firsts

This will be the first blog entry I've ever seriously written. We all had a Xanga back in middle school, but I never took mine too seriously. I hope to take this seriously- I'd like this to be a noble experiment of sorts, to see if I can stay disciplined enough to keep going.

All the best writers write everyday, right?
I think they do, so I'm going to try to follow hesitantly in their footsteps.

Here I am reading a chapter on form in film and right now I'm trying to use my title here to dictate my content to me. "Firsts."

There's the obvious one. Recently was the first time I made any kind of sexual progress with a girl at Indiana. She's Indian, typical features but sharper than average. Still got the button nose and the soft complexion. Looks innocent enough but after enough alcohol I guess any girl will jump a complete stranger. Sadly the night ended with some pretty heavy alcoholic distortion and some trademark self-pitying philosophy.

This is going to be a good log of my memory too, I can already tell.

We went to a party off campus in a neighborhood designed for student housing. Basically, we invited ourselves to some kid's surprise birthday party who wasn't even there when we got there. So I walk in the door with a full bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 inside me and artificial fruit on my breath, with a couple girls from the floor above us. One was Danielle, a girl I went to high school with and was in my youth group- we weren't great friends in high school but great acquaintances I'd say. We shared some decent conversation in classes we had in common, couldn't ask for much more than that in high school.

The other girl was Kristina, Danielle's friend and briefly my friend during welcome week. She was now just another acquaintance. She'd been drinking pretty mildly, as had Danielle, much to my disappointment. We were all standing in the corner by the bar, away from the action of the party and I tried to strike up some conversation with Danielle while waiting for my roommate and his girlfriend to arrive. Danielle was always a good sport, a quality that I always admired in the meek-mannered. Some people hold their convictions like cold shiny diamonds, reflective and unbreakable. Danielle's diamonds were more like cooling carbon; they had a certain form, but you could still make some light impressions on them.

After some banter he showed up and upon walking in the door I noticed his distaste while he was sipping from the red plastic party cups. Anxious to get him on my level I asked him about getting drunk tonight. He said that he wished he could find some hard liquor so I was on the task. I bounced past people all warm and fuzzy and found the owner of the apartment. He showed me the freezer and pulled out the opal blue Skyy Vodka bottle. It was cold and heavy in my hands, bold with white typeface. Perfect- quite an improvement from Khamchatka or other plastic-bottled liquors. My roommate and his girlfriend all partook while I poured generously into their plastic cups, raising the bottle to my lips for what my intoxicated brain could guess was about an ounce of alcohol. This is where the blur begins.

I sink into the couch and start talking to the girl next to me. This I gathered after the fact, the next morning, since I don't remember any conversation taking place. What I do remember is her laughing and stretching her head out, planting a filthy kiss on my face. There was a kind of mild surprise in me before I quickly focused all my remaining attention on this girl.

The rest of the night plays out like a distorted silent movie in my head. The girl puts her arms around my neck, kisses me some more, asks me if I want to smoke hookah to which I reply that I would be thrilled to. I briefly affirm my decisions for the night with my roommate, who looks almost as excited for me as I feel. He says that she's cute with a boyish excitement in his eyes. There is some talk of me going home with her. Some hookah is smoked. The girl then tries to tell me something remorseful but with as much tenderness as she can. Then there is me leaving with my roommate and hopping in a car, not in a great mood.

I get on my soapbox in the car and project my anger onto my roommate. I tell him about realities and social boundaries, and I say that his choice affects the reality, my reality. Why not choose the better reality for me and let me go home with this girl? He obviously doesn't let me get through to him or choose correctly, so I open the door and start walking back. After a few minutes they talk me down and back into the car. Back in the dorm, I wander the hallways in frustration and I punch the concrete wall as hard as I can with my left hand. Even through the booze I can tell that it hurts, a lot.

In the morning I'll wonder how it's not broken, but for now I go across the hall where my floormates are throwing a small party. I sit in a cheap desk chair by one of their beds and talk to a girl named Shannon for a while about my problems. She thinks I'm drunk and oblivious so she doesn't pretend to care about my problems very much at all. I end up in my RA's room talking to him about the same problems, problems he really cares about but similarly can't decipher. Eventually I head back to the room in defeat.

The next day my friend fills in the pieces. Of course he wasn't holding me back from hooking up with a cute girl but protecting me from getting my ass kicked at a party, probably by another guy in a mental state similar to mine. Another night gone, I scratch my head at him and feel a vague wave of shame and jealousy.

So I diverted from the form here but I think it grew together with the content and did it's own thing. This is about me getting to know myself and whoever else finds this getting to know the real me so we'll see how it goes. I'll get better at this as we go along here.