ihavebeenfloated

Before I begin this entry, I would like to make this comment: The problem with going into Stuyvesant Parker Mode (also known as: Brad becomes a ranting asshole) is that, sometimes, I am rebuked which makes me feel like a kicked dog. Although the rest of my angry rant is still valid, I feel as if I was utterly defeated in the worst way possible. Oh well, so much for that one!

Onward, this entry will be a new format in an effort to really capture my inner thoughts and throw all possible vagueness right out the goddamn window, which I seem to have been doing recently anyway regardless, but just to make it all failsafe in my slightly topsy-turvy sleepy mindset. This format will be called: Having a fun, exciting, invasive, no-holds-barred interview with yourself. I recommend you try this at home, or on your journals as well, if you can manage to separate your several distinctive personalities enough to achieve complete dissociation! Not that I’m really sure what that means…

At over 3,000 words, this is a whopper. You’re going to have to click through to read it. I would not recommend reading this entry if you do not want to find out things about me that you’d rather not know. Honestly.

So, Brad, what’d you do today?

Well… I, hmm… I went to my first set of classes for the summer semester of college!

Is that really all you did today? That’s not wholly productive sounding…

Well, OK. I woke up when Tiffany climbed into bed next to me when she got home from work. I fell back asleep after saying hello. I woke up later when the alarm went off and put my laundry in the wash, fearing that I would not have it done in time to leave so that I could make it to class. Tiffany woke up at this point, and we drove to one of her dog sitting clients, and she bought lunch at Subway for us. We went back to her place, I threw my laundry in the drier, set my alarm for forty-five minutes into the future, and went to sleep next to her again.

Rhm, how about less specific?

Fuck, yo, I’m like already done. Jesus, quit riding me.

Fine, fine, go ahead.

So, I woke up when the alarm went off, folded my laundry into my basket, and went back inside. I roused Tiffany a little bit, told her my goodbyes, gave her a heartwarming but entirely one-sidedly felt kiss on the forehead, knowing that she wouldn’t remember any of it in her sleepy state, and headed out the door.

So that was it for yours and Tiffany’s potentially last weekend together ever?

Well, not quite. I stopped by her dry-erase board on the way out and wrote a small message on it that I probably shouldn’t have, that she still hasn’t noticed and probably wont until she reads this post (if she does) and then looks for it.

What’d it say?

Something stupid, sappy, and entirely pointless. In short, I am not telling you because it will further my feeling of patheticness.

Come on, get it out, you’ll feel better.

Fine, it said something like, “Love you, even though you don’t want me to.”

Fuck, dude, that’s pretty fucking pathetic.

Yeah, thanks.

What did you do after your absolutely not surprising act of sorrowful retardation?

I drove back up to Los Angeles, a rather enjoyable two hour drive where I listened to even more of Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” which is entertaining, even though I am not sure if I will ever get through all seventeen hours of it. When I got back home, I showered and immediately headed back out the door to reach my first of two college classes.

How’d that go?

Well enough as expected.

So, that means you’re going to run screaming and drop all your classes, right?

No, but thanks for being an asshole.

Well, you can’t blame me. I mean, you kind of have this reputation for being a complete loser who never accomplishes anything in his life, and when he tries to, he usually gives up half way through and, somehow, manages to feel good about it while everyone else silently judges you, or in some cases, not so silently judges you.

Yeah, funny that you bring that up, as that is exactly what Tiffany told me over the phone during my break in the middle of my math class.

Whoa, she really told you all that?

In less words, yes. It was really an upper of a conversation, I will tell you. The gist of the conversation was mostly, and I am not even paraphrasing here but saying what she really meant to say but didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate it properly, “Good God, I’m glad I dumped your ass because you’re a huge loser and I’m so relieved not to have to worry about supporting your sorry ass through this failed endeavor of yours.”

What did she really say, then?

Something like, “Man, I’m glad I don’t have to put up with you,” along with a lot of other sentences not important enough to remember.

So are you going to drop the classes or what, then?

No, Christ, I thought I already covered that.

No, actually, you deftly avoided answering that question by proceeding into a segue involving your favorite of all conversation topics: Tiffany.

Fuck, fine, you got me on that one.

ANSWER THE FUCKING QUESTION THEN, ASSHOLE!

...Wow, you don’t have to shout at me. No, I am not dropping any classes. Though I am sure that my Art Appreciation class will be terrible for me, and I’m even more certain that my Political Science class is going to be even worse, perhaps even make me wish to set myself on fire in order to get out of it, they are things that I’m required to take to achieve my goals.

So you’re feeding my canned lines in order to justify your supposed stance?

I don’t even think you know what that means, but.. well…

What I’m asking is, do you even mean what you’re saying?

I think I do.

Sigh…

In short, in order to do what I believe is what I want to do, I need to take these filthy classes. Even if I choose to not take these classes, I will have to take others that I probably wont enjoy, either. Admittedly, I have a lot of choices, but when it comes down to it, I might as well take these classes that I might possibly enjoy more than others that I might possibly enjoy even less, and get the stupid requirements over with.

You’re really determined on this whole English teacher thing, then?

Yes, I believe that I am.

Explain how you can believe and not know the answer to that question.

The way I look at it is thus: I could either spend the rest of my life job hopping, either from one shitty profession (veterinary medicine) to another shitty profession (data entry? envelope stuffing?); or I could decide to bite the bullet and endure a possible five to six years of grueling, horrible, terrible, and fucking unbearable school work and land myself into one career that I might enjoy and be able to do for the rest of my life.

What if you don’t enjoy teaching?

Well, then I’ve got a B.A. in English that I can carry around to other jobs that might require someone who has a B.A. in English. Or, you know, I could write that best selling novel I know is lurking around somewhere in my mind.

So you’re going through with this whole B.A. in English thing?

Yes, why not?

Well, look at your writing, man, you suck balls!

Whatever. Now you’re just being mean. The English major should, hopefully, make me a better writer. If not in style, at least in punctuation.

You’re not dropping any classes then?

Not my Art or my Math class, at least. The political science one… Well, we’ll see when I get there. I hate to judge the class purely on the terrible looking textbook I already purchased for it, and really I dislike the idea of the class solely on having to write a paper in a group. I’m not sure why I fear the concept of writing papers, as all I apparently do I write all the time. The fear of group work, however, is obvious: I hate people, and assume everyone is stupid.

Well, I think you’re stupid, if that helps any.

No, it doesn’t, really.

Also, you might fear writing papers because your inherent writing style is so personal that the concept of having to write anything in MLA format makes you want to off yourself.

Thank you for answering that question for yourself, that helps me greatly as I don’t need to answer too many questions all on my own.

You’re welcome.

What else have you got for me, then?

This whole Tiffany thing, what’s going on?

Thank you for bringing up my favorite conversational topic again! That is awesome. How’d you know I wanted to talk more about that big mess?

Well, uh… I, you know, exist inside of your mind, and all.

Because Brad knows this, I know this?

Yeah, exactly. So the answer then?

You weren’t really specific, there wasn’t really a question there so much as it was the beginning of a conversational topic.

You really are a wordy bitch, aren’t you? Do you talk like this in real life as well?

Unfortunately, for the most part, yes.

I’ll never understand how people can put up with you.

Neither can I.

You also have a terrible habit of wording things in the reverse of the order that they should be phrased in order to be intelligible to a common person, just so you know.

Yeah, OK, anyway, ask me a goddamn question and stop analyzing my speech patterns.

Are you two, meaning Tiffany and Brad respectively, going to get back together or something?

No, I don’t think so.

Is that what you want?

No.

You’re lying.

No, I’m not.

Don’t make me explain you for yourself, now.

Fuck you, go for it, asshole.

Deep down, you desperately want Tiffany’s love and are pining for it at a rate that is apparently steadily increasing at an alarming rate of speed.

I’m not really agreeing with the increasing part, but go on.

Although you feel that you want nothing more than a new relationship with her, part of you knows that can never come to be for a number of factors. The first is that both of you have approximately eight billion reasons not to trust each other. As any decent person above the age of twelve knows, trust is a very important foundation for any relationship. To give examples of reasons your trust for each other is faltering, I may have to reveal things about the both of you that neither of you are comfortable with the world knowing. Is that OK?

No… well, fine, go ahead, I mean, what the fuck do I have to lose at this point?

You don’t trust Tiffany because she has a past history of cheating on people, and in fact got with you while she was engaged to another man. You say, and I believe, that there is nothing you hate more than infidelity. The idea that Tiffany could possibly cheat on you instills such a fear in you that you feel the need to watch every move she makes. You know that this is paranoid, and you try to keep it under control because she told you repeatedly that she hates guys who are controlling.

Well, duh, of course she hates guys who are controlling, because then she has no way to cheat without chance of getting caught.

And, there you go, you proved my point. You could never trust Tiffany because, no matter how hard you tried, you could never convince yourself that she loves you more than she loved all the other men she cheated on.

And why, exactly, can she not trust me?

Are you sure I want you to tell the world about this?

What? Yes, go ahead.

I don’t really want to.

Make it vague if it makes you feel better, Jesus.

I’m not here to make things vague, I’m here to make them crystal clear. Unfortunately, I don’t really want to talk about this as it’s a bit of a sore subject for me. This task is up to you, Brad.

Fine. It will be vague though. Early in our relationship, before we were even in a relationship and it was as clean cut and Brad sleeping with his boss… I shot a video of… something… occurring… between us… and, long story short, I posted it on the internet on a message board I go to. Eventually, I told Tiffany about it as we were having a conversation about a similar topic and it did not sound as if she would be too upset about the idea. Well, I was wrong, she was extremely upset about it, and the fact that she didn’t break up with me right there will still confuse my thinking to this day.

So, let me get this straight, you took a private video of you two engaged in some sort of act, and then posted it on the internet for lots of anonymous people to see?

Yes.

Why in the hell would you do that?

You know that no amount of rationalizing on my part will make it seem right, so why are you asking me to explain myself?

Because it’s important for people to see that no matter how stupid an act you perform, you still manage to come up with some way to rationalize it.

At the time I believed our relationship was strictly temporary. She was engaged. She was my boss. Her fiance was due back in a few months. I didn’t think it would turn into a real relationship, nor did I think it would last in any way. In my stupidity, I felt it was OK for me to share something like that with a few hundred of my friends. To this day, several months later, the video would not have traveled outside of the circle of those few hundred people had it not been for the actions of Tiffany.

What’d she do?

She told her friends about it and had them find it. Before you ask, they found it via the website I posted it on and not anywhere else, two months after I posted it, thus proving that it would not have moved outside that circle.

You believe that it may become more widespread now?

I do, because it is apparently traveling within her circle of friends, and that always leads it to traveling outward from there.

Do you think that is a valid reason for her to distrust you?

Yes, and no. I say yes, because, that is something pretty fucking terrible for a person to do, period, no matter the mitigating circumstances. I say no, because of those mitigating circumstances. I would never, ever, do something like that to someone who I loved, someone that I was in a relationship with. In order to prove this point in a matter that sounds like entire bullshit to outside observers: I have plenty of more video that I have not posted anywhere despite a demand for it. I love her, and I would never do something like that to her ever again. I am relatively annoyed, actually, that she is spreading it by her own means because that makes me feel even worse about it. Had I not told her, had she not had her friends found it, it would have just disappeared into obscurity, never to be seen again.

I feel it’s important to state here that although Tiffany was highly upset about this, she did not break up with me at that moment. It was actually a month or two after that she decided to dump me. She also often asked me to bring in the camera on several different occasions, in which I politely declined as I was still rather upset about the whole ordeal, myself. All in all, after the initial explosion of anger, she seemed rather comfortable with the idea in the end.

That takes care of reason number one that you two can never be together again. The second reason is that you have proven yourself to be nothing but a pussy whipped sack of shit who follows her around like a kicked puppy pining for her love. Does this make sense to you?

Yes, I suppose it does. The fact that I have done nothing but pine for her proves to her that I am spineless, weak, and pathetic. No one would want that in a companion. Or, at least, no one well adjusted. Obsession is not an attractive trait.

Third reason would be that she has broken your heart so many times, and proven herself to be prone to explosive outbursts of uncontrollable and unexplainable rage, that you really, honestly, should not be able to see yourself in a healthy relationship with her ever again. Correct?

True, I suppose.

Fourth reason, she hopes to rekindle things with her scorned fiance, and even though you’re sure if he knew what she actually did to him, as he is not aware of the fact that she was cheating on him, he wouldn’t want to speak to her again. Unfortunately, the poor son of a bitch has no idea, believes that he broke up with her for stupid reasons, and seems to want to get back with her. It looks like things will work out between them when he comes back into port on the seventh, unless you have something to do with it, and you know that you wouldn’t do something foolish because you know then that you would never be able to talk to her again. Despite the fact that you are beginning to realize that you will never be in a relationship with her ever again, you still love her like a fool and would never hurt her in that way.

You’re a goddamn asshole.

Well, it had to be said.

Whatever, I don’t like you anymore.

Too bad, I’m you and you can’t get rid of me without killing yourself, and we both know that isn’t an option because you enjoy the suffering of life too much and would hate to miss out on the potential happiness the future might, but probably doesn’t, store for you.

Piss off.

So, what are you going to do now?

Slowly work Tiffany out of my mind and pursue this B.A. in English I’m chasing after?

And then?

Hope to find happiness again?

And then?

Get married and make more babies with my beautiful wife?

Speaking of…

No, not this conversation, I’m not ready for that.

OK, fine.

Thanks.

And then?

Die, feeling satisfied that I lived a full life. Hopefully I’ll have a lot of money by then, as well, so that I can die in a really nice bed in a big mansion with my lovely children all gathered around, that way they can bicker over who gets possession of my estate. Little do they know that it will be written in my will that all my money will go to the first born great great grandson.

And then?

I will frolic through heaven as a majestic white horse.

And then?

I will be reincarnated as a small child, preferably a girl, who lives somewhere in Europe. She will have excellent vision, but will unfortunately become stricken with Parkinson’s Disease into her early forties. She will live happily, despite the disease, thanks to the care of her loving husband who will write the novels I will probably never write in my lifetime. When she dies, her body will be cremated along with a dozen roses, and her ashes will be buried alongside the Euphrates river.

Thanks, now I’m going to sleep.

Me, too. Good night, old friend.

Good night.