|
|
Thursday, October 30th, 2003
|
Thursday, October 30th, 2003
12:11pm - Lonely.
|
I think there's something wrong with me.
I think that there is something clinically wrong with me to lust after older men so.
It used to be a joking matter. "Aranel loves older men; she can be like Anna Nicole Smith," or "Look Aranel, he has grey hair, don't you think he's hot?"
I know what I'm about when it comes to love. I know what I want. And I know I have dug myself into a trap. For despite initial attraction, I can find myself falling in love with the one next to me, falling in love with eyes, noses, pieces of a person, seeing them as metonymous to the whole. I love the PERSON within, not their external shell. Of course, I know that if I wasn't physically attracted to a person, it wouldn't ever work, but the fact of the matter is, the more I fall in love with a person, the more physically attractive he becomes.
I am not a shiftless person, moving from one crush to another. I can't develop shallow crushes, I can't form shallow attachments that extend as far as a shy "hello" in the classroom. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't go find someone to hookup with, rid myself of the tension inside, and think nothing of it. Have sex like a man.
Deep within, I'm a romantic. Despite my cynical, mannish exterior, I am. I want to find love suddenly blossom beneath my fingertips, unknown and hidden. I want to have to hide my love until the right moment, when my knight in shining armor steps forward to sweep me off my feet.
But therein lies my pitfall. For all that I might think like a man and sometimes act like one, I am a virginal maiden locked in her tower, helpless in the making the first attempt. I cannot make the first move, I cannot step forward and claim what's mine.
So is the sad history of my love life.
So then do I focus my affections on someone greater? Someone unattainable? A teacher?
Perhaps if I let myself, I could admit I have a crush on my art history professor. Or perhaps, if I were being really honest with myself, I could say that I WANT to have a crush on my art history professor. That my soul is searching for someone to fixate upon, for someone that I may idolise and place upon a pedestal, for after all, isn't that what crushes do? Find someone to obsess over, to help me forget how truly lonely I am. I am the perfect friend, not the perfect lover. I am content with my friends. I love them. They are my extended family, people who I know are there for me should I need them, people with whom I have a soul-bond.
Yet I am lonely. It is a silly thing to be, especially when I am surrounded by such love. But I know that there is a part of me longing for romantic love, a part that is aching to be soothed by a lover's touch, the sweet pain of it eased by his smile. I miss having someone to light up my day, someone who's face I look forward to seeing, someone who can make or break my day with a smile.
I ramble on. I ramble to forget the hole inside me, the hole that I feel filled whenever I see the shadows of him pass me on the street, his particular gait here, the distinguished grey hair there, an attache case, khaki pants, and blue blazer. For my attraction to older men is only physical because of the ghost of him in my heart.
I told myself over and over that I should be over him. And for the most part I am. Yet it is at moments like this, when I feel vulnerable and lonely that I long for someone to call my lover. Because there is no one here, my mind turns to someone three-thousand miles and thirty-five years away. Because I am a pathetic human being.
There is something clinically wrong with me.
|
|
|
| Wednesday, October 15th, 2003
|
Wednesday, October 15th, 2003
1:42am - The Affair.
|
She watched the way his hands moved the chalk. His motions were smooth, practiced, although his letters belied the fact. His hands were large, slightly ungainly, and his fingers dwarfed the small yellow chalk in his hand. Yet, there was a sensual g race to the way he moved them, the power, the surety.
She loved listening to his voice, the deep rumble that reverberated in her chest. His voice could transform into the heights of passion, trembling with excitement, forceful and beautiful. His speaking voice was wonderful, and she knew his singing voice was sublime.
She always paid attention to what he said, feeling the lure of what he had to offer her and the rest of the world, if they would only pay attention. In the somewhat homely and slight body of the man before her, there was a brilliant mind, a mind that called to her own. The draw of it was magnetic, primal on the purely intellectual level.
She loved being challenged; she loved pitting her own rather blunt wits against his razor-keen ones. She loved learning what he had to teach.
Parts of her adored him, just as the others around her did. They all adored him, in more ways than one, never having met someone like him. Goddammit, they were fucking attracted to him. And if she would admit it, deep down, she was too.
No, if she let herself, she would admit she was in love with him.
She hated him too, sometimes. He knew exactly the kind of effect he had on women, and the manipulative bastard that he was, used it exactly to his advantage. Of course, all within the realm of propriety. Women flocked to him in droves, all wanting that special attention that he never displayed. But it was there, they all sensed it, with a woman’s intuition. There was room in that heart for a special someone.
She knew the stir he created and tried not to be sucked into it. She would not let herself love him. She knew that he didn’t deserve her. She knew it was inappropriate and wrong. He was her teacher. And old enough to be her father.
Perhaps it was not love she felt. Perhaps it was the old game of competition, wanting to be one up. She wanted to be one up on him in information, in intelligence, why not in the manipulation of feelings? Perhaps give him a dose of his own medicine?
Or perhaps she knew there was something there.
It was there in the way he gestured, the tiny nuances and hand motions, biased in her direction. And the gazes, the gazes held far too long, though not with a lover’s eye. The piercing look that he gave her, when all moments seemed to fade away and they lost themselves in the vortex of Time. Striving for the connection between two beautiful minds.
The verbal foreplay only masked her fear, her fear that someone would discover it, that she would discover it. That which he already knew.
Her feelings.
She was never good at flirtation. Other women could sidle up to him, simper, flatter him. He was used to it, she knew. He could deal with feminine wiles. She knew that the moment she met him.
She wanted to be different, to stand out, to leave an impression on the sandy beach of his mind, just as he did in hers. She wanted to dazzle him, not with looks, not with sexuality, but with the intellect.
Her test.
She was no raving beauty. She was lovely by her cultural standards, but not sufficiently exotic-looking to draw anyone’s eye. If she passed, if she led him into an affair of the mind, there was hope for her in the world.
A cerebral love affair.
It was what she desired most.
He led her out of her intellectual innocence, sullied her with his knowledge, seduced her with his acumen. He did that to all that came under his tutelage.
But was she special? Did he see something in her brain, her wits, that called to his own just as his called to hers? Her heart said yes, but her mind had long ago stopped trusting the heart.
She wanted empirical proof.
She was handed empirical proof, every day. His long, probing gazes into her eyes, the veiled compliments, the verbal foreplay. But given the data, how would she interpret?
She wanted more, more tests. Another’s opinion, perhaps. But she would never ask, could never ask. To ask would only reveal what she sought for so long to hide, to deny, even to herself.
It wasn’t love. She knew it. She felt the way she did because he brought about in her an erotic awakening of the senses, especially of the mind.
But that didn’t stem her feelings. Or diminish her longing.
He turned from the blackboard, setting the small piece of yellow chalk carefully on the tray. He dusted his hands lightly, the motion masculine and sensual. He settled himself before them, every movement calculated and sure. He crossed his legs, and in one fluid motion, brought his hands behind his head. He smoothed his hair by way of a nervous habit and gazed directly into her eyes, sharp, searching, desirous, and regretful.
“JJ, what do you think?”
current mood: nostalgic
current music: Meet Virginia-Train
|
|
|
| Monday, October 13th, 2003
|
Monday, October 13th, 2003
2:48pm - Chester.
|
I suppose the time has come to dig Chester's story out from the closet of my mind, to brush the dust off the lid and examine its contents once more only to bury them again deep within my heart.
The day after he called, my mother sent me a long email denouncing my relationship to him. She called it "unhealthy," "unnatural," without any sense of "normalcy." I could not bring myself to read her email in depth, or even more than once. It cut me to the core; she forbade any contact with him whatsoever, be it online or over the phone and least of all in person. An icy claw gripped my innards, twisting my innards with a fear I could not name or articulate.
Days passed by in which I heard nothing from either of my parents, days in which I existed in a cold, grey, monotonous world of apprehension. Dad called me a few days, wanting to hear the entire story from me. Dad and I have a much healthier relationship than Mum and I, and he listened patiently as I described the situation to him. I didn't describe everything in full detail, but for the most part, he heard the entire story and was very understanding. He promised to talk to Mum and calm her a bit and said that I owed her a call as well.
I did as he asked, but not within a few hours as he thought I would.
Instead, I waited a few more days, trying to warm the cold fire that burned in my stomach with work and friends. At last, I plucked up the courage to call her and to try and explain the story.
How she found out, I never knew, nor did I ask. Nor did I try to defend myself in the following three hours as she railed out against me, against Chester, calling him a dirty old man, a pervert, and a lecher. I admitted freely that he was all of those, and yet none at the same time. Yes he was a flirt. Yes he did nothing to discourage my coming to his office to chat. I felt my mother was irrational, yet it was she who kept insisting that I was acting so. She wanted me to stop all contact with him because she felt that I had no need to keep in touch with my teachers after high school. I would have understood had she told me not to email ANY of my teachers; her logic would have been consistent.
However it was only Chester she attacked, only Chester she blamed. She didn't even blame me for my infatuation; she said she understood. Girls my age "often developed attachments" to their teachers. Yet she berated me over and over again, threatening to pull me out of NYU because it wasn't healthy for me to keep attachments this long, to call Mayfield, to call Chester himself.
During the hour between her calls, I was wracked with guilt. I was afraid I had cost a man his career, over something that had NEVER HAPPENED. Over something that I had almost wished, but never dared dream to fathom. I stared at the phone between my fingertips, wanting to call her, wanting to lie my forked tongue off, to save him from paying for faults that were not even his. I called my friends, sobbed the entire story to them, but could not bring myself to dial my mother's phone number.
At last she called again, somewhat calmer than before, but with more iron resolve. I was not to speak with him. I was not to contact him. I was not to see him, least of all alone. If he makes the first gesture, I am to be graceful and thank him, but remain aloof.
The world crashed around my ears. I felt less depressed than guilty, although I was horribly depressed at the time as well. I carry the weight of the entire world on my shoulders sometimes, my guilt heavier than Atlas's burden.
It was then the apocalyptic dreams began.
My nightmares before had always consisted of a man with sinister intentions bent on harming me in some way I could not understand, did not have time to understand. I am pursued, playing always a game of cat-and-mouse, running and hiding, running and hiding, protecting some small little boy.
The tenor of the dreams changed.
They feel different. They begin as school days, set on October 16th, 2001, in which I wake up at 6:43 when my Dad comes in to pull the bedclothes off of me. I get ready, I drive to early morning biology labs, and the day passes in a blur until time slows down at 3:43 in the afternoon, exactly nine hours after the dream begins. I play piano in the living room of our school, feeling the warm light of the late afternoon sun upon my back, smelling the dust motes that rise like smoke off the Oriental rugs. Chester walks in, a silent and comforting presence as he listens by the piano. I am between ecstasy and fear, torn between my desire to stay and play and play and play forever, wanting to be with one who understands, the only one who understads my passion for the instrument. The room is silent save for the songs I play, different, lyrical, and unknown. I know I must leave; my family is expecting me, yet I cannot tear myself away.
I look up to see him smiling at me, a smile free and devoid of its usual flirtatious and amused smirk, a smile of genuine pleasure. I stop playing and reach for his hand as the sunset turns blood-red.
I make a selfish gesture and the world ends.
The buildings crumble like piles of dust in the distance, horrific screams rise like smoke from destroyed cities and I cannot move, stricken with guilt. My last moments should have been spent with my family, my friends, those whose love I possessed, not by the side of a man whom I admired. As the scenery melts beside me and the earth passes away into darkness, I wake with knowledge that I am condemned to hell.
It took three weeks for me to write this story down.
It will take three lifetimes for me to forget him.
current mood: crushed
current music: Across the Stars-The Attack of the Clones soundtrack
|
|
|
| Thursday, June 19th, 2003
|
Thursday, June 19th, 2003
12:13pm - The Road
|
I know I haven't updated in a while, but I suppose that was because I had nothing to say. My light and flippant face is the one I present to the world, yet what I truly am, I can only commit to this journal, it seems.
My true self has been pretty quiet lately.
I suppose it doesn't hurt that I've been so incredibly busy with work that I've had considerably less time to sit and reflect about things. This is the first summer I've ever had a job. It's sad, but I've led a sheltered, spoiled existence for nearly eighteen years and I'm not about to stop that now. I'm an intern at a public relations agency and this is my first taste of the corporate world. I've been going and going at this frenetic pace, driving along a highway so quickly that I've little time or even the inclination to sit back and enjoy the passing scenery, I was too bent on reaching my goal.
But now that I am here, eating my lunch, I can at last let the feelings that have repressed for so long to surface.
There really is no one word that sums up what I feel right now, but perhaps a song will do. This is terribly cliche, I suppose, for I've never been one to turn to songs to express what goes on within. I prided myself on being able to succinctly articulate what was running through my head and in my soul. This is doubly ironic for me because the song in question is sung by a boyband, of which I was never fond.
Yet here I am, listening to it right now.
There are so many things about me that are hypocritcal and contradictory. The band is a Korean band, which culture I am from, but not a part of. The band is a boy-group, to which I never listen. But the music moves me, touching on some nameless and aching part, pumping along with the rhythm of my brain, the insistent tempo of my heart.
The translated words are as follows. I tried my best; there is a verse missing from the lyric booklet and Korean poetry translated into English is at best somewhat screwy.
This road I am taking, where it is going, where it is taking me, I cannot know, I cannot know, I cannot know, yet even today I am walking it.
If people don't have a path set for them, that instead they forge their own road, they do not know, they do not know, they do not know, yet againlike this they walk.
Why am I standing on this road? Is this really my path? At the end of this road will I realise my dream?
What will truly bring me happiness, whether it is money, whether it is fame, or if not, the people I love, I wish I knew, I wish I knew, I wish I knew, yet the answer still cannot be revealed.
Why am I standing on this road? Is this really my path? At the end of this road, will I realise my dream?
Whatever dream I dream, for whom is this dream? If this dream is so, will I be able to smile?
Or now to where, where shall I go? For what I am living, only to live.
Why am I standing on this road? Is this really my path? At the end of this road, willI realise my dream?
The missing verse goes right before the second chorus. I can't give the word for word translation, but the gist of what he is saying is about the choices he makes, what to say, what to earn, who to meet, the freedom he wishes he had, but he doesn't know if he's ready.
My Korean at best is marginal, although it was my very first language, so I apologise for the mistakes in my translation.
Gil.
The Road.
current mood: nostalgic
current music: Gil- g.o.d.
|
|
|
| Monday, June 9th, 2003
|
Monday, June 9th, 2003
1:04pm - James
|
Woot, my first entry in a Blurty. I'm not even sure why I got one because I think anything that Livejournal and their spawn puts out is incredibly limiting if you are a cheapskate like me and don't want to pay for nifty extra features. However, the one feature I do like about Blurties, Livejournals, Ujournals, etc. is that you can post comments and there's a nice Friend's option. However, I think I may keep this journal private and just for me because I sorely need one.
Okay then, I'm going to write down what I've been feeling for a while.
Yesterday was graduation. I can honestly say that I'm overjoyed to finally get out of Mayfield. I hate that institution.
Okay, so that's a lie.
I think I may have just been ready to leave. I'll miss the people there incredibly, my beautiful campus, the family atmosphere there, etc. but I was done growing up when they were still coddling me.
And I hate how Catholic the school is becoming.
Yeah, I know, I chose to go to an all-girls Catholic school, but there was a difference. When I chose to go there, it was a Catholic independent school, the "Catholic" part simply being an adjective. It was like any other independent school in the Pasadena area, the only difference being it had religious education, which didn't really bother me. And as much as I bitched and griped about taking religion courses, they weren't that bad.
I don't know when the change occurred, but suddenly I found myself attending a independent Catholic school, "Catholic" now being integral to the school instead of being merely a nice addition.
Funny how that is.
It's not like I wasn't Christian or anything, or had fundamental problems with God when I entered school. Well, I hadn't been attending church for a few years, and religion was never really my thing, but it was in line with the beliefs that had been bred into me for fourteen years.
I think, if nothing else, attending Catholic school has turned me away from God.
I absolutely hated how stifling Mayfield became. It wasn't so bad under Register, who I think was far more focused on turning our school into a respectable prep school rather than a Catholic school.
I always said there were two types of Catholics: Catholics and Catholics. Most people I know are Catholic, or even catholic (with a small "c"), but it's the Catholics that made my life miserable.
In this case, it was our new headmistress.
She is Catholic.
I hate her.
She's nice and all, but she's one of those people who's a little too nice, like she's trying too hard to please.
Which makes her Catholic-ness all the more unbearable. Because I suspect that a good deal of it is put on.
Another thing is that Register was an educator. She taught psychology at our school and did a great deal to help Mayfield gain respect as a scholastic institution. McBride is not. I don't know what the fuck she did at Westridge, but I'm sure it didn't involve teaching of any sort.
But enough about the things I hate about my erstwhile school.
Because I really, truly, honestly will miss it dearly. It has been a wonderful four years of my life and I met people that I will never, ever forget. Vende, my twin, Alasse, my OTHER twin, Mandu, Flo, Hime, my sisters...
But most of all, Chester.
Funny how Chester has become the actual name for the man in my mind.
I might as well write his name down (as if I'd ever forget) and cement him in my mind as the...the...
I can't even put the words down.
James Moran.
James Kevin Moran.
James Kevin Moran, born on June 1, 1950, thirty-five years my senior, a thoroughly charming, intelligent, witty, clever, and utterly lovable man.
Junior year I was convinced I was in love with him. To this day, I'm not sure if I am, or even if it was love in the first place. Very few words can describe what he means to me. Mentor, friend, teacher...they don't do him justice. Lover, no. But he was something closer than a friend to me, but not quite a lover.
If I were completely honest with myself, I'd say that I was attracted to him. And I think he knew it, at least on a subconscious level. And yes, the attraction was physical, although I could hardly call him handsome. The physical attraction I couldn't really understand. Yes, I had a propensity for drawing older men to me, and I to them, but none who were my father's age. There are several things wanting in his physical appearance, yet there is a pleasing sensuality to him that thrums through me whenever he walks into a room.
It was sheer torture the first year I knew him. I acted like a lovesick fool and I knew it. I'm not sure if the others knew or not. Some might have guessed. It was obvious, at least to me. And I believe the attraction was reciprocated in some part. It manifested itself in stares that we held just a shade longer than what was decorous, little fluttering touches from his end, countless small things that were insignificant yet mattered so much to me.
It was different this year. We were more comfortable with each other, I guess, a little more distant as well. It was less physical, hormonal attraction than it was friendship. I walked in a moral and emotional quandary all year, trying to shed the vestiges of my attraction to him (which I never could and never will). I didn't know whether or not I was still in love with him. I didn't know whether or not I was holding onto the fleeting feeling because I was devoid within, or because I truly did feel that way. I felt slight jealous pangs when he paid other girls more attention than me, yet they were only slight. Last year, I would have anything and everything to monopolise his focus so that I was the center of his world.
It was a bittersweet ending yesterday, as he put it. A fitting end to my career at Mayfield, in terms of my relationship with him. I don't know who caught whose attention first, but I believe it was him. I don't deny that I somewhat put myself in his sphere of vision, but he reached out to hug me.
It felt good. It felt good to hold him like that. I didn't linger too long in the feeling, no more than was proper or necessary. He had someone take our photograph, and I felt him rest his head against mine. With his camera. He wanted a photo of just the two of us. For him to remember.
I don't know what he will remember of his experience with me. What I mean to him. Am I more than a friend but less than a lover? I believe I am. I distinctly remember him saying through the joyously sad haze in my mind that "Now that you're out of high school..."
Now that I'm out, what? Other phrases flit through my mind, "Don't become a stranger, I know you won't" and "I can now meet with you..."
I wonder now what it would have been like to kiss him. Not on the lips. But on the cheek. A friendly peck, yet full of a world of meaning for me. To press my lips against his skin in a sweet farewell to my high school years with him. How he opened my mind, an erotic awakening of the intellect.
The moment is long past, and through the whirlwind that was the after-graduation celebration, I can barely remember his words, or even his expression as I embraced him goodbye.
Only the feel of his head against mine, his hand wrapped slightly around my waist, as I cling to his robes, feeling the silk slide through my fingers like our years together.
James.
I love you.
current mood: geeky
current music: Rose- James Horner
|
|
|
|
|
|
|