it wasn't really 'fun'

Today, I had the unique pleasure of getting ear-douched.

Yesterday afternoon, I woke up with a fucked-up blockage in my left ear. It was like my ear had been replaced with a seashell. It was, most vehemently, NOT COOL. But I figured it might have something to do with sleeping for fifteen hours, so I let it go.

Today: same story. This is not the first time this has happened, and apparently it is a new and exciting genetic curse, for my father and brother both have regularly run into problems with overly waxed ears.

So, I got to see this big nasty hunks of wax floating around in my eardouche thingywhobob. It was NOT COOL and believe me I'm doing you a favor by not drawing any visual comparisons.

Anyway, all is well now. I'm leaving France in nineteen days, which is FUCKED UP. I would not have just 'gone to the hospital' back in the States - I would have waited until the blood seeped from my eyes and my genitals sang out for mercy! But never if my ear felt weird. Goodbye, sweet actually effective health care system.

Also, side note: I realized that I forgot to racconte something. One of the guys I was flirting with this weekend told me that the gays here think of Scott as being a porn star name. I don't know how I feel about this.

Regardless, I am going to Rennes this weekend, and it will kick ass.

life is a weekend

OK, this is going to be a rather vignette-ish entry. Because I am feeling the sweet buzz of brevity rightaboutnow.

Nantes was cool, many times over. Basically, we walked around in big circles a lot, often in search of a mythic Monoprix that escaped us in a very Brigadoon-esque fashion.

The Le Tigre show as hot, hot. My thoughts on Gravy Train are as follows: cool, weird, synthy, hilarious, stagey (slightly), do we really need to see that dude's little cock. Members of the band made a really kickass zine which my friend purchased and I eagerly devoured. Le Tigre: kick ass, perhaps scarily or irritatingly reliant on technology, bad-joke-tell-y (in a good way), dope. You can tell I'm not really a Le Tigre-head because I didn't know that the girl with the short hair was actually a girl. Whoops! Fun nonetheless.

I also managed to flirt heavily with two boys. Were either of these endeavors successful? No, but is that really the point?

Should that be the point?

Fuck!

I also went to a gay bar then a random gay club on Easter night. This was a sweet-ish experience, but there was a lame male stripper that we saw at both places. Thoughts on this: apparently male stripperdom in France is synonymous with prostituion, do we really need to see that dude's little cock, gay people are robots because everyone is watching this with their mouths hanging open.

I mean, obviously I like dick. But if you're going to be a male stripped you need to pack a little bit more heat than the average dude. But as with all matters gay, it's OK as long as you have a six-pack!

Right now I am slightly crabby but high, so it's ok. I'm going to go to Rennes this weekend for another grand adventure.

Also, I am obsessing about whether or not to cut my hair. But instead of making a decision, I'm going to go smoke a cig.

les crushes / survey attaque

Okay, so I have a confession. Sometimes, I get that 'not-so-pure' feeling when I'm around a handful of my students. Colleagues too, but that's like...acceptable almost. Expected, certainly - this whole experience is making me feel like I'm in high school, so getting crushes on profs is something that obviously happens. And I am currently living my life French-teenager style, getting forever stoned in my room, listening to music, masturbating furiously.

However, les crushes: one of them just walked in to the salle de profs - my heart stopped a little bit. She is totally the froggy teenage sex-kitten of my dreams: almost six feet tall, long red hair, big green eyes, French indie/hippie style, totally mortified by how hot she is. She's like a perfect combination of all my hot redheaded lady friends. When I gave her a bisou, I couldn't believe I didn't get a boner.

No, I'm not actually 'bisexual' but sometimes I get crushes on girls, à la lesbian dream girl from college. I once got wasted as only a 20 year-old can and told her girlfriend I was in love with her (lesbian dream girl, not her girlfriend).

Other crushes: I teach a BTS class once in a great while, and have fostered a crush for one of the clueless 20 year-olds therein. I saw him yesterday, when I was randomly teaching a small group from that class. When I found out he was in my group, it was a little difficult to maintain my calm, especially since he's rocking these totally hot sideburns. I kept on thinking that he was looking at me with those big dreamy eyes because he loved me, but my roomie and I decided he is actually just a total tosser and probably has no idea what I'm saying, so that is his 'concentration face,' easily confused with the 'can't you see I'm in love with you' face.

Then there are two boys in my lycee pro class, both about twenty, dreamy as F-uuuuuuuck. The one time I sortied with the crazy girls from this class (before they were my students) the ringleader invited two guys she was hot for to the bar, one of whom being the BTS boy and the other being one of the lycee pro boys. Can't argue with mofuckin' good taste!

But the big daddy of crushes falls to the mysterious beautiful surveyant that works at my school. At first, I was sure he was a surveyant. Then I thought he was a student. Now I'm about 70% sure that's he's actually a surveyant. Nonetheless, he is the cutest boy in all of Finistere, and I DO believe my studies have been extensive enough to draw this conclusion. Curly brown hair, blue eyes, non-wack French pseudo hippie style. Every time I look into his eyes I feel like I'm going to fall down.

This weekend, it's going to be Brest (tonite), Quimper (tomorrow), Nantes (Sat, for Le Tigre!) and possibly La Rochelle (Sunday/Monday/never).

Okay, wasn't that fun and enlightening?! On with the survey I poached from Sara, since it has been approximately one million years since I last did a survey up in this piece.


Ten movies you'd watch over and over:
1. Donnie Darko
2. Breathless
3. Before Sunrise/Sunset
4. The Thin Man series (ALL OF IT!)
5. Gone With the Wind
6. Spirited Away / any Miyazaki film
7. Heathers
8. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
9. Adventures of Felix
10. Young Frankenstein

Nine people you enjoy the company of:
1. E-Liz
2. Nico
3. Saundies
4. Jigga
5. Little Bro Jimmy B
6. Elaine
7. Magui
8. Imani
9. The LDCC (not one, but many (cheating))

Eight things you are wearing:
1. The very last cool shirt that H&M made tan and white with crazy seventies designs
2. Red 'Freedom Bowl' teeshirt over the top
3. Gap-rhymes-with-crap jeans
4. Dope-ass Target watch
5. Black socks
6. The shoes I betrayed Ireland for
7. HOT striped underwear from H&M
8. Cool denim jacket

Seven things on your mind:
1. Should I have a fourth coffee?
2. Going on my crazy adventure this long weekend
3. Need to buy blank CDs
4. Hopefully I got fucking PAID today or I'm fucking fucked
5. My friend Saundies actually emailed me!
6. The crushes
7. The apples I bought on Tuesday are mushy SHIT

Six objects you touch every day:
1. my computer
2. my toothbrush
3. money
4. my lighter
5. my bed!
6. myself (hahaha! i can objectify myself)

Five things you do every day:
1. Read
2. Count the days until I leave with a combination of fear and longing
3. Smoke cigs
4. Um, eat?
5. Obsess about things I need to do or should be doing to the point of sleep deprivation.

Four bands/groups/musical acts you love:
1. David Bowie!!!
2. The Decemberists
3. Helio Sequence
4. Nina Simone


Three of your favorite songs at this moment:
1. Queen Bitch - David Bowie
2. Ashes of American Flags - Wilco
3. I'm Just a Soul Who's Intentions are Good - Nina Simone (from the Dior commercial)

Two people who have influenced your life the most:
1. Weirdly, I would say Marla - one of my first and only genuinely good friends in high school - she taught me how to be open, to be true to myself, how to raise my voice and say something clever or shocking just for the fun of it, how to smoke cigs, how to smoke weed. She taught me how to be, how not to be and that just because you've known someone for five years doesn't mean they're not fucking crazy.
2. It's hard to pick one other person - if I had to pick one other person, I would say my friend Travis. Who taught me that it's okay to talk like a crazy person, it is exceedingly necessary to always be reading and always be writing, that it's okay to get stupidly drunk as long as you laugh at yourself, that being convicted and truly believing things is the only way to be alive.

One person who you love more than anyone in the world:
1. This is fucked up, but I'm going to say myself - I don't have that big scary life-changing love of my life yet and frankly I don't even know if I want that right now. I am becoming the person I have always wanted to be, I am able to surround myself with amazing people who even more amazingly care as much about me as I do them, which is really a fucking miracle. But what I've learned in France is that ultimately, in spite of all these people, I am really the only one that I have. And I can stand on my own two feet, look myself in the mirror straight in the crazy-color-change-eyes and say 'I love you' and 'I hate you' in the same breath - that's love.

un p'tit morceau

Okay, so, it was hard for me to recall this through the hash haze, but I found it hilarious. Here is a little bit-by-bit rehashery (har!) of my conversation with my roomie Matt, in the style of this beloved blog.

Matt: God, that baby we were playing with at the pub was so cute!

Me: Um, pardon?

Matt: This woman came in with her baby and we played with it for a while. I was so wasted I was crawling around on the floor with it.

Me: Of. A. Bar. Good? What was her story, anyway? This responsible mother.

Matt: She was leaving her husband, some French guy in the navy.

Me: Because he was having an affair with me, right?

Matt: Close. He got together with another guy on his ship. She was very matter of fact about it.

Me: Well, that explains what she was doing in the pub.

Matt: She said (cue perfect Irish accent) 'You should have told me you were fucking bisexual before you married me, you cunt!'

I laughed. Forever. I know other people's pain, tragedy, etc...so not funny. Except, it is. Also, it always makes me laugh the way cunt gets tossed around in the UK (and the Republic of Ireland, god bless it's EU-loving soul!).

so good!

I don't even know how I'm in such a good mood today. Maybe, I'm making the most of one of my last fave days of the week for the teaching - I have three groups today, and they're all great. I also managed to make it to the salles de profs in time to check my email, a true rarity since my first class is at 8 am!

Possibly the reason my spirits are so high is because I spent yesterday afternoon/night reading the first 300 pages of In the City of Shy Hunters by Tom Spanbauer and it is SO fucking good I'm thinking about getting a commemorative tattoo. INdeed, not too long ago I was bitching my sweet head off about the inesecapable suckiness of modern gay lit and then I see this book at the Fac library in Brest. I decide to follow up, because I remember being interested in reading his novel, The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon.

It's really exciting to read an author who is not only a good gay writer, a good writer from the west coast...but someone who writes with such joy, such craziness, such spark and passion and richness. I'm about halfway through the book and I seriously love it.

Also, I am finally trying to looking into getting my carte de sejour before I leave. Y'know, just in case it becomes impossible for me to leave this country once I am stopped at the douane and forced to spend the rest of my days in a interrogation closet buried away somewhere in the heart of Charles de Gaulle II. Obviously, it could happen. Even if I have been told repeatedly by other offenders that no one actually cares, no one will even notice.

But my number is up, clearly! I can feel it in me bones. I have smuggled. I enjoy pathelogically lying to people on planes. I drink and mix painkillers on planes, as it is generally the only way I am able to fall asleep. This time, they will stop me in my devil-tracks and I will surely know why the caged bird sings, it's lyrics, etc.

OK, obviously the caged bird is a metaphor and not to be interchanged with a jailbird, but whatever, I'm the one writing this blog and I will inappropriately co-opt whatever I like whenever I want and damn the consequences! Unless they involve me getting stuck in this country.

good times, ever rolling

Life has been really fucking good for the last week.

Example: one of my friends from Brest passed through Morlaix on Wednesday with a carload of American friends, en route to Rennes. I invited myself along, had a nice little soiree in Rennes and passed the day of St. Patty's there. However, I have proved myself a sub-par Irish American in the following categories:

1.) I didn't wear green, because I went to Rennes at the last minute and just wore the clothes I was wearing for two days.
2.) I didn't go out for the mad fete of St. Patty's that eve because I had to haul ass back to Morlaix so I could wake up ungodly early to start my long Friday morning of teaching.
3.) I bought a pair of shoes with the British flag on them...on St. Patty's day! For shame!

Thursday during the day in Rennes was awesome. I ended up meeting a college mate of my friend Matt who is ALSO from Northern California. She was incredibly cool, and we just spent the day shopping around, drinking cafés, looking at people, comparing notes on weird franco-experiences. I smoked joints madly and publicly, she was unable to partake (some crazy promise she made to her dad...some people are so unlucky to be so principled!).

Then it was off to Brest again Friday afternoon. I spent a good share of the afternoon soaking up the sun and chatting with my Irish lovah Elaine, mother of my future children (Pubshag and Penumbra) and generally chilling out quite pleasantly. I was still tired from walking around all day, but Imani, Elaine and I ended up at some crazy French hippy party waaaaaaaay outside town. I managed to catch a second wind and stay up til what I considered a very respectable hour (3 am), but we anglophones were the first to crash. The fete was illuminating because we met real French people with actual herb instead of fawking hashish, which was cool/inspiring. Also, there was a whole crazy pack of cute French boys so we were rather enjoying ourselves, myself and the recently-cut-loose ladies.

We didn't get back into Brest until Saturday afternoon, but we still managed a respectable sortie that evening. I caught up with my Welsh roomie, Matt, who had been kidnapped by the filles anglaises (though only ONE of them is actually English, they are commonly known as the filles anglaises). As they seem want to do, they spent the entire day drinking and watching rugby. Truly, to see kids with the wherewithall to drink like bastards for TWELVE HOURS is fucking inspiring. I myself coveted their drunkenness, tried to fall in with their example with six pints in two hours, got a little too wasted and had to sleep at hottie Espagnole Magui's boyfriend's house. Whoops!

Sunday was quite chill, had a visit to the plage, but it was the murkiest of the three days of gorgeous. But still a beautiful day for Bretagne in general.

SO EXCITED about the next two weekends: this weekend it is Quimper, then Nantes for the hotness of the Le Tigre/Gravy Train show on Saturday, then possibly to La Rochelle on Sunday, since we have a long weekend due to Easter (we get 'Good Monday' off). Then the first weekend in April I'm going to Rennes again, staying with some cool, random American woman I know through more than a few degrees of seperation. But most of my peeps are going to be in Rennes as well, so it'll still be very sortie-ish.

And I am done for today and tomorrow is my fave work day of the week (even though I have to be in class at 8! such is my love of teaching!).

Oh shit! Bloggybabes, I forgot I didn't yet drop this bomb on ye! There is a tiny sliver of a chance that I will come back to France next year. I'm applying to be an English assistant prof dealio in Rennes for the next school year. Significant raise, significantly cooler city, and I would get to do a lot of the travelling that I didn't get around to this time. We'll see how it all goes - I'm trying not to be overly optimistic. But the good thing is, even if it doesn't work out, I'm going back to the US and that's what I want, too!

Okay, this concludes today's crazy ole entry.

memorandum to body/update/ode to hotness

Dear Body:

I know that drugs have become new and exciting in their potential for abuse.

However, this does NOT mean that you are obliged to wake up at three in the morning for no fawking reason at all. Especially not when there is already the need to be up at 7 am.

Thank you for your consideration.

Other resurgent pet peeves: the inability of the human populace in general to throw away the cardboard rolls of toilet paper when they are finished (why?! why?! it's so simple!!!) AND the existentialist death-march of French high schoolers. Seriously, people - one painstaking, loafing footfall in front of another. Tragic to watch, annoying to get caught behind.

Well, the depression is gone, gone, gone - apparently all I needed to do was acknowledge it and force it into retirement. Plus, what, I'm leaving this country in 34 days and it's really just a waste of time.

Went to Quimper this weekend with the goils, AKA Imani and Magui (my sexy Espagnole whom I had a sex dream about (weirdly)). It was lovely, lovely - we managed to land some hashish from the pseudo-ex-boyfriend of our fourth mousquetaire (Elaine, the rad Irish girl) and then it was off to Quimper to party with the local assistants there.

Tragically, we forced ourselves to be the drunkest people there, got totally defoncé on top of it and were pretty antisocial. Well, actually, Magui and Imani were, I managed to crawl back into the public eye.

PERHAPS in part because there were a whopping THREE people from the actual west coast! The shock nearly killed me. Because whenever I meet Americans they never seem to come from my coast. However, there was even one girl from Davis, CA which is a fucking stone's throw from where I grew up (we were even born in the same hospital). But get this: she has my fawking BIRTHDAY. That's some crazy shit, non? Not the same year, but same day and same hospital.

I actually just forgot that until right now. Because I was wasted.

Luckily, this girl from Alaska I wanted to force to be my new best friend was there. I remembered her from the stage as being a totally cool smartypants and saw her in Brest one night, many moons ago. Where I was also wasted (in the tradition brestoise). So I have not really successfully convinced her to become my new best friend. Nor have I convinced her that I am not a frothing-at-the-mouth alcoholic. But we did managed to talk about New Orleans and I found out that she is a genuine MFA-in-creative-writing-holding smartypants.

But I will probably never go to Quimper again and tragically these people shall disappear from my life story. I imagine. Whatever, they probably have no respect for us because we passed out before 1 AM, the scheduled hour to get thineselves to the afterhours boite. It was embarassing. More embarassing when we woke up...in someone else's completely abandonned house.

We did what most people would do: steal snacks, smoke a joint, take showers and decide not to clean up any of the filthy post-party scene. It really seemed the only logical choice.

Then, we cruised to the cinema to see La Vie Aquatique, which I had been hot to see for some time. It was playing in Brest, but dubbed in French, so I refused to go. Luck was with us and I found out that it was playing in Quimper, a ville one third the size of Brest, in version originale. Yay! So after a long promenade and some serious 'now-let-us-face-fuck-ourselves-with-kebabs,'we went to the film.

My impressions: Andersen manages to deliver a strange, beautiful world full of unique characters, crazy style and beautiful music, like always. His imagination is out in full force, as ever. However, the narrative lacked the momentum of his other films. The story was slower, more awkard, lacking in the same zip that made Rushmore and Tenanbaums so fawking hot. It was great to see him go into a more surrealistic, bending-of-reality kind of place, but a little disappointing when we notice the cost. Good film in general, but I was hoping that Andersen would not misstep so early on in the game.

Yesterday, I listened to Wilco's Yankee Foxtrot Hotel for the first time. Which is kind of pathetic because I have been a fan for a while, but I was obviously not even remotely aware of just how fucking amazing they are. I think I managed to hear all of their albums before finally getting ahold of and listening to what is widely described as their masterpiece.

Okay, that's all. Plans for this weekend remain hazy, but hopefully I'm going somewhere. EVERY WEEKEND IS CRITICAL now.

swinging

Mood swings, mood swings - I'm having a whole fucking playground of moods these days. I don't really know what's going on, but I spent all of yesterday afternoon in bed, with the lights off, watching new DVDs: some Buffy DVD with four of the classic Faith episodes, followed by A Life Less Ordinary, which at least made me feel less depressed for the half-hour before unconsciousness swooped in.

I feel bad for my 20 year-old roomie - he's a really nice kid, we've hung out loads over the last five months, he has become my foster kid bro...but for the past three weeks I have been isolating myself rather unabomberishly. Not to say I am constructing explosive devices, obviously, but I am seeking refuge in the isolated cabin of my mind, most definitely. I can feel his angst seep in through our thin walls, he is just BEGGING me to come out of it because he isn't really capable of entertaining himself. Lord knows I wasn't at 20 - it was the beginning of my post-France, post-freakily-isolationist phase and I wanted to be with people around the fucking clock.

But at the same time, I feel myself resenting those regular knocks on my door, that unspoken pleading for me to come the fuck out of it so he can have something to do.

It makes me angry, just because of the way I have been feeling these days. I'm not a fucking television! I don't exist to entertain you! It's not my fault if you're bored! Sometimes I wish that I could be distilled into the ideal form of myself, to give voice to that anger. But other times I'm glad I'm not. Though he is Welsh, he has definitely inheirited the whole emotional restraint of grande bretagne, and would probably not be able to deal with me unleashing like that.

Luckily, we don't really have to find out. I don't think.

I kind of feel like A Life Less Ordinary is my new fave movie. It's about to enter regular rotation with the newly-purchased Triplettes de Belleville, which I picked up in the magical land of Brest last weekend.

Currently reading Fortress of Solitude by Johnathan Lethem and I am in love with every word he writes. The way he brings everything about the environment of late-seventies Brooklyn is setting my brain on fire with possibility. Lovelovelove it.

Hopefully, I will finish it and pull myself out of this pit. Haven't even written in THE STORY since one week ago today, where I hit my page-goal before setting sail for Brest.

It's official now. Maybe. My most beloved teeshirt, the symbol of all my crazy adventures in Nawlins, all that sex and booze and lying around the Garden District so hungover and nights turning into mornings just like that...is maybe gone forever. I thought for sure it would be at my friend Andy's, but he can't find it. It kind of breaks my heart, even though I am so over the genius bartender, I still love thinking about that time in my life. That teeshirt is a fugitive from the crumbling house of memory. The Hideout doesn't even fucking exist anymore! I will never return there, never pour another shot of Jameson or another draft of Bud inside those dirty, magic walls.

I don't think this is specifically what is depressing me, but it might as well be.

Or, maybe I just need to get laid. I need to try and seduce my colleague with the big blue eyes, who may or may not have been checking me out yesterday. Gaydar doesn't work on this continent, but slightly more extensive intuiting and veiled hitting-upon may become necessary.

Il faut laisser la porte de possibilité ouverte!

more inconsistent, scattered updates

I started posting early into my weekend adventure in Brest, but way too much was going on in the meantime for me to finish. Going away vibrators had to be co-purchased, sangria had to be swilled, dancing had to perhaps ill-advisedly take place and there was, as ever, the oh-so-necessaire making fun of people that were way more drunk than me WAY TOO EARLY.

I would say, 'You know who you are!' but the yous in question are not really readers of my blog, I don't believe.

Friday was excellent, I couldn't believe how long it had been since I stayed out til six. Well, I guess not since New Years, which really isn't that long ago. However, the Amsterdam memories are slightly defunct in their recollectability, perhaps because I had to delete so many pictures because I kept on forgetting to go dump them out onto a CD so I could take more. Oops. Perhaps it was because I was constantly high for six days. Example: did I go to the Van Gogh museum? I think so. I doubt we could have let the chance pass us by. But...who's talking?

Ugh. I have been moody as shit lately, partly due to the fact that I started getting sick just before my big weekend and didn't really bother to not exacerbate it, ie, by avoiding alcohol, cigs, hashish or staying out all night. In fact, I gave a germy open-mouthed kiss to all these sundry little choices.

Which reminds me! I think I am about to stumble into my first friendship with a frog, who perhaps non-coincidentally may become my first consistent drug-giverer. Yay!

Oops, time to pretend I'm actually working.

updating is about to become normal again

So worry not, loyal and huge fanbase! Change is just 'round the ole corner. Today I am feeling alarmingly happy, even though I basically got up at 5:30 this morning because of the fucked up biological alarm clock that is my busted knee. Why, you may be asking yourself?

For starters, my favorite collegue - a hilarious, energetic woman that makes me realize that not all of the frogs are without passionate, imaginative, dynamic natures - saw me this morning and asked if I had anything ready.

'Sure, of course,' I said nonconvincingly.

'Are you sure?' she asked.

'Um, well, I'm just not very excited about it,' I explained.

'Oh! Well, you don't have to come this week if you don't want to. Rest, hang out, do whatever you want and we'll start again next week.'

This is why I like my school (though not specifically my students). It is so fucking CHILL that I have not once been reprimanded for my inconsistency or general laziness, in fact one could say it has been coddled as though such displays were part of my irrefutably magnetic charm!

So basically, I have two hours left in this week: one this afternoon and one tomorrow morning. That means I am done on Wednesday morning at 10 am. Huzzah! Although next week and the week after I pretty much have real, fullish schedules. But that's okay, because my work week is still one quarter the size of most working American dolts! Yay!

Here's the other hotsy totsy detail. The last two weeks in March are both three-day weekends for me, so I am going to Rennes and Toulouse, the former more certain than the latter because through five-ish degrees of separation I know a woman in Rennes who offered to host me. She seems quite charming and her husband runs an American school in Rennes, so I'm pretty much ALL about that shit. As far as Toulouse goes, we'll have to see, but I need to go SOMEWHERE to make up for the fact that my vacation was essentially a vaccuous waste of self-pity.

So on Thursday I am going to Brest again, but only after I try and finalize my social security and fill out my forms for reimbursement. I am just irrationally afraid of doing things like this, both for the adultness of such acts and also for the complete incomprehensibility/general illogic of all such French proceedings.

In other news, my hair continues to grow and grow and I am getting skinnier by the day.

Miracle of miracles! Mid-blogging, another of my colleagues comes up to me and informs me that my class tomorrow is also off, due to the fact that he will be doing a training session for come computer shit. One hour remains in my work week, and it's the group that I LOVE (because there should be one, at the very least).

Things are definitely looking up.