Also my scalp is insanely dry. Incredible. Buzzed my hair off a few weeks ago and the sides of my head were densely matted with dead skin. Not greasy sebaceous offal, just...accumulation. Been slapping jojoba oil on my head after every shower and the situation is much improved, but if I don't do it for a few days, the itching and flaking resumes. Some people have suggested I use coconut oil instead, and maybe I will. There is a certain logic to it, hermeneutically speaking.
Plus I have decided that the thing to do is to start shaving my head. Embrace the dome.
*
Before jumping into my main thrust, I would like to say that I was stuck on the Journey Mode of this newfangled Tetris I mentioned and quit playing for awhile. This one level, Hula Soul, is quite fast and exacting, and a block developed around it. Couldn't hack it, got frustrated and left the game alone.
Because the Nintendo Switch is such a wonderful machine, I hadn't felt the need to touch my handhelds--my DS's and Game Boys--in about a year or so, except to raise six Dragon-types on a Pokémon Sun runthrough. I was idling at my desk instead of writing a few days ago and pulled out my old Game Boy Color (yellow) and popped in my ancient Game Boy Tetris cartridge, which I have owned since I was eight. Playing this ancient version of the program liberated my thinking and reminded me who I am. Beat Hula Soul first try after that and kept on going. Fun stuff. Tetris rules so fucking hard. Someday, when the current whatever the fuck is over and something resembling a functioning society is allowed to resume, I hope to visit the local arcade and play its hallowed, venerable Tetris machine, which has already given me many happy hours. Once upon a time I was up on its high scores, and perhaps I can get there again.
*
Factually Pointless didn't update at all in 2020. The last posts of 2019 were made on computers at the downtown branch of the local library, as discussed in said posts, and the leap from where I was in November 2019 to where I was in February 2021 was of such acceleration and distance that I have felt completely unable to summarize. Even the events of 2021 as they happened before I lost my job seemed too swift and fluid to properly chronicle. I was going to buy a house on two separate occasions; neither panned out. Now I'm planning on securing funding in order to shoot a movie, a project I have not embarked upon in about fourteen years. I know how, though, and since I seem unable to properly engage with the concept of returning to work, and shooting this thing is all I can think about (besides writing and the other shit I like to do and think about) I mean to pursue this task relentlessly. How does one come about roughly thirty thousand dollars to make a movie? I guess step one is, figure that out.
Anyway. Back to the past.
*
December of 2020, I had come to a point in my work with upper management. My employees were being abused, on top of being underpaid and overworked. Our union was doing fuck-all. So a few days after my last post in 2019, I took up union stewardship and all that it entailed on top of my regular duties, which were intensive, as half the kitchen including the head chef and the former union steward had quit because of management (not that I was upset to see the back of any of them at this particular juncture. Better than those folks had quit at previous junctures, many due to to the people leaving at that time). This is why the blog took such a backseat, at least at first. Didn't mean to take such a hiatus, but I made myself responsible for everyone around me.
Sadly, I cannot recommend this. Do what you gotta do--I would do it again, if I felt it necessary, as I did--but expect the opposite of gratitude and advantage.
Another reason I haven't written about this stuff is that the purpose of this blog is not to suck my own dick in real-time. The facts are this: starting in December, my friend J (who rose to the occasion to serve as alternate steward and supported me throughout the whole ordeal) and I organized the employee body and made the union serve us to the effect of renegotiating a union contract that established a higher wage rate increases in said wages for personnel based on length of time worked. Along the way, we managed to expel the most toxic member of management by getting together a document that would have led to fairly severe litigation if they hadn't taken the belated action that they did (pretending the guy was leaving for his own reasons). I also started dating my husband-to-be--casually, not even as a primary partner. He was dating and living with a mutual friend. More on that in a moment.
This all took us through March of 2020, and two weeks after this, news around COVID was serious enough that I decided to close the kitchen down (for me, eyewitness account from a friend that the state capitol where they were at had literally boarded its doors shut was the tipping point. Don't trust the news, but when someone whose eyes you have looked into reports directly from input into those eyes, that's actionable). I personally had to make this decision because my direct superior wanted to, but didn't feel safe from managerial retaliation, and as I had just shown that they couldn't stop me from doing what I felt was right, it fell to me. Donated as many perishables as I could to charity and distributed as much as I could to staff, froze the rest, and sent my people home if they wanted to be there. The workplace did not close at any point.
Two weeks after I shuttered it, the lockdown order came down. Next bit's kinda traumatizing, but that can't be unusual. Anyone thinking back to the beginning of lockdown and the ensuing weeks and months probably wants to shy away from those times in their mind. Luckily, detailed recounting is not at this stage necessary. I could expand the preceding two paragraphs into literally hundreds of pages worth of tellable events. Whole character arcs. Same with the paragraph after next. But the post will be quite long enough without going into detail.
First, my husband. For the purposes of the blog, we can call him Ezra (for said purposes, I've not used someone's real name unless they specifically asked me to, and even that I've gone back and changed, because I don't think it prudent to use anyone's real name anymore). I am nine years older than him, and we worked together for a year preceding and during the first couple months of our relationship. That doesn't sound great, and I felt weird about those particulars for a while. Don't anymore; the age gap is the same as the one between my own parents, and close to the one between his parents, and we've been married for well over a year. Also he had dated two dudes plenty older than me before I even met him, and lived with one of them. While we worked together I was so focused on professionalism and being a decent friend and resource and role model and, later, boss, that I never even allowed the possibility of seeing him as a sexual being in relation to myself come into play for over a year, and a whole lot of walls had to come down before we ever even touched. I mentioned him in the blog before I ever mentioned my last ex-girlfriend, whose part in the blog seems terribly exaggerated to me now and also unfinished, since I never addressed that we stopped dating (still friendly, it just sort of fizzled out--painfully for me, not such a big deal for her, but a good learning experience for both of us). Ezra is the coworker that lent me Everywhere Disappeared, the Patrick Kyle book I so adored. He is trans, and his tits are coming off in five days, which is pretty cool. He is also pretty cool. Cool enough to marry.
Ezra was crashing at my place the final couple weeks before lockdown, because he was going through some shit personally what with a nervous breakdown and extreme manic energy, plus irreparable relationship issues with with Aiden, our friend with whom he shared a lease at the time, and because our other partner, Deyas, is a person who really needs their own space regulated a certain way. Lockdown made our situation semi-permanent but also fraught, as Ezra is much more a social animal than I have ever been or could be and his friend Orli and her boyfriend, an old school friend of mine, Augustine, required sociality as well. We went along as linked households for what would prove one fucked-up shitride with these people and an orbiting cast of characters, a tale which merits a whole novel. Dead serious. Let me hit you with a word-cloud-type non-sentence to partially illustrate what went down: spray paint I don't do cocaine but of course do what you want some motherfucker ran over the dog bloody handprint on the window lamb's brain soup dude was doing way too much ketamine we chasing every sunset we fucking can top of the parking structure Nat Shermans bonfires gathering up all these SPIN scooters for the fuck of it blasting playlists out the speaker just like old times don't normally ever drink this much yeah well welcome to the club this is fucking unprecedented this isn't even an actual business plan the dude is cheating on her where is the money even coming from you really gotta tell her what happened before he tells her because if he gets ahead of you on it it's gonna be bad you should tell her today you oughta clear your head fuck man it's so hard to breathe I feel like I can't do this anymore but I feel like I can't stop do we contact emergency services do we know anything about his mental health history yeah I heard some shit but this is worse how many times are we gonna have to talk to the cops going back to Vermont well he's in jail for now where did all that money come from do I get myself a handgun or a new computer look I'm not going to testify one way or the other damn that's some good shit like remember back in the day look at that fucking sunset man none of this is even real I known you a long time no I don't blame anyone for this what the fuck kind of person are you really I don't know what the fuck feel like I'm losing my mind do I even know him it's like he doesn't listen at all let's go buy some candy Costco vodka made in America hahaha you don't understand what it's like living with the pain of this a mismanaged society crumbles A MISMANAGED SOCIETY CRUMBLES I think losing the dog really pushed him over the edge this friend group has become gross and incestuous come on let's just walk away just let her walk away I think I'm done giving a fuck all we can do is do our best and be honest probably it could have been worse probably I could have prevented this probably everything's gonna be ok.
Around when everything calmed down and wrapped up, I got the call back to work, as the case numbers were dropping. Magical realism with hyperdark twist interlude over, practically on cue. The perfect timing of everything is always so unreal. Did not do cocaine (I have never done and never will do cocaine; I have this unfounded but extremely powerful conviction that if I ever do, my heart will pop like a balloon) or ketamine or whatever the hell else was getting passed around, or take a drink. Did smoke probably more cigs and weed more continually than ever before in my life, which is saying a great deal, plus shrooms when they were around. Thankfully, no one was hurt at any point, at least physically, except Augustine, who did it all to himself, and he's alright. He's one of those dudes that's always alright. I pray I was able to exert a steadying influence over what could have been much worse, but there's a lot I could have said and done beyond that, and living with that is just life, I guess. Ezra also kept it pretty much sober, but the rest of them all went pure hog wild with all the shit they could grab, and after we broke orbit with them, their utter collapse was not long in coming. Arrests, vacating the state, I don't know what all else. Broken windows, shuffled lives, profound remorse. Someday I'll tell you all about it all.
Work now consisted of just me and my boss, which involved my acting as his psychologist and reality anchor as well as doing more than my fair share of the actual work. This too was a situation that spun out of control eventually, but I think I handled it and the fallout much more elegantly and responsibly than the preceding interlude in life. Ezra and I moved into the current apartment, we got our second cat, he got a job at the local library and started going back to school, and we got married. That was the best part. We also took a few trips, which was neat. Then I finished and put together Broken Arrow, Laudable Marauder, which ignited the old bloggin' chops once again.
*
There! You're the quick and dirty version of caught up, dear reader. As I have said, there is so much more to tell, and I will tell it by and by, dear readers, as I intend to make this a very prolific year for the blog.
And with that, we must put the seal on January. See you next month.
--JL
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