i dont understand my sleep habits at all. monday night i passed out reading at like 7pm, woke at 2am (that is 7 hours of sleep after all), slept again at about 4 am, got up at 9 am.last night i couldnt keep my eyes open later than 10:30pm and couldnt keep them shut later than 4:30am. finally at 6:20am or so i got up and went on a bikeride. then i spent forever clearing out my email box, which now blissfully has only 6 or so things in it (not counting files) and made oat bran pancakes. yum.
the phone has also been ringing off the hook, which is odd. last night shaun called me to go out to the paradise (a bar) with him - tuesday night is the night to "go 'dicing" as its called. i informed him i didnt have any money to which he replied - so? (this means he will pay for my drinks since he is a mortgage loan officer and rakes in the dough) but i still didnt want to go. smoke, drinking, inane conversation mostly forgotten later. blah. what i wanted to do was curl up in my bed with a good book, like when i was a child. and that's exactly what i did do.
and today i wake up at an indecent hour - but its hours earlier than i intended, rather than later. and today my body is not heavy with hangover, mind numb, vague feelings of guilt running undercurrant my whole day. today my clothes do not reek of the cigarettes i was surrounded with and the alcohol i sweat out. today i do not have the name and phone number of a person or two i talked to while at the bar, whom i will never call and mostly not remember what they even looked like. today my niece is coming over at noon and i can babysit her about a thousand times more effectively as i have drunk of fiction and breathed of cool morning air.
sigh.. i need to talk to shaun, actually. but i dont know that i can convince him to sit down at a coffee shop and talk with me. his talking is done at bars and i dont want to do bars with him. im a little ..disgusted with him. jana feels that when she was with him for those brief two weeks a year or two ago, that he used alcohol to get into her pants. that she said no all the time but then they got drunk and she started saying yes. not that he forced anything physically per se, but that he encouraged them whooping it up specifically so she would get drunk enough to consent to sex/makingout/etc. and recently ive heard him talking about wanting his roommate, lillian. she is a cutie. but its his roommate for god's sakes. thats dangerous and disrespectful territory. and the way he talks about it is that he wants to get drunk with her so she'll "start likin on (his) ear again." apparently last time they were wasted together she was on him a little bit and he is looking to encourage that sort of thing.
that, my friends, is fucked up. now, i dont know if he just doesnt have any sort of confidence with females unless he's drunk, or if he is purposely looking to manipulate people into doing things they would not do if sober. i really fucking hope its not the latter, and im sure whatever it is, he currently doesnt see anything wrong with it. it makes me kind of sick, actually. and that is one of the reasons i didnt want to go out to the paradise with him. i dont want to end up having this conversation with him when we are both drunk or drinking.
it is a pretty serious matter and i want to talk about it sober. it is the sort of thing that it causing me to re-evaluate the nature of my relationship with shaun and wonder if we can really still call each other friends in an immediate way. a lot of that depends on what happens in this conversation. i had a similar sort of evaluative conversation with jana, and was really pleased with the results. i feel it was constructive and helped us understand each other more and i liked what i found in her when i had a chance to talk with her seriously - not at the bars.
and i think that is how i like jana, a person i want to do more sober things with than not. and i want that to be how it is with the majority of people i interact with. getting a buzz on once in awhile is something that is okay. something i want to reserve for special outings, or if i have a mind i feel like having a beer.
but when the majority of the time i spend with people is spent at the bars or clubs...well thats just depressing. if i dont have enough in common with these people that we can just hang out some place without getting our drink on, than im not so sure its worth spending my energies on them. not like im casting anyone aside, just that im being more choosey about my activities. shit, i can amuse myself plenty - if it comes between going out when i dont really want to and sitting home alone, its really not a problem to sit home alone.
i have projects im in the middle of, a comp and internet, books, art supplies, a bike, people who live far away to write to, etc.
this is a pretty interesting time in my life anyway. i've never done committed activism in the way i am now - that is, such a small group who are not responsible to some fee committee and can be flexible and indeed dont have a recognized governmental structure (nor seem to need one at this point), etc. and the learning group has been great - i feel like i could do anything with those people. we could tackle any topic, i wonder if everyone feels very committed to staying on race issues or if they would be open to other issues? im not sure myself which i prefer. certainly i have done less work looking at race than gender..it would be interesting to take race and another category - like class - and analyse how the two relate. one of these days i would like to just do something social with those peeps.
its too bad my art class is at the same time as the FTAA(what the fuck is the FTAA?) meeting tonight - i really wanted to go. i hope there are opportunities to get involved that dont involve wednesday nights. i called to the space where the meeting is supposed to be (madison's indymedia center) and left a note saying as much, with my phone number.
well, i am excited about the class, too. eleven classes at $80 is like $2.40/hour for model time, which is pretty good. lessee, for today i am going to just bring newsprint and standard tooth paper and conte crayons. later i will bust out markers and ink and such.
well...enough ebabble for now.
