"And check out my hair. It's so unstyled, it's like a pile of stand."
~Casey J.

Looking through my archives, I find a link to Casey's old livejournal site and go. His last post to that site was in 2007, which would have been a year that I had very little to do with him.

I was about to write this whole post about how clear to me it was, while I was reading that, why I was crazy about him-- how smart he is, how funny, what a great writer. And there's something so sexy about his cockiness, and his dismissal. You know that cliché that women go crazy over the bad boys who act like they don't even like them? Casey is, like, the geeky journalist version of that.

But as I'm about to start writing this thing about how great his post was, about how his post made me feel, I realized that I didn't even read the whole fucking thing. That I couldn't bring myself to read it. There's a possibility that this somehow indicates that he's not as interesting as I'm giving him credit for-- more likely, it means that I'm still smarting from the way our friendship (essentially) ended, by the way it left me feeling utterly inferior to him.

I gotta get my shit together and learn things. Start reading Newsweek, listen to more NPR than I already do. Get some strong backing for my opinion on universal health care, and all of the other political issues. And other shit that would make me interesting to him again. Spend more time playing video games. Spend more time climbing fences. Start a fight club. Go seduce some more women. Write about fucking anything other than myself (and him. And other people in my life who I have all these bullshit "feelings" about.)


Maybe the coolest I've ever been in my life was when Casey Labrack still thought I was cool. Probably the least cool I've ever been was as I was typing that sentence.


This is not the way back to win back his respect, his attention, or his "ineffable fondness." Writing about vague ambitions to be better, do better, know more, but never really do anything about them. Just the fact that these ambitions are more about getting him back than they are about being a intellectually curious person, well, that sort of poisons anything I could accomplish. But he doesn't have to know that-- that is, if I could shut up about it for even a second.

I tell myself, don't be so hard on myself. One week from today (technically yesterday, since it's after midnight), I am going back to school, and this time, I'm going to go learn things that I want to know. I'm not being so career-minded, I'm not clawing and scratching my way out of a crappy job and a going-nowhere life...I mean, I am, but not quite as desperately, and with enough patience to make it more about the journey than the destination. This first semester, I registered for four art-related classes and, with a great deal of anxiety, music chorale. I just decided it was time to be brave-- time to ignore the people over the years (my sister) who have repeatedly told me that I can't sing at all, and just learn what I can, and be the best I can be at it, whatever level of skill that may be, because, frankly, I love singing. I always have. So it's time to just do it, incredibly scary as it might be.

That's kind of cool, right?


Maybe, one day, soon, I'll be publishing the children's books I've written and illustrated. Maybe I'll dedicate one to him-- or, better yet, I'll dedicate one to me, a little parable for the kids in the audience about being yourself, about not trying too hard to impress someone else. About having self-respect, about loving whatever it is about yourself that makes you special. And it'll sell a million copies, be an instant classic, and I'll be beloved, and successful, and I'll make millions of dollars.

Then I'll buy him a vintage El Camino, so he'll have to be my friend.


On with it.