I'm doing it again

You think you've got demons? Fuck you, all of you.

For the last week I've been eating, breathing, and sleeping my job. It's a part-time job, and I've turned it into an 80-hour a week crusade. I'm a fund-raiser. I raise money for a good cause, namely, the Fuzzy Sado-Massochists. I solicit corporate donations, both cash and in-kind. I solicit individual patrons and members. I coordinate fundraising events. I sell ads. I do anything I can to scrape together any penny I can beg, borrow, or steal. Well, not borrow. I have no fucking intention of giving any of it back. We need it for the summer season. We are a non-profit, professional theatre company. I raise money to pay actors, build sets, rent performance space, design and purchase costumes, and all the other things that come with theatre. But it's all an act.

I care, I really do care about what I do. The actors' livlihoods depend on me. But mostly I care about what my job does for me. When I first came home to this one-horse shit hole I cried twice a day from lonliness. I cried because of all the friends I miss, and for the relationships I never had and never will as long as I live in this small-minded cesspool. I love my friends. I miss their conversation, their company, their competition. I miss the ones who crack me up, and the ones who make sure I never go out on Friday night looking the frontrunner in the Lesbian Lumberjack of the Year contest. I miss the ones who come into my room and open my fridge and help themselves, and the ones who mail me tapes of themselves reading novels because I'm too far away and the phone is too expensive. I miss the friend who climbs inside any cardboard box he sees, and the friend for whom hot chocolate is a dietary staple. I miss the friends who carry boats and row their goddamn fucking brains out and lay it all on the line even after I've irrevacobly destroyed our only chance of winning the biggest regatta of our lives. And the friends who pick me up and carry me on their shoulders when I'm afraind of a dog. I miss being made to laugh, being told off, being cried on, being counted on, and being missed.

But I'm selfish, because the person I miss the most is the one who doesn't exist. I miss the person who isn't in love with me. I love all my friends, and I assume they love me in the same way, but we all know there's a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. I have been loved, but I have never been in-loved. I know what it is to be in love. I do not know what it is to know that someone is in love with me.

So when I arrived in this miserable, mid-western mire a few months ago I spent a lot of time drowning in the cataract of self-pity and lonliness that sprayed from my eyes daily. As time wore on and my temporary stay became longer and longer, I couldn't take the emptiness any more, so I filled my emotional void with occupation. I latched on to something that was only supposed to be a part-time distraction and made it my life. I do that, you know. I find things to consume me so I don't have to be alone with my thoughts. (Rowing is fucking brilliant for that. I highly recommend it to lonely multitudes seeking escape.) When I think about my self or my life, I bawl like an 8-day-old Jewish boy, so I don't leave myself time to think about myself. I don't dwell on what I'm missing. I even gave up watching romantic comedies and reading love stories because I can no longer bear being reminded that in several, fundamental ways, I am different from EVERYONE I know. There are certain experiences common to all people -- love, death, sex, loss, ect. -- the sum of which is known as the human condition. Two of these are alien to me. No one has ever loved me, or allowed me to love them. No one has ever made love to me, or allowed me to make love to them. They are alien to me. I am alien. I am not fully human. I am sub-human.

So when I asked a friend of mine who was depressed to tell me about the woman who had him bummed, I was expecting some dreamy looks, wistful sighs, and a few fond memories. I was not expecting an acid-tears, serrated knife in the viscera reminder of what I lack. It's a good thing I live in the flatlands, because if there were a cliff nearby I'd be fucking headed there right now. Instead I'll spend the weekend slaving at my "part-time" job, trying to find a rowing club within and hour's drive that I can afford to join for six months, and working on the book I've begun writing. Anything, absolutely fucking anything, to keep me from thinking about what I've just heard.

How do you like them demons?