These Actions of Mine

I have nothing else to give you

only my fear inside

for my emotions have run us dry

and I feel so helpless to these things in my mind

wanting to undress myself from my own sins

wanting to be anything but what I’ve become

I need to feel that need

of something to fit myself into.

And I find it so hard to understand these actions of mine…

when I just want to fly away from it all

from my shame and my shadows

those things I keep hidden in the black petals

in the gated gardens tucked away somewhere in my shadowy mind.

I want to be where no one can reach me

want to hear only poetry of silence in the world outside.

Oh how I hate these actions of mine…

I long for the kindness of the people of yesterday

but the seasons have changed into the spring of diappointment

and mirrors only reflect to y0u all the things you hadn’t become

just mistakes

and mistakes all over again

Oh how I hate these actions of mine

Shoot From The Hip

My day off, today, was a little different than my usual low key days. Usually I spend them wrapped up in the blankets of my bed or out window shopping downtown or just hanging out with Wayne or a friend having coffee or roaming around Barnes and Noble. I am not too adventurous (sad but true) and outside of my personal writing and shopping I don’t have many other passions. Occupying my time is simple, just put me in the corner of a room with a pad and pencil and I can totally entertain myself.
Today however I was invited to do a photo shoot for a friend of mine who is getting in to photography. We were to meet at the Dripolator in Black Mountain (a really good coffee shop in a picturesque little town near wear Wayne and I live). My friend’s name is Nick and our past has been…well…turbulent as of the past year. He’s Wayne’s ex boyfriend and for the most part we have gotten along but for a while there was a period of time when i didn’t want Nick to talk with me; he had offended me greatly and I had returned the favor if you know what I mean. Up until a week ago we hadn’t spoken at all then a week or so ago he had sent Wayne an e-mail asking if we would be willing to do a shoot for him. Nick was wanting to take some “couples” shots and Wayne and I thought it would be fun so we agreed.
Today was the first day that I had laid eyes on Nick in forever. I didn’t know when I arrived at our rendez-vous point if things would be tense between Nick and me. Fortunately there was no issue and Nick and I got along just as we did back in the old days. The shoot was an experiment for Nick, to give him exposure dealing with diffrent types of models and I think it went over quite well. However, when they say the camera adds 10lbs they mean it. Between shots at different locations Nick would show us how some of the pictures would look and I have to say I was a little bit surprised with myself. I have gained so much weight, I look like a freaking potato. Back in the day when I would do photo shoots for other people I was skinny, thin, flat stomached, tan and had a hair line that wasn’t as far back as it is today. I hadn’t thought about my self image much but after seeing myself in a few shots today I am going to lay off the Paula Deen cook book and start trying to do something with myself. Its all about age-ing gracefully and so far I haven’t done the best job with that. I hadn’t cared at all and I didn’t realize I had a reason to care…until today.
Anyway despite all of that we had fun. Wayne and I aren’t an affectionate couple at all. We don’t look at one another with stares of endless love (well unless one of us is drunk). We don’t believe in Public Displays of Affection and we are not excitable people in the least. We are not the image of a sterotypical gay couple by any means. We are mean, negative people that wear black a lot. But today, for the shoot, we had to involve a lot of P.D.A that we wouldn’t normally do. Luckily most of the shoot took place in downtown Asheville a very tolerant and gay friendly town. I was amazed at how little attention we drew to ourselves. Hugging, holding hands as we walked down the street. Kissing on street corners and no one seemed to be offended or even care. We did draw attention for the simple reason people could tell we were getting our photos taken, but as far as the whole “gay” issue no one cared. It was a nice feeling to know that if Wayne and I decided to do something like that on our own that in we could. I had always read that Asheville was very gay friendly but since I don’t share my romantic life with the rest of the world, today was the first day that I saw that it was true.
Anyway I am exhausted and I need to eat something. My brain is starting to shut down. And as soon as I get copies I will post pics… Until next time…

Alone.

Alone…

For the past two weeks I have been home alone. Wayne had a temporary job offer to come work for a friend in Tennessee who is managing a hotel in Pigeon Forge. He was only supposed to be down there for a week but last week, while he was down there, he got an offer to stay another week which he accepted.

I was a little uncomfortable the first few days that he was away. I wasn’t so much afraid of the bears and the coyotes as much as the white trash neighbors. Talk about a scary bunch but they are. Not to mention the house being broke into about a year ago. None the less, in a few days I was for the most part over my uncomfortable paranoia. I cleaned the house from top to bottom and blasted my music and ran around the house naked. I did all the typical things that one might do when left alone but by the time Wayne came back that week-end I was getting bored with being alone.

That week-end Wayne did come back but only to let me know that he had accepted another weeks worth of work down there. I wasn’t exactly happy about it and soon again that Monday I found myself coming home to an empty house. Now, on day ten I am sick of being by myself. For one thing I miss Wayne, I really do. I know I bitch about him a lot and he can be a total douche sometimes but you don’t realize how much you depend on one another until you spend some time apart.

Last year we lived four months apart but it was all out of anger so it may have been a period of displacement, it really wasn’t like this. This time I have actually missed Wayne. It’s odd, but totally understandable. I miss going to bed with him; I haven’t slept well since he’s been gone. I miss talking to him when I come home from work and little things like that. It’s really sappy I suppose. I don’t care to tell you though because it’s true…not to mention NO SEX…that part blows the most. Without getting nastily detailed or anything Wayne drives me crazy physically. Often while we are watching TV I will slightly stare at his face and thinking to myself in those moments “He is so cute”. Or even in his sleep in the early morning light when he’s on his back snoring I think its cute. I am real prude at not admitting these private moments that I don’t let him in on. Usually I mask my moments of “awe” with saying something immediately rude or sarcastic …but still, I have them.
Oh god, make me stop! I am making myself sick. I sound like my friend Sabrina which scares me immensely. But I won’t go there. That is a blog entry within its self.

Anyway

I am sick of being alone! When you find yourself doing laundry for fun you know you’re bored. So hopefully Wayne will be back sometime tomorrow and I can go back to being hateful and stuff.

Happy Pills

I don’t get it anymore.
I just need to get some things out here that drive me insane. Every time I mention Wayne’s name on here is starts some drama, he always takes things the wrong way and it usually turns into an explosion. He printed off a few of my old blog entries from back in the day when I had the original Stevanilla 360 page that got deleted because I pissed off the Mormons running Yahoo. Evidently he had printed off a bunch of my entries to throw things up in arguments that he was sure that would happen (and they did). At the time it was 2005 or 2006 and re-reading the entries make me realize that not much has changed. Of course we are not as “romantic” as we used to be back when we first started dating, that just comes with the maturity of a relationship, you loose the endorphin rush of affection over time, and that is to be expected. In the early days of the relationship we argued a lot which was something I wasn’t used to and didn’t do that much in my former relationship. I somewhat liked the fact that we stirred a passion with one another and sometimes that would lead to some heated conversations. We used to spend a lot of time together, but somewhere down the line that has become less and less occurring. I mean we spend time together, but not quality time as much as we used to. Now days I feel that since I am not in computer graphics I can’t compete for his attention. He spends night and day sitting at his computer like a scene from the movie Videodrone. The house could really be falling off the side of the mountain and I don’t think he would notice until the internet cord slipped from the back of his server. I have discussed it with him before, many times, sometimes in argument but luckily one night the power went out and we sat on the couch and discussed it rationally. Since that night he has been a little more attentive with the house work and things of that nature but still I find myself feeling murderously frustrated at the amount of time he spends on-line playing the same games over and over again like a teen-ager. No matter how tired I am when I come home from work I typically have to go to the grocery store after work, buy dinner. Come home, cook it, clean up after us, pick up after him, do the laundry, play with the dog, clean up after her and maybe by 2:20 am I get time to sit down. All the while he has usually been sitting at his computer showing no sign of appreciation or even recognition. He has been good as of late, he vacuumed, he has done laundry, he actually seems to have been disappointed a few times when he found out I was working when he was off. We are at a point where we are not arguing as much. But for example just tonight, after he made a really great dinner, I washed up afterwards, he had dropped tea bags into a pot of boiling hot water and forgot it on the stove. When I looked to see where he was I wasn’t surprised to find that he was sitting at his desk typing away to some random stranger probably in Iceland doing some tech support for a game that he plays. I understand that when you are good at something you enjoy you can become obsessive and I am definitely an obsessive person. If I like a singer, or an album I will listen to it over and over for months before dropping it. I am capricious with my hobbies, one month its tarot, one month its food, one month it’s making soap or bath shit. But I don’t let it consume all of my free time. Left to his own liking, he would probably spend all day and night on the computer and some days when he is off and I am working he does just that. I leave in the afternoon and he’s sitting on his ass at the computer and when I come home he’s wrapped up in a bath robe, hair a mess, pecking away at his computer. It’s like living with a crack addict without the crack. Anyway, I have talked to him about it, showed my ass over it, now I am just over it – over it. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to feel like he shouldn’t do the one thing that he enjoys but at the same time, get out of the house, go see a relative or a friend or something. What the fuck ever. It really doesn’t matter to me, in fact I wish I had probably not written this, and I don’t want to cause drama but am I nuts and selfish for feeling this way, or should I allow myself to be aggravated over this on going issue? I had trouble thinking of something to write about lately because we are under a whole lot of pressure right now. Wayne is about to lose his job, the mortgage company we are taking legal action against, and financially …well we are butt fucked, wait no, fisted by a logger. So maybe things are just on my mind that I try too much not to dwell on. Anyway I can take a deep breath and mumble an improve Buddhist mantra and pretend to be ok about all of the big issues but the sounds of Wayne’s keyboard or a pile of dirty clothes in the corner makes me want to commit homicide. I really think I am losing it people. I need xanax, a straight-jacket and a white padded corner to get into the fetal position in.

HATE

I am writing about something that I haven’t dealt with in a while. Today I couldn’t sleep; I woke up repeatedly worrying that the imaginary power-man was here to cut off the power. I kept hearing phantom knocks at the door and lying in bed wondering if I had paid enough money to the power company to pacify them until I can pay them again. Money wasn’t the only thing running through my head, the stresses of everything else going wrong in my life was doing laps around my peace of mind.

Finally frustrated I decided to get up, I knew the sun would soon be up and I hate watching the sun rise. It assures me that I will not be able to sleep. It was six thirty am and I hopped on line to check my e-mail and see if any of my friends were available to chat as they were having their morning coffee, getting ready for work.
I opened my e-mail and saw that I had a few facebook messages and I was excited to see that I had a new message from someone I don’t know on Yahoo 360. The message was from a guy named “Matt.” and I was excited to see a new person checking out my page on the graveyard that is now Yahoo 360. I logged in and put in my password and quickly went to my mailbox on there and sure enough there was a message from him so I excitingly opened it ready to make a new friend. My excitement was a mere distraction from the stressful thoughts running through my head but my excitement was soon to come to a crashing halt. In front of me were words that I did not want to set the tone for my day and the message simply read: “You’re a faggot and that is sick…I hope you die of AIDS”. I was not nearly as shocked or offended because it’s only the nine thousandth time that I have received a message like that. His attempt at hate was neither original nor interesting and I decided at that point not to respond because I am sure it would fuel a fire. I suddenly realized and was impressed with the fact that it wasn’t affecting me, at least not in the way that “Matt” wanted to and I suddenly began to realize that I have de-sensitized myself over the years from that sort of thing. The attempt at hate that I found simply boring made me question myself. I quickly removed myself from my own situation and became offended with myself for being such a door mat. Years ago I would have sent a message back letting Matt know what a nut job he is, but why do him the favor of letting him know he has issues. I have always believed if you truly dislike someone you don’t want to do them any favors or give them any information that they can reflect upon later and better themselves with. Years and thoughts of “school daze” torture came rushing back into my mind, further feeding my insomnia remembering days of sitting on crowded school buses with kids throwing gum in my hair and trying to pull my backpack away from me in hopes of throwing it out the window. Every hate experience I have had the misfortune of knowing. From my cousin Judd running over the doll house his wife gave me with a back-hoe and making me watch, from being ridiculed by family members for liking the color pink to being pushed down stairs in between classes to being grown up and a drunk man yelling out faggot to me as I walked down the street in my hometown. Yes, there has been many an occasion in my life where I have been scarred and I suppose over time the emotional skin has thickened into an armor that maybe now no one can permeate. No, the hate-mail I got did not faze me but it got me to thinking why someone holds so much hate and disgust inside them.
I have thought about this all day despite my efforts to repress my painful memories and thoughts. They have been stabbing my thought process from the darkest recesses of my mind, so I am writing this asking you if you can answer my question; “how can someone hold so much hate inside?” It must be extremely painful to walk each step of your day holding such an emotional burden inside yourself. Insanity, possession, whatever the cause I am certainly glad that I have never held such a demon inside me. I simply do not have an understanding explanation for my own peace of mind….so can you tell me?

Natalie

~Natalie ~

Some people believe that you've known people in a former life and some people believe that these souls can re-occur in your next life and the thoughts of that some people may not believe but with me I say I have to wonder when it comes to my sister Natalie. We have always been night and day; clearly I being night; reclusive, passive, withdrawn and soft spoken always leaning towards the dark side; then there is Natalie. She is completely day...or at least evening. In High School she was little bit country with hair so big it would scrape every door frame she would pass under and I, on the other hand would walk through the halls in my black fingernail polish and vintage clothing wearing a Burial Vaults shirt. She and I, through the teen age years really seperated as much as we could in the personality department. I have to attribute that to the fact that we were always beside one another. I felt at times she was my left hip and I was her right. You know how teen agers are. But prior to that time in our lives we got along beautifuly. We liked the same music, did the same things together and went everywhere together no matter if we liked it or not. At the time I though she drove me completely crazy but in retrospect, after growing up a lot, I really cherish those years. In that time we lived with our grandparents. We didn't really have a chance to really enjoy life back then, but we would spend time together, Music being our common bond. Recently in the past few years Natalie and I have started to re discover our similarities in life, and our personal views, although they still sometimes differ we are a little less black and white and meet in the middle somewhere in the gray. I am more sentimental in some ways than she is and the other day in my comment field here on myspace she posted a song that transported me back to a place in time, a song that she and I loved together and would privately dace around together to. It made me remember how hard times were for eachother and how much fun we once had. It made me miss days that I spent forever to try to forget. The song reminded me of how we still managed to have fun depsite our troubles surrounding our life back then. Years have past since then (and just so you know the year it was is 1990 and I was thirteen and she was ten). She and I live total seperate lives but I still make a point to see her from time to time. She makes me smile like no other and humors me with a simple turn of phrase that she may un-knowingly comem out with. I love her because she is my sister, that is true. But I love her because she makes me laugh and has always ben there for me. No matter how far apart we may be emotionally or phyically we will always be connected and that is someting in my life that I will always cherish and reqire to keep going in my own life.

That Cloud Looks Like Ireland...

I don't write enough anymore and part of me really misses doing it so prolifically its such a nice thing to do because it makes you take a moment out of your day or week(s) to take a deep breath and reflect. Whether it be good or bad its always a nice thing to do.

I haven't written since before Christmas and there is reason for it. I have been so active lately and really it's been in a good way. I have been spending my free time hanging out with friends I haven't seen in forever and focusing on my family. Christmas this year was really good I have to say and one of the best things about it was the fact I was off for a change.

New Years was fun too...no dookie cake this year... really it was very laid back, I spent the night watching the ball drop on ABC (and before I go on, let me be mean but if you watched it then you know it deserved special Nilla commentary: First of all Kelly Pickler makes me embarrassed to be from North Carolina, she's cute and all but damn that bitch needs to shut the fuck up! And I think she mentioned she was from NC about 8 times...but its she did manage to find people from my town Asheville to interview that were actually normal acting. Secondly I know it's mean and it's his show but Dick Clark needed subtitles. Its tragic what happened to him if you are a Dick Clark fan but I am not. What an asshole and you know Ryan Seacrest sucked Dick Clarks' nasty liver spotted dick to get the job of hosting the show...Man Seacrest makes me want to tell people I am straight, what a closet case. But you know who does make me wanna be straight and that is the talentless Taylor Swift whom was the first performer of the night. She's hot for a 10 year old...something about the eyes, they are all squinty and sneaky, I think it's kind of hot....) I digress; New Years was fun and Wayne and I spent it together on the couch sipping cheap champagne. My friend Sabrina called me a little after midnight like she always does which was nice...

Speaking of Sabrina, man we got into it hard core. I know most of you reading this won't care but those of you know have known me for years know who Sabrina is and our love/hate relationship. I have been really angry as of late and I have been making it clear to people when they piss me off and she did. I let her have it; explaining to her that I didn't' feel like she had been there for me when I really needed her this year and demanded to know why. After a conversation of screaming at one another (I did most of the screaming) we made up and were hanging out the next night. It was such a relief to get it all out and come to a peace with her. She and I have been friends for so long I feel like something is really wrong with me when we find ourselves growing apart.

Oh and I pissed off Wayne's skank ex boyfriend this week as well...it's not even worth mentioning but just another person to add to the "people Ive made mad this week" list. OOOH and let me tell you what really pissed me off. Today at Cracker Barrel Wayne told me that Nick (his ex) called him all pissed over what I had said to him and actually went over to his house after he got of work that night to caudal him. I didn't press the issue because it's not worth it. Wayne and I have been getting along lately so I am not rocking the boat but just know there will be an entire box of licorice Altoids that will be eaten right before bed time each night. (the smell is a big turn off to Wayne and he hates it when I eat those right before bed LOL)...and he'll pay later trust me...and as for the ex boyfriend...well he just better stay the fuck out of my way is all I have to say.

Well, that's about it for now...you know it's funny...I wanted to write this entry entirely about Kate Bush but I guess it's too late for that now...Its late, even for me so I am going to pop some Altoids and go to bed....good night...