Letter to my mom (Dysfunctional Thanksgiving, Zoloft, Genny)

 Dear Mom,

I s'pose I'll actually try to send this letter and get to the points at hand, rather than beginning yet another rambling, never to be sent journal of my anxiety ridden love life. 

So, how ya doin'?

Steve, Carol, Tim & I had our Thanksgiving dinner together. We had corned beef & cabbage and continued the tradition of not fully cooking the meat. Tim seems about the same as usual, as does Super Nintendo Carol. We enjoyed a wonderfully anti-social, dysfunctional family get together. Steve, Tim & I played pool in the garage, while Carol interfaced with the Game Station. 

I took Tim fishing in my canoe, which was ok, though he is a bit hard to keep entertained. I think he needs Zoloft. Ha. The answer to everything. Oh, yeah, keep them coming; I guess they are working ok. I don't feel much different, except perhaps that things do not seem to be so much of a chore.

I still don't have a clue as to what to do with my life. I have no girlfriend, no plans, no strategies. But any day now, I guess the sky is going to pop open and beam down a column of light and lead me to her. Hope abounds in the face of disappointment.

Genny has turned out to be a mirage. The closer I get to her, the farther off our relationship becomes. Oh, well. I tried. Now I am tired of being the fool with his heart on his sleeve. "Not me," I say, but if she'd call, I'd run to her. Oh, well, at least I admit it.

Music is very therapeutic for me. Soon, I'm sure, I will get into a band, as soon as someone answers my ad...

I am also getting into better shape. My 3X a week weightlifting is keeping me from getting the Golding Gut. Speaking of which, I wonder about Grandma. I called her # and got a young lady's answering machine...I guess I should call old Dad and find out.

Well, I got to be going. I'm off to work. Talk to you soon. Take care.

 Love, 

Andrew

Thoughts (while) On Pot (Chico 11-7-92)

Pot

Lets you forget

The majority of

Things which tend

To stress people out

And makes you focus

(by limiting the number of thoughts

one has) on the one

Thing you are currently

Doing. You tend only

To do things you enjoy

When stoned, so you

Um. Ah, what’s that again?

---

I had a sudden bad thought, like as if my face

cracked open from the jaw to the temple and out

poured nothing but pot ashes.

A kind of melancholy bliss -- Zoloft, Raving about Genny and a short update on life (another unsent draft of a letter to my mom)

Dear Mom,

Howdy. Thought Id' take time out of my busy schedule of loafing around the apartment, listening to Led Zeppelin and watching mindless, muted Music Television and going out of my head. 

Oh, the Zoloft? Not bad. At half strength, it's about like looking forward to a cup of coffee or a Twinkie. But the agitation I am feeling today, I believe we have spoken of before at great length.

I have my heart hung out on my sleeve for a certain young lady (Genny) who is entertaining, for the moment at least, consideration of dating me. Oh, boy. 

I am at once happy and excited, nervous, fearful, stupid and overly emotionally charged. Music becomes painful to listen to, but I enjoy the pain. A kind of melancholy bliss. I am plainly in hormonal overproduction over this girl. If I could just keep from blowing it and scaring her off. Like all the others...

Other things have been going on in my life, mainly, the daily work routine, Uncle Steve's semi-weekly dinner/TV evenings, Brian, Mona and Gene -- fishing and yapping buddies -- my music and vehicle recreation (I now have a car, a van and a motorcycle -- Steve's old 550) all take up time not spent brooding over my search tor the ideal woman.

Oh, and I spend a fair amount of time worrying about the future, or my lack of one. I could be a more positive person, I guess. 

Sometimes, when the moon is right, and I feel in love and don't have a care in the world, I'll feel like dancing, or singing up a storm, to my neighbor's alarm. I live in the now. When "now" is happening or cool in the pleasurable sense, I am perfectly capable of sitting back and grasping the moment, not dwelling on fears or insecurities.

It's just that most moments are not like that. They are a ceaseless grind of boring sameness. Lameness! I need a challenge, something to live for. A new cause or religion to fight for. You know, an existential experience to cement who I am. Like right now, I'm still liquid concrete being tumbled about in a cement mixer. 

Will I be the oldest living person to be confused about what I want to do in life? Will frustration over failures cause depression to get the better of me? Find out in our next exciting episode...

Well, Mom, gotta go for now. C-Ya.

Well, I'm back from dropping Genny off at work. As if that were not a rewarding enough experience, she made me a big sack lunch consisting of 2 cheeseburgers, chips, cookies, banana, apple slices, a muffin and a soda. I am blessed.

I bought her a tiny vase with flowers and constructed a magazine font ransom note type letter that said, "Dear Genny, I love you. Hoody." She thought it was ever so cute and kissed me. I am so glad she had this reaction instead of a whole range of uncomfortable responses I had been sort of bracing myself for.

I really do love this girl, though, Mom. She's just young and confused, and I'm older and less mature, but she's everything I could dream about. We share the same taste in music and popular culture and have similarly repressed religious backgrounds and liberal politics. She loves to cook, and I love to eat. She's beautiful, naturally, and the fact that she desires to spend time with me really just blows my mind.

We've been good friends and almost lovers, then in limbo while she was deciding what she wanted. I just kind of hung around and kept the door open anytime she'd need a friend or someone to give her a hand with something. Anyway, I would be extremely happy to land such a "catch" as this one, and you would just have to meet her.

Well, enough raving. I'll be seeing her again shortly, and I must prepare to suck the marrow out of these moments, I can tell you. S'long!

Love,

A~~~ G~~~~g

 

Pretty bad, huh?

This is what my signature has eroded into. But it's quick, though.  

'90s Era Survey (to be included with all love letters sent by me)

E X A M I N A T I O N

Questionnaire Related to Letter

Check all appropriate answers

SECTION A  “ I liked your letter, but…”

__ It confused me, especially the part that said ___________.

__ It made me feel uncomfortable, like an itchy blanket.

__ I thoroughly, unqualifiedly enjoyed every bit of it.

__ I felt it was too forward.

__ I felt it was not forward enough.

__ I would rather read a mathematics textbook.

__ It caught me off guard, I don’t know what to think.

SECTION B  “You’re a nice guy, but…”

__ Forget it.

__ I don’t like you in that way.

__ I think you are mentally ill.

__ I am not attracted to you, you’re not my type.

__ I suppose I could like you, but I just have to think about it.

__ My heart is very tender right now, I don’t know what I feel.

__ I am lonely and need a friend (platonic).

__ I am lonely and need affection.

__ I am a married woman, how dare you, you jerk.

__ Please do not pursue me any further, I am more attracted to Joe.

__ Go ahead and pursue me, I’ll slap you if you get out of line.

__ Oh, Andrew, you GOD, light me up.

__ Oh, Andrew, you poor, pitiful fool, get a life.

__ I am mildly amused.

__ I am slightly annoyed.

__ I am mentally ill myself, how should I know anything?

__ Give me 5 mins. to slip into some edible undies.

__ You, being a male, are a pig.

__ I thought you were nice until _____________.

__ I would like to be left alone.

__ I am in mourning, call me in _______ days/weeks.

__ Hold me, just hold me.

__ Just what the hell is wrong with you, anyway?

__ I have plans to become a nun.

__ I will never get involved with another man.

__ I plan to commit suicide next week, so this is all irrelevant.

__ You are opening a can of worms, for God’s sake put down that can opener.

__ Let’s run away together.

__ Let’s forget this whole thing and turn back the clock to before you wrote these ridiculous letters.

__ I am emotionally distressed, please just be my friend and don’t expect anything.

__ This survey is biased and unfair.

__ Questions that should have been included are:

      _______________________________________________________

      _______________________________________________________

      _______________________________________________________

Since there is no way to score this, as it is not really a test, please return to the Survey 

Taker when completed.

Song for Ramona Reid

Song to Ramona
 

Girl its gonna take a lotta bowls,

To get over the fact of you leavin'.

Cause when I come home, go to sleep, get up, go to work,

I got nothin' to look forward to this evenin'.

Never gonna see your face in any office window or doorway,

With a pitcher and the pills in your hand.

Gonna have to remember all those,

Good times we had.

So many times to see your smiling angry face busting up

laughing,

I'd come early to see you.

Then they took away the time from us,

Where did it go? No more:

Stayin' late, comin' early, hangin' around.

It's no good, can't they see, to try to separate you and me.

Cause like Obi-wan-fucking-Kanobi,

If they strike us down our friendship will only become more 

Powerful than they could ever imagine.

All that has happened, like a busted picket fence,

Like a worn out sledge hammer, beats at my poor heart ceaselessly.

Their callous disregard, their privilege to LOSE OUT.

For you I'd go hungry, without any dope for weeks at a time,

I'd sacrifice all that is mine, to capture a minute or two and

set it aside, so that later, when the evil shit comes, 

I will have one perfect gilded gem to console me, amidst the lameness 

that will surely be my life. 

If one swims hard enough, the currents that engulf and submerge us 

will propel and uplift us to perfect harmony, freedom, innocence and bliss. 

Bless you Ramona, for you are the closest thing to it,

this is it...now is it. It is. So rejoice and be glad!

 
(Oh, Andrew, Stop Ramona-cizing everything!)

 
 

Ramona

Ramona,

I am sitting here in a quandary. No, actually it is a chair in the SNC. But my mind is as baffled as Pat Rupp. The source of my anguish is probably evident. But let's go back in time just for fun...

I don't know the exact moment when the thought came into my mind: "Hey, this person Mona, who I work with and occasionally chat with is really cool. I mean, I feel comfortable around her. I want her to be my friend. I want her to like me.

“I want her to like me, share her secrets and troubles and confide in me. I wish she wasn’t married. But that’s ok, ‘cause I really respect her. It’s better this way. We can be really good friends and never be tainted by problems that plague most male-female relationships. Maybe by getting close to Mona and getting to know how she thinks and feels I can begin to understand women in general (a very bold ambition).

“But she’s so accessible and open. Surely she is an exception. She’s very different from anyone I have met. So warm and human and unpretentious. God, and she’s pretty, too. What a lucky guy she must be married to. He probably loves her to death. (seriously, no pun intended). He should, anyway.

“What’s a guy gotta do to wind up with a girl like this, anyway? Be Gandhi or Mother Theresa in their past life? The good ones are all taken and usually taken for granted. Well, I’d never do this,” I say.

Then, the trouble in Paradise. Her man beats her and she kicks him out or he leaves. She says it’s over, but she doesn’t want it to be. But she does not want to suffer any more. No more tension or anxiety in her own house.

She calls her friends for support. I have longed for the chance to show her that I care, that I am there for her. I feel needed. I also feel guilty deriving pleasure from the closeness she has allowed me to have with her in sharing her problems. She seems so vulnerable.

God, I think she is so attractive. Maybe she…thoughts and daydreams run amok…no, this is wrong. Although we are really good friends now, I have no right to indulge in this kind of thinking. Or have I? What if she’s lonely? What would it hurt if I told her how I feel: I know she’s a kind enough person to forgive me if I am acting inappropriately.

I’ll send her a letter (how original). This approach has never worked before but, hey, I don’t think she’d really mind a nice letter to inform her that she is (A) Loved (B) Beautiful. So, I did it. Gave her the letter. And waited and watched. No response. “I liked your letter,” was all. What did that mean?

The subject seemed shelved. And our friendship was intact. I wasn’t embarrassed. I figured I had just been so off base that it had been laughable. She’d never been attracted to me. I am demented, delusional.

So, off I go on my Quest for Woman, sniffing elsewhere, in the personals, in the supermarket. I can’t stand being alone.

I get involved in an “instant relationship” with someone named Joy. She says she loves me. What can I do? She gives me wonderful hugs and tells me I am all that she wants in a man. We’ve known each other less than a week. I have reservations. I don’t want to hurt this nice girl who is so in love with me (an indeed makes me feel loved).

But if I ever had a chance with Mona…no, forget it.

Then, a phone call, “I wrote you a letter.” Hmm. What could this mean? Hold everything. Let’s just see what it says.

P.S. She hugged me—a dream fulfilled.