so very alone…

It’s been a rough couple of days. I should probably apologize for a number of things, but it seems like people just get mad at me whenever I apologize. So I’ll just post Bertha’s rejection email and leave well enough alone.

My dear, dear [Harlan]:

We have opened our hearts to each other. Our souls have been intertwined in coital bliss. To me every hour of the light and the dark has been a miracle.

And yet I must say no.

It is not our time. It is not our place. It is not our moment. Do not close yourself off and wrap your gifts in a cocoon. Spread your wings and fly, fly, fly. Soar above your mortal limitations. Soar above your troubles. Soar above your fears.

In your darkest hours, you can always choose to perceive things differently. You have a choice. You can focus on what’s wrong in your life, or you can focus on what’s right. Love is right, [Harlan]. If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you.

You are a glorious being. In the world of illusion, you are lost and imprisoned, a slave to your appetites and false power. In the world of truth and fearlessness, you are a physical embodiment of the divine. Be fearless. Be free.

With sincere love,
[Bertha]xoxox

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Today I finally met with my probation officer. My sentence is supposedly largely suspended, except for the two days jail, the fine, restitution, community service, and probation.

As before, I found that one of the great drawbacks of dealing with the justice system is boredom. I had an 9:00am appointment to see my probation officer, but didn’t end up seeing him until about 10:10. How could they get that backed up that early in the morning? Do probation officers somehow end up providing informal therapy, like bartenders or something?

Anyway, when I finally got in, after having spent a bunch of time filling out some forms (I had already filled out a couple that I got in the mail, but there were more waiting for me once I got there), I met my guy, and it turns out he’s unbearably chipper. First he wanted to explain to me his philosophy of "crime and punishment" (he actually used that phrase, though no air quotes or anything) and probation. He proceeded to fill me in on his view of the rule of the law, social mores, the justice system, and how I could use this experience as a stumbling block or a stepping stone. I could see why he was all backed up. Then he seemed to want me to do more or less the same. Which is to say, spill my guts, I guess. I felt kind of pressured to say something, so I said that I knew I had done something wrong, and I wanted to make it right. He was cheerful, but also, expectant. And? And…nothing else. He kept asking me questions to draw me out, but I wanted no part of it.

Because really, come on, you don’t go into this situation without wanting to do anything to get it over with and just move on. The weird thing is that I might have expected this kind of behavior from some fresh-faced kid just out of college with his social work degree or something, but this was a middle-aged man. He must drive his family crazy.

Anyway, when he could see I wasn’t going to play along, he finally gave up and we got down to business, which basically consisted of a) when do I want to serve my time (because as a non-violent offender with a weekend sentence, they want to work around my schedule) and b) what type of community service would I like to do. Also he gave me a chance to pay my fine and restitution in installments, which I declined. I chose to do the jail time ASAP basically. I have to call in to the county jail to coordinate with them, because I guess they get pretty crowded, and he gave me the 411 on that. How did I best think I could contribute to the community? Um, whatever, basically. He never stopped being chipper, but I could tell he was disappointed with me. Finally he just chose something for me: cleaning up trash in public parks. I have to do 80 hours of that on a work crew. He gave me all the contact info for that. I’m so excited. Someone pinch me.

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Let’s get something out of the way up front and personal. Yes, yes, yes, I am drunk and getting drunker. and not just drunk. i found some pills in my sister’s cabinet that all looked very pleasing. i steered clear of the prozac and grabbed a few lortabs and allegros and various and sundry anti-anxiety medecation. for someone who’s life is perfect, she’s got a lot of self-numbing shit in her cabinet.

oh, i should probably mention that i spent the weekend at my sister’s house. No, I have no idea what came over me. i just got sick of things here and thought i’d leave somewhere else and the thought of visiting my brother made visiting my sister seem fine by comparison.

oh, and i got an email from Bertha. No is the answer. That’s right. No. She said no to marriage.

the one thing i got going for me is my liquor cabinet and the pills which i can space out. so what if i get constipated. i don’t care. i just don’t care.

Isolation score: fuck you and fuck the horse you rode in on

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I haven’t slept more than a couple hours the past couple days.

On Wednesday night, I was wondering what made me ask Bertha marry me. I just kind of blurted the question, without really considering what it implies, other than that if she was married to me, she wouldn’t be screwing Thurston on non-Wednesday nights (Maybe Thurston has Thursdays, and some other guy [who I’ll call Fred] gets Fridays, and so forth).

By Thursday, though, I was unable to sleep for an entirely different reason: I was freaked out about what if she says "Yes?"

More than anything else in the world, I want to be married and have kids, but I’m not sure Bertha’s the one. I at least need more time.

It’s too bad I had to go and open my big mouth, because otherwise things are going so great right now. I love my new job. Really, I should say that I love one part about my new job: scanning the internet usage logs, seeing what people are browsing.

First of all, I was glad to see that nobody at work has visited soveryalone.com. So I don’t have to worry about whether I’m being read by a coworker. Second, I am amazed at how much time everyone in the office is spending browsing the web. I doubt that there is a single person here who spends less than 4.5 hours a day browsing.

Here are some examples.

Stan is a gadget freak. He bounces from Gizmodo to Engadget to TechCrunch to NewEgg to buy.com. Almost continuously. Based on the number of times per week he goes from the product page to a secure connection, I’m guessing his house is full of shiny things.

Larry loves politics and news, and is apparently a big Clinton supporter, though it looks like he hasn’t been able to give up the dailykos.com habit. I feel sorry for Larry.

Donna shops and follows entertainment. She hits TMZ.com an unhealthy number of times per day, and Googles celebrity names nearly constantly. The combination of words she’s searched in conjunction with the term "stanley tucci" is probably the clearest cry for help I have ever seen.

Devin, my boss, may actually be the second worst offender of all. To his credit, a lot of the time he’s on the web he’s looking at competitor sites and doing research on new marketing scams schemes. But he spends five times as much time reading ESPN.com. I swear, he must reload the Page2 section 200 times per day, just praying that Bill Simmons has posted something in the past three minutes.

And then there’s Mary, the evangelical who tried to convert me when I introduced myself.

Holy shit.

She starts at some evangelical site, evidently gets herself worked up about the sins of lust and fornication, and then she’s on her way over to persiankitty.com. She bounces around there (not literally as far as I know) for a while and then, maybe feeling guilty, heads on over to an online bible.

And get this: Mary works in a cubicle. Just like pretty much everyone here. But of course she has the back of the monitor facing the cubicle entrance, so you can’t see what she’s looking at.

Or at least, she thinks we can’t see what she’s looking at.

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do with this information, but I like having it.

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I made three mistakes last night. First, when I went over to Bertha’s house, I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have just grabbed her, made love to her, and left.

Instead, I had to ask her where she had been all weekend. I was prepared to tell her that I sat in my car outside her apartment all night last weekend, and she never came home. No need. Here’s what she said:

“I was with Thurston.”

(His real name isn’t Thurston, but it’s equally snooty.)

“Who the hell is Thurston?”

“He’s one of my lovers.”

My second mistake is that I didn’t walk out the door right then. No, I had to act like I was cool with the whole thing. After all, only losers get caught up in petty jealousies. The desire to possess closes the heart, right? So I went with it.

The truth is that I was lonely and really, really horny. As in steam blowing out the ears.

We went into her bedroom and had sex. Only this time it was much different. I didn’t have the warm rapture which overwhelmed me the last few times. In fact, it was quite the opposite. If it’s fair to compare our first encounter to two wolverines caught in a dryer, this would be like a grizzly bear taking on a salmon (only the salmon was on top).

In my anger, I finished early and let out a primordial yell. Bertha calmly pulled out something from a box under her bed. She called the thing ”the fireman,” even though it was just a smooth blue cylinder. I was too confused to ask. After instructing me to rub her in certain areas, she then went about pleasuring herself with her little blue fireman.

Here’s the third mistake. When she was finished, I asked her to marry me. The timing just wasn’t right.

She said she’d have her answer shortly.

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I had a strange dream last night about Richard. (No, crazed sex fiends, it wasn’t an erotic dream.) For those of you who don’t know, Richard and I shared an office at the last place I worked, and he holds the distinction of being one of the only – if not the only – person who doesn’t wear me out during a conversation. In fact, talking to him actually gives me energy instead of making me feel drained.

We must have had a falling out because we haven’t spoken in more than a month.

In this dream, Richard and I were standing at a bus stop. There were a few scattered trees on the sidewalk behind the bus stop, and all of a sudden a bunch of wild animals broke out from behind the trees and rushed at us. We ran. In real life, of course, tigers and bears and gorillas would have easily caught us, but in dream world, they ran at our speed.

We ducked into a flower shop and tried to hide behind a table full of roses. The animals burst in and continued their pursuit. We ran back out on the street and Richard jumped down into an open manhole. I followed. And so did the wild animals, which had grown in both size and strangeness as the dream went on.

After some frustrating bureaucratic delay, Richard and I managed to buy subway tickets and get on an underground train. (Apparently, in this strange dream city, the sewage and subway systems are interconnected.) I thought we had escaped the animals, but sure enough, wild boars and fanged giraffes and mountain goats chased in hot pursuit.

The subway train somehow transformed into a locomotive that soared over and through mountains. Richard and I ran towards the back of the train, which was more like a submarine inside.

I climbed on top of the train and ran. As I turned around, I saw that wild animals had caught Richard. He shouted for me to help him. I froze. I actually tried to go back to help, but my feet seemed to be stuck to the top of the train car. The monster animals pulled Richard down off the top of the train and next to a swimming pool surrounded by palm trees.

When I was finally able to move again, I jumped off the train, tumbled, and searched frantically for Richard. When I found him, he was lying face down in blood. The animals were gone.

When I turned Richard over, he was my father.

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Driving to work today, I pulled up at a stoplight and looked across through the window of the car to my right. The driver, alone like me, was singing. It looked like she was enjoying herself, so I kept watching.

After a few seconds, she turned and our eyes met. She could see that I had been watching her sing in her car. Now, if someone ever saw me singing in my car, I would be so mortified I’d probably drive full-speed over the next convenient cliff, just to end the embarrassment.

But she just smiled, nodded, and kept on singing. She didn’t care if someone saw her singing in her car. Why should she? She wasn’t bothering anyone, and she was enjoying the song.

I would give anything in the world to be able to do that.

Isolation Score: 8.9

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Bertha still hasn’t returned any of my calls. She didn’t answer when I rang her doorbell Friday night or Saturday night. Her door is locked. Her bedroom window is locked. The lights in her apartment never came on Saturday night, or at least not before 3:30 am. Is she avoiding me? Is she away for the weekend?

I feel very alone.

I’ve been trying to comfort myself by taking a larger perspective. In the course of human history, now isn’t exactly a bad time to be alone. It’s certainly better nowadays than it would have been a hundred years ago.

Let’s travel back in time.

It’s 1908. Let’s say there’s a guy named Arlen who didn’t get any pleasure from talking to other people. In fact, it pained him so much that solitude was a form of relief. And let’s say he had the kind of sister who was living such a dim life that her only moment of brightness was when she shined a light on her brother’s isolated existence. And he had the kind of brother who sold all of Arlen’s Star Trek: TNG collectibles for $15 in a yard sale and then accused Arlen of avarice for complaining. OK, maybe they didn’t have Star Trek collectibles back in 1908. Maybe he sold his brother’s Civil War artifacts for an Indian nickel. You get the point.

What could a lonely guy do in 1908? Sit around in the local diner with people he had no desire to talk to? Read books in the library? Live in some brick apartment reading Charles Dickens by candlelight? Have a tubercular seizure and be taken away to a sanitarium?

Compare that to now. I can turn on the television at any time and choose among dozens of movies, any of which can easily numb my mind. I can watch every single episode of Babylon 5 on my Zune. I can jump on the internet and see all kinds of things that my 1908 doppelganger could only dream about. I can make safe friends on the internet. And so can everyone else.

We can all be alone together.

Isolation score: 9

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Everyone, I’m sorry for that last post. I was pissed off at my Sister (more on that another time), at Bertha, and at myself, and then I started reading comments from people asking about the trophy. At first I just deleted them, but people kept asking. So I spent the evening feeling sorry for myself and drinking, until it occurred to me that I ought to give everyone a piece of my mind.

What’s strange is that as I wrote it, I was convinced my logic was perfect and that my arguments were unassailable. I was really looking forward to reading it this morning, because I still had the impression that I had written something really cutting and pointed. Then when I did read it, I actually was hit by a wave of nausea. I look so stupid.

Anyway, those are all excuses and I hate it when people make excuses the main part of their apologies, so here it is, this time without excuses:

This blog is important to me, and the readers of it –even the ones who read strictly with the intention of making me feel bad or telling me for the thousandth time that they think I’m not real–are closer to me than any people I know in real life. I’m sorry I got drunk and yelled at you, especially in all-caps, because I hate it when people post in all-caps.

I wonder if I could get anything for that trophy on ebay.

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EVERYBODY’S GIVING ME SO MUCH SHIT ABOUT MY TROPHY. SO FINE HERE’S WHAT HAPPENED. I DINDN’T GET ANYTHING FORM THE BLOGGY PEOPLE. THEY DIDN’T EVEN EMAIL ME WHEN I WON. AND THEY SURE AS SHIT DIND’T GIVE ME THE MONEY THEY PROMISED ME. BUT I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE MONEY. I JUST WANTED SOMETHING THAT PROVES I WON WHAT I WON. SOMETHING PHYSICAL THAT SHOWS THAT FOR ONCE IN MY LIFEI DID SOMETHING REALLY GOOD. SO I WENT TO A WEBSITE AND I BOUGHT A TROPHY. AND THEN OF COURSE EVERYONE STARTS DUMPING ON ME ABOUT IT I GUESS BECAUSE IT MAKES ME HAPPY OR I GUESS I SHOULD SAY THAT IT USED TO MAKE ME HAPPY BECAUSE I COULDN’T KEEP IT WHERE ANYONE COULD SEE ITANYWAY, SO I KEPT IT IN MY DESK DRAWER BUT NOW I THREW IT AWAY BECAUES LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE NOW IT JUST REMINDS ME OF HOW STUPID IF EEL. AND OF COURSE EVERYONE HAS TO GO AND START PLAYING DETECTIVE ABOUT IF ANYONE ELSE GOT A TROPHY AND OF COURSE THEY DIDN’T WHICH GIVES ALL OF YOU HILARIOUS COMMENTERS ANOTHER THING TO TRASH ME ON. WELL HAVE FUN MAKING ME FEEL LIKE CRAP YOU BUNCH OF ASSHOLES.

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