2001-06-21 - 12:21 p.m.

lonely much?

i know i'm all angsty and i shouldn't be, but i am.

i'm sitting at work, not doing my work. i'm listening to lisa loeb. tails. rarely a good sign these days. comfort music.

why do i feel the need to be comforted?

why is it my comfort comes from the voice of a woman i don't know?

last night i lay in bed awake way too late, way too late, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, feeling like i wanted to cry. SmogMonkey was in the back of my head singing the "alone, alone, you're gonna die alone" chorus.

there has to be more on one hand, keep your head above water on the other.

i know that i am corresponding with some match.com'ers, that i'm getting responses, that women are making an effort to contact me, because they liked the picture of me, or what i had to say about myself. i know that there is some potential there, and you can't win if you don't play the game.

i just am feeling tired of it all. i'm tired of all the effort. i don't have the emotional energy to go through it all right now, just so Rejection Man can jump out of the bushes and pound me into a pulp.

i feel like i'm in a ballroom in pre-revolutionary france. it's this gorgeous, opulent place, and i'm walking around to all the perfectly primped women, with their powdered wigs. with perfect grace and eloquence, i go throuh the complex, time-honored ritual of inviting them to dance. with a graceful nod of the head and perhaps a small half-smile they accept.

but i find myself out on the dance floor alone, and i'm not doing the stately waltz of all the perfect couples on the floor. somehow i'm out there alone doing the running man and moonwalking for all i'm worth. i'm totally out of step with all those who go through life two by two.

and all the perfectly coifed women stand along the wall and say to eachother "he is such a nice boy, and he tries so hard. i think of him as a brother, don't you?" "bien sur"

and somewhere in the back, SmogMonkey is warming up the mormon tabernacle choir for a stirring rendition of the "alone, alone, you're gonna die alone" chorus.

last night i was thinking about how long it's been since i've had sex. i've been on dates, i've met amazing women. i haven't had sex in years. hell, i haven't even kissed a woman in years.

years.

i just don't know what i'm doing wrong. i should try harder, or not try as hard, or just stop obsessing, or something. i feel like i have these years of failure pressing down on me. crushing me. if a starving man staggers out of the desert, and you hand him bowl of rice, he might just be so excited by the mere sight and presence of food, his need might just be so bad, that his hands shake and he finds he can't hold the bowl. he might spill the rice in spite of himself.

i know i'm on a huge self-pity kick here. i know i have a lot to be thankful for, a lot to look forward to.

but.

somewhere (in a fortune cookie, i think) i read "a man is what he thinks about all day".

i think about hating my job, and being alone.

hence, i'm most often hateful and alone.

see any connection here, kids?

i want so badly for this journal to be a place for me to practice writing. i want the entries to be well-written, for people to read it and say to themselves "yeah, well he might be a whiney bastard, but he can write!" of course, i don't think anyone but me has read it.

i also am not going to beat myself up about the quality of the writing here. (i beat myself up enough on other subjects). i'll just use this as i see fit, and right now it seems i need to work through some issues. (understatement much?)

i need to find some way to make a change in my life. most of the time i go through life happy, or at least content. i know if you read these entries, it doesn't seem like it, but i write the most when i feel like crap.

i only feel like crap occasionally.

or at least, that used to be true.

now i feel like crap more and more often.

i'm lonely.

i can't say that often enough or emphatically enough to get through to you the depths of that statement.

i'm lonely.

you ever see fargo? that freaky guy who went to high school with margie and he shows up and hits on her in a clumsy, pathetic way, then breaks down crying in the middle of a hotel bar across the table from a near-stranger, and all he can say in the end is "i've been so lonely".

yeah. sometimes i know how he felt.

i'm gonna stop now. i should do some of that work i hate.