Half-Fiction Friction

what to say about the recording of half-truths?

satisfaction

in terms of pasttimes, she preferred masturbation over anything else. between intellectual masturbation and physical masturbation, it was practically all she ever did in her spare time.

in terms of intellectual masturbation, she would write lengthy blog entries and letters to the editor to various publications that made intangible philosophical and political commentaries, most often by referencing canonized literature, foreign films, Foucault, and occasionally pop culture. she had an average of 14 tweets a day chronicling her academic reflections to everything around.

in terms of physical masturbation, she pleasured herself upon waking up, prior to falling asleep, in the shower, and a variety of other times and locations, including occasionally in the bathroom at work. sometimes there was porn or a vibrator involved; other times she used her imagination and her hand. masturbation was useful because 1) women struck her as judgmental and made her nervous, and 2) men struck her as just plain incompetent. she always came.

a fictional account of myself and all my friends

i drink coffee on nights when i drive past your house, so that it doesn't feel lonely or strange, it feels like Bravery. it feels like Truth.

somehow it's always winter. there are christmas lights strung along rooftops and mittens and scarves and the windows all frost over.

i drink coffee on nights like this, when i need to feel like an artist or an intellectual to feel alive (and yes, i remember what you told me about how those two words are interchangeable). i bought into the american myth of value and now i am stuck trying to grow into something exceptional; a writer or a musician or a profound academic or a civil rights martyr or an anarchist. there are these ideas of trying to become better than you already are; they make you hate yourself, i realize this now with my maturity and somber analysis of society, but nonetheless, it's too late for me. oh well, is my reaction. i am - you guessed it! - a nihilist and an existentialist and an atheist, too.

i was a gangly nervous girl, and then an angsty gothic teenager.

there are fits of insomnia and isolation, that i try to wear proud, like intentions.

on this particular night i drive past your house and keep going, winding up through the lost hills of suburbia, reality tv, sedatives, clean kitchens. i set up a picnic for myself in the snow and try to ignore the temperature. i lay back and in my head i can see snow angels surrounding me.

i recall previous bouts of delinquency.

there was the time that we were making out on the subway and didn't even notice when it went out of service. finally we realized, prying open the door, pressing the red emergency button just for fun and giggling as we ran down the tracks. then we noticed an old man in a wheelchair, beyond the pavement against the wall. this is when you stopped, took your leftovers out of your bag and gave them to him. he called us dykes and we just smiled and walked off holding hands, understanding our own strength and everyone else's preconditions.

after that day we didn't talk anymore. it was enough satisfaction to see in someone else something kind, something compassionate and sweet; to see in each other that with our steel-toed toughness comes something very gentle after all.

in the middle of everything i am constantly trying to prove to myself my own strength. hold head high. ignore goose-bumps and loneliness. snow turns skin blue. make plans for tomorrow, when there is a chance i could run in to you, when perhaps there will be a change in the weather.

human, being; human, (no longer) being

she imagined dragging her tongue along the gritty cracked surface of the brick wall that she sat with her back to every day; up the columns and along the rows and in the thin lines of grout between bricks. the taste, or rather, the way she imaged in the taste to be - sort of metallic and sort of like dirt - made her nerves and anxiety soften some. other times when she would sigh and lean back in to the wall she imaged doing it with gusto, with fervor, with loud cracks until the back of her skull began to bleed. she was mature and intellectual but she was, for an artist anyway, surprisingly ineffective at being introspective.

human, being, human, being, she would write on everything