So Kevin left moments ago. I can't say that his departure from my apartment was a good one, since I presume he's spending tonight in a hostel (either that or he just lied to make me feel bad, and is probably going out to party and get laid. I imagine that's probably the truth), but I figured I had to write something up about it. I'm angry at him. And angry at myself. When he visited back in March, I had a shimmering glimpse of what would happen if he ever stayed with me for a long duration of time, but I wanted him to be here, so I was willing to risk it for him.

Lemmie explain.

Kevin has driven me ape-shit psycho. This month hasn't been exactly a beautiful one, and I know that I'm as much to blame for that as he is. I can't say today was the last straw, because the last straw has been building for a while now, and today my annoyance and anger at how he's acted overrode my desire to see him succeed.

I guess I'm probably breaking a rule by writing this up here, but nobody reads my site anymore and he complained about me in his site long before I wrote this anyway. I know because I checked. When he left, I broke the promise I'd made to myself before he came and started reading. I wasn't going to while he was here, but when he left I wanted to, because I hoped he had written something nasty about me which would piss me off and then justify that entry. I sortof got my wish.

I'll preface this by saying that, at the end of Octobre, he saved my ass and I owe him for it. he doesn't think I feel that way, but I do. I am appreciative of what he did for me. This entry is as much a letter to him as it is to me. He did me a favour and that was why I was able to live here another month. I guess he figured because he did that for me, that was why I let him stay with me, but that's not the case. Even if I had been totally, completely financially secure and stable I would've let him stay here, because I love him and he was one of my best friends, and I wanted him to live in New York City with me. Unfortunately, since I guess I effectively kicked him out today, I don't think I can call him that anymore.

So Kevin did me a favour, but I don't think that justifies how he acted since. Kevin is a slob. Not just a little, but I'm talking about dirty clothes on the floor, dishes unwashed, bed unmade, shit all over the apartment messy. Since I'm obsessive compulsive, that irritated me, but I would've had no problem with it (okay, maybe a little) if not for the fact that he proceeded to run around my apartment acting as if I should clean up after him. I know he's an only child and he's lived with his parents forever, and I presume she DID clean up after him, but I'm not his mother and if he's planning on living with other peoeople who don't know him and don't care about his well being any more than, "Are you going to be able to make rent this month?" he needs to realise that he can't act like this.

But I maintain that he has not treated me like a friend since he's been here. And it's hurt me more than I think he realises.

I guess the first time I really lost it was Thanksgiving. C.S. was coming over to spend some time with me, because I had no Thanksgiving and he didn't want me to be alone the entire time. Kevin had gotten back from work- doing a temp job that, I should state, he got through not only my agency, but my agent- a little bit before, and since he had no minutes on his phone, I said he could use my cell to call his parents long distance. However, C.S. was on his way and I told Kevin specifically not to stay on long, because I needed it back in time to answer when C.S. arrived at my door. I had no doorbell, so without the phone he'd be waiting downstairs forever.

Kevin, in an act of nothing more than absolute disregard for not only me but C.S. as well, not only stayed on the phone for nearly fourty-five minutes, but ignored all of my other calls. C.S. called at least three times and sent me a text message before I vaguely managed to hear him downstairs calling to my window in the cold and rain. He'd been out there about fifteen minutes. I was livid.

So after opening the door and letting him in, I stormed into my room where Kevin had once again demolished the bed that I've made up diligently every day, only to have him completely mess up by the simple act of sitting and proceeded to scream at him. It was the phone, yes, but it was also because I've had to wash his dishes nearly every day since he's been here. It's because I've cooked for him nearly every day he's been here, and then hear him when he gets home from work demanding to be fed. It's not that I wanted gratitude, because I wanted him to be happy, and I wanted him to enjoy being in New York, because I wanted to see him succeed here. But I did not want to be treated like his butler, and that's exactly the way he's acted. He says he didn't, that he never thought of me that way, but his actions obviously did.

So apparently in screaming at him to get off of my phone (and it's not about the free minutes, Kevin, it's about how you rudely ignored C.S. and left my friend standing out in the rain without a single thought about anything by yourself) his mother heard me and started telling him that he needed to get out of my house because I was psycho.

I didn't discover this until Friday, when I was walking along the street with him, carrying his dirty clothes to the laundromat where I was going to use my quarters and my detergent to wash his underwear. In the course of our walk he dropped that comment as if it was casual as fuck. It made me even angrier. Obviously, he didn't explain to his mother why I was yelling at him, or why it was rude for him to be ignoring my phonecalls on my phone which I was letting him use. Nor did he tell her about how I've cooked for him, and cleaned the dishes that he'd otherwise leave on the floor, straightened and cleaned up after him, defended how he's been acting to my roommates who all wanted him to leave after the first week, nor how I got him in touch with my temp agency so he could have some sort of income instead of wasting his money, or how I helped him find apartments, and let him use my phoneline and my computer and my internet access- for which he repayed me by spending hours looking up tricks on gay.com when he should've been sending out resumes. The list goes on and on and the more I type the more I become bitterly angry about the whole thing.

He used me, plain and fucking simple, and then when I got angry about it, he called me psycho.

A while back, when I noticed he was becoming stressed about finding an apartment, I told him if he needed to he was welcome to stay here a little while longer until something turned up. This was despite the fact that my roommates didn't want him here, because they'd seen how he was just spending hours on the computer in chatrooms, and despite the fact that I'd started taking credit for the messes he'd made so that they wouldn't have any more reason to begrudge him. I haven't told him any of this stuff, and as far as I know they didn't mention it to him because I told them not to.

Anyway, after the way he grossly mistreated every nice thing I've done for him and taken it far beyond the point of advantage, I made up my mind. If he didn't have something by Novembre 30, he had a short amount of time to scurry up an apartment, or a plane ticket back to California. I was tired of his behaviour, and it was unfair of him to put me through it anymore. Lucky for him he found something, but since he wasn't going to be able to move in until tomorrow, I was still willing to let him stay here until he could leave securely.

That was until today, though.

This morning, around 9 AM, I went to clean the kitchen of what was mostly his doing. Two of my roommates had been out of town for Thanksgiving, and I knew if they had to clean the apartment when they got back, even though they hadn't been here all week, they'd be angry. So I did it for them, and for Kevin- who still acts as if it was nothing and I shouldn't gripe because I should be his maid- so there would be no problem later on. Since I was up until extremely early in the morning I was very tired when I was woken up at noon by Kevin, telling me that one of my roommates wanted me to clear out the dish drainer of the dishes I'd washed this morning so that she could wipe up the counter. Initially I was upset with her because she knows what my sleeping schedule is, but once Kevin had ran off- where, I don't know- she told me that she'd asked him to do it and she was astounded that he got me up instead. And so was I.

So I went back to sleep, angry about him and stressed about the upcoming hearing I'm going to have to deal with. He called me around 2 or so to ask me to open the door for him. I had gone with Kevin the day he arrived to make a key for him so that he'd be able to come in and out as he wanted. He lost that key early on when he spent the entire night out getting trashed with a boy he met online, and since then I've had to schedule my life around whatever he's doing so that he won't be left outside, like how he left C.S. waiting thursday.

So when he got home, since I was still angry, I got particularily annoyed when he turned on a light that he really didn't need, since it was daylight and the house was full of illumination and he's not paying for the electricity bill, or the cable bill (though he'd comandeered the television and the fast modem for my computer), or the phone bill (though he used it freely as if he was) and ran off to do other things.

I told him, "You know, since you're not paying any bills, I'd appreciate it if you'd turn off a light when you're done with it." I had attitude, I know, because I was pissed. And it really wasn't about the light. I guess maybe the light was the Last Straw.

"What light? What're you talking about."

"This one which you don't need on. And so you're aware of it, D didn't ask me to clear out the dishes this morning, she asked one of us to do it, and since I was asleep and you haven't washed any of them since you've been here, the polite thing would have been for you to do it instead of waking me up."

I don't remember what he said next, just that it was flippiant and displayed his total selfishness, because he has only thought about himself this entire month, not me or the four other people who live here too. We started yelling at one another. I took his things out of my room and put them into the hall, I told him if he wasn't moving in to his apartment tonight, he could sleep on the couch in the living room, because I wasn't sharing a bed with him another night. I locked my door and we stopped talking. And that was that. He left soon after, muttering "I won't sleep on a fucking couch," and I imagine that's the last of him.

Which hurts me. Because, whether he believes this or not, I didn't do any of that because of what he did for me. I didn't let him stay here because I felt I owed him, I didn't cook for him and wash his clothes and everything because I felt I owed him, I did it because I wanted him to succeed, because my move to New York City had been so difficult, and he's come in nearly the same circumstances. But I've tried extremely hard to buffer him as much as possible so that it wouldn't be so hard, and for that what did I get? His parents think I'm psychotic and I yell at him for no reason. He spends hours on my computer looking for sex. It's rude. It's trashy.

So I guess, then, that this is goodbye. I want you to live here, Kevin, and I want you to be happy here. I don't want you to have to get by or suffer through hunger and depression and having no money and no job and no apartment the way I did. I want you to succeed, I truly do, no matter what. But I don't think you're going to be able to, not unless you take my advice seriously and don't read this as me bitching about you. If you don't stop treating people the way you have been, you're going to fail. And you've lost my support now. Maybe gay.com will provide you with some place to stay and some work, I dunno. But unless you grow up, you're just going to get by. You're not going to thrive. And I'd rather see you thrive here.

I still love you, kid. No matter what. Maybe someday soon you'll be able to call me up or write me an email, and we'll go get coffee at some diner like I told you I hoped we would when you first got here, because I still need my Sex and the City posse. I hope so. I hope you don't leave in a month. And I hope that one day we can be friends again. But not right now, because right now I'm still hurt and angry with you.

But someday I'd like to hear from you again. Good luck Kevin. I mean that.

Love, Josh

30 November 2003 at 6:23 pm | No Comments »
proselytizing

Ah, but now everything is completely fixed. Now, if someone wants to make me a layout for the main domain?

30 November 2003 at 8:47 am | No Comments »
the daily things

So, I forgot to mention this, I think, but my birthday was just short weeks ago. I'm now officially nineteen now, no longer "barely legal," but quickly working my way towards obesity and senility. It was weird, because the prospect of going from eighteen to nineteen terrified me far more than seventeen to eighteen, even though that was supposedly a bigger experience.

I've made discoveries about myself lately. I guess that's not the right word. Gradually, I've been putting pieces and parts together, and slowly I've been working towards some sort of answer about my personality. A lot of this has been about Kevin staying here the past month. He was one of my best friends before, but- perhaps because of the stress that I've been under, and his own problems with moving here- we've fought constantly since he's been staying in my room.

But it's not just him. C.S. and I fought too, though not the same way that I've fought with some of my boyfriends.

I've spent so much time running. Like my little italian man said, I've been trying to escape something in my past. I know pieces of it. Kent's death. How do you deal with something like that? I've spent so much time convincing myself that I'm all right and over it, and I think now that I'm not and I never was, that I'm not "strong," and I am not "surviving," but I'm in denial. I've been running away from losing him.

Then there's the other things, the dark parts that I still don't understand, but sometimes a snippet of a conversation overheard in a restaurant or a picture flashing by me on the subway will trigger a memory, and I'll sit for several minutes trying to trace it backwards down the pathway that it found me on, but it never works. The ground always disappears and I fall back into the present.

I have lost many people. I told C.S., with much pride, that I have no problem burning bridges. If I need something from someone and they won't provide it, then I will get it another way. And that's another subject. Need. People don't look like faces to me anymore. They look like obstacles or means. I remember when I used to care, when I couldn't stand in a crowd because the feelings of those around me would wash into me so violently that I couldn't take it. So I started avoiding them.

I've spent so much time running that I've gotten lost and don't really remember what was so scary. I've spent so much time trying to protect my feelings that I think I've lost the ability to feel alltogether.

I don't know what the point of this entry was. It hasn't ended how I meant it to start, though.

To those of you I've lost or pushed away, just know that I'm sorry. I'm working backwards now too, trying to bring myself back towards that person I used to be, the person who was hurt but didn't let it hurt others, the person who felt. The person who loved.

I'm not brave anymore.

30 November 2003 at 5:05 am | No Comments »
introspection

As you can tell, I've moved the site once more. But, to where? The new address, 1st-flight.net, is just more than any domain, it's my domain. It was a sudden and random leap for me, but one that I'm excited over. Since it's on my mind, if anyone's looking for hosting, go ahead and throw and email to me at breakdown at 1st-flight dot net. Gimmie your current address and contact information.

That, unfortunately, is the last of my good news for the moment. At the moment I think I'm going to be okay for rent Decembre, due substantially to an incredible donation by Ryan. But that's not the bad part.

I got several letters from the NYS Department of Labour today. The jist of them would be that the bowling alley, my former job, is not pleased with the fact that I'm able to collect benefits, and they've decided to contest it all the way to the court level. I'm still waiting for information about when this hearing will be, but in the meantime my unemployment cheques have been suspended.

That having been said, you guys might notice the link back on the side for my Paypal link. Without the unemployment, and without a job, I have no income now. So if any of you are able to donate anything, it'd mean a lot for me. And uh, I'll update more. I guess.

For the moment, that's it. There're still a lot of quirks in the site at the moment, but I can't fix them until I get my old files back. So, keep me in your thoughts. I love you guys.

30 November 2003 at 2:36 am | No Comments »
bitching

I almost forgeteth. I shaved my head. Full on crew-cut, buzz style, military Joe here. I think it looks cute. Kevin took this picture. I like the haircut, I think it makes me look much older, but somehow I think this picture does the absolute reverse. Anyway:

But yet he still managed to capture my signature scowl. Oh….

24 November 2003 at 7:20 pm | No Comments »
shutterbugs

It is with great determination that I sit in front of my keyboard at this moment and type up this journal entry. Those of you who've been reading this site long enough are probably used to my sudden and unannounced hiatuses; I doubt however that there are many of you left.

So, since I can't remember what I wrote last and I don't care enough to check, I'll reiterate the brief history of what's transpired since then. Towards the beginning of Octobre I left my horrible bowling-alley job to begin a new one as a receptionist at a non-profit art gallery in busy. I was very excited about this, because it would mean more pay and less attitude, but as soon as I quit my job, the art gallery fucked me over by revoking their job offer, leaving me unemployed.

Not to be trampled upon, I promptly called forth the fires of hell and smote them. You might've heard about it on New York 1.

So, the next step was to make money, which I did by going through the long process of applying for unemployment (which I miraculously got, even though the bowling alley decided to distort the truth and contest it) and reactivating my account with my temp agency. I quickly got a temporary job which I worked at for the next three weeks, then Kevin announced he was moving in with me, and oh, he did, and then the temporary job ended, I got my cheques, and now I am once again searching for work.

Somewhere in all of that I turned 19, C.S. and I decided that much as we care about each other, the needs we had when we first met were no longer the needs we have now and quietely seperated, I got a new cell phone and a computer desk, and I realised that while I am a big slut, I'm not as big of one as I first thought.

So now I think I'm up to date.

My birthday was nice. I went over to C.S.' house and he and his sister and neice threw me a nice party, one of the few I've ever had. They even got me cake.

Uh, there's probably more I should write but I made it a goal to update today and I did, so I have achieved something, even if it makes me no money, but what can you do but pray, eh?

24 November 2003 at 6:13 pm | No Comments »
the daily things

The big news would be that Kevin of LA Deviant fame is moving to NYC. He's going to arrive next week, and the first month of his move will be spent in my tiny-ass apartment. But he's buying me groceries, so I can't complain.

I hate the temp job. The schedule is killing me. Never before in my life have I found it so difficult to stay up all night and sleep all day, but it's impossible. I hope I find a new job soon, and one that is more reasonable. But at least I'm making some money, so I'm not utterly fucked.

That's all for the moment. I hoped that the move would jumpstart my interest in writing again. Now that I have my own computer and my own reliable internet access, maybe it will. Goodnight.

2 November 2003 at 9:58 pm | No Comments »
hear ye!