Saturday, January 25, 2003

I am hiding the last post.

posted by McKain | 11:35 PM

Friday, January 24, 2003

Today, I felt mostly worried. I am finding myself attracted to Lauren. About this, I don't know what to do. I've been spending a lot of time with her, a lot of time talking to her on the phone and going downtown. I've been really comfortable and pretty open around her.
At the same time, though, I've finally been able to talk to Anna again. I've felt mostly uncomfortable and distant with her since I've been back, but last night we talked, long.
I finally felt as though I'd started to go back to how it was before all this with Anna, all this attraction and feeling of constant indecision.

posted by McKain | 11:25 PM

Thursday, January 23, 2003

Ventured downtown again during this second of snow days, this time with Will, Leah, Maura, and Lauren Davis. This snow was not so packable, not so formable into snowballs or snowfootballs. Or snowfeet for that matter.
Last night, I talked to Lauren on the phone. It was odd, it was a kind of random call. I wanted an interaction that didn't seem to happen otherwise. The conversation was nice, pretty mutual, although it was well known by both parties that I called with nothing specific to say. There was the meaningless chitchat, the question and answer session, but eventual it gave way for an actual conversation, actual discussion. The topics seemed to come from nowhere and were very broad. It was relaxed, though. No tension, no one to perform for, just an all around calm.
And then going downtown was really enjoyable. Maura and I verbally combatted one another, my humor being far too subtle for her. But she made many good points. Leah and Will were as beautiful together as ever. Lauren was mostly quiet, but we played around a little bit. I don't think there was anyone there who didn't enjoy her or himself.

posted by McKain | 10:30 PM

Wednesday, January 22, 2003

I wish it would snow. More than anything, I'm hoping for snow again. I suppose this is getting sad. I've gone from depending on people to depending on the weather for my happiness. From one undependable thing directly to another.
Yesterday, it rained. Will, Mark, and I went downtown, went to Coffee Underground sopping with rainwater. It was nice. Walking under one awning and having the nice sounds around me, the heaviness of all my clothes, my hair dripping down my face.
Katie gave me a back rub today. My muscles appreciated it, but I think I'd been mentally screaming out for physical attention for a while. I let her press too hard, let her squeeze the skin until it ached worse than before, felt the muscles tense and relax under her fingertips. It was good and satisfying to have someone devote some attention to me, to let nothing else matter but the pressure she gave to my back. My ego had its fill.

posted by McKain | 10:38 PM

The last post is an personal essay I wrote called "Franny Said It Best."

posted by McKain | 12:23 PM

I hadn’t seen snow for years, hadn’t seen anything fall from the South Carolina sky but rain and hail, and the occasional unfortunate bird. It was my senior of high school and I was walking to my psychology class and at first all I noticed was how slowly the rain fell, how white and cold the sky was. It took a few seconds for my mind to take in all the evidence and come up with Snow. I took fifteen minutes of stopping and starting to walk the two-minute walk to my psychology classroom. The room had no windows but I still couldn’t pay any attention to Dr. Carbaugh’s lecture.
At five, the class ended. Before we left, Dr. Carbaugh said, “I heard it was supposed to snow today. I guess I heard wrong.” Someone then said they’d seen the snow falling on the way to class, and I nodded my agreement. Every one of the eleventh and twelfth graders in the class became as enthusiastic as if we were waiting for the recess bell. Dr. Carbaugh stepped outside to a window and yelled back to us, “Hey, it’s like a blizzard out there.” No one was patient enough to merely walk out of the classroom after that.
Not thirty minutes later, I rounded up a group of friends to go downtown – Emily, the cellist; Maura, a writer; Will, a visual artist and my roommate; and his girlfriend, Leah. We were all wrapped up and double-layered, prepared for weather we couldn’t imagine.
Downtown Greenville had frosted over. The long, usually bright road of Main Street was muted by the gray sky. Even the white Christmas lights that hung from the leafless trees seemed suddenly to be less cheerful. Cars were caked in ice and snowflakes fell to a sizzle on streetlights. It was only five-thirty but the roads were motionless for the first time I’d ever seen. Any other people we saw walked around with scarves twisted like shrouds around their heads, their hands tucked beneath their arms. It seemed like the rest of Greenville just wanted the cold to stop while we threw snowballs at one another and shook the few evergreens to submerge whoever was unprepared with the snow that had gathered.
This was one of the first times I’d seen Will and Leah together for a prolonged period of time. Mostly I heard them on the phone at night, Will up in the room walking around with the phone to his ear. They joked back and forth, Will doing more listening than talking. At this point, Will and I’d been roommates for the second of our last two years of high school. During our junior year, we were mostly inseparable, spending the time outside of classes finding something to do either downtown, at Reedy River Park, or on campus. When Will’s first roommate was expelled, for whatever reason, I moved in with Will and we stayed up most nights until two or three playing video games or watching movies. Somehow we’d ended up in most of the same classes (all except for when Will was in art and I was in writing) and in those classes we’d make jokes that no one else understood, laugh during a movie because of something we’d said the night before, and so on.
When Will got a girlfriend, he spent most of his time with her, as he should have. For a long time, though I wouldn’t admit to it, the whole thing bothered me. Not that Will had a girlfriend, not that there was anything wrong with Leah, not that anything I could think of was wrong with them being together. Will was the kind of guy who liked watching bad Chinese kung-fu films to laugh at the voice-overs, the senseless plots, and the ridiculous special effects. I knew him to work full force until he was finished with schoolwork or art assignments, then to joke for hours until the next bit of work came around. What I’d seen of Leah showed her to be compatible.
What really bothered me, at point-blank range, was jealousy. I spent a lot of time telling myself that friends get happy for one another when one of them falls in love. I made myself smile whenever I saw the two of them walking together. At night when we were made to stay in our rooms, I kept myself distracted, writing or reading with music blasting into my headphones as Will laughed at something Leah said and leaned back in his chair. During this time, I spent many nights out in the hallway, writing a lot of sad and angry things, forgetting about my family and any of my other friends.
Then, in the day, I’d ask Will to do something, most of the time it was something unimportant like coming outside to fight. Often, he’d say he was too tired or too busy. I had to refrain from bringing up the fact that he was up until four talking on the phone, ignoring work and sleep.
It wasn’t until we walked around out in the snow that I finally became really happy for Will and Leah. That day downtown, no one in our group of five had any idea of where we were going. We just walked from one patch of untouched snow to the next, forgetting about warmth as the snowballs melted down our shirts. It was Emily who decided that coffee would be a good idea, which it was.
Soon, the five of us dripped our way into a basement coffee house called The Coffee Underground, writhing out of our wet clothes like snakes from their wisp-like, dead skin. We chose two couches situated around a low coffee table and heaped everything sopping onto it. Will and Leah sat together on one couch directly across from the rest of us. The whole time, while we confused our orders to the waitress, while we figured out who owed wanted to try who else’s drink, the two across from us touched and whispered to one another. They weren’t rude about it; they didn’t wholly isolate themselves from the conversation. They would pop into the chat with a funny anecdote, like Leah’s story about Will’s terrible Christmas gift to her (a necklace with a childish red heart, one with a smiley face painted on it). But I could feel them detach from the group. Before Leah stood up for creamer and sugar for her coffee, she patted Will on the leg and he reached and grabbed her hand. Even when they drank, their knees touched.
It was odd for me to see this. Just a month or so before, I’d been in a relationship with a girl who forgot I was around whenever another of her friends showed up. To see the affection remain even when others were present was to see something I’d wanted for myself but never really experienced. Will and Leah’s contact was natural and oblivious to the surrounding.
By the time we left The Coffee Underground, Leah and Will were walking hand in hand, so close they might have been warming each other up with body heat. When the snowballs began flying again, one would hide behind the other. We played football in front of the Peace Center, where operas and symphonies come to Greenville. Maura made a lopsided ball of snow. Leah and Will were on a team against the rest of us, running around in the evening snow like we were all insane, diving to tackle one another. When Leah scored a touchdown, she and Will did a victory dance together, Will’s red hair dripping wet onto Leah’s forehead as they slowly spun. I think it was there I stopped trying to force myself into the picture and let it shine in all it had without me.
In J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, at one point Franny says, “I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.” I finally felt the same way standing in the cold, watching my roommate and his girlfriend hug and spin circles in their end zone. All along I’d been thinking of how tragic it was that I was being forgotten, taking their love to be an assault on my ego. Right there I began to let myself become nobody, in hopes that doing so would give them both more time for that kind of beauty. Still, when Maura lobbed a heavy snowball at the twirling couple, I laughed hardest.

posted by McKain | 12:22 PM

Monday, January 20, 2003

This Rufus Wainwright music makes me weak, but just a little bit stronger.

posted by McKain | 10:43 PM

Sunday, January 19, 2003

During dinner today, Rachel Poole Dye walked up to me while I was in line and said, "How's it going, Regis, you sexy mofo?" and proceeded to grab my ass, as she always does. This is Rachel, the girl who I respect in very few ways, but when she said that, I felt a surge of confidence or something along those lines. Never before have I been called sexy and never before this year even considered attractive. This is not going to my head or anything, it is just unexpected.

posted by McKain | 11:05 PM

I haven't had a bad day since Thursday, or rather, I haven't had a day that wasn't wonderful since then, since I realized how happy I am for my roommate and his girlfriend. I've worried about nothing, I've dreamt of nothing and been nervous in no situation. It's relaxing. Since Thursday, since the snow fell and I found this other direction for my concern, enthusiam, and (happiness is not the right word, neither is contentment, it's a warm word I'm looking for, one that means beautiful and peaceful, one that means unconditional, one that means that everything is in its right place, one that means it is all okay as long as they are together, as long as Will comes to the room smiling and I know why, as long as pilfer or absorb the runoff of their eased togetherness, their natural closeness.) Not too long ago, my mom told me that when her kids are in love, she is as happy as they are. I think the same applies for roommates, in my case at least.

posted by McKain | 8:18 PM