Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

44th St

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I am so scattered right now, but i’m trying to reel some of it in through writing it down, so bare with me.

Today when i finally opened my eyes my sloping ceiling was hanging right above me and everything was so fuzzy that it seemed like endless white feathers strung to make a giant boa suspended as a giant web — I was trapped like a fly in fuzz.

Two little girls just ran through the quiet lounge reading from tiny business cards that were really invitations, and they decided that they couldn’t attend because the date was this past Thursday. They looked like they could’ve only been five or six but they read out loud like nine or ten year olds would, so my perspective is wholly confused. We just had an informal reading of our newly picked Winter play, and i am torn between wanting to play the angsty 15-year-old who curses and whines in every line, or the Steve Buscemi-like spinster who’s into conspiracy theories and masturbation. Last of the Formicans reads like Cocoon siphoned through one of the zany episodes of X-Files and plunked down into an adjacent suburb of Roseanne. The funny thing is, i don’t know which of the two characters i want to be, let alone who i identify with. The 15-year-old hates everyone and everything he’s been shoved into but hasn’t got any reason for it, but the older man has constructed his own web of feathery explanation that greets him every morning when he wakes up.

Of course, i burned a ton of theatrical bridges this term, but throughout it all i maintained that i’m in it not for the acting but for the characters. I’ve never wanted to be in a play… usually i just sortof blunder into a fun role. This time, i think i’ll be crushed if i don’t get what i want, and i don’t know if i can do anything about it…

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6681171/

Trio: Season 2, #3

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My tiny square of a back window is thrust wholly open, and my room has settled into an easy calm of breathe-in breathe-out. My room really does breathe… the drop ceiling slightly expands and contracts with the tidal pull of air in and out of my window.

The roomies are going to the Halloween party this Friday as mythical things, and when i said i might be some sort of woodland faerie L said “Peter, you either can complain about what people say about you, or you can be a fairy for the party. Your choice.” It was funny for a moment and then, well, whatever. Initially we were all going as Greek gods as a injoke about none of us being involved with the production of Lysistrata, but that devolved into anything vaguely fey and now we’ve got an Artemis, a winged nymph, and me. Seeing as the rest of the week shapes up as a hodgepodge of class, work, and concerts i’m not entire sure where i was planning to construct a (manly) costume. Apparently whenever i pick up my guitar from South Street and actually rescue my dry cleaning from across the street. And do laundry. Ha.


I was hoping to do a Trio tonight but first i fell into the deadly Tori-induced clutches of a nap and then i wore my voice out screaming at Monday Night Football (… I’m still undecided on what i liked better… the touchdown pass where the receiver’s knee gouged a giant rut in the endzone dirt and yet the Giants still claimed he was out of bounds or the way the ball slid out from the quarterback’s hands and into those of the Eagles in the last two minutes to ensure the win. But, i digress…). So, despite a lack of official music from me this week, feel free to listen to the practice take from Sunday night. We all know that i do one Madonna cover per Demo cd, so having finally arranged that one it’s suddenly a big contender. As for the last song… just pretend i know what all the chords are and it suddenly becomes much more coherent. I personally find the whole affair to be a painful listen, which is why i’m not posting it as a trio, but you might actually enjoy some of the unrehearsed and unselfconscious bits and pieces of it.


I suppose that’s all i have to say. For a while there i was just aimlessly lying on my bed avoiding my philosophy homework, but when the room started breathing heavy and i thought i should tell you about it. Goodnight.

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Everyone has learned how to respect me during our time at Drexel insofar as everyone makes an assumption about my sexual preferences and gender identity and then gets themselves proven wrong (by their closeminded standards) by my flirting with girls and watching football. But, i keep them confused, much to my partial delight and eternal chagrin. I give lap-dances to boys at parties, or i mention that there are cute freshmen of both sexes to be had in the play.


People are so quick to assign labels that they often forget exactly how people really work. My friends have learned in the past two years that i generally don’t label easily and so they just leave me be, but when everyone’s sitting around drunk and loose-lipped people say things. And they hurt. A lot. Last night we were playing “I Never” and i was the only person in mixed company who had never kissed a boy — and i haven’t, ever. It’s not to say that i never would, but i am generally not attracted to men and haven’t had any reason to lay lips on another boy in anything other than a friendly manner.

First someone was incredulous… was i sure i hadn’t? Next i was told “that you lie alot anyhow.” And then a third person chimed in that it was ironic considering… “Considering what?” …. “Well, considering that you…”


Of course he didn’t say it, because no one wants to be outrightly awful to me even when their lips are loosened with liquor, but we all heard what he was saying; it was ironic because i was the gay one. The theme repeats. I mentioned that i never had sex with Selina and they all asked why not; i truthfully replied that it was because i didn’t want to be entangled with anyone on that level at that point in time, regardless of whether it was a consideration of our relationship or not. And they laughed. Of course, they said, i wouldn’t have sex with a girl… of course, they pointed out, i would have a good reason not to.

I’m getting tired of these arbitrary social boxes. Yes, my manner of speaking and gesturing has a primary association with “gay” stereotypes. Did it ever occur to anyone to ask me if i enjoy talking like i do? After talking like this for twenty years, and learning all of my tonal and indicative qualities from a group primarily composed of women, can i really change overnight? Did they ever think to ask if i would if i could? For all the haircuts i get and tight shirts that i wear, i still get boxed up neatly — even if no one normally says it it becomes quickly apparent when everyone checks their appropriateness and grabs a beer.


I am so sick of it, and so sick of myself. Everyone else is allowed to flirt with who they want to flirt with regardless of motive. Our masculine male friends get to make out with other guys as a lark at parties and never hear two words about anyone doubting their sexuality. But not me. I have struck such a precarious balance with everyone i know that all i have to do is remark that a boy is attractive and suddenly my box is tightly packed again. I have no option of flirting with people just for fun, regardless of my reasons. I could never kiss a boy, no matter what circumstantial contrivance it involved. I’m too fucking busy trying to get everyone to just judge me for who i am to begin with to do anything else.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6485607/

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I had had a pretty insular week after returning from my whirlwind boston excursion, so last night Aim and i decided to head down to South Street and see the Beta Band on extremely short notice just to get out of our respective houses. It was great to see Amy again; her presence has been super-lacking in my life since she started her new job and i got back to classes. But, anyway, that’s not the point.


The point is that i returned from Beta Band to find that the roomies were entertaining at the apartment. At first it was superfun… we had a bunch of people around who i don’t always get to chat with, and i was enjoying myself. I even had a beer.


When it comes to parties i am a floater… i very rarely have a strong connection to any person or conversation so i just mingle around until i get miserable and leave. That’s my modus operandi, and it’s inevitable; eventually i’m so frustrated with my inability to be connected to anyone else at all that i wander home and go to sleep. In my own home i figured it would be different… i wouldn’t be on the outskirts of the conversations because i would be in charge… i would be the host.

I was wrong. It turns out, as soon as you amass a big enough group i immediately turn off socially (even if i’m friends with them all individually). Even before everyone started wandering away to their own cliques in different rooms i had reduced myself to tiny inserted comments and laughing along with the crowd. I endured the typical jokes which i do not enjoy, and i mingled from room to room unable to connect to anything that was happening even though i owned the lamps and cushions people were clustered around. Eventually i just locked my door, stripped off my clothes, and went to sleep to Death Cab turned down so low that all i could hear were the upper registers of Ben Gibbard’s voice intoning “highway” over and over on the second track.


It’s not fair. I refuse to have my own home be a gathering place just so i can be trapped there without anywhere to escape to. I don’t know what our social future will turn out to be, but i’m starting to think that it’s out of my hands: i don’t have any say in it, but i’m not taking any responsibility for it either.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6485340/

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I am back in Philadelphia, complete with my newly mellowed red hair and my newly mellowed personality that i have yet to assign a color to and this newly hollow ache for the tiny slice of else i had this weekend. Normalcy and a different city and walking around and being happy — things that i can’t really necessarily apply to Drexel and Philadelphia, but i try. Today i walked into the Admissions Office and everyone fawned over my hair for a solid hour before i got to do any work. Last night i got 100% on my first test of the quarter. Baby steps on a long walk.


There is a door in the frame of my room and it feels so very different to shut it and be insulated from the rest of the apartment except for the hi frequency bleed-through from Lindsay’s room downstairs. I am cocooned in my warm-lit green and white and brick, slowly working through my stack of Boston music and making a point of looking forward to tomorrow and the next day. Because, even though i might not see a point in either of them, somewhere past there there is a day that i want to be on and i’ve got to live the inbetween to get there. That’s how getting places works; you have to endure the inbetweens.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2001/10/6423711/