Year 24

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I know very few people who read this now.  Almost no one in fact.  This diary has seen it’s fair share of friends and foes alike, almost every year has lead to one or two "random" noters, and most years have introduced a few new readers and has lost just as many.  I’m not even sure who checks up on this diary anymore.  It is quite old, perhaps far past its prime now.  Nevertheless, I do believe in nostalgia and it’s always good to come back and visit this place to read how life is going and when. 

So the first part of this is a life update.  It has now been a year and a half since I moved from Wisconsin to California.  After a brief but rough opening, I landed myself in a 6 bedroom house filled with interesting friends and a landlord who was a nightmare.  Approximately half a year ago, that landlord ran off with all the remaining tenants’ security deposits and utility money after a colossal fight which ended with me calling the police on him and an attempted eviction which failed miserably.  The man may burn in hell for all I care and I think 650.00 worth of security deposit is money well spent to get that gap toothed dumbass out of my life forever. 

Since moving into the house I’ve had a slew of roommates.  Gavin was from Seattle and while we got along well at first, that broke down as his lack of cleanliness and stupidity became more and more a frustration.  He was succesfully evicted by Mark.  Ron was from New York and he too left the house due to eviction but we still keep in touch because despite his abrasive and cocky personality, he really is a fun guy.  Rich left the house of his own accord, so did Monte.  I never hear from Rich anymore though he used to promise to stop by the house sometime.  He never has.  Monte and I chat every so often but rarely.  That left Brandon and I of the original roommates.

Introduce my brother, Ryan, Sean, and Jason to the house.  Sean would be the next to leave, bailing just as I took over renting the house myself from the real owners (a sweet family from Sri Lanka), and leaving me with extra money owed to the landlords and to utility companies and a room left in disarray.  It was well worth the price, however, to have his drunk and idiotic ass out of the house.  Ryan would attempt to stiff me later but capitulate to breaking even with me a couple months later.  Jason would follow several months later to move in with a friend of his.  Introduce my best friend Nate and Dan to the house.  Introduce Suzin, Greg’s ex.  I do not talk to Ryan or Sean or Jason now. 

Then Dan moved closer to USC so he could start up more college.  Brandon would move out to find a smaller place more his style.  Introduce Courtney and Kim to the house.  So that is the current composition as of now.  3 guys, 3 girls, almost all from the Midwest basically, a couple strangers, a couple brothers, an ex-couple, a couple of college buddies….it’s a good composition I think.   I hope to maintain it.  It’s been too short a time period to determine if Brandon and Dan will keep in touch.  We will see.

I still work for the same company that offered me the fantastic job of 32,000 for 20 hour work weeks.  I now am entitled to request vacation more frequently, though it is still unpaid and the one boss is trying to figure out what kind of bonus they can give me since the other boss is vehement about how sweet of a deal I’ve got and how little I should be rewarded.  Nevertheless, the job pays well, I don’t pay much rent at all now that I’m running the house, and I simply have to maintain responsibilities.

I have had three works, all one acts, performed just Off-Broadway and in New York Play festivals.  I’m not sure how well they went, as the director of the shows is a dear friend who means well but has very little talent to recognize or control acting.  I was able to watch one via internet video which was actually acted by this friend and directed by someone else and I think they both missed the mark entirely on characterization.  I’m not sure, however.  I’m hoping to get some cold reads soon.  Get everything up and running.  I’m working on my novel again, slowly but surely, and trying to figure out if I want to step back from writing this play and turning it into a novel.  I never know anymore.

I spend most of my time watching movies, hanging out, enjoying life, eating out probably too much, reading less than I should, writing a healthy amount, and hardly ever working at work.  Life is good.  I know I should buckle down more seriously with writing and focus even more on my career, but I can’t help it.  I spent a long period of my life doing everything I didn’t want to do to make it convenient for everyone else and now the opportunity has arrived for me to slowly build up savings and still enjoy my life.  I can’t pass that up honestly.  I have never had many close friends and so I’ve had to find ways to enjoy my own company as much as possible. 

I’m now 24.  My birthday was just last week.  The entire week was a sort of bittersweet disaster.  On the one hand, my long distance girlfriend and long distance best friend were wonderful to me.  On the other hand, my roommates, save for Courtney and Kim and Suzin, relative strangers to the house, were not all that fantastic of birthday mates.  I have yet to recieve a gift.  My parents sent me just enough money to seem like a joke, which I’m sure is far more than many people get and yet, I always place things in perspective of my parents’ fortunes and how much they spend on their other children….as in Greg, who they paid his credit card bill for a number of months after he moved out here while never even offering the same luxury for me.  I would have taken it just so that I could keep more of my own savings, but I guess it was imperative to preserve Greg’s future and I could do as I wished with my own life.  It has always been such.  My dear friend Jess missed wishing me a happy birthday.  So did my other two brothers, though Dave called the next day.  I seem perpetually surrounded with short-term devoted friends, and the term keeps getting shorter.  My birthday party this weekend was sparsely attended and mostly by strangers who were not there for me but for the booze.  I tire of those sorts of parties very easily and ended up retreating to my room after indulging in too much booze.

But now to the heart (literally) of this entry.  I have a new girlfriend.  She is from Louisiana and lives there now.  She is young in years and old in experience.  She is beautiful but she thinks of herself as purty, which is fine by me as long as I can say otherwise.  She’s an English major.  She has not watched nearly enough movies which I will rectify.  She is sweet and adoring and wonderful.  We spend copious amounts of time on the phone together and are happily in love, much to the chagrin of others in both of our lives (mostly hers as she’s constantly adored and being fought for by all sorts.)  She is complicated and interesting and wonderful.  I met h

er through this site, simply by random, and after much conversation we decided that it was meant to be.

She wants me to move to Louisiana which I’m torn about on many levels and clear on others.  Strangely, the clear levels do nothing for my predicament.  Honestly, there is nothing real and tangible tethering me to this place.  I don’t consider my friends, even my close ones, to be all that committed or caring.  Marie is the only one, and she stays committed across great distance.  I have a brother here but he has never needed my help and never wanted it either.  I have learned over time out here to do a great deal of things alone which has just made me more prepared for moving somewhere where I know no one.  I love Kristen with all my heart, all my everything.  There is very very very little that I could deny her.  I love her madly.  She eclipses the stars, the sun, and all former loves.  I have always argued, sometimes to the point of hurting former girlfriends, that certain things belong to the people who are connected to them…but all I want to do is rip them back and give them to Kristen.  I won’t, I know.  Not in whole.  But in part.  I will give her the love that was intended, the love that was inspired, the love that was promised.  I will give to her every part that was meant to make a smile light up in the eyes.  But I will let the title stay with the ex.  They can have their meals, their quirks, their sayings, their nicknames….all those things.  But they are stripped of their meaning now.  She is the one for me.

We have talked about marriage and children and it seems real.  But I have been fucked over in this line before, each time with disastrously over-emotional results on both ends.  I feel more confident now with Kristen that what has occurred before isn’t so much my fault.  I was always willing to be the pariah for the cause, if it meant that others could keep their hearts and heal, but I’ve become less forgiving with Kristen.  And while that should seem like a bad thing, I know it isn’t.  It’s just now I feel like I need to respect myself enough to deserve her.  I’m not going to give out as many favors and sacrifice of myself as much to anyone and everyone who wants to cut a piece of me away to have just because they want it, because they can, because they’re overly indulgent.  All these things belong to Kristen now.

I’m not certain of a lot of parts about Kristen.  I’m not sure I’ll ever fully understand her, and I’m ok with that.  We’ll attempt to do the best we can and I think that’s about as good as one can expect or attempt.  I’m not sure if she thinks she’s a great person or not, sometimes I feel that she thinks very poorly of herself but in a good light.  That she feels she is a cruel and cold and calculated person and those things are to be admired.  On some level, I agree.  Perhaps I admire them because it is not my general nature to be that way and so I assume it isn’t easy to be such.  I’m not sure…I’m struggling with exhaustion right now, and I don’t even know why.

What I was attempting to get to was that I love her.  I adore her.  She is my world, she is the fortress that protects my heart, she is my delight.  She is my everything.  She even is my muse when most former girlfriends have been nothing of the sort at all.  I want to marry her.  Of course I have to meet her first, which happens at the end of this month, heralding the anniversary of a gigantic tragedy, one that I let be important simply because I know how insignificant the other half of it pretends it was.  I let it be important because that is my nature, and I’m tired of dating children.  I seem to date them perpetually.  Forever young, thinking they’re old and wise and ancient.  Smarmy, self-absorbed, spoiled, stupid, indulgent and silly.  I think I’ve finally found a girl who I respect as much as I respect myself…..well, perhaps only almost, considering I’m blatantly arrogant.  But I think, once again, that’s the best a person can do.

I keep wanting to write sweet things to make her smile here, but all I can think is that I might as well wait until I’m with her so that it’s closer and more intimate.  I want nothing lost in the translation. 

Welcome to year 24 of life Bradley Owen Jennings.  Oh the places you’ll go.