hair+cut

For a person with such gorgeous locks, I go to the hairdresser very infrequently. In fact, I have never had my hair cut without first being chastised by the stylist in question for being such a hair care delinquent. In the past I have attributed this delinquency to my incorrigible procrastination, or my need for delayed gratification, or even my desire to see a marked and dramatic difference in my golden tresses after I've forked over 80 dollars to have them slowly tortured by sharp blades. But today as I sat on the adjustable chair trying not to stare at myself in the mirror, I think I identified a deeper cause: I don't want to feel like I'm paying for sex.

Let me explain!

At my salon, not only do the stylists wash your hair with lovely Aveda products, they also treat you to an intense scalp massage. Really intense, like tantric acupuncture. Then they obviously continue to manhandle your hair and scalp for the duration of the appointment.  The stylist I had today was fantastic, really, but in order to be so fantastic she had to stand extremely close to me. At a few points during the process, she stood behind me and leaned over me so that her bosom was sheltering my head and her hands were holding my hair directly over my bosom. It was during the second such occurrence that I began to think, "wow, if I really needed to be touched and didn't want the stigma of hiring a possibly gay male escort, I would just get a haircut." 

There it is, folks, the real secret behind the success of the beauty and aesthetics industry. 

I know it's a shock, but just take a breath, and then maybe a shower, maybe give yourself a scalp massage while you're in there if you know what I mean and get over it. 

gutteral

you never could dance but now you don't even sway

I used to sing, now watch me try to hum and laugh

maybe we've lost the things that made us

the things that made us worthwhile

during the lowest moments

there exists a thought of escape from this lifestyle of embarrassment

this living on humiliation's doorstep

this sleeping with the enemy

breathing the air wafting up hot from the sewers

leaving my hazmat suit in a pile on the floor

for an instant I wonder if I was right about it all

but don't look back and never look back

the opposite of how I looked at you during those years of believing

I deserved anything at all

believing in the eventuality of midnight visitations-

you the self-thwarted lover desperate for reconciliation

and me your living benediction

'absolved, absolved' you breathe down to the core of me

but I hold my breath this time

the grey world you inhabited doesn't enfold me anymore

I have other yous and you have other mes

yet we never acknowledge why we keep them quarantined

as personified memories of ecstasy and illumination

hidden revelations voiced to the hidden crowd

fleeting glimpses of possible beauty

we live in landfills for used joy

where hope comes to rot

from a certain elusive angle I can see the icy clear blue world of my imaginings written in the depth and darkness of your eyes

where you remembered me from an uncertain future

and looked back with a smirk of shared understanding

that burned the space between us

(I posited touch as the fireman)

oh but we were young

I would sing songs for you, but, as I said

nevermind

in my voice's stead

I will throw myself at your feet

weak from liquor but bold just the same

flagellate my romantic soul with memories of expectations unfulfilled

you will humour me and feign to share my wounds

I won't look for a blood donor

ooze life into the gutter

and die on the sword of past illusion

mute and fading

with you, motionless, near enough to touch.

fashionable fictions

Last night I dreamed of schizophrenic stalkers, supermodels, philosophy, and psychics. What these things have in common, I have no idea. Let's find out together! 

So my family and I were on a driving tour through Vegas in a convertible that looked like a hot dog bun. For reasons I still cannot remember, the person I hate most in the world was in the bunmobile with us. I thought he would behave himself because my parents and brother were there, but he kept making biting asides that were obviously about me. Then he tried to choke me and force himself on me. Then the scene replayed, but I got to say and do all the things I wanted to do but didn't the first time round ("I get a do-over!").  I kicked him in the groin and dislocated his jaw with my fists of fury, yelling all the while, "you're the most disgusting thing I've ever seen; get your fucking hands off me!" (thanks Mer and Alex Sanderson for that). 

Then we arrived at our destination, which was apparently a press conference being held at  famous runway model Anna Selezneva's new luxury hotel. For the event, she was wearing a different kind of boot on either foot. She declared it a fashion trend, as well as being very practical for her infamously shorter left leg since her left boot had a thicker sole. I applauded her ingenuity and took plenty of pictures. Then I realized that she really looked more like Sasha Pivovarova than Anna Selezneva. During the press conference, a SWAT team broke through the picture windows and declared that Sasha/Anna's family had just been murdered and that she was either the prime suspect or the next target. They couldn't decide whether to arrest her or protect her. The put me in charge of looking after her, but they made the mistake of leaving the dismembered bodies of her family in the room with us. Anna/Sasha started to freak out, and just at that moment Patrick Jane/Simon Baker from CBS's The Mentalist showed up to film the event for the show's upcoming reality episode. I told him I was a big fan and somehow tried to sell him the clothing from ML that I had ordered especially for a jovial Syrian family. I also tried to get him to read my future even though I knew he was just an actor who played a character who had only pretended to be a psychic. 

Then we were at my messy studio apartment in Bristol, trying to protect Anna/Sasha from the murderers we were sure were after her. Ken Nickel, my philosophy professor, showed up to lend his aid, but he said that he had to do some work while keeping watch. He took out a stack of papers that had already been graded and wrote scathing comments all over them just for the hell of it. All the papers were on the same topic: What is a Heidegger, and if so, who are your Kierkegaard? 

Sometimes a Heidegger is just a Heidegger. 

a small anecdote

This was the dominant scene of last night's dreamscape:

I stood in the corner of my kitchen while my father decided what to make for dinner. He told me all the options and I gave my opinions, but he didn't seem to be paying any attention to them. Then he seemed to have made up his mind and reached for a skillet. I knew something wasn't right; I could feel a sense of impending doom mounting in the air. All my fears and misgivings were dead-on, because the next thing I knew dad was reaching into the fridge and pulling out a carton of eggs.

"Omelette for supper! Breakfast as dinner night!"

"Nooooo00000!" I screamed, hearkening back to Anakin Skywalker in Episode 3 and thereby making all living things shudder in sheer horror. But again, dad was deaf to my cries of despair. I racked my brain, trying to force myself to conceive of a way out of this situation that was worse than death. 

Saved by the bell. Thank goodness.

no hook-ups

My other personality has something to say today as well (I'm never upset by just one thing, believe me).

Here is a law that will make everyone's days much brighter if abided by:

If you're in a disgustingly touchy, aren't-we-so-lucky-to-have-found-each-other-and-happenstancially-fallen-in-love, isn't-Christian-school-great-because-of-young-marriage, aren't-other-people-sad-and-incomplete-because-they-haven't-found-what-we've-found-in-each-other couples that litters this world I'm compelled to live in, only act like it if you're alone or around people who are glad that you're together. Don't make strangers suffer the awkwardness of your intimacy, and especially not in enclosed spaces. They might just vom all over you.

Can I get an 'Amen!'?

optimist in pessimist's clothing

I have a lot of difficulty living. I'll admit that freely to any person who has any interest whatsoever in knowing anything about me. And also, apparently, to random internet passersby. I find it hard to persevere through an entire day. There have only been a few isolated periods of time in my life during which this hasn't been the case. I like laughing, and I like eating, and I like drinking, and I like being purposely lazy. There are a lot of other things in life that I like doing as well, and no matter how far-flung they might be from my previously listed likes, they share the common characteristic of being things that society dictates you can only indulge in when you've done your share of soul-sucking, identity-effacing, will-to-life-straining work for the day. Who the hell came up with this system? How did we get to the point where you can only earn happiness by fulfilling a dictated number of unhappiness hours? That is insanity. I don't want to do meaningless work that decreases my belief in the existence of joy. I don't want to live in a world where my fleeting freedoms cannot even be enjoyed because they are always overshadowed by the resentment of captivities to come. I don't want to feel guilty for for thinking, however briefly, 'I'm happy right now.' 

We are created to experience joy and to delve into those things that remind us of our infinitely complex, indestructible identities. We are created for creativity and for understanding. We are created with the capacity for overwhelming, mystified wonder. I physically ache with the thought that some people do not realize these things. For what is the purpose of living if not to experience as much as you can, as deeply as you can? I fear that our world is being run by people who have lost the ability to love life. But then that begs the question, how do those people get out of bed in the morning if I can barely manage it? Worrisome thought indeed. 

poop toaster

Having now discovered the perfect cocktail of medications to make me sleep without dreaming crazy person acid flashback dreams, I must recount to you not the dream I had last night but excerpts from a dream I had a few nights ago. Forgive me for not having made proper use of the instantaneous nature of the internet. 

I decided to pay a visit to my newlywed friends Maddie and Jesse. In my dreamland they were living on the top floor of a house converted into apartments. They got a great deal on the flat because it included no bedrooms or kitchen, only a bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a hallway with hardwood floors. Bargain! They were having a house-warming party, but I had a bad feeling about it. I knew that the old lady who lived in the house with them would go all apeshit if we disturbed her. Luckily, for the first half of the party she was gone to McGill for her class Sexuality & Finance. For the duration of the shindig I had a strange nagging feeling that I was forgetting something, something terrible, something much bigger than a ticked off neighbour. Then I looked out the window and noticed that the sunset was emanating a deeper red tone than usual, and I remembered that our world had been taken over by Kryptonians bent on harnessing the powers of our Yellow Sun, and that we had only a few hours left to appease them with sacrifices before they would turn our Sun permanently from yellow to red, making human life on Earth impossible. This is where it got acidic.

Maddie said that she wanted to show me her back yard. Apparently the big apartment house was home to horses as well as people, because there were stables in the yard. But this scene transformed into a Middle Eastern reserve where Syrian men ordered the women around and smiled innocently like little toddlers. One such man welcomed me to the compound and offered to give me a tour. They had converted the stables into a gigantic bathroom divided into stalls. Each stall housed two devices: one toilet for women and one toilet for men.  The women's toilet was just a bathtub full of water and seaweed, while the men's toilet resembled a urinal/massage table/recumbent bike hybrid. He told me that every time a man needed to 'void his indiscreet regions', he had the right to request the company of a woman to do the same simultaneously. If the woman was unable to void in the time given to her, she could be sacrificed to the Red Sun. I realized then that the Syrians were actually Kryptonians. I also discovered that I would not be allowed to leave the compound until I had offered a self-demeaning sacrifice to a Syrian man. ("Those toilet men are freedom haters!")

I will spare you the gory-yet-hilarious details of what transpired next. Suffice it to say that I was glad to discover upon waking that I hadn't pooped the bed, and still possessed the freedom to eat a toasted bagel by the light of the Yellow Sun. Ah, simple pleasures.