* * *
So, lately:
Time with Freida, editing in her studio, which has mostly been an excuse to spend time together;
Slept, once, with Oreste again. It was a terrific evening. Ran into each other at a show and kissed hello continuously. I hadn’t seen him in over a month, mostly he had been on tour, and it was so relieving. Lovely to be caught in this heat of public passion: chatting, running around from one room to another, hands touching, kissing lots, holding each other, all night. It was as if the whole week hadn’t been awful. So, he came over; we rode in a taxi together. He is moving away soon, permanently. He doesn’t like it here, and we haven’t spoken since the evening.
Ivan tells me I shouldn’t be so conservative with myself where it concerns Oreste, but Ivan is fucking wrong.
Helena started to email again. I’ll still be doing a hint of work for her. Hardly anything. We had a meeting at her house last Friday afternoon and it was a treat. It occurred to me she might have handed me down her only slightly worn copy of Either/Or in order to torture me (you see—Oreste read from it the night Helena brought me to see him do comedy), but: this is crazy. This is not a reasonable thing to think.
* * *
Resigned myself to the pretty unavoidable circumstance of having sacrificed this semester for myself academically. You cannot fail your future by taking too long. There is no deadline for life.
I have no one to ask: can’t I just feel good enough for the both of us?
The afternoon after my last night with Oreste, Max asked if I wanted to have lunch. I biked down to Parkdale, we had Tibetan food. Max is in touch with the things one should be in touch with. He asked about Oreste, and I told him: it “ended” soon after he and I last hung out, but only insofar as it went from a thing with some accountability to a thing with none, but now it has ended, really, because he’s moving, for months. He told me about someone new he had been dating, but that it seems to have ended, too. He says she’s my age, but not like me. I ask, what does that mean, what sort of way am I that someone can be unlike? He says: calm, introverted. I know I’m trying to get over the investment in being affirmed by what others might see in me, but it makes me feel so great that he sees me this way.
* * *
This semester truly ended with nothing. One thing I have not recovered from: still feeling guilt for aptitude, power, still feeling as though every time things are going well, they threaten to return to bad again. Even when I feel powerful, I anticipate it all falling to shit again. So, of course it does. At the heart, I still don’t trust myself, don’t think I deserve things that are going well, don’t think I deserve to claim what I want. Always think I should want some other thing. Whenever I am so lucky as to find focus, this is the guilt that distracts from it. I feel guilt for a presence I’m worried is seductive, because all discourse seems to verge upon seduction, and all seduction feels violent to me, or at least unclean. But you can stimulate without seducing! And you can comfort without seducing. And you can excite without seducing. You can draw lines of identification without seducing. I don’t want to consume or ruin anyone. I am not guilty of anything.
I am going to have to work through discipline in order to bring about for myself a life that, at least, more closely resembles that life I’d like to live. I get a reason to live the moment I give myself one.
Slept with Paul again after a dinner party at his house. It was nice: Ivan, Freida, Ruby, more. Ivan made a stew. Didn’t love when it became a YouTube party, but, for the most part, nice. Paul had told me of his desire to have a sex night in plain words prior to this party. I wasn’t sure; by the party, everything was fine, it met all the conditions I’d wish to set for a casual sex contract. I am never frightened of being myself with Paul. I feel comfortable expressing whatever I’d like, and get satisfactory expression in kind. It’s easy. Ultimately: I trust him. He is my friend, first, and I trust him. No rules are broken, nothing threatens to be compromised. It is exactly right.
Romance progresses discursively, upon discoveries, upon the power of discovery. In friendship, though, whatever must be known is known—certainly there are further depths, but they don’t matter; they don’t threaten to destabilize the structure. In romance, some party is always a step further, waiting for the other to catch up. In friendship, you stand evenly. In both friendship and romance, you want to be at that dinner party.
* * *
It’s no pleasure, but it’s our privilege, to be disappointed by things. Our disappointment means our rules, too. Depression is a defensive stance when anxiety has become too tiring, and has made us too vulnerable to life.
* * *
Last week, I went to a party of Helena’s, which Oreste was in town for. Intimate party: I met their mother. The party was a treat, and it was very easy to speak with Oreste, whom I hadn’t been speaking to since his departure. Often we were with each other. He was the last person who spoke to me before I left. Goodbye wouldn’t have felt complete without, “Do you want to hang out later?” OK. We did not fuck absolutely instantly like the most recent times. Talking before, and lots more after than usual. What happened was I got everything I wanted. Unbelievably? This certain sort of speech I can’t even articulate exactly the nature of had been missing for months, but that evening it wasn’t hard to cultivate. Talked about taste and self-cultivation. Talked about how one feels good, and how one feels bored. Talked about what we never talk about (I brought up how I thought it was strange that we never discussed previous romantic involvements). Why should it be OK that I can discuss things with my friends that I can’t discuss with the person I’m sleeping with? He says he doesn’t even want to hear about his closest friends’ old closest friends. We talk about memory and decide that mine is better. He says, at two years old, he was terribly misbehaved. I ask, do you find that you often have feelings while being unaware of them? He says, yes. I tell him, I always know exactly how I’m feeling. He asks, are you kidding!? I say, you know, obviously, I’m kidding a little—but I am almost not even kidding. I bring up all sorts of things, little details I kept, and he is surprised. I tell him, I try to keep a good memory, and sometimes I succeed at this. I tell him I think he idealizes an aesthetic of disaffection, but I don’t, and sometimes I feel self-conscious about this. He laughs, really, do you think someone who comes into town for a single night and spends it in your bed only to leave again the next morning might idealize disaffection? I say, it’s a possibility! And we laugh, lots. He doesn’t like hearing about former attachments because he feels like we’re all just substitutes in each others’ lives for positions previously held by other people. I say, I don’t feel like this.
We’re not together, and perhaps I’ve confused, to a point, what I thought I’ve sought from togetherness. Look, honestly, what scares me is that I care about someone and they do not care about me. That’s it. That I’ll sleep with someone, and I’ll hold myself to a certain standard of treatment with them, and they will not do the same for me. And then they’ll meet someone else, a surprise to me, who has whatever thing I happen to lack, and then I’ll have nothing left but my loss. This has happened in the past, and I’ve been heartbroken by it. My suspicion, however, is that a relationship does not inoculate you against these misfortunes. My way of showing care is an anxious one. I want it demonstrated. I want some other scared person to demonstrate skill and fearlessness with me, when maybe this is an absurd thing to want! Because I cannot just—as though I’m not encountering new people to change what I want from the world—pretend as though I have some made-up standard that separates them. The facts: I care more for Oreste than I’ve cared for anyone in some time. Wrote him later to say it was so nice, and I’m always coming to like him in new ways. He says: “It’s a different world in your world (i.e., when with you, at your place), and maybe an important one, certainly a unique one. (These are all good things. OK.)” OK! This is the sweetest fucking thing I have e
ver been told. “It’s a different world in your world.”
* * *
Probably: I already know the pleasures and joys I am bound to experience in life. I already know how they feel, what they look like, and, generally, how they are sought. No great mysteries await me. There is no great life I haven’t lived but could. I just have to avoid the terrible parts and stay the course of the good, rewarding parts. You have to live in the world you make. It is no great mystery.
* * *
Ivan stayed over on my couch for three nights, and it was splendid. Nice to have company, nice to have someone I feel preternaturally easy around, nice to pepper one’s life with that of another for a while. Some dinners, lots of hanging out and chatting while doing other things. A little pot. He showed me that it can be cut with lavender. It’s terrific to smoke a light little lavender joint. Blaise sold me, also, a bit of Dexedrine, which I am smitten with. This is a drug that makes me feel exactly as I’d desire to. Regular, light, present life with none of that constant-threat-of-the-bed feeling. Suddenly had a good and usable picture of some things that needed to be done. Didn’t feel worried or sad, not for a day. What I shall try to do is get my doctor to prescribe me Dexedrine or some similar thing. Considering SSRIs, I worry about the loss of physical passion, the loss of drive. Yesterday, I felt like, should I be able to live like this daily, I wouldn’t care whether I had a sex drive or not.
* * *
Why does the most inspired speech seem to always wish to scurry off elsewhere—another register, another genre, another manner, another vocabulary? The artist could always be doing better had she chosen another medium first. The writer would always be doing better work had she chosen another style. And meeting a lover, an object of infatuation and inspiration, you’d be better off speaking more like them—or, at least, your desire spurs you forth in this direction. What attracts you is exactly what you aim at reproducing, matching, beating. You want your best in you.
Here’s my prediction: I have an easier and kinder relationship to some drugs this season. I see no problem with the drugs, which distract me from the suicidal hopelessness that has dominated many labour and leisure hours over the past few months. I hope my therapist has decided that I am only depressive, not bipolar, so she may be comfortable providing me amphetamines. Otherwise, I find it a bit of a joy to smoke some marijuana, and know for certain that I do not deserve even an oil drop of the bullshit of life.
Supposing I care about something right now, it is school, and the friendships incidental to having my attention there. If I do not care about anything, it is Oreste. Let us (me) face it: I’m never going to want some other dick as I want that dick as I think of wanting that dick (and I do, indeed). Honest about the dick I must wean myself off of, it is necessary to be honest, too, about the steps necessary to undertake. You must go on a blind date with a man about whom you possess no optimism whatsoever, who emails you to say he will be on time. OK, sir!
* * *
Dates are shit, life is a bore, pleasure is capricious, and I’m proud of myself for smoking the pot necessary to reconcile myself with life!
* * *
For the second day, for the first time, I have taken Wellbutrin. On a prescription. Like one should. I had an appointment with my therapist where I asked, shyly, about being prescribed Dexedrine, “or at least something which would make me feel as Dexedrine felt.” When I took Cipralex years ago, I did not like it, and due to fear of Cipralex-like effects, I was not keen on taking any SSRI. I did not want to feel numbed or slowed or knocked out. I just wanted concentration, and to feel stimulated. She told me she would not prescribe a stimulant as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder, but that on Wellbutrin, some report stimulant-like effects. I’d heard of others using it (Julian, particularly). I decided I could not wait for the good days any longer. So I’m trying it. Began with a very low dosage. It doesn’t feel like Cipralex and it doesn’t feel like Dexedrine. So far, it doesn’t feel like much. But I was tired at a normal hour yesterday, and I didn’t have much trouble waking up today, and it’s past noon already, and I haven’t had the math urge.
Even as I improve myself, I won’t get all I want. There is no perfect strategy to life. There is no good way of behaving whereby you can secure yourself against disappointment and pain. It’s not as though if I “played my cards right,” reserved myself a little more skilfully, I’d attract better the attention I wanted. You suffer then, too. You suffer whenever you want something. Yet you need to want. That’s what it is to live instead of spending all day in bed afraid to get your hopes up for whatever or whomever outside in the world may stimulate you.
I often forget how much worse off my body was when I was younger and more afraid. I forget the constant sinus and yeast infections and warts on my feet and nausea and extra weight and every little fucking thing. I forget the hunger, the binge eating, the feeling of bottomlessness. I forget that even though I had a certain resilience, there was always something in the centre of my gut that made me feel so frightened and helpless that it bore out at me from the inside. I never knew what it was. Alexithymia is real. If you speak openly and put your trust in people, it doesn’t change your relationship to them, because they don’t know the difference. It will all look the same to them. But you will know, and it will feel better physically! Almost as if by magic, to “act naturally” stops one from feeling so sick all the time. The reward, I guess, is not ostensibly positive—in fact, at times it feels painful. It’s just the absence of the constantly encroaching physical sickness, something you’re easily forgetful of when it isn’t with you. This, or my diet’s better.
The good is not sought through attachments to lost attachments crystallized in my mind, who actually made me feel compromised even when things were good. The kind of love I want is so rare, and it takes such considerable willingness to give on the part of two improbably compatible people who would have to come together upon the most generous luck. The most precipitous. I cannot expect that to be the baseline of life. It’s not! It is the most wonderful fucking thing in fucking life, and you cannot live it always. All my desire for Oreste is based on nostalgia for three weeks when I thought we would fall in love with each other. They were the fucking best three weeks. I’ve had special weeks. With Julian, with Max. When two people were giving. When they both truly wanted to be there. When they both made some demand from the other. Then, it stops. You wait for the next time. It will happen whether or not you are “behaving properly,” which is one of the generous things about love. It means you don’t choose an ethic of behaviour in order to win love, but simply for its own sake. You just establish conviction upon your values in the world, and you just fucking do it! It won’t always give you what you want, because there is no consistent experience of pleasure. That is not what it is to live. Even in a better life, what is worst will achieve the same magnitude. The state of your silverware might become very important to you. The little things. You will never live without disappointment, so who fucking cares.
Possibility is, these drugs are doing a job.
* * *
I have much to resolve privately, functionally. Here are some general prescriptions:
Do not play puzzles or computer games to spiral my mind into a pulp of numbers;
Do not contact Oreste;
Do not use social media websites;
Do not masturbate more than once daily (possibly related to Wellbutrin, area feels a bit numb and resistant, anyway);
Do not have sex with any man;
Nothing in your life shall be won having sex with any man. Lots instead lost. Do not have sex with any man, but especially not a creative man, in any field of production. Just enter those fields instead. Imagine I’d never dated any comic. I could be such a very good comic. I make everyone laugh: my therapist, my classmates, my hematologist, and from this I get nothing. People respect performers. This stupid thing of b
eing an artist. Do not address people directly but instead through these disavowedly personal intermediary objects and you are worthy of some sort of stupid respect. Make an enterprise of yourself for being charming and smart, do not just be charming and smart. “Working on my art.” For whom. Do not have sex with any man working on his art.
There is (slowly) taking the medication to bring oneself to life, and there is working with it in order that one not continue to reinforce the habits of a depressed person. I’ve learned to like jogging. I can learn to like working, doing, socializing again. I want it so every woman loves me and no man thinks to fuck me. I want to be fit and dress nicely, not concealing myself, as I have always known, with long hair, which will grow back since I last cut it. I want to be energetic and energizing, nothing less. And I want to do well in school again, making few mistakes, losing hold of nothing, being ambitious, not allowing things to slip. I want to be my most impressive self. I will allow no attachment who makes me feel excessive or self-conscious for being my most impressive self. I want to be big, sturdy, and reliable. I’ll strive for it. It only takes a couple of months at a time and it’s not too late. I want to have a true self, a private self, a close self, and some other entity that produces things for consumption with knowledge of that consumption, separate. Like everyone fucking else. I’ve already known how to live in an effective way, and I’ve done it. Do all your readings, write all your papers, and do not have sex with any man.
I am too porous a person, but I won’t be.
There has been a cycle in my life: detach myself from others and a feeling of constitution by their interest in me, devote myself to work, do very well in work, feel powerful, self-adoring, large, elated, optimistic—and sadly, in this state, become infatuated. What I must know to do is allow this state to last as long as possible without being punctured by the threat of infatuation, which compresses me back into a smaller, more frightened, more manageable thing. Do not ever again on your fucking life feel good, and big, and centred, and let some insecure piece of shit make you feel self-conscious for displaying “confidence.” Do not let it happen again, and do not have sex with any man.
Sludge Utopia Page 4