Are You There, Dude? It's me, Retard.

I meant to start this off as a Serious Post, digging into my past with the unforgiving claws of my inner kitten honesty, that innocent hungry furry being that won't take no for an answer when she smells fresh blood, which is always coursing through me.

(Reason #1 Why I Will Never be a Successful Writer: My analogies are most often perverse and just very, very bad. My best friend Linda Lin told me this in 9th grade via a letter passed to me during Health class. I shrugged her analysis off, but the criticism has lived in me like - here we go! - a small mote of glass, clear and sharp, swimming slowly and secretly through my veins towards my heart, its tiny bite eventually will kill my dreams...Oh yeah. I am terrible.)

Anyway, as you can see from the title of this post, 'serious' is not on the agenda tonight. I'm on the goofy side of the moon tonight. Just like yesterday, when I kept doing my jig-dance at S, my ridiculous imitation of the crazy cloggers that appear on channel 14 public access every night, in endless, time-numbing loops of scuffing and scuffling and hipping and hopping that are frankly horrifyingly mesmerizing. Who are these people? Who in this day and age chooses to clog?

It would be one thing if these performers in their jazzercize blue leotards with mini ruffles around their hips and white leather shoes were all school age - you know, soaking in their past hillbilly culture the way some might take a violin or ballet lesson. But no, there's black people and old people and fat people and all kinds of people you would not expect to see bouncing up and down and wagging their feet around, occasionally clapping their hands and hooting, in lines...
The best thing is when they go freestyle, and the feet fly in all directions.

Anyway. I grew up tapdancing, which maybe grew out of clogging or hamboning, which are related, I'm guessing, to Irish dancing and square dancing? - I'm not sure. In tapdancing, though, you get to move your body and vary the routine, whereas the clogging choreography seems to repeat in endless loops. You also get to tapdance to better music. No offense. And tapdancing is nice and loud. You shuffle, but with metal parts. Like a robot.

(Reason #2 Why I Will Not be a Successful Writer: Because at this point in this draft, I very much want to go do something else. It's an itch or a tick that comes over me right at the point where I feel the momentum cascading to a pitch that will take me crashing over rapids into a swelling river of rushing brilliance - a reluctance? A knee-jerk restraint? Fear? Whatever it is, even if I take a small break, I fear I will lose all the tumble-flow that is pushing me forward through the words right now... Though the occupational therapist did tell me the other day that the human body was not meant to stay crouched in front of the computer hour after hour, which makes sense... maybe my body rebels?)

So I was jigging for S. That was the point. I was making him laugh. He was fighting a bad mood. I was goofy and silly and playing, making myself laugh, too.

Later, I realized how long it has been since I have let myself go like that. I used to be known for my whimsical, spontaneous expressions. I used to break it down any old place and time. What's been holding me back? Guilt. Guilt and sadness.

Because I used to do this for T. I used to make him so happy. And it feels disloyal to him to be happy now, to make someone else happy, in my way, which is the only way I know how. How I can feel disloyal this long after we parted, I don't know. And why that of all things is what makes me feel guilty and disloyal - being goofy - as opposed to the usual transgressions of sex, I don't know.

Maybe because humor was the bonding element of my family.

I'm suddenly realizing that I need to explain the title of this post before I completely collapse.

S. was declaring blogging dead yesterday, and I want to be clear that my interest in writing this has nothing whatsoever to do with potential readers. He has, necessarily so, an interest in an audience. It's who he is. For me, you would think the same thing. I grew up with an audience. A constant one. If it wasn't god, it was the cult. We were always on stage, figuratively and literally.

But I guess I've amended my performance space enough, through my years of pointless poetry writing, to expect no applause or critique, just the act of acting, declaring, being, without need of the dark face in the hall.

Ok, that's probably bs. But seriously: no one reads this. And that's OKAY.

But the pretension that goes along with clicking the Publish button is enough to inspire me to write, and that's what I need to keep me doing it. The physical diary, open now at my side, which no one will ever read, doesn't do it anymore. Not in the digital age...

That may seem a contradiction, but I'll pull a Walt Whitman to excuse that and continue.

I just think the word "retard" while it may be offense to the truly factually retarded is funny, and maybe I'll go to hell for it but I don't care. I used to slow my LA walk down for the limping "retard" - I would never call a real person that, only myself - in high school, when no one else would. I made friends with the slow and the drooling. That doesn't get me off for good behavior or anything. I'm just saying that not being PC doesn't mean I haven't treated others with humanity and Christian love.

Reason #3 Why I'll Never be a Successful Writer: It seems impossible for me to actually tell a full story or say anything.

And so: I blog. Shudder. Groan. Sigh.

P.S. I really do hope Linda Lin someday gets in touch with me. I continue to entertain the notion that I will indeed reunite with all the Lost Friends from my past one day, though as I age and stumble toward my death, this possibility becomes more and more a silly myth than anything else.