you can call me pavlov's dog

Today I met my parents for dinner at a place called the Brew Pub on the corner of Main Street and Transit Road in Buffalo. More accurately, Williamsville, and as I'm learning this is a very important clarification. I was in a very bad mood as I had just driven an hour and a half after an hour therapy session from Rochester to visit an apartment. I didn't even get out of my car once I got to the apartment because I "didn't like the looks of it," and then managed to somehow feel as though I'd been gipped for having driven so far for "nothing." Believe it or not this is one of the milder examples of my compulsion, and I have certainly driven a lot farther for a lot longer just to turn around and go back where I came from. It is something I don't understand about myself.

Regardless, when I pulled up to the restaurant, my Father asked me how my day went, and I told him it was long, and tiring. He said, you know, when people ask you how your day went, they don't actually want to know. I wanted to say, if you understood the reasons behind and the weight of what you just said you would understand me entirely. Instead I told him I'd try and give a better answer next time, to which my Mom looked disgusted, and said, "He doesn't mean with family."

I'm reading "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. I sleep with it next to me, and if I could wrap my arms around it, or beg it to nurse and cradle me, I would. That is all there is to say about that.

When I was in rehab I started to cry about anarchy in a group therapy session. A man who is exactly like me in every way except for his upholding morality spoke to me as if I was a child who has been hanging around with the wrong crowd. "Is this Nietzche? Is that where you're getting all this?" I always want to say, I've never read Neitzche, I've always believed this, but I hear he says the same things, but I'm pretty confident no one would believe me.

I've realized that rehab is another one of those experiences that I don't like talking about because I feel like I can't do it justice. Grandits keeps asking me to tell stories but ever since I stopped being a decent writer, I feel like me verbalizing anything is doing it a great disservice.

I've been wanting to make Emily a mix for weeks. I don't have any blank CD's. There are a lot of other things I've been meaning to do, like contact Chriss and Seth, and call my friends in rehab, who probably could really use to hear from me, and go to AA every once and a while, and see Bonny and a few others, there are so many other things. I remember a scene in Igby Goes Down where the oldest son realizes that his father has done nothing for years but stack cigarettes for hours on end in the desk drawer. I pray to god no one is watching me.

I would go back to Rochester, and hope someone or anyone there would be someone or anyone I could talk to. My grandpa always said, "Fool me once, fuck you."

I had very significant dreams for myself-

Home and That

For a Cat Named Pretty Princess

Glassy eyed twenty-somethings, seventy five cent diet pepsis, newport menthol cigarettes.
Stale easter candy, five day old lemon merengue pie, pastel colored m and m's.

Someone wedged the remote control between the cushions, under their ass, and we're sure it was Jessica, and on purpose.

Green erasable pens, half assed art projects, premade frozen pizzas, the smell of feet and pork roasts, hungry diabetic possums.

I say hello to Amber.

Earlier I had explained to a woman named after a borough that I knew the most fundamental element of beauty was sorrow, and that no human power could ever take that from me. She struggled with this, and so I said that I was frustrated, and would be happy with the whole place lit on fire.

The reason I say hi to Amber is so that she doesn't say hi to me first. Then I get to feel like I'm doing her a favor by allowing her to feel like the desire to be familiar is mutual. Sometimes she doesn't hear me.

Three nights ago after we shared a fit of hysterical laughter over a phobic possum, Jessica told me she had tried to slit her wrist with a piece of plastic. We laughed some more and I thought of my brother, I heard his chuckle and unease. I too will bury myself in time under the weight of my social camoflauge.

I can even still hear the possum, eating all the cat food now that the people are asleep.

I was a writer, once. The rest is memory.