pink · milk

"...Anna felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Vronsky, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. To have him entirely to herself was a continual joy, his presence always a delight. All the traits in his character, which she learned to know better and better, were inexpressibly dear. His appearance...was as attractive to her as though she were a young girl in love for the first time. In everything he said, thought, and did, she saw something peculiarly fine and noble. The rapture he caused frequently frightened her: she tried in vain to find some imperfection in him. She dared not confess to him her own feeling of inferiority. It seemed to her that if he knew of it he might the sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing this."

--from Anna Karenin by Leo Tolstoy

SO. Guess who I just found on myspace. No, go ahead. Guess.

------------->ALBERT!!!!!<------------------
the Jew of Starkville
the *ooonly* cool person around for most of my childhood
the best friend I had for most of elementary school
the only real friend I had in middle school
this super big fuckin weirdo math genius
who is now a composition major (voice minor) at the New England Conservatory and does musical theatre at MIT and is generally an all-around stellar fella...

Yes, that Albert. That's who I found. That's something that makes me smile, the possibility of talking to Albert. I'm about to go to Portland and he lives in Boston, but hey, that's why they call it "traveling," huh? Plus I've got tons of family out on that coast so it probably wouldn't be too hard to score a bus ticket or something...I *looove* Albert. Albert loved me when I was fat and unpopular and stuck up (...now, I am thin.) and he is an awesome guy. This makes me happier than anything else could because I don't have any better friends than that. Like, I am as fond of Albert as I was of David back when I thought David was really ugly.

I wonder if I will ever be able to hang out and have fun for a night and really just be having fun and be thinking in the present moment, or if I will always just be pretending to have fun while thinking about how much I miss being with David and trying not to cry in front of people. I don't have any sort of timeline for how long I'm supposed to not be able to help crying in public, which doesn't happen as much as it used to but it still happens probably once a day. I keep hoping a bus will hit me or something...no such luck yet, but today I'll be trying to venture out of Fitchburg, so let's cross our fingers...

Hey guys, wanna know how much of a loser I am? I have a Myspace now. THAT IS HOW MUCH OF A LOSER...anyway, I justify this computer addiction with the fact that I'm leaving town in like a week, so I'm bingeing out on the Internet, getting my fix and then some before going cold turkey... (My myspace name is captaingalactos. You can go and, like, read a list of my favorite books I could think of.)

My family is back in town today, hooray. I hope Clairie got Albert's contact info while she was in Starkville. Yesterday me and Sars tried having a yard sale, but no one came, and I was like "fuck this", because I never wanted to have a yard sale to begin with. Do you really think that's something I would suggest? In *trash season*?? I was quite reluctant but she convinced me, and of course it's a stupid failure and then she's like "Well I have to work tomorrow but my mom said she would help you set up so you can do this again over the weekend" and I am like "No, thank you." I'm going to try and sell my real cute clothes and cute, worthwhile shit to Helen, and then anything else I'm going to just donate or something. Yard sales. Are you fucking kidding.

I am out of pain pills (EEK), and tonite I am supposed to go to Helen's because her folx are out of town, but I want to get some drogas beforehand...(I really like using that term, I first learned it because we were in a "protest" type class and on the first day everyone had to write down on the same sheet of paper one example of how they "protested" things, you know, in their life, and Dave wrote "by takin drugs, or drogas" and I thought it was very cute.) I have not smoked any cigarettes today, and I haven't really been smoking much at all since getting my teeth out (I smoked half a bowl of pot yesterday. Serioiusly. With Sarah.)...in theory I can inhale again soon without fear of drying my sockets, but they might already *be* dry is the thing, but I don't want to risk it so I've been putting cigarettes in my nose, which is gross and everything but you actually get used to it surprisingly fast. I tried smoking pot thru my nose and it was way too hot, which I should have known, so people have had to shotgun me and Sarah and Helen both suck at it. I haven't seen Lil since getting the surgery, and of course I don't have my regular caretaker anymore to make sure that all my drug needs are met...

I have been drawing pornographic comics lately, as I probably mentioned, and OMG! I bought a DILDO!! I was going crazy one day and went to Woman's Touch for a cheapo vibrator, and they had sale dildos so I got a purple one with a super-powered little vibrator that goes inside it for half off. It is really not very big, compared to a real penis--it can't be more than 6 inches long and 1 1/2 wide, I know I put it all the way in my mouth when I got it home just to make absolutely sure that it was, you know, a lot smaller than Dave's--but it HURTS! GOD it hurts! And I can't even get it all the way IN, I can only get like, 4 inches of it...this is WITH lube and WITH a vibrator inside it...so my genitals have shrunk in the past 2 months. I mean, I guess it makes sense--I was always really little, Dave said I was unbelievably tight the first time we fucked and this is after I'd been fucking Cyrus for a year so I never really got stretched out, and I haven't had any sex in more than 2 months--which is longer than I've gone without fucking since I *started.* That's why I needed to buy a dildo, y'know. And I'm not going to fuck any boys in the forseeable future at all, but knowing how little itty bitty I am makes me even more reluctant to. It's going to take awhile, but eventually I will find some boy who I finally decide is deserving of my freakishly awesome pussy, and his mind will be BLOWN when he finally gets there. (It's weird to think about finding a guy who "deserves" me--this has never been a factor for me before. I was usually turned on by guys who I really didn't feel deserved me, like Smerfo, but then the whole Dave thing just was so different and changed all my perceptions about sex and relationships and all that stuff. I just feel like if I fuck a guy who doesn't deserve to fuck me then it's like spitting on David's grave, you know? Like, debasing his most precious possession. He treated me like a goddess, like my body was the most important and valuable thing in existence, and so I feel like in his absence it would be disrespectful of me to allow anyone who's not going to show the proper respect to even touch what I still consider to be David's property.)

I dunno. Thinking about sex is really complicated for me right now. And I'm a scorpio, you know, and most of my power and most of my magic lies in the realm of the sexual, and I've got a super fucking high sex drive, so I think about it a LOT, which makes it even more complicated. I drew a really cute pornographic comic last nite, it's only 6 panels and it's just straightforward kissing and fucking and it's not even explicit (you see like, one tit), and it's not a long story about a hypothetical blowjob (which is what my other pornographic comix were turning out to be).

SPEAKING OF PORNOGRAPHIC COMIC BOOKS: CLAIRE: You should really try to get the new Alan Moore when it comes out, Lost Girls. It's about Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, and Wendy from Peter Pan. And it's pornography. And the woman who illustrated it, he first learned of her art cos she worked with S Clay Wilson & Spain Rodriguez in the 60s, and during the like, 15 years they were working on this comic together they became engaged. Doesn't that sound fuckin' cool? I know you may not be as into porn as I am, but GOD, doesn't that sound FUCKIN COOL.

Yes, yes it does.

Well. I'm in Fitchburg at my aunt's house. She is a social worker for disabled adults, and she is obsessed with Disneyworld, and she is very fat. Between those 3 facts I think is enough information to get a pretty good idea of her personality. She talks all the time and it's hard to not feel condescended to, and she doesn't really listen very well at all even though she always thinks she is being very supportive and giving good emotional advice and everything, she gives weird Hallmark-type advice which doesn't really make sense to me emotionally at all. And she does not listen when I am trying to actually talk to her and without meaning to she interrupts me or laughs at me when I am talking about Dave and on the verge of tears, so in general she is an annoying woman. Her house is super luxurious tho.

Last nite I went to Milwaukee to check out Helen's new place, with Manny and Will Coggin and this kid named Bill from West who draws pictures. I learned how to play euchre, and aside from that it was not very fun at all, but Helen's apartment is really cute and so is the neighborhood in which it's located. Today I had a fucking miserable day wandering around downtown carrying all my overnight shit because I had a tooth appointment as soon as we got back to Madison so I didn't have a ride back out here to Fitchburg, and Lil wasn't home and I didn't have 50cents to use a phone...then I went out to dinner with my aunt and some of the people she supports and the people at the next table had annoying little kids, and of course my aunt was trying to just be nice to the kids and then realized that their mom was really her old friend from highschool or something...I hate little kids in restaurants, it is one of my biggest pet peeves. (Another one is when they put salt on your broccolli. I did not have good luck at this restaurant.)

(note to the queasy, or those who just would rather not have any mental images of David Melton's penis today: best not read the next paragraph. You've been fairly warned.)

I have been drawing lately...mostly mini-comix, and for the most part, pornographic. This is at once very therapeutic, nostalgic, erotic, thrilling and unbearably sad--it goes without saying that the only sexual situations my mind can picture are, of course, me & David, but the really weird thing is I can't really picture most sexual situations that we would actually commonly find ourselves in...like I can't really picture fucking, or him eating me out, which were definitely the most frequent activities...me giving him head is a FAR DISTANT third, as I probably did that less than once a week (he would give me head probably an average of like, one and a half times a day), but that's the only thing I can really explicitly picture: blowjobs. I did spend a lot more time than usual doing that on the last nite we spent together, and I guess it makes sense that I would get obsessed with the act of, you know, submitting myself to pleasure him...but that's still weird, that I can only get off fantasizing about sucking dick. I've never been one of those girls who is all "into" sucking dick, in fact I usually would avoid it as much as possible...Dave was the first guy I ever did it to without being asked first, and even with him it was more of a "special occasions, this really hurts my neck" type thing. I mean, I guess it was sort of fun while I was doing it, but that was mostly because of how cute he was and the noises he would make and the tiny little gasping, breathy voice he'd use to say "oh God oh God oh God, Hannah, you're the queen." And it was mostly a foreplay thing anyway, like I usually would spend more time kissing his thighs and licking that area between his balls and his asshole (he let me shave that area--I begged him to, so I could lick it and not get hair all up in my grill). For the most part he wouldn't even let me do it for more than a few seconds--he would pull me up by my ears and be like "If you keep doing that I'm just gonna come right away, and I want to FUCK." (So mostly I did it at the beginning--just a few seconds to make sure everything was all hard and slippery and everything--but sometimes I would do it at the end too, cos y'know, he would always pull out so as to not impregnate me, and sometimes while we're fucking he would whisper in my ear "can I come in your mouth?" and I still don't quite understand why that turned me on so much. I hated that he always had to finish by jerking off, after he'd just made me come about ten times harder than I could if I was masturbating, and I couldn't ever convince him to just come in me unless I was on my period, so finishing him off with my mouth made me feel like I was doing a better job of pleasing the person I loved, you know? That's a bigger turn-on than anything.) ...We were so compatible, it's almost unbelievable. We were so comfortable together, we were never awkward or embarrassed, we were never grossed out by, you know, me licking the pussy juice off his dick and then him kissing me, or anything else like that...we were just totally in love, and we had awesome sex, and we knew that what we had was really special and beautiful and so we embraced all the smells, juices, squelching noises, and other harmless and ultimately endearing aspects of sex that some people seem to find so distasteful.

God, David, I miss you. The other night I started crying just because it occurred to me--I was looking in a mirror, and I've lost a bunch of weight and my hair's growing out longer than it's been in awhile, and all around I don't look too bad--but it occurred to me, you know, I may or may not look "better" than I did, say, five months ago, but I used to be the most beautiful girl in the world, and now I'm not. That's such a stark, sad realization: I used to be the most beautiful girl in the world, and now I'm not. I used to be the only girl who mattered, in David's world, and now I'm not the only or the most of anything--I'm not that special in anyone else's world. I guess what makes me sad is not the idea that nobody thinks I'm amazingly beautiful--it's that the *world* in which I was the most special girl is no longer a world I can be in. I think that must be a good way to phrase how I'm feeling because re-reading that last sentence just made me start crying again.

WELL.
Yeah, so another person from my highschool is dead, in fact someone who I had some pretty big beef with. (I was on OK terms with him actually up until David died, at which point I was like "Fuck you, scumbag--you never apologized to Dave and you can't even say "sorry" to *me* when you see me afterwards, and "sorry" is all ANYONE said, and you were like, the only person who actually had anything to apologize for. So fuck you, asshole." This was my attitude towards the recently deceased.) So in a perverse sort of way I feel vindicated because he hung himself, which to me spells GUILTY. It doesn't matter tho. I'm sure a lot of people thought Dave was a scumbag.
I'm gonna call his girlfriend and try to talk to her or something. I don't know her well or anything, and Helen pointed out that she never said a word to either of us after Dave, but Helen goes "But we're being the bigger people, right, by approaching her." That honestly never occurred to me until she said it, but whatever. We are the bigger people. And I feel like a shit saying something like this, but I disliked this kid WAY more than I disliked Tim, and so while his death doesn't bring back Richard or Sandy or Jason or David, it does remind me that it's not *only* the cool ones who go too soon.

I know I sound like a fucking scumbag, talking that way about someone who just hung himself on like, Saturday nite. Maybe sometime I'll fill you in on the whole story...long story short, this (dead)kid robs one of my good, good friends, steals all his drugs and starts a fight with him so *everyone* gets kicked out of the house, incl. me + Dave, who can't go back to Dave's folx' house that late so we spend the nite with Deadkid, who gives us some drugs after we get back to his house and learn that he's just, like, robbed *my* good friend. Next day, Deadkid wakes up and is accused of stealing all these drugs, and all these stolen drugs are at his house, and so his first thought is: Let's blame this on David Melton. He robs houses, right? He's known for doing this kind of stuff, right? (Wrong. David sure did rob some houses, but not the houses of *my* good friends, and he sure as FUCK didn't steal a bunch of drugs just so he could leave them all with some dumbass.) So Deadkid assembles something resembling a "posse" and shows up right on Dave's parents' front door, and I'm yelling "What the fuck does this have to do with *alllll* you guys?" (Helen & Sean Ott were there--this is actually the main reason I had beef with Helen for so long--as well as that little Katie bitch, and Anna Hudek, and 'Vash'--best friend of both the robbed one and Deadkid.) And Sean Ott goes "Well you robbed our *friend*." at which point I, flabbergasted, am more like, "YOUR FRIEND?? What, did you meet this kid once, last week?? I've been good friends with this kid as long as I have been with QUINCY." And talking about it more to Helen, I don't know if Deadkid ever even mentioned that 90% of the drugs were at his house...anyway, that still stands out in my mind as the shadiest thing I've *ever* personally witnessed *anyone* doing (keep in mind, I dated Smerf for almost a year, and David for 2, so I KNOW from shady). Then Deadkid has the nerve to call me and David "the two shadiest kids around" or something like that, and I wanted to shoot him in the face. You see, *I* am *not* someone who robs houses, *period*, and on the one occasion I did steal something from someone's house, I admitted to it the next morning as soon as they asked, and I really kindof resent being called shady. (That's one of the reasons it took so long for me & Dave to officially start "going out"--I really for a long time just didn't want to be thought of as "David Melton's girlfriend.") Drug-addicted, stuck-up, dysfunctional, rude, dirty, selfish, self-righteous--these things I will admit to being, no problem. But I really don't think I am shady. I mean, I would invite me over drunk.

Anyway, so the shadiest person I've ever witnessed, who was also very obviously an extremely fucked-in-the-head type of kid, has killed himself. That's the closest real suicide I've ever known, now that I think about it. Dave's not petty enough to be sitting wherever he is and laughing, but I bet the two of them are splitting a bottle of OT in the afterlife and the kid's going "Man, sorry about that shit, man, at Joel's house that one time" and Dave's going "Don't even worry about it, dude."

WELL. In other news, yesterday was the official last day of our lease, but I had my wisdom teeth out at 8:45 in the morning so officially I am gone from that house and will never return. Moving out made me cry a pretty good deal, just seeing the place all empty and looking the way it looked when I first saw it, or when I first showed it to David. It was a great apartment to live in, and I picked it out for me and David, and we had some of the worst fights ever and pulled out chunks of each other's hair and strangled each other and threw each other across the room, and we made some of the most fabulous love ever and yelled so loud the upstairs neighbor would actually *leave* and tried things neither of us had ever tried and both came at exactly the same time. And, it goes without saying, we ingested truly heroic quantities of drugs on a fairly regular basis in that house, and at least once each had to punch each other in the face and throw each other under the cold shower to get the other one breathing again. I miss him every single second of every day.

They gave my Vicoprofen for my teeth, and of course the first bottle is gone this morning, and after I eat these next 10 I have to go meet with the doctor before I can get more, which is just as well because I can talk to him about how ibuprofen really doesn't affect me hardly at all, even when I eat the 1000mg prescription ones, so he should really just take "I'm allergic to tylenol" as "I could really use some pain pills that are JUST PAIN PILLS, without extra shit in them like ibuprofen or tylenol." I've been sleeping at Sars' folx' these past 2 nites, and she's been shotgunning me hits of weed and I've been smoking cigarettes out of my nose, which is kidnof uncomfortable/hurting but not bad enough for me to, you know, not smoke cigarettes for a day or 2.

AND IN THE LAST IMPORTANT NEWS...the day before I moved out I got a phone call from my second-favorite highschool friend (second after David, obviously--so my favorite *living* highschool friend), BUNNYGUTS...we talked on the phone for about 2 hours at least, and she was in a hotel room in Seattle being strung out and waiting to get Suboxone again, and she wants me to meet her in Portland, which I desperately want to do. So once my teeth are mostly recovered, that's where I'll be bussing, and GOD I hope I don't have any difficulty in meeting up with her. Even if seeing her & George all lovey together makes me sad, at least I'll have Stella to cuddle at nite...and while I love Quinn, I really don't see us trying to travel together and staying friends. I already get sick of him after a day and a half. And he loves to hang out with crackheads and take cocaine. Charlotte loves to hang out with psycho gutterpunks and trainhoppers, and shoot heroin, which sounds like....the slightly more appealing option of the 2. (I told Lil about talking to her and wanting to meet up with her and he's like "You know, you'll be strung out too if you're traveling with her" and I'm like "Well yeah, probably, but it'll beat smoking crack with Quinn all the time. I mean at least I'll enjoy my high.")

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I went to see the Masters of American Comix exhibit at the Milwaukee museum with Helen and it was pretty cool. It's up til August 13 and only costs $10 if you have any kind of student ID at all, or $14 if you don't. I would recommend it, but it's small. They have some awesome things in the gift shop tho, mostly stuff I would've bought for Dave if he was still alive. So a bus ticket to Milwaukee, last I checked, is $22 round trip...if you can get a ride or afford to take the bus, go check out some original Eisners and McCays.

I. am. so. sad.

I don't know what to do! I am getting my wisdom teeth out on the 31st so I need to stay in town at least a week after that. I don't know if Quinn will want to wait that long but if he doesn't then I will just take a bus to Arcata by myself and hopefully eventually see Charlotte on the west coast, and otherwise just make a bunch of new dirty friends. But until then, i don't know what to do with myself. Every day is excruciatingly tough, and Sarah is never around, but she had the great inspiration to move all "her stuff" (that is--my kitchen stuff, the TV, VCR, DVD player, and ALL the furniture, but of course not a single item of her fucking clothing) out of the house, so it's just messy but I can't make any food and there's no food anyway and there's absoutely nothing to do, and we found out our landlord was lying about the air conditioner...so my house is really un-fun to be at, and I'm really hurt/pissed at Sarah. And her boyfriend is a fucking SHIT. I can't believe all the shit she would say to me about how I "deserve someone who treats me better" than David. David sure as fuck never showed up drunk at our house at four in the fucking morning expecting to smoke my pot. (The fact that it was my pot is only actually relevant because it was Sarah's boyfriend who actually did that--because if Dave *had* shown up at 4am, Sarah would've been at work, and me and Dave were pretty communal about pot, so it wouldn't have been a big deal at all. Somehow tho, when it's Mike, I get pretty fuckin salty.)

Dylan's out of prison. Hooray. He has to go back in a month and a half. He was in for no reason--just because they made a mistake, and were trying to send him to a group that doesn't actually start til September. So he missed his last chance to hang out with his best friend, as well as said friend's funeral etc., for the sake of an error on the part of the "justice" system. He's under supervision, he's got the ankle bracelet making sure he's in his place by 7pm every nite, he gets breathalyzed every day and randomly piss-tested every 4 or 5 days. It's damn good to see him. He's imploring me & Helen to find him a woman. I don't know how much help I can be in that respect.

So...yeah. I'm at my parents' house right now and I don't know what to do with myself. I feel horrible all the time and I am angry at everyone and ALL. I. WANT. IS. DAVID.

I got to see Semilla's baby today, Anandi. I'm not into babies but she was really cute and very aware & smart. She's 2 months old--born 4 days before Dave died.

Yeah, so instead of thinking about the poor homeless or ghetto youth out there in the desert slaughtering innocents in the name of the Bush regime's bankroll...let's celebrate everyone who's actually *defending our freedom*, by which I mean, you know, shooting cops, robbing banks, getting high, etc. If David were here he'd know what I'm talking about.

That's a really common thread in my thoughts these days: "If David were here..."
I still obviously don't have anyone who I'm anywhere near as close to as I was to him. I've been trying to rebuild some sort of social circle around myself, and since the funeral I've rekindled my friendship with Quincy (somewhat) and actually made friends with Helen (which is weird...I haven't decided yet whether or not she's actually *cool*, you know, in the strict sense...but damn, she's so fuckin nice, I don't know if coolness even matters that much at this point...and anyway it's not like she's nearly as UN-cool as a lot of other people). Oh yeah, and I don't know if I mentioned this but me and Charlotte are friends again, but she's not in town anymore and she owes me $20.

I'm trying to work out all the really horrible grief thru art. I'm working on a masterpiece of illustrated semiautobiography, my magnum opus, the comic that will put my name in the history books (or at least, one day you'll see me mentioned in a back issue of the Comics Journal)...I've been working on it since 2 weeks after he died (that equals about a month of work) and I have maybe 2/3 of the first page finished, and by finished I don't mean finished with ink.

I'm supposedly going to start apprenticing at this tattoo place in Portage, but so far that's had all these complications, so I'm not sure if that's really going to happen...in a way I really hope so, I mean I would love to get licensed as a tattoo artist, but that would be the only thing keeping me here, so if it doesn't work out I can skip out of town with no strings attatched. Quinn is getting on my fuckin nerves but...whatever, if I avoid hanging out with him till we leave, I'm sure we can meet some more folx in the woods.

Yeah, so...I don't know, I feel like a totally different person in a lot of ways...I mean, me and Dave were each other's whole worlds, you know, and now...my whole world...poof, and now...I don't belong to anyone. There's not a soul out there who really knows me that well or would know what I was thinking the way Dave did.

The love of my life is dead.

RIP, David Melton, the Awesomest, Galactic Hyper-Intelligent Freedom Fighter

11/12/86 - 5/24/06

There's nothing else to say. There's nothing else of note. Nothing else has been on my mind. I've just been, you know, crying.

I love you, Dave. You will always be the stars in my sky.