I still won’t be writing my life update.

I just came here to say that if you want to read a book, and you feel like a good yearning is in order, then please consider picking up This is How You Lose the Time War.

I’m very busy last minute prepping for Bonnaroo. I fly to Philly Monday and then Tori and I are driving to Virginia to see Lex and drop off Willow and then we’ll be on our way to Tennessee. Send good vibes bc I am not a camping gay and I don’t really trust Tori’s jeep but she swears it’ll all be fine.

No i wont be writing a whole update today. Im gonna reread This is How You Lose the Time War and try to fall asleep at a decent time.
I have so much to do before my flight on Monday and being professional around people today was exhausting.

“A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet.”

Kind of weird tho that the three years I didn’t write a single entry I was with her. Couldn’t I have at least written something nice?

I dk why I stopped journaling. Or why my therapists have never suggested it these last few years. I think maybe it’s because I’ve mostly used this as an outlet when I’m sad. But I was happy with her. And then when she left I was just empty. And even if I wanted to write about my feelings there comes a point when you’ve avoided them for so long that they’re no longer alive things. They’re just embalmed brittle corpses that don’t even remotely resemble what they were and honestly it’s kind of offensive to even pretend they could represent what resided within them while they were still breathing with meaning. Sorry I didn’t mean for this to go all macabre again. I’m gonna try again tomorrow. I want to write an actual life update like I always say I will and never do.

I unexpectedly watched someone else die today.
Nicole allegretto’s dad. We’re not close anymore and it’s been over a year since I’ve seen her. Last time was when amareena and I went to her wedding.
But she called me this morning to say her dad choked on something at work and aspirated and was brain dead. She said she couldn’t stop thinking about me and my mom and asked if I could come so I did and it was fucking weird. They extubated him and luckily it was only a few hours but watching the whole thing with her and her family was just not fucking ideal.

This year is off to a real fucking shit start.

Tw: death, possible medical negligence

Im watching this nature documentary show about the journeys animals go on- usually to reproduce, find food, etc. But what stands out to me is how few make it. You’d think with a 1/1000 survival rate baby sea turtles would have evolved better defenses or something. But ultimately no one would ever blame an animal’s character for its lack of success on a journey. We can watch these bears or whales or penguins starve and get caught and die on their journeys and we feel sorrow and outrage at observers for not helping them, but we’re never going to think, “well why didn’t it just take a different route, or store more food last winter? Maybe it deserved its fate for making the choices it did.” No. We accept that a combination of luck and outside forces culminated in this animal’s downfall and we wish someone more capable had stepped in with aid. And I’m wondering why we don’t offer that same grace to our own species?

And now I’m thinking about NYE again. How the EMS that arrived were completely useless. How they looked at the scene of an unconscious Mexican man my age covered in vomit on the floor of a party in a basement surrounded by a screaming Spanish family while some drunk bystanders in fancy party clothes administered aid and they thought there was no point in caring. Why would they take over compressions or try narcan or start a line or epi or anything when clearly this was just an inevitable ending due to some flaw of character in this man? I’m pissed and I hate them. But since no one ever bothered to ask us what happened and I’ll never give a statement on why were found with a dead man in a basement I’ll put it here:


We were just getting home from Henrietta’s drunk af. My shirt broke at the bar so I’m wearing my satin two button tuxedo coat with nothing underneath and between the erratic driving of our Uber driver and the mix of champagne and tequila I thought I might throw up. There was a guy standing on the stairs of our building asking for help in Spanish. He said he had called 911 and they didn’t answer, he did it in front of me and I watched as he did it again and got their voicemail. I tried on my phone and the call wouldn’t go through. I couldn’t fully understand what he was saying but I understood he said someone might be dying. I tried the emergency button on my phone and it went through so I asked for medical and followed him downstairs into the basement. There was a Hispanic family’s party and everyone crying and screaming in Spanish and a guy laying on the floor with another guy trying to wake him so I handed my phone to someone and ran to the man on the floor. I did a sternal rub and got nothing, checked for pulse or respirations couldn’t feel anything so I started cpr. The guy vomited so I rolled him on his side and cleared his airway with my fingers as much as I could and then went back to doing compressions. Then Lisa has was there so I yelled for her to get Shannon and she immediately took off. Shannon and Lex had already started walking home and were a few blocks away but Shannon ran to us and when she got there she took over cpr and then the police and ems got there and they were fucking useless but they got an aed and had me lift the man’s shirt and place the pads but it wasn’t a shockable rhythm so Shannon continued compressions while I used my terrible Spanish to move the family into a side room and then more ems arrived and took over for Shannon and they had me ask the family how old he was and what happened even though I don’t freaking speak Spanish like that but I was able to say he was 34 and doesn’t take medicine or drugs, they think he choked or drank too much and then we left bc the family was begging me to tell them he was going to be ok and he was not ok and I was in over my head and my friends were crying and they went home and Lisa and I went upstairs to her apartment and then the Taco Bell I had ordered on the ride home was delivered so I washed my hands and changed my clothes and ate my nachos while Lisa cried and yelled at me for being able to eat but eventually I got her to eat her Crunchwrap too and we fell asleep on the couch together.

Happy new year.

I wonder if I am hardened
If it shows up in my face
In my (lack of) faith
In my cynicism.
Do I wear the results of what’s taken
In my eyes
In my advice
In my (colder) encounters where maybe I should give them the benefit of the doubt but I won’t and instead I’ll demand distance.
I tell my sister “be careful” and she insists “be friendly” and the truth is
I am not friendly.
I am polite. I am kind. But I am invitational.
And I believe they wear wanting not like wolves but like prey searching for survival.
I will not be a savior.

I’m in Brooklyn now. NY is waaaay more open than Chicago. I wish there were more places to run around here though. I’m having fun, about to get off work and then we’re gonna go explore some breweries.
The girl I hooked up with in Chicago is FaceTiming me every day and making this a thing. I dk.

So we’re in Chicago and it is such a wake up call to what life is like outside Florida currently. Everyone I’m with is fully vaccinated and had no second thoughts about traveling to celebrate my 30th birthday.
What we didn’t count on is how restricted everything would be. No groups more than 6. No standing indoors. Every place at less than 50% capacity. And so many places are closed permanently because they couldn’t survive covid shut downs. The majority of which are queer spaces and small businesses.
It’s fucking sad. And while I love and want places to be covid cautious I feel like sometimes the point of precautions is getting lost in the politicization of it.
I dk. My Florida is showing.
The girl I slept with likes me a lot and keeps texting me. Lex and Shannon have been acting weird.
People keep making snarky comments about how much I eat but they’re the same people that constantly complain about what their bodies look like and I truly just think they don’t understand what a healthy amount of consumption is.