Archives for July 2003
It’s good to be getting my mind back. I thought for a minute that I’d lost it.
I’m becoming more and more convinced that no matter how bitchy, depressed, disaffected, misanthropic, or aloof a girl presents herself to be, she really wants to be treated nicely. Actually, I just wrote that and thought of all the girls matched up with total assholes. Scratch that. I don’t know.
I’m hungry again. But a little bit of hunger is good for the mind and the soul, don’t you think?
What is nice and what is bland? This is a question I’ve considered recently. Can I be “nice guy” without being “boring guy?” And if I am “nice guy,” will I get a girlfriend? Because damn, that’d be great.
But seriously, Ryan has pointed out something I was already analyzing recently in my behavior, and those are the troublesome spats of negative, argumentative banter I slip into with various people. It’s sort of like a safety mechanism for me. It’s known and comfortable, so if I’m uncomfortable for some reason—often because I’m intimidated by the person I’m dealing with—I’ll slip into jerk-mode. And yeah, I’m good at it, but who wants to be good at that?
Well, I’ll have to continue my self-centered musings another time. My stomach calls me. Not having a kitchen is very inconvenient, I must say…
3-2-1 Gay Street? Are you kidding me? Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.
Well, I had to take it easy because I was somewhat sick, but there was no such constraint on the rest of the fellas, so all the boys pretty much got shitfaced in West Chester with Brandon. Probably not a whole lot I can post publicly in the way of details, but let’s just sum it up like this:
Ryan Tennis said it best: “It sure feels good having some debauchery back in my life.”
Pirates of the Carribean was an absurd spectacle. It was entertaining, however. I especially enjoyed the amazingly superfluous references to “Davey Jones’ locker.” Classic. I just hope we didn’t create an absurd spectacle of our own with all the comments we made during the movie.
Lesson learned: Tom Sherman and power hours do not mix well. (However, Red Bull and vodka—trendy though they may be—do.)
But seriously. I haven’t been that drunk since Dillo Day 2002. It was bad news—of the unload your stomach contents on the lawn sort. Big thanks to Bucky and everyone for taking care of me. But as Ryan and I discussed afterward, at least I’m a polite drunk. I didn’t drag my sloppy self around the party, hitting on girls and making a general scene. I also made an effort to place the vomit in convenient areas. Very good of me, I think.
Really pisses me off that I missed such a good party, though. Tons of people I wanted to see, and because of my lack of judgment, I was stuck passed out on a bed rather than living it up. Hmm. Live and learn.
I’m trying my best not to play a role here in Bryn Athyn. That would be the easy thing to do. For whatever reason, I’m known here as a “straight shooter”—a term I’ve actually started to use self-deprectingly of late. I’m the guy who tells it like it is, no BS, with maybe a smidgen of rebel, don’t-give-a-shit thrown in. And some people like me for that, while others don’t so much. But overall, I’d say the reaction is positive.
I really don’t want to be one-dimensional, though. It’s too easy to pick up on how others view you and reinforce that view. I guess it’s a fine line to walk—I don’t necessarily want to act differently simply to counteract the stereotype, but I don’t want to be the stereotype either. Oh well. It’s human nature to categorize, generalize, pigeonhole, and all the rest. It makes human interaction more efficient.
Another thing I’ve noticed here in Bryn Athyn is that I don’t notice enough normally. People here think. They’re very aware of their lives: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s too easy to drift through this material life of ours drinking it in through our limited, inevitably eroding sensory experience. I think the people I know here look a little beyond that, and I like that, but it also forces me to look at inadequacies in my own life that I might otherwise comfortably ignore.
I could go on and on about those inadequacies, but I’ll share just one: I impute negative characteristics to those who intimidate me. If someone is better than me at something, or I’m envious of him/her, or a girl is just too good looking, I almost automatically assign negative qualities to the person to streamline the process of distancing myself from that intimidation and uncomfortableness. It may be emotionally efficient for me, but it’s ultimately weak and unfair to the other person. It’s not his/her fault, right?
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 16:50:37 -0500
From: Benjamin Cherry <b-cher..@northwestern.edu>
To: [me]
Subject: RE: nipple!
p.s.
i hear shit in the kitchen today so I walk in there and a fucking
squirrel hops out of the trashcan. The fucker had chewed a hole in our
screen and let himself in to gorge. I was confused because I didn’t know
how the fuck to get him out, but when I said “dude, you need to get the
fuck out of here” he scurried up to the windowsill, and I was like
“peace” and he was like “later”
no shit