September 20, 2003 - 4:21 p.m.
It's time to pay an intellectually-stimulating visit to my guestbook!
First, we have this entry, from "TheOnlyOneYouCanTrust:"
Kevin, I've never heard of girls repeatedly signing guestbooks to complain about our entries. Maybe they haven't discovered email? Besides, a guestbook is to state to the creator how well you liked the site and other itmes linked to it, not to say, "Oh, Kevin I believe in you, even though we may have gone through tough times, I still think you're a fine person. I have to say that because I'm too weak and wimpy to say, 'your stuff is okay. It's over now. But Ill still come over to play viedo games if I feel like it.'" Kevin, you're a great guy. You need to surround yourself with women who are a bit more concerned about more than the superficial and how offended they get about a humorous article. (Why, yes, I'm an introvert, too! And, I thought it was hilarious!) Enough. I'm sorry. This has gone on too long. Kevin, I like your entries. They're always filled with enthusiam over the greatest stuff, like driving and video games. Have a great day.
Hm. Thank you, I think. I'm a bit confused, though. I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me. I've read it through about three or four times, but I'm baffled, I have no idea who you are. I don't know how long you've known me, O writer of that, but I've kind of got this thing about anonymous guestbook signings: I don't like them. They make me nuts and they stir up trouble. And I don't want no trouble. You may in fact be The Only One I Can Trust. You may not. You may be a sentient ham sandwich with murderous motives. My point is, I don't know. I DON'T KNOW! Can I trust you to sign your name next time? It would save me a lot of going crazy. Thanks in advance.
Then we have this one, from Clara:
Ah, the good old days...Wait, what the fuck? That was high school, it kind of sucked! :-p But Soul Caliber II! Which version did you get? I told Rob and Charlie and Ben and Cricket about 4-player WarioWare possibilities and they sounded excited. I have friends with video games! In Lynchburg! Woot!
I got the GameCube version. I had to have Link. Plus housemate Eric wanted to play the game, and he's got a Cube. (He's actually been playing it far more than I have.) I think I am finally accustomed to the controller, though I had to reassign Guard to the A button to accomodate my throw-happy playing style. That makes A+K moves very difficult. I also tried to use my PS2 controller converter, which might have worked, but the game seems to be coded in a strange way and so every time I would push a button it would do something different. If I'm going to be Vertical Slashing, I want to make sure I don't sometimes do a Soul Charge instead. Plus even if it had worked it was making for some very confusing setup ("okay, so I press X to press A to do G. And I press Circle to press X to do K. And then I get mad and find my Cube controller"). Oh and, I know it's not a word, but it's Soul Calibur, with a U. That's the name of the sword's evil energy, in the storyline. Just for future reference (and because I am nitpicky).
And the last stop on our thrilling tour of my guestbook is this humorous bit, from Amanada:
Are you cheating on Charlene?!? Charlene is a jealous mistress and doesn't take kindly to cheaters.
This made me laugh a lot. I assume Amanda wrote this in response to a throwaway moment in this entry when my fingers froze and I went to find my space heater. The heater I ended up using was one my sister donated to me right before she went back to college a couple weeks ago. Charlene is also a heater. Charlene was given to me by Amanda early on in our relationship, because she wasn't using it and I was always cold at work in the mornings. People kept stealing the heaters I had been using previously, and that made me sad. So one day I got to work and there was a heater that said CHARLENE on it. On the side, it says: "I have a relationship with Kevin, and it would kill me if we were ever separated. Please don't move me." If there are still people out there who for whatever reason don't understand why I have nothing but affection for Amanda, let that little anecdote be Exhibit Q.
Oh, and the heater is named Charlene in honor of the following dialog from the Season 2 Simpsons episode "Dead Putting Society":
Homer: What are you doing! That putter is to you what a bat is to a baseball player! What a violin is... to the... the guy that... the violin guy! Now c'mon! Give your putter a name.
Bart: What?
Homer: C'mon, give it a name.
Bart: Mister Putter.
Homer: D'oh... You wanna try a little harder son? C'mon, give it a girl's name.
Bart: Mom.
Homer: YOUR PUTTER'S NAME IS CHARLENE!
Bart: Why?
Homer: It just is, that's why! Now this is a picture of your enemy, Todd Flanders. Every day, I want you to spend fifteen minutes staring at it. And concentrating on how much you hate him, and how glorious it will be when you and Charlene annihilate him!
Bart: Who's Charlene?
Homer: (brandishing the putter) I'll show you who Charlene is! Now start hating!
Every time somebody would ask why my heater said "Charlene" on it, Amanda and I would both yell, "YOUR HEATER'S NAME IS CHARLENE!" and that would be the end of it. Ahh, good times. Oh, and I don't think it's cheating, because Charlene is still at work and in regular use. Of course, I guess that's kind of like me saying I had sex with my secretary but I go home to my wife every day so it's okay. Maybe you have a point. Oh God, I'm sorry! Forgive me!
I'm only one load of laundry and one diary entry away from completing all the tasks I had planned for this weekend. That's exciting! Free time is like gold to me. Gold, I tell you!
So while that load's still going: THE ISSUES. You know, the heady issues that I was waiting until the weekend to write about. The things that make my life more than just working and anticipating my next moment of leisure.
(This is going to be a very long entry. BE WARNED!)
Well, there WAS only one issue, but now there are two. I'll start with the big one first.
I want to stay single. That may seem like a dumb thing to be concerned about, but it's been on my brain lately, so it's only fitting that I devote some diary space to the concept, eh? The last time I went to dinner with my mom, she pointed out that I am a person who needs space. And at the time I was running around trying desperately to make two girls happy, and I wasn't even dating either of them. I was involved, to be sure, but I recognized her point. And I remembered the end of my relationship with Marika.
Cliff's Notes version: I had a girlfriend named Marika. I met Amanda, but I had no feelings for Amanda at the time. It mattered little, because I gave Amanda a ride home from work one time and Marika saw us, and cried a lot, and confronted me. Actually, she also put all of the stuff of mine that she had into boxes and prepared to break up with me. I took this as a sign that our relationship was probably doomed anyway. Everybody's theory to explain Marika's behavior was that she was just too young. They may have been right, but it was more complicated than that... Marika and I had been holding on to a deteriorating relationship for some time and if it hadn't been that, it would have been something else, equally stupid, I'm sure. Anyway, Marika and I broke up messily, and I decided I needed time to recover and remember who I was. My life was slowly putting itself back together from my homeless year and I figured I needed to concentrate on bettering myself.
I decided I had no energy for maintaining a relationship with a human female at that point. So I decided I wouldn't have one. (I was doing a whole buttload of Deciding.)
Then Amanda and I fell for one another. It wouldn't have happened at all, except, well, I REALLY liked her. One of the reasons was that she was very laid-back and easy to get along with. Our interests and our ideas about dating were so similar that even at its peak it was more like "hanging out" than "dating." It was like she was my best friend, and I happened to be in love with her. I was sacrificing nothing to be with her. (Plus our "relationship" status kinda snuck up on us. So it wasn't like I had totally betrayed my intentions for the sake of "dating.")
But I never reeeeally was single, was I?
Even when we broke up, we'd change almost no behaviors and end up back together soon enough anyway. Of course, eventually the reasons for the breakups were more and more valid, and every time it was a little bit harder and a little bit sadder.
Officially we broke up six months ago, but in my heart it was no more than one month. It feels more like two weeks ago, to be totally accurate.
And I still love her. It's a changed love, but it's there.
Sometimes it hits me, the feeling that Ely would surprise me with words: "I'm single!" Ely would talk about going to parties and meeting single girls and I would think he was nuts, but now I catch myself thinking a mutation of that same thing. I'll see a pretty girl, and my brain will send a signal that lasts only a split second, but conveys the following information: THEORETICALLY, YOU COULD BE DATING THAT GIRL.
But then my brain backs itself into a corner and only bums itself out. Because I don't want That Girl. I want Amanda.
For a while, at least, it seems as though every girl I meet will inevitably be compared to Amanda. If I were to start dating somebody, I'd probably get annoyed with them for tiny inconsequential reasons, the root of which would always be "you're not Amanda." Like, I would expect them to respond to something in an Amanda way, and they wouldn't. Because they wouldn't be Amanda.
In our breakup periods, she and I would always say, "how am I going to find somebody who is you but not you?" Meaning, how can I find somebody with everything that makes you so great, without the root incompatibilities that make us constantly break up?
(For the record, that incompatibility, for my purposes, is basically "religion.")
So even if I felt the need to have a Capital R Relationship in my life right now, it wouldn't be fair of me to get myself into one. Because I'd just be punishing everyone with two X chromosomes for not also having Amanda's DNA as well.
And, I apologize for the totally sexist untrue generalization that I'm about to type, but most girls want to have time and/or money spent on them. I don't have much free time OR money.
I'm probably only saying that because I'm sort of down on the whole "girl" idea right now anyway. Know why? Because girls gossip. Guys gossip too, but that is the other Thing I wanted to write about. Because it is a totally weird thing and I am not sure who I can trust completely.
Remember how I spent some time one night with Laurie, mostly venting about failed relationships? Well, I guess I should have been more cautious. The way I understand it, Laurie found out that Ely was interested in Amanda. (Laurie and Ely had recently broken up a very long relationship.) So Laurie tells Ely to watch out, because of all kinds of crazy things I had said to her about Amanda. My theory is that Laurie just didn't want Ely dating again so soon, so she kinda bent the truth for purposes of scaring off Ely. But whatever her motives, Ely goes and tells Amanda's friend in Georgia all these nasty things that supposedly originated from me. Amanda's friend from Georgia already had a theory that I was evil, based almost entirely on the fact that I wrote happy things about Laurie in my diary. (Her theory was something like, I wrote those things so that I would break Amanada's heart. To string her along. Because clearly that's my goal.)
So: Georgia girl gets some thirdhand information that validates her theory about me being a jerk. And Amanda, who is sick, gets to hear about a time that never happened where I said she was a "horrible girlfriend" and all sorts of other things that I can't even remember now. Just total crap, basically. Have I said anything that would give you the idea I think Amanda was horrible? Do I seem like the kind of person who would play mind games with somebody, for fun? People who know me know that I am essentially very simple, and I only really want one thing: simplicity. Because there's happiness to simplicity. Concocting an evil scheme to play with Amanda's emotions would be complicated. So even if I didn't like her, I would never do that.
I mean, c'mon. Who knew that the OH MY GOD WHAT'S GOING ON WITH KEVIN AND AMANDA network had such strong connections to Georgia and back?? It was weird enough when it was just everyone at work. This is just baffling.
"I'm sad, I miss Amanda and this is frustrating." --> "Amanda is frustrating." --> "Amanda is a terrible person." --> "I hate Amanda, and I hope she dies." Given a few more people, perhaps I could have become a DEMON HELL-BENT ON DESTROYING THE EARTH with a TERRIBLE HORROR MOVIE-STYLE PLAN that involves STEALING AMANDA'S LIFE ENERGY to UNLOCK THE DOOR TO HELL!!!!
Er. Anyway. I was bummed because I couldn't believe that Amanda would put more stock in a gossippy game of Telephone involving things I never said than the things I actually do say to her. But we worked it out. I mean, people sometimes get the wrong idea from things I've said. But I know I wasn't telling Laurie horrible things about Amanda. I know, because I was there. I don't even have any negative feelings about Amanda that I could embellish for the sake of angry ranting. And I certainly don't have any vindictive plans. Sheesh. I don't know exactly where along the line I mutated into an evil jerk... not sure which particular gossip cog is most responsible for that. Heck, I don't even really care. I just need to make sure it doesn't happen again.
The friendship I have with Amanda is complicated enough without everybody throwing new wrenches into it.
I just hope Ely stops trying to pursue Amanda because I just recently untangled one love triangle this summer. I don't need a new one. I just want friends. Seriously.
Whoop-- laundry's done.
How's ALL THAT for an update, eh? How are your eyes? Need a backrub or a Dr. Pepper? Who's up for Soul Calibur?
