the hammer is not my penis

The way I’m feeling these days is mostly like I’d like to find a musical with a song about how it’s ok to feel like crap and then play it on infinite repeat. Something along the lines of “It’s ok to feel like crap/ it’s ok to sit on your couch/ and watch Veronica Mars/ and eat ice cream sandwiches for hours/it’s ok to feel like crap” would be great, only, you know, with a lot more rhyming.

In an ideal world, and this is a revelation that any regular readers will readily file under “D” for “Duh,” the song would come from a musical penned by Joss Whedon. Forgive me, but I’m feeling a bit like I should change the name of this blog from “pretty dumb things” to “pretty dull things.” My emo echo is driving even me to ennui, so I completely pardon you if now you jump ship and go someplace where people are having uncomplicated sweaty naughty sex (or even complicated sweaty naughty thoughts). I am solidly back in the doldrums. (It’s a fictional landscape I envision as a series of rolling grey hills, like if you carefully arranged a movement of moles, made them stand still in an infinite undulating sinuous series of curves, and shaved them.)

Ok, so here’s life in my Working Girl office. The office space itself is kind of like Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as decorated by Franz Kafka, only without the girlish charm of the former or the childhood whimsy of the latter. It’s a great big room painted optic white, lit by fluorescent lights, and with desks all out in the open and arranged in foursomes like a quad square of chocolate, but without the melting yumminess. Which is to say that everyone who walks by can see my monitor. Everyone. All the time. There is no hiding in that bleak white landscape and, trust me, it hurts.

To be watched, however fleetingly, while I write is a painful business. No one needs to watch me write. It’s not pretty. I talk to myself, my face goes all tic-tic-tic as my inner Leonard Bernstein conducts reluctant words into strange new melodies. In the best of all possible worlds, I jump away from my writing constantly, with the alacrity of touching something hot or faintly gross. I surf the web non-stop. Sometimes, I take three-minute dance breaks that often as not are comprised of my doing the pogo to the consternation of my long-suffering downstairs neighbors.

All of these things, things that are complemented by my sudden and inexplicable needs for some obscure food item that I must have that moment, things that are punctuated by  strange and indescribably changes in posture or the need to make my fingers do push-ups on the desk or any other item from my large bag of writing quirks, don’t work well with others. There’s a reason why writing is largely a solitary occupation and that is this: writers are fucking freaks. No one needs to watch, and yet everyone in my office can watch me. I feel like a circus geek.

On the other hand, I do like my work. I’m writing some interesting stuff and I get to solve interesting issues and it’s all pretty neat. So there’s that. I just would very much like to do it in the privacy of my own home, AC/DC or TLC or ELO or NAS playing loud on my speakers, surrounded by my pets and the free rein to let my writing tics fly. But alas. Plus there’s the fact that this job has so consumed my writing mo-jo that when I finally, finally get home to my quiet and solo abode, I am too depleted to type. Without time and energy to write, I mean my own writing, I pretty much lose my will to live, and that is not hyperbole.

And there’s this: I had sex with my X. A couple of weeks ago. It was a hot, sweaty, dirty night and we had hot, sweaty, dirty, faintly irritating sex following a meal of West Coast oysters and a bottle of Sancerre.  I’m not going to narrate it, not yet anyway. I’m not ready and this isn’t the time and it’s still raw and red as road-rash. It was a natural course of events that began when Donny sent me that letter back…whenever it was. We started talking, and talking led to eating, and eating led to eating and drinking, and eating and drinking led to fucking, and it’s an old story. (I do miss that sexy-low writing, those words that swirl and spin in some dark fleshy ecstasy. Soon, I hope to let loose the critical synapse and let the gutter utterances sway slow as junior high-school couples.)

At first I thought everything was fine. At first I thought I was fine. But then I realized I wasn’t and that I hurt and that this whatever it was wasn’t working. So I called Donny and told him that unless he’s calling to tell me he wants to work it out with me, or unless he’s calling because something is really, really important and he really, really needs me, that he can’t call me. I feel like I’ve been running the break-up ultra-marathon and my joints are failing me. Everything hurts and I just can’t put another foot forward.

Finally, there’s the fact that I’m still putting off my need to get a roommate. I just can’t cope with the concept that I’m going to have to give up even this, this last bastion of my independence. I have crunched the numbers and crunched them again. The stark mathematical fact is that without finding steady additional freelance work, I can’t live here by myself. It’s a thought so depressing that I stand stock still in the face of it.

So there it is. My life in a bitter nutshell, and a low from which not even Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog and all the joy contained therein can lift me. I turn, as always, to Buffy. This song from "Once More with Feeling" comes closest to my apocryphal ditty, “It’s Ok to Feel Like Crap.”

Comments

[Innocent Loveboy]

I don't know... good as Dr Horrible was, it's not something that I'd watch to cheer myself up, so maybe you are right in turning to Buffy instead.

Dr Horrible just has the most depressing ending... ever.

[The Fury]

I think you have a hit song there, even without the rhyming. It seems the doldrums are darkest before they're dank. However, even when you're down, you have a great wit. I wish you all the best with the roommate search, hopefully it's someone that can appreciate you and all of your Veronica Mars watching, ice cream sandwich eating goodness...and they pay their bills on time.

[Mrs. Hall]

I do believe Buffy is copying the moves from Janet Jackson., maybe from Pleasure Principle? I think I would bet money on it.

Good luck healing the broken heart and the damage the recent backslide has caused. As always, my heart goes out to you. Perhaps you can have a plan if/when the man calls again. Perhaps you can call a friend to be your back up. Like, in case of emergency type friend.

Man, that dude seems like such an asshole. I hate to pass judgement, but does he not realize that sex with him is tied to your emotions? That it impedes your recovery from this broken love affair? If he does, does he not care that he continues to hurt you with the sex and the chats and the calls? Can't he man up and let you heal?

I don't know, I actually don't know either of you. But I love your writing and your site. Even the dull posts are interesting if you are interested in the writer. So I feel the need to stick up for you.

Mrs. Hall

groan...

stop seeing your ex (!! it hurts you !!)

be happy you are employed in this crazy market (not all of us are...)

and look for a roommate who is lives some place else and only need a pad in the city one or two nights a week...or less!

sheesh...

[chelsea g]

Anonymous comments are so hott. So what you're saying is, essentially, that it's not OK to feel like crap?

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[Pete]

CG,
It's OK to feel like crap, but one should do that for a short while and then try to get back to feeling good. You are a good writer, even when you have all the mentioned impediments. Keep it up.
Pete

[marianne]

If you tried to repress your feelings of crappiness (crappihood?), you'd be doing yourself no favours. The feelings are valid... ride them and they'll eventually fade. Good luck with the roommate search. You may end up with someone great, you know, someone who gives you both independence and companionship. It could happen!

[David]

Stop with your ex already! Is a vibrator really that awful? You don't seem to understand just how much you're hurting yourself.

[J.J.]

Nasty double-whammy, CG.

First off, I can imagine that writing at work is nightmarish. I've always thought that writing is a private endeavor, and it's not going to be very good when creative juices are flowing with all their physical manifestations in a public space. I used to do some writing in my office, and even that was uncomfortable. Never knew who was going to interrupt me mid-thought, never knew who would be watching me through the glass window while I plumbed the recesses of my cranium. Not the kind of environment that I would expect anyone fo find conducive to serious creative output. There's a reason why conservatories are so insulated from the rest of the world -- it enables the creative students to really explore their talent in a safe space. And offices are about as far away from a safe space as I can imagine.

Speaking of safe spaces, I think you need to make one for yourself to protect your barely-healed heart from the enticement of Donny. It's like addiction, CG. Getting sober is one of the hardest things a person can go through, and will always be a mostly fragile state to maintain. One slip, and it's back into the tumbling chop of the rapids. Essentially, you fell off the DonnyWagon and had a setback. And like a lot of slips from sobriety, it felt good while it was going on but underneath you might have felt like it wasn't. And afterwards, it seems like you knew it was no good. So good call on total abstinence from the source of your addiction, CG.

At least, that's what it seems like to me.

The roommate situation's hard. NYC is merciless when it comes to the financial pressures it puts on people who live there. And never mind the independednce factor, I keep coming back to the safe space metaphor. With a roommate, it's going to be tough to share your inner sanctum. With luck, the downturn will finally begin an upturn and you'll find a little sunlight as you start to come out of the depths.

[J]

I always thought the "Everybody Hurts" was just such a song...

On the whole, though, I think it's Robert Smith who really beat you to the punch on the songwriting. If catharsis is your drug of choice to treat depression, my personal prescription is just to put everything you have by The Cure on shuffle, and take it from there. That's the strategy that got me though a divorce with only moderate suicidal ideation.

Whatever it takes to get you through, but you can't heal if you keep picking at the scab.

[imdougandirule]

Cool blog. I stumbled onto you today. Sorry you quit.