#and with the recent resurgence of petekey in the holy year of 2020 this post was just begging to be written

[ex-priest]

i’m sorry, every single song is about you (and other sappy summer sentiments)

the nature of [me] is that every so often i have to stumble upon summer again. this year it’s seven months long and reeks of sweat and garbage and lemony, dish-washing soap. it’s nine people in a house all slowly going insane from the heat and the virus and the threat of a government that’s all out to get you. it’s going to bed at 5 am but only because i can’t stand to see the sunrise. (it reminds me too much of hope. and beginning again. and days that feel new. ever since march every second/minute/hour blurs together so fast. i am a morbidly obese forty-something incel wearing a ‘virginity rocks’ t-shirt sitting on the couch with my finger lazily pressing down so i can skip through all of the commercials.) 

but it’s still the same. after 2016 all my summers have been the same. an endless, constant loop of the following words: longing, dread, suffering, like, doldrums, doldrums, doldrums. (it always comes back to the linguistics of it all, because my words dictate my worlds, and for some reason i like to drown in misery and decades-old blog posts and thinly-veiled song lyrics that somehow makes me feel more than anything else i’ve felt in my entire life. children dying in the streets don’t get the same emotional reaction than the sentence “i’m sorry every song’s about you.”) i’m pretty sure this combination of words have appeared on this blog more times than i’ve ever said ‘i love you’ to someone and actually meant it. real life is only as meaningful as the things that have happened to me, and since i’m not unfortunate enough to be pete wentz from fall out boy i’ve decided to pour out some of my words for him in a hopeless attempt to aid him as he ambles through this post-summeroflike world. honestly, he needs all the help he can get.

there’s just something about all this that makes me incredibly sad and mouthy and crying-at-the-bar-at-2am-because-i-want-to-kill-myself drunk. my mind is a perpetual loop of “you are my favorite what if” / “my body is an orphanage, we take everyone in” / “it’s hard to find someone that likes me for me and not because i’m pete from fall out boy. and i found them. and then watched it fade” and i am powerless to stop it. i’m always a sucker for good poetry and god damn if peter lewis kingston wentz iii isn’t one of the best modern poets i’ve ever read. up there with richard siken and tumblr user julykings. i don’t know how scholars and academics measure brevity and wit or whatever the fuck makes an objectively ‘good’ poem because as long as it makes me want to fucking stop in the middle of the street and sob into my hands for at least a moment or two then it’s fucking art, baby. “i think the word fuck is good, but only sometimes / like how fucking good it felt to be seen” and “i’m sorry about the blood on your mouth / i wish it was mine / i couldn’t get the boy to kill me but i wore his jacket for the longest time” live in my head rent fucking free.

this post is longer than i expected. and also going in a direction that both surprises and delights me. it’s been months since i last wrote something on here. i’m always writing about failure and memories and romance and the lack thereof. but it always feel like i’m just performing for an invisible audience. (story of my fucking life, by the way.) i’ve forgotten what it’s like to just unhinge my jaw like a snake and swallow. this summer made me remember how good it feels to be me, sometimes. to have nothing and no one to answer to. i have so many unread messages that if my phone was a physical mailbox it would have exploded by now, spencer in icarly style, i.e., spontaneously combusting with no real explanation except that’s just the way life is. if anyone i know is reading this right now then i’m sorry. i can’t stand the thought of being needed/wanted by someone right now. (that sounds incredibly cocky. ‘i don’t need you,’ i imagine you saying. ‘you just have a fucking responsibility/obligation to [insert whatever the hell you want from me].’ and yeah, i agree. but at the same time, fuck you. and also at the same time, i don’t mean any of this. i’m just tired. i’ll talk to you again when i can no longer wake from my sleep.)  but i digress. what i’m trying to say in this ridiculously-long, unwanted, overly-wordy post, is that i will always be a slut for whatever shit went down on the 2005 warped tour. i’m not very good at saying things, so i tend to over-compensate by saying lots of things. and then i do a complete 180 and say nothing at all. i don’t know. maybe i just don’t have the guts to talk about the real and the present. maybe that’s why i have to get drunk out of my mind before i ever tell anyone about how lonely i am. it’s much easier to lament over the death of a romance that wasn’t mine. and it’s so much easier because with the way pete wentz writes his about his well-documented, decade-long, four-album heartbreak, i don’t even have to say much. i just have to say something along the lines of “his hands hurt from holding on too tight” and i guarantee future [me] would be reduced into nothing but a sobbing, light-blue mess. it’s that easy. (wrote you a goodbye note [you just wrote me off] on your arm when you passed out...)