Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

ross

Bunny-Hunting

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Easter does not rank amongst my preferred holidays, maybe because the Easter Bunny is not as powerful a social phenomenon as the Jackolantern or the Thanksgiving Turkey. Face it: it’s a day about the son of god coming back from the dead that is merrily glossed over with pagan egg hunts so that it’s not the religious equivalent of Thriller.

I typically spend Easter hiding from my family. This makes it, in effect, no different than any other day of the year. Past tactics have included unplugging my phone, celebrating passover instead, or having my boss invite me to her house for dinner. This year i decided that the best place to hide would be in plain view, so i invited myself, Elise, and four friends to dine at chez-krisis. The plan was that my mother would be overwhelmed by trying to chat like the merrily socially well-adjusted woman she is that i would escape largely unquestioned and unscathed. My mother, after freaking out for three weeks because she’s never had that many people in her house for an occasion not related to a funeral, seemed to take the planning of the event in stride and with only mild outbreaks of frantic chain-smoking while attempting to invoke the maternal instinct for hosting that she’s let lay dormant for all these years.

It went off nearly without a hitch. I was chastised repeatedly for serving cocktails to my guests before dinner, and told i need to seek alchohol counseling when a single drunken exploit was highlighted in conversation, but was otherwise left unquestioned about my finances, job hunt, and ever-mysterious FUTURE. It was small, as dinners go and, as is typical of such events in my family, consisted of a majority of Italian food and no turkeys, greens, hams, or yams. What wasn’t typical was that i got to enjoy the company of both my friends and my family, which made it much more festive for me.

We ended the night with copious Italian pastries and a marathon of Trading Spaces. Pretty much an ideal day.

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When i was younger TGI Fridays was a fun restaurant to go to; it was a slice of Americana, with red and white striped server shirts and electric blue drinks. It was a restaurant nice enough to consider “eating out” but cheap enough to go to with high school friends.

Tonight we were looking for that sort of bargain eating, and so the bunch of us attractive twenty-somethings drove to a Fridays in the city. In a nod to the TGIF uniform of my youth i was in the red striped shirt i had coveted for months, and upon arrival i had a fishbowl sized Sunset Strip in hand. Feeling attractive and pleasantly tipsy, we were seated.

You need to understand something about me and restaurants: i can’t focus on anything written on the menu. It’s a sort of site-specific ADD … too many people, too much movement, too much smoke and clinking glasses. Though i may peruse, i either have a specific favorite in mind or i just flip through and choose the most verbose description.

Here i should mention that Fridays, inexplicably, has joined forces with 7-11 to become part of the low-carb Atkins revolution. The way Atkins re-entered the zeitgest has left me bewildered, especially as i watch people throwing away the buns to eat twice the hamburger.

Does anyone see where this is headed? In my quick perusal i chose the most colorful picture, a chicken dish, and when it was (finally) brought to the table the waitress bellowed “Atkins Diet Chicken!” I laughed, heartily, that she had mistakenly brought this diet dish to our table. When she proffered it to me i joked, “Do i look like i would order the diet dish? Look at me?” The description had made mention that i could “save five carbs by leaving off the peppers,” i calmly explained, but i did not opt in. I had opted out of the Diet Chicken

I was sober now, steely and serious, as if the drink had never existed. I wasn’t on a diet, i told her. This was the third annoyance of the night, i stated coolly, on top of the pineapple in the drink and the slow service. I’d really just like to mention it to the manager. I don’t mean to be rude, it’s just that i’m not fat. I will explain it to your manager; i didn’t order a diet dish.

Or, well, maybe i did. I thought i had ordered the tasty looking chicken with cheese and broccoli. Instead, i inadvertently turned to the page, the one where we are all in on the hip trend, and we are all on the hip and trendy diet. It’s been around for years; South Beach was so mid-2003. I’m not really fat, it’s just these pants.

I delivered a brief but ultimately trite complaint to the manager, who offered to replace my broccoli with carb-rich mashed potatoes, and then silently choked down the food, ignoring my friends. I could hardly taste it, could not feel it in my mouth. Instead, i was feeling it sinking inside me, bloating my stomach, rising in my throat as soon as it left the back of my tongue. The room was suddenly contracted; too small, too loud, my side of broccoli shrub-like in it’s massiveness on the plate, my chicken the cardboard cover of a lean-cuisine box.

The conversation from the table across from me suddenly rose, punching through our table’s idle chatter. I heard the man speaking to the waitress (“Oh, make sure that i get the diet version of that beer. Make sure you take your time with it, i want you to bring it slow.”) and to the inexplicable pimply balloon-sculptor (“Can you make me a light balloon? It’s got to be thin. And can you give it red on the shirt? A really gay red.”)

From there it is a blur, screaming something over Lindsay’s head to the man across from me and his rambling reply floating back at me as i stood and pushed Ross out of the side of the booth, pausing only to throw down all of the large bills from my wallet. I was not gay. I wanted to leave. I was not fat. I wanted my non-descript flannel clothes back, and the underweight body from beneath them. I wanted my fingers flirting seductively with my epiglottis, head resting on the side of the bowl. I wanted to escape.

I walked around and around in the slowly drifting snow, 17th, Chestnut, Walnut, helping the small woman hail her cab, 16th, Chestnut, smiling at the strangers walking to and from the pricey bars, Market, calling Ross to ask him to get change for my big bills, lying easily, “No, no, the bus is only two blocks away,” 16th, 15th, Waiting to let the gorge slip solidly to the bottom of my stomach, the rage lie still.

I take my life for granted sometimes. I live, have lived for five years, in a calm bubble, where the only one judging me is myself. I have allowed my figure to fill out, supressed my irascible nature, embraced the wispy charm of my character, and just made sure to stay calm. Now i have a dozen dozen days of that left until my bubble is burst, one hundred and forty four days from here until i step off that stage into the real world. Everybody judges. Everybody hurts. Sometimes i need to open my mouth. I need to make myself happy a little more often.

I know that wasn’t especially interesting, but it’s what happened to me tonight. I’m always told not to apologize for my art, but it didn’t feel that artful. Thanks for reading. To cheer up, you should check out the bit about S&M in the last post.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2004/01/107440033006968402/

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And, by the way, i wore cargo pants to Kaki King. And, and, rather than doing it myself i made Ross order my cosmopolitan. I have to say, there’s nothing quite like making your muscle-y blond football-player sized male friend walk up to a female bartender to order a cosmo (especially when they come in dainty little glasses). I don’t know what was better… the look on her face when she heard his order, or the look on his when he saw the look on hers.

But, i digress…

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/08/106140302352548944/

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I am not a car guy, but this weekend i found myself catching my breath when I was first introduced to Ross’s gold 1967 Camaro in full daylight, its top just finishing its retreat to the back hood. We rode in the Camaro almost exclusively the entire time we were in New Hampshire. My favorite part was the looks… at gas stations and stop lights, wide eyed, covetous, keenly appraising the four of us in the car (five, after we were joined by Martha).

I had never been to New Hampshire before. The names and numbers of the highways that got us there were meaningless to me, made all the more alien by the day-early fireworks that exploded in the night all around us. The state itself was equally as foreign; different slang, different prices, a different way of driving. Vehicles on the Maine beach’s parking lot all open and empty, the Philadelphian in me feeling almost compelled to vandalize them for being so trusting.

It felt more real than Philadelphia, though, as if the commonality of an experience makes it less like reality. Like I was a trendy kid eschewing the new pop album to embrace indy critical darling, only with New Hampshire instead of something off of Barksuk records and irreverent, heathenish, treasonous wit rather than any kind of nationalistic spirit. I still wondering the same wonder: is it good because I like it, or because no one else I know does?

Friday morning I woke up at eight twenty seven, so that by the time I rubbed my eyes, stretched, and walked to the kitchen it was eight thirty. Time for work; not even alien surroundings can convince my brain that it is not time to communicate efficiently at half past eight. Saturday saw me rise at the same time, again unprovoked and exactly.

I resolved that over ninety percent of my liquid intake would be alcohol. I was that guy, the guy from the big city turning a peaceful sub-urban vacation into a bender. I was that guy, drink in hand at all times, but even while i went through the motions i knew that it wasn’t me; it felt exactly the same as playing a snooty New York writer trapped on a Pacific Island for my acting class: i knew the paces to go through, but I never felt connected to the character.

On Sunday morning, hung over and ready to head home at eight thirty on the nose, I finally felt like I understood the both of us; we were using a change in location to attempt to focus our image, but without any normal references to work from we were skewed, suddenly out of control and unlike the selves that we had grown accustomed to.

If New England can at once transform and fascinate me to such a degree, how would I react to Alabama or California, England or Denmark, India or Australia? How frightening to think that all of my weakness and confidence might stem from a place outside instead of a place inside, and that a simple change of scenery could alter or even invert it.

Not the sort of independence I had intending to be commemorating, but fitting nonetheless.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2003/07/105760143610820933/

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The way things were headed i seemed due for either a complete mental breakdown or halfway shaved head. And, having just had a complete mental breakdown two weeks ago, i decided that looking like half-hearted punk rocker was better than lying in the middle of my curled up floor sobbing and speaking gibberish.

Subtract half an hour. I was sitting on the stairs averting my eyes from the television because Nicodemus has always scared me. As her hair fluttered down to a white trash bag spread out on the linoleum one razor-sized strip at a time Kate said that none of us had ever seen her natural hair color before. Grinning, she stood up and and walked out of the too fluorescent bathroom as Ross turned to me and asked if we were just trimming up the back.

Add twenty minutes, and i was attacking it with scissors while he shaved off the back with a half-inch blade, pulling at my thick hair so hard that i was crying. Tears carried shards of hair down my face like tiny rivers as we all laughed out loud. I wish that i could blame our hysterical laughter on being drunk or stoned, but we had all stopped drinking hours beforehand. They were laughing heartily, rolling around on the floor outside the bathroom, and i was laughing at myself.

Subtract fifteen minutes. They voted five to one for my haircut, but add twenty-five to that and they all drifted away. Bored with me, though i played the comedian as i tried to get Ross to pay attention to how short my hair should be. Elise won’t like this, i said, and they all laughed at my antics as i complained about the hair that was in my eyes and how much it all hurt. She won’t like, i thought, because i’ll hate it. I will never be able to convince her.

Plus thirty minutes. Standing in front of the mirror with the clippers wielded like a dagger, and it was almost perfect. Ross had left, Kate was in the shower. The top was excellent, the back was a little shaggy, but the sides were all wrong. They needed to blend from the top, and loop around my ears. The left side slowly conformed to my wishes, but on the right i came too close in front of my ear and was left with a tiny bald spot when i pulled away. It just won’t do, i thought.

They had joked earlier about giving me a mohawk.

Six months ago today was the third night Elise and i slept beside each other in the same bed. Six months before that i was packing up what there was of my life and wondering if it meant anything at all. Six months before that i was already saying what i refused to let myself figure out. And i don’t remember what happened six months before that, other than that it was a week before i started using blogger.

After Ross left, Kate wanted a shower, Lindsay wanted me to sweep up the hair in the bathroom, and Erika wanted to go to sleep. I just wanted my curls back, to save them for winter when i can be pretty again, and now i am just teary and wide awake waiting for the train to take me away from here in the morning.


I will not forget this feeling.

https://www.crushingkrisis.com/2002/08/85355930/