fear me.

cosmonaut

Why would I even bother? I mean, it's been half a year since I had anything to say. This blog is as dead (and probably as irrelevant and cliche) as a doornail. What? You didn't miss me?

Perhaps my absence has been like that of Jodie Foster's in Contact, when she blasts off and disappears into a wormhole and sees galaxies glowing and undulating in the velvet black of space and meets her dead father and then, when she splashes back down into Tokyo, everyone agrees she's only been gone for a second. Like Jodie Foster I have been in another dimension. And I have stories to tell.

In the Roommate star system on planet Forcryinoutloud, life has easily been absurd and interesting enough to write about. There just never seems to be a good time. And it hurts too much to travel back to the other worlds where communication of these episodes is possible. You know how it is.

But now he who was once the Date and who became the Roommate is becoming A Friend. Presumably I will no longer change his child's shitty diapers or arise at 6:30 to help with their morning routine or stand blinking in awe when he says, "Jesus Christ, you dressed him in that? For cryin' out loud."

This change will facilitate a chance to think unfettered once again. I will listen to the music of my choice without fear of offending his punk/grind/anarchist sensibilities. Listening to the right music helps me think. Listening to scabby 14-year-olds vomiting up distortion, live cats and the bile of faux rage does not.

I can't really hold a Friend responsible for fettering my thoughts. It's not his fault, really, that I try to accommodate. I believe in psych circles they call this process dishragification. But this Friend is a guy. As soon as he's taking up enough of my brain space to tip the balance, the process begins. I start thinking maybe the Jackson Five wouldn't be just the thing. Or that Tom Waits is actually not all that good. I start thinking, "hey yeah, maybe reading Margaret Atwood novels is no fucking different from reading harlequin romances! Maybe I should read this tract entitled 'People who don't wear the same Political Slogan as me on their T-shirt need to Suck my Dick right now' instead."

You can see how it's going to take me a little while to get my bearings again.

There's a tonne I will miss about the Roommate. Soon, when the house has been too long without the smell of a good vegetarian casserole, I will wonder why we couldn't keep living together. Why I didn't just resist becoming the dishrag. One day I will have to learn, won't I?