Brother Michael – A Most Unreliable Narrator

55 Minuts Til X-Files (2015 version)

Dear Internet,
In 1997 I was living with a dominatrix in a dump of a house in El Cerrito, California; a ‘burb of San Francisco. With barely any income, I survived by the generous help of others, my wits, and eating one meal a day.
Every Sunday night my roommates and I, plus circular friends, would get together for pizza and X-Files. This was our ritual, without fail, every Sunday for nearly a year. Even when I moved out with one of my roommates to a house in Oakland, we kept the ritual going. But after awhile, as all things seem to wont to do, X-Files and I parted ways. I was still somewhat of a rabid fan but the magic, and the lure of pizza, were almost gone. Pizza was now saved for video game binges and other special occasions.
I’m excited about the upcoming reboot but also a bit sad as I remember the supposed very last X-Files movie in 2008 where they made it pretty fucking clear that they have tied up all the loose ends, thus no more X-Files. The last shot was of Mulder and Scully in a raft, waving good-bye to the camera.
I was reminded by TheExHusband recently, when the news broke the X-Files were not only coming back but most of the original case (including The Lone Gunmen) would also in attendance, about a piece I wrote one evening before that week’s episode was on.
Here is that piece I wrote 18 years ago (!) about that one particular benign Sunday night, starring a rotating cast of characters in my life, before the night’s episode appeared. I’ve cleaned up the piece for grammar and spell checking but for the most part, it’s as it was when it was published all those years ago.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

55 Minuts Til X-Files
The pizza has been ordered.
The seats have been staked out.
Simpsons are on and I am killing time.
My stomach still is grumbling from all the coffee I have had today. Maybe it is still regurgitating from the Taco Hell from last night. I have no idea why in the hell I am going to eat pizza. I should eat I suppose, but, for some reason food hasn’t seemed appealing in the last few weeks. Everyone is telling me how good I look. My mens pajama bottoms keep falling down, showing off my cute little underwear from Victoria’s Secret.
I laugh.

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Every Sunday, at my house, is brunch day. My housemates and their friends all come over and my job, being miz coffee person, is to make coffee. I can cook, but I tell them I can’t. I just make coffee and swap stories with everyone.
Today I attempted to make bacon.
I burned it to a crisp.
I resolved just setting the table and making coffee.
Rob looks over at me and says “Lisa, I didn’t know you were so domestic.”
“Rob,” I say, “Tell anyone and you will die slowly.”
He laughed.
Brunch has become a tradition here. Every Sunday my two roommates and I prepare from having anywhere from 5-10 people show up. We all crowd around our tiny kitchen table and actually eat a home cooked meal. Eggs, bacon, steak, toast, fresh brewed coffee from yours truly. It sure beats all the frozen and fast food we eat on a daily basis.
A few hours later, we all grab movies and watch the afternoon away. Sleaze tests, teasing, arguments, and scalp massages are all part of the routine. Today, due to one of the guests having their kids with them, the movie selection was trimmed down. We all wanted to see Toy Story which I had on tape. Problem was, so were two other movies. Also on one of my tapes was a video declaration from Danny. Only problem was, I couldn’t remember which tape it was on. I called Danny and left a message. He called me back and told me what tape it was on. Grateful it wasn’t on the one we were planning to watch, I told him I would talk to him later and hung up. He called a few minutes later and said “When you have a few minutes, tape after The Lion King. I don’t want you to see what I said.” Slightly amused, I said okay and hung up.
We ended up watching Trainspotting instead.

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This is what has been most amusing to me. Danny and I dated on and off for nearly year and a half. We lived together. We were together when my grandfather died and when everything else came tumbling down around me. But for some reason, I can’t conjure up anything but memories of him, and even those, are blanking out. I can’t say I even loved him. I used to think so, but, I can see I never really did. And my “coldness” for him, so apparent, when, not so long ago, when I had resolved that I would never treat him like I had, is something I can’t help.
The person Danny is, is no way related to who I am. It never was. My assertiveness, my aggressiveness, my lust for life, never matched his. He would have been happy living in Grand Rapids for the rest of his life, while I wanted to see the world. If my plans of marrying him, would have been carried out, I would have either cheated on him OR committed suicide within a year. How stifling that was. How limiting. He said, “You’re so special. You have no idea how special you are.” I laughed. I knew how special I was. I did’t need anyone to validate it. I have no remorse for being cold to him, then and now. I used to, but guilt, for being who you are, trying to fix something that isn’t really there, is not me. I no longer think about it. He asked me once, a few weeks ago, how would I feel if he moved and didn’t tell me.
I didn’t answer. I simply didn’t care.

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35 minutes till X-Files

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Yesterday, my friend Michael took his wife Beth and I down to the Lick Observatory in San Jose and to the Rosicrucian Temple as well. For over 20 miles we traveled up Mt. Hamilton, talking about various and sundry things, while I looked out the back window and dreamed. How beautiful the area was. How so, un-plastic it seemed from everywhere else I have been in California. It looked so New Englandish, with the leaves changing colors and the air crisp and strong. I wandered around the observatory and wished it wasn’t so foggy.
But I could still see into forever.

****************************************

At the Rosicrucian Temple, I felt so at home. My love for the Templars gave me appreciation for this. Michael and I sat in a little area that had a fountain spilling water into a pool. We talked about various and sundry things. The changes in my life. My flying out to Pennsylvania to see Jeff. Michael’s marriage with Beth. My writing. Michael’s music. I opened up my backpack and took out my wallet. I dug out a penny and pitched it in, and made a wish. Not to be outdone, Michael pitched in a quarter. Not to be outdone, I dumped all my change out (about $5 dollars worth) and pitched it in with glee. I laughed out loud and spun around.
Michael and I walked around the Temple, wishing we could get into the Egyptian Museum, but sadly it was closed. As we stroked the papyrus (Direct from Egypt!) plant (“Looks phallic,” I said) we walked past the fountain again. I stopped short, and ripped off both rings given to me by two different lovers, Michael (a different Michael) and Danny. I tossed them into the water with nary a thought and kept on walking. I suddenly felt more free than ever before. I didn’t feel binded to anything. I didn’t feel as though I was making the past complete. I did not have to apologize to anyone. I didn’t have to make excuses for what I did. I could rid of it all.
I had told Jeff that, today, I was going to do the symbolic thing and burn EVERYTHING ever given to me by an ex-lover. Letters, clothing, stuffed animals, books, video tapes. Thinking of the hug bonfire this could produced, I have resolved just to do letters and stuffed animals. Now it grows late in the day.
X-files will be on in 17 minutes.
After that, I will be watching Leaving Las Vegas.
Hopefully tonight, under the moon, I will dance my ass off and burn it all baby. Just burn it all. What I wanted to do last New Year’s Eve…
Someone just knocked on the door.
Pizza Hut is here.
Time to go.
Till next time.

****************************************

xoxo,
Lisa

This Day in Lisa-Universe: 2012, 2012, 2003, 2000

that’s great it starts

smoke is going up my nose. ick.
da’ chronicles is evolving. i get a new idea every other week or so, so it’s original content is certainly blooming. personally, i don’t think it would have shaped into what it is now if i had sat down with a story board and done it all in one sitting. i keep adding and changing the site content. please lord, if you are up there, don’t make me get a brand new spanking idea about design. i simply couldn’t handle it.
last night, after updating da’ chronicles, i went on IRC. i was thoroughly bored, and justin was downloading some update on his computer. he was intent on watching tv, so i got on-line and configured irc on his machine.
one of the channels i always frequent, is #philosophers. i get on-line and see the usual parade of souls that frequent the channel. one of the usual cast of characters, Eroticide, is on the channel, except he’s masquarding under a different nick. he says “hello lisa rabey” as if he is being clever. i had checked my stats and noticed that he had been to my site. i ask him what he think, and he says something about how pompous and egotistical i am. i ask him why he thinks i’m being pompous and egotistical, and he says because i own a domain (well actually three domains, but i won’t needle it) and i “plaster my journals on the web”. i started laughing, and i tell him that it is illogical, because it is. i’ve been keeping an on-line journal since 1995 (or thereabouts), and that’s hardly egotistical and pompous. he goes off on some lame rant, and i just kind of keep laughing. he’s so lame. i tell him it’s no different then his self-styled prose that he kept on his website. i tell him to grow some balls. he says ‘okay’.
the irony is that later on, i was checking my stats again, and he had gone back to my site a few hours later.
fucking hypocrite.
i’m angry.
i’m so ticked off, that driving over to el cerrito this afternoon, i started grinding my teeth. hard.
I spoke to michael this afternoon, and he asks how i’m doing. i say ‘fine.’ and he says that it sounds like i’m down in the dumps again, and i say ‘yeah, i am. it’s never ending. every year from october to february, i’m thoroughly depressed.’ and he says ‘maybe you have seasonal depression.’ and i say ‘yeah, i was diagnosed that years ago.’ and he says ‘maybe you need some sunshine.’ and i say ‘why do you think i moved to california?’ and start laughing. and he starts laughing as well, and then we make plans to meet on wednesday, sans justin and karena.
right when i was typing up the above, justin called and asked me to come pick him up. i picked him up at bart and he saw how depressed i was looking. i asked him what he wanted to do tonight (if anything) and he started throwing off the usual (tennis being the first one). I shrug my shoulders and mention something about going to Lucky’s to pick up coffee and bagels for breakfast tomorrow. He asks if I want to go to the bookstore, and i swear, my eyes lit up. I was thinking earlier today when I was running errands of going to borders in Emeryville, and decided against it. I just came home and started working on da’ chronicles.
so justin and i go to borders, and it is his idea, so we are not having issues about it. i walk around happy with my mocha freeze, and justin says if there is anything i want, to pick it up. for the life of me, i can’t remember what it is that i want, and i start to panic. i know i want a mocha freeze, so i get that. but as for books, i can’t remember which ones i was thinking about getting. i know that i have about 50 books in a pile that i have attempted to start reading and never finished. plus justin and i have our list of books that we wanted to get from the 100 best list. We had looked at amazon.com for the books and did notice they were noticeably cheaper.
so we are walking around, and i think i don’t want anything heavy, and he buys four sci-fi books to read, and i pick up some book. and we head off towards natural sciences and i pick up fermat’s enigma, which is about the solving of fermat’s theorem. basically the holy grail of the mathematics world. so i’m getting immersed with that, and we start walking around. justin is looking at computer books, and he asks me what MAC means in the PC terminology, and i say ‘i dunno.’ and he goes to explain it to me. and i say ‘oh yeah. each nic card has it’s own address that is independent of any other nic card.’ and justin kinda looks at me like ‘how did you know that?’ and i just shrug my shoulders and we sm00ch and keep looking around.
i walk past the humor section and see that Bill Gate’s Personal, Super-Secret, Private Laptop is on sale, and i think to myself that i gotta tell Traci about it because she loves anything anti-M$. and as we are walking towards the checkout, we head towards the periodical section and justin makes a bee-line towards computers and i head towards the chicky magazines. i flip through some of the somewhat decent ones and yawn. chicky mags are so damn boring. i start checking out the eclectical section, and i’m obsessed with the mag paper which is generated towards high falutin society folk in New York. and Justin makes fun of me, like he made fun of me getting a cell phone. fuck ’em and feed ’em fish heads.
the other night i was doing something. i don’t quite remember what it was, but it sparked me about being rich.
i mean really rich.
so i’ve decided, that being poor really sucks. that living hand to mouth is for losers, and that i’m going to be a millionaire by the time i’m 35. No more living in East Oakland baybee anymore. I will have homes in New York and oh, Paris. and be this great writer who writes scathing stories and I will have a Pulitzer by the time I’m 35 as well. Fuck this noise.

all saints day

my grandmother, bernice preiss, died 26 years ago today. please observe a moment of silence for this remarkable woman.
i’ve spent about 6 hours today watching movies, four of which were spent watching Gone With The Wind. The irony of this is that after I read Atlas Shrugged, i started pinpointing the plot similarities between GWTW and AS. I’ve talked and talked about this previously before, and everyone thinks i’m being on crack. But trust me, read GWTW and AS, and tell me that Ayn Rand stole quite a bit from Margaret Mitchell. Michael said that Rand admired Mitchell. I guess it is true, imitation is the best form of flattery.
i’m having intense issues.
i feel fat, just got the pictures back from all the previous parties as well as our trips, and i look HORRENDOUS. so it’s weight issues, and love issues. justin is getting on my last nerve. basically everyone is getting on my nerves. my stomach hurts, and i’ve got a zit, and i feel like crap.
i don’t feel like talking much, so i’m not.

everything’s gone green

help me, somebody help me.
i wonder what i am…
it seems like I’ve been here before.
– everything’s gone green by new order

Tonight at work, I was reading an email that Wired sends out with updates of late breaking news stories. I was reading some such article that had caught my eye, when it had links to websites that were eerily like mine in context, but just overall better designed. One of them, the Fray was awarded for it’s excellent design, and from there I ended up at other sites that were more or less like it: ego-taking domains that really hosted nothing but twenty-something angst, in this damn digital age. The only difference between my site(s) (I know own THREE domains, so therefore I am better) and theirs were two things:

Better designed and pleasing to the eye.
A more regular update of content.

In a sense, this pissed me off. I had copied my files from home and brought them to work to *actually* work on (which, it seems I never have time to do, so I don’t know why I keep torturing myself). I immediately opened up ye olde EditPad and went to work hacking something together. But the more I worked on my site, the more angrier I got, and so I left it in lieu of deproving domains and fixing machines.
It got me thinking about a lot about my ‘writing’, though this is not necessarily a new thing.
See, I have been told since I was a child what an exceptional talent I had for weaving the written word. In college, one of my English profs went so far as to say that I could actually make a living off of satirical writing. While it pleased me (and ye olde ego) at the same time, I’ve always taken my ability to string sentences together for granted. For instance, when I was in school, and I had an article to write for the paper or a paper to write for a class, I would always wait till the last minute before I would pound out my masterpiece. And I would always get A’s.
A few months back, I was asked to write an article for an on-line magazine, and I actually got paid for it (400 smackers!). Justin says that I am now an “official” writer since I’ve actually been published. Sometimes I think he is more distraught over my lack of actually putting pen to paper than I am, but, I know since I was a wee tot that I’ve always wanted to be a writer. You know, sitting in some dingy bar in Paris with my drink while scribbling out my latest and greatest. Somewhere between that dream and now, reality happened.
I think about that a lot.
When I have time to browse the web, and I find things to read, I immediately chastise myself for not having written it, thought of it, or doing it myself. Justin asks me: “What is stopping you?”, and I say to him (and to console myself) “Nothing.” But in reality, I have always felt inferior to others when it comes to what I have to say, because I get cynical enough to say “Well, there are no original ideas and no original thoughts.” Mayhap, in a sense that is true, but dammit! I have a ‘voice’ and I know how to articulate myself, and I don’t know why I keep feeling like time (like sands in an hour glass, so are the days of our lives) is escaping me. Justin says that is how he feels about our relationship: he has to hurry up and love me, or else I will be gone.
Michael always tells me how silly I’m being when I start beating myself up. Words wound deep. For instance, when Jeff and I first met over a year and a half ago, it was my ‘writings’ that brought us together, and it was my writings he took the liberty to pummel when we broke up. blah.
In the movie Dream for an Insomniac, the lead character, Frankie; says something how boring the ordinary is and we should only reach for and live for the extraordinary. And I felt a kinship with her and her spirit. And that is how people see me: this free spirit who really doesn’t give a rats ass about what people think about her, but is super sensitive to criticism against her.
I’ve always hated the word ‘writer’. I think about some schmuck who is sitting at home with her fuzzy slippers and pounding out love stories for some cheesy romance novel. I think about the very stereotypical beret wearing, coffee drinking, all black absorbing poets who roam the world looking to get published. I think about people who actually are bad writers and just call themselves that because it is ‘cool’ or ‘neat’. I seemingly have issues with this. 😉
A few years ago (maybe less, maybe more), I was part of an email listserv that was dedicated to the Beat Generation. Since, at 23 I was one of the youngest people on the list, I would sit back and listen to those who had been friends, lovers with the likes of Ginsberg, Keuroac, Ferenghetti, and that ilk. One man, Leon Tabory, found my writings off of a link I had set up on my .sig file, and wrote me the best letters digizines ever saw. He said my “gift” was comparable to his buddies Keuroac and Ferenghetti and that this gift shouldn’t be wasted. I felt a sense of honor, and perhaps praise getting that from him. I felt, like I would achieve status at some point, though it has yet to happen.
When I was young, I used to say “Okay, this summer you are going to write (quote)The Great American Novel(unquote)” and it would .. never .. happen. I would think “Okay, you are going to get up at 8am and pound out something, no matter what for an hour” and it would .. never .. happen. I chastise myself for what I should of done, instead of what I could be doing! That perhaps pisses me off, for I have all these wonderful ideas in my head, things I want to discuss, things I want to do, and I just don’t!
My therapist says that my depression (I mean, is THAT not irony? Isn’t everyone depressed or borderline psychotic these days?) is the reason why I keep pulling this stunt: never finishing things I should be doing. Like college. Or falling in love. Or finishing my book(s). Or actually making something of myself. I think about all these things.
I think about them a lot.
Mayhap too much.