cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the Time of Chimpanzees I Was a Monkey Saturday night I went fishing for catfish, which means catching bait starting around 5 pm and then really getting going at dusk. When I first arrived at the river I ran into a chick I know who was there with her friend and their kids. The friend, Katie, is not especially attractive but has nice tits. Three years older than me. I went to high school with her sister, who was better looking. Anyway, she asked for my number in order to offer access to a fishing spot for the future. Around 11 pm, she texts me. Long story short, our mutual friend got drunk and passed out. Katie was at her place and invited me over for a drink. Five blocks away, sure. Yadda yadda yadda, I ended up fucking her at 3 am on a blanket in the middle of the front yard. Probably (definitely) a bad idea. I am way out of this chick's league. Most of a bottle of rum was involved. Now she's blowing up my phone and I'm really not interested. Wow, that was dumb of me. She has no education, overweight, boring, focused on small things, but a nice enough lady whom I penetrated, vaginally. Then on Sunday I had a date (why the fuck am I dating? I'm trying not to date given my current situation of being broke as fuck and having nothing to offer) and fucked the other chick, Dana. Dana has a masters degree and would have been great 5 years ago. I mentioned her previously. I'm not sexually attracted to her but keep having sex with her. She has some kind of eczema thing around her eyes. Really smart and I have fun with her. Fundamentally we should just be friends but I'm lonely and generally isolated and cooperating with physical intimacy as a survival sort of thing. Dana is also one of the resistance type people who was in the street on 8/12. I think I'm fucking and hanging out with her in part because of that. I've been making a point of reaching out to them for the last few months. Handing them information more than usual. I am keenly aware of the fact that a historic struggle has been happening here for the last 12 months or so. I want them, or at least their leaders, to know that while my work as a journalist follows rules and must be truthful and ethical, I picked a side from the start. This is selfish, I know. I sized her up and thought that this is someone who can help fix me. She teaches yoga and does counseling and works with people recovering from trauma. Which is me, to be perfectly honest. And she's been good for me. We trade massages. I cook for her. I've taken her on some adventures, like the canoeing trip that went all rough. It's been very casual with no discussions about exclusivity and I don't think I did anything morally wrong by drunkenly fucking Katie the other night. It was stupid, but not wrong. All my physical problems are on my left side, as Dana noticed last night. My shoulder that got twisted up while catching baseballs. The fleshy base of the thumb on my left hand. My mid back on the left. A weird spot under the base of the middle toe on my left foot. I'm off-balance. I'm missing my left kidney because of cancer when I was little. My right kidney grew to more than twice it's proper size. I look like I have a small love handle on my right size (it's not fat, it's just a huge kidney) and I'm normal on my left side. So my center of gravity is off. And I guess that affects my posture and everything else about my biomechanics. All these muscles on the left side of my body are knotted up and painful and maybe that has something to do with my center of gravity being off. And it also probably has something to do with stress and heartbreak and tension. I'm all fucked up on my left side. Every day I relive that fucking riot. Watching that guy being beaten in the street by half a dozen people. The sting of the tear gas and pepper spray. I hate it and I miss it. I hate the violence and the hate and the death. I miss the moral clarity and the certainty that I can do this physical thing right now and no matter how hard it is I know that I am exactly where I need to be and so long as I stand here and refuse to move I have done my duty. Blow my fucking brains out, I don't care. I stand here and I won't move. I relive it and I cry sometimes but I miss it. I miss the clarity of duty. When people are trying to kill me and I stand up and look them in the face and I will not move. I can do that. The enemy fell at my feet screaming and I poured water on his face and helped him and I knew who I was. I can do that. I can't do this haze of reporting on incremental shit and half-assed paydays and ignoring stories that are a big deal to people who follow this shit like a religion but are of passing interest to most of the general public. Every day it's there. I keep pitching stories and trying to re-establish myself as a science journalist. Editors don't want to hear it. They don't see the science journalist any more. I can't get hired as a science journalist now. In their minds, I am something else now. The civil rights journalist. Not what they want. Nobody is hiring civil rights journalists. "In the time of chimpanzees, I was a monkey." 9:37 p.m. - 2018-05-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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