Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

identity

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I wear my headphones for the entire walk from here to the theatre, and from there back to the apartment. This week i’ve been singing the whole way there: Pinkerton, Garbage, Return of Saturn, Jagged Little Pill. I investigate each record in thirty minute intervals, picking apart the melodies in high-definition sound and finding their places in my own range. Rivers comes out strained in chest voice, i solidly match Shirley’s alto, Gwen brings me up to falsetto or down to my lower register, and Alanis tends to hover over my break point. I cannot keep my voice inside my chest.

I never really try to imagine myself from outside. I suppose it’s a problem i have … why there is such a disparity between my interior image and what i actually allow people to see and hear. Today walking home at midnight belting out “you’ve already won me over, in spite of me” i finally stopped for just a second to think about the picture. The image. My whole frame dwarfed by my round black earphones, shrinking me even farther away from my twenty earned years, swinging my arms and stretching my baritone voice, planting one foot in front of the other. I draw stares from plain pedestrians and pretentious Penn kids alike.

I hardly ever picture what i look and sound like, even when i’m doing the most outrageous of things. Last night i caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror in the middle of “Like a Virgin” or “Material Girl,” and – suddenly – my voice matched up with that writhing image of me as if audio had just been synced up to a projected movie. I had to stop singing for a moment so as not to cry. The boy i was looking at wasn’t at all the one i felt i was being at the time.

I really don’t mean to be any of this at all.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9569992/

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Sometimes it is just there in the pit of your stomach, bubbling under. Each little phrase and laugh is a dig at you, winging across the room to impact like a punch to the solar plexus and, while everyone else has their head thrown back with laughter, you are just slowly reaching your break point. You are trying not to boil over, but there is always that one irrelevant thing that someone says that is the coup de grace — the blow you cannot recover from.

They had been verbally working me over for an hour and i don’t even think they realized it, even after i left. My food had stuck in my throat for a second, and i could feel myself turning a little red, and then i wasn’t in control of it anymore. Boiling over. Screaming, cursing, slamming, until i was out of there and down Walnut Street and back in my room. I wasn’t in control of it; my body entered some sort of social fight-or-flight reflex on my behalf. Some quick words to the roommates, and then i was up the stairs and locking the door, and on my bed i was mouthing over and over “i can’t change anything, i can’t change anything.” And i know that i can’t. I know that i am two decades into this and that i set myself up for this fall for my entire life, but it doesn’t making the landing any easier.

I knew it couldn’t possibly work twice in a row.

Last night i was miserable and so i went out. It was a good idea; sitting around and moping wasn’t going to fix anything. Tonight i had the same impulse, but although it was well-intentioned of me i think that i realistically should have realized that it was time for a recharge Because, if i don’t take time to recenter every so often i manage to let people see through to what’s underneath. And, that never works out too well.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9324213/

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The feelings i have are these slippery things, and i wish they were more like velcro. I wish i could throw words at them and have them stick. I feel… slighted, continuously slighted by life despite my attempts to make it worthwhile. I feel unappreciated for being someone i enjoy being and over-valued for things i despise. And, of course, alone on a Sunday night my immediate reaction is to try to write a song about how i feel and, failing that, to blog about it.


The thing is, i’ve written this song already and blogged about it a hundred times. Yesterday Lindsay and i had a ridiculously deep conversation while watching the Eagles game, and i said something about getting married and having children and a house, and i meant it. But, i can never have any of that so long as i live within this private universe i’ve constructed, with all of its own symbolism and meaning.


I’m usually not shy with my lyrics, but this week i wrote something that says how i feel and i purposefully tucked it away. It Says how i Feel, but i can’t sing it or play it because for it to really come out and do justice to all the slippery feelings i have inside i need to make it perfect. In my head i hear the sighing melody and the double bass beat on the chords in the chorus, but try as i may i can’t get even a line of it to come out like that at all. Anyway, i don’t know what to say about this feeling other than what i already said in these lyrics last week, so here’s the latter half of them:

Imagine my whole life as Technicolor — with someone painting the shades into the scenes, and everyone acting from scripts with each other. They’re all off-book except for me, so every day is a stumble-through rehearsal, and each night is an actors’ worst dream because i never know the right thing to say, and i’m left silent in the spaces in-between. So, my front porch is a consolation, my door is a sigh of relief. The stairs are invigorating, my room is a reprieve. It’s then that i open my mouth, and the room is filled — the words come pouring out. My guts are spilled. It’s a shame i can only find my voice between four lonely walls of brick and concrete, but i don’t really have any choice: it’s just something about emptiness and me. Outside i feel just slightly out of focus; around other people i sing a little off-key. I wonder all the time if anyone will notice that i seem to be coming apart at the seams. I am coming apart at the seams.

It’s a one-dimensional representation of what i’m trying to say… my words stripped of inflection and tone. But, it’s the closest i can come to opening this up to you, so take it for what it is.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/01/8889949/

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I just (for the first time ever) caught wind of someone plagiarizing my content for their own nefarious uses. The site itself seems to have disappeared, but Google has faithfully cached the one offending page here. Strangely enough, i located it via a referral from a the search “that the only way to convince me of its worth is to do amazing,” which sounded oddly familiar because i wrote it here. Further perusal reveals that this post was also partially lifted. The only other pages from “Bellylicious” that Google seems to have cached are all just index files or in other languages, and i can’t seem to locate an active email link on any of them, so i’ve hit a dead-end in locating the perpetrator.

I don’t know what i find the most bothersome out of this entire happening. First, the search itself is rather odd … anyone searching for that exact phrase would have had to have read it on either my site or on the plagiarist’s … anyone doing the former would have no reason to search for it, so someone read the latter and found it familiar (maybe the author forgot where she stole it from?). The second thing that bothers me is that i would’ve never even imagined someone was using entire paragraphs of mine to say what they were feeling, let alone known about it. In a way it’s almost flattering … she wasn’t using whole posts, but just succinct sections of them that she found applicable to her life. At the same time it’s rather chilling — as though i’m a blogging thesaurus that anyone can tap into to to find some relevant emotions to spruce up their post with.

The third thing that bothers me is… well, it’s just the stealing itself. I’m sure if someone emailed me and asked if they could use a lengthy excerpt from my page i would probably let them so long as they attributed it to me. Frantically trying to track down the person who has been stealing from CK via Google has led to this tiny kernel of panic in my stomach that is saying “what happens when someone takes one of your songs? you won’t even know… you’ll never know it.” And, it’s true … most of my songs are copyrighted enough to hold out in court, but anyone could be covering them on MP3.com with different titles and i would never even know it. The entire concept bothers me… i’ve never stolen anything in my life … i don’t even eat spare grapes in the produce section of the supermarket! The fact that someone could be stealing from me right now… not only stealing, but stealing something that i spent time and emotion on so that other people can enjoy it totally disconnected from me … it’s almost enough to make me tear all of this down right now.

Of course, i can’t do that. This is my life, and my therapy, and my fun. And, if it brings on a couple of more crises along the way, so be it

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7979713/

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All this kvetching about things related to my (ever-precarious) gender role and identity may have to do with a date i may have tonight. May. It may be a preliminary evaluative “check-out-the-goods” opportunity where i’m supposed to try my best to be coherent while maintaining a vague sense of romanticism. Or, it might be two friends going out to dinner. Except, i think it could be a date… you know, Friday Night and all that. But, i don’t want to assume. So, it’s really out of my hands. I have nothing to do with it. I just need to shave and shower and show up looking pretty. Well… pretty for a guy. You know what i mean.


Thus all the anxiety about the razor. And the fairy.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/12/7924634/