by Megan Boyle
Now a bus, I hear a bus moving in the same direction as the airplane
More cars
Another airplane, ‘high pitched’ noise coming with this one, sounds ‘landing’
Lights of a car approaching
The car is backing into a garage 30’ from me
Still one leg out
Here comes the other one
Right leg and foot both on the ground, seat made a ‘ticky ticky’ noise as I moved leg
Hiccuped
Hair is tickling my nose
Both feet on floor, door is ajar
Another airplane
Thought ‘Did I mention I live by JFK’ and pictured myself onstage looking around an audience for laughs
Scratched nose and moved hair behind right ear self-consciously, knowing I’d be typing
Scratched itch on forehead
Before I wrote ‘self-consciously’ I non-self-consciously scratched an itch on right leg
Looked again at street behind me, hearing cars to the right, scratched leg again
Another airplane
Okay here goes: you won’t hear from me for a while because I am going to ‘ornament’ my arms with bags of groceries
I am going to walk to the passenger side of the car and open that door to do this
Then I am going to lock the door
Liveblogging this in advance because my hands will be full on the walk to my building
Pictured me buying beer at pickles & pies and thought ‘mercy’
Another airplane
I can smell celery from my grocery bag, ‘beckoning’ me
Fuck
Another set of headlights approaching
Pulled door closer to me so car could pass but the pulling was unnecessary
Also scratched my head
Again, and my inner right knee
Am I really this itchy? Seems uncommon
Heart is beating faster
Enough clowning around Boyle go to the passenger side door, now is your chance to get away, ggogogogoogogo
10:22PM: thought ‘i’m not going to make it’ humorlessly several times while walking to building. did ‘shoulder shrugs’ with groceries on arms, endorphin rush was quickly replaced with ‘this is horrible, i’m not going to make it.’ about half a block from my building i lowered grocery bags to get better fist grips.
saw a person standing by the entrance as i neared. thought ‘shit, i’m going to have to interact maybe, maybe i’ll take long enough for them to comfortably pretend like they didn’t see me or conclude ‘it’s too long for me to hold a door for someone.” it didn’t work. i recognized the person, it was crystal, i forgot when we met but i know it was in the elevator. she lives on the second floor too. she was wearing hospital scrubs and had a small dog tonight. i said ‘thank you, have i met you before?’ saw her eyes. she said ‘i think so maybe.’ i said ‘you’re crystal.’ she said ‘yeah, yeah i’m crystal.’ i said ‘crystal, yeah, hi, i’m megan’ as we walked to the elevator and comfortably entered ‘agreement that we would both be using the elevator and crystal would hold the elevator door for me’ dynamic. i said ‘and who is this?’ she said ‘oh this is hershey.’ i said ‘hershey’ and smiled. we were in the elevator. i looked her in the eyes and said ‘it seems like a lot of people have small pets in this building,’ aware of intentionally acting like patrick bateman. slipping into patrick bateman style. think i was able to do patrick bateman style because of ‘fleeting hopelessness’ on the walk to the car. like. i can do patrick bateman style if i get to the level of hopelessness where i’m thinking ‘there is nothing left to expect, nothing can surprise me, so why not do whatever.’ just remembered the part in ‘american psycho’ where he’s at the beach with his girlfriend and he can’t sleep and he stands alone on the beach, feeling…i can’t remember, something about this part was poignant. then he went inside and pictured smashing his girlfriend’s head in with a statue/bust, was most tempted to do it that night.
back to crystal: i’m not going to write everything about crystal. i remember not writing everything about crystal last time too. at the end, as we were walking to our apartments (hers is diagonal to mine, next to colin’s), i said something about having two cats and thought ‘evilly maneuvering this entire conversation to get cat inventory off my chest.’ crystal smiled and kind of laughed and said ‘you have a good night megan.’ i said ‘you too, crystal’ and unlocked my door. crystal would be an easy patrick bateman victim. like you would know ‘red flag: crystal will be killed,’ if this were a novel about how i killed people.
11:16PM: turned on red light by door. put groceries on table. impulsively bought a push-button night light that’s supposed to make stars and the moon appear on the ceiling when you turn it on.
replaced old lightbulb in lamp. when i remove or replace a lightbulb i picture it exploding and slicing me open somewhere. this time i thought ‘the shade is placed in such a way that it would be my right wrist. gashing open. blood pouring out. would i call mom? i would call mom to see if i should go to the hospital but i wouldn’t feel like going and she would tell me to call an ambulance. would i do it? i would…what would i use to stop the bleeding [memory of when i slipped and sliced open finger cutting open a coconut in iowa with tao and it was bleeding a lot and i used a towel and went to the front desk and they called an ambulance, then the ambulance guy said the hospital was close enough to drive to and the ambulance would cost more, then like, ‘but it’s your decision though, ambulance or not’].’
the light didn’t turn on. tried the outlet above it. still didn’t turn on. removed poster covering the fuse box and turned on and off all the fuses, remembering the part in ‘jurassic park’ where laura dern does that and electrocutes the boy and then the velociraptor attacks her friend and there is a close-up of her screaming. pressed button that said ‘test’ and heard door buzzer go off as the lights of my ‘main light area’ by my bed went off. tried it again. no dice. tried all the fuses again, thinking ‘laura dern, it’s going to happen, the velociraptor, or no, just i’ll be electrocuted, okay.’ think lamp is just broken. plugged computer into other outlet. thought ‘buying lightbulbs and throwing away old lightbulb when it was the lamp the whole time, and now i have less light in my apartment than when i started, no wait, that’s better, i don’t even like it when there’s a lot of lights, [memory of zachary liking overhead lighting and me ‘dealing with his preference’ most times we used the living room, using lamps when he wasn’t there].’
did dishes. thought about soliciting brandon scott gorrell for ‘how did you get out of depression, are you out all the way, for some reason i think you’re doing okay’ advice. imagined his response being something like ‘make yourself do things you think you want, make yourself be social, you will meet people you like, if what you’re doing is making you unhappy think about why you keep doing it, maybe see a therapist.’ thought ‘that’s the most anyone can ever say. the most that can ever be recommended. your choices are always this: stay unhappy, kill yourself, see a therapist.’ felt hopeless…thing…of ‘i can’t imagine putting away the groceries, can’t they just stay there on the table.’ smelled the celery. the beckoning ass celery. washed the glass component and scrubbed sticky stuff off the motor component of the blender i found with nicholas last night. it took a long time. the sticky stuff was greenish brownish. thought ‘maybe the sticky stuff is pesticide, all of the appliances on the street seemed sticky, maybe they fumigated their apartment and that’s why they were getting rid of things, maybe the blender will work and small bits of pesticide will stay inside it and ‘mercifully’ poison me over time and they’ll find out from looking at my hair, the poison will show in my hair, napoleon-style.’
put away groceries. took picture. thought ‘it looks like…such…a nice-looking fridge, doesn’t it,’ like the rock man in ‘the neverending story’ when he says ‘they look like such big…strong…hands, don’t they.’
MAY 29, 2013
&nbs
p; 1:30PM: shirley is sleeping next to me. she yawned and arched her back to fill my hand. now she seems asleep again. there is no way to know really, if a cat that appears asleep is. or if anyone is, i guess. there is no way to know if a person is really asleep, everyone could be pretending. funny to imagine cats…the amount they sleep and how much ‘pretending’ would be involved.
3:58AM: listening to mitch hedberg youtube videos. he’s one of the only stand-up comedians to make me laugh this hard. ‘rice is good for when you’re hungry and you want two-thousand of something’…jesus…think about how good his book/twitter/anything would’ve been…
4:44AM: ate 2mg xanax. i don’t want to be awake right now. shit. i don’t want to be asleep either. alvie is acting insane, howling again. he is afraid of beds, maybe. what is going on with that guy. would it have been better if i had named him ‘kevin.’ why don’t i have a period yet. why is he howling in the bathroom.
now shirley trying to fight him off the bed. he wants to be on the bed, i think that’s the problem. that’s a nice-sounding problem for a person to have but what a hell for alvie. running around and howling and unable to communicate what he wants to ‘large non-cat thing that feeds him, that is now repeating his name and gesturing to the bed, where a cat that looks almost exactly like him [though don’t think he knows that] is trying to fight him.’
5:18AM: sun is coming out. sky is doing blue morning thing. i don’t feel xanax working yet, or it is maybe just having a minimal effect. door to staircase has opened and closed twice. there is a ‘rolling’ sound right now, coming from the hallway. it stopped.
saw that tao ‘liked’ that i was going to ‘taipei’ release. scanned the list of other people going and considered belligerently ‘liking’ only the people i like’s ‘going to event’ status. should i eat another 1mg xanax…how am i going to…do things…today…it…shit. two placebo birth control pills left for this month. usually get period a little before now. i feel like if i say this it will mean i’ll get my period. why would i not get it. there is no reason for me not to get it unless i messed up with timing, but i don’t think i did when that would’ve mattered. earlier i pictured going to an abortion clinic alone. they would ask me if i’ve had one before and i’d start crying. i wouldn’t tell zachary. i would require mental hospital things if that happened, the depression that would follow, i think, i don’t know if i could live with myself or feel motivated or try relationships with people if i did that again. the most humane thing would be if i killed both of us, if it happens. i’m not being dramatic please don’t read into this. i’m just thinking. it’s not going to happen. everything is going to be fine. i can feel ‘period-y thing’ in my lower half. like cramping kind of. i’ll probably wake tomorrow and will have ‘wet the bed’ with blood instead tonight. zachary if you are reading fuck you if you think i’m doing this for sympathy i’m writing what i’m thinking. how many times do i have to say something for a person to understand it. it’s impossible to make someone understand you if they don’t want to, if they think you are just their thoughts about you. so many people are like that. i am like that maybe. i can’t think of ways i’m like that but i’m not denying the possibility that i could be like that about some people. zachary reading the previous sentence and squinting and saying ‘huh,’ making a display of ‘huh.’ like making a display of ‘i am reading words on a page that were not necessarily written by a person, these are simply words for me to understand, that are poorly written and so harder to understand.’ then me looking at him and saying ‘what do you think?’ and him not looking at me, still squinting at the words and making a face like half-interestedly trying to figure out a math problem, then saying ‘well, there’s some content in there.’ it is going to take a while to get ‘disapproving zachary’ voice out of my head. also zachary if you read that and think i wrote it for sympathy fuck you big time worse than the last ‘fuck you.’ also zachary if you are reading stop reading already, you said this wasn’t ‘worth your time,’ go spend your time in better ways.
5:36AM: still no xanax effects. eating another 1mg. i’ve been eating 2-4mg and combining with alcohol recently, that’s why i don’t feel much.
5:57AM: considering eating another 1mg if i’m not sleepy by 6:15AM.
6:01AM: re-watching MDMAfilms movies. sweet/funny/nostalgic. seems like such a long time ago. there must be like 500 hours of footage of tao and me on external hard drives, floating around.
7:00AM: ate another 1mg. sam cooke tweeted ‘xanax is a palindrome’ recently. thought ‘eyes wide shut’ or something, re: that, something vague.
7:17AM: ate four hummus/avocado/salt/lime tortillas. i want curtains that block out all light. it feels so bad to see the sun do its sneaky thing on you. i would be safe in a black room with dim oscilating rainbow lights. memory foam carpet. loft bed as big as the room with security cameras that show what’s under the bed. memory foam carpet would be a drag, realistically. like for daily life. want carpet with wide textural sampling, like little squares of ‘memory foam’ and ‘trampoline’ and ‘quicksand.’ the squares could scatter randomly or dominate the whole floor sometimes, you could set the floor to ‘oscillate’ along with rainbow lights.
there was this thing at the adler planetarium, ‘the space walk.’ outer space simulation. i did it twice. i probably did it once, though. this is probably a case of ‘memory so nice it must’ve been ‘twice.” you walk in a line moving in the direction of where ‘the space walk’ ends. behind the first door is a hallway where it’s so dark your eyelids feel irrelevant, that leads to the the door ‘the space walk’ is behind. a room that doesn’t look like a room because there are no floors or ceilings or walls, just blackness ‘punctured’ by star-like lights. it was some kind of mirror trick. that could be my room.
11:14AM: i was visiting juliet and tao—roommates in the midst of a bromance that had taken them both by surprise, whose mutual fascination seemed to have been taking place over one long dazzling conversation that was hard, as an outsider, to get in on. they were curious and distantly welcoming of me, though more preoccupied with referencing their ‘lesbian relationship,’ ignoring my questions about if it was a joke, or if it wasn’t, how that worked. i was running out of ways to appear busy and stood by a sliding glass door. the mountains were volcanoes.
woke with UTI pain. no period yet. eating cherries and pounding water. sleepy.
2:04PM: woke almost peeing. no bed wetting today!!!!!!!! sleepy xanax overload. 4mg. too much. i am not allowed xanax today. UTI pain gone. i just need to remember to drink more water. imagined joaquin phoenix at the DMV spelling both his names and heart skipped a little.
2:29PM: pictured myself looking ‘calmly dead’ in bed, getting found by mark probably, after transferring all my paypal money (~$350) to my savings account (~$100), spending it all on heroin to combine with all the xanax i have (~20mg) and a bottle of wine. mark would say ‘ah jeez. that’s too bad’ and call whoever you call. that’s if i find out i’m pregnant. i would make sure my cats had enough food for a few days before i did it. i don’t know if i’d leave a note. my note would be an asterisk and my last liveblog update would be ‘*: see above.’
2:55PM: chewed caffeine pill with teeth and swallowed. ate noopept. the DMV is 26 minutes away. i think i got this. i can do this today. decided ‘lacking interest in food’ depression is better than the alternative, for health. eating only fruits and vegetables makes me feel good, physically. maybe will cause other things to improve.
3:33pm: Danny texted ‘hi’
Danny called less than a minute later
He said he wants cash instead of a check
Annoying
Meeting him at 6pm
3:45pm: seems like I’m not going to make it to the DMV. They’ll also be annoyed with me for being late and will probably be less forgiving. I’ll get my car inspected instead. That is actually the more annoying of the tasks. Okay. Going to call bp station by me to see about this.
4:35pm: w
ent to the wrong gas station. Called the right one. The man said ‘no we’re a Mobil gas station now.’ parked by a ‘self-car wash’ machine and wandered around service area and tried to open a door. No dice. Wandered to repair shop area and saw a probably female person working on an elevated car with a 24-pack box of sam adams in the open trunk. I said ‘hi I called earlier about a photo inspection?’ She smiled and said ‘oh just hang out and wait.’ walked to the edge of the service area and waited a little. She cheerfully said ‘oh naw, you can bring it over closer, bring your car over and hang out.’ I did it. I am hanging out. She said ‘you got your insurance card?’ I said ‘yeah’ and felt like I had won a ‘price is right’ thing, I haven’t known where the card is for a long time and found it while moving a couple weeks ago. Took out insurance card. Afraid there will be an issue.
Woman pulled up to my left, wanting an inspection too. Mechanic lady said ‘hold on, I have one ahead of you.’ now the inspection-hungry woman is parked behind me. Have to pee badly. Their bathroom is out of order.
7:07PM: have been laying in bed feeling depressed. i am wearing a bikini. why did i do that. i don’t know, but ‘here it is.’ smells like chlorine. i don’t remember wearing it. i know ‘laundry’ is something i wanted to do.
7:25PM: dad called. i don’t feel like typing details of anything right now. nothing has been bad or…i don’t know. nice talk with dad. danny showed up at 5:31PM. told him i was looking for publishing jobs in manhattan to sound ‘responsible.’ dad said ‘you can ‘punch out’ for the night.’ couldn’t make myself sound okay. dad said ‘i don’t know about you, but i think if i lived by the beach, i don’t know, i’d like to take a nice walk on the beach sometimes. have you done that?’ i said i haven’t done it much and that maybe i would do that now. heard my voice sounding ‘far away.’
tomorrow i’m going to do the other things i said i’d do today. i don’t want to do laundry or hang up clothes. i want to be sleeping but i don’t want to sleep and then wake and have it be another time. should i buy wine or something. i don’t feel enough effort to do…just…it would involve…anything is going to involve my effort right now. should i just watch TV. there is nothing i want to look at. i don’t even feel ‘i want to be held by someone’ right now. i don’t know what’s responsible for mood shift. mood has plummeted since returning from car inspection. i could make green juice. my face feels different. i’m sorry to everyone i haven’t responded to yet, who has said something nice to me. i get in this place sometimes of feeling that i’m being ‘sucked out.’ not by people or…i don’t know, not by anything. the feeling is like i have one IV needle spaced out every two or three inches on my body. like the ‘hellraiser’ needle-head guy but everywhere, and the needles are hooked up to tubes but they’re not sucking out my blood, it’s something else. i don’t know what it’s sucking out. it feels like breathing requires mental effort, or just like, laying here. i’m ‘paying’ the needle sucking things just by laying on my bed, like, if i let them do it for a while maybe i’ll get left alone and i can start doing things again. when i feel like this it’s like there’s no question of ‘what do i want.’ like ‘what do i want to eat’ or ‘who do i want to talk to’ or ‘how do i want my life to go.’ i just don’t have a choice for a while, i just have to let the thing suck whatever it wants out of me. then i can go. like today, i started to be able to ‘go’ again today, by going outside. if i drink i’m going to…i know what ‘drunk’ feels like. i know what ‘xanax’ feels like. i know what other drugs feel like. i know what ‘soberly waiting for time to pass’ feels like. i know what everything feels like. pictured myself in a transparent box at the coney island freak show behind a belted gate in front of which is a plaque that says ‘UNABLE TO BE SURPRISED BY ANYTHING.’