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For me, 90s music is going to be about 1996 and the far-reaching implications of that year until all the horror has been smoothed away by the passage of time and the re-visiting of those memories so many times that it fails to shock, and then fails to sadden, and then merely just is.

My then-best-friend, my high school best friend That Idiot Shawn, the guy I was in love with at the time, was getting the annoying end of the custody shuffle. He was also in possession of too much imagination, too much sensational TV, and self-medicated ADHD, using under-the-counter substances. Top that off with him being an irredeemable drama queen, and you may have an idea of how much chaos he was capable of causing, unaided. Enter me, the sheltered, naive girl who grew up without television and under the impression that everything a close friend or family member told you was the truth to the best of their knowledge. I believed in weird coincidences and the supernatural, because of weird stuff that went on in my own life. He believed that weird coincidence and the supernatural made for really good drama. He told me his rich fantasy life, complete with all the things he'd ever wanted to be and the way things would have played out if he'd been in a movie. He didn't bother to tell me where reality began and his dreams ended, partly because he thought I'd just know, and partly because -- well, he enjoyed the power he held over me.

This was on the radio then. I remember it being a year of bitter and symbolic songs with that thread of despairing hope and deep-rooted anger, because listening to the radio was like looking in a mirror. His world was crumbling around him, and he was taking mine with it.

This one is for everyone at Gossamer who didn't get feedback from me in 1997 through 2000.

It's been years.

There's a mermaid on the wall of the shower, and she's got her back to me, hunched over, studying the ripples in the water like she can see something there that I can't see, not even if I squint hard enough to see stars. I remember the black screens and amber letters, logged in too late to my shell account. Thin client, they'd call it now. Dumb terminal. Dumb angel, and saving grace in a world full of madness when the 24 hour study area in the library was the only sanctuary I could think to find.

All the geographic-distance between the screaming fangirls meant e-mail. E-mail meant culture and archives. I dreamed in gossamer, gold and green and all the lovely colors I couldn't see on my screen. I never responded, always lurking. Bad fangirl, no feedback. I was never a part of the culture, but there I was lurking on the outside, watching the words patch the hell I was living in. The characters always got worse, but they came together in the end, didn't they; they were meant to be together, and all the aching and poison words couldn't keep them apart. You could tell by the chemistry it was meant to be so. And in the end, it was.

Autumn leaves and crystal blue skies and that little treasured hope of independence and higher education turned in to twisted winter and bitter bare birch. The words were solace. I wouldn't let myself cry over myself, so I watched them burn in their silent orbits around each other, mute hateful torture. Sometimes they laughed, and I laughed with them. It was safer than crying. If I started, I would never stop...

I memorized the names of the ones who wrote them best. I had to believe that it was inevitable when they wrote them that way. I wasn't sure whether I liked the ones where they got together at the end or the ones where they weren't yet there but they'd make it there someday. I tried to write down what had happened with us, make it happen to them, but the words wouldn't come. It wasn't time. It wasn't right. I had more waiting to do, and someone with better words than I did had to write them as they were.

The years turned the anguish into dust, and from the dust grew flowers. They're still broken and beautiful, and the mermaid in my shower sits watching them. Why does she dream of unhappier times, when today is so full of life and promise?

Oh, my dystopia. We were perfect, you and I.

There are two males in my life (present and past) who get referred to in a very similar tone of mingled affection and annoyance. They are Darkside and Fuzzy Modem. I offer here a breakdown of some of the most common similarities and differences between Darkside and Fuzzy Modem.

( Read more... )

Summary: Google Spreadsheets has a lot of improvements to go before they master export to HTML. Darkside is so much ♥, in a perfectly sour, sarcastic, and antisocial way. Fuzzy is a walking reality show waiting to happen, and my best position there is spectator, not co-star.


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The shrimp did what to the cabbage? Only this time the phrasebook isn't Hungarian, and there's only one dodgy word. Warning for dodgy language. Via pauamma.

Mad restaurant science. Via wyldemusick.

The Hobbit!

I remain thankful that in times of crisis, Darkside has never pushed me away when I've reached out to him. Once upon a time, I was madly in love with That Idiot Shawn. And I pulled a stupid stunt and ran outside in the winter with bare feet and ran down the frozen iced-over road after D.C. with her pager that had fallen off, and I came back with frostbitten feet. It was fine until my feet started to thaw and all the ruptured and damaged nerves started crying. I reached for his hand and he pulled away from me and said that he would not allow me to hold his hand because that would be too much like we were a couple. (We were involved in bed at the time.) The layer of dead skin on the bottoms of my feet eventually fell off after blistering all over (the bottom of my feet was one huge thick blister), and the doctor said I was lucky to have not lost toes. And Shawn did not let me hold his hand while my feet thawed.

Darkside may not reach out to me if he's in pain, but he does not push me away when I really bloody well need comforting. Could this be yet another reason why he's my best friend? Hmm.

Make Life Awesome!

Long hair vs. Bone marrow, FIGHT! Context: People with long hair often have people come up to them and ask if or when they plan to donate their long hair to $CHARITY. It's similar to the annoyance factor of people coming up and touching pregnant bellies without invitation, though less invasive of personal space and more self-righteous and sneakily mean-spirited. Why "mean-spirited"? Because in many of the exchanges, there's an undercurrent of "if you are enjoying your long hair for yourself while there are LITTLE KIDS with CANCER who have NO HAIR, you are a SELFISH AND MEAN PERSON!!1!111"

Today, I plan to enjoy a trip to the plasma place.

I am intimidated by the job application process but will persevere!

Now I'm trying to figure out which of the actors in The 40 Year Old Virgin looks like Mr. Shallow. He's the young one with the tattooed arms in the movie, but I haven't the foggiest what name goes with that character. But he so looks like Mr. Shallow. And that's totally hot.

Have been reading romance novels lately. Eeeuuuurgh? Some are decent. Some are very bad. If I do publish there, I doubt Darkside would read me even out of a sense of duty.

V returns on Tuesday.

At dinner tonight, someone indicated that I was sitting on the Has Relationship side of the table. Which was very weird. I don't technically consider myself In A Relationship as far as all crucial parts of relationships like hugs and kisses and any attempt to stay together goes. I do consider myself taken as far as being available to new relationship prospects goes. It's a very weird limbo, very much like the one I found myself in back in high school. That one had a lot more emotional anguish and a lot less personal satisfaction. This one is a comfort zone and a warm, mutually agreeable, trusting friendship. But does it count as a relationship? It brings me some of the same satisfaction of one, because I love openly and happily, and I know that I am cared for deeply. But one of the things where I know it's a relationship is where I can spend significant physical time, when there is physical time, curled up next to, being petted, and wrapped securely in their arms. It's very much not a relationship. Sorry. Curled up next to is iffy. The rest are generally right out.

My own personal creativity has bottomed out because of all the creative effort I have to expend at work. Price paid for job that takes hard-work-creativity time? Less to spend as wished on personal projects.

I seem to have become the Neighborhood Muse for a bit here. First the hisssstorical thing. Then Shawn calling me in a tizzy because he's stuck and needs a muse-moment. Then the other thing that Dawn was talking about. Goodness.

I'm having Sunday off. I need Sunday off.

Dream involved a comedy of errors in an attempt to sleep with Shawn.

If I were being perfectly frank with myself, I'd be either somewhat scared, ( WARNING! POLY STUFF! )


My teenage fumblings of sex with Shawn were just as much of a comedy of errors as the dream was, which I find refreshing and amusing. Oy. Oy vey. My sex dreams tend to be extremely realistic, and feature the correct personality of my partner(s) as I know it. And. Yeah. Not happening. What garnetdagger says, goes.

Once upon a time in high school, I had this best friend.

( Brazen stupidity of the genius IQ type involving electrical weaponry, do-it-yourself-ish-ness, and the public school system. )

Once upon a time in high school, I had this best friend. We'd spend hours on the phone, because that's the sort of friends we were. And he'd get himself in alarming trouble, because that's the sort of guy he was.

One day, while we were on the phone, he found himself standing behind the couch (he may have been lounging on the back of the couch? Or something?) with a need to get out.

So he tried sidling out. This did not work, as the couch was pushed up tightly against the wall; the reason he could be where he was standing was because there was a window behind the couch, and that created enough space for him to stand. So he tried pushing the couch.

This was even less successful. As he probably should have already known, but discovered loudly right in my ear, the windowsill behind him housed his mother and stepfather's reasonably impressive collection of potted cacti. Pushing the couch forward meant pushing his bottom backward, and behind him was not open air, but a tasteful selection of succulents with thorns.

Of course, neither of his parents were home to push the couch to let him out. He was stuck.

After I stopped giggling at his expense, I suggested that he fall forward, letting his torso down onto the couch, and his feet would follow, and all would be good. He argued with me a little, and continued in his fruitless attempts to push the couch forward for a bit (spearing himself on the cacti behind every time) but after he got tired of playing pincushion with his butt, he followed my advice and escaped.

I suddenly realized that Darkside had heard whether or not I was on good terms with my exes or not, but had probably never encountered direct evidence of that entire polyamory thing. Between calls at work, I got a long litany of my exes and other people I would have had reason to romantically love at one point or another written out, and whether I love them now or not, and why. My object with the litany was to demonstrate that unless something happened to make it otherwise, I would keep on loving someone until the end of time, or I died, or something like that. It worked out that either there was some definite thing that happened so that I stopped loving them, or I still love them.

A few slipped under the radar, I am sure. I will have to include Queenie. I have slipped out of contact with too many, and there have been drastic changes here and there, and that's sad. But I still trust and respect many of my exes, and that's where my love has its roots. Some of my exes have proved that I can and should not trust them, and a few of them have demonstrated that I should not respect them overmuch either.

A large factor in my trust and respect for Darkside is that he compels my honesty. There are not many people who I feel that I must tell everything to. I am capable of lying with a straight face to the public in general, if I have a reason that I should lie. After getting caught lying on some things a couple times, I learned how to lie convincingly. I just told my lies exactly the way I told the truth, with the same level of detail and enthusiasm, throwing in plenty of extraneous corroborating detail. And while I considered myself, for the most part, exceptionally honest and straightforward, I, like Miles, never realized how much "subtle spin" I was putting on stuff until I had someone who not only appreciated my honesty, but compelled it.

How does he compel my honesty? He is honest and open with me, to whatever degree he is open. I would be doing his trust a disservice if I did not repay him in kind. If he doesn't wish to tell me something, he tells me that he'd rather keep that to himself. He is the antidote to Shawn. He won't let me lie to myself, either. I trust that he would never lie to me, but I know he's not so great about open and honest communication with himself. Ah, well, we all have our little flaws.

And he's honorable. If I am in need, and he knows about it, and it's something he can do something about, he'll help. He has had any number of opportunities to betray me and hasn't. Most telling is that he could have betrayed me by not encouraging me to do what was right for me -- he would have just had to offer me no opinion, and not help me figure out what was right. It wouldn't, technically, have been betrayal, only that he would have been standing by as I turned traitor on myself. He didn't, even though it meant inconvenience for him. So he has demonstrated his honor to me.

His honesty and honor are what win him my trust. Those and his kindness win my respect, and his charm and wit win my fondness. Trust, respect, and fondness are the seeds of love.

And when the seeds of love take root, they stay rooted so long as trust, respect, and fondness are still there.

I can't love Shawn again. My respect for him is growing slowly as he earns it, and the fondness is back after Darkside healed me, but the trust, the undeserved trust, will never return. Trust, respect, and fondness have all departed for BJ, leaving me wondering why I made that mistake. I am fond of digitalambience, but there is history there too with trust and respect. I trust, respect, and am fond of the Lady E., my first and most beloved fiancée. I trust, respect, and am fond of River, lately beloved of swallowtayle. I respect and am fond of pyrogenic, and while I suppose I trust him, I would have to spend more time interacting with him in the present to say that definitively.

Actual innate respect differs from showing respect for someone. Showing respect for someone is a basic social grace. Actual respect for someone is something that is earned through that person's actions. While I behave respectfully towards the people I speak with on the phone, do I actually respect the ones who curse at me? Absolutely not.

I was probably going somewhere with this, but I have no clue where. At least more of the structure of my mind is being revealed, now.

I was chatting with good ol' Shawn last night about the fact that one of our buddies from high school is going to be a father soon.

Shawn: "When are you gonna squeeze one out?"

Gee, Shawn. Your eloquence and tact are an example to us all.

So, back in high school, I had this best friend. That Idiot Shawn.

( It always goes downhill after this point. )

Darkside and I once had a conversation wherein we discussed our relationships with our exes now that the romance has been turned off.

It turned out, with me, to be about 50/50. His situation was a little more complex, but I'm sure he'll be realizing just how good it is sometime.

We'll start with the ones I actually sortakinda dated.

Kermit: pretty good, actually. We chatted last night, after not really getting the chance to speak for years. Yay for Hotmail.
Bugs: Not so good. I broke up with him rather roughly.
the Lady E.: Fairly good. We chat on AIM from time to time.
Good Ol' Shawn: Darkside counts this as a Bad, Very Bad. It's since progressed to an "Okay, I guess."
That One Chick: *sigh* If we still were in contact, we'd probably do well. We aren't. *sigh* This counts as OK.
River: Good. I still worry about him...
BJ: Bad. Very Bad. If he tries to contact me, the cops will likely get involved.
digitalambience: Darkside counted this as a Pretty Darn Bad, especially given the hissing and casting of fireballs that accompanied the worst bit of the breakup. (It's since gotten better.)

At the time of the discussion, that left me 50/50, before the improvement with Shawn and digitalambience. (Letting Shawn know that I'd flipped off his bride as she walked down the aisle, and hearing his reaction, really did wonders for our friendship.)

yaksha42: Really good. We still hug and hang out; he monster-sits from time to time.
Also, as I'm not really having that "affair" with godai so much anymore, he possibly counts. *hugs and snuggles the Dave* And we get along well, when we have time...

That's improved my Good To Be Involved With score quite a bit. I don't get on with only 20% of my exes, and if Bugs and I got back into contact, I think we could be civil, if not friendly, since we were high school freshmen when the relationship, and breakup, happened. The most disappointing portion of the stats is That One Chick, because I really do miss her as a friend...

*puff puff* Squirrel nuts!

Poll #163899 Shawn Stories
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 7

I have heard the "That Idiot Shawn" stories about:

I would like to hear (or hear again) the "That Idiot Shawn" stories about:

...From time to time it's necessary to excavate those old buried bombs in the mind.

Shawn crawled around with a lit match looking for the fuse. I don't know whether he planned to defuse them, or just light them off for fun, but doing it that way was really stupid. And he did it on his timetable, too.

Darkside packs along a flashlight; my dear Boy Scout. And it's a great big bonky flashlight (Just for you, sionainn...) and I can actually see things with it. And he holds it where I need light, and points out stuff I may have missed, and hands me the shovel so I can excavate, following the fuse to the bomb itself. In case I've forgotten, he hands me my body armor, and he's already wearing his.

Sometimes we can defuse it without detonating it. But, if we have to detonate it, he's brought the full bomb kit, including sandbags and fire extinguisher. And in the ear-ringing aftermath, he helps me to my feet and we dust each other off and make sure no one did really get too hurt, and then we patch up all the scrapes. Sometimes he has to clean and stitch a gash, and I feel really lousy about not having ducked fast enough, and really bad about having had the bomb there in the first place.


Figures that a good analogy for my mind is a minefield. But he helps me flag the ones we haven't taken care of yet.

this was the day. that was from my old journal. it doesn't make much sense.

he'd been living a fantasy life, you see, and such was the power of his delusion that i half-believed it, and I Knew that he was going into danger that summer, and i was at home, and he was a thousand miles away, and i could not could not save him, and he was so far away, and he was my Responsibility; I was charged to keep him safe.

and then he didn't call. for the first month, i didn't know if he was dead or alive, but that i would have Known if he'd died. and my health went toilet.

and then he called. and there was something Wrong, and i didn't know what to believe: his beautiful cryptic story, or abuse, or what, but he was in danger and i couldn't stop it.

and it got worse that July. worse and worse and worse.

and i had a summer job and it hated me as much as i did it. babysitting, nanny on a bad case of swimmer's ear and sleep dep and depression.

and then he went incommunicado for a week. religious camp, his stepmom said. a week. and he called sunday night and he was hell warmed over.

and he called monday and everything was all right.

and he called tuesday and he was on that knifeblade of energy that means you know you're going to die.
and then he called me back and he was od-ing and he was trying to die and say goodbye and i was here and he was there and i could do nothing. only he painted it his delusion, so all i had was that to go on, and i didn't know, but i knew he was in danger, he was about to die, and it was my responsibility to keep him alive, and i couldn't. i was going to fail.

and he hung up, and i sent him all the energy i could, and i was almost sick, i couldn't eat because of my ears, it was oatmeal with blue cheese dressing and lemonade (i insisted on the bleu cheese dressing as a bujold joke) my ears were so bad i couldn't chew, barely swallow.

and then an hour later he called back. calm, peaceful, very scared and alone, like a four year old in the er without his mommy or teddybear. and i couldn't hold him. i just told him i was there, he'd be ok, it was all going to be ok now.



i didn't know until the following may that he'd tried to kill himself. all i'd heard was the delusion, that pretty shiny delusion.



my engagement broke. she'd gotten wrapped up in it too, and it freaked her the hell out, and she wanted no more to do with him, and since i was wrapped up in him, we were over too. it took a while, but that's how it happened.

darkside held me on the phone while i cried. i've been telling this story, telling and telling to get it all out, but it stays inside, somewhere, and that part isn't wanting to leave.


from here, shadesong's post about PTSD.

My experiences with That Idiot Shawn have given me a keen sense of who may and may not be trusted, especially with my heart, mind, and stability.


Someone who doesn't give a shit about my emotions, no matter why I'm feeling them, is not to be trusted. If someone were to say, as Shawn effectively did, "I'm sorry you have to feel that way. It's your fault you're sad. You should stop feeling that way because no one's going to feel sorry for you," then they are not welcome around me. It may well be that way; it may well be that I was lighting up incense in the no-smoking zone around a buried bomb, but that doesn't excuse him for crawling around with lit matches trying to locate the fuse. Though it was my fault for telling him that there was a bomb there to start with, I suppose, even though I saw him smoking and warned him not to.

Someone who acknowledges that I feel the way I do, and if it's good, yay, and if it's not good, sucks, and says that if it's not good, then something needs to be done to make it better (and who kicks my ass if I'm just sulking), is more on their way to earning my trust. Even if there's nothing that can be done to make it better short of moving the universe, and I'm feeling horrendous about it, a hug-it-all-better and a "I'm sorry you feel so lousy, and I hope you feel better soon, because you being sad makes me worry and I care about you," do wonders. If Darkside should see me waving lit incense around in a buried bomb zone, he points out the appropriate sign, sometimes forcefully, and lugs along a fire extinguisher, his own flak jacket, and an extra one for me.



I came to be a friend of Darkside when I was losing my very shaky grasp on my mental health. Instead of squeezing my wrists until I had to let go of it, and then blaming me for not having a high enough tolerance for pain, as Shawn did, Darkside grabbed it, wrapped both of my hands around it, and left his hands over mine until he was sure that I could maintain my hold of it. Then he stuck around and re-positioned my hands when it looked like it was slipping again, and gave me pointers that he'd learned the hard way himself, on how to keep it and not let it slip away like that so often.

Once I could drag my focus away from my grasp of my own mental health, once I no longer had to hold onto it so tightly my fingers were going numb, I was able to look up and see what he had in his own hands, and how his hands were shaking from time to time. And, very gently at first, I helped steady him.

We're not both in college anymore, as he's graduated. His schedule sucks. In classic introverted Army brat fashion, he'd never had a friendship that didn't fade with distance, and doesn't know how to handle it. I am Anomaly. I am Joanie. I am still his friend.

And every now and then, my hands shake on my sanity. Weird things happen inside me, and I reach out to him as one of two people I trust to help me figure out how to make things right inside me, who won't make me drop myself on purpose or by unknowing accident.

Last night at work, votania cheered up a lady who was having a grumpy day by telling her the tale of Oscar the Iguana and That Idiot Shawn.

Shawn was going to his dad's house for the summer, and was bringing his pet iguana Oscar (a very new pet) and didn't want Oscar to be riding down with the luggage, because hello, iguana, cold-blooded, need good climate control.

So he stuck Oscar in an empty duffel bag and decided to carry him on the plane. Like, in his lap or something.

So he went through Security with Oscar in the duffel bag, and told them, you know, to not put it through the X-Ray machine, as he was an iguana, see? The security checkpoint people being much less vigilant in those days, unlike the guards from the youth of Miles who would have disintegrated the iguana on the spot and then sifted through its remains for bombs, bugs, and the like, let Shawn, and the iguana, pass through.

Shawn got on the plane and got settled down, and then the plane was boarded by some people who did not look like they had much of a sense of humor, and they told Shawn that no, his iguana did not belong on the airplane with the passengers. In vain, Shawn argued that the iguana would be very good and would stay inside his bag. The officials said no, that he would have to check Oscar or leave him behind.

Shawn's mother, who fortunately hadn't departed the airport, was called into the negotiations, and wound up taking Oscar home with her for the summer.