October 25-28, 2001 — Catching the last train home

Thursday

I was on such a roll there, posting a journal each day for like... two days in a row. But then I stayed up until 7:00 am on Thursday without writing one, and the lack of sleep more or less made my Friday a write-off, and I’ve a hard enough time writing journals on the weekend even at the best of times, so here we are, four days behind again. Sigh.

But yes. Thursday, then. I worked on the Cuff The Duke Web site for most of the afternoon and then went with Andrew to see Panic play at what turned out to be the sketchiest venue for music in Toronto. We met up with Elaine, Andrew’s girlfriend, and then walked to the show. It was at a bar that might be able to hold 25 people at the best of times. As you might’ve guessed, these aren’t ideal circumstances for moving equipment in and out of the building. It didn’t help that five bands had to bring in and then remove their equipment one at a time, or that the bar had to close at midnight. The two out-of-town bands played for about 10–15 minutes each (at most) and were selling CDs and t-shirts our of their vans because there wasn’t room to setup a table inside.

At one point a few minutes after Panic was supposed to’ve stopped playing, members of the band that they’re on tour with just lost it and started moshing and trying to crowd-surf. It was complete chaos, especially in such a small space. At one point things were calm enough for me to glance over at the bar only to see the aging, punk-looking fellow who seems to run the place loving every second of it as kids swarmed to the front and tried to sing along as a bit of a violent mob.

Over the course of the night, I’d been showing off my complete inability to interact properly with others. Elaine kept grabbing me (in a friendly way), and I couldn’t help but react negatively. I’m still not all that good at physical contact, especially when I’m not given time to prepare for it.

I was also told by Karin, the girl who I went to see Apocalypse Now with in September, that I didn’t look all that happy to see her. I made up some story about the walk being so cold that I couldn’t really be happy to see anyone at that point, but I don’t really think my reaction would’ve been all that different had it been warmer out. I tend to look pretty indifferent to see good friends, never mind people that I’ve barely spoken to, so I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. But thinking as much probably just further illustrates how little I know about proper human behavior. I guess.

Anyway. I made it home in one piece and proceeded to talk to the girl from Maine that I met on AIM last week for several hours. Her name’s Jess. And before any alarm bells start going off with readers thinking that I haven’t learned my lesson as far as long-distance relationships (and girls with boyfriends) are concerned, we get along very well as friends, but there isn’t and there won’t ever be the slightest hint of things going any further than that. Good? Good.

But yeah. We ended up talking into the small hours of the morning. She wanted to stay awake so that she would wake up just in time to start work the next day, and I woke up too late into the afternoon on Thursday to be all that tired. She called me before we each went to sleep; incoherent talk of spiders and the problems with condiments in the United States ensued. She’s also convinced that part of the reason I’ve had so few girlfriends so far lies in the fact that girls think that I’m gay after they hear me talk because I’m too careful about pronouncing words properly. I’ve decided that it’s boys from Maine who have a problem and don’t know how to speak properly, but I could be wrong; also, I’d rather blame others than take Jess’s (mostly joking) advice and start grunting more often and using “good” as an adverb in the place of “well.”

Friday

On Friday, I accomplished nothing. Andrew was gone for the night, so I started work on the page design for a print zine that I’m working on. It’s going to be a mostly-fictional story with a book-like page design and will be the first antigreg zine. I don’t know if there will be an ongoing series after this one. We’ll see how the first one goes. I’m not quite done the story for it, but I worry that it won’t be fictionalized enough and that if the wrong people read it, I will make some enemies. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Saturday

On Saturday, Andrew handed out résumés and got a call-back from Blockbuster within thirty minutes.

This inspired me to get a job. If it’s really as easy as that, I’m willing to at least give it a go. So I wrote a résumé for the first time in forever and decided I’d try to get a job the next week. A scary thought to say the least, especially for someone who’s never handed out résumés before. But it has to be done — I don’t want to be burning through my savings too quickly, and paper cutters and antigreg logo embossers don’t grow on trees.

With my burst of employment-related enthusiasm exhausted for the day, I went to see Cuff The Duke open for Man Or Astroman. It was a fun show, and Andrew and I had finished up the Cuff The Duke CD design before I went to the show, so we were able to finally give them that. It should go to print this week.

At the show my inability to play well with others continued to show through. I alternated between being rude and just... not feeling like myself. It was a long night. It takes far too much effort to talk to so many people. I felt like I was going to collapse.

After the show, Johnston and I were rushed into the subway station by the subway attendant, who informed us that there was only one more train. On our way home on the train, we saw two people rush down the stairs only to have the doors close just as they were arriving on the platform.

When we got off the train, they were repeating an announcement saying that there had been a security incident at Yorkdale Station and that emergency crews were on scene. I wonder if someone jumped. It would be a sad ending to a shift for the person driving the train.

Sunday

Not much accomplished today, either. I designed some (rather simple) antigreg pins that I’m going to sell as a set, and I made a to-do list for the week ahead. But that’s about it, and, all in all, I think I mostly wasted that extra daylight savings time hour.

Not the most productive set of four days, was it?

If I get a job this week, though, I’ll have plenty to be proud of. I’ll let you know how that goes.