March 16-18, 2001 — Some tormented form of alright

Three days is far too much to cover under even the best of circumstances. Given that so much has happened since Friday, things aren't looking good. And given that I have to begin my journal on Wednesday in order to cover everything, things are looking even worse.

First off, then, an addendum to Wednesday's entry: While I was downtown getting my titanium barbell put into my right ear, I saw a girl on the street who I thought I recognized from iam.bmezine.com. We'll call this girl on the street "pseudo-Erika."

Upon arriving home after seeing pseudo-Erika on the street, I emailed the real Erika, who was in Vermont at the time, to see if it was her that I'd seen.

Which brings us to Friday. With Nathan's birthday festivities not set to begin until the evening, I'd settled down for an afternoon of nerding out with plans to finish all the fixes that I'd been working on for the Bran Van 3000 site. But before I got very far into things, an email arrived from Erika informing me of the rather slim chances of my having seen her on Queen Street due to her having been out of the country at the time. Somehow I wasn't terribly surprised.

We sent emails back and forth until it was time for me to travel to Ryerson en route to the Grade and Moneen show. (It was sold out, so everyone came back to my room where we waited for Pat and Nick to arrive so that we could begin a game of Risk. Nathan may tell you otherwise, but I'm pretty sure that it was his best birthday ever.) By the time socializing had come to an end, Erika was asleep. From the emails we'd sent during the day, though, I'd already become more attached to this girl than was probably healthy.

First thing in the morning, I learned that she was in a long-term relationship. After we'd each had a good cry (Erika said it felt like we were breaking up), we spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what we going to do, beyond torture one another.

Emotionally unstable and with questionable motives, I left Toronto behind for the night to visit Lindsay in Oshawa. There seemed to be a bit of tension between some of her friends, and she ended up going home only a couple of hours after I'd arrived. Luckily, Jeff and his friends were all at the same bar as I was (not unexpectedly, given that I was staying at Jeff's that night), so I was able to spend the evening watching drunk people eat disgusting food in large quantities (for prizes!) and partaking in a much more colourful Saint Patrick's Day experience than I'd've ever expected.

On the way to Jeff's house, we stopped at Pizza Pizza. I left my shoulder bag there. With my CD player, all my clothes, and a couple of books in it. I realized what had happened when I arrived at Jeff's house, and I sprinted back to the Pizza Pizza in a panic, arriving two minutes before closing. After running I get all wheezy, so I spent the rest of the night sounding like a chain-smoking grandmother with a penchant for bingo. (I'll propagate stereotypes if I damn well please, thank you very much.)

Amy and I eventually took the train back to Toronto on Sunday afternoon.

With a computer in front of me once again (and mere moments before the withdrawal symptoms would've become debilitating), Erika and I resumed sending emails back and forth. By the time she'd gone to sleep, the total number of emails I'd received from her since Friday had passed twenty. I asked how much of what had went on she thought would be alright for me to write about in my journal, and she told me that there were no restrictions. Which was nice, since the title of this journal is a snippet from one of the emails she sent me, and it's far better than anything I could've come up with.

Before I went to sleep, I rode on the subway for awhile and visited Downsview, Erika's station of choice. I'd never been before and was quite impressed. All sparkling and new.

And so goes the abridged version of my weekend. I don't think I really did it justice, and a lot is missing. Sorry.

Meanwhile, I'll be in Buffalo tomorrow night seeing Dashboard Confessional. I won't be back until 6:00AM on Tuesday. So I wouldn't recommend expecting another journal until Tuesday night. Unless I'm feeling really keen early Tuesday morning. And what are the odds of that?