I need to let stuff out here. Do not read if you hate blogs that actually sound like blogs.

I think overall I'm a nice person. I make an effort. Sure, underneath it all I'm always yay close to jabbing everyone in the eye with a leaky pen (cue Morrissey: "in myyy liiiife, why do IIIII smiiiiiile..."), but I usually feel so guilty about this that it forces me into politeness overdrive when I'm around strangers. Please, thank you, excuse me, holding doors, all that -- and not even that sort of disingenuous sweetness self-consciously "bitchy" people brag about employing because they believe it's a rilly canny way of concurrently "taking the moral high road" and revealing the true depths of their insufferable twatiness (like this is a good thing). I try to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. I end up hating and distrusting and feeling disappointed by 98 percent of the people I interact with, but it's worth a shot, right?

Still, I'm nice. I'm an optimist. I wanna like people. I wanna love people. And because of a fairly short attention span and a knack for self-preservation (despite the death-wish devil on my opposite shoulder), I just don't allow that many people into my inner circle. It sometimes feels like I physically can't do it, like there's a "Maximum Capacity" warning sticker safety-pinned to my heart and a bouncer waiting outside. I've gotta think you're the ant's pants -- and even then you're not guaranteed access. But the couple of really close friends I've had have meant everything to me, have brought me outside of myself and made me care, made me ill with worry sometimes, made me feel concern in a way that tossed to the four winds the overvalued and quite selfish notion of hero-roleplay and forced me into long debates with my conscience about the ethics of intervention. And more often than not those friends have just made me happy by being totally fucking balls-to-the-wall COOL, and this is urgent and key: If I think you're that kind of cool (and no, it doesn't have to do with fuckin' popcultrefs -- although those are among the funner small-talk conversational crutches, as long as they're not centered around some stupid TV show), you've got my heart, basically, and if you treat me good and make regular mention of how totally fucking balls-to-the-wall COOL I am (hey, I may be a groupie, but I'm not a doormat), I'll love you forever.

There's this friend I've been thinking about. We were much closer a year ago than we are now; our lives have gone in separate directions and our network of mutual friends has broken apart several times over, but we still talk every so often. He was on my mind recently -- someone furnished a great old quote of his and I was all GODDAMN I MISS THAT GUY and yesterday we IM'ed and turns out his band's hitting NYC next week and GODDAMN I MISS THAT GUY and it's not even crushy longing anymore, I just wanna see him and reconnect for the brief flash of an instant he's in town and bask in the presence of one of the only citizens of this vast and populous world I've ever seriously truly honestly given two thirds of a fuck about, and that includes the majority of my ex-boyfriends, current crushes, regular acquaintances, and familial ties. Sorry. For real.