damianajournals

[damianajournals]

August 20

After the daily morning writing I curl up on the couch reading Anne of Green Gables until it’s time to go to work & it’s so wonderfully soft & comfy & cosy, a good call adopting this underutilised piece of longue equipment.

Work’s pleasant & I make lots of satisfying big sales although fuck this pathetic excuse for a mop & fuck this inability of mine to stop eating the damn Nutella pastries.

Once home I finish my assigned reading & roll the most perfect spliff & I get on that good enriching novel-editing buzz & power through the Halloween chapter. My laptop freezes just when I’m done & I get this sickening crippling fear that I’ll have lost all my work after restarting it but the thing’s gone & autosaved itself, bless the advancement of technology.

I’m utterly relieved as I message T some nonsense about clitoris’s & send N a photo of my perfect spliff. He messaged me out of the blue on Friday night & something seems strange & changed about him like he really wants to get close to me again which is unexpected yet pleasant I’ve always loved that boy even through all his stupid ego-tripping fuckboy muck, there will always be a place left aside for him in my heart.

I conclude the evening with the first half hour of the second Matrix movie which I think is totally great I love the lore of the world & the way the story’s progressed in the time between & there’s this one great sex scene between Neo & Trinity cut with this horny dance-orgy in Zion which quite frankly is a big big mood.

I go to sleep comfortably again, melting into the sheets it could be said, & am trying to conjure up some fantasies when all thought just slips right out of my mind like I’m meditating without even trying & it's somehow so easy my head effortlessly empty & no thoughts crying to be heard as usual but the effect’s broken when I hear a borderline domestic through the wall & sit up abruptly wondering what the hell I should do, straining to try hear it better. But the weird shouting soon stops & I allow myself my peace, & within minutes I’m asleep.

[damianajournals]

August 19

The writing’s good & work’s good too, the boss being unexpectedly likeable lately & noting that I’ve got new shoes (finally, I’d been making a fuss over nothing as usual), but then my silly key-lessness puts me in a predicament when nobody’s home in the evening. I see all the lights out above the tackle shop & think fuck & I try going round the side like C said but I’m too afraid I’m too too afraid & the damn dog’s barking at me so I go across the road to the pub instead.

I’ve barely stepped inside however when I realise my ID’s with my fucking key & I really don’t feel like a soft drink or spending money for that matter but at the last moment when I’m near tears/on the brink of despair I call I & thank god I do cos he’s just around the corner & he finds me on the front step reading Anne of Green Gables by the light of my phone. How’s that for timing, huh?

Inside at last oh the sweet precious sanctuary of my bedroom I finish my assigned reading for the day (feeling delightfully accomplished, took all my pills & drank all my water etc etc) before smoking the tiniest end of that spliff from last night & editing chapter nine (making swift progress these past two weeks) & it’s too late to watch a movie after so I masturbate instead over C fantasies which I really should focus on over inappropriate & unrealistic JDG fantasies & then I plot ways of asking K on a date which I should just do fuck my overthinking I’ll ask L if he’s single & flirt the world away. All in all (at the end of the day as the saying goes) I’m rather content & warm & happy as I fall so sweetly asleep.

[damianajournals]

August 18

A pleasant day in bed reading Anne of Green Gables & watching movies & playing video games & eating those damn Nutella pastries. Around six in the evening I do a highly-focused edit of chapter eight, churning through it so I can watch The Matrix which is a great engaging experience, the acting iconic & the action sequences some of the best I’ve ever seen. T still seeming strange & not that keen on sleeping with me maybe I’m just imagining it or maybe I’ve got good instincts but either way I try not to mind too much. I fall asleep around midnight, the day having slipped gently away.

[damianajournals]

August 17

I spend my morning reading & watching Netflix & playing video games waiting for the homies to roll through for sesh & poetry. T arrives first in a pink silk pyjama shirt for a party he’s got after & then G & L come & G reads my stuff & likes it & L smokes ciggies out the window as usual & when E turns up we roll a sesh & I drink her pink rosé.

It’s a nice time & we talk about random things like housing & the economy & James Joyce (funny how T & T always talk about the same writers) & then T’s gotta go & I think I should hug him goodbye but I don’t I just stay sitting. Next time, next time, when there’s not so many eyes onlooking.

G draws a pretty picture which she addresses to me & leaves on the couch when her & L leave. E stays for a while & we have a bitch & I order a pizza which she comes to collect with me but I was so fucking high I ordered a pepperoni without the damn pepperoni but the guy working is nice & cooks it separately & puts it on bless his accommodating soul.

By the time I get home I can only manage three pieces & I’d intended to watch a movie but end up with more Stranger Things behind the scenes videos & then some cute stupid clips of Finn & JDG & it’s interesting to think how they’re just boys, just boys, on such display to the world & apparently Jack ‘got caught smoking pot’ & he apologised saying it was a ‘stupid mistake’ but he probably didn’t really think that, just let the sweet kid smoke weed & protect him from the malicious sixteen-year-old girls trying to get their possessive paws on his celebrity. Protect him, the Hollywood just-a-boy angel.

[damianajournals]

August 16

Morning writing productive as ever before I head to work which I’m entirely not looking forward to. Head office guy comes and condescends the fuck out of my boss and barely even acknowledges me and he really is a right cunt isn’t he and I pull faces behind his back.

When he’s gone I don’t do what he rudely told me to and read under the counter instead, in a rather pleasant mood until T comes in unannounced and unexpected and there’s a girl with him and I dunno it’s just something about the vagueness with which he talks about tomorrow afternoon that makes me suspect he’s not so keen to sleep with me anymore which would be a right shame & I spend the rest of the shift thinking & overthinking it & pulling myself down into a funk. This is the problem with having a boy on the scene, that relentless anxiety in anticipation of loss.

I have some disappointing KFC for dinner & drop my book on the mopped floor & swear a bit more than I should in a public space but I’m damn well pissed off till I get home & get high, doing a bit of work on my book & finishing the one I’m reading before getting on the red wine buzz & watching the 2003 Peter Pan which is insanely erotic for a kids movie, though truth be told I’m into it. The child love-lust between Wendy & Peter’s totally perfect & the chemistry’s there & it really raises some interesting points about the link between intimate love & growing up. Makes me want to play with some kind of narrative regarding premature sexuality. It’s also totally hilarious, with John’s one-liners hitting the spot every time.

While I’m shut up in my room doing this I hear the revelries of H & C & co & it borderline concerns me. There’s such an aggressive sexuality in the way they communicate, & they fall against my door making it bang as they do a photoshoot in the hallway, & I can tell that H is fucked up already making me worried for how she’ll hold herself out in the world.

My concerns prove valid when I wake up to a knocking on the door at two in the morning. She stumbles through the hallway unable to walk straight or comprehend speech, drunker than I’ve ever seen a person, & passes out face down on her bed. In the morning she tells me she left her phone outside the door & vomited in the taxi. It’s a little bit funny & a little bit pitiable, a fitting summation of this particular aspect of character.

[damianajournals]

Musings (August 14)

I frequently have to remind myself that nobody really gives a fuck, not about me the same way I give a fuck about me, they’re all spinning in their own worlds & orbits & circles & I’m here spinning in mine gotta make my sun a source of something I’ve got eternal access to, like my own self-love & infallible self-belief fuck em if they say I’m selfish or crazy or delusional this is my sun make your own cos I never got enough light from anyone or anywhere else.

[damianajournals]

August 15

After a café visit of just-enough journaling I take the train out to Greenlane to go to the oral surgeon cos of when I unhinged my jaw while tripping on acid three years ago. There’s this really lovely receptionist with sparkly eyes and rivers of blonde in her hair who’s making all these funny jokes as I wait which makes me smile but then in the actual consultation I get my head scanned in this big spinning x-ray machine just to have the doctor (with all these fancy certificates on his wall) tell me that yeah it’s a little weird but there’s not much to be done, which costs me a grand total of 265 dollars not to mention the 2400 I’ll have to pay if I want to get my potentially problematic wisdom teeth removed.

I’m near tears cos of the sheer overwhelming concept of spending that much money on teeth and information I already knew and I really don’t understand how young broke people like me are meant to look after their overpriced health. One of those moments when I thank my blessings for my mother who talks to me over the phone and says that she’ll pay the lot, thank god, I’ve only got to pay the 5 of the 265.

The bus ride to work is stupidly arduous and I should’ve stayed on the train and I get this overwhelming urge for fried chicken which I give into at the KFC which was a good call really though god knows I’ve no idea how the hell you’re supposed to eat it.

At work the boss bitches about the bigger boss which I find entirely amusing and enjoyable, jumping in on the opportunity to talk shit about these big-headed cunts who’ve probably never worked a minimum-wage day in their life for some faceless company that doesn’t give a damn about them. I’ve got a feeling I won’t find it in me to hold my tongue when he rolls through for a critique session tomorrow.

I bring home Nutella danishes for the flatties and make dinner then work on my book til H gets home when I go out into the kitchen for a catch-up which just ends in me coughing chaotically so I retreat til she comes in for a sesh, telling her about T etc & her showing me these beautiful tarot cards she got in Melbourne all divine & feminine & glowing.

I then finish the chapter & it’s almost an addiction now this productivity & then I allow myself to get carried away in another JDG fantasy before finding myself watching the most fascinating but horrifically cruel porn structured around a game show where each girl has to perform certain painful tasks for money & one girl’s gotta get fucked by this giant dildo which they stick in dry & jesus christ her screams are real, hell I like cruelty but this is borderline too much.

To add to the theme I bite right through my bottom lip during my 2am post-masturbation munchies & suck out the blood til I fall asleep.

[damianajournals]

August 14

The day goes along pleasantly enough until I’m hit by a sudden depression at work which I think stems from the fact that T’s not messaged me back since yesterday and it’s probably nothing I’ve just got this terrible paranoia as a result from years of inexplicable abandonment, disappointment & complete destruction of all premature hope. This feeling then swells & expands to include that feeling of nobody really giving a fuck about me/the city now neglecting me & I get all sad & upset about how nobody comes to the social events I organise like when only eight people turned up to my 21st birthday party & I’m feeling that deep aching kind of forgotten & lonely again only alleviated slightly when L, who I was thinking of funnily enough in inevitable connection to K, messages me asking my plans for a specific date & asks if I want to perform in a show organised by her & E which of course I do (despite being undeniably jealous that everyone else is going around organising shows & nobody would come to mine if it was me).

On the topic of that particular group of people I dreamed about them the previous night & it’s got me thinking again about K & how I’m very interested & intrigued by him & would quite like to be better friends but am not sure how to go about doing that & don’t want to come on too weird or strong or whatever. I hope the fates will twist their way into putting us together. In the meantime I’ll probably ask him if he’d like to read some of my book, a good excuse to talk to him & see a little further into his mind.

Once home T finally messages me which rids me of all that unnecessary sadness thank fuck & I roll the most perfect spliff & get on an unexpectedly productive editing buzz which is entirely satisfying & then I finish reading what C sent me & fall in love with his love & his awareness of himself that phrase that says we’re incapable of harm oh it makes me grin so warmly & I think yes darling that is far too true & the world is all the better for it.  

[damianajournals]

August 13

I wake up feeling restful at a reasonable hour for once & am at the café by quarter past nine. A boy walks past to the bathroom & he intrigues me (something about his clothes & his hair) & then he sits down at the table opposite & I feel him watching me maybe curious about the way I’m mouthing my own words at the laptop screen so ecstatically & he’s drawing one of those Star Wars characters & I hear him tell S he does costume design, I like the passion with which he flips through his folder to show her things he’s been working on. I catch his eyes once & we exchange a smile & I think he’s sweet but not sweet enough to distract me & when he leaves it’s something of a relief not to feel seen.

Work’s peaceful & I manage to read several pages & miss most of the rain & then I go home to masturbate before smoking up & I suddenly feel so tired obviously this sickness is still draining my energy like beer in a glass & it takes all my willpower but I manage to finish the assigned evening chapter of Jesus & spliffs & charades & then I fall asleep to fantasies of Halloween & JDG & a little bit of sex.  

[damianajournals]

August 12

I wake up with one of those frustrating, inconvenient shadows of a hangover that just makes me feel all tired & nauseous and eat bad hot chips in bed trying to rehabilitate myself. Work is sleepy & unexpectedly busy which is mildly exhausting but I make it through & head home trying and failing to write and essentially just wasting a night doing not much worthy to speak of at all. Far too tired & achey for this day to be much of a day. Good night, slow sighing world.  

[damianajournals]

August 11

Squeeze some writing into my morning before T rolls through and we get high & play Skyrim with two very conflicting styles me all slow & sneaking & careful and him running rushed & aggressive & quickly hitting buttons in a way that gives me undeniable anxiety… maybe the only way I’ve seen that particular inevitable tone of his masculinity shine through. I have a coughing fit which is gross & embarrassing but I feel ok about it around him comfortable as ever & he doesn’t seem to mind (maybe he does maybe I’m making this all up his general acceptance of everything but to be honest I don’t think so). He buys me a Kingfisher bless his chivalry & a few sips in I’m already feeling that blessed happy mellow tingling I haven’t felt in a hot minute.

The time goes quicker than the beer & we sneak in an obligatory fuck before he leaves & I’m so deep desperate into it practically begging him not to go just yet wish this sex would go on & on & on forever & I never feel like this I’m always kind of hoping it will end soon but with T it’s different cos I’m so damn turned on for him. Kinda wish he’d touch me harder & faster & hotter even though it’s already hard & fast & hot. I’m your bitch, T. I’m your inevitable bitch.

But he’s gotta go & leaves me like a lovely puddle on the bed kissing me goodbye my legs all up & over him (I’m all up & over him) and then I try not to fall asleep as I wait for H to arrive with her beauty & her drinks which she does wearing the most fantastic outfit that I wish I got a picture of but to describe it she looks like some bohemian tapestry with these brilliant bright red boots which she apparently got from the free stall in Matakana which is funny cos that’s where I saw her last (all these inevitable omens the universe telling us that we really ought to hang out more often).

She makes me up these tequila-pineapple cocktails which I positively throw back in retrospect far too swiftly & everything’s hazy before I know it and it’s raining real hard and when the rain stops we go for a walk & she smokes a ciggy on the bridge over the train tracks & everything’s got that shiny shimmery glow of post-rain reveries & it’s very romantic you know I could probably be in love with H if we hadn’t crossed over that threshold into friendship.

Back at mine everything’s blurry & all I can think or see is her beauty I love those bright colours she’s wearing & her amazing hair & then I think maybe we smoke weed which was probably a bad idea & then we get in bed & I puke over the side twice once in the bin once on the carpet god dammit (worry about that in the morning) & then we go to sleep & I’m out like the quickest flick of the light.

In that confused moment of waking after drunkenness I reach for her & she is not there. A happy shame.

[damianajournals]

August 10

I begin the morning with the satisfying necessity of productivity, cleaning in preparation for potential guests. I go to the café and manage to substantially catch up on all the writing I’ve been missing, now that my brain & energy levels seem to be functioning on a reasonable level. I’m still snotty & sneezy & coughing so I while away the afternoon playing video games & being generally languid, telling T to wait till tomorrow when I’ll be better company, and to end the evening I engage in the bliss of a long-awaited spliff, catching up on some more writing before conjuring up some quite vivid fantasies of M that’d do quite well as content for an erotica & masturbating with an almost religious enthusiasm which results in the sense that my body’s melting & evaporating all at once with these strange faint floating tingles that I don’t think I’ve quite experienced before… an ecstasy at the cost of my upper lip which I can’t help but bite when I come.  

[damianajournals]

August 9

Feeling better but not the best I could be. Another nothing day with overexpenditure on sickness relief & getting so so tired of this inability to do anything that actually matters. Talking to T still quite consistently & he messages me when he’s out at night having a not-good time & it makes me feel so nice because I wanna be that drunken turn-to for comfort I wanna be that steady sweet thing to make it all better it makes me feel known & noticed & properly appreciated.

Speaking of A who’s still on my mind I type out a big long summary of what I need to say to her to settle the score. Oh, this is gonna take all the strength & courage I can possibly afford but I need to close the story.

Sister sells me a fifty bag, which is funny. She approves of T’s reading choices ~ impressive, she’s usually only got bad things to say.

I nearly smoke weed but I don’t. It would be a dumb idea. Just gotta sit through this stagnancy, it’ll be over soon & all the world will be made of an even brighter light accentuated by its current absence unjustified by any heaviness of emotion. That’s the real frustration really, no mood to match the lack of physical wellbeing.  

[damianajournals]

August 8

Bit of a nothing day really, wish I was back on the buzz & feeling a bit pissed off that this whole shitty sickness thing had to inconveniently coincide with that long-awaited lion’s gate portal epiphany trip, wish I was getting lit at O & S & C etc’s gig seeing all those lovely old friends & dancing to the funk but guessing it’s all a bit too much to wish for & I should be grateful for what I’m getting which don’t doubt me I am. Just a case of bad timing, really, but guess it’s nice I’m finally yearning for something other than bedroom solitude for once since the start of Winter. A nice reminder of my changing rhythms, in preparation for when I can really start to dance again. But lord fucking knows I wish I could smoke, & I wish I could write, & I wish I could be lustful ~ the boy is waiting, I see it in everything he says to me. I wait for those hands as he waits for this body, a perfect pairing of violent harmony.

[damianajournals]

August 7

Unexpectedly sleepy at the café, can’t write properly, a feeling which swiftly develops into quite genuine and unexpectedly debilitating illness. To make matters worse I lock myself out of the flat in the drowsy chill of rain, heading to work cos I’ve got nowhere else to go. I descend rapidly into an inability to do much at all and the boss sends me home. On the bus I receive an out-of-the-blue (more like out-of-the-turmoil) message from A which riles me right up and sees me promptly spiralling down into a seething simmer of age-old rage like always happens when I see her name her face catch a snapshot of her delusional sense of injustice or whatever the fuck it is that keeps her coming back and always trying to salvage this dead unburied friendship. Maybe it’s the unburied-ness of it that’s got us both with such a lack of peace & closure which has me thinking maybe I’ve really gotta lay things out for her tell her how it is & how I feel which is really a whole lot more trouble than I really wanna go to but I guess it’s for a reason & will all be worth it in that final calming silence in which she’s just a laid-to-rest figure of memory.

Fuck that bitch though I get so angry thinking of her righteous indignation putting everything on me like I’m the one that fucked up & threw away our friendship rather than the one that went to such ludicrous lengths to save it, wish I saved myself the trouble instead although guess a friendship so precious is worth the effort of trying, not that it mattered with all her crazy not that I like to use that word but what else am I to call it, how else to summarise all that madness & rage & disrupting hurtful chaos she put me through. Fuck you fuck you fuck you don’t you know the end’s already been & gone?

Good to hear from T though, feeling like shit but such an old forgotten loveliness to have these chats & companionable occupation of time.

(Throat feels like I swallowed silt & sand. Give me thunder & rainstorms but god forsake this desert dryness trying to rob me of all my fresh pleasure).

[damianajournals]

Musings (August 6)

Create your own communities where they’re lacking and don’t wait for someone else to do it for you ~ the simple trick is to bring all those beautiful people together & watch the world expand. Disperse social stagnancy and centre the discussion round what you want it centred on, no space for small talk or apathy.

Love your friends like you love your lovers & love yourself the same. Thank your friends for their friendship & write them into dazzling intimacies of the most divine description, catch them in your eye like the gentle spectacles they’ll always be.  

Don’t try inserting yourself into circles you’ll only end up seeking elusive satisfaction in superficial relationships (not that they don’t like you or vice versa just that they’ve got their circle & you’ve got yours so) throw yourself into it when you find it, fill it with the most crystalline waters to sink & swim in so much deeper than any shallow restriction of heart, take that heart & hold it up to the shine of sky where the golden-blue glows through & makes an entirely beautiful expression of you to glitter in the eyes of those who think it’s all beautiful, too.

[damianajournals]

August 6

A rather routine yet enjoyable day beginning with a satisfyingly substantial flow of journaling followed by an entirely pleasant shift at work during which I snatch moments to scrawl out creative musings inspired by an earlier conversation with K. As soon as I get home I smoke up and start writing for four hours straight (hail that creative energy muse wherever she may be), right into the lateness of the night which unexpectedly presses in on me with unrelenting images of her the fucking owl lady causing me to feel quite suddenly alone, how I wish E or T were here to hold me & help me sleep rather than this quiver & quake of terrifying sinister smallness preceding an unsettled sleep.