Can This Shit Get Any Stranger? The answer is YES.

mood at time of entry: I can’t even remember at this point, but I am going to go with weirded out and tired.

Note: Yeah, this is old. That should you let you know just how long I have been meaning to get around to the site. Guh. And I still need to get the entry that goes after this one.

So I went to the Gym Class Heroes show that I was looking forward to for more than a month now. It wasn’t all a bad experience, but I can’t help thinking about the overall picture in my life at the moment. This is especially true, since there were at least three entries that I needed to get out somewhere since last week, but I never let them out. I just bottled it all in and let it brew; let it feed on itself until I just felt sick.

I mean, it’s not all bad, but I’m still thinking about the fact that that I need another job and I think that the one I was going to apply for but thought I had missed out on just might be for me. True, I don’t want to smell hotdogs or any more food than I already do all day, but it’s a second paycheck and the staff there get paid every week. It’s not much, but it’d give me spending money and allow me to finally start saving up for the things that I want and need. I want and need a new computer. I don’t even want a ridiculously expensive one either, I am thinking of something that has more memory to save things on than I currently have and only cost a few hundred dollars. I could do that.

I also need to finally get my driver’s license. Will you believe that at 21, I never got one? It’s true. I never really needed one up until the last couple of years. And then, I was too broke to pay for classes and whatnot. Yeah, I know that you don’t need to take the classes to get a license, but I’d feel better if I had classes to attend and ease me into driving all over. Just being a passenger on the freeway and on some of the streets here terrify me. If you saw all of the close calls, wrecks, red light runs, and big rig truck accidents that happen here/that I’ve seen, you would be, too.

There are also the last of the medical bills to take care of. I’ve hardly put a dent in the largest one, but I haven’t forgotten about it. I’m just broke. Literally. Just this past week, I got all of about two seconds to cheer about the good paycheck I got, before I withdrew every penny, bought a money order, and then paid my rent. At this point, I am just trying to figure out food and bus fare for a week’s time until I get paid again next Friday (April 13, 2007).

I think that I’ll just squeeze by, but still. It’s stressful as hell to have to face this same stuff day in and day out. And things aren’t getting any better overall, it seems. Some things have changed, like the fact that I can take care of stuff when I need to, but it’s just tiring me out to work so many hours and still not have enough money to completely take of all of my bills in one swoop. I mean, we’re makin’ it, but still.

If that’s not enough of a legitimate reason to be bogged down, there’s all kinds of weird shit jumping out at me from all corners. Okay, so we all know that I don’t have the best track record with relationships, because it’s only been the sickos and perverts and fuckin’ worthless guys that are attracted to me. I mean, even the ones that seem okay are fuckin’ worthless and end up being a waste of my time, because they never want to take the time to get to know me. They can’t give me what I need and just looking at all of the men that I know, friends or not, I simply don’t see how people make a go of it.

So out of nowhere from my list of men past, Justin with the Transsexual Clause pops up at my neighborhood IHOP. No kidding. He just shows up in the parking lot and called my name as I walked across it to go home. It wasn’t even another case of Scary Ex Disease, he just happened to work there, and we hadn’t seen each other in the month or so that he’d been there. But the odds of us running into one another were pretty damn high, since I walk across that parking lot all the time, pretty much every day that the Internet is open. If I have time that day, that is.

So we caught up and I got the vibe from his enthusiasm at seeing me again, which completely out stripped my own, that he was trying to work his way back in. It freaked me out, because even though things weren’t all bad between us when we dated three years ago, it was like dating a kid and there were his issues to deal with. I can barely keep up with my own issues, then and now, so how am I am to make these things work with someone else’s? We didn’t last long, so that’s what I was a little surprised to find out that I had made that big an impact in his life. I never think of myself as someone that’s made a huge impact on anyone’s life, which is why I am always sure that I could just leave or disappear for whatever reason and I wouldn’t be missed all that much.

But apparently, I was missed and the person who’s missed me loads was just right there, waiting to be found in IHOP. It kind of sucked that he was bouncing all over me, because I met his friend Jonathan, who’s a bootlegger. I saw him and thought, “Damn,” because he was rather good-looking. Cute. Yeah, just damned cute. He kind of resembled Travis from Gym Class Heroes, even though I am not hugely into Travis. Still, I have to admit that he’s an attractive guy, even though he prefers white women. But what can he say, his mother was white, but it just points to the fact that his father was a black man that preferred white women.

I guess that I can’t say too much on the subject, because most of the time I can’t see myself ultimately settling down with a black man. It seems to have gotten to a rotten situation of a stalemate of ‘I don’t want you and you don’t want me’. Just great. That’s the way to create and strengthen black families and family structures in America.

So. Jonathan.

At this point, it’s a hopeless venture, because he’s not interested and I can respect and understand that. But, I can still look when I go to visit Justin and say hello. Yeah, I know that I just threw you with that. Why would I go visit Justin, right? Well, I ended up seeing again a couple of times this week and we just talked. He told me that he has a rich girlfriend that he’s gotten pregnant. She just bought a house out of the way somewhere and he’s thinking of going to go live with her. That’s all fine and dandy, because I truly did freak out at the thought that it seemed like he expected us to just pick up where we left off three years ago. This is despite the fact that I truly did like him and I still do.

The connection that we had, the one where we could just get along and talk and laugh and simply be with one another, hasn’t seemed to have gone away, even after all of this time. It’s still there and I know that sooner or later, we’re going to end up kissing one another, even though he has a girlfriend. And you know what, I just don’t care. I don’t, because that seems to be how relationships go and neither of us seem to be able to just let that connection go, because it’s just. . . unexplainable. It just is, but I know that in the end, we still have to stick to the lives we have now. At least, I’m pretty sure that we are going to stick to the lives we have now and not completely fuck them up by chasing after each other. What we had, issues and all, was something that I don’t come across often, if ever.

This is only complicated by the fact that Justin’s gay friends like me. One’s a guy and the other’s a girl. Yeah, I know, let me explain. The thing is, there’s this guy named Lance who’s pretty flamboyant, but he swore up and down this week that he likes me. He told me how he watched me for over a year at the college in the library and that he’s practically in love with my lips and how he wants to go out on dates with me. He kept telling me that he was serious when I would just laugh while he was telling me all of the ways that he wanted to work his way into my life. I am still trying to find a nice way to tell him that that’s not going to happen, because I’m not attracted to him and he’s gay.

Okay, so he may not be waving that rainbow flag yet, but it is my sincerest belief that Lance is about as gay as they come, and he just doesn’t know it yet. Or, maybe he just hasn’t accepted the truth yet. I don’t mind being his friend, but I’m not going to waste my time being his beard. I don’t want a relationship most of the time anyway, so why would I allow myself to fall into one where it’d all be a sham?

The girl, on the other hand, is okay. I met her the first day that I saw Justin again. I joked with her about beating people up and she’s cute, she’s just got the most jacked up teeth I’ve ever seen. I mean, ever. But still, she’s cute and I don’t really mind if she likes me. She doesn’t bounce all over me the way that Justin and Lance do. I have to wonder are they on diets of pure sugar. I know that Lance’s diet includes whatever drug he’s consuming, which is yet another reason why I don’t want him. I don’t want to date people like that, because it would be too easy for me to be pulled into that world and I’ve got too much shit to do and get on with to waste my time on drugs. I’ve avoided them all through my teen years, so how much sense would it make to suddenly fall into them? It doesn’t make sense, so I’ll have to think about all of that, too.

And after all of that, I spent the night at Ronnie’s house last weekend. Ronnie is the guy I work with that I am certain at time is mentally challenged on some level, because he just gives off that vibe. Well, I was pretty comfortable in our friendship, because he hadn’t tried to hit on me at all in the four-five months that we’ve known one another. We hung out, ate junk food, watched movies all night, and then took separate showers before we went to sleep. I know that men have their mooring hello to deal with, so I was expecting him to go to the bathroom while I was sleeping and just take care of it, instead of looking at me to help him.

I can’t really tell 100% — snort — if he was looking at me for an extra hand, or whatever, but I woke up after only two hours of sleep to him rubbing my back in a way that has only led to sex in the past and him edging closer to me to hold my hand. I laid there trying to make jokes and laugh it off, all the while trying to subtly scoot away from him. No dice. So, I got up, got my stuff and hurried home. I had a legitimate excuse, because I truly did want to get home and show my family the movies that I had rented from the RedBox in our local McDonald’s, because they were due at 7 P.M. that evening.

He walked me out and most of the way to my bus stop, all the while asking me if we were okay and whether I was mad at him or not. I told that I wasn’t, but I was seriously creeped out. I could have went that way, but I had just settled into the fact that he was going to be a straight, platonic guy friend with no messy issues surrounding us. Oh. Well.

I saw him this week and he didn’t even mention the unexpected sleepover. We worked together as usual and weren’t even all that weird. I sort of expected weird, but I am glad that things did not go that route. Even so, I won’t be spending anymore nights at Ronnie’s place, because I don’t want to wake up to anymore of those backrub cuddles. At least, not from him.

After all of that special, special drama, I went to the show last night/this morning. I am still tired and achy from it as I sit here writing this long entry and listening to the Gym Class Heroes CD I ordered last week that arrived for me after I had already left for the show. I bought the tickets to see GCH, but I had already heard from some of the other people that had attended the tour on LJ that the opening bands weren’t al that bad. K.O.S. (pronounced ‘chaos’) was damned good. I danced to every song and I loved them. The rapper, P.O.S. (pronounced just as you see it) was SO much better than I thought he would be. I thought I’d end up sighing and bored while he was on stage, because I don’t really do rap music. I just don’t. It’s always bitch this and ho that and I fucked yo’ baby’s momma. You know?

But he was pretty good and I’d buy his CD. I particularly liked his one lyric that talked about how he raps, but doesn’t say ‘nigga’ in his rhymes. That just struck a cord with me, because we are called “nigger” enough without turning around and calling each other the same damned thing.

The band that I thought would be okay, RX Bandits, weren’t all that enjoyable to me. This was largely in part to their idiot fans and all of the whiny black girls that came out to the show to see Travie (Travis). You could tell that they’d never been to a rock show before, so they kept complaining when people would mosh and dance up against them. It was great to see so many other black people at this type of concert, because I am used to being one of, if not the, only black girls in the audience. Once they started complaining, my black pride wore off quickly.

The situation wasn’t helped by the stupid fangirls standing next to me that kept taking ‘We’re so hot and sexy’ pictures with their ridiculous make up and tongue rings. The glammed up black chick in the ‘We’re people of color, but we’re just posers’ duo tapped my arm and asked me if K.O.S. was Gym Class. I gave her a look that clearly said that I couldn’t believe that she had just asked me that, told her a patronizing ‘No’, and rolled my eyes at her idiocy. One, everyone around her was saying that it was K.O.S. And two, they’re the headliners, they always go on last.

Then, there were also the irritating couples, where the boyfriends would get all pissy if someone tried to jostle their girlfriends. They, too, were in the wrong place to try and say ‘Don’t push me’. They just were. So, that pissed me off and I didn’t hear most of RX Bandits’ set, but I saw the great majority of it. They looked like they put on a good show, but I didn’t really enjoy it the way that I should have, even though I clapped and screamed at all of the appropriate moments.

Then, came GCH. They took forever to come on. That really pissed me off, because I was tired, dehydrated, and needed to get on with things. This was especially true, because I had talked my way into a ride home from one of the other concertgoers for me and my brother. They ended up leaving, so I called my mom after it was all over.

Still, it took the band I was really there to see a freakin’ long time to put in an appearance, and this was after the doors opened late and the show was delayed. Hell, the Meet-and-Greet was delayed for ages for whatever reason. Some girl that had come earlier in the day told me that all of the guys were doing interviews and Travis left with cameras following him for some type of press thing. Who knows?

The show ended up being pretty good. They played songs from “As Cruel As Schoolchildren” and “The Papercut Chronicles.” I wanted to get TPC before the show, so that I’d recognize the songs, but again, no dice.

After the concert was over, I got a few autographs. I spoke to P.O.S. and told him what I thought about the ‘nigga’ bit and my brother started a trend of having the man sign people’s shoes. I had him autograph the envelope that my tickets were in and the water bottle that I caught from him. I got Steve from RX Bandits’ signature and I saw the lead singer, but I didn’t really feel like going up to him. Hell, I had Brandon go up to Steve.

We saw Travis and he said that he’d be right back to someone, so I told Brandon that we shouldn’t run after him for an autograph. That was stupid, because he was fuckin’ right there in front of us. That my third miss of the night with him. When he did an autograph for someone on stage, I didn’t get one. When he was right in front of me and started shaking everyone’s hands, he missed mine. I don’t think I’ve felt as stupid as I did for missing him that last time as I’d felt in a while. I was just so mad at myself.

I did end up getting Matt’s autograph and the chance to talk to him for a few minutes after the show. I told him that I bought the ‘Free Matt’ shirt to help him pay on the bail the band had to pay to get him out of Mexican jail after they had gotten drunk and he had mistakingly wandered into some guy’s house and fallen asleep. This was back when I had money, so stop thinking, “That’s exactly why you’re broke!” Heh.

He said that it helped and thanked me. When me, him, Brandon, and two other fans got down to the bottom of the scary, outside stairs of the venue, there was a man selling his last pizzas of the night for $5 for a whole large. Brandon had mostly paid me back for the shoes that I bought for him this week, so I told the pizza guy I’d get one. Matt said that he wanted one, too, but that his money was on the bus. I told him to come back, because I’d get the pizza for him. He thanked me tons, and I told him that I appreciated him being so nice and talking to us. He didn’t have to do that, because everyone else, according to Matt, had already left for the after party at a club.

I knew about it already, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go. I just don’t have it like that. I wish that I did, but I never do. I will one day, when I have my own car. Hopefully, I’ll be able to save up for that, too. Anyway, after many thank yous and an autograph from DeJesus, whoever that is, my mom pulled up and I couldn’t stay any longer.

Apparently, DeJesus is some new add-on to the band. He waves their flag around and sings and just adds something to see on stage. I guess. There was also this keyboardist that was pretty good. I didn’t see him after the show, at least not up close or paid attention enough to spot him. I mean, I did completely miss P.O.S. walking around me due to the fact that I had been on the phone trying to secure us a ride home. This was until Brandon told me that he was standing right behind me and had looked me in the eye and I had never even noticed.

I thought about buying a t-shirt or whatever, but they were $15 and I only had 20. I mean, I had already bought the Matt one, but I wanted another one from the show. I am rather glad that I didn’t get anything, because then I couldn’t have bought the pizzas or the food I needed to purchase from McDonald’s so that I could order six cups of water. No, I am not kidding. I truly did order six cups of water. I was thirsty as all outdoors.

Well, that’s pretty much it on the catch-up. I am hungry as all out and I still need to wash my hair. I need to check on my bra and I’ve already started the CD over, so you know that I’ve been writing too long. Heh.

Oh! I ended up finishing my writing exchange story just like I knew I would. I started on it the day before it was due and finished it up the day of. I turned it in and beamed for days after. Posting has started, but I am afraid that the story I sat down and wrote on for hours on end won’t be posted, because I ended up getting this girl that I hate and NEVER turns her assignments in on time. I mean, why in the fuck do the mods still allow this girl to participate in the exchange any longer? She has been late or had some huge issue every single time, and I’ve always fucking hated her for it. I’m busy and I manage to get my shit together and turn in my assignment on time every single round, but this stupid girl can’t seem to get it done. I hate people that get the same treatment as everyone else, even though they don’t deserve it.

I guess that I should just stop right there, because I am one heartbeat away from ranting about all of the illegal immigrants in this country that don’t have any intention of blending into this culture, but want to get jobs and healthcare, have babies on American soil, refuse to learn English, and send money back home, whatever the fuck that is. Puh. Just. Stop.

Breakfast now, ranting later. I hope that everyone is well.

Danielle