The Ever-Loving Virgin Prince

My prized piranha,

Ah, it’s been a difficult day. I don’t know what it is, but occasionally a hangover has the same effect on me as does that time of the month for most females. I get moody, my energy level is shot, and I can feel a definite tug-of-war going on between my emotions. The punishment for a night of excess is that I become overly-sensitive, coming dangerously close to tears over such trivial things as watching As Good As It Gets.

It wasn’t a great night last night; I just barely missed the opportunity to hang out with my good friend Super-Crowl at his favorite pool hall. I haven’t seen him in a long time, and as he’s getting married, he wanted to have a drink or two with me at the establishment that proudly hangs his portrait on the wall. I was ready to head out into The City to meet him, but the whole affair was poorly-planned and last-minute, and he decided that we should instead wait until the next Friday.

I was tired anyway, my feet were sore and blistered from a day spent out pounding the pavement in the warm California sun; I was underfed and exhausted from the job hunt. I knew I was in no shape for a run, though had my feet not been terribly blistered, I’m sure I would have attempted it anyway. I rather enjoy running now, and the speed which I continue to attain makes the whole experience that much more thrilling.

You see, people seem to love their diet fads, and without question, Atkins (the incredibly dangerous diet) seems to be the most popular. While I’m sure that drinking bacon grease, not eating fruit and vegetables, and a minimum of physical activity may appeal to some people, my diet is considerably anti-Atkins. First off, my diet is almost entirely carbs. Certainly, I make a point to eat fruit and vegetables, and beans and a limited amount of meat, but I certainly don’t shy away from noodles, rice, and bread. The nation of China isn’t noted for its obesity epidemic, and therefore, proves Atkins obviously isn’t the only way to go about things.

My diet is called the “Get-Off-Your-Fat-Ass-and-Do-Some-Exercise Diet” and it seems to be the best thing I’ve done yet. I’ve tried others, notably, the “Eat, Drink, Breathe, and Sleep-Karate Diet” which worked quite well though it left me sore all the time (and I still get the urge to randomly engage in blocking maneuvers), and the “Drink-Yourself-To-Death Diet” which had been perfected by my now-ex-girlfriend (and I believe she still practices), which really only succeeded in bulking me up. Indeed, the latter diet gave new meaning to “feel the burn”, and whereas with Karate I often yelled out, “Ki-I!” while engaging in strenuous physical activity, in drinking the two of us only generally yelled out “Ow! My liver!”

But my new routine is working out quite well for me; the results seem to be increasingly obvious with every day. The first six months were slow and gradual, and at times I was frustrated, wondering why I wasn’t seeing results faster when I’d been running so often and so hard. Certainly, at first, the only immediately visible results were blistered and/or bloody feet, and sweat-drenched (and occasionally blood-splattered) shirts. But by the time I’d started running 6.5 miles per hour, the results were getting quite noticeable, and I was dropping weight fast.

In the past month I’ve put a new hole into my belt twice, what most amazes me about this is the fact that in April, being the month of my birth, I’ve lived in excess quite a bit. Loads of booze, a regrettable amount of cigarettes, a much more toothsome diet than usual, quite a few skipped days of exercise, etcetera, etcetera… and I’m still getting smaller! Apparently my metabolism has gotten to a point where I no longer even have to try that hard, as long as I have at least three days of running in a week. I guess the fact that I continue increasing speed (and pretty much gave up fast-food once I gave up beef) helps. I can eat all the bread and cheese I want, bitches!

So to others, I say go ahead and enjoy your Atkins; I blame you not for enjoying a diet that encourages both sloth and gluttony. Enjoy your deep-fried cheese-sticks and chicken-legs wrapped in bacon; wash it down with Ranch dressing! It’s probably just coincidence that Dr. Atkins died overweight at a not-so-old age due to heart attack. Me, I’ll stick with fruits and vegetables, and running, like the native tribes of Mexico have done for ages. I’m sure they’d all live to ripe old ages if only the drug-kings down there would stop killing them off.

Eh, what can you do? People like pot.

Bobo the Virgin Chimp, it should be mentioned, has a much different exercise regimen than myself. Any of you that have ever seen an ape no doubt know very well that their legs weren’t built for running. Nay, Bobo focuses mainly on his upper body, exercising mostly his arms. Indeed, he can be witnessed for hours on end, flinging things that need not be named with his mighty, hairy arms in the backyard.

Anyway, I’ve wandered off a bit in discussing personal health and physical fitness. I was discussing the bad day I had.

To begin with, robots broke in again and looted the medicine cabinet. I attempted to follow the bastardly automatons, but they busted through my bathroom wall with wildly flailing arms and were too fast to catch. The must have been amped-up on nitrous because all that was left of their invasion of my commode were the streak-prints of burnt rubber and heavy-metal-footprints in the back yard, as well as an assortment of hastily dropped issues of Popular Mechanics, which mostly had their fold-out schematics stuck together with oil droppings, and often showed the telltale prints of over-handling by lubricant-perspiring retractor clamps.

Stupid robots.

Secondly, there was my exhausting job hunt. I’m getting quite tired of going to places to apply for employment in person, only to find out that they only accept applications through their company websites. This is ridiculous! How am I supposed to show my dedication and tenacity through an assortment of emails and a trail of filled-out web-forms? An IP address is not a face! Distinct like a fingerprint, yes, but not at all like a reading of gumption from the face of an earnest and spunky kid. The streets of South City also served to annoy me.

If there’s one thing I’ve always hated about The Industrial City, it’s that it’s hell to travel through. It is essentially cut-off and removed from the area around it, and the streets are nothing more than a winding labyrinth meandering through it; they stretch and go long, they’re deceptive in where they take you, and they never intersect. In most places you can spot a landmark in the distance and walk towards it. Not in South City.

I eventually made it home and got to feeding myself. After letting my blisters breathe for a while and making time for my muscles to unwind, I checked my email. I’d made an attempt at reconciliation with Rush Girl the day before and wanted to see if she’d written me back. She hadn’t.

It’s not like I still love her and want her back, but we’d been friends once and I was hoping we could perhaps start up a dialogue again. We’d been friends before we were lovers, remained friends (though sometimes enemies) while lovers, and after we broke up, remained friends still (due to some serious effort on my part). I’d always comforted her when she was unhappy, and been there when she needed someone to talk to. I’d comforted her through her many alcohol-soaked and pill-powered freak-outs, and when her boob-job didn’t take and she started bleeding profusely through her chest, I talked her through it while she waited for help to arrive. It was just the way things were; we’d been close. I suppose I figured that since we’d been so close at one time, it’d be a shame for us to remain on bad terms.

Despite all my efforts at retaining a friendship, the phone calls, the letters, the trip to Vancouver to help her move, I consistently was met with the impression that she’d rather just write me out of her life. It wasn’t the first time I’d felt this way, I’d always been treated as somewhat disposable by her when things weren’t as good. But being of the somewhat sensitive and sentimental type, I’d always made an attempt at maintaining a friendship between us. To me, it seemed silly that two people who had at one time confided in each other their deepest secrets, fears, and desires; two people that had come so close to marriage, could months later be completely cold to each other, the only thing shared between them a wall of silence. Quite frankly, the very concept seemed to me to be quite absurd.

But the phone calls stopped coming, and the last time I called her, all she could do was insult me for an hour before finally hanging up upon me. An apology never followed. Within a month she’d sent me another email in which she proceeded to act as if she was being the bigger person, but still continued to condemn me. I can’t recall whether I wrote her back or not. I doubt I did. I was fed up with her by then. I was sick of the way she treated me, the way she’d always treated me. By then I was filled with nothing but the purest anger. Her actions, coupled with the feelings I’d long-kept suppressed during our entire relationship, had turned me into a seething, rage-filled powder keg.

Around a month later she sent me one more email. Though still devoid of apology, it was also lacking further insults. Though a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, it was still an attempt. However, I was far too hurt and angry at that point to accept it. I was sickened by her continual claims of personal growth and emotional metamorphosis, claims I’d been hearing from her from day one. Claims which I knew were a convenient way of avoiding taking responsibility for her actions in the past.

I wasn’t ready for reconciliation at that point. I wasn’t prepared to forgive and forget; to give her yet another second chance merely because a cheery mood struck her. What I wanted at that point was for her to hurt; to know for a change, exactly how she’d made me feel during our entire relationship. I wanted her to now feel it.

I responded with an email chronicling all the different ways she’d hurt me; something I hadn’t done in the past as I’d always been far more concerned about her than I had been about myself, and more importantly, I’d been deathly afraid of ever telling her anything negative about herself, as she made consistent threats of suicide. Of course by this point, I’d been hurt enough by her that I no longer cared, and I was sick of her getting away with the way she treated people. My letter ended up being some 14 pages in length.

She responded with one final email, in which she fully admitted to all I had written. This was an incredible change for her; she’d always been absolutely terrible at taking personal responsibility for things. Still, no apology. That was the end of communication between us.

Direct communication anyway, that was when the war of the blogs started.

I knew that she read my website obsessively. I also knew that she had a tendency towards insulting her former friends and lovers (and anyone else who wasn’t looking) on her blog, which was why I started reading hers again after not checking it for a few months.

She claims that I started with the first volley. That’s not entirely true. She’d been bitching about me since August at least, and when she started her new blog in October, wrote about me in a negative light with her very first posting. I, myself, didn’t write a single negative thing about her until December. That matters not. What does is that we slowly, but surely, began a passive-aggressive war with each other, painting each other in unfortunate words, sometimes as personal reflection; sometimes as a form of outright attack. I tend to think that she went for the neck more than I did, but my viewpoint is admittedly biased.

I enjoyed the series of attacks for a while; it was considerably easier for me to write about her negatively than it was for her to do to me, being that she’d acted like an ass the majority of the time I’d known her and I had a hell of a lot more material to draw upon. I didn’t even have to delve into using her personal secrets as weapons. Towards the end, once she’d ran out of cheap insults to fling at me, she was reduced to fabricating facts just to try to keep up. I suppose at the point when she outright lied about me (painting me as an objectifying womanizer, while hiding behind the image of an innocent girl… in stark contrast to the truth of myself being rather innocent and naive, and she… just a bit easy: in fact she initiated the very first physical encounter between us; she later admitted to me that she’d half been looking for a cheap weekend fling… she hadn’t expected a guy actually caring about her, to want to have a relationship) was when I became as mad as I could be. Outright lies were not fair play! Had I been playing as dirty as she had, I could have easily crucified her with merely the truths I knew about her. For her sake, I didn’t even bother. Even I, as angry and petty as I’d been feeling, had my standards.

She even left a handful of rude comments on my blog, though, I decided that if she truly wished to be so petty I’d gladly leave her comments posted, so that everyone else could see just what kind of person she truly was. I’d let her hang herself in that department. As far as her personal appearance, she’s always been her own worst enemy.

The attacks continued, mounting in severity, each of us now very filled with anger towards the other. I’m not proud of it; I was angry, and feeling petty, and writing as I did helped me to get feelings off my chest and make me feel better. But I started to realize that I was also getting sick of the whole affair. I was starting to realize that much of my anger had come from the fact that I had missed her friendship. Certainly, she’d turned her back on me, but I missed her all the same, the person with which I’d once shared such personal thoughts and had so much fun.

So when she leveled her last attack at me (and a cheap one it was), I didn’t retaliate. I wrote her instead, telling her where I’d been coming from. I didn’t pull any punches, I told her how it was, and I certainly wasn’t going to kiss her ass or sugarcoat things for her. Too many people had been doing that for too long. It may not have been the nicest letter, but it was an honest attempt, and I was trying for forgiveness, both on her part, and mine.

She wrote back. It was an equally hostile letter (perhaps moreso… it’s hard to say, being in as much of a partial position as myself) but there was too an attempt at civility. I was exceedingly happy over our mutually-agreed end to hostilities. I wrote once more, an attempt to further bridge the gap between us.

No response.

So that was her answer: coldness, silence, death. I guess I was hurt at the response (or lack thereof). After all the second chances I’d given her (to the point where the term “second chance” no longer applies… almost to a humorous degree) she was unwilling to give me a second chance. My first second chance. After all the times she’d deliberately hurt me and I’d forgiven her, she hasn’t willpower (gumption, character, strength, courage, what-have-you) to do the same. I suppose that’s the way it has to be. There’s nothing I can do about it, and I’ve honestly tried my best, but it doesn’t help but sting a little. Oh well, at least I know that despite her claims of great personal growth (which I placed much faith into in writing her this last time), as enlightened and metamorphosized as she claims to have become, it didn’t stop her from continuing to engage in petty attacks while still supposedly in this state. I suppose I should have expected this.

It doesn’t matter. I told her I’d stop engaging in petty attacks upon her and I will: time will tell if she’s truly able to do the same. And if she does, then at least I can feel some joy in her newfound growth.

All that was a bummer, but I was moreso bothered by the following matter.

Around 5:00 AM in the morning, The Magnificent M drunkenly messaged me and told me she thought that she may still be in love with her ex-boyfriend. This, coupled with the fact that I’m almost entirely broke, and that I’ve been having difficulty in keeping away from my vices in the past month, left me a very unhappy lad. I called her the next day, and received confirmation that we were now indeed “just friends” in every sense of the term.

Now I don’t blame her; I understand where she’s coming from. I can understand maintaining feelings for a past love, even if they treated you like crap. I also know that it took several months for me to fully get over my ex-girlfriend, and that she’s had little more than a month to get over hers. Still, I can’t help but feel a little hurt: I had strong feelings for her, and high hopes of what might happen between us.

Still, as lame as some things seem, I persevere.

In better news, while cleaning my room a few days ago, a happened upon the old suit my father had given me. It’s a powder-blue suit, not all that dissimilar to the one Karl Kolchak used to wear, and manufactured in the 70s. From the day my father gave me this suit, it has never fit me, he, having been a much thinner lad in his youth than I was, though I accepted this suit merely for my love of retro-fashions, and bell-bottomed pants. Feeling curious about my newfound physical state, I put the old suit on. It was LOOSE. This suit has always been tight on me; at times it seemed the seams in the legs would burst. Not anymore. I ran the sucker through the wash (it needed cleaning) and still the suit was LOOSE! Huzzah!

I am officially now thinner than I was in high school (and I was only thin then because I was malnourished and snorting Ritalin). I am now healthy, well-fed, in good shape, a quick runner, and more svelte than ever I was before. The double-breasted suit I wore to Washington DC, on behalf of college students across America, when I visited museums and saw Ralph Nader and James Carville speak? The suit I wore to all important functions when I was in high school? Yep, room to spare.

My two favorite suits now fit me beautifully once more, and I am fiendishly happy for that. There is always a sense of awe that fills me when I wear my father’s suit, wondering what adventures he experienced while he was wearing it, back when he still drank, and sniffed coke, and constantly balled women. Back when he lived in Los Angeles, and Venice, and The Amazing Criswell kicked him out of his apartment because he didn’t want “those damn hippies” living there. I realize I am that man now; not with all those vices perhaps, but with that same youth and potential. Adventures await, and I anxiously greet them.

As Johnny Cash said, there’s a silver lining behind every cloud.

UPDATE:

The Magnificent M wrote me tonight and apologized in entirety, stating that she does indeed like me, and is indeed attracted to me. I think she wants things back where they were. I haven’t decided yet whether or not to give her a second chance: I’ve learned a lot from my past relationships about not taking crap from women, and I do have my pride.

Be seeing you,
The Virgin Prince