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11:44 - February 14, 2003 I miss dark rooms dusty with.. well, dust, but the museum kind, not the ancient grandmother's house kind, and stars on the ceiling and fluffy comforters thick with limbs sharing each bed with five other people whispering so as not to awaken parents sleeping nearby and toppling CD towers stuffed with good music, boys and girls with legs thrown over one another in a huge nonsexual pile, lying on the floor when it gets too hot with eyes closed, air on your neck, music soft, understanding. Our assignment in creative writing class today was to go do something subversive concerning the dreaded V-day. The example given was to go to a restaurant alone, wait til someone of your gender got up to go the the bathroom, then slide over on the bench next to their date and ask them for their number. I would do it (and you know I would) but I'm going to be on a bus from Boulder to Denver, and then, tomorrow, on a plane from Denver to Los Angeles. I asked him if that was subversive enough to count. He looked confused and then laughed in the other direction.
12:23 - February 13, 2003 Anyway, when I emerged from the mass of buildings onto an open field, Will Vill looming, enormous, in the distance and the expressway running like a slash in between, I noticed suddenly how much like the plains Boulder looked, facing east. The land dropped slightly at a barely-there angle, and then stretched out forever and ever; Superior, Lafayette, Westminster, and at the very end of my vision, Denver, fading into the distance. Facing west, though, just by turning 180 degrees, the mountains shoot up high into the air barely two miles from your face, still coated in snow and enveloped in wind. To the north a bit you can see the Front Range extending on and on. It made me want to start walking west, into the mountains, and keep walking and keep walking until I got to the other side, camping along the way in caves uninhabited by bears or snakes and eating freeze dried food. Who wants to do it with me?
01:21 - February 13, 2003 I couldn't stand it. I was falling on the floor in the other room, whimpering and screeching and spitting and fairly ROCKING in hysterical laughter. She believed ALL of this, up to the part about Aaron KILLING someone. Aaron's about as likely to kill someone as Martin Luther King, Jr. is, but... and although Andrew was tensed up tighter and tighter in a ball in the corner, shaking with guffaws and Chell was smoking weed with his 'collapsed lung', or had been, at least.... she just kept asking. 'Really? And then what happened?' When she figured it out, finally, after she murmured, eyes wide as saucers, how sick she felt and how she couldn't believe he had KILLED someone and why were they telling her this and she didn't know what to do... it just dawned on her suddenly, I guess. I don't know. I felt terrible. She was more embarrassed than I've ever seen anyone. My sides were sore from laughter, and I felt so bad. On one hand, we completely humiliated her, and we're assholes. But on the other, she believed Aaron ripped someone's ARM off. Oh, oh, oh.
13:30 - February 12, 2003 I could play oldschool Mario forever... I played it long enough that I only got five hours of sleep. Thank god I don't have a Nintendo in MY room. I just have snippets now. Of everything. 'Uhh.. yeah, it's going ok. My roommate sleeps in this fort in our room. Umm...' and the one word 'yeah' and how it conveys so much to other people when you start laughing and you bury your face and all you can say is 'yeah'. I notice so much more sober, but it's not as amazing. Tumbling into the fort at 8 PM and waking up Andrew, curled in a corner, sleepy, rubbing his eyes and hugging the blanket as he reluctantly makes room for us. Aaron's head blowing up like a balloon and floating away on a faint white string. Chell's eyes so abruptly changing colour that I shrieked and he looked thoroughly confused. The naughty Coke can, meeting its bloody fate at such a young age.. 'it was talking back'. And before. I remember the first time I met them. I almost didn't go over there because I was tired.... this was back when I was sleeping over twelve hours a day just from boredom. And I almost went home because I was tired. But their smiles were sincere, something I wasn't used to, and I followed them up eleven floors to this huge sprawling dorm.. I mean.. dorms aren't supposed to be that huge, but this was huge... and then I smoked with these four strangers and there was no awkwardness, not even from the very start. I love how things happen and you don't even notice them while they're happening. You don't notice them until months later, and then you can't imagine what would have happened if you hadn't gone over there that one night. And remember, I'm sober. I really don't think that weed is the problem. I never did, but it was making it impossible for me to see what the problem WAS. The harder I tried, the more backwards it got, and I would forget where my thread was going. The thrill of it, the 'Oh my god! I'm so high! I can't even think!'... it was all gone. The standing outside a bus stop and discussing what would happen if our skin were made of clothes and our clothes were made of skin. The almost literal feeling of floating all the way to the gas station and floating back, the wondrous taste of food, the amazement at the sound of music. The amazement at new ideas. It was fading, and it kept fading, and it would flare up occasionally, but really it was just gone. I never used to feel sick. It used to be extremely clear, the stomach seemingly free of the acid, the muck that constantly plagues me and makes me almost always nauseous. It used to take that away, and now it intensifies it. That's all. I think that might actually BE all. The rest might have been group dynamics. When I think about it I don't even know what the change is. Still. But at least this time I can remember what I was talking about.
11:57 - February 11, 2003 It'll be hard, though, all addiction aside. Almost all my friends smoke and they do it all the time. Even when I don't think they're high, they probably are. Andrew's 'bus face' is a perfect example of this. And Andrew... it'll be impossible to tell him I'm quitting. I actually already hinted at it and he was better than I'd expected about it, but I don't think he thinks I'm serious. We've always laughed about people quitting and how funny it is that people actually think it's a problem. Now I've become one of those people, and I have nothing to say about it or for myself. There's no evidence anywhere that weed is the problem. But my head is all mucked up and backwards and I can't muck it up anymore right now, I just can't.
00:19 - February 11, 2003
01:01 - February 09, 2003 People are starting to go overboard, especially Chris. Drunk every night and something worse happens than the last, something nobody can believe he's doing, and nobody really knew him to begin with, I don't think, and even less so now, so we can't ask what's bothering him even when we, or I at least, am pretty sure something is. Bothering him, I mean. I'm still so dizzy. He said maybe it's time for me to quit, mostly empty Jack Daniels in his hand, eyes glistening. I couldn't look at him. It's funny and terrible, the difference between last night and tonight.
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