Penguin Lust, Unrevisited

There's no conceivable reason why ACDC's "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You" is stuck in my head. No one around me recently has sung or referenced that song, no one has rocked (or appeared about to), and I have not seen someone salute anyone since I shaved off my Hitler mustache in the mid nineties (I'm kidding, I'd never shave off my Hitler mustache...I mean, I've never had a Hitler mustache).

All week long, the wrong things have been popping into my head: that horribly catchy Maroon 5 single, Manamana, the word "phlebotomy". At work, a softspoken man was trying to order a raisin scone, and I kept hearing him say "bra strap, bra strap, bra strap" over and over.

The crazy quotient in my life keeps escalating. My mother called last week to tell me she heard an ad for a job on the radio that would be perfect for me: bag checker at Logan airport. When I tell her that I'm not the least bit interested, she asks if I'm content to bag groceries for the rest of my life. I've never worked in a grocery store in my life, but now I'm considering it just because I think she's prejudiced against supermarket clerks.

Yesterday, she called and asked if she could visit on Saturday. Just as she hung up, Zuzu called and suggested driving to New York City on Saturday to see a poetry event. When I reminded her that Dmitri is going to be in town on Saturday, and that he might not want to spend ten hours of his visit in a car, I realized that the real issue was that I didn't want to be trapped in a car for ten hours with Zuzu, Dmitri, and Zuzu's latest "boy toy", a guy who, within the first five minutes of my first conversation with him, brought up both how easy it is to murder someone AND how complicated his life has been since he was released from the mental institution.

Today I received an e-mail from someone saying that they were removing me from their friends list because I mentioned in an entry that I don't like cunnilingus. If you've read enough of my journal to decide to add me as a friend, and you don't realize that I'm not going to be a huge proponent of cunnilingus, I just don't know what to say except: "Penguin lust."

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/105323.html

Stuck In A Moment I Can't Get Out Of (Part 1: Scotthole)

My father moved to Martha's Vineyard while I was away at school. It wasn't remotely traumatic. It wasn't even a remote island (I'm cockslapping myself for that joke, don't you worry). I started spending on average about three weeks of the year on the island. I felt like a Clinton.

But despite all my vast Martha's Vineyard experience, I'd never been to Nantucket. Sure, I'd drunk the Nectars, I'd recited the dirty limericks, but I'd never actually been there. I was overjoyed when, in April of 2001 I won a two nights stay at The Jared Coffin House, complete with round trip airfare for two from the Cape.

In July, I was hanging out with some jailbait who was crushing on me, and who I was...desperately trying not to crush back on (I barely made it...he was sooo cute/funny/smart/completely illegal), and he asked if he could come with me to the island. No. No. No. Hmmmmm...No. But it did remind me that I had to book the trip at some point. I was going to Seattle in August for the National Poetry Slam finals, and I was broker than an old pop culture reference, BUT I didn't want to go to Nantucket during the winter when it was all cold and desolate. So I called and made a reservation for September 14th. 2001.

September 11th, I was scheduled to do a poetry show in Portland Maine, with the only really Deaf Poet on Def Jam, Ayisha Knight. I was voicing all her poems, and she was signing all mine. We'd also interwoven our poetry into one long show. It would have kicked so much ass, but, you know the planes and the buildings and the dying happened, and it didn't look like the show was going to happen. We were also opening for Folk Implosion that night. Damnit.

After an awkward day of honing my ASL skills on the subject of terrorism, we drove back to Boston, where i was staying with Zuzu the Political Activist. That was fun. Really. I'm being completely sincere. No, I mean it.

After a few hours of nonsensical ranting, I checked my e-mail.

Hey Safey,
Looks like the world is kind of fucked up right now. Are we still on for this weekend on Nantucket? I completely understand if you're not in the mood, but maybe some time away from the real world will do us some good. Hope you're slamming your heart out.

Scott.

Oh, right. Nantucket. Scott.

Scott was the one person who ever replied to my PlanetOut ad (looooooooooooong since removed). He was 23 (I was 24 at the time), a former fatty who was now borderline anorexic, and interesting. Not necessarily in a good way. We'd gone to a PJ Harvey concert together a week before, and had...hmmm...we had something that was almost fun. The concert was good. I discovered he lived on the Cape at the same time I had, yet we had never met. However, we knew about a billion people in common, so we talked about them.

After out pseudo-date we sort of hugged, but not really, and he drove back to the Cape, while I was explaining to Zuzu why, despite our awkward first "date", I had invited him to Nantucket: "No other prospects."

Scott picked me up at the bus station (sexy, sexy), and drove to my mother's. The plan was to park his car at her house, take the cab to the airport, and be on our way. But nooooooooooooooooo, Scott wanted to meet my mother, and have her drive us to the airport. I love my mother, but she's CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZY, and more than a bit bitchy to my friends. Jennifer had suggested running her over with my car, my boss at Kookaburra Canyon would hide in the kitchen when my mother came to visit me at work, and Liam was more direct when he asked me "Dude, why is your mom such an insufferable bitch to me?" She had plotted to have Elvis killed before I figured out that that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Why would I want to introduce her to someone I didn't particularly like, but wanted to have sex with in the near future?

I prepped him. My mom knew I was gay (she had nearly walked in on me and Elvis on more than the occasion), but we didn't talk about it. Talking about it involved crying. This is the woman who just two weeks ago, chastised me for voting in VT instead of MA (that's where my ID is from). "Just think, if you'd voted here instead of Vermont, you could have changed things."

"What do you mean?" I asked her.

"You did vote for Bush, right?" No, she wasn't kidding.

My prep for Scott included just telling her we were friends from College (he was currently attending the community college I had gone to a year and a half before), and that we were going to get away from the 9/11 stuff.

"Actually," he confessed when we were in her house, "I met him on an online personals site. We're going for a romantic weekend." I was so going to kill him.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/87001.html

Elvis Rex (Part 2: Breath of Fire, Ass of Smoke)

There is little in life as agonizing as the anticipation of knowing your mother is about to walk in on you having sex with a boy when she doesn't know you're gay. I suppose it could be worse. I could have been being gang banged by the football team when my dad walked in, but I've never had much of an affinity for jocks, and my Dad lived over an hour away. He also had a sense of personal space. Something my mother lacks to this day.

There is no way to make this look innocent. We're two guys in a bed who reek of long amazing sex (you can barely smell the "you're better than my brother" at this point), and Mr. NoAss's Gila Monster is still visible through the sheets.

The tension is mounting on me, and I'm pretty sure it will hurt worse than Seith's cock when I hear the door open and-- It's not my door. It's the door to the spare bedroom.

This is where the sobbing begins to waft under the doorway. I'd been so focused on my pulse moving north from cock to inner ear, that I hadn't noticed it.

I threw on some baggy clothes and knocked on the door. "Mom?"

"Insafemode, you're awake? Of course you're awake. It's only ten. Insafemode, I did it, I broke up with my boyfriend."

Now my blood drains back down from my inner ear, into my feet, and escapes through my toes and on to the carpet. My Mom is breaking up with her boyfriend. My Mom, who owns my house is breaking up with her boyfriend with whom she's been living. My Mom is totally going to kill my fuck factor.

Then my blood comes back with resounding force into my brain and kicks my ego's narcissistic ass. "Are you ok?"

"Yea, Insafemode, I think--" her phone rings, it's her boyfriend. I do the wiggle-your-feet-while-your-mom-is-on-th

e-phone-dance while she sobs, then steels, then says. "Oh--Why didn't you tell me that it--Ok--Well that changes everything. I'll be right over."

I never did find out what the fight was about.

"I'm so foolish sometimes." My mother said as she picked up her purse, and yanked her jacket off the floor. "I just get so emotiona--Insafemode who's in your bedroom?"

I turn slowly. Each crisis has been thus far averted, so this must be the point where Seith and his serpent wave at her from my bad. But Seith is no longer in my bed. He's fully dressed and playing PlayStation.

"Oh, Mom, this is Seith, he's a friend of mine. He'll probably be staying here for a while."

"Well, lucky thing I won't be needing the spare bedroom then. Goodnight Insafemode. Goodnight Seith." "Night. Good to almost meet you."

And my mother, The White Tornado, spun down the stairs and back over to her boyfriend's. The whole ordeal took about five minutes tops.

"I figured if we had been playing video games it could have accounted for any noises she would have heard."

"Good thinking. Certainly the 'Oh God, you're better than my brother' comment would have been in a better context."

"Yea, sorry about that. Are you any good at Breath of Fire 3?"

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/2455.html

Slow Flashes (Part 2: Welcome To The Club)

Pilgrim's Academy was my chance to start over. None of the kids in my new school knew that I had been third-grade famous for my Woody Woodpecker impersonation, or that Queen Popular Sarah The First had caught me picking my nose in fifth grade science class. Nobody had heard about the time Kevin Harris pushed me off my porch and broke my arm. Nobody even knew who Kevin Harris was. I was safe.

I've never asked my parents precisely why they decided I should go away to a private middle school. I think they believed that I was too smart for the public school system, and that's why my grades had been dropping. It couldn't have been because I was bored with the facts the teachers mumbled, and terrified of the small humans who were supposed to be my peers.

Whatever the reason, I'm mostly grateful. I've heard stories about what happened during my two year absence from the public education system: group showers, rat tails, stabbings, a pregnant girl, marijuana. The most exciting thing I can remember from my two years at Pilgrim's was when the Latin teacher had a nervous breakdown between third and fourth periods, and stormed out of her classroom yelling that my friend Scott and I were "trying to destroy" her and her "teaching curricula". That night, she called our parents, and the parents of a few of our classmates, and told them how "ill-behaved" and "dangerous" we were. After a brief investigation into our third and fourth period activities (the highlight of third period being that my teacher failed to collect the homework I didn't do, and the highlight of fourth period being that nobody blamed me for the fart someone dropped in the darkroom), the Headmaster issued a written and verbal apology to all the children and parents involved, and the Latin teacher was demoted to assistant librarian.

It was during the Pilgrim's years that I fell in love with the idea of Jennifer. Long brown hair, green eyes, nose that wrinkled pleasantly when she laughed at my stupid, stupid jokes. After voluntarily going to a couple of her cello recitals, and convincing her tutor me in Science, I finally got the courage to ask her out, and was stunned when she said "Yes." I was less stunned when she dumped me four days later, confessing that she'd only really gone out with me because she wanted to make out with my supposed best friend, Scott. And he hadn't noticed her at all, until she started tongue kissing me during lunch.

I'd like to say I spent the rest of the year shunning both my treacherous friend, and that filthy hobag, Jennifer. But I didn't. I continued to worship my ex-best friend's new girlfriend. And pretended to not hate Scott for his betrayal. After all, they were my best friends.

Unlike public school friendships, private school friendships are hindered by distance. No one in my school lived in the same neighborhood that I did. Only two of them lived in the same town, and neither of them were my friends. So, during most school vacations, I stayed home alone and began my affair with computers. Typing elaborate fantasy stories, and some of the worst rhyming couplets recorded by twentieth century man. I became really good at top of the line games like Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego?, and King's Quest IV. During my Spring Break (which did not correspond with the public school's February and April vacations), I spent some time at the doctor's office where my mother worked, and riding in my father's work truck, eating sandwiches while he fixed electrical wires and telephone poles.

On the third day with my father, I ate a runny Grilled Cheese sandwich that had decided that, since it had defeated my throat with its power of burnination, it was more than up for the challenge of destroying my colon. Despite my life-long dislike of public restrooms, I had no choice but to run into the restroom that my father's many coworkers shared, and purge my body of this greasy affront to cheesdom.

I knew this was going to be a multiple part bowel movement. At least a three minute project. Unfortunately, I'd left my copy of The Two Towers in my dad's truck, and the only thing in the stall with me was a Wall Street Journal. I picked it up, and out fell a glossy magazine with a scantily clad woman on the cover. Club. I was ready to put the magazine back within the pages of the newspaper. I'd "read" through my father's Playboys, and hadn't found anything interesting aside from the joke section. Slim women with large breasts leaning over cars, or kneeling on beaches didn't do it for me. But the woman on the cover was not like the women in my dad's Playboys. She didn't look like the kind of girl who liked long walks on the beach, and dreamed of curing cancer, or becoming a veterinarian. This wide-hipped, huge nippled goddess had probably dropped out of highschool after her third abortion, and decided that stripping only provided temporary fame, while posing for porn meant that her nineteen year old pussy would live forever.

I flipped the magazine open. I marvelled at the way she squatted to the ground, a whip held tight in her teeth. In the background was a bright red motorcycle, and beneath her was...a huge cock. Sure enough, the next page showed her leaning over the motorcycle, while a guy in a visored helmet and nothing else pointed his cock in the direction of her mammoth ass. My butt clenched. I leaned over and checked the room for a pair of feet. I was alone. I folded the magazine back into the Wall Street Journal, ran it out to my father's truck, and zipped it into my backpack.

original post: http://insafemode.livejournal.com/228152.html