Tuesday, January 23, 2007 | by nathan

93 - Jennifer

After a two-week mission trip to NYC, she exclaimed, “I met the man I’m gonna marry.” God told them to get married. Such a nice reason.

Monday, January 22, 2007 | by nathan

92 - Brac

We’d stand on either side of the divided door that opened to Campus Corner, taking breaks; he’d chew, I’d smoke. Slow store, good boss, shit job.

Sunday, January 21, 2007 | by nathan

I Just Don’t Want Coffee

Can you believe it? I’m getting one of the things on my Uberlist done today - I’m reorganizing the closet in my office. This is a work of major scope, as there is a bunch of crap in my office closet, a lot of it boxes of things to which I am too attached to trash, such as concert tickets, a bottle of Ale 8 One that Woody and I got on one of our trips to his parents’ farm in Kentucky, letters from friends as far back as high school.

The best thing I’ve found are all my old journals, poetry books, and photo albums from high school and college. I flip through them and can.NOT.BELIEVE I was once this person. I can’t believe that as early as 10th grade I was writing about having crushes on boys and decorating my journal pages with ink stamps. I mean, Jesus. I can’t believe how much I used to cling to people who made me feel like shit about myself, or that I wrote one or two lines that I read now and think, "You know, it sucks balls, but for a fifteen year old it doesn’t suck as bad as it could."

I am nonplussed to think how much I’ve changed in the last ten, fifteen - shit, the last three years. Reading back through all the words of the people I’ve been - it’s weird. I find myself mourning some friendships that went sour, or faded quietly, or that I finally wised up and got out of. I find myself wondering where those people are now. Some, I know, and I wish I didn’t. Others, I’d give anything to sit with them for an hour.

What I wouldn’t do is go back to any days past. Sitting on my floor is a pile of cardboard, paper, gold leaf, leather and upholstery that tells the story of where I’ve been. I had a moment where I was terrified and told Brian he should burn all these if I die, but then I thought, "I’m going to be dead. Who cares?" So I told him not to publish them. He pointed out that, if I die a famous author, those journals could be a valued literary relic.

Oh, yeah, okay, well, then you can publish them.

In the meantime, I’m giving serious consideration to finding some particularly damning passages and submitting them to The Cringe Book, which is a collection that Sarah Brown is putting together of teenage journal entries. Here’s what Sarah herself has to say about it:

We’re looking for brave souls willing to share their old diaries, journals, letters, notes, songs, poems… anything you wrote during the crushing misery of adolescence and then saved in a hidden box at your parents’ house all these years. Top secret no more.

The more dramatic, embarrassing or excruciating the writing, the better. A good test to determine whether or not your material is Cringe-worthy: when you read it to yourself, do you physically cringe? Then for the love of god, it needs to be in this book. Seriously. You are going to be so glad you did this. Cheaper and better than therapy.

I might regret doing it, but in the midst of this cleaning-out, it might be good. I find myself mourning the person I was a bit. Not that I would change anything about him, because I think that what he (I) went through got me here, which is exactly where I want to be. But also, I got hurt along the way - everyone does - and I think a part of that hurt always stays with you. I’m starting to think it’s something about trying to heal as much as you can, and to not let the hurt make you afraid, or mean.

So, yeah, there’s a bit of sadness in looking back over all this stuff, from when I was 11 and getting bullied at school, to high school, where, oddly, I was basically happy if not incredibly lame and clingy. The journals follow me to North Carolina, to Ireland and Italy, to Connecticut and back here, through all those years of pain and long, drunken nights, and I would not trade one damn word of any of it, which also hurts like hell. The thing is, the story is mine, it belongs to me. I’m luckier than most in that I can pile my story up on the floor, or, in this case, arrange it neatly in my closet, where it can sit, reminding me where I’ve been and maybe point a little of the way to where I’m going.

So, maybe, if I die, you should all sit around with my ashes on the coffee table and laugh your asses off that, in the ninth grade, I was feeling particularly angsty and copied the lyrics to "We Don’t Need Another Hero" into my journal. For some reason. 

Still - that’s miles away from the most cringe-worthy thing in there. 

Sunday, January 21, 2007 | by nathan

91 - Yet Another Josh I Don’t Like

When we met he was intelligent and fun. Now, egged on by catty queens, he acts shitty to everyone. He’ll never be allowed inside my house.

Saturday, January 20, 2007 | by nathan

90 - K.C.

Her music has accompanied me in the car for quite some time. Infinitely more precious, however, is the unbelievably graceful friendship she has extended to me.

Friday, January 19, 2007 | by nathan

89 - Valerie

She endeared herself to me not because she looked like Magenta from Rocky Horror in purple Doc Martens. She was just genuinely friendly, honest and real.

Thursday, January 18, 2007 | by nathan

Winter Weather Alert

To the two Universities where I currently hold gainful employment/enrollment:

Driving has gotten worse in Oklahoma the past week, not better. Yes, the main roads are clear but I am taking my life in my hands every time I drive through my neighborhood, as evidenced by today, when my car skidded out of control, up the steep embankment into my neighbor’s yard, then back out onto the street and straight through the stop sign. Luckily the sheet of ice over the grass was so thick that I am sure I did not disturb any vegetation that might still be alive under there.

The local public schools have had the presence of mind to stay closed all week, and yet you, universities, remain open. Do you not understand that people have to walk all around your campuses to get where they are going? I recently found out that one of your professors is having to have steel rods put in his leg because he fell on the ice. Just now, I busted my ass on the way into the office. If the public schools, who ship kids by bus and then leave them in the same building all day, think it’s too dangerous, shouldn’t you, whose employees and students have to drive themselves to campus and then walk from building to building, be closed too? Isn’t that just safer?

I almost dislocated my hip getting out of the car this morning. I want you to know that if I had, I’d be taking your entire endowment.

Sincerely,

Nate 

Thursday, January 18, 2007 | by nathan

88 - Jon W.

Not only the smartest person I know, but also the most passionate. We don’t get to talk much, but my life works better knowing he’s there.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | by nathan

Sunrays and Saturdays

Yeah, so -

    running into your douche-bag of a former boss, the man who, by sheer force of his way of being in the world, made you want to bring a gun to work every day, not to hurt him or anyone else, but so that he could watch as the hollowed-out shell you once were committed suicide in front of him, but you figured he’s such a self-involved piece of shit that he probably would just get annoyed that you got gray matter all over his favorite Bill Cosby sweater and Ned Flanders mustache, and he gives you that look like, ‘Yeah, I know you asked to be moved to a different department because of how shitty I treated you, and I have nothing to say, except I sincerely believe that Jesus told me to behave like such a douche-bag, so I can’t really reconcile how much you hate me, and how badly I know I treated you, with the fact that, as a heterosexual white male, I can do no wrong,’ and so you just say a quick hello to each other, then keep walking past, and then later he PUSHES RIGHT PAST YOU to get out the door as quickly as possible to avoid having the whole thing happen again?

                          - awkward.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007 | by nathan

87 - Another Josh

A spiritual hero in his own eyes, he made us feel inferior, only admitting his sexual indiscretions when it made him look good to do so.