Under the moonlight/ I kiss my melancholy/ Hope no one sees.

I previously mentioned Amanda’s question, why is self-destruction sexier than the alternative? I’m attracted to girls who are surrounded by issues like a siren ringed with rocks. Only sometimes, I wonder if it isn’t the rocks singing to me. The perfect girl is like an atomic bomb on the moon–beautiful, destructive, and infinitely distant from me. Eros & Thanos.

The trouble with Ruth was it always seemed as though there was something off center about the whole relationship. I had been in the situation once before. It’s the kind of thing where she likes me more, and I try to reciprocate out of a mixture of respect for her and personal self-interest. Girls who like me ‘coz I’m weird and smart and so unique and I-never-thought-of-it-that-way-before. I want Ruth ‘coz she’s everything I want just jumping into my lap and falling in love with me. Yet, I don’t want her for the exact same reason. The kind of relationship that I find myself seeking are the ones where I’m in the position of awe and fear of her dark depths. Seeking a kind of deadly goddess of broken wings. These two relationships are almost comically counter-balanced. In both, I’m afraid of getting what I want. What I most and least want is what I want. Am I going to replay my two girlfriends in hiGh SCHOOL with different names for the rest of time, I wonder. I’m two people either pulling myself apart or crushing myself together. Where is Tony Blair when you need him?

The end of the school year had crashed down upon us like a meteor in the night. Soon, unswayable fate would draw us all out to it, just as the meteor once drew three shônen of divergent destinies. Anyhow, our Apple of Enlightenment approved crew of three guys and a girl (which we had expanded to three guys and two girls) were hanging out at Waffle House, as always. The gang had assembled and exams loomed. Amanda and I were just hanging out, when somehow it became clear that the time had come to go up on the roof. Amanda needed the help of my incredible height to get a sure spot on the ladder out back, but after that it was relatively smooth sailing. We surveyed our new vantage point, and it mostly dark and very smelly. Fans were doing their thing. Neither of us felt like overstaying our welcome there, but it was really cool. Afterwards, Amanda photographed a napkin on which she explained the trip and her lack of camera-bearing foresight. Then she photographed another one saying she had been to Jamaica. To what extent are things like these driven by the same impulse that made me get every secret coin in Mario 3? I mean, you don’t really need the coins. They don’t help that much. It really isn’t worth it. But if there’s a warp tunnel, and you know there are coins on the other side… To die three times for a single 1-UP is human nature, it seems.

My greatest nightmare is abandonment. Being left completely alone in the world like the man on the moon. But it’s a paradox. I do willingly sequester myself, but only so long as my dreams promise to keep me company. The more I just lose myself in my own idiosyncrasies, the more I need to believe in the existence of someone with whom to share them. So, the dream is this perfect girl, a woman embodying all of my contradictory needs. The goal is to stop the idiotic searching. To find the final relational solution, a person whose existence ensures that I’ll never again have to wander under the autumn starry sky alone. That’s what there has to be, there must be someone to understand the wander and its discontents. Unless I find that person, I run the risk of being alone forever, of being cast aside by life on earth. Hence, the quest.

One night I dreamed that Amanda and I were in a hall somewhere and my pastor from home was speaking. My Buffalo Daughter poster was on the lectern and he made the Buffalo Daughter ‘bd’ hand symbol and seemed to make the kind of vaguely derisory remark about the band that you would expect from someone who is put off by their supposed exoticness. Running into stuff like that makes me think, yeah, they’re a weird band, but who cares? I’m weird too, and I always have been. Why not like music and people of a similar quality?

Being two people means sending mixed signals. It means being ambiguous. It means doing something and then its opposite. Being the kind of guy that I am, I’d hate to deny anyone of their natural right to be the one who breaks it off, the one who chose to walk away. On the other hand, I maybe don’t want to mess up a good thing. Splitting the difference, I emphasized my existing self-critiques. I self-deprecated. She hated it. If I think I’m not good, and she think I am, what does that mean about our relative tastes? I did my best impression of the Thing from Fantastic Four—“Alicia baby, I’m no good for ya! You needa go out and find a regular guy made outta flesh and bones, not a granite gorgon like me! I’m just some lout from Yancy Street who’s mixed up with some dangerous enemies. I don’t want you to get hurt!” OK, so maybe I didn’t say that. But you get the gist. One day, she tells me over IM that crying exists. Crying always exists. It’s like a prerequisite for this brand of star crossed business. Tears as a sin qua non of earthbound romance. It’s been so long since I’ve cried myself, but things like this always make me wish it could be me instead. I want to be the one set upon by the gravity of life, but it never turns out that way.

So, the year was dying, and only precious few nights remained. Hampton was out of the picture already, and Becky and Adam had resigned for the night to attend to her illness and their new found feelings for one another. That just left Amanda and I to fend for ourselves. The plan was a video and alcohol. I chose The Brave Little Toaster from Amanda’s selection, based on its completely frightening subtexts of abandonment and product loyalty. It frightened me as a kid, and it affects me now in a way related to the memory thereof. I’m not an especially brave toaster.

One night, I had an exam the next day or something, but I went to hang out with some HIgH school kids my senior anyway. I was naturally lightly ribbed for my association with a govie who is two years behind me, but it was mostly left alone. We talked about dreams at some point. Erin said she had dreams where she knew she was asleep. She did horrible things like killing people and just watched from behind her eyes as it played out in the cloudy realm. She says she feels like a Drowzee, a Pokémon that eats its opponents dreams and gets sick on the bad ones. Quelle haute noir. (Whenever I was around both Ruth and Erin, it was obvious even to her with whom I am enamored, yet she refused to exhibit proper jealousy…) After dinner, we were outside of the theater, deciding whether or not to see a movie, I wrote a haiku while looking at the clouds and the moon. Konban ya/ anata to aruku/ tsuki o miru. We ended up seeing Insomnia. (Two stars out of two.) “Ah, this evening/ Walking with you/ Looking at the moon.”

In an emptying room, I pack my stuff as Amanda looks on. The Cure CD I borrowed from Erin is playing. Amanda talks about the memories the music imparts in her. Back in Georgia, her expanding middle school horizons. My posters have been stripped off the wall. My personality is rolled up in tubes and placed in boxes. We’re talking about not what needs to be said. I don’t mind. When we finally say goodbye with awkward formality, Adam’s roommate Peter tells us to hug. I’m inwardly thankful.

Gertrude Stein like, if I could only save my one favorite poster, I’d save two. Except the two I’d save have duplicates, so it’d end up being four. Identical Buffalo Daughter posters and identical Lego AquaZone posters must be preserved. Buffalo Daughter is a band that other people like, but I’ve never met anyone with my near religious fervor for the trio. And the AquaZone… The Aquazone is a vision of the beautiful life, a life of parenthetical smiles painted on in the warm ocean depths. It’s a world where good and evil collide, good wins, and no one gets hurt. It’s that cool plastic octopus in front of a glowing plastic power crystal. Back in the day, my friend James and I talked about how your posters are like your subconscious telling a story. I looked around and realized mine was telling me to escape. My wall was littered with windows into the realm of the dream-like form, where everything is just as perfect as the TB-303 beat in a Buffalo Daughter song. Now, the boxes are being put in the back of my car, and I’m almost gone already.

One night, when I was a kid, I slept over at my friend’s house and had an odd dream. I was at a swimming pool for some reason, and I dove to the bottom full of joie de vivre, no doubt. I then swam leisurely towards the surface. But, it seemed to be taking much longer to reach the surface than it had the bottom. I swam faster and faster upwards. Suddenly, I began to panic, ‘coz it didn’t seem that I would make it. Perhaps there was no surface at all. Maybe there was nothing but water all around me. Terror beat in my breast. I began to run out of air. Finally, I let my mouth hang open, even in the seemingly topless depths. *Gasp* Air! Glorious air! I woke up to find myself in a strange bed with a stuffy nose that was useless as a conduit for air. At the time, I wondered, if I had opened my mouth to the suffocating dream-water around me, what would have happened? Of course, normally, if you hold your breath too long, you pass out and then breathe. However, if one were already unconscious, how could one pass out? It would have been an embarrassing cause of death—a snot-filled nose and a stubborn will to believe what I’m experiencing. Now, I think probably it was inevitable that I breathe, but…

Climbing every Waffle House ladder, getting every secret coin, every 1-UP—maybe there are things you could do, which are fun and good, and maybe still not necessarily something you should do. And maybe despite being drunk and able, I should not have kissed Amanda, even though I made her kiss me first. I do that. I make people kiss me first. I put my face too close and wait for interpersonal gravity. It’s shameful. It’s this hideous mechanism of responsibility dodging, as though culpability were a smash attack, charged and aimed at my person. Just days after kissing one girl and trying to be in love, I let myself pretend to be in love with another. I just force certain emotions through my system to pretend I’m justified. And maybe it is vaguely like love, but Love doesn’t fade the next day, and Love doesn’t second guess itself on the walk back to its dorm at 5AM, and Love isn’t selfish, and Love doesn’t play with people emotions, and Love is so everything that I’m not capable of being. Love is the way I still play Mario 3 every once in a while. Love is not hoping she’ll bring it up, so you don’t have to be the one who does. Still, for a moment there, late, late at night, just she and I and her snake named Indiana—well, it was very lovely.

In Magicant, there were a series of terrific battles that culminated in reaching the Sea of Eden, the core of the very self. There, the fearsome Kraken that had previously taken the teamwork of four together beat had to be beaten in its Bionic form without the other three team members. Then all that remained was a Mani Mani statue, which upon inspection pronounced itself to be Ness’ Nightmare, and declared “(I’m the evil part of your brain. You can’t beat me. Because, you are the one who forced me into being.)” With that, the battle against the self became fully realized. One wonders, how can a person asleep pass out?

So, I want someone to come and permanently solve my loneliness deal, but the thing that conflicts me is, all of these girls with whom I’ve been getting involved, I know they aren’t going to be the one that does it. They aren’t going to be the ones to permanently banish the nightmare kingdom of loneliness. And I don’t like to make a big thing about it, but the reason that it won’t work is that almost none of the girls I fall in with these days believe in the literal resurrection of Christ. Which is sort of a make or break quality in the long term outlook of the relationship. I hate to seem closed minded, but there it is. My hypothetical dream girl needs to share one more thing in common with me, if I am to feel comfortable with our romance. So in that sense, pretty much all of the relationships into which I enter into are doomed before they start. Why is self-destruction so sexy?

Look, when fighting those tremendous and terrible battles in Magicant, it’s not just the Earthbound kid versus the world. There are also the Flying Men. The Flying Men are a group of five birdmen, who will join you one at a time to aid in the struggle. The thing with Flying Men is unlike other team members, they don’t just lose consciousness in battle, they die. And they stay dead. Tiny little graves with stone crosses mark their final resting places. And heaven help me, it was for my sake that so many of them went to their final destination. The last Flying Man, he tells me, he’ll help me even knowing what’s become of the others, but he says, don’t treat me like trash. Shortly thereafter, his tombstone said, “Tombstone.” Before, a the first Flying Man said to me, “I am your courage. I follow you here in Magicant. …My name? Let’s say Flying Man.” Lame Lil’ Toaster me.

Look, it’s not that I want to hurt people, it’s just sort of what’s bound to happen given the road I’m on. Dreams are so solipsistic. I’m always dreaming for myself, instead of the person I’m kissing. Magicant is not made for flying men. When I got the chance, I told Ruth about kissing Amanda, and that was it. We had previously talked about taking Project Mayhem back to the basement. This announcement meant that it was back to the IKEA nesting instinct. As for Amanda, the year was over, and what was done was done.

There’s this incredible, classic Fantastic Four issue that I read way back in a summer camp as part of a collection or something. Recently, I ran into it again. It’s from the Jack Kirby/Stan Lee years, the Silver Age of comics, and it’s a rare Fantastic Four where the plot is fairly self-contained. “This Man… This Monster!” starts with Ben Grimm, the enormous, orange, rock-skinned hero known as the Thing, wandering disconsolately in the rain. He is given shelter in a typical outer boroughs house by a strange, bald, mad scientist. Knocked out by a drugged coffee, the Thing collapses on the guy’s couch, only to have his powers somehow stolen by the unnamed assailant. The next day, after being denied access at the Fantastic Four’s headquarters, he decides to visit the apartment of his on again, off again girlfriend a blind sculptress named Alicia. He composes himself outside her door.

“Even though she can’t see--I’m still kinda nervous--to be facing her like a normal man!
It’s what I always wanted--always dreamed of! If only it had happened some other way!”
[Then, as Ben Grimm knock on the door of Alicia Masters--he sees--]
Panels before, the unnamed scientist selflessly had given up his life to save the leader of the Fantastic Four in a desperate last minute bid for redemption. As a result, Ben Grimm once more regains his unloved powers.
“My--My hand!!!”
[Startled--shocked--stunned into speechlessness--he has no way of knowing that, a universe away, the man who had taken his identity has now given it up again--forever!
Finally, when the initial numbed reaction has passed…]
“I-I’ve become The Thing again!
Now I can go back ‘n clobber the creep who’s posin’ as me!
Besides, by turnin’ into Ben Grimm again, I mighta had a chance with Alicia--even against the Silver Surfer!
But now--it’s too late! I’m a walkin’, livin’, monster again!
Maybe this is the real me! Maybe Ben Grimm is nothin’ more than--a dream!”

Buffalo Daughter said in a magazine article that they tried to make their latest album more normal. They don’t want to be known for being the band that just makes weird sounds. They’re trying to be more pop. The writer of the article reports that their latest album is an even more expansive landscape of weird sounds. Ah, the glorious failure of Buffalo Daughter.

I’m tired of being the Thing. I want to someone to see that I’m trying to be normal, but I’m just miserably failing, ‘coz I’m being what’s normal to me. I want to find someone who is trying the same thing, but who’s heart I won’t break by necessity of after life expectations. Does mankind need to build every atomic bomb? Fly every rocket ship through cosmic rays? Get everyone 1-UP? Kiss every girl? Even if it is really beautiful and fun? Will cowardly toasters be rewarded with affection someday, too? Or will magicant just fill with lackluster graves for fallen flying men?

Amanda sent me a birthday present at the start of the summer. It was without a doubt the best thought through gift I’ve ever been given. It was a book of essential haiku, and I love it.

When Ness’ Nightmare was defeated, that was the end of magicant. The sound stone that had recorded the eight melodies of Ness’ sanctuaries was shattered. The rocks sang siren songs no more. Ness returned to the real world, his EXP higher than ever, his soul made pure for the final struggle against external evils.

Death is a dream of flying men and no day break.

Let’s dream of Buffalo Daughter.

Death is a new moon we haven’t yet seen wax.

Let’s dream of tanooki suits.

Death is the endless dream.

So let’s dream of nuclear families in AquaZone picnics.

Let’s dream of men on the moon in this dekkaid.

Let’s see wire stiffened flags and week long sunrises.

Let’s dream about the beautiful moments, like frogs croaking by lakeside prom.

Bashô speaks to me: Furu ike ya/ Kawazu tobi-komu/ Mizu no oto

“Ah, the ancient pond…/ A frog plops in/ The water’s sound”

Let’s dream of wonderful things, like the Waffle House sign on highway 25.

It’s before prom, and I give Ruth a Waffle House hat, a track listing folded like a crane, and a mix CD.

Let’s dream about the empirically best times.

The CD ends with seven minute jam by Weezer.

Let’s dream of the credits, where the Flying Men come back to life.

The song is called, “Only in Dreams.”

Let’s dream of Doki Doki Panic: Yume Kôba.

Let’s dream of chartreuse evenings, when the moon was full.

You know Neil, according to the New York Times, it was your heart monitor that gave you away.

The words are:

Only in dreams
We see what it means
Reach out our hands
Hold on to hers
But when we wake
It’s all been erased
And so it seems
Only in dreams.

“Although Mr. Armstrong is known as a man of few words, his heartbeats told of his excitement upon leading man’s first landing on the moon.

At the time of the descent rocket ignition, his heartbeat rate registered 110 a minute--77 is normal for him--and it shot up to 156 at touchdown.”

Only in dreams, it is the doki doki panic of every day life, love, and hashbrowns. Moonbeam lit faces and girls who are too perfect but for my own flaws. Short poems tell a larger story. Songs speak to the heart.

Sleep well.