, and I knew that if they had a problem with it, they would have to speak to Smart Resources about it. A fellow temp worker actually called Smart Resources and confirmed over the phone that 8:30A to 5P was as long as we had to stay there. CEDA passed around two sheets of notebook paper, one for how long people were going to be able to stay Friday on such short notice, and one for how many hours people would commit to the "mandatory" Saturday workday. I put down 8:30A to 5P for myself on the Friday paper. I didn't put my name on the Saturday paper at all.

My thing was this: CEDA seemed to be so hungry for bodies that they would walk all over and ignore someone's special requests if that someone tried to be cooperative and give them extra hours. And I don't have Mondays and Wednesdays to give them because my college classes are at 5:30P on those days. So I'm not going to cooperate at all. It's the principle of the thing. They don't need to know that I had extra hours to give them yesterday and today. They appear to be the type to take advantage of the knowledge that I have no life and I have extra hours to give them. And if I allow them to take advantage of me on such short notice once or twice, then I run the risk of them assuming that I can do that for them at any time. I don't want to tell them about my school hours because then they can assume that I'll be available to them for all other hours, and that's my time to chill. I am not giving these people 60 or 70 hours a week. They don't seem to be the type to appreciate it. And because they don't employ me, I don't have to. There's countless single mothers in there as temp workers that have to run home and take care of their kids. They don't have those hours to give. But it's okay because they were irresponsible and fooled around and got knocked up, so let them go, they have to take care of the little ones. But because I'm responsible and I'm not having kids until I get married, I should suffer and take the extra hours? FUCK THAT. Pretend I'm a slut that got knocked up and I have to go home when I was told I could go home, at 5P like I agreed to when I took the damn job. Pretend that I don't have extra hours to give because my choice of a baby daddy is an asshole who was hot when I met him at the club, but he doesn't give a fuck about the kids, so I gotta run and get them at the time that I said I would because he won't. Do not punish me because I chose not to have those responsibilities until I was ready. And anyone who takes offense to that can go to hell along with their baby daddy.

The Botox blonde vice-president was not there to annouce these new hours, but the woman announcing them said that these orders came from the vice-president, which made them mandatory. She did say that Monday was a national holiday and that the place would be closed, but I just know that if the place were open it would be "mandatory" that we would be there for that as well. Whatever this woman was in charge of, she was also the person to go to in the morning and evening to sign in and out. But it was a long day for her yesterday, so long that when those of us who intended to leave at 5P lined up to sign out, she eventually yelled, "Everyone just go! I'll sign all of you out! Just go!" What would worry me about that is, if I'm staying after 5P, how can I be sure that she didn't sign me out as leaving at 5P, robbing me of my extra hours of salary? Is everyone that didn't sign out at whatever time they left going to be assumed as leaving at 5P? And if that's the case, what would have stopped me from leaving at 10A if I'm being signed out at 5P? That's the kind of place this is--poorly run, disheveled, desperately in need of people who care about such things as organization and order. As for the mandatory Saturday, literally seconds before we 5P'ers left, the skinny white woman in charge of the data entry area announced that the computer problems that resulted in no processed applications by me the last three hours I was there were going to be worked on all weekend by the programmers in downstate Springfield, and as a result, working Saturday was not only not mandatory but not an option anymore. Enjoy the three-day weekend after all. By the way, I can't label the girl in charge of the sign-in books as the tall, tattooed black girl because there are many tall, tattooed black girls working for CEDA, some of them in "supervisor" roles. Take that for what it's worth.

Some other points of interest about my new workplace:

• Someone in charge of giving all of us temp workers our own user I.D.s and passwords for when we log on to the computers took all of our names down for that purpose Thursday afternoon, but we still didn't have our own I.D.s yesterday, so we were all signing in using the I.D.s and passwords of people that were employed by CEDA but happened to be absent yesterday. I was Adam Grenier along with about four others. They better get our own I.D.s ready soon; how else will they keep up with the 100 apps that each of us is expected to process per day according to Janet?

• This goofy fat black guy who's dressed every day in shorts even though the dress code is supposed to be business casual came into the conference room late Thursday asking all of the men to volunteer to show up at 7A Friday to help move boxes. He heard Janet talk about me, Andre, being one of the men in the room, and noticing that I was big, he waddles over to me and puts his hand on my shoulder and bellows, "Well Andrew here can show up I'm sure." I looked him right in the eye and said, "I can. But I won't." That made the room chuckle. That was an easy decision for me to make. I could make a lot of money as a mover, more than the shitty $10/hr I'm getting now. But I'm not a mover. That same goofy guy was in charge of taking everyone's pic for their I.D.s a few hours earlier. Some hot girl had her pic taken right before me, and he was so busy staring her ass down as she left that he didn't even notice me line up for my pic. When he finally did look at me and my expressionless face, he lined up the shot and muttered, "There's always one." I have no idea if that was referring to the hot girl or my ugly mug, but if he was talking about me, he had absolutely no room to talk. He walked into the lunchroom where everyone had been funneled after the pics were taken and informed a white fellow temp guy that his name was illegible, and when the guy rewrote his name, the goofball checked it out and, satisfied, raised a fist and told the white guy, "Peace out" and left. I stuck up a fist and sarcastically yelled out, "Word to your mother," eliciting another laugh from the room. Yes, I'm getting a kick out of being the class clown. No, I don't like the goofball black dude.

• The men's room...what can I say. It's a motherfucking 10K run to get to it. You have to go out the door, make a left, go down a hallway that's only about 30 feet long, no biggie, then make another left and go down a hall that seems to be a city block long, and I'm not exaggerating. You also need a key from the front desk to get in, and all day yesterday, that key was missing. The women's bathroom is right outside the door. I made the walk twice yesterday without a key. What did I think was going to happen when I got there? I don't know, maybe I thought I could magically make a key appear with my mind? Maybe I hoped the door would be unlocked? Maybe since I couldn't go to the women's bathroom, I just went to the men's room with no plan whatsoever and hoped for the best? Anyway, it worked out both times. Someone with his own private key who worked for one of the other businesses on the floor happened to be standing there the first time, and he opened it for me. The second time, someone was already in there and I caught the door as he left and snuck in. The toilets are not made of gold. The building is very accessible, to be sure, but it's the 20th floor. It's not like bums are going to pass the word to go to this place on the 20th floor that has great bathrooms. Why the fuck does there have to be a lock?

At least I got some good news financially this week. My financial aid could be processed by the end of the month, meaning I could get reimbursed for my classes. That's assuming that they accept my declaration for my income this year, which did not include the severance I got from CBOE. I actually intended to show them that severance check stub and hope for the best, but that stub got caught between my notebooks when I took them out of my bag before Thursday, and I didn't discover that it was missing before I went to the school, so I just decided to lie and tell them that I had declared all of this year's income instead of having to come back up to the financial aid office at a later date. I don't know if they have a way of finding out that I was lying, but I do know that the woman processing me almost gave me a heart attack by bringing up the $2,000 I have in my savings account, which she knew because it came up on her screen when she tried to send my application through. Guess I'll find out what they know soon enough. Cassandra met me Thursday morning and gave me $200 of the $1,500 she owes me. I called her Wednesday and arranged to meet her outside my new workplace at lunch, but she managed to miss me even though I weigh about 6,192 pounds, and I wound up burning my entire half-hour lunch standing outside. But on my lunch break Thursday I called a dude who owes me $500 from a football bet and still works at CBOE, and when he met me he had $300 in cash waiting for me. My man. I didn't even ask him for money on such short notice, all I asked him was to come down and meet me outside CBOE so we could talk. And he hit me with a roll of bills as soon as he saw me. And the coup-de-grace: The fare box was broken on the bus home yesterday! I saved $1.75! (It's the little things in life.)

This weekend makes two straight cancellations by women who wanted to meet me for the first time. Last weekend, a Latina from Boston came to Chicago to go to court for child support, and she wanted to have someone who knew the city to hang out with. But we never exchanged phone numbers, and she didn't e-mail me once she got here. Then this weekend, a redhead from Seattle who briefly lived in Aurora was going to visit a friend on the south side, and she wanted to meet me, so I was going to stay at my uncle's last night and hang out with her today. But the last time I spoke to her was Thursday, and at the time she expressed doubt that she was going to make the drive due to the astronomically high gas prices. Next weekend is supposed to be the big meeting between me and "Laurie." But I haven't heard from her in a couple of days. That has me very nervous, but even if I do hear from her and confirm that she is still coming, I no longer have the free time that I thought I was going to have. I actually have a job. So my planning of things like hotel accommodations and activities will have to be very crisp, no wasted motion. Can't I get online at work and plan these things, you ask? This balding, weasly white guy was asked by Janet during intake training whether he agreed with previous assessments of the validity of a paycheck, and he said he did. When she asked why, he actually said the following words: "I'm taking a gamble that the people before me guessed right." Janet is a nice girl, but she didn't take kindly to that. This same guy sat there surfing the net (I clearly saw the Yahoo home page on his screen from where I was sitting) once the system crashed yesterday, prompting the tattooed black girl in charge of the sign-in books to come running up and announce to everyone that surfing the net is not allowed and that the IT guys downstairs can tell when someone's on the net and that you'll get a warning about it once if you're caught, but the second time would probably be your last day. So that's why I won't be getting on the internet at any time during my tenure at this job. But now that I think about it, if they still don't have our own user I.D.s for us by Tuesday, how would they know who's surfing the net? If they can tell by user I.D., well, I was Adam Grenier yesterday, but so were a bunch of other people. If they can tell by computer IP number, if you can't tell exactly who's on what computer, unless I'm caught red-handed by someone, how can you say that it was me on that specific computer surfing the net? It could have been anyone. It's just one more example of how completely screwed up this place is. The next four months are going to be absolute torture. Call it a hunch.

Manic Monday

Well, tomorrow is going to wind up being a much busier day than I figured a few days ago. First, I made the deadline decision to sign up for a couple of classes at Harold Washington College for the fall semester, which starts tomorrow. I did not go to the school and sign up, because I didn't feel like going there unless Whitney Young High School had sent my transcript to them, and I found out over the phone that they haven't yet received my transcript. My application for financial aid will not be processed until Harold Washington receives my transcript. So how did I sign up for classes? Online. Anyone who had a Harold Washington I.D. last semester can use it to log on to their computer system and register for classes in that manner, and you can even pay for them online if you have a few grand on your credit card and you trust the security of the server. I had to do it by Saturday at 6P though. If I didn't sign up by then, I would have to wait until Monday for late registration, and there's an extra fee for late registration. It gets more interesting: There's a 48-hour grace period for paying for the classes, so I decided not to pay for the classes with my credit card yet in case they receive my transcript tomorrow and they can process my financial aid. But if they don't receive my transcript, I'm going to have to pay for the classes now and have them reimburse me later after they determine how much financial aid I will receive. Boy, I just can't do things like normal people, can I? It's funny how much this past week standing in line at the school and running around trying to get proper documentation reminds me of last year at this exact same time. Still stinging from being dumped over the phone by "Sarah," and desperate for some kind of purpose for my pathetic life, I decided to sign up for classes on the last day of open registration, hobbling along the way due to a gout attack I was having at the same time. A year and 22 credits later (and hell fucking yeah I'm proud of those 22 credits, even though it takes about 120 to receive a bachelor's degree), here I am again, rushing and trying to beat the deadline and not completely sure that I know what I'm doing. I think I get off on doing things spontaneously like that. If I planned things out in advance, I'd have all that extra time to be afraid and convince myself that I'm a loser and I'm not going to do well and I'm never going to amount to anything. This way, I don't have time to think about it. Just do it, like Nike.

So tomorrow would be hectic anyway, what with me intending to go up to the school early before my literature class starts at 5:30P in order to find out the status of my financial aid. (My second class follows immediately afterwards, social science 102 at 7:05P, and both classes are Mondays and Wednesdays.) But I received a phone call today that made tomorrow downright apocalyptic. It's a job interview! It's just a temp job, but I'm still excited because I haven't been able to get anyone to even acknowledge receiving my resume when I apply to all these jobs I see online. And finally, someone called me back. I applied in an e-mail around 5:00P, and they called me a couple of hours later. It's a data entry deal on Madison and LaSalle, four blocks from where I used to work for ten years, as well as five blocks from school. I don't know much about it except it's a temp job that will end around the holidays and it's $10 per hour. The person who called initially told me that the hours were M-F 8:30A to 5:30P, but when I explained that my classes start at 5:30P, he assured me that I would be able to get out of there around 5P and get to class on time. So they seem friendly and not hardcore, but of course I won't know until I meet the gang. A potential problem is that he told me to dress professional for the interview, and my best clothes aren't what one would call professional. I don't own a suit, so it's going to be the same slacks and tie and painful suede bucks that I wore to that sports marketing interview way back on January 24. In addition, I had already charged my electric shaver for eight hours in order to shave my head today, before I even knew I had a job interview. So I start the preliminary trimming process, and the battery sounds like it's ready to die immediately, so obviously I need a new battery. So I'll have a nice furry head for this interview, but I'm used to having a clean-shaved head to go with the clean-shaved face, so I'm going to be self-conscious and hope that the hair isn't a bad impression even though there's nothing weird-looking about my hair, it's very normal looking black man hair, still very short, now complete with slightly receding hairline as a reminder that I turn 30 in December. The 839 pimples on my face are something that I can't take care of before tomorrow, so I'm not going to think about them.

It's been a weird week as far as my dealings with women. I've suddenly become popular in the MSN online group that I met "Torrie" on, and I do mean suddenly, out of nowhere. A 40-year-old New Jersey blonde e-mailed me out of the clear blue. At first she was commenting on a message I had posted, but at the end of the e-mail she informed me that if I ever found myself in Jersey, I would be "a mountain she would love to climb." Um, okay. One of the managers of the group, a 30-year-old Texan BBW, all of a sudden started flirting me on the message boards, one of the messages being simply "Will you marry me?" I'm as honest and straightforward on those message boards as I am in my blog, so I must have said something that made her take an interest in me. I think I mentioned a dominatrix whip called cat-o-nine tails in a post as an aside, and she perked up to that because she fancies herself a fictional mistress. I've played along with her because it's harmless fun, and because I'm flattered by the attention, although I don't find her attractive. "Laurie" is in the same group, however, and I don't think she likes it that much, but with the amount of flirting she does there, I don't think she has a leg to stand on. She's going to Florida in October, and she has told a member who lives down there that she would want to see him. She claims that she doesn't do hook-ups, and I tend to believe her because she's been celibate for two years, so she could have already hooked up if she wanted. But she made me promise that I would tell her if I hooked up with a Boston Latina who posted the message to me that she would be coming to Chicago this weekend and wanted to meet me (not for a hook up, and I haven't heard from her so we didn't meet anyway). I promised, then I made her promise the same thing. A different woman privately e-mailed me and told me that she would be in Chicago next weekend and wanted to meet me. She's 35, Seattle BBW and a redhead, and I've never had a red, so I admit that when I told her okay it was with the intent of hooking up. I've since decided that it wouldn't be worth lying to Laurie, or worse, telling her to her face that I couldn't wait two lousy weeks for her to come to Chicago and fuck me. The redhead woman and I talked for forty minutes Saturday morning, and she seems cool, so if nothing else, I'll make a new friend. To top things off, Torrie stunned me by sending me a text message Friday morning saying she missed me. I told her that I missed her too, and for no other reason than I didn't know what else to say to her, I told her if she needed anything let me know. Her response: "What I want from you I can't have, you're too far away." I told her that I wished I could help her. What I didn't tell her is that I could help her by flying up there and fucking her brains out right this second, but I won't do that because I'm holding out for a shot at a hotter, non-smoking, not-a-bisexual-slut woman, and losing myself in the great sex and good times we always had could ruin that shot at the hotter, non-smoking, not-a-bisexual-slut woman. It's incredible, that may have been the most popular week I've ever had with women...and save Torrie, I've never met any of them. Wondrous invention, that internet.

Anyway, gotta run, I have to spend an hour or so screwing around with fantasy baseball stuff before I get some sleep and get ready for my big day tomorrow. To think, I signed up for classes so that I wouldn't have too much spare time on my hands. Tomorrow might be the beginning of a crazy couple of months where I have no spare time on my hands. Wish me luck.

Life In Limbo

I feel like I may be on the verge of breaking through and living each day with some kind of purpose, even if the purpose is something as small as not overeating and attempting to turn one of my bad habits over. It's just a matter of me realizing that I am worth waking up every day with a purpose. I usually wake up cursing about how fucked up I am. But right now, I'm waking up in limbo, because I still have zero income; I still can't find an interview, much less a job; the tentative date for "Laurie" to come to Chicago and meet me (and hopefully pay me what she owes me, but she's claiming car problems now, so I'm not optimistic) isn't until the weekend of September 10; and I can't even go after financial aid to take more college classes until my high school transcript makes it from my high school to Harold Washington College, whenever that happens. They wanted to reject me outright for financial aid due to my relatively high salary last year, but since I'm unemployed now, if I can make a hardship claim gooey enough to persuade them to give me assistance, then I'm in. The problem is, I can't make a claim until my high school transcript is in their hands, and time is running out because fall classes start Monday. So, exactly like last year, I am against the wall trying to sneak in and register for classes before the opening bell. At least I'm not dealing with pain from gout arthritis while I'm running around this time.

I was actually offered a gig but I turned it down, and because they apparently were willing to give me the $15 an hour that I was making at the Chicago Board Options Exchange when they brought the guillotine down on me in January, a part of me is really regretting it. But the job was a bad situation all around. I applied online for a data processing gig at some scientific lab, but the description didn't say what shift the job was, where the job was, or what the compensation was. The people taking the application were actually a hiring firm, and somebody from that firm called me Tuesday afternoon, one day after I submitted my resume. He described the job to me--taking body parts(!), scanning a code on them, and entering assorted data into a computer, very boring and isolated but I actually prefer isolated rather than be around a lot of people trying to be social while I do my job--and then he asked me what shift I would consider. I said I didn't care. He said, "Even third?" I said that I didn't necessarily want third but I would take it. So of course he said that it was a third shift job. I wasn't thrilled about that, but then he asked what salary I wanted, and I said I was making over $15 an hour at my last job. He asked if that would be good for this job. I held my composure while saying sure. I was wildly happy about that because all of these other jobs I'm applying for are ranging between $9 and $12 an hour. I honestly don't expect to make more than about $10 in my next job because the market in Chicago just isn't very good. He brought my spirits back down by telling me that this gig was in some suburb out past O'Hare Airport. I don't have a car, so any job I get has to be accessible by public transportation, and because I did not know whether a Pace bus (Pace is the bus service for some of suburban Chicago, but not all) went to this place or if the bus even ran late enough for me to get to a third shift job, I started to worry. I realized that if a Pace bus didn't get there, then I'd have to take the train to O'Hare and then hail a taxi, which might destroy my take-home pay. Then this guy told me about the taskmaster boss, a woman who didn't tolerate tardiness or slacking off, and I realized that tardiness would be a big-time problem at least early on while I figured out the best way to get to this place. By the time this guy started to basically beg and plead me to hang in for the four-month duration of the contract for this job since it would come out of his ass if I didn't, I was souring on this gig big-time. Of course I didn't want to hang in for the four-month contract, no one takes a third shift job intending to turn down regular jobs that he may get later. It took all my restraint to resist telling him, "Hell yeah I'm leaving that place when I get another job! Are you fucking kidding?" I asked him how long I had to decide whether I wanted to do this. His response: "Orientation is tonight." Uh, sorry buddy. I thanked him for his honesty and begged him to keep me in mind for other jobs with his firm closer to the city. He said he would. He was probably lying.

I just couldn't up and run out somewhere I didn't know on several hours notice. It would be like having a day or two to decide whether to take a gig in another city. Different logistics for sure, but the same principle--a shit job, in an unfamiliar place, and you gotta decide in a very small amount of time. I couldn't do it. Eight months of unemployment I guess have not rendered me so desperate that I would drop everything and deprive myself of a semblance of a regular life for a decent salary. I still don't understand why I can't get a job during daylight hours. Ten years of work experience and performance in a pressurized environment doesn't mean shit to anyone unless you're white or a slut. To say I'm frustrated by this point is a gross understatement.

As I alluded to earlier, the excuses are starting to form as to why I'm not going to see the money that I loaned to these two women, Laurie and Cassandra. When I brought the subject up to Laurie during a conversation yesterday, she almost feigned a car accident up there in Detroit trying to show me how bad her brakes are. Okay honey, I'm not getting my money back, I get it, you don't have to kill yourself. Meanwhile back in the city limits, Cassandra chose last weekend, when she told me she would be giving me the first installment of what she owed me, to "lose" her cell phone, and she claims not to have a home phone line, so, you guessed it, there's absolutely no way I can get ahold of her. Imagine what went through my mind when I waited until Sunday to call her and find out where she was, only to hear a message that the owner of that phone number has requested that no incoming calls be accepted. Excuse me? I figured she was halfway to Acapulco by now. She called me Monday from her job and explained to me that she had that done once she knew her phone was missing so that messages wouldn't be backed up once she found it. So when I asked whether she would be able to spare any money for me now considering how much a new cell phone is going to cost, she laughed in my face and exclaimed, "No!" So I could actually call her at her job if I wanted to talk to her, but why? I already know what the deal is there. But hey, I bring all of this on myself, being so desperate for love. No, I'm not involved with either woman, but if they were men, chances are I wouldn't have loaned that kind of money.

So rent's due in a week, bills come in steadily as always, and I have nothing coming in as far as money. It's all dependent on my savings account right now, and that's dwindling. Over $8,000 in cash as a severance in January, and it's almost all gone. A lot of people like to criticize me and say that I need to toughen up, especially when I was whining about that fat whore "Karen." All I can say is, life might suck for everybody, but not everybody deals with it the same way. My way is to bitch and moan for a little while, maybe for a long while, but I always try to keep my eyes open for ways to improve the situation. And I just don't see a solution right now other than continuing to wait for one of these companies that has my resume to go ahead and give me at least an interview. Or rob a currency exchange or something.

I feel compelled to comment on a website called BeautifulPeople.net, which I came across the other day because a local newspaper did a story about it. BeautifulPeople.net is a singles site, and you can only join if you're hot enough. I'm not making this up. Your picture gets a 3-day judging period by the opposite sex members of the site, and if the majority think you're hot enough, only then are you allowed to join. In their own words, the site is "...reserved for people, who because of their attractive appearance and personal qualities, stand out from the majority." Well, I'll be damned. It's bad enough that no matter how fat, ugly, or slutty a woman is, she gets to have the highest standards for what kind of man can respond to her personal ad...now there's a site where guys like me are automatically eliminated before we even get a chance. Sure, the women on that site aren't fat or ugly, theoretically, but my point is, no matter how disgusting the woman is, she always has high standards for what kind of man she wants. Where the hell are fat, ugly guys that aren't rich supposed to go to find some companionship when the fat, ugly chicks who aren't rich won't even consider them?? So I guess BeautifulPeople.net is just a snapshot of society, where looks make all the difference. But it just made me shake my head, because in a world where all the ladies, from prime cut to Mickey D's grade Z beef, are joining hands and singing, "I don't want no scrubs," now the websites are excluding people if they don't look like a fucking movie star. And the websites, the internet, really is my only shot, you know. 350-lb. black dudes with size 7 3/4 hat sizes can't walk up to girls on the street and spit game without a wad of hundreds, not in this world anyway. I want to patent the rights on UglyFolks.net, where guys like me can hook up with women who don't think their pussies are made of gold and who want to go out with guys who don't look like The Rock or have million-dollar bankrolls and yet--gasp, shocking!!--might still have something to offer. I think this idea might make me a lot of money and allow me to have lipo and a facelift, so that I don't have to be in that category anymore and I can actually have a shot at getting married someday.

And I'm only half-joking.

There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves

"Laurie" posted this poem in her blog and dedicated it to me. Funny, it can be argued that being a gentleman is seen as a weakness by people these days. But the poem does capture how I feel on a daily basis.

There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

"There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men to gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain.
There are men to gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.

There are men too gentle to live amount wolves
Who devour them with appetite and search
For other men to prey upon and such their childhood dry.
There are men to gentle for an accountant's world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.

There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world
Unless they have a gentle one to love."

James Kavanaugh

The Testing Of My Generosity

In the last two days, I have handed $850 in cash to two different women as loans. I have never been romantically active with either of them, and I've never even met one of them. I'm still unemployed, and as of this moment the only income I have is the tax return on my unemployment benefits (which, of course, I cannot collect until 2006) and money owed to me by several people. Now I have to be honest with myself and figure out exactly why I loaned out money despite my situation. Is it true generosity for the sake of helping loved ones? Is it typical male lust, considering these were two attractive women? Would I have loaned this kind of cash to anyone I know with a dick instead of a pussy? I'm afraid I'm not introspective enough to honestly know the answers to these questions. But I will say this: The "Karen" fiasco must have sapped the anger and rage out of me, because I'm imagining scenarios where both of these women wind up telling me that they don't intend to give me my money back ever and then disappearing on me, and I can't imagine getting mad. Some pithy little aphorism about "If they had to lie to get the money from me, they must have needed it more than me" keeps popping up in my head. And also, I just feel so good about helping them right now, and finally having some kind of purpose besides being an example of how not to live, and maybe that good feeling is what's making me unable to even imagine anger right now.

Cassandra let me drive her car again yesterday for about an hour on a quiet side road near Bolingbrook, and I can definitely see improvement, although I'm still confused about simple things like which way to turn the steering wheel when the car is in reverse and I want to maneuver it right or left. She had brought up a $625 car repair bill weeks ago, but didn't press the issue with me, probably because she felt guilty about the $875 she already owed me from Kentucky Derby weekend. I asked her twice about the car repair bill in the last couple of weeks, and she just said that it still had to be paid, but she didn't ask when or if I was going to help her. So we had breakfast after I drove yesterday, then instead of driving more, I told her to go back to the city so that I could go to my bank because it closed at 2P on Saturdays. I made the withdrawal, she hugged and kissed me and told me that I was a blessing, then she told me that starting this month, on the 15th of the next four months, she planned to pay me $375 to erase her debt. More to entertain myself by seeing what her reaction would be than out of need, I reminded her that she borrowed an extra $100 Kentucky Derby weekend as fun money. She said that I told her at the time it was a gift, which I probably did. She said she would give that back too under the condition that I give her "gift" back to her once I'm employed and back on my feet. I agreed to that. Then I let her see my resume, which she thought looked good and couldn't understand why I wasn't getting at least interviews for jobs that I have been applying for, and she left. I'm not worried about the money because I still have enough in my savings account to support myself for at least two months before I have to start considering moving in with family and applying for welfare. (I miss gubment cheese and powdered milk. Not.)

Not long after I came home yesterday, "Laurie" mentioned during our daily online chat that she was being thrown out of the place where she had been staying and she needed $100 immediately as a deposit. She brought this up not as a request, but as a reason why she was feeling anxious, trying to "rack her brain" to come up with the cash. It was me who responded, "If you want me to wire you some money I can do it," to which she responded, "Dre...that's the nicest offer in the universe...really...for someone you don't know." She initially said that she didn't want me to do that right now, but she may change her mind and ask me later, and if she did she would be able to send me the money back on Monday "on my mother's grave." I said ok, then I called her just short of midnight last night because I was worried about her and left a voice mail telling her to please call me if she was still in trouble and needed my help. She called this morning and said she had a plan but didn't have much faith in the person that was to come through for her, then while we were chatting online today, she finally asked me how we would pull off the wire transaction. I told her to go to a nearby currency exchange and give me the address, then I would go to my currency exchange after I went to the ATM and I would Western Union her the money. She asked for $100 but said she actually needed $200 but whatever I could give was fine. Hey, $1500 to Cassandra, what's a couple of hundred to Laurie? She said that she can personally pay me the money back Thursday because the state fair where she works will end then and she was considering coming to see me anyway. It really doesn't matter to me when she pays me back. I want to see her and hold her and make love to her as soon as possible, whether she has the money or not, so I'm much more excited about maybe meeting her for the first time in less than a week. While I was out getting the money and then wiring it, she left an instant message quoting the song "100 Ways," written by Quincy Jones:

In your arms tonight
She'll reflect that she owes you
The sweetest of debts if she wants to pay
Find one hundred ways
Ya gotta believe it whoa
Love her today find one hundred ways

"You've shown me what's in your heart Dre," she then wrote. "I can only prove what's in mine." And boy, am I looking forward to that.

But what does it say about my mindset when I take her gratitude and Cassandra's gratitude with a huge grain of salt? Every time I start anticipating the money from Cassandra or the companionship from Laurie, a little voice in my head says, "What if you don't see the money or either of these chicks again? Remember, every other time you've put trust and faith in a woman, you've been betrayed or abandoned. Why the fuck should this be any different?" Very sobering thoughts to be sure. But at least I realize that it's not because I don't trust these women. It's because I honestly can't remember a time when I trusted a woman and didn't wind up alone in the end. The good news is that I am not obsessing over whether I will ever see the money or these women. If I get screwed again, hey, shit happens, and it's no one's fault but mine. With Cassandra, that's just an insane amount of money to lend to anyone without some sort of written contract recognizing it. And with Laurie, shit, I don't know her at all. Never even met her. Her pimp could be counting that cash right now while she is sucking some guy off behind that currency exchange. Her crack dealer could be counting the cash while she gets high. Do I really think that either of them is lying to me and going to screw me over? No, I don't. Let me make that clear. The thought of being screwed is floating through my head as a little reminder not to get my hopes too high. It is NOT the prevailing attitude in my mind, and I am not sitting here anticipating getting fucked over. I'm simply acknowledging that it could happen, especially with my past history, and that mentally I had better be prepared for it or else get ready to go back to the psych ward at Northwestern. But now, more than ever, I'm okay with it. No one wants to be lied to, but I believe that I helped two good people in tough situations, and that karma will combine with them to repay me greatly, and even if they don't repay me, I still did a few good deeds.

The other side of that is the side "Ronnie" is showing me right now. "Drew" and I went to see the movie "Wedding Crashers" last night (very funny, depraved and perverted in some areas in a psychological way, not necessarily in a totally physical way like a lot of today's comedies, and that was pleasantly surprising), and Drew invited Ronnie along. I actually heard part of a conversation Drew and Ronnie were having when I got into Drew's car after he picked me up at the train station, and Drew asked Ronnie if he, Drew, should pay for my movie ticket with the $11 he owed Ronnie and therefore knock off some of the $36 debt Ronnie has owed me for the past two months, and I could hear Ronnie reply, "I don't care." I couldn't fucking believe that. See, that's why Ronnie is a piece of shit and I don't ever plan on speaking to him again. This is his attitude over the debt he owes me. "I don't care." That's on top of not calling me and informing me of the status of the debt. Hell, I didn't know he was even going to acknowledge the debt, but if that's how he wants to do it, "I don't care," then I don't care either. I told Drew that the debt as far as I'm concerned is over, because I don't even fucking want the money from Ronnie anymore if he's going to neglect it as if it's something he shouldn't have to be bothered with. But unless Drew tells Ronnie I said that, Ronnie isn't going to know that the debt's dropped, because since he hasn't seen fit to speak to me in two months, I don't see fit to tell him shit. And he is still dating a woman in Indiana, so he's got some money, or else he wouldn't be able to drive out there and spend time with her.

Ronnie blew us off, by the way. We got to the theater about 45 minutes before the 8:50P showing, and the theater is somewhat near Ronnie's house (20 to 30 minutes away), but even if the theater was farther away, Ronnie and Drew agreed on this theater. Drew didn't decide that we were going there, that's where they agreed to go before I even got into Drew's car. But the movie began with no word from him, and when Drew missed the opening to step out and call his ass, Ronnie didn't answer the phone. Class act all the way. All I can do is make sure I don't treat people like scum and try to do something with my life to make sure that my mother having me wasn't a waste. Any rewards I get for my deeds (such as a future favor from Cassandra or great sex, marriage and a family from Laurie) will be icing on the proverbial cake.

It's Over

Where one door closes, I have heard that another one opens. There may be many important doors that open as a result of today's conversation; time will tell.

"Torrie" and I have decided to end our relationship. We had a talk a few nights ago where she basically kept asking me if I wanted to continue our long-distance romance, and I kept saying, "I don't know." I wasn't man enough to straight-up dump her, but I planted seeds in her mind that I wasn't really excited about our relationship. I was hoping that she would take the hint and call me back and tell me that she doesn't want to go on, and today she did exactly that. We agreed to remain friends, but I know that will become a problem when A) she finds a new lover and I become jealous, and B) if we ever were to meet up as "just friends," because we did have a lot of physical chemistry and the urge to have sex would be tremendous. Hooking up and having sex wouldn't be such a bad thing--hell, it's the reason we got together in the first place--but the point of me dumping her is that I want more out of life than meeting a woman and fucking her and leaving. If I didn't make Torrie believe that I wanted out, we could have gone around and around in that circle for an endless amount of time. And it wouldn't be horrible, it would be two adults having great, consensual sex, and there's nothing wrong with that. It's just that there's a next step after that if one of us wants more out of a relationship than just fucking, and for me to take that next step, Torrie would have to be someone that I would want to potentially be with on a long-term basis, and by that, I mean eventually marriage. And the truth is, I would never want to marry Torrie. There are many reasons, but the most important is that I don't feel like she and I are a lifelong match. We're so different. I feel like she's still a stranger to me in some respects, and that's no surprise considering we've only met three times in our lives. But I have always figured that my future wife would be someone who I felt such a connection to physically, emotionally, and spiritually, that I would feel a magnetic force between us, drawing me towards her no matter how much I want to pull away. I've felt that before, with "Yasmine" and with a girl in eighth grade, although neither of them felt the same about me. I didn't feel that way about Torrie. And after all these years of taking whatever pussy I can get, for the first time ever I feel like I don't want to settle for just any chick that will fuck me. I want more. I want someone who I desire to be with and learn about on a possible lifetime basis, and she would want to be with and learn about me for a lifetime. I don't intend to settle for less ever again.

How much "Laurie" has to do with the way I feel is something that I cannot ignore. I have to be honest. The thought of an attractive, blonde woman insisting that she would be interested in getting together with me and that we could be soulmates makes me feel like the luckiest man in the world. I feel like something is on the horizon when I think about Laurie, something special, something that I've never felt before, something that will finally put an end to my search for someone who understands me and will love me unconditionally. Because as much as we don't want to admit it, we all want to be loved and understood, and I'm neither right now. And even when I was in previous relationships, I didn't feel loved or understood, and that's because I wasn't in those relationships because I was interested in the person, it was because the person indicated that she was desperate enough to fuck me. Now, Laurie has indicated that as well, but unlike my past lovers, she is attractive and could choose anyone to fuck, but she has not had sex in two years because she has been waiting for just the right person to become intimate with again, and she thinks that I might be that person. That makes me feel incredible. I am trying to imagine a life without Laurie simply because I needed to dump Torrie for reasons other than getting together with Laurie, but I can't help it. I want to see Laurie badly. I want to find out if we are what the other has been looking for. But hey, I could have held on to Torrie and lied to Laurie and hooked up with her while keeping Torrie on the side. I did not do that. It's important that I give myself credit for cutting Torrie loose instead of clinging onto her like she's my last hope of ever dating again, like I did when "Sarah" dumped me around this time last year. And Sarah was four million times worse than Torrie as far as qualities that I wouldn't want in a potential wife--both are loose and bisexual, but Sarah was actively fucking other women and not considering it cheating, as well as staying in the houses of "masters" overnight being a BDSM slave and getting off on it. It's unbelievable where I am mentally now compared to where I was just a year ago, or even a few months ago. I'm not all the way confident as far as walking around thinking in my head, "I know I'm going to find the woman I'm looking for because I'm the shit!" But I do not ever intend again to become intimate with a woman who I don't find attractive or morally upstanding simply because she is willing to fuck me. When I think of all the pain I could have avoided in the last couple of years from "Karen," Sarah, "Jane," and the co-worker who shall remain nameless if I would have just been honest with myself and admitted that I didn't want to be with any of them because of their looks or personality but because and only because I flirted with them and they returned the interest and I thought, "Hey! Maybe they're crazy enough to fuck me!!"...well, all I can do is shake my head and move on to the next chapter of my life a little wiser and with higher standards for myself.

Speaking of confidence, I put a beatdown on my fear of rejection and went to two different places to apply for work after Torrie and I broke up today. This is a big step for me because I haven't been on the street looking for work since I became unemployed simply because I always thought to myself, "Why would anyone want to hire me? I'm not college age and I'm uneducated." I'm starting to see things a little differently. Not a lot of confidence still, but enough to know that whatever job I go for I have ten years of work experience to testify on my behalf that I am a hard worker who gets the job done when given the opportunity, and maybe someone will see that, but only if I put my ass out there and apply for jobs. The alternative? These past nine years I've been sitting in my apartment by myself afraid to go out in the world and go for anything. Can't keep doing that. Laurie in her blog said that she tries to find five things to wake up to every day, because the alternative is turning on her car in the garage with the doors closed. That's what I've been doing. I've been sitting here separated from the world, waiting to die slowly. I don't want to die anymore. And for that, even if she and I never get together, I owe Laurie unlimited thanks. But it's up to me to take it from here and live my life without fear. A daunting task for sure, but now more than ever, I feel like I'm ready to give it a shot.

And notice, no updates on Karen. She can be getting gangbanged by 400 niggers right now. I just don't give a fuck anymore. What a great feeling.

A New Beginning?

I just read my entry from Tuesday, and it's funny how I say that my opportunity with "Laurie" has magically appeared out of nowhere, no thanks to any improvements or efforts I have made recently. Not true. I am starting to get more in touch with my spiritual side, which may have had to happen in order for anything between Laurie and me to work, but the point is, it's happening whether Laurie is part of the picture or not. After all these years of resisting any kind of influence by my God on my life, I am beginning to realize that if I don't let my God into my life, I'm not going to ever have a life. It's been 29 and a half years of resistance on my part to "let go and let God," so to speak. What do I have to show for it? Heartbreak. Bottom-of-the-ocean depths of self-esteem and confidence. No education. The feeling that I'm running in circles and that nothing has improved in my life. And most importantly, every attempt by me to put my trust and love into a person resulting in catastrophe because I didn't have that trust and love for my God or for myself first, which maybe, just maybe, is what "Karen" meant when she said that our relationship was "doomed from the start." Basically, what it comes down to is, when am I going to go a different direction and let spirituality guide me and see what happens? Because all of my resistance to let that into my life has resulted in, all things considered, a pretty fucked-up life thus far. As my aunt has asked me many times, when am I going to try something else, since my way has obviously not been working?

I had a spiritual encounter last night. One of the cassette tapes that the never-to-be-identified burglars stole when I moved into my apartment three years ago was "Real Love," by Lisa Stansfield. For those that don't know, she is a British singer with a powerful voice and old-school R&B flavorings in her singing and music, and I enjoyed listening to her music immensely. The entire second half of the album "Real Love" contains some inspiring singing and songwriting, but there's one song that was always special to me: the last song, "I Will Be Waiting." She doesn't harmonize with any other voices on the song, it's all Lisa, belting out a typical I-understand-that-you-have-to-find-yourself-but-I-will-be-waiting-for-you-when-you're-ready-for-me lyric but doing it in a way that makes your heart ache for her and at the same time makes you pray that you can someday find someone that loves you that much. Well, I ordered the album, on CD this time, from Amazon.com, and I played that song last night for the first time since it was stolen from me years ago. And something in the lyrics made me envision my mother singing to me from heaven, and I don't believe I ever heard the song in that way before. "I will be waiting for you/Waiting for time to heal your wounds/And I will be thinking of you/Knowing love will bring you back to me, cause our love is true," goes the chorus. And I saw clouds and my beautiful mother singing those words to me, telling me that she's waiting in heaven for me to straighten myself up and earn my way up there with her so that we can be reunited. And my eyes teared up and my throat started feeling dry and swollen, and I just buried my hands in my head wondering why I have spent so many years doing things that would make my mom so not proud of me if she were alive. I'm not going to be perfect from here on out, but I have got to make things right between me and my God if I ever hope to spend eternity with my mother. Because the way things stand right now, with some of the things that I have done in my life to other people and to myself, if I died right now, I don't think I would be anywhere near heaven. And I don't even want to think about the physical punishment I have vowed to hand out to any supreme being upon my death. Usually I make those vows after some other incident of bad luck has happened to me, without thinking about what I could have done to not put myself in the position of having that incident happen to me. Yes, I have a lot of anger inside me.

If anyone, Laurie, Karen, anyone were to read this blog and be happy for me that I have finally figured out that I can't ever have the life I want without "letting go and letting God," that's fine, but it is not about other people and how they feel about me. If the day ever came where I joined a church, and boy I didn't think I'd be considering doing that right now, my prejudices about other people and my fear about what others would think of me wouldn't matter either. I have the feeling that so long as the relationship between me and my God is okay, nothing else would matter. I have the feeling that I could walk into a church with someone I hate--Karen, for example--and hold her hand and pray to my God to give me the strength to forgive and let life continue and go along its intended path. I would be able to walk down the street and still assume that no women find me attractive because of my weight and perceived ugliness, but I could be okay with that because the type of woman that would not want me in her life because I'm fat is the type that I wouldn't want in my life because she's ignorant. I could walk into a job interview without fear of rejection because I would have a sense of purpose in my life besides finding a job, and therefore it wouldn't be as big of a deal to me. Mentally, spiritually, maybe even physically, I could find a love for myself that I've never had. It would be a whole new way of living, and then the soulmate that I've been looking for would come into my life, and I would actually be ready for her instead of worrying that it's a mirage and she wouldn't stay with me for the long haul because she can do much better. I'm not there yet, not by a long shot. I'm still weak when it comes to the flesh, and I still don't believe enough in myself to do something radical like dump "Torrie" for no reason other than I don't see her as a future wife. But maybe I'm on my way. And that's better than I was a few weeks ago.