Forty-Seven Miles of Barbed Wire

Obviously, yesterday it was bothering me a little. Having to talk about it twice with people, and having them ask me questions, and trying to navigate through that without letting on that it isn't an ideal relationship for me, and that there are some nagging issues bothering me, started to stir up the cauldron of emotional turmoil that surrounds me and Jen, and then seeing her stirred it up even more. The talking to her part is fine, because I've reintroduced the edge that used to be a part of our earliest LSI interactions, when I used to give her a hard time about some of the dumber things she'd do and/or some of the wackier things she'd say. Increasingly, I think the word girlfriend to describe her should be put inside quotation marks, but whatever, dude. I persevere.

Today I didn't see her at all, didn't catch a glimpse of her down the hall, didn't walk by her on my way out, didn't see her car in the parking lot (I forgot to look while driving out), didn't call her, didn't get a call from her. And this is what I decided: who cares? For a while I was playing this by her topsy-turvy rules, but that gets tiresome after a while. And Sparky don't play that way anymore.

I also came to a few conclusions, even though they may be temporary conclusions, as follows:
I'm not sure how much I even like her right now.
I really don't feel like hanging around with her very much.
I don't even really feel like talking to her on the phone.

Now, that might all disappear like dust in the wind tomorrow, but I've been feeling that way since before lunch, and I still feel that way all this time later tonight, so who knows? Maybe I'm kicking my junkie habit. Maybe I'm ready to move on. Maybe I'm just kidding myself. Who knows?

If only I didn't find her so damned attractive.

Gearjammer

Over the weekend while in Massachusetts (which I will talk about more pretty soon), I fixed that last nagging problem with Chapter 3. It took me about an hour of hard work sitting at the kitchen table to hammer three paragraphs into decent shape, but I did it, by god, and now it works a lot better. I finally got to Borders today to type that up, because both Guinevere and now Cinderella (and possibly others who may or may not want cool nicknames for the sake of this blog) are waiting for chapters to read. It's good to have fans.

Anyway, getting through that pricker bush of exposition leaves only the long dance between Alyssa and Kelly that ends the chapter, and I blasted through most of that while I was there. I only have about a page and a half left and that chapter is toast. That particular conversation ranks among one of my favorite extended talk sequences in any chapter, not only because those two characters have such a nice dynamic, but because there is so much going on between the two of them right there, and there is so much information flying by, and it sets up so much ... it's a miracle I could pull all that off. It's really only matched by the chapter length card game, which is coming up later.

I did look ahead to Chapter 4, just to refresh myself on how the scenes break down, and because that's the last chapter that my newest reader has read (I think). This chapter is where the usual format of a long chapter broken into three to five different scenes is first set down, and along the way I introduce some of my favorite supporting characters. Gwen, Kelly's second-in-command, first appears here, as does the work setting (which is in dire need of alteration). Ben, Kelly's best friend, debuts in what will become a typical Kelly and Ben sort of scene, and of course it's set at the Diner. And Kelly's kid sister, Laurel, also makes her first appearance, albeit by telephone. All three are a joy to write.

Emma doesn't show up until Chapter 5, although she's mentioned in 3 and talked about in 4, which is pretty typical of the book. All three of the characters mentioned in the last paragraph were also first mentioned a chapter before they show up in the book. I think Chapter 5 is also the debut of Willow, another of my favorite characters, if only because any character based on Meredith is going to be hilarious in her own way. I can't remember about Alexis, but she might not show up until Chapter Six. And that's just the tip of the iceburg. There's a huge amount of speaking parts, walk-ons, and characters that are mentioned but never appear (Vera style -- Colleen and I were just talking about that this weekend).

But to make a long story short, I'm going to hammer the crap out of these chapters so I can get them out to my readership.

And thank you all.

Hold The Line

It's one thing to say it, and I talk a pretty good game on paper, but then I see her and other emotions are triggered, and that just makes it all the more difficult. So while I know I'm doing the wise thing by starting to distance myself from Jen, it sure ain't easy pulling it off. And other things just exacerbate the situation. Let me explain.

I was in Massachusetts over the weekend. I'll discuss that in another post, but Jen called me Saturday night. No message, but my caller ID snagged her. When I got home Sunday night I didn't call her back. Friday's conversation was just too weird, and I'm a little burnt out on her and her squirrelly behavior. Nevertheless, I'm not pushing for any confrontation or anything this week since we're both on the same shift during Rugers' shutdown week. I'm working in my area doing odd jobs, and she's out in machine shop doing something. Even so, we're both there and I don't want to make anything more awkward than necessary.

Also, I took the assumption that she didn't call from Arizona or Tennessee, or whichever state is next. Call it a hunch.

You might also wonder why she and I aren't just riding in together. Once upon a time we would have. Now I didn't even offer it out as a suggestion. I figured she'd turn it down, and I just wasn't up for that. Also, she's unreliable and I didn't want to get myself into a spot where she might make me late. Even though I had a few openings to offer that out there, I didn't. A few weeks ago I totally would have, offering myself up as a sacrificial lamb once again. Now? Not.

For a while this morning I wasn't sure if she was there or not. Then I caught a glimpse of her just before break. I was walking down the hall towards the vending machines, and she came around a corner way off in the distance, leaving one of the bathrooms. She looked right at me, turned, and strutted away. Then I was left to wonder if she'd blown me off or if she just couldn't see me (her vision can be a little fuzzy). I decided not to worry about it.

Thing that makes it worse #1. In my cell I've started to be friends with Allen and Jason. Both of them know I have a girlfriend, but I never specified that she worked there at Rugers. So they were quizzing me today, and they cornered me, so I had to come clean that yes, she does work there on second, and in fact .... she's probably here right now. So that opened a whole can of worms. And Allen wanted to meet her. There's a reason I skirted the issue of where she worked, and it was to avoid exactly this. I could not imagine what would happen if I approached her at work with one or both of these guys peppering me or her with questions.

One of the questions was how old she was, which of course I answered. And I got this response from Allen: "How the fuck do you get a 20 year old? I'm 21 and I can't even get a 20 year old."

And, there is another whole layer of the onion -- the difference between everyone's perception of this relationship (that we're sleeping together) and the actual sad truth. But whatever. Everyone at LSI thought that, too, and that was a good thing. It isn't a bad thing now, either. If Allen and Jason, and the goons in the machine shop that she works with, think I'm hitting that ... well, there's no negative there. I know, and you readers know, that I'm not, but I'm taking that to the grave otherwise.

Near the end of the day Allen and I headed out to the punch out area, which took us through the machine shop. And I saw Jen sitting by some machine talking to some guys. She kind of had that face she gets when she's bitching about the injustice inherent in the system, and yes she's already started in on Rugers, but nevermind. There she was. So Allen and I took the corner that led us right by her line of sight, and I locked my eyes dead on her until she noticed me, and then did a sweeping wave as we walked by. I got a "Hey, Sparky!" and then she asked me something, and I can't even remember what I answered back. Allen asked if that was my "old lady", I said yup, and he was impressed.

You know if all these guys who wouldn't mind taking my place knew the whole truth about being with her, they might not be so eager. It isn't so easy, boys.

Then I left. I don't know if she was expecting me to wait outside for her, but she seemed to indicate on Friday that she had other plans ("Just take a drive, disappear, and nobody will see me"). Fair enough. So I split. While I was driving out I saw the lady who's been giving me the eyeball since Day One, and she waved and I waved, and as tempting as it was to stop and say hi, I kept on going. Not yet. Don't make it worse than it needs to be. Just keep driving, go home, and don't do anything stupid.

I did call her and leave a message later that afternoon. She called back and we talked for about twenty minutes. The conversation included this: "Oh, that *was* you."/"I knew it!" -- but she says it was because her vision was fuzzy and she wasn't totally certain it was me. Whatever, dude.

Thing that makes it worse #2. I stopped at the local grocery store and ran into my friend Adam, who's working there right now. That's another thing I'll post about in another post. But he hadn't heard that I left LSI (he's another former employee), so I got into that whole story, and the subject of Jen came up. So that led to another discussion of my girlfriend, where I know the real truth of the matter, but have to play it cool for other people so that they think everything is going all right. That's harder to do than you might think.

For now, only y'all reading this are going to know where my head is at.

Like a Phoenix Rising From Arizona

So where's Jen been all this week while I've been writing about other stuff? Let's catch up. Last Sunday she went rafting with her aunt out on the Connecticut River, which resulted in three things:
-- her aunt lost Jen's phone over the side, and it's now at the bottom of the river.
-- Jen got a 2nd degree case of sunburn, mostly on her legs, which are infected with oozing blisters.
-- Jen also got a bad case of poison oak.

You'd think any one of those would be enough, but then it just wouldn't be the Jen I know, who can sometimes be something of a walking disaster. Because of items two and three she missed a little work, and has been in kind of a mood. Because of item one I didn't hear from her for a few days, until one of those nights she was home and called me. Fortunately, she had the foresight to get her phone insured, and it was replaced. She called me early this morning and we talked for maybe twenty minutes. And we arranged to meet up after I got out of work, since I was getting out earlier than normal, at the truckstop.

Work was another good day. Amanda and I got sent back out to the machine shop, and I worked on something with her for a few hours. Then we got split off, and I spent the next four hours reaming holes in safety mechanisms. In the right context reaming holes is something I quite enjoy, but in this case it got a little tedious after a while. Near the end of the day Amanda ended up on another machine nearby, and I waved, and she smiled and waved. See how much better I'm becoming at this? I was also flirting with this other lady, who was working on a machine behind me, named Melinda. I didn't even realize I was doing it until I was doing it. The monster is awake, ladies and gentlemen, so hang on for a bumpy ride.

I got to the truckstop first, about ten minutes ahead of Jen. When she arrived I walked over to her father's borrowed truck and said, "Well, if it isn't Jennifer (her last name), live and in person." We talked for probably a half hour. She asked me how my day was, and I answered. "It was a really good day." And because I was smiling and in an obviously good mood, she looked at me somewhat quizzically. So I went on, "Everyday is a good day."

She didn't agree, as she's had something of a miserable week, due mainly to the factors listed above, but also because Rugers may not be all that she was hoping for, and she's started to do that thing where she's talking about maybe going back to this other job (not LSI) that she's been in an obsessive love/hate relationship with since I've known her, or just up and taking off to Arizona. That's a new one. Up to now it's been Tennessee. She's discussed some of her Rugers issues with me in previous conversations, and while they do (for the most part) seem reasonable, I also believe that Jen has a self-destruct button somewhere on her that she doesn't know that she pushes anytime something might be all right.

So you never know with her. A lot of what she says can be written off as her typical bluster, but some of it is entirely feasible. To know which is which you kinda have to get into the rhythm of it. I'm mostly hip to it. But insomuch as the roller coaster of trying to be in a relationship with this girl goes, and her potential theoretical flight to Tennessee or Arizona goes, I'm about over it. Whether she's done it on purpose or not, Jen has done a pretty good job of weaning me off of her the past few weeks. I always knew there was an invisible clock ticking down on me and her, going back to the post in this blog where I covered the fact that she and I were officially going out, almost two months ago. She and I aren't really compatible, and I've always known that, even if I let myself get caught up in the whole thing for a while. The past few weeks I've come to my own conclusions while the whole Rugers thing has been blossoming for me.

I'll tell you one thing, I'll never doubt the Wheel of Destiny again. The mechanism is in the works, and I'm being led somewhere, towards some ultimate destiny. Jen was brought into my life to turn me upside-down, move me along to a better job, show me that I'm better than the situation I was in, prove to me that smart and attractive young ladies can still be interested in me, and overall ... she left me better than she found me. For all of that she'll always be one of my favorite people. And what I want for her is to be happy, even if her happiness doesn't correspond with being with me. And I'll never forget what she's done for me, because the Shaun that exists right now is one that's never existed before. Due to her influence, the anger and bitterness has gone, my thoughts of inadequacy are gone, and the shell I've always hidden in has been cracked wide open. And I'm only just begun. I have a lot of fish to fry.

And I have a lot of time to make up for.

Machine Shop Sparky

Sometimes the gods smile upon me, my friends. I'm not sure what's behind it all, but this year is shaping up to be one of my best years ever. It didn't start out well. A lot of January and February was a depressing epic of disasterous proportions. But I've turned it around. And as apprehensive as I was about this new job, I am taking ass and kicking names all over the place.

The assembly operation was down today because the testing range was down in preparation for shutdown, which is next week, so we did some cleaning and rearranging of the cell. At least at first. Remember yesterday how I mentioned that Amanda was the one there I hadn't yet broken through with? Well, she and I got sent to the machine shop to work the rest of the day (and probably tomorrow), and so I got to work right next to her for most of the day, and the breaking through has begun. Sometimes I wonder if the Nice Lady, or whoever is in charge of me up there, reads these posts and then makes the necessary tweaks. I think Amanda and I might get along very well given the chance. Working in the machine shop wasn't too bad either. It's a little more tedious than assembly, but once I got in the rhythm I could deal with it.

I also had my 30 day review. Holy cats, has it already been that long? It flew right by. I was brought into Mike's office for a small meeting with him and Barney, and Mike went over their notes on me. It's similar to many company reviews I've been through, in that there are a number of categories, and I'm given a score out of 100 in each. I wish I had a copy of it, because I'd transcribe all the numbers for you here, but you're going to have to rely on my memory. Seeing as I've only been there a short time, and the job is uber-complicated, it was explained to me that the scores in most categories were really pretty good. In a lot of the stuff I was scored a 79, just under a B grade. Alllllllmost, but not quite. That's for the stuff like job knowledge and accuracy and such. I'm doing well, but I have a ways to go, and that's to be expected. One of those 79's was in the category of 'Interest', as in how interested I seem in the job, I guess. Mike explained that one as, "You're a pretty quiet guy. You're a little hard to read." Give me time. Before long most of them will forget I was ever this quiet, I assure you.

But I did get four(4) 100 scores. Those were in the categories you'd expect that I would hit the hardest: attitude, reliability, initiative, and .... something. I've been racking my brain all afternoon trying to remember what that 4th one was, but it was something in that same family of qualities. I was especially pleased with the Initiative score, as that was something I always thought I didn't get enough credit for on my LSI reviews. It's also nice to know that I work for a company where it's actually possible to get a 100 score on anything at all. LSI and FMC, I'm looking at you.

We got out a little early today, which I'm sure is due to the shutdown thing, and word is that we're getting out at 1:50 again tomorrow. I'm hoping tomorrow afternoon is a little more productive than today was, since I was lazy and took a nap instead of going to Borders like I was supposed to. Well, tomorrow is another day. Maybe I'll get sent out to the machine shop again with that cutie Amanda, too. Woo hoo.

Good day. Good day.

Indiana Bob and the Temple of Doom

That guy came back today to time us, observe, and tweak things. Jim calls him Indiana Bob, hence the accent, hence the title of this post. I was doing slide-fit again, and being as badass as possible, and then Indiana Bob decided to not let Jason and I build up such a lead. For a while he wouldn't let me have more than two ready guns on my bench, and then it was one, and then there was no buffer at all. I'm not sure I see the benefit of that, as when we were rolling along with a two-gun buffer we cranked out 25 finished guns that hour, among the best I've seen since I started there. But he's part of the administration and I'm just a lowly rookie assembler, so what do I know. Doing it with no buffer is hard. Every instinct I have tells me to blow as much shit out as quick as I can, and build up a comfortable lead if at all possible. And it was hard to finish the 2nd gun and then wait for Jim to take them off my bench.

Meanwhile, I'm definitely starting to fit in with the cell. My natural smart-ass personality is already blooming, well ahead of usual projections, meaning I'm a lot like most of the rest of the cell. And I can already bust on Jason and Allen pretty well. I haven't really broken through with Amanda yet, but give me time. Give me time. It was no accident that Jacquie and Casey (the late shift hotties) were both so close to me at FMC. No accident at all. Christie is another one I'm not completely broken through with yet, but I have a better in there than with Amanda so far. Christie has stood up for me a couple times when Allen was busting my nuts in the early days ("Tell him to SHUT THE FUCK UP."). She's a tough rough chick, though, even though she's small. I bet she packs a wicked punch. You know how Meredith was the toughest chick in my crew? Well, while that was true, Meredith was pretty chipper a lot of the time. Christie is just rough. But I like it.

Check back with me in a few months and we'll see how all this is developing.

Diary of a Virgo, volume 6

In the language of the Hopi Indians, koyaanisqatsi means "crazy life," "life in turmoil," or "life out of balance." It's usually invoked to describe a culture that's in disarray because of corruption and lack of vision. In the horoscope you're now reading, however, I'm using it to identify a chaotic state that each of us periodically goes through in our personal life. It's a phase when we lose our moorings, when we're out of touch with our moral center. On the one hand, it's uncomfortable and disorienting. On the other hand, the brain-scrambling it stirs up is often a blessing. It flushes out mental habits that no longer serve us. It provokes creative innovations by rearranging the contents of our psyche. According to my reading of the omens, this is such a time for you, Virgo. Happy koyaanisqatsi!

In the words of Ben Fong Torres, .... crazy.

That'll Put Some Marzipan In Your Pie Plate, Bingo!

What was I ever worried about? A new job, any new job, will fall before my might. Why? Because I am a total badass. That's why. I'm not saying I'm perfect, not yet, but I'm picking this stuff up and I'm getting pretty good at it. I haven't been there a month yet, and I'm already getting comfortable and starting to flex my muscles. With my new outlook on things (see earlier posts) the sky is the limit on what I can accomplish now. And I will dominate in time.

I seem to have moved on from gas-blocking to slide-fitting, although when need be I can slip over there and do both. Jason is on gas-blocking right now, and he's having a hard time of it. Meanwhile, I'm attacking the slide-fitting thing like a rabid animal. Right now, I have my sights on Jason as the weakest link. That's where I start. I'll pass him first, and then work my way up from there. The blood is in the water, and I'm the shark. It's what I do. I might never pass Fred, Jim, or Brad, but I will become their equal. Eventually.

Yesterday we were videotaped. It seems that just our cell was. They want us to get up to 300 guns a day, and right now we're nowhere near that. In all fairness, the company only recently instituted a Lean system into the workings, and when that was put into effect in LSI some years back it was quite a chaotic tangle for a long while. And half the time I never followed it anyway. Some of the guys who have been there a while are very resistant to the changes, and it's making for some friction. I believe the tapings were to help Mike and the rest to try and streamline things as much as possible. I really don't enjoy being taped, and the girl with the camera made me some nervous, but you better believe I was cranking shit out.

Today a guy named Bob came by our cell to take Tact times. For us to get to 300 it's been calculated how many things must pass through our hands in such and such time. He started with Christy and Amanda over in trigger housing, and they're pretty fast, so no problems there. Then he went to Jason in gas-block, and huge huge huge problems there. It was a mess. I waited all through that, knowing I was next. It was not unlike sitting in Ms. Morgan's 8th grade English class waiting to give an oral report on some stupid book. That anticipation was a killer.

This guy Bob was pretty nice, though, and his wicked midwestern accent made him even more personable. He said there was no pressure, he was just there to observe, and he was going to time me on getting the slides ready. I was mostly worried that I wouldn't be able to explain myself very well, being so new, but I think I handled the whole thing rather well. I was relaxed and somewhat comfortable in what I was doing, and that helped. While I was a screener I used to get yokels from engineering out at my press all the time to observe, so I'm used to this kind of thing.

As usual, I had four or five slides ready to go while waiting for Jason, so when he handed me a gun I just slapped a slide on it and passed it to Jim to do bolt-fitting. Then Bob stopped me. He wanted to see the whole thing and time it. So he had me set my prepared slides aside and do it up from scratch. I should have figured. So Jason handed me a gun, and he said go. I grabbed a slide out of the bucket and file, file, file, hit the 45 angle, hit the other 45 angle, and then straighten it. There's a fixture for that, with three directions I have to meet, and I just have to bend and tweak the slide to get it to fit. Sometimes they're pretty close out of the bucket, sometimes they are out in Timbucktoo. The first one I did was somewhere in the middle. I came in at 96 seconds. My second one was 98 seconds. Then for the third one I hit 66 seconds. And I explained to Bob the difference in some of the slides, which can account for that time differential. Also, sometimes a slide won't fit the receiver, but a different slide will, and that first slide will fit a different receiver. They're all different. So that came into play, too.

He timed me on 10 slides, and there was still a few problematic ones that put me in the 90 second range, but I also had a 56 second slide, and several in the 60 and 70 range, then a few in the 80's. About halfway through he told me the Tact time was 87 seconds. By that time I was running an average time that was underneath that. When he was all done with me I asked if I could find out my average across all 10 slides.

79.5 seconds. I was well under the Tact time. Sweet. He was pretty impressed, too. And he wasn't the only one. A couple of the others mentioned my fast times afterwords. I downplayed it, but I did really feel good.

You haven't seen anything yet.

Keep On Rocking in The Free World

Guinevere tells me I have a new reader of the packet of chapters I sent her sometime back, and that's excellent. Even though that draft was in desperate need of some revision, the basic structure of the narrative is sound. If I recall, she told me the packet was Chapters 1 through 4, which is an interesting chunk. I probably should have done 1 through 5, since Chapter 5 is where Emma comes back into the storyline, but by the end of Chapter 4 we've met most of the major players in one form or another. I've promised to send the revised chapters in a new packet as soon as they're ready, and I'll probably do 1-4 again, just so I can get them out sooner rather than later. Now I haven't heard yet whether this new reader enjoyed the chapters or thinks they're crap, but really I'm just happy that somebody is reading them. If this book is ever successful it'll probably be largely due to word of mouth spread by Guinevere, my #1 fan. She rocks.

It'll probably be packets for Guinevere, Colleen, mom and dad, and me. Not all of those packets are expected to be read, and I'm fine with that. I know Colleen is extremely busy all the time, for instance. And really, I don't know if she likes the story or not. I do know, from a source, that my mom once couldn't get all the way through Chapter 1, and I'll admit that it's hard-going to get through that chapter, especially since it's my mom and she knows Kelly is really me. It's fine. It's cool. But the packets are going anyway. Another reason for those is to have everything backed up in physical paper form in case the laptop goes kerblooey and the disks get erased. Technology scares me a little bit in that way. Too much can go wrong. If I were still in touch with Krysten she'd get a packet, too, but I'm not so that's out the window.

Meanwhile, I'm still in Chapter 3. The part of the chapter that I mentioned last time as needing a big fix turns out to be just fine the way it is. That's encouraging. I've gotten a little further than that, too. Kelly and Alyssa have just left the party, and she's about to drive them somewhere quiet. And that's the next thing I need to fix. As written, the driving sequence is way way way too long, and I need to find a way to trim that into a tighter package. I'm just not sure how to go about it. I've never been happy with that sequence. It's always dragged. That's my assignment for tomorrow.

When I get back to the conversation between the two of them, though, that's the easy part. It's a lot of text, but it's pretty close to perfect just the way it is. I'm only going to tweak it a little bit. And then it's on to Chapter 4, which needs a complete overhaul. The scene breakdowns are right. Most of what everyone says is good the way it is. But I screwed up a few things really badly, like changing the job environment away from the hospital setting. That was a terrible mistake, and I'm going to rectify that.

On a side note, one of my favorite devices in the book are Alyssa's cigarettes. Now Melissa has never been a smoker; Alyssa smokes quite a bit. I don't remember exactly why I added that character trait, aside from that I think smoking is sexy, and that I thought it would fit the character, but whatever prompted me to do it I'm glad I did. They've been a blessing. Those cigarettes have been so useful to me in so many different scenes that I'd be lost without them.

Besides, everybody knows smoking is totally cool.

Spin the Black Circle

It's amazing how easily I divorced myself from LSI. Almost from the moment I skipped my last day to hang out with Jen the weight of that world was lifted from my shoulders. Rugers is demanding, and I work hard, but the pressure is not all on me for a change, and it's a good change. This job swap was a good decision, and I'm glad that Jen forced my hand in order to get me out of the hellhole of LSI. Given that I nursed a FMC obsession for years after I left there, I thought something about LSI would strike a nostalgic chord, but there's really very little space in my brain taken up by that place right now.

I also thought I would miss the people more. I do miss a few of them. Starr was my friend, and I enjoyed her shitty attitude, but I believe she and I are going to drift apart now. She called me the Sunday after what would have been my last day to let me know that she was going to miss me, and that she was upset that I didn't show up to finish my last day. She also invited me to a party that was supposed to take place the Saturday after the 4th of July, and said to bring Jen along, too. When I called her back on the 4th to find out about this for sure, it turned out that the party had moved to her sister's house elsewhere. Oh well. Instead Jen and I went on the almost ass-hopping adventure that day.

I miss sitting at our break table, too, and talking to Skip. He's perhaps the most foul-mouthed bastard I know, but he's completely hilarious. When I used to sit there with him before work he would have some remark to make about every single person who came into the parking lot, and he's one of those guys who would tell you exactly what he's thinking at any given time.

I miss June, too. She always used to look out for me. And she was instrumental in helping Jen and I weather some bad times. If anyone knew exactly how valuable I was to that department, it was her.

And Stacy. She's the one, if you remember, who became something of an ally of me and Jen during the war. I was worried about what might happen to her after the both of us were gone, and let me say, especially after I was gone. In only a short time I kind of adopted her like a kid sister, and I treated her really well when she worked with me. I know that would not be the case when I wasn't there. Turns out I was right. She talked to Jen sometime on Saturday, and apparently she went to the head of her own department and said if they were going to continue to send her to Sue's department she was going to quit. I guess Starr hasn't been too nice to her, which is kinda predictable. Starr wasn't terribly kind to Jen a lot of the time either.

Also, Stacy wants my mailing address because apparently a wedding invitation is forthcoming. She has a little baby, and I guess the father is who she's marrying, but from what I hear he's kind of a jerk. Jen and I were discussing that, and no sir .... I don't like it. But if they make it all the way to next March or May (I'm not sure) I'll be happy to go to her wedding. She's a little goober, but I like her a lot.

Ok, I guess I miss Ian, too. He's kind of a doofus, but after a while he starts to grow on you. I've been extremely critical of him in the past, and his work attitude, but he was a good guy and fun to discuss things like Heroes or Resident Evil 4 with. I have his e-mail addy, but I haven't used it yet.

Other than that, I plan to disappear for a while. There's a decent chance I'll run into people from there now and then while I'm in town, but I'd rather leave it at that. I left there in a pretty good blaze of glory. I had a reputation for being a hard worker, and really for being the anchor of that area. That's not just me talking; a lot of people believed that. Now Starr isn't going to tell me that she can't hack what I used to do, but according to Stacy they are *hurting* there now. I bet Skip finds that hilarious.

But here's my LSI legacy, and really why I want to ride off into the sunset and disappear. I'll put it in Skip's words, too, paraphrased a little bit: I was one hell of a worker, and I did everything out there. There wasn't anyone else who would do what I did. But I was kind of a pussy and let Sue push me around, and I'd never say boo about it. Then this girl came along and stirred up a whole lot of trouble --- most of all, getting me to quit. And on my way out I finally stopped being a pussy and made Sue's life miserable. People saw what I could really be like, and a lot of them were surprised by what they saw. And then that girl took me out of there, and good luck trying to replace me, motherfuckers.

One thing that I know for sure is that I'm very hard to replace.

Maybe Jen will figure that out, too, before it's too late.

Lake of Fire

There are a few contenders for the title of 'Wildest Church Excursion', but the clear winner has to be the night that I ended up in the backseat of my car with a stripper out in the middle of the Plains of Turners Falls at 3:30 in the morning. It's both better and worse than I just made it sound. I've promised this post a few times already, and here it finally is. How did that come about? I'll tell you the story.

This was actually the night that started the beginning of the end of my weekly Church excursions. I could see that things were getting to a certain point in my life and I needed to stop. There were a few more trips after this night (we're somewhere in early November 1998 here), but only three or four ... and then a couple after that spread way apart. But what happened here was a huge sign that things were going seriously awry in my life. Not that I instantly turned myself into a model citizen right away, but it was something.

At this point Dan and I had become enamored with Wings, a strip club in Connecticut. We tried it on a lark, and came to enjoy the atmosphere and several of the dancers. One of them, Jade, left a huge impression on me with one fantastic lapdance (yes, I did name my Honda after her, if you're curious). It wasn't Anthony's, but it was a fun place to blow off some steam. But man, it was a long ride home afterwords, especially if you've been drinking. I only went to Wings once more after this trip, with Higgins, but that's a whole story unto itself.

I met up with Dan at the Cumbys on the far end of Main Street in Greenfield. He had this girl named Lori with him, and she was coming along. He was always picking up strays somewhere, and this one was actually staying at his house for some odd reason. Her and her kid. I kind of knew her before this, but she and I weren't close or anything, and I was kind of put off that he was bringing this chick along. But whatever, I didn't make an issue of it. I drove (that isn't usually something I would specify for the story, but it becomes a very important plot point later).

We got to Wings, and by then the three of us were getting along all right. She and I hadn't entirely thawed to each other yet, but we were getting there. We all started drinking. I paced myself, knowing I was going to be driving home, and besides that was one of the nights I wasn't feeling a burning need to destroy myself with liquor. The two September weekends in a row, which I'll blog about another time, pretty much quashed that for the time being. Aside from Lori being there it was pretty much your standard Church type excursion. Until she talked the owner into letting her get up on stage. She'd been drinking heavily, and was bombed, and she talked herself up there. She wasn't as good as some of the professionals there, but I'll be honest, she wasn't bad.

Even that didn't make it the craziest night ever, though. She danced in cycles through the rest of the night until closing while Dan and I did our own thing. I should mention at this point that Dan had the usual crush on this girl. That's another important plot point -- he liked her a lot. She danced for me a few times, but I was really interested in other girls there, and didn't pay her a lot of attention. She was doing fine without me anyway.

By the time it came to leave I was pretty buzzed, Dan was drunk, and Lori was bombed out of her mind. She climbed into the car in the driver's seat and wanted the keys. I said no way in hell, and insisted she move and get in the back. I'd have been fine if she passed out back there actually. She and I probably spent five minutes on that stand-off. I wouldn't let her drive, she wouldn't move. Finally, she compromised and moved to the middle of the front, between me and Dan. This was when I had the Buick, so there was a lot of room, but it wasn't the ideal solution I was hoping for. It was good enough to get us out of there, though, and I was all for that.

Neither of them happened to mention that I was supposed to drop them off at the Diner, where they were going to meet some guy that had Lori's car, or it might have been her actual boyfriend, or something .... the details were murky in my brain then, so I can't really tell you. But the point is that when I came up on exit 24 I just blew right by it. Only then did they both tell me that I was supposed to get off there, and they made it sound as though I'd fucked up, so then I got pissed and made it clear that nobody had told me a fucking thing about it. The rest of the ride to Greenfield was dead silent.

What do you suppose I did next? Of course. I hit the rotary and went back to the Diner. They both looked at me with no small surprise, but Lori seemed especially impressed, because she didn't really know me and didn't know that the Big Damn Hero thing is my schtick. But Dan should have known, even though I'd been pissy just before that and didn't indicate to anyone that I was even willing to go back. "Well, what did you expect I was going to fucking do? Leave her stranded?"

Naturally, when we got back to the Diner whoever they were looking for wasn't there. We didn't stay, and I took Route 5 back. At this point, Lori's hand started to travel into my lap, and ... well, you get the picture. I didn't say anything, but suffice to say, I was extremely uncomfortable. I hoped Dan hadn't noticed, and I put my foot down on the gas. My only thought was to get to Turners Falls and drop them off as fast as I could. And in a twist I did not see coming, Dan suggested that we go to the Plains instead.

I didn't want to. I tried to beg off, but they both wanted to go, and I crumbled and went along with it. The Plains, as legend has it, is this weird spooky haunted area out in the middle of nowhere out towards Montague. I'd only been there once before. We parked. And at this point Lori was all over me. I mean *all over me*. She and I made out for a while, her hands were everywhere, and I should point out that this was all right in front of my best friend, who had a crush on this girl. I can't account for my behavior here. I wasn't that drunk, certainly not like those two were, but I've been drunker and used better judgement than this particular time. I really can't account for it. Lori and I made out for what must have been ten, fifteen minutes. Then she wanted to get laid.

I knew the situation was going right off the rails, but there was too much momentum and the train would not stop. And the fact that she'd gotten me extremely wound up and turned on did not help matters, IF you know what I mean. At this point Lori climbed over the seats to the back and started getting naked. Dan excused himself from the car to take a walk. The look he gave me seemed to imply some tacit approval, but I did not know what to do. I've done some things, yes, but this was the world gone surreal. She did talk me into the backseat, however. I couldn't help thinking that I was betraying my best friend, and that I was taking advantage of a girl who was bombed out of her frikking mind, but the truth is that in the end, I couldn't do a damn thing.

Then I dropped the two of them off at his house and got my ass home to bed.

That was a Saturday night. On Monday, while at work, I waited to see if Dan would call me around 6:30, like he usually did, to see if I was coming over after work to watch wrestling. By this point I'd already told this story to Jacquie and Casey, both of whom were stunned. Jacquie especially. "I can't hear any more of this. I'm shocked. Completely shocked." But of course they both had a million questions, most of which centered on how Dan and I were. By this time they both knew who he was, and he knew who they were. (He had a crush on Jacquie, too, btw) I didn't know. So all three of us were waiting on that call.

He did call. We were cool. Dan and I were always cool, no matter which one of us were trying to steal a chick from the other. Sometimes best friends can weather that sort of thing no problem. He and I discussed that matter once, and only once, and then it was history. Lori and I were pretty awkward around each other, though, and I wasn't unhappy when she disappeared from the scene not long after that. And while I often use this story as the answer to "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" (it's the answer I gave Jen, too), there are worse things on my resume, and sooner or later I'll get around to some of that.

Usually, though, the story of the night that I stole the stripper away from my best friend and almost fucked her in the backseat of my car is good enough to take the gold medal when this sort of thing comes up.

Serve the Servants

As an interlude here, sometimes I miss the sorts of posts I used to make at the Batcave, where I would just ramble on about comic books or movies or whatever, instead of stirring up all my own personal shit to put it on display. Don't get me wrong, I think this blog has been tremendous during its run, and especially the past couple weeks, but sometimes I just feel like screwing around. And I'm going to do that in this here post.

As a writer with aspirations both as a novelist and a comic book writer I'll sometimes come across ideas that are so inspired that I become filled with envy that I didn't come up with them myself. One good example is putting Hawkgirl onto the team in the Justice League cartoon, which I would never have thought of doing, and then turning her into such a badass that she became far and away my favorite character on the show.

Another, and a more recent one, is taking sweet and innocent Mary Marvel and switching her power source so that it comes from the dark side, resulting in a more grim and gritty version of the character. And I *love* the costume redesign, too. If I can parlay some success from my first book into getting a comic book gig, Mary Marvel is definitely a character I would love to use in a book ... assuming they don't revert her back to original form by the end of this story.

Jesus Don't Want Me For a Sunbeam

I did consider taking a trip to Church. There's one over in White River Junction, so I really still could, now that I think about it. But I've held off for now, even though I'm so sexually frustrated and pent up that I could explode. At least a Church trip would take some of the edge off. I would like the edge to come off a wee bit.

People who have known me a while know what I mean by Church. It's something I was especially known for at FMC during 1998-99, so much so that I became something of the patron saint of strip clubs. I suppose I was the ringleader of the major excursions, but really that reputation came because I went every week for several months. I'm not sure where the Church nickname came from, at least as far as who came up with it. I don't think it was me. It could have been Dan or Markwell, but the true origin is lost to history. Ostensibly it came because there was an actual church located across the road from our regular strip club, but to me the nickname always had a deeper meaning.

The whole thing started from humble beginnings. Back in the late fall of 1993 I was working for Dunkin Donuts down in Hadley on second shift. At the time I was living with X on High Street, and she was doing that job with the crazy hours, which meant I wasn't seeing a lot of her. Dan was staying with us off and on (mostly on), as was X's younger sister Terry. It was quite the arrangement, let me tell you. Anyway, this one night I got a call from Dan at work. He wanted me to meet him at the Diner after I got out of work. He sounded terrible. If I could describe it, it would be like a Vietnam vet with a case of shellshock. "I've done something horrible." That was all I could get out of him.

I met him at the Diner, and he told me what happened. I won't just come out and say it, but I was at work and X was at work, and that left two people alone there, and you do the math. Anyway, he needed to do something to get rid of the horrible feeling he was feeling, and he suggested we check out the local strip club. I was hesitant, but always up for anything when hanging around with him, so what the heck. I didn't even know there was a strip club local to the Diner at the time, but there was. And my introduction to the world of strippers began with Castaways.

As strip clubs go, as I'd later learn, Castaways was kind of a dive. The dancers there weren't the cream of the crop, let's say. But a naked chick is a naked chick sometimes, and this was my very first experience with a young lady dancing naked for my entertainment dollar, so I wasn't too snobbish about it. Although, at first I could barely even look at them. I was a wee bit embarassed, and it took me a while to warm up. I'm not sure that first night I ever did get comfortable, but it was fun. We stayed for about an hour.

Then we set off in search of the holy grail. Dan had heard of a strip club in South Hadley named Anthony's. Neither of us knew how to get there, or even how to get to South Hadley, but we set off in search. That first night we took a wrong turn in Alberquerque and went in through Chicopee and got hopelessly lost. We finally did hit the major artery that runs through South Hadley, which we would have needed to make the right turn off of, but since we didn't know that we never made that turn. The mission failed, but he and I never liked to give up, so we were going back out in search of this place the next day, while X was at work.

And we did. I'm not sure what brainstorm ever set us down the correct road, but the holy grail was found. The trick turned out to be turn on the corner where the Midas is, and the arrow on the sign actually points out the way. Now Anthony's was more upscale than Castaways by a good sight, and it was bigger, and the dancers were incredible. I only remember two from that first trip -- Cassandra, who Dan had a crush on, and Heather, who I had a crush on. We spent a good chunk of change that afternoon, stayed longer than we should have, swore each other to secrecy, and made a pact to return the next time we could.

That turned out to be the following Friday night ... and every Friday night for the next few months, until I started working at the hospital. At some point we started taking private shows with our favorites, too, which were nothing then compared to what the girls can do now, but that much attention from a very pretty dancer was always a nice thing to get. Dan would meet me at Dunkin's at 11, we'd fly down the backroads to South Hadley, and then stay until closing. Getting such a late start meant we didn't burn as much money, and that was a good thing. I only had so much to burn in those days.

Dan and I developed a sort of protocol, which we stuck to like they were ironclad rules. Well, they were to us. Anthony's is so large that several dancers are on stage at once. People leave their dollars up to attract strippers towards them, and then the stripper dances for you. Some high rollers didn't care who showed up to collect that dollar, but those of us on a limited budget needed to be more thrifty. And so Dan and I developed the first rule: Safety First. Say you were trying to attract Cinnamon over to you with your dollar, but she ended up going the other way, it is then perfectly acceptable to remove the dollar from the stage before it attracts someone you don't want. And yes, every strip club I've been to has had at least one dancer on shift that was somewhat undesirable.

But you need to be quick, because Dan and I always stuck to rule #2: Honor the Deal. If your dollar misses Cinnamon, but does attract another dancer and she starts performing for you, the contract must be honored, no matter what, whether or not you wanted her to dance for you. Rule #2 is really just a dictum not to be rude. I have seen other guys there violate rule #2, and it makes me want to smack them. On the other hand, I've also seen dancers swoop in like hyenas on a fresh kill for any dollar that's up there, even when it's obviously meant for someone else. A lot of them won't do that, but every club has the hyenas.

Every so often a dancer will just show up and try to start dancing for you even if you don't have a dollar up, trying to reverse-engineer rule #2. So Dan and I developed Rule #3: Don't Look. If you aren't looking, and especially don't make eye contact, it's acceptable to not put up money. I've always thought it's kind of shady for a dancer to do that sort of thing, but my thinking is our putting up the money starts the contract, *or* making eye contact and/or watching that performance also implies a contract. So if that happens and you aren't interested, just Don't Look.

Most of the time I'm sure Dan and I were the only two people in there following that code, and I feel proud that he and I always stuck by it. There are, of course, other rules and standards of conduct set down by the house, but those apply everywhere. I always took it upon myself to hold myself to a certain standard in dealing with all of the dancers and waitresses in that I would be extra polite right across the board. I always thanked a dancer for her time, and I always tipped the waitress staff very well.

Then the Summer of Darkness Tour 98 began in earnest. I was depressed and discouraged, and the only way I wanted to feel better was to go to Church and get drunk off my ass. Back in Greenfield Dan and Larissa were over at Bobby's house, and normally I'd at least have Dan as my co-pilot, but that night I needed to go it alone. And I got hammered well beyond my usual limit. I knew how much beer I could drink and make it home, and several trips to Church had raised my tolerance, but that night I just blew right over it. I didn't care. That was a night that the Nice Lady was surely looking out for me, because I was in no condition to drive, but I made it to Greenfield in one piece. Then I met up with Dan and Larissa, threw my keys to Dan, we left, and I passed out in the backseat of my own car. I got home because Dan drove me there, and we both pretty much slept in my car. I'm not sure how I slipped that entire summer past mom, but I never got any questions about anything I was doing, and I can't imagine how it must have looked.

The legend of Church then started to grow. One Friday Dan and I took Markwell down there for his virgin strip club experience, over Meredith's *strong* objections, and it was his report about what he saw there that started the buzz. The Church nickname grew out of that night, too. If ever there was a nickname designed to deflect the true meaning of something that backfired so spectacularly ... I don't know about it. But before long everyone in the kitchen (and beyond) knew exactly what Church was. That night was something else, too. Dan and I took this 18 year old clean cut kid, got him drunk, got him stoned, took him to a strip club, and totally corrupted him. Nobody was more gung-ho for a Church trip after that than Markwell, not even me. It's like we were living out an American Pie movie. I'll probably go to Hell for a lot of things that happened that summer.

Dan and I experimented with a number of other Strip Clubs, including Mardi Gras, the Magic Lantern, Wings, and a few down on the Berlin Turnpike, but Anthony's was always the shining star, the one we would return to, the best of the best. Other people would always ask about these other clubs, and we'd give them the skinny on the good and the bad, and some of those questions inspired one of my best ever ad-libs: "Same religion, different church."

I make no apologies. Sometimes the best remedy for stress is to have someone wave a naked tit in your face, even if it costs you a buck.

All Hands On the Bad One

I could have gotten laid this morning, but insteand I went to work. Such is the sad tale of my life. Want to hear the story? Great. Let's go.

So of course she called me this morning. Anytime I'm leaning one way or the other she either shows up or withdraws just to upset the paradigm I've just adjusted to. I would say she's doing it on purpose, but that would mean she's reading my mind, and I doubt that's the case. But it was Saturday morning, and she had no idea I was going into work, so it's a pretty unusual time for her to call, not that anything we do approaches regular in any shape or form, but whatever.

The phone rang at 3:12, way early for her, but I knew it was Jen. Nobody else would call me in that timeframe. She hit right between my two snooze alarms, so the phone woke me up, and I was wicked disoriented for a bit. I'm sure that came across on the other end, too.

So she asked what I was doing. I told her I was getting up, getting up for work. And there was a five second pause before she said .... "Oh. You're working?"

Even confused as I was the pieces were starting to come together. She sounded very disappointed. And as she put the rest of the pieces together for me, it turns out that she was "hornier than a cat in heat", but too bad I had to go to work, huh? This is the story of my life. Well, it isn't like I had any advance warning or anything. I agreed to work yesterday. How was I to know that my girlfriend was going to call me at 3:12 the next morning for a booty call? Especially since that never happens.

So we jousted about that for a few minutes. She insisted I didn't know what I was missing out on, and I said that yeah I get the idea, now you're just rubbing it in. And I played it cool, even though this being the FIRST time I've worked a Saturday in eons that ... that .... yeah. Fate is really a cruel mistress sometimes. I'll tell you what, though, Fate or the Nice Lady or whoever is up there fucking with me .... there'd better be a goddam point to all of this! Or I am going to be one unhappy camper.

The truth is even if I had some idea yesterday that she might call me this morning for that reason ... I probably still would have agreed to work. Come on, if she'd planned it ahead what are the chances that it would have been cancelled or the plans changed, and then I would have been *really* wound up. At least this way, with all of the guys at work crawling over each other to get a piece of that, I'm the one she called about it. Take that, motherfuckers.

It didn't bother me at work. Then I came home. Now I've said this before, but listen clearly to my voice this time when I say: Shaun is getting FRUSTRATED.

You're No Rock and Roll Fun

I'm tired. Exhausted is more the word. Today when I got home my head was killing me, so I laid down with a cold wash cloth over my eyes, and the next thing I know it was almost 9:00. Actually, I do remember a knock on the door at some point, which was probably the landlord looking for the rent. That can wait until tomorrow, since I didn't get out of bed or even consider it. It isn't late anyway, so screw it.

Now, do I go back and try to get more sleep or do I just stay up? I ask because I agreed to come in to work tomorrow morning, on a Saturday, from 5 to 10. Why not? It isn't like I have other plans. At this point, I'm just concentrating on the $$$ that an extra five hours of overtime is going to provide on top of the 11 hours I already have this week. And this money I'm making is going to hammer some bills so that I'm in the clear, and come this fall when I seriously start looking to get out of this flea hotel it'll be that much easier.

I'm so tired. I owe Guinevere an e-mail, and I know it, but my brain is so frazzled. I'll hop on top of that tomorrow. Seeing as how she is my best friend and one of the few people out there I know that cares about me with no question, I figure she deserves a timely response to her great e-mails. Speaking of, I should write Colleen a letter, too. My sister is awesome, too. Right now most other people can suck it. I may not really mean that when the sun comes up, but I'm tired and frustrated and only kind of give a shit.

Jen. I meant what I wrote here yesterday, but again .... tired, frustrated. I don't think I'm going to call her tomorrow. In fact, I may not call her again until she comes looking for me. If I'm an important friend or whatever the hell I am, I guess she can show me so. And that's all I have to say about that.

On the other hand, through the magic of Myspace I got back in touch with a friend from LSI named Lisa. She left there sometime last year through some acrimonious circumstances of her own, so I sent her a message that the best thing about LSI was leaving there for good. And last night I chatted with her on Yahoo messenger for a little while. It was nice to be able to relax and chat with someone without feeling a lot of pressue on every word. It's really no wonder I retreated into those alter-egos, because sometimes it isn't easy being green. Anyway, I got back in touch with a friend. Yay.

Work is going all right. Today was a little frustrating, though. I was filing and straightening slides to go onto the barrels that Jason was gas-blocking. What he was doing is usually my job, but I think Barney put him on that because he was mostly goofing off and flirting with Amanda (the department hottie). Here's something: I'm a much better gas-blocker already than Jason is. For most of the day the slides were going fine, although I picked up a few nasty metal slivers, one of which is still in my finger. Then they just stopped. I'm positive I was doing them right, but they stopped fitting on the guns, no matter how hard I tried to beat them into shape. It could have been the gas-block, so Jason and I had a small Mexican stand-off for a while. Then Fred came over and hammered the fuck out of a slide to get it to fit a gun, just as an experiment, and then checked it in the straightening fixture and it was nowhere near those parameters. So it isn't really anything I'm doing, I guess, but I frustrated myself right into a headache. Then someone suggested Jason do something different on the gas-block screws, and after he did the slides started working again. Draw your own conclusions there.

No writing updates. I've been tired and worn out, and today I didn't get anywhere near the bookstore.

I'm feeling a little pent up, too. I wonder if I have enough cash for a minor Church excursion.

We Are the Brave Pioneers

As Guinevere knows from our chat the other day, I've been feeling somewhat out at sea with the whole Jennifer thing. At least three times during the past week I was going to make a post about it, thought better of it, decided to wait it out, and then went on to another subject. The shifts we work and the long hours that make them up keep us apart, but last weekend I was beginning to feel abandoned, and I felt frustrated about that. I won't get into all the details of who called who when and so forth, because I'm past all that right now. Let's jump ahead.

Tuesday night I called her and left a message on her phone while she was at work. It was a "hope you're having a good night, see you soon" sort of call, which I do from time to time. At that point she and I hadn't talked since Saturday night. Sometimes I hang back and take a wait and see approach, so I can see what she'll do and I can find out where she's at. Then I changed my mind. I know in the last post on this subject I said that whenever I try something it hits the wall .... but I was mistaken. I have done things that have worked to great effect.

For instance. After that week when she and I were at odds, I was the one who brought us back together, with the e-mail (which I still think is badass) and the phone call. I did that. And even when she was scared and trying to push me away before we started going out, I kept myself in the game by letting her know where I stood, planting my feet, and refusing to budge no matter what. And she and I only started going out at all because I forced the issue that night in the parking lot. I can cause things to happen, sometimes just through force of will.

And perhaps thanks to that message she's called me the last two mornings before work, and we've had good conversations. As a result I've reflected on a few things and come to a better place. I'm working crazy hours; she's working crazy hours. I've more or less adapted to mine. She is so obviously exhausted on her way home that it's affecting how I view things. She's also stressed for other reasons -- the hours are long and bizarre, she has to travel about twice as far as I do, her living situation is a little stressful, and she's looking to move, she has car issues she needs to take care of, and she has other friends (like Jenn) who only call her when they need something. So I have to stop and take a look at my role in things.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm not going to let my selfishness and the petty things that bother me ruin everything. Ultimately, I would like to keep Jennifer as a longterm close friend, whether she remains my girlfriend or not. In thinking back to past relationships that went sour, and trying to figure out what could have been salvaged out of that and how, a lot of it comes down to me. If I wanted to hang onto something out of those relationships I probably could have in at least 85% of the cases, but I let small things and hurt feelings get in the way, and that left me with nothing. I won't let pride get in the way this time. Of course, in a lot of those older cases I wasn't playing with as much confidence and power of will as I am now, and things are a lot different when you don't hate yourself and the world. A lot different.

My legacy from this relationship will be that Sparky was the one guy, the one person, who didn't clog up her life with a bunch of stupid bullshit that could have been avoided. There are a lot of factors I can't influence, like the work schedules, or what her level of interest in this relationship is during any given day, but I can hold up my end of things. I will hold up my end of things. In the early going I may have faltered a little bit here and there, but over the last month or so I've been entirely on top of my game, and perhaps the best at this boyfriend thing that I've ever been (or at least in the top 3). I won't go down like a little bitch, and she isn't going to treat me like yesterday's garbage and get away with it (if things come to that), but I'm also not going to drop the ball my own self. She will know at the end of things that I was a pretty badass boyfriend who would do just about anything for her. She'll know it.

A while back, when she and I were forging our relationship at LSI, long before there was any idea that we might start going out, although she and I had been flirting since about the first minute, I started to see that she would make for a good parter. At first she was just yet another person I had to drag through the foil training process. Then she started to catch on, and with the good chemistry she and I had, we became a pretty good team. Then the "pushover" incident happened, and the next day I gave her the complete business, and really took that comment out on her, trying to prove some sort of point ... I dunno. But she took it, she weathered it, and by the end of the day she and I were fine again. A lot of other people I've worked with would have cracked, but she didn't. And she really earned my respect.

Because of that I decided that she and I were 'Partners'. Usually, I was the Screener and whoever I was working with was just my flunky, or my "bitch" is what we really used to call it. But after that day Jen and I were partners, something that only Starr had prior to that. As in her prior relationships, Jen had been screwed over at jobs before, and was a little skeptical of me when I told her that there were two things that would be true:
1) I'd have her back no matter what.
2) I'd never throw her under the bus.

She was skeptical, yes. But I proved it. No matter how bad things got, especially at the end, I had her back right to the wall. Even during that week when she and I weren't getting along, nobody could pry anything out of me that cast her in a bad light. Even when people did try to interfere I insisted that it was my business and I'd take care of it. Sue sticking her fat nose into it was one of the things that brought Jen and I back together, in fact. And I never threw her under the bus. Even when she screwed up, even when she pissed me off, I never went to Sue or anyone else and bitched or complained, which makes me pretty much unique within that department. I don't throw my Partner under the bus, and I always have their back.

So where I'm going with all that is probably clear. I don't throw my girlfriend under the bus, no matter what. And I still have her back, right to the wall. Those two things will always be true.

And that will be my legacy.

Some Disassembly Required, part 5

Brick by brick I am dismantling the whole shebang. The era of Bethany and the NHG's is drawing to a close, and I am the grim reaper come to end it all for keeps. The time has come. I'm going to miss those girls, but I need to move on. And then instead of the five of them (and various supporting cast members), it'll just be me, Sparky, here all alone writing this other blog. It might be lonely going at first, but ultimately it'll be worth it.

The first thing I did was take Beth off of my PO Box. Things had grown to the point where she was getting mail. In my efforts to keep that persona up and running I had her name added to my PO Box, which is ridiculously easy to do. I just told them that my girlfriend, Beth, needed to use my box to have some things delivered, and bickety bam ... she was riding along. But last week I removed her from the box, so now any stray anything that is sent here way should bounce back.

Next is the matter of the Batcave. If I'm abandoning the identity I really shouldn't leave all of those posts hanging around out there in the ether. This blog is one thing -- only a handful of people even read it. That blog is quite another. I never specified which company I worked at for all those years, but there are too many names and details in those posts for me to just let them all stay. So I'm dismantling the Batcave post by post by post. I'm going to leave the shell, and gut the rest. There are things of mine I want to keep from the innards, so I'll be sorting through the wreckage and saving what I need in Wordpad. But eventually, with no warning, that blog will just be an empty lot.

I haven't decided about Myspace yet. There exists five profiles, one each for the core group, and let me tell you those were a bitch to set up and maintain. They may disappear. I may let them remain. Unlike the Batcave, those profiles are really pretty harmless and can't really bounce back on me. I don't have to decide that right now anyway. The Yahoo mail accounts will wither and die from disuse on their own, so I can let time take care of those. The old forum is already deleted. I think that only leaves the four AIM accounts. I need to rig one up for the really real me anyway, and I might do that tomorrow.

In the meantime I'm picking my brain for any other loose ends I might have out there. If I come up with any they'll all be liquidated in short order.

The Wolf (see Pulp Fiction) is on the job.

Diary of a Virgo, volume 5

"Write the bad things that are done to you in sand," says an Arab proverb, "but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble." That's perfect advice for you in the coming days. Why? Because I believe you'll be cheated or slighted in a way that will have only minor, short-term consequences, whereas on the other hand you'll be the beneficiary of a loophole or the recipient of a generous blessing that should reverberate for a long time.

Huh. I can almost guess what the first part of that will be related to, and I bet you can, too. The second part sounds all right, though.

While I have your attention, I'd like to reflect on the blog here a minute. I was a little hesitant to start this one up again, for reasons covered in the Disassembly series of posts, but I really think it's worked out very well. It helps that right after I reanimated the corpse of this thing that I stumbled into the two biggest stories of the past several years: a) the job changeover, and b) the new girlfriend. It also helps that my last six weeks at LSI were so batshit crazy, because that made for some good posts.

I think the past week has been especially strong. Everything from "It's a Gas Block Life" forward have been posts I've been very happy with. And taking the blog as a whole, it's been really solid in ways the other blog never could be, even as happy and proud of that other blog as I've been in the past. This is post #72, and I'd be hard-pressed to find a string of 70 posts over at the Batcave that I'm as proud of as I am of the total content of Stray Bullets. And that's thanks again to Guinevere, who nudged me into bringing this back.

And I'm just getting warmed up.

Ramona the Brave

Getting back to the first book, I'm still working my way through Chapter 3. There's a lot of clean-up I need to do. Like I said the last time I discussed it, the opening bit needed a trim so I could get Kelly to the party faster, since that's where he meets Alyssa, which is the most important element of that chapter. So I looked at what I had and decided there was way too much dicking around. Now there's almost too much dicking around still, but it's much leaner and I think it flows better. Plus, it was pretty boring the way I had it. I don't want people tuning out or falling asleep on me.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I moved the story from Massachusetts to New Hampshire. Wait, hear me out. New Hampshire gives me a tighter playing field, in that I can concentrate most of the action in Lebanon, West Lebanon, and Hanover ... with occasional trips elsewhere, like Manchester. If I tried to do the story straight up in Mass, I'd have to deal with Greenfield, Bernardston, Turners Falls, Deerfield, Sunderland, Whatley, Northampton, Amherst, Hadley, Holyoke, Springfield, Westfield, Agawam, and Longmeadow. And that's just off the top of my head. There's probably more. And that's a bit unwieldy. I gave some thought to doing the same thing I did with Texas, which is take the area and transform it into a brand new entity. But I decided that worked a lot better for Emma's story than it would the rest of this story.

In getting Kelly out of his apartment I also introduce one of my favorite of all supporting characters: his cat Milo. This cat isn't based on any cat I've ever owned or known of, but I've really taken to him. I don't know if it's that he only barely tolerates Kelly, or that he acts as kind of a color commentary on any other person who comes in that apartment, but it's something. That latter thing is a bit I'm very fond of, and it's one of the several sneaky things that I'm doing in the story right in plain sight. Pay attention to how Milo reacts to Kim, Laurel, Alyssa, and Emma, along with a few others, and you'll get what I mean.

To get Kelly to the party we then meet Brian, who is based on a friend of mine from the FMC days. Since there are too many people I know with this same first name, I'll just call him Walker. I tried to stay faithful to the spirit of Walker and how he talks, although I might have exaggerated it a little ... but only a little. He's the guy who gave me the nickname Benitez in the first place. He came up with Ohio, too. I'm sure if he'd still been there when you started, Guinevere, he would have come up with something cute and funny for you, too. It's taken me a long time to fine tune the conversation between Brian and Kelly in the car, but I think the rhythm is really good right now.

Then at the party I had to cut a little chaff, but I was impressed that I came up with so many nice little details about the party. I made sure to keep all of those while I trimmed the other fat. The idea of what that party was like comes across, and that's really what I needed.

And then comes Alyssa. It took me three or four days just to get her approach from across the room down right, and even so I think I should give it another read-through, just to be sure. It's hard to nail, and this is something I really need to nail hard.

But then it gets easier. The opening conversation between her and Kelly, with the few tweaks I gave it, really really sings. It helps that I've de-schmucked Kelly a little in this version of the chapter, too. I wasn't real keen on how he came across in earlier versions, and it took a few passes to fix it. Alyssa, on the other hand, is tremendous. She's far and away my favorite character to write*, because all of her sentences just have an incredible energy that I can feel coming through my fingers. And she and Kelly have a great chemistry right off the bat, which makes the conversation so much easier to get through. I'm still only on the first leg of the conversation, while they're still at the party. The real meat of the matter comes at the conclusion of the chapter when they're alone in her car. I stopped tonight on a section that in the existing version is just glossed over, which I now think is a mistake, so I have to figure out how to handle that. That's tomorrow's assignment.

(*not including Emma in Chapter 2, which is a whole 'nother matter.)

I'll admit, Alyssa was a difficult character for me to nail down at first. But then I figured out the secret, and once I did everything fell right into place like rifle parts. That secret, and you can skip the end of this sentence if you don't want to know it, is to write Alyssa as though everything she says *might* be a complete and outright lie.

I probably won't spill every secret and trick that I know about these characters, though. Some of them need to show up in the details of the story.

It's going well. Very well.

Ramona the Brat

I don't know how long I can milk Ramona titles out of my writing updates ... or why I am at all, but just go with it, eh?

Last week I was chatting with one of my alter-ego's friends, one of the few I wish I could keep, even though I know that's impossible. Anyway, since the person is from Texas I thought I'd hit him up for some details that were nagging me as far as how accurate I am with a few things in Chapter 2. I think I more or less found out what I needed to know, and then we got into a discussion of my ideas for my second book, which may have some Texas in it as well.

If you remember my last discussion of Shannon, you might remember I mentioned a note about twisting some of that stuff into a book. Unlike the first book, where I'm trying to stick to the story, at least as far as Emma goes, this second book would be a complete extrapolation of what might have happened if the relationship between Shannon and I did what it could have ... and then went completely off the rails. Or in other words, what if Shannon and I did run off to Texas like she off-handedly suggested one afternoon? And then what if everything went horribly wrong? I think it has some merit.

And keeping with the themes that I enjoy this second book is going to be dark and very Noir-ish. I always love a good Noir story. And it's going to be bloody and violent in ways that the first book can't be. Now, wait a minute, you say. What some of you have seen of the current book is pretty damn violent in spots, yes, but it's only as violent as it needs to be to tell this story ... with maybe a little extra, thanks to the Ben character. But this Shannon and me book will be even more violent, more than it needs to be, even egregiously so. It might turn out to be something (else) my mom can't read. But to do that story I'm going to have to really cut loose and go bonkers with it, and anyone who's read some of the stories I've written for my own team of super-villainesses at the Batcave (which is a whole 'nother thing I intend to take out of there and potentially make money with) knows I can bring a shitload of violence to the table. So it would be my second book filed under: "Twisted Love Story" (or to use the shorthand -- "It's about a girl.")

I like the idea that my regular type books (as opposed to comic booky stuff) are all happening in a shared universe. So if I can figure out a way to do it I might overlap a character or two from the first book into the second (or vice versa, if I'm really sneaky about it). I also know where the two lovers on the run are going, too. There's a whole county built in Texas already where they could end up, so maybe that'll become my version of Castle Rock. Who knows.

However, while the guy in this second book will be based on me, it won't be Kelly. His story is all told in the first book. The two leads will be brand new to the second book. It's conceivable that Emma could make some sort of appearance, but only if I find the right way to do it. I wouldn't rule out Alyssa making a cameo appearance either. There's no plan for that, but I only have the bare bones of a story right now, too. I'm drawing some influence from movies like Blood Simple, and the comic book this blog is named after, as far as the feel of things. Texas is probably going to be more of an Idea Of Texas than a real representation, since I've never been there my own self. Most of my idea of what it's like to be a Texan comes from Preacher, Firefly, Lone Star, Erin, and a couple of people my alter-ego chats with. So I have the idea of the place in my noggin, which is a start.

I haven't the slightest notion of a title, though.

Some Disassembly Required, part 4

At this point adding a fourth character was probably gilding the lily a bit, but I had a really good handle on the voices and personality quirks of the first three, so it didn't seem like too much of a risk in giving it a shot. Plus, it was another case of a natural progression of the storyline requiring another person to enter into the mix. Bethany and Taylor(Emily) were together, so it only seemed fair that Brandy(Jill) would find someone, too. For the record here, I can't decide whether to go with Brandy and Taylor or Jill and Emily in these posts, and it probably doesn't matter anyway. The lead character is staying Bethany, though.

Willow came along in a sneaky way. Throughout this I've gone the extra mile to make sure all of these characters seem like they're seperate people, and with a little thought it really isn't that hard to pull it off. The first thing is making sure they don't all sound alike, because if they're interchangeable then you're pretty much screwed. But by this point nobody would confuse Brandy with Beth or Emily. The speech patterns are different enough. The second thing I've learned is to make sure that one character doesn't know *too* much about what the others are doing. Like if I had a couple roommates, I wouldn't always know what they're doing at all hours. My girlfriend is another good example of this. I usually don't know what she's up to at any given time.

Using that second principle, I brought Willow in slowly. The story was that this attractive young college student approached Jill at school and they struck up an instant chemical reaction. Now, Emily being the best friend would be the first person Jill would tell about it, but I decided that Jill would keep the information from Beth, at least at first, until she got used to the idea of having her own girlfriend type person. So what I did was have Emily accidentally-on purpose spill the beans about it in the forum, and then I had her and Jill bicker about it a little bit there, in front of my audience, and then eventually this Willow girl would come by the house and meet big sis. As these angles go it was pretty well played out. And since Jill was such a sexpot character there were members of my audience who were keenly interested in seeing what sort of girl would rope her in.

The trick was finding her voice. I figured that anyone who would approach Jillian out of the blue and proposition her had to be full of moxie, and out of that I developed her as someone who is totally direct in what she says, not always the most tactful, but definitely a straight-shooter. Also, as the new girl to the group -- since the other three had known each other forever -- she became the most reactionary and knee-jerk protective of the rest of us. If someone screwed over Jill or Emily, for instance, that person would be dead to Willow forever. That's how I played it. There's always been a circle the wagons aspect to the girls, and Beth is easily the most ferocious if anyone even looks at the others sideways, but Willow became the enforcer, and the first one who would stop taking any shit from anyone. Somehow, also, when I use her voice she doesn't use a lot of contractions when she's chatting. That may sound like a tiny detail to y'all, but the next time you're in a long chat with someone .... you try it. Then let me know how it went.

Willow was introduced in the fall of 2001, completing the core group. She moved into the apartment by the summer of 2002, making for an even more cohesive unit. Soon after that Willow and Bethany developed their special best-friend connection, and the infamous Friday night GNO (Girl's Night Out) gimmick was created. Probably on a weekly basis the GNO's were the thing I was most regularly asked about for details, which required me to get creative since in reality I wasn't really doing anything special most Friday nights.

Having the four girls be so tight let me fill in all the lines of the relationship diagram, as follows:

Beth-Emily: girlfriend
Beth-Jill: sister
Jill-Emily: best friend
Jill-Willow: girlfriend
Beth-Willow: best friend
Emily-Willow: sister

That last one took me a while to figure out. Of course, they aren't sisters by blood, but I decided that they'd adopted each other as sisters at some point along the way. It bothered me not having some kind of definable relationship between those two when all the rest were filled in. Plus, it gives the whole thing a certain symmetry, and symmetry is always a good thing.

So the core group was established. I was able to alternate between the four of them without a lot of problems. The trick was trying to remember all of the details I established, because I always break things down to the atomic level, and these four girls were no exception. Since a lot of the details came out in chats with different people, I had to keep most of those details and specifications in my head. Most of it was easy, but for some of it I had to keep a cheat sheet in Wordpad so I didn't fuck up and contradict myself. But there is a reason they all have birthdays that match people I know (mine, Chrissy's, Samantha's, and Colleen's ... in order of character creation). They were easier to remember that way.

But I still wasn't finished. I filled this pocket universe with tons of supporting characters, many of whom were as fully fleshed out as those four. And I added a 5th NHG later in the next year, too.

We'll cover all that next time.

Sparky the Great and Terrible

So no matter how the thing with Jen ends, I'm keeping the nickname. It's probably the best general use nickname I've had pretty much ever. Benitez never really made a whole lot of sense really. Guinevere's nickname for me is another one I really like, but it's reserved just for her, and probably wouldn't make a lot of sense in other contexts with other people anyway. But Sparky is pretty good. It even helped me solve a continuing problem in the book, as far as Kelly needing a decent nickname for people at work to call him. The temporary solution I'd been using was completely dreadful.

I know I keep hitting this note, but it's really amazing how I'm feeling right now. That is to say, I feel good. I haven't felt this good in a long time ... so long, in fact, I can't even put a timeframe on it. And it's due to the fundamental changes I went through this spring. Perhaps the most fundamental of those changes, and it's something I mentioned in one of the Disassembly posts, is that I stopped hating myself. Maybe I've even started to forgive myself a little bit, too, for you know what. And while Jen may not work out as a longterm girlfriend, and this relationship might hit the wall and crash at anytime, she was the catalyst of all this, so *if* we do go down in flames I need to be prepared to go on beyond that so that I don't revert to angry, bitter, and miserable. Because that's no way to live.

Sure, it sounds harsh to say that I hated myself, but I really did, for a long time. And that point of view influenced almost everything I did and thought. It was responsible for the things I did during the Summer of Darkness Tour (1998). It was responsible for the creation of Bethany and friends. It was responsible for numerous relationships that went boom. It was responsible for the money trouble I got myself into a couple years ago. It was responsible for a lot. It might be the reason I never got the book finished. It was the reason for my anxiety attacks and near nervous breakdown four years ago. There are a lot of things. And it was all because I hated myself.

But now I don't. It's as simple as that. I woke up and I stopped. During my long dating hiatus I couldn't imagine why anyone would possibly want me. Now, I believe that I'm a great boyfriend, and that if Jen doesn't work out I'll find another girl who will realize how good I can be. Now, I don't feel like I'm wasting my life, I'm not embarassed by my job, I'm not humiliated by what I have to deal with on a daily basis, and I don't lie awake at night crushed by depression and fear. I don't dread the mornings anymore, and I don't feel like the entire world is against me when I wake up. I've changed, and I like it.

And goddamit, it's going to stay this way.

Some Disassembly Required, part 3

I'd like to be able to say that the addition of Taylor to the mythology was some kind of master plan, considering what an important character she turned out to be. You know, that I decided to create someone to represent the ideal relationship as I see it for Bethany/me. Or that I tried to create perhaps the nicest, sweetest girl with the biggest possible heart as some sort of commentary on what I felt was missing from my life. Or even that I needed to introduce someone who could act as a stablizing force for the wilder Frost girls. But none of that was true. I was bored one afternoon and figured I'd expand a bit. I figured while Bethany was something of a loner, that Brandy at least would have a best friend who would visit from time to time.

At first that's all I knew about Taylor: she was Brandy's best friend. Sometimes the voice doesn't suggest itself right away, and instead grows out of the details. Somewhat subconsciously I used Erin as a model for Taylor, and started to insert some backstory that she was a troubled, abused girl, who nevertheless always saw the good in people and would go to tremendous lengths to try to help anyone in need. Whereas Erin was consumed by her demons, I decided that Taylor would be a survivor. And out of that she became probably the strongest of the group that would eventually be known as the New Hampshire Girls. I also knew that she and Brandy were lifelong friends, beginning before Kindergarten. Both Brandy and Taylor worked as waitresses, went to college, and also performed at a local strip club a couple times a week. And I knew that Taylor had a major crush on Bethany. From those humble beginnings I knew I had enough seeds to run with these three characters for a long while.

After the mistake that almost pulled the plug on this whole continuity, it was necessary to change the names of the three of them. Thus, Brandy and Taylor reverted to their "real" names of Jillian and Emily, and the false names were revealed to be their stage names. Bethany, however, always concerned about her privacy, assumed the name of Penny Lane, which was also taken straight out of Almost Famous. I didn't reveal Beth's "real" name for another six months, around the same time that her alcoholism became something of public record. That is to say, I needed a character defect that would get me out of a tight spot, and that was the best way to go. It really did add a lot of depth to her character.

Around the same time as the name change, Beth and Taylor became a couple. I found something irresistible in the idea of Taylor having had a crush on Beth for almost ten years and having it finally pay off for her. And they stayed together the entire time since, far outlasting any real life relationship I've ever had. They haven't really had any major hiccups either, so somehow I reigned in my pot-stirring troublemaking plotlines in favor of watching this ideal relationship blossom into something special. Sometimes I'm just really sentimental that way.

Of course, you'd think I'd stop at three characters, especially since I had to write posts and have chats as all three at alternate times to keep the universe spinning around, but ..... oh ho ho no. I had another idea.

We'll get to her next time.

Some Disassembly Required, part 2

It wouldn't be my blog if I didn't have several different continuing threads running through it. We already have:

1) the epic story of Cookie and Sparky.
2) the journey from screen printer to gun maker.
3) the march towards publishing destiny.
4) several time travel episodes into the past.
5) an exploration of the ghosts that haunt me.

and now...
6) the complete dismantlement of my internet alter egos.

Like I said in part one, there are five of them. As always, these things tend to spiral out of hand once I get rolling. Just like there are at least 100 different speaking parts in the book, I couldn't limit myself to just one character. I didn't intend for that to happen, but a natural progression developed and they just showed up. Bethany ran solo for at least six months before one of her friends asked about the little sister that lived in the Vermont woods with her, and thus Brandy was born. From there, I extrapolated the rest of the family. I decided that Beth was the 2nd of five children. I've always wondered how I would have come out if we'd had an older sister, or even if Colleen had been the older one of us. I think she and I would have basically come out the same, but I might have been even more troubled than I was. She would have cast a long shadow if I were following her through school and such.

I put some of that thought into the creation of the often spoke of but never seen older sister, who I named Whitney. I also took inspiration from the older sister, Anita, in the movie Almost Famous, but took it a little further. More than just leaving a box of records, the mythology then became that Whitney built Bethany like she came out of a box of Tinker Toys, and passed down most of the things she was interested in to her younger sister. A lot of the stories told about Whitney also drew on the real life relationship between Colleen and myself, as did a lot of the stories involving Beth and Brandy, but in a different way. I also decided that there was a younger teenaged brother and a baby sister who would have been about five when all of this was created. That put the span between the siblings at a respectable 26 years. If that wasn't weird enough, the older two sisters are brunette, the third sister and the brother are blondes, and the baby sister is a redhead. I've toyed with revealing the baby sister, Shannon, to actually be Beth's daughter, which actually plays off of something in real life that I heard rumored while at FMC, but I never had the nerve to pull the trigger on that.

Bethany, basically a version of myself, was something of a geek for the same pop-culture things I'm keen for. Whitney was the rebellious, ultra cool big sister everyone wants to have. I decided Brandy would be a wild party girl, and initially I based her on Chrissy (they even have the same birthday), but the more I used her in chats and within the forum I was hanging around in, the more she developed her own famously bizarre ways of speaking. I'm not even sure where things like "It ain't no thing" or the assorted other Brandyisms came from. They just appeared. All things considered, Brandy was probably the most fun to use. Beth was by far the easiest, but Brandy had a joy of life that was pretty infectious. Bethany was always a little more sour, but being a recovering alcoholic might have had something to do with that. The challenge with Brandy was that no matter how hideous my day was or how awful things with Jude might have been at the time ... Brandy *had* to be upbeat and positive. Thank god I gave her an explosive temper later on. It came in pretty handy.

A couple of months later I got even greedier. A third character started to develop in my mind.

We'll get to her next time.

Some Disassembly Required

Since around the time I restarted this here blog I've started the process of disassembling my internet alter ego and everything attached to it. As I've portrayed that character for near to seven years there are a lot of loose ends to wrap up. Some of them may never be altogether wrapped up, since I don't think I'm going to do any kind of big spectacular reveal and let my secret identity loose to the world, and she's more likely to just disappear into the ether. I've been mulling over exit strategies since pretty early on, but I've never come up with anything too exciting, and for whatever reason I kept on sticking around. Part of that was because until the relaunch of this blog and the fundamental changes in my status quo brought about earlier this spring, I wasn't comfortable being myself. And I don't just mean on the internet.

My alter ego has existed in one form or another since 1996. The character of those early years (1996-2000) was really just the prototype version. When I created Beth in August of 2000 she was fully formed from the get-go, and that version of the character has been running ever since, even though she's undergone a name change or two. She's the character I consider 'me', even though I subsequently developed a supporting cast, and I can also inhabit any one of four other characters without much problem. I've even chatted with the same people as four of them at different times, and each of them are different enough to fool most of the people most of the time.

However, there have been suspicions since a critical early mistake that those girls are .... exactly what I've told you here. There is a small group out there that would love to find out the truth about Bethany, but unless someone comes across this post, chances are they'll never know for sure.

Slipping into the character of Bethany has always been really easy. The others are more of a mental challenge, but Beth is pretty easy to get. She's essentially me in most of the important ways, and what I would like to be, but with the volume turned up to 11. She's smart, funny, charismatic, charming, opinionated, takes no shit from anybody, and is a total badass. Anything I wish I could say to someone, she could say it. Anything I wish I was brave enough to do, she could do it. She was fierce and ferocious while I was a schmuck and a pushover. I used Bethany to escape from my boring, go nowhere life. A lot of the time I was more interested in her life than in my own. Then I met Jen and she turned over the whole applecart and helped reawaken me. A lot of the qualities I enjoyed in Bethany turned out to exist within me after all, and they resurfaced. And I did something that even she could never do: I left the job that was crushing my soul. I did that. And it turns out I didn't really need Bethany anymore.

And the process of disassembly is underway.

We'll discuss this more.