Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

family

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When my aunt Joyce first heard about me being the overnight and day visit coordinator for the admissions office at Drexel, the first thing she asked was “Have you met any cute girls?” Forget for a moment how incredibly innapropriate it would be for me to hit on cute pre-freshmen, and just notice that the first thing that Joyce asks me about any situation i get myself into is how many cute girls the situation contains. Since i was somewhat incommunicado during the rehearsal period for good woman of setzuan no one in my family ever really heard about or met Selina other than my mother, so they’re all stuck assuming i’m in the same little anti-dating zone that i was in in high school. And, to an extent i still am, but i just think it’s hilarious how they pump me for information constantly to see if i’m seeing anyone, or thinking about seeing anyone, or thinking about anyone. I think one or two of my other aunts might have finally given up and assumed that i’m gay based on my total lack of apparent attraction to the opposite sex (and my utter refusal to attend any sort of go-go bar with my father every year around my birthday), but the wonderful thing about my family in that respect is that they’re very accepting but they never bring things like that up on their own. So, as far as i’m concerned, the gayer the better – that way i don’t need to hear them bitch all the time about my lonesome love life.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3274847/

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Yesterday on the phone with my aunt, she off-handedly asked what i’d be giving up for Lent this year. My family isn’t the most strict in terms of Catholicism, but on my father’s side they all go to church every week or two and make sure to observe all the major holidays and the rules that go along with them. So, they honestly practice Lent – giving up something extravagant like chocolate (i’ve always known it to be a food item with them (rather than buying new cds, which would be more apropros for me), but i’m not sure if that’s a symptom of my own family or Catholicism as a whole). I replied that i didn’t even realize Lent was upon us, although subconsciously i’m quite aware that the whole purpose of the Mardi Gras is to have one last wild night before heading into Lent. She clucked in reply that i should watch out lest i wind up in hell, and though she meant it light-heartedly its intended effect was felt.

Am i to think that i’m really going to hell because i didn’t give up chocolate for a month? While i realize such a practice obeys the letter of religious law, you have to obey the spirit as well, and obeying the spirit of the law is more important. I have a laughable line in my play where i implore to the gods “Well, good will, for instance, might do instead of love? Or, good sportsmanship instead of justice? Instead of honor, outward propriety?” I gave the line with a chuckle for nearly a month before my director stopped me in the middle of it one night and asked me to tell him what was going on. After some mulling on my part i realized that i wasn’t offering up my “insteads” as a joke to the gods, but as a reality. I am taking the stance that to ask that we always love our neighbor is asking too much, but that we should at least offer him our good will in hopes that we get it in return.

Somewhere in there is my feeling on Lent. I won’t begrudge my family their religious practices, and i’ll be mindful of my frivolous nature during Lent, but you can be sure they’ll all be on a chocolate binge when it’s over, and that shouldn’t be the point. Giving up something you like for an amount of time shows a commitment to your god, but actually changing your habit as a result of true self reflections shows that you’re really honoring him.

Plus, i don’t really like chocolate to begin with.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/02/2571340/

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Matt’s amp is buzzing. To get any kind of volume out of it you have to turn up the Gain knob, which distorts the signal a little and leaves you with this constant amplifier hum. It feels expectant, as thought some rock band’s big sound is going to come crashing out of the amp any second in a tidal wash of big guitars and growling bass, but really it’s just me sitting on the floor trying desperately to read sheet music from the Bass Cleff of a Tori Amos book.

The apartment is otherwise empty. I did a lot of wash yesterday, so the bedroom looks somewhat organized. In here is another story … everything scattered – papers, cds, jackets, shoes. It’s really the fault of this weekend; i didn’t spend much quality time with the apartment this weekend. Saturday night Drexel had their homecoming dance and i have this single glowing picture of me with a tie tied around my head as though i was some kind of savage, sweating like a horse and smiling madly. I love to dance, that’s all there is to it.

It took me fifteen years to learn how to do the mashed potato correctly. I’m not sure that the learning curve is so steep … i think instead i had to spend time learning all sorts of other little rhythmic pieces of the puzzle before i could put it all together. A decade and a half is a long time to have spent doing anything. I’ve been in school for fifteen years now… i’ve been out of my first house for fifteen years… i’ve had my Thundercats for fifteen years. it’s funny, i only have a decade on my closest cousin and he won’t ever know the same things i knew as a child. Thundercats, GI Joes, Madonna, George Michael, Casey Kasem’s countdown, Johnny Carson, Ronald Regan, the Gulf War … all of those things are vivid emotional and psychological building blocks of my life.

I’m the only one of my cousins that will remember my Grandmother. My nine-year-old cousin Dale wouldn’t have any memories of her active and laughing since he was five or younger, and all of my other cousins are only four. I’m the youngest person in the family to know her; we spent hours sitting at her kitchen table playing solitaire, lying on her living room floor watching Golden Girls every week, eating Golden Grahams before i got picked up by my carpool on the way to middle school. Last night i was on the phone to my mother and she reminded me how long my father’s mother had been in a managed care facility … time had shrunk it down to only a year, but she was out of her own home months before we left my home of sixteen years in SouthWest Philly (which she owned).

That was almost three years ago. It’s been a long time since i’ve sat and played solitaire with her, but to me it doesn’t really seem so expansive. She’d always get up and dance when she won… singing “Let the Good Times Roll” and dancing around the kitchen. I eventually learned to jitterbug so i could join her, but by then it was too late.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2182260/

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Got up. Went to class. Went to work. Got home. Listened to my messages. Laid in the middle of the floor and cried. Skinned my knuckle punching the wall. Cried. Put “1,000 Oceans” on infinite repeat. Clung to the stereo and sobbed like a child. Went to rehearsal. Love y’all, really i do.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2172472/

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My life weebles and wobbles but it just doesn’t fall down. I can’t explain it. Despite the most awful things happening, they always turn out for the best in the end.

My mother and i were essentially kicked out of our house at the end of my Junior year by the owners because they wanted to sell it. I had lived in that house for all but three years of my life. I refused to leave. My mother wanted to buy a nice little house somewhere verging on suburbia, but there was the small matter of my attending the best highschool in the state, which i would hardly have left just for senior year. In the end i convinced her to rent a house on the verges of South Philly, because i know that when she actually buys a place it should be one she loves, not one she settles for. It was all very depressing at the time, but Senior year wound up being one of the best of my life, despite all the shitty parts. I wound up living within walking distance of Gina and Anastasia, and i could actually take a shopping trip to South Street at my leisure. I had my own room on my own tiny third floor. Our kitchen was nice. I was happy.


Lots of other things have righted themselves over the years to keep my life going at its usual pace. I only got into a local university but they gave me lots of money and inexplicably wound up happy there. I almost didn’t find an apartment (chronicled at length in the first week of the archive) but wound up in a super-cheap and easily accessible one. But, life doesn’t always work out so perfectly. For some people, it doesn’t work out at all. I have too many friends who got into a local university and got zero money who are now unhappy and in debt. I know too many people who had to move home because they didn’t figure out where to live in time for the beginning of the semester. I know too many unhappy people.

Yesterday i confronted the fact that my smile might have finally become used up. For years and years i just glided through my occasional problems with a grin pasted onto my face, because they all got fixed eventually and life moved on. Suddenly i’m starting to realize that not everything fixes itself, and that i don’t know how much good cheer i really have left to get me through the bad spots


Imagine that… i’m 19 and just learning that “happily ever after” only really happens in fairy tales and first-date movies. I’ve never had to confront the possibility before; i always assumed that bad things only happened to people who weren’t thinking positively. Now i’m starting to realize that keeping a smile on my face isn’t the best defense, and that sometimes it cuts as cruelly as any situation i might be unsuspectingly plunged into. But my life is still all-good, and that scares me. No one is continually blessed. The gods only have so much attention to give.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/01/2097862/