i don't belong here. it's absurd, how people expect you to come home the same person, after a weekend like this one. i'm not the same person; my home feels like it belongs to someone else, my clothes don't fit me right, and my friends all look like strangers. i probably don't like the same foods anymore, even. i'll have to find a new secret ingredient for my mac 'n' cheese. i'll have to get new shoes. i'll have to accessorize. it was one of those weekends. i saw belle and sebastian, yes. and yes, they were incredible. just like last time -- which goes to show it doesn't take 4,000 miles of earth and oceans to make a kid feel completely alone. just a napkin, a pen, and a bowl of bad grits. i wrote down my favorite line: "so how about it? show me please how I will look in twenty years. and let me please interpret history in every line and scar that's painted there in front of me..." & when i got home, i shaved my head. a bit later, there was a girl who saw me crying. and then there was that other girl, who was crying herself, and who came over and hugged me, before launching into an unintelligible mess of words. i heard her say she was sorry, and that she didn't want to be hated. she said she had lied. i have also lied. i'm not sorry. but those lies were not told this weekend. this weekend i was honest, brutal and afraid. i was smitten, i was burned, maybe even a bit forgotten. i made someone very mad. i made someone scared. i even think i made someone happy for awhile. i left a mark. i'm definitely not sorry. my friend shaun asked me why i shaved my head. i wasn't sure, i said, but i told him that something had changed, and i didn't feel quite right about myself until i'd gotten rid of my hair. and then i still didn't feel right, but thought better of cutting off limbs. i went outside. so shaun thinks i'm 'purifying,' and that this is a healthy behavior. i didn't disagree with him, but i did made a little pretend gun with my hand, and i pointed my index finger at my heart. and i let my thumb drop. i must be exhausted. shaun didn't ask me any more questions after that. when i first started thinking about this post, i was getting off the el. i had wanted to say that i felt like one of those baby elephants you see on the discovery channel, running the end of her trunk back and forth over the bones of her mother. i had wanted to say that i felt like an iceberg, broken off from the antarctic ice shelf, drifting north into the loneliness of some tropical paradise, only to be nibbled down into nothing by hungry algae. i had wanted to say my heart was broken. but that's dumb. and when i showed shaun how i'd been shot, he probably didn't understand. because when you get shot in the heart, but it's done softly, and with only an imaginary gun, you're really not so bad off. my heart got a bit of exercise, and it's still out of breath. but i definitely feel okay. love, baker,baker __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? LAUNCH - Your Yahoo! Music Experience http://launch.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+