Model Friends

Meaning this quite literally. My girlfriend is a supermodel. It’s not easy, because I don’t see her a lot. Or technically I see her a lot, but not as often as I would like to. But I have accompanied her to all sorts of places, and met quite a few of her friends, who are not, as one might surmise, all beautiful people all the time.

And I’ve just realized that we have been together for close to seven years. Dear God. That’s a long time. That’s longer than nearly all the wives my father has had. Amazing. All these therapy sessions are really bringing out surprising revelations for me.

I met my girlfriend through one of my best buddies. He may be a stodgy old bank officer now, but twenty years ago he was very well on her way up the modeling career ladder. The agency’s star, as it were.  But he left the company because the jobs weren’t really regular enough to pay the rent; plus being a female model didn’t suit him at all. But he retained his friends from those times ( models are very open minded people. So much that some of them have even had their brains fall out. Wonderful, no?) and those friends love having him over to size up the newbies, and on occasion, give advice to the ones who want out about getting a “proper” career and what it’s like to work a nine to five job.

The latter was how my friend met her. Obviously she wasn’t looking to get out of modeling – she was already well off enough to not need to worry particularly about surviving if she was out of work. She was more interested in learning. Just learning. About anything at all. And that quite piqued my friend’s interest. He called me up and told me that he had met someone fun and I should go check her out at this runway party next week downtown. The following, as it is too commonly said, was history.

In any case, I will return to the topic. Having been with her for so long, I’ve of course met many of her friends, most of whom are relatively top tier models, and actually befriended a few of them. It is true that they are rake thin, but definitely untrue that they are less intelligent than any other person I know.  Very many of the ones I know have backgrounds in the arts, like acting or dancing and a lot of them actually hold other jobs, especially in performance arts. All of the models whom I have found interesting have university degrees. My girlfriend, not to boast, is the most beautiful and intelligent person I have ever had the privilege to know. And not all the models I know are female. Quite a few of them are (arguably) men. And a few more are complete paragons of manliness – these are the bodybuilding jocks who pose for men’s health magazines. Why my girlfriend knows them, I have no idea. But she has a lot of contacts.

I don’t know if it’s something friends just do, but my friends – especially my model friends – love giving me advice. They really, really love it. I always step out of a conversation with a model with a brand new shiny anecdote on how to live life. And they really love gossip. Which is a big part of why I like spending time with them, but not too much time because it does tend to wear one down.

They like to give out fashion advice like candy. But their wardrobe out of work, speaking from experience, doesn’t really change a lot. My girlfriend has a huge wardrobe but she almost never wears those clothes, most of which are complimentary sets from the companies she works for. She tends to wear the clothes once to model them, then keeps the clothes, sends them off to the dry cleaner’s and when they come back, she hides them somewhere in one of her clothes racks and forgets about them completely. It’s actually rather fun to take a walk through that room in her apartment where all her clothes go. I call it the glamor graveyard. She calls it a waste and keeps planning to bunch it all off to some charity somewhere but forgets to all the time.

A lot of people don’t realize that beautiful people are really not much different from regular people. In fact, the ones I know are far more normal than I am. Apart from their terrifying beauty regimes. I’ve stayed over at my girlfriend’s apartment many times, and she tends to have friends crashing over at her place most days of the week. A few of them house – hop because their income isn’t regular enough for them to be able to afford a proper place to stay. Some of them have the money to get their own place, but they just like the freedom. So my girlfriend’s living room is kind of like an open party zone for whoever is over at the time. She doesn’t mind it, because it’s usually relatively quiet and the guests always clean up after themselves and make her breakfast to apologize. And whenever it gets crazy she’s free to go to my house anyway, so it’s all good.

Speaking of the house – hopping models, they may not have a home to go to, but they always carry their beauty regime with them in their duffel bags. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been freaked out by men and women with mud masks and whatnot on their faces as I step into the apartment’s open bathroom (as opposed to the closed one adjoining my girlfriend’s room). It’s miraculous, how they pack that many bottles and boxes into a cloth duffel bag without breaking anything or having stuff leak all over other stuff. And they leave a remarkably small footprint. Living footprint, I mean. It’s hard to believe that dozens of people regularly party in that little living room every other day when you are alone in the room. It’s always immaculate, when there’s nobody around. I’ve seen food and blood (yes, blood) stains on the wall during the party which vanish without a trace the next day after the guest is done bustling about the house cleaning up. Maybe I should introduce them to my mother – stepmother I mean; I’m sure they would enjoy sharing cleaning tips with each other.

Merde!

I think my father is going insane. He was talking about death today. His own death. Fine, he is seventy three, but what nonsense to be going over at breakfast. And when I saw him in the morning he was trying to freak out the clown plumber who lives four doors down from us with my sister’s story. I suppose it is all well and good to be happy and open and proud, but him? That’s ridiculous coming from him. What did he ever do for her other than pay the bills?

To be honest, his retirement fund was never enough to pay for her bills. And people always kept wondering what I did with my (rather extravagant, I admit) engineer’s paycheck. I do have a couple of modestly sized properties squirreled away but I’ve never really expected to leave anything to my children. Mostly because I don’t have any. And I don’t plan to get any ever. I have been taking care of babies and kids nearly non stop until just over ten years ago and I am completely and utterly sick of it. Say what you will about what wonderful experiences having children give, but having had to watch over seven children from the age of nine, I will say this once and for all: they are not worth it.

So I let my siblings have whatever they need. I don’t even know why I have those pieces of land and houses, et cetera. They would only go to my siblings or their children when I die. It’s not like I’ll take anything with me when I go.

Now I sound like my father. This is getting stupider by the second. I have no idea why he’s been behaving so strangely recently. Just yesterday he was telling his wife about his third wife. I have never seen him do that before. I must say, she ( meaning his present wife) seemed quite struck silent by all that rambling, but he did not seem to even notice her expression. Is this another one of his games? I know he’s very fond of playing these crazy stunts on people – particularly his wives – to see how much shit they can take before leaving, but they have never been this… odd.

He told me his stupid pet bird was going to kill him.

This morning when I woke up I heard some strange noises coming from downstairs. That’s what woke me up, actually. The screeching, crashing and banging. But I thought that my father would be able to handle it, so I took my time brushing my teeth, putting on my clothes, and all that junk.

Note to self: Clean up room. You do not want to step on a transistor ever again. Especially not the sharp end.

Note to self (2): Get Band – Aids for emergencies ( ie: Holes in foot from stepping on the sharp ends of transistors ).

After managing to find antiseptic and bandages I put on my shoes and went down the stairs to catch my father being a jerk to that clown man and scaring the man off by talking about my sister. I am perfectly fine with her, but to listen to my father speak about her in that way really irritated me, for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that my father seemed to be using her in one of his tricks, and I had never known him to do something like that ever before. It might have even scared me a little.

And then he closed the door and was giggling like a madman. That was truly shocking to see. I don’t remember ever seeing my father laugh for more than three seconds at a go. And never in public have I seen him laugh. He barely smiles unless it is in front of people he has known for years. He never speaks unless spoken to when he meets somebody new. For years as a teenager I was pretty sure he had a social phobia but I eventually outgrew that when I realized he was not afraid of anything, literally.

Which was why I did not move until he actually noticed me staring from the top of the stairs. He seemed so airy and cheerful. I was surprised he wasn’t upset or embarrassed at me having seen him act like a lunatic.

Then he made me breakfast, which isn’t particularly strange. But the oddest thing was that from the moment I set eyes on him he had this huge bloody scratch across his face, and he made absolutely no mention of its existence until I asked him about it. After I was done with breakfast and had cleaned up, I passed by the drawing room to see that my father’s bird – fine, hawk – was not in there as usual. It was perched out in the veranda, drooping considerably as the sun began to make the day swelter. I am heartless, but not that heartless. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t go near that bird with a ten foot pole. It’s a flesh eater, for goodness sakes.  So I told my father about it and he almost ran to save his dear pet Nick ( I wonder why nobody calls the bird by that name, it seems like such an obvious nickname ) from drying out and joining the bleedin’ choir invisible.

I let him recover, kissed him goodbye, and went off to meet my therapist.

And note to self: Try to call a geriatric psychologist, if there’s such a thing.

Prophecy

Remember all stuff that about blood and tears in the last post? This time it was nearly blood for me, and tears for someone else. I think I’m a little shell-shocked right now. I don’t know why she reacted that way. I mean, other people have left in tears before, but… I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry. I don’t know what to do. I mean, I never knew that she could…

But I’m being awful again.

I’m sure you will read this. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was doing. I will make an appointment right now with Fran for next week. I will tell her everything she wants to know.

What I told you was the truth. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Is this about him? But you know I can’t give it up. It’s been so long, and I don’t think he could take it.

All this time I thought there were only three people I could ever love. Him, mom, and my little trooper. Of course there are others like El or Jak or my other brothers and sisters, but compared to them… Mom is dead, of course.  And my little trooper is out my of reach now.

But now, I’m thinking of all the things I’ve done to hurt you. And now I realize that you’ve never hurt me, not even once. Emotionally, I mean. Is that right? Even today, when you left, I wasn’t hurt. All I did was think about how hurt you must be now. But I can’t imagine how it feels. So that’s an issue? That I am never hurt?

People say that I am strong. But I don’t know how that correlates. Is that because I am always numb inside? I’ve always been this way, as far back as I can remember.

The first time we met, I remember so clearly. You threw a glass of wine in my face at a runway party and I laughed really hard. And then you talked to me about Shakespeare and Kant versus Bentham. Then I asked for your phone number and I got it. And I asked if you wanted to go out sometime, and you did. It was surprising, to say the least. So we met the next night at a coffee shop – that really nice place off 22nd street – and talked about how underrated HyperTransport is. And the next night it was desktop publishing at Mario’s pizza place. In fact, I’m pretty sure I can recite everything about our first ten to fifteen meetings; it’s all in my mind that clearly.

Everything about you is just so fun – but is that really what you want as my descriptor of you? Fun? You’re so much more than fun. I wish I could tell you right now. But I think I would screw it up. Like how I screwed it up with… my little sister. I suppose that’s another issue. But I just met her the other day and she told me to fix myself up too. Like everyone else. It was a little upsetting, I must admit. It made me think about things I didn’t want to think about. Like what I’m doing now.

I think I’m going to make an appointment with Fran for tomorrow. I’ll call you after that. I hope that’s not too early.

On Being Crazy

I have a psychologist friend who recommended me to a psychologist friend of hers; she told her friend I would be a most interesting case to observe. This psychologist friend of my psychologist friend – let’s call her Fran – had a nice and long chat with me and as I am prone to do, I discharged my charm upon her, and by the time the third date (session) was done with ( along with many other things… You have my number, Fran. I bet you still have it, even after this long) I was promptly diagnosed with “not quite dissocial personality disorder” and bought off with some fun meds. So naturally I ate the meds like candy (had a jolly good time), and googled the term.

Wikipedia says this.

And of course, since I enjoy clicking and I enjoy reading, I kept on clicking on the other links and read them all.

Things like this, this, this, this and this.

What is “superficial charm” anyway? What differentiates superficial and non-superficial charm? Why is passive aggressiveness a personality disorder? How strange.

Also, I think my father is a psychopath. But I suppose I won’t mention it to him. We’re all a bunch of crazies anyway, and we get along wonderfully. CyberDust from some online forum that I totally spilled my guts at that one time while I was sopping drunk told me that I was a nutjob who was overly dependent on my crazy mute daddy and that I should just hang myself and do the world a favor. Of course I told him “A sharp tongue does not mean you have a keen mind” and bawled my woes to dear Johnnie. The next day I pretty much forgot most everything about it and went bowling with my girlfriend.

Those aren’t the only times people have said I was nuts though. Everyone who knows me even slightly tells me, “You have issues.”

Please. I have no children. I am one hundred percent sure of it. It is impossible for me to have any children. Stop telling me that I do.

On the other hand, I have plenty of magazines at home. PC World, anybody?

Seriously, people keep telling me that I have a problem but they never identify it. Are they afraid? I’m not about to hit them, though I’ve been known to break a few noses. But that was long ago when I was still wielding, quite inexpertly (hence the injuries to other people), the softball bat. I unfortunately retired when I (accidentally!) broke someones fibula. I still don’t know where a fibula is to this day.

Back to the “issues”. I do understand that there are things going on in my life that some people might find strange, offensive, inexplicable, or any combination of the words. Offensiplicable, perhaps. I could describe a few here, but I won’t, because I don’t care. Maybe that’s the zenith of the situation right there. I don’t care. Floating through life like a dandelion seed, that’s a pretty nice description of what I do, except my life has a lot more blood and tears involved. But don’t worry, none of it is mine.

Psychedellic Haiku

A narwhal etched noise
In lines, over eels. Your
beyond, the seas part

It is cold outside
but the fire in your eyes
burns the world away

Wow, this is easy.
You should try it too, y’know.
You might have talent

Upon the lotus,
A droplet.
But it has not rained

Fuel economy
means nothing, to one who rides
only bicycles

On my lap,
A laptop.
Out of batteries

Empty smiles adorn
graduate celebration;
Valedictorian

Here the boys don’t cry
but the female species weeps
nightly in moonlight

The red light blinking
A minute for a hero:
It happens every time

The Sublime Beauty of the Solid State

Essentially a cousin of RAM, but without batteries. Flash based drives work very well. They’re just gigantic SD cards in a hard drive case anyway. I have no idea why nobody has tried hooking up, oh, twenty or so MicroSD cards on a RAID to a decent USB port. The read/write speed is about 22 Mbps, not fantastic, but not awful. Though the cost ratio isn’t completely worth the effort. But that’s what most current SSDs are anyway. Most amateurs could probably do it.

SSD computers are lots of fun. You can shake them like maracas. But they don’t make any sound, which may be unfortunate for the musician but probably indicates some kind of modest quality of manufacturing. Always a good thing. If  anyone’s noticed, the prices for SSDs increase pretty much exponentially as the storage space goes up, but at those kind of prices, I’d rather strap together as many SD cards as I can get on a nice array and wire it all in a hard drive case for a fraction of that kind of cost. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing on my lab rat machine, so far it’s been working out pretty well. Electricity use is something important to take into consideration though, but whatever, it makes the Mousey work pretty fast.

Planning to stick that tiny USB microSD reader on my work laptop as well. Will probably see if I can boost the laptop’s computing speed a little. And I’ll be using another microSD in a regular SD card converter placed in the SD card slot. I think I want to try out running a bootable OS on the SD card. Probably something zippy like Linux. Or I could have a bit of fun and run some silly thing like Windows 95 on it. But that will be an idea for another day.