My coworkers apparently chatted about how I'm changing. How I'm not wearing the silly hats, or the crazy shirts, or bright colors, or whatever. They seem to think it's because of Gene. Not because I'm dating Gene, but because of Gene and who he is.
I admit, and he admits: Gene likes things his way. And as anyone who knows me well knows, so do I. Who fucking doesn't?
I've been wanting other things to think about, or not think about. As much as people seem convinced that the person they identify me as is this person they know, I have never been OK with that. I'm rebellious in that way; I hate being pinned down. To an idea. To an expectation.
Not necessarily to a commitment, but that too.
All the different things I've dabbled in so far in Seattle: Bent writing, Jim Henson volunteering, working at a record store. All dreams that came true, all things I couldn't do for longer than eight weeks. Part of me feels like this year is the year I address, face and possibly conquer what is a goal, and what is just some obsessive little idea of "bliss" that I have held on to for years.
Lots of reasons to face my issues with the past, with holding on, with nostalgia, with adulthood and preserving my youth (or reliving it). All things I am OK with dealing with at twenty-five. It makes sense. Sure, some people my age are more concerned with their career at this point, or what their career is going to be. I have some of that too.
I don't want to work in retail forever. I don't know if I'd even want to start my own business, or help run one. When I stop thinking about my class background, or even just my upbringing, I get more done in my mind as to what I can and can't do.
Part of me thinks the next step is to just keep doing what I've been doing on days that I'm not stressing about life: Just live, and it'll come to me.
I understand the potential danger in that way of thinking.
It seems like every four, or five years, I have an identity crisis built on what my legal name actually is.
The last time I requested a replacement card at the Social Security office, this happened: Who AM I?
The name of this journal was inspired by this new discovery of "me." And because I was trying to close some doors. And move around to Boston, Syracuse, Buffalo, Olympia, Portland, Olympia and when I came here, I tried to embrace the new "me." Tried to grow out of LiveJournal.
Bottom line: Adrian Adonis Lambert identifies a person of the last three and a half years. Discovering my receipt today read that I have no middle name leaves me wanting to just shed this entire confusion. Having no middle name seems better. More fitting for me. Adonis kind of sounds like I made it up. It's also kind of trashy, or something someone who was big into WWF in the 1980s would have done because of this guy: Adrian Adonis vs Lanny Poffo
I'll remember how nice it felt for awhile.
When I went to summer camp
in West Virginia
You drove me half way there
From Upstate NY
down to a town I don't remember
I caught a Greyhound
On the bus
I talked to no one
I brought no books
No headphones
Just me
and a Tupperware case
a plastic coffin
to hold my belongings
While I was there
For the first
and last time
I shot a bow and arrow
I climbed a small mountain
I went into a cave
Deep in the cave
Past the cold mud
A counselor told us
to look at a puddle
a pool
of untouched water
The other boys
Made jokes
Calling it "virgin"
Daring one another
to dip a finger in
and I stared at its glow
When we got back to camp
we were released from the van
The other boys
Mad mini mud men
Ran to jump in the river
The one that separated the camp
from the railroad tracks
Every night
at 11:30
a train would go by
A chug and a choo
Going east
My eyes still awake
I used the time to sing
Nothing loud
Nothing soft
Nothing longer than
the minute it took to go by
Each morning
I made my bed
I tidied my coffin
I took out the two CDs I brought
and stared at their back covers
Each day
The boy with armpit hair
had new things to say
about my bed
about my cleaning
about my music
Each attack
Solely for soul
A musty, musky
Sweaty Eddie
pretending to fuck me
like a jack rabbit
I slept on my back
the rest of the time there
I slept at the nurse's office
for the last week
I slept with the tracks
just a little farther from me
and so I sang
something louder
DON'T FUCKING DRINK, ADRIAN. YOU ALWAYS FEEL LIKE SHIT THE NEXT DAY NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU'VE HAD THE NIGHT BEFORE. YOU ARE A LIVELY AND SPIRITED PERSON WITHOUT ALCOHOL. IF ANYTHING, YOU BECOME LESS "FUN" AND MORE DISTANT, TO YOURSELF, AND TO OTHERS. ALSO, IT'S EXPENSIVE. ALSO, IT CAUSES YOU TO CRAVE CIGARETTES WHICH YOU ALSO DON'T RESPOND WELL TO AND DON'T, SPIRITUALLY AND POLITICALLY, BELIEVE IN ANYWAY. ALSO, BEER ISN'T GOOD FOR YOUR BLOOD TYPE. ALSO, YOU LOVE VODKA TOO MUCH TO ONLY HAVE "ONE DRINK." ALSO, THE SAME GOES FOR MAKER'S MARK. ALSO, YOU'RE IN SEATTLE WHERE THERE ARE A LOT OF FUNCTIONING ALCOHOLICS SO THE PRESSURE IS ON. ALSO, YOU SEEM TO FORGET A LOT THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRINK. ALSO, YOU DON'T LIKE TO GO OUT DANCING TO NEW WAVE LIKE YOU DID IN NEW YORK ANYMORE ANYWAYS SO WHAT'S THE POINT. ALSO, YOU'RE PROBABLY A BETTER SINGER AND KISSER SOBER. ALSO, YOU SOMETIMES WET YOUR PANTS BECAUSE OF YOUR MS. ALSO, YOUR FATHER IS AN ALCOHOLIC. ALSO, UH. YOU JUST FOUND OUT SOME FUCKED UP SHIT ABOUT FACEBOOK SO YOU HAVE TO STOP THIS ENTRY NOW.
My parents honored my life by visiting me here. They both seem to LOVE Seattle and my mother's already talking about how they'll probably be back in the summer as Zuher just "gets that way" when he falls in-love with a place.
As much as I was about trying to deconstruct why I, for example, need acceptance from men (whether straight, gay, queer, bi, whateverrr) - I realized that my unrepressed feelings to be loved and accepted by my parents are always there too. I mean, an entry about how they're in town and making sure I note all the good things first makes me stop and think, "OK. We're seeing what's important to Adrian right now."
I picked up A.M. Homes' The Mistress's Daughter from the library yesterday. It's helping me front these things and be OK with the loose emotional connectors in me in terms of where I come from and what I'm looking for. I also liked feeling re-connected to one of my favorite writers from my first years in college.
I think I'm only going to share my politics with strangers for awhile, as an experiment, do what I mean to. I think I'm going to talk more about relationships and stuff I don't like so much to talk about with my closest friends. And I think I'm going to make the most outgoing calls to work and to other job opportunities for this month rather than to friends I talk to all the time, or could easily just e-mail with. Katie may be an exception. And thinking about how I've talked to her lately has kind of been a mix of it all: feminism/gender politics, conformity, appearance, her relationship and working.
Drinking, partying, all of what I feel associated to when my parents last really "knew" me I feel so apart from. I've been burning out on that lifestyle for awhile and frankly, am quite over it. I like getting drunk off one drink. I like waking up with a clear head most days. I like having fewer (if any) fits for a cigarette because, really, I only have them when drinking.
As much as living in a "gay area" and being in a big city again has me thinking all I'm concerned of is romance and sex, I am starting to feel like I really know how to go out and get what I want. I forget how forward I can be, how I'd much rather be, and usually am, a starter than a joiner. But I want to join. I want to continue touching more lives and having more lives touch me. And I want to write and type till my fingers fall off.
It's like that dream of living here, after watching and loving Mad Love in junior high with my friend Kara Lacey, has finally come true. Of course I have to note that I'm typing this on my first night in my new place and it's Drew Barrymore's birthday.
I could get a little choked up. The dream came true and I'm not even sure how it's going to turn out. And I'm not even that into being all grunge anymore. Actually, I'm trying a little hard not to be. Embracing the now and all that bullshit.
So it doesn't even feel like noting. But I'd be a liar to feel like these dreams that are coming true are not from the person that I embodied fourteen years ago. The person, the practical baby. I didn't hit puberty till I was at least fourteen I think. The summer I was fourteen was also the summer I was propositioned based on my assumed sexuality by another guy named Adrian who was four years older than me. The eighth grader and the senior. I felt like everything was there and ready except for my body. I felt a prisoner, as most people do at that age.
I don't really want to get into a long entry as my friend Rocky has to get sleep and is waiting for me to finish using my computer. As all I can think about lately is writing I just had to make sure some kind of "first night" entry was put somewhere.
Valentine's Day, considering how cynical my family and (some of my) friends view me as about most "holidays" because I don't celebrate Christmas or any of that shit, doesn't really bother me. I mean, for one thing: Everyone knows it's bullshit. Even if you're in a relationship, you do.
Secondly, I am admittedly into socially-constructed affirmations of love. Like chocolate hearts. I gave one to a Sagittarius girl when I was just seven years old for Valentine's Day. I remember wanting to kiss her, too, but couldn't because she was sick but still in school for the day.
I think lots of little boys are socialized to think that this would just be a speed bump.
Boundaries were taught to me only by learning that some people don't have them. Like my brother. It sucks when you learn things through example, and experience. I mean, isn't that called "learning the hard way"? I remember my first grade teacher thinking I was ridiculous for how kissy I was, or wanted to be. Closing my eyes and puckering my lips like a little wind-up birdie walking until I hit a cheek.
Part of it was my overdose of affection. I got a lot of love. The kind of love that made me feel good and clean. Grandma and Grandpa treated me like the star grandchild. My sisters felt bad for me for my no-way-out exposure to my brother's perversity. My teachers, though generally not knowing exactly how to teach a little faggot, at least stood up for me when they witnessed other little boys trying to cut me down for it and thus showed me they understood the purpose of at least why to teach a little faggot.
No matter what head trips I get into about my fucked up understandings of love and affection, romantic love, sex-negativity, sex-positivity, what-have-you, there has been a big-hearted soul wanting to escape from all the institutions. From all the assemblies.
Someday I'm sure I'll find myself in a fancy restaurant, eating fish and drinking wine with a dream man, on February 14th. Perhaps I'll come back to this entry, the one typed-out in the public library in downtown Olympia, Washington and think of how I've changed.
I wonder if we'll split the check. Usually I'd say he'd pay but I forget how giving I am when I get all stupid over someone.
No matter what, self-love comes first.
I'm feelin' pop music more so than ever before. I have no idea why. Perhaps a precursor to me being more immersed in gay culture? Way to stereotype gay men, Adrian!
I watched Happy Endings last night with Chuck and Glo and the dogs and it made me feel the most OK I've been in weeks. I've felt so scrambled lately. Less of the world, and what goes on, is hurting my pain body. I'm a little more "every person for his/herself." I know that's rotten to some degree, but I also know I can't be a prisoner. This may be me reacting out of the argument my brother and I got in over Facebook. I tried confronting him on the fucked up sexual abuse I endured from him as a boy and it went in the direction of "GET OVER IT. FUCKING LIVE YOUR LIFE." I remember I had a similar approach to Aisia about her still being involved in "The Church" when I was in college and her saying it was "mean," while my mother gave me the most appraisal for it I think I've ever received from her about anything. I guess we learn our hard ways through her - which isn't really a gift. It's hurt a lot of my relationships. On the contrary, I've kept friends the longest out of any of my siblings, and that's considering the age difference and having less years on the planet than any of them. Part of queer identity, at least for the way I see it, is building family outside of your blood relatives. I've known that the family I was born into was one I was going to work my way out of since I was young. I mean, there is something deep and eternal about them, for sure, but there is also this area of my heart and mind where I know I have to be away.
Lately I don't know who my friends are, though. I mean, I know. But I see that the thing my parents always said about how someday my friends would all pair up and leave me in the dust even though I'm expecting that everyone's going to remain single and loose like me is a serious reality. And now I'm fine with that.
It's just that I don't know when I will pair up. It probably won't be till I release my writing to wider audiences. In that way, I have never been equipped for something that's always intrigued me.
Sometimes I think I need someone abusive. Verbally, mentally, physically. Someone to whip me into shape. But then the person I know I am knows I won't tolerate any of that. Fuck, I can't handle a person for more than a half hour generally.
And all these assumptions about human existence make me a little ill considering how much thought I give them thinking out how so much of it is the planet's own shit being put on the new people being born into it.
I guess forfeit is my big struggle lately. I think about forfeiting all the time. That's one thing I shared in common with Everett. When people expect you to hold the flags, start the movements, be the action all the time, there's a person who just wants to really shake things up by becoming painfully normal - or go against your expectations.
That person has been with me. Sometimes I think the inevitable is too powerful. Sometimes I do agree that nothing's gonna change.
So I look for a way out. An older man with intellect and financial security. One who, when asks if I want to sell all my old junk and collectibles so we can move in together, I will say, "Yeah. It's just stuff." for the first time in my life.
Because people who live differently generally die earlier than those who don't. Or so we're meant to believe.
Where are our role models?
Kate Bornstein, one role model I can count on.
Myself? I don't know anymore. Maybe not, and so be it.
I don't think the use of mind-altering substances helps my writing. I remember smoking pot once when I was fifteen and writing an entire children's book in my head on a long walk through the woods in West Falls, NY. Right now, in the safety of my bedroom, I feel too out-of-it to come up with anything truthful.
Good to know.
When I was about seven-years-old I thought the only way a woman would ever love me was if I found a prostitute to. I don't know if this was some influence of (one of the biggest piece-of-shit "films" ever) Pretty Woman because of the time period, or if this was just another side effect of my sexual abuse. Either way, it makes me really sad. That may seem self-pitying, a moment to say "PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER." but I think I should be able to speak out.
Not that I regret the periods in my life where I had to resort to prostitution to get by, or that I think any less of myself. I just wonder if I ever had another chance, or if these things happen to certain people so they can be sex-positive, queer radical types like I hope to be one day. Was growing up poor and pretty and abused for it just a done deal that I'd be on the road to this way of living?
Somehow I thought it was funny when my friends would call each other "hookers" when I went home last. I don't think it should be something to be ashamed of. I don't think it should necessarily be liberating either. What you often get robbed from you as child can often only find its way back in the riskiest, most topsy-turvy and ass-backwards ways.
I refuse to feel dirty any longer. I refuse to be ashamed anymore. I refuse to feel all of this as I compare why I should feel different from my French Vanilla friends, why someone's giggly, everything's-fashion-and-gossip-mags way should make me feel more pushed back into my lifelong turmoil, like slipping on the roller skate back down the basement stairs.
I want to be an idiot too. I want to know I choose to be an idiot, rather than be one because I didn't lose my right to my body - as if it was ever up for grabs.
Navigate: (Previous 10 Entries)