ad astra!

Carson finally got the rest of his stuff up here. What a nightmare that was. I’m still worn out, and we have to go put the shaz into storage tomorrow at 7am & then return the UHaul. Then maybe I can sleep���

I dreamed about the house this morning.
I suppose it’s because I finished the book at about 5:30am. What a fucking awesome piece of work.

House of Leaves is a book about a film. The film is about a house.

Will Navidson, Pulitzer prize-winning photojournalist, and his companion Karen Green move into the house on Ash Tree Lane hoping to settle down, take root, and raise their two children. Since Navidson is a photojournalist he lives with his trade�everywhere video cameras record his family’s movements and his and Karen’s thoughts. Kind of like The Real World. Then something happens.

While they were gone on a trip for six days, a hallway has appeared. Upstairs in-between the adults’ and kids’ bedrooms. Just out of nowhere, for no apparent reason. Then Will starts measuring and he finds that his house is larger on the inside than it is on the outside by 1/4 of an inch. He gathers some friends and they take more measurements�the house is expanding on the inside. Then another hallway appears in the living room, only this hallway should lead to the outside. Instead it leads into a pitch black maze. So of course they go inside.

And then it gets creepier. I first stumbled upon this thing on the internet in 1995, just a short passage (referred to as “Exploration #4″) about three people caught in a lightless maze, and then I couldn’t find much more of it after that aside from Johnny Truant’s ramblings about a girl & her fast car (which, years later, somehow made its way into a song I heard on the radio) and then I mostly stopped looking. It is now a novel called House of Leaves. There’s so much more to it; the actual “horror story” itself is buried under two layers of narrative, much like A Turn of the Screw�Johnny Truant is our editor and the text itself was written by a mysterious man named Zampan� It echoes of the Blair Witch Project(or rather BWP echoes it since HOL predates it by at least five years) but is much more complex and worthwhile. And scarier. A schizophrenic haunted house story that just might make you afraid of the dark again�

I like it. You should check it out. Buy it from Amazon.com

Today was a very boring day at work. When I was working at the Holland store they offered me a position there�and a 75�/hr raise. I would also get 40 hours this summer, something I’m not guaranteed at Jenison even though I have open availability. So I have pretty much decided to transfer there, at least for the summer. I’m not too keen on driving that far in the snow, not to mention into the lake-effect snow, but I will do it for the summer and see maybe about transferring to Alpine for the winter. After that, who knows.

Today’s cool quote is:
“I know there are two subjects in paintings that no one will buy. One is Jesus, the other is sheep. Love Him as much as they want, no one really wants a picture of Jesus in the living room. You’re having a few people over, having a few drinks, and there’s Jesus over the sofa. Somehow it doesn’t work. And not in the bedroom, either, obviously. I mean, you want Jesus watching over you but not while you’re in the missionary position. You could put Him in the kitchen, maybe, but that’s sort of insulting to Jesus. Jesus, ham sandwhich, Jesus, ham sandwich; I wouldn’t like it and neither would he. Can’t sell a nude male, either, unless they’re messengers. Why a messenger would want to be nude I don’t know. You’d think they’d at least need a pouch or something. In fact, if a nude man showed up at my door and I asked ‘Who is it,’ and he said ‘Messenger,’ I would damn well look and see if he has a pouch, and if he doesn’t, I’m not answering the door. Sheep are the same, don’t ask me why, can’t sell ‘em.”        ï¿½Steve Martin, Picasso at the Lapin Agile

I am quickly losing the will to stay awake.

Last night I was out too late at Morningstar76, a little coffee establishment over on Wealthy. It’s an interesting mix of neo-punk post-Columbine high school kids, non-collegiate twenty somethings and the occasional vagrant college student. And Kava House closes too damned early and has become a little too yuppie for me. They closed at three and I went home and slept until about 6:30 when Carson awoke and complained that he was ill and couldn’t sleep. He went downstairs to do god-knows-what and so I just got up (being unable to return to sleep myself) and downloaded Trillian because I got tired of using four different instant messaging programs. Damned fucking good idea they had, too bad AOLTimeWarner is suing them for using their network. Just open all that damned shit up, for chrissake, and make it easier for people to use. Of course, Trillian doesn’t have any ads and I’m sure someone will want to get paid as soon as there’s a version 1.0… right now there’s just a little “Donate…” option that I wonder how many people actually use.

As soon as I had installed and configured Trillian I get an IM from Jeff (via the ICQ network, assimilated by AOL a few years ago) who is now living in Houston, TX. Before I digress I must digress�my ICQ # is 1096156, my Yahoo! ID is aporia79mi, my MSN Messenger is pellerip@student.gvsu.edu, and I’m edge79MI on AIM.

Now, on to Jeff. I met Jeff on IRC in the later winter/early spring of 1998 and we hit it off rather well, or at least as well as could be expected via the Internet. I feel like one of those crazy people who meet on the internet at then get married when I relay this story, but I was a gayboi living in a conservative little town with few places to meet other gaybois and the Internet was just about all there was. We met face-to-face over my spring break… I remember it [as I think now, the fact that I remember our meeting isn't anything astonishing as it was only four years ago, in forty it will be astonishing] very well… I was working until 10 and he showed up early at 8. I was stunned to see him there at the pharmacy window, mostly because a boy had never come asking for me there before (or anywhere else, for that matter) and because, I think, I was smitten. He was obviously too early so he sat in his car reading a Dean Koontz novel with an orange cover. Then we went home and my mother would not accept the fact that I’d shown up with a boy and asked if he could spend the night. Which I should have asked before but I knew the answer would be no, so I just didn’t ask until she was confronted with the situation. The answer was still no, so we went over to Mike’s house, who is somewhere in his 30s, and he was gracious to let us spend the night there.

The rest is sort of a blur. I remember going to visit him (he lived in Utica, on the other side of the state�my first trip on my own in my own car far from home, also at my mother’s dissapproval) and him visiting me and eventually his mother moved away and his brother took over the house he’d been sharing with his mother and kicked him out. My mother, in a strange turn of events, invited him to live in our house until he was on his feet in Grand Rapids. He was here from the end of May until the end of August, a whirlwind time of post-high school fun and being in love. Grand Rapids and Jeff didn’t click, but we did have a good time with Brad at Cedar Point. Jeff moved back to Utica or thereabouts and our relationship did not continue. While it was rather heartbreaking at the time, it makes sense now. There was no way we could’ve stayed in my mother’s house much longer, but I didn’t have the guts to move and I don’t know if we had the means. The rest, as they say, is history. Jeff ended up in Texas (which is funny because two other guys I dated have also moved there, which allows me to say that “all my exes live in Texas” even if it is not entirely true) and then Jeff ended up messaging me yesterday morning. We didn’t really talk about much of anything, he hadn’t slept much and had to go to work, I was groggy as it were, and then an indignant and ill Carson came back into the room and threw a pillow at me, which prompted our conversation to end.

I went downstairs to read my book, The Notorious Dr. August : His Real Life and Crimes by Christopher Bram (of Gods and Monsters fame) which was reccomended to my by Milt Ford, my estranged English Professor and friend, for summer reading. I’m thouroughly engrossed in it�which is why I am sleepy. I went back to Morningstar76 this evening around 11:30 to read as Carson was deciding if he was sick or not and if he should go out to Diversions by himself. I am too tired to drink or dance or socialize, but I came home and he was not here�a precedent for him as he usually insists that I go with him. It will no doubt create a scandal within the little Gay.com world. I’m sure he’s looking for a little gayboi about five-foot-nine he’d like to stick his dick into, but of course I know he won’t do so, he will only entertain the thought as any normal homosexual in a homosexual bar might do.

But I don’t think I would mind if he fucked a cute little gayboi, especially if he brought him home to share. <wicked laughter trails off…>

I also had the thought last night of seeing about putting a letter in my file (if there is one) at DA Blodgett, the agency which oversaw the adoption of my brother and myself some twenty-two years ago. I mused for a bit on why I would say, but my wrist (carpal tunnel or whatever) has been bothering me since I spent six hours on the new short story a few days back�which is at 5,000 some words, I might ad, all drafted first by hand. But I need to go to DA Blodgett anyhow on Monday to see about getting my medical history and any other information I can squeeze out of them, which probably won’t be much.

Well I must go. I do not wish to dwell on the circumstances of my birth anymore and as I said previously, I am nearly drained of the will to remain conscious.

Brad left a week ago this morning. I haven’t been able to get an email through to his hotmail account for a few days now, I’m not sure why. I don’t have his phone number. There’s always something new that Brad is doing that worries me; he spent one year stoned all the time, then another drunk, and now I guess he’s doing speed. He says he’s doing it in moderation, and I trust that he is and he has friends he trusts that will tell him when to stop, but when those friends are doing speed also I wonder how easy it is for things to get out of hand. I want some speed, if only because there’s a character in a story I’ve been working on who uses it (you know, that way I’d really know what it’s like) but given the fact that it’s a highly addictive schedule II substance (and I have no idea where I’d get any) I’m thinking I’ll just pass on that for now. Brad knows that I will tell him if I think he’s getting out of control. I did it before and it was for his own good. He hated me for it (I did, after all, get his post-alcoholic mother involved) but now he has realized that we’re just looking out for his best interest. He knows I will fly to Vegas and kick him in the ass if I have to. But I cannot find any way to criticize Brad’s use of methamphetamine when I hand it out every day to little kids. Interesting contradiction, no?