I Think Were Alone Now

There are times when life seems to take a major turn. We experience moments that are so powerful they burn a mark into our memory banks. When I was 24 years old I truly fell in love with a girl. I fell hard too. We were together for about six months. In the end the relationship didn’t work. I tried to forget her. I tried to burn every bridge we built. I tried to leave her in the past. Out of everything I wanted to lose, I kept this memory. The memory of our first kiss.

I still feel chills, every time I think of that moment. I felt so calm and so nervous all at once. If she would of let me, I could of stared at her all night. I could have just embraced that moment for an eternity. The look in her blues eyes, the sly, giggly smile she would make as I stared at the lines on her lips. She had teeth imprints on her lips, she claimed that it was a habit she formed out of boredom, but I believe it was a nervous thing.

As I describe this moment I can feel the Goosebumps growing on my forearms. Everything just felt natural. It felt as if everything was meant to be. This is what is described in film as “the perfect moment.”

She looked at me as I looked at her. I wondered if she could hear how loud my heart was beating.

All I could hear was the sound of her breathing. I watched her chest moved up and down, up and down. We were completely alone. As if we were the only two people the room. The only two people in the town. The only two people in the world.

“It almost feels like my first time,” she said smiling.

I had to compel myself to keep breathing, it took every ounce of energy I could posse to control my emotions. God is this really happening.

“What’s on your mind Gil?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I felt frozen. That small voice in the back of my head kept telling me to kiss her. Kiss her.Kiss her. Kiss her now.

“I don’t know? What’s on your mind?” Trying hard do my best Marlon Brando impression, but the words didn’t really come out like I wanted.

“Gil, do you want to kiss me?” Her voice sounded like a little kitten purring.

This was my moment to be cool.

“Do you want me to kiss you?” That totally did not sound cool.

She just shakes her head up and down. We both go in for the kill – 50/50. I kept my eyes open all the way up to the moment of impact. I watched as her eyes close and her lips puckered up. Contact. As her lips moved against mine I could taste her. A taste that I really can’t describe. It was such amazingly new experience that my brain went dead. All emotions were gone, it was just me and her, stuck in this moment. “This magic moment,” talk about clichés. I felt as if I had just crossed some major road in my life.

She sucked my bottom lip into her mouth and lightly bit it. It was such a new sensation that it shocked me. I pulled back.

“My lip.”

She let go. It was the first moment in my life where I felt completely air-headed.

“Did you like my kiss,” she asked with a sincere desire to know.

I really didn’t know what to say. I liked it, I liked it a lot. I just couldn’t put the words together. I just wanted to think for a moment.

The word came out slow, as if I learning to talk all over again. “Good,” was all I come whisper out.

Basic instinct took over and I went in for another kiss. During the second kiss I didn’t close my eyes. I watch as she moved her mouth. I found the movements of her mouth fascinating. She moved her mouth from mine.

“I’ve never been kissed so aggressively on first time with someone,” she said with that same sly smile. I became confused because she was the one biting my lip.

“This time try doing it slower,” she said.

On round three, everything became fuzzy…

…As we stood by her front door, we just held each other. The warmth of our bodies creating a glow around us. I buried my face into her neck, as I raised my head our eyes caught. I gave her a small kiss on the lips. It made a smacking sound. I made my way up the stairs. I could hear the sprinkler system turning on. Right before I reached my car a wave of cold water hits me in the face.

It was such a magical moment for me that I didn’t feel the effects of it till the next day.

Cliques

One thing that has bothered me for all 25 years of my mundane life are “clicks” (spelled in some parts of the world as cliques). Why the hell are they so fraking important to us? Any place I’ve ever lived. Any place I’ve ever gone to. Any place ever even considered moving to, has “clicks”. If you were to travel to Hawaii, you would notice the locals even have a click. When you go to church and all the “holier than thou” clowns have their own click. College and highs school and even pre-schools have their own clicks. Being apart of a click, I guess is what makes us feel as if were really apart of the human race. Clicks remind us that we’re really alive. They give us purpose in living a somewhat normal life.

Granted the term “click” is mainly used while in high school, but the fact remains that clicks don’t just exist in high school. They continue into college, the workplace, and even religious institutions. (Hell, I personally believe that religious institutions are the biggest click). We just want to call it something different.

There are large clicks and little clicks. Some clicks become so huge they even petition the government to have their own rights.

Now, I’m not saying that I don’t belong to any clicks. I do. I in fact belong to all sorts of different clicks. I’m in a religious institution. I geek out on movies, music and comic books. I once belonged to a baseball and paintball teams. I’m involved in a online posse in RED DEAD REDEMPTION. I played D&D games when I was in high school. I work at a radio station. I’m even a Facebook junkie. Since I’m in so many different clicks, I see what they do to us as human beings.

I feel that catering to clicks is an injustice to all people. The more we allow ourselves to separate into are own clicks. The more we separate ourselves from each other. We should really start creating groups (like on Facebook). Groups that everybody wants to be apart. For example everybody seems to love Bob Marley. So we so have a Bob Marley group. He even wrote a popular song called “One Love.” This song has very positive message, let us all be one. One heart, one mind, one people. But no! We can’t do that because it’ll hurt our image in the other click. We have to be “one click.” When we get to involved in “our click” we just end up separating ourselves from others. Lets my groups or something that doesn’t feel so exclusive.

Time to change the subject.

Last night I went with my friend Lono to another Twilight Concert Series show. The two bands playing were The Twin Sister and Beirut. Both bands were brand new to me. I had heard a lot of good things about Beirut, but never gave them listen to. Lono and I tried to figure out why Twin Sister gave themselves that name for their band. You would just assume that with a name like Twin Sister that there would be twin sisters singing the songs. Well they weren’t.

Lono created a metaphor in which every time he would smell pot, he’d call it a skunk. “Where’s that skunk at?”

My biggest beef with out-door venues is all the pot smoke. I can barely stand the smell of cigarette smoke and so that bittersweet smell of pot is repulsive to me. Frankly I really don’t care what another person does. Just don’t blow your damn smoke in my face! There was one other thing that bugged me at the Beirut show. This fella smoking pot in front of me had the world's biggest nose. I’m not even close to joking when I say that his nose literally looked like one of those red clown noses’ you can buy in a costume shop. It was fraking HUGE! It could have been its own country. The worst part was I was so entranced by this sucker’s clown nose; I couldn’t even enjoy the show because all I could do was question how elephantiasis could only affect one part of the body. All in all, it was a fun night out in Salt Lake City.

I think I would let my dog sleep in my bed, if he didn’t get hair all in my sheets.

3AM

Darkness surrounds me. The darkness rushes away as the low dim of a ceiling light glimmers. I’m in the same living room as last time. Every thing is closing in. The ceiling seems so close that there’s not enough clearance for my head. The living room feels like it’s underground. It feels like a coffin. I look down at the ground and notice a black spot on the floor. It looks wet. I stoop my body down. I use my little finger to touch the stain. The liquid is wet and warm. My eyes focus on my pinkie to see that the color is not black, but a dark red. My insides tense up. I fight the bile beginning to rise. My heart beats faster.

From the stain, a trial leads to a darkened bedroom on the far right of the living room. I don’t want to be here. My conscience prods me. My body feels as though it is being drawn into the darkened bedroom. But I just want to leave. This living room feels like a coffin. I step into the bedroom. I reach for the light switch. The light slowly flickers on. I wish I didn’t do that. I see a bed in the far corner of the room. On the bed there is a body covered in blue sheets. The dark red color is everywhere on the bed. I can only imagine what’s under those sheets. I’m gonna puke. I’m gonna puke. I’m gonna puke. GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! I hear a loud deafening scream.

I wake up in a cold sweat. What time is it? I turn to see the neon-green lights telling me its 3:45AM. It’s sad. I seem to be able to sleep for two hours a night. I get out of bed.

The day moves by in a blur. I can’t believe its 10PM already. I went to my classes then to work. Now night has come. The nights are the longest part of my day. I lay in my bed, praying that I’ll be able to sleep the whole night through. I pray that I won’t have the same nightmare. Around 3AM I’m in darkness. Once again the light enters and I’m back in the coffin living room. The blood stain is in the same place. There’s a trail of blood leading to the bedroom. I HATE THIS! I walk into the darkened room and turn on the light. The body is still covered in blood.

I have to see the face. I have to see what’s under those blue sheets. If you think this is nightmare, wait till you see what is under those covers. The curiosity is killing me! I slowly move to the figure on the bed. I grab the blue sheet at the bald of the head, the figure is a shape of a girl. The sheets stick to the lifeless body as I pull them away. Long black hair mangled with blood is the first thing I see. My knotted stomach turns. Pale blue eyes stand out sharply against the blood. I’ll never forget the color of these eyes. As I stare at the girl’s eyes, I feel as if I am looking into a tormented soul. Her jaw is horribly busted. Most of her teeth are missing and her eyes are the only distinguishable feature. Her head twitches and the jaw moves open. A sound comes from her distorted mouth. A scream comes out like the siren of an ambulance.

My eyes open and I look to see my alarm. Its only 3:45AM. The same time as last night, I try to stop my body from trembling.

By noon feel like I could pass out from lack of sleep. I sit on a tacky blue chair on the shuttle bus that will drop me off by my car. The shuttle has three stops before I arrive at the parking lot where I get off. The bus diver looks to be in his late 50s; what little black hair he has left, he combs over. This is a special bus to be on. The driver blares the music from the radio as loud as bus regulations will allow. Today it sounds like he is making his own regulations.

Two girls get on at the second stop. One of the girls has long black hair, pale white skin, and distinguishable pale blue eyes. I think the gods are sending a direct message of supernatural proportions to me because the song playing on the radio makes this whole event even more bizarre. I don’t know the name of the song, but the lyrics give me goosebumps. This can’t be real. I’ve gotta be dreaming again!

“Linger on your pale blue eyes. Linger on your pale blue eyes.”

The word “linger” just adds more to my shock. Since the moment I saw those eyes the image lingered in my mind. I’ve never been the type to listen to others’ conversations but I try as hard as I can to hear what the two girls are talking about. The girl, sitting next to the black hair, pale, blue-eyed girl, is an average everyday blonde-haired petite girl in blue jeans.

“Joey asked me to go with him to the Halloween party this weekend and I said yes,” pale blue-eyed girl says.

The blonde girl rolls her eyes and acts as if a major sin is being committed. “I can’t believe you’re actually thinking about going out with him. He’s strange.”

“Well unlike you Jenny. I don’t have boys rushing in line to ask me out. So I go out with those who ask me.”

“Alice, Alice, just because you don’t have as fortunate a dating life as others doesn’t mean you should go out with a creep like Joey. You still have to use good judgment.”

Her name is Alice.

“I’m sure Joey’s a fine guy, he just gets excited sometimes. Anyway, all you heard were rumors.”

“They’re not rumors if they turn out to be true. Now, I can line you up with Nick, he’s cute in his own way. How about that?” The blonde girl sure is trying hard to keep Alice from going out with this Joey guy.

“I’m not going to cancel with the guy, that would be mean. I am going to the party with Joey. Now let’s talk about something else. Alright!”

The bus finally arrives to my section of the parking lot. Alice and the blonde girl, Jenny, stay on the bus. There is only one stop after mine and that’s the school dorms. I remember seeing ads all over the school for a Halloween party at the campus. Today, is Thursday, the party Saturday.

This time when night comes I try as hard as I can to keep from falling asleep. I don’t want to see anymore of that cursed dream. I’ve had many nightmares before, but never about real people. Nothing has ever been this real. Around 3AM I lose the battle to stay awake.

Not again! I’m in the basement living room that feels like a coffin. I hate this stupid nightmare! Routinely I look to find the wet blood stain on the carpet. Where’s the spot? It is not in its usual spot. In fact it’s not anywhere. I hear noises upstairs. I need to hide. My mind goes into a state of shock I can’t move. A young man with dyed red hair, about my size, wearing a black cloak walks down the stairs carrying a body wrapped in blue sheets on his left shoulder. The young man is speaking to the wrapped body. He can’t see me.

“Why won’t they listen? They never listen.” His voice causes my skin to crawl. The body begins to shake, As if it is fighting for its life. The young man loses his hold on the body and it drops right in front of me on the floor. The sheets separate and I see Alice’s face. A blood curdling scream comes out of her mouth.

The young man’s eyes looks like hell on earth. He pulls out a scout-hatchet from the inside of his cloak.

“SHUT-UP. SHUT-UP. SHUT-UP,” the young man yells. He takes the hammer part of the hatchet and repeatedly beats it against Alice’s jaw. I turn my head away. Once the young man is satisfied he picks up the lifeless Alice and carries her and whatever is left of her face into the bedroom. The spot has returned.

The blood trails into the bedroom. My courage fails me and I huddle in the corner. I try using my hands pressed tightly against my head to muffle the awful sounds that come from the darkness of the bedroom.

Once my eyes open, I run to the bathroom. The toilet accepts the remains of my dinner. The terror and nausea causes me to pass out on the bathroom floor.

Saturday night finds me at the campus party. I wear a cheap black costume from the local grocery store. It consists of a black robe with a white skeleton face mask. I want to make sure I can hide in the crowd easily if I need to. I find Alice in the lounge with the red-haired young man. Alice is dressed as a ghostly bride. Her groom, Joey, is the Reaper. Joey just stares at Alice the whole evening. The faces he makes are every mothers worse nightmare. This guy is a creep. The more real this nightmare becomes reality the more I can feel the adrenaline running through my body. My body is on fire. This mask feels like it is melting my face off! I follow the couple on the shuttle taking me back to the parking lot. I look at my watch to find out it’s already 2:45AM. My stomach feels as if butterflies the sizes of bats are flying in circles inside of me. I swallow back the overwhelming nausea.

I get off the bus with the couple. Their conversation starts to get heated, so I hide behind a yellow Honda. The time is 2:50AM.

“You should come over to my apartment and we can have few drinks,” The young man’s voice reminds of the voice from the dream.

“No thanks, Joey. I should go back to my dorm-room and get some sleep,” Alice says warily. I can tell by the sound of her voice she wants to get away from Joey.

Anger enters his voice, “Come on; don’t play me off like that. Come to my apartment.”

“No Joey I want to go back to my room. Anyway, there’s no reason to raise your voice at me.”

“LOOK GIRLEY, you’re coming with me.” Joey reaches into his cloak and pulls out his scout-hatchet. Pure fear is drawn all over Alice’s face. The blunt end of the hatchet strikes the right temple of Alice’s head. I fight the desire piss my pants in the parking lot.

Joey opens the trunk to his car and pulls out blue sheets, which he uses to wrap Alice’s body up in. “If you would I’ve just listened to me it wouldn’t be like this,” Joey said as he places Alice’s body in his trunk.

At 2:58AM I track Joey all the way to a brown house with a brown lawn. Brown, the same color as a coffin. His house is not too far from mine. How was I gonna stop this lunatic from murdering Alice? I jump out of my car and run to the back of the brown house. I find a window that is almost buried in the ground. I look through the window to see a washer and dryer. This room has to connect to the living room. To my surprise the window is easy to open. I decide to go in head first. The window seal is more slippery than I anticipate. I lose my balance, fall, and smash my head against the washer. Before the darkness over comes me I see the arrows of the clock touching on the 3 and the 12. What just happened?

I open my eyes to find myself once again in the coffin living room. My heart feels as if it going to punch a hole through my chest. The stain is in its normal spot. I follow the trail of blood to the bedroom. She can’t be. I’ve failed her. GOD NO! I see the body lying in a tangled mess of violence. My stomach contracts and the feeling to puke is also a reality.

I run to the closest bathroom. I can’t even make it to the toilet, waste sleuths from my mouth into the bathroom sink. I switch on the bathroom light and look into the mirror. Blood is spattered all over my face. My red hair shines brightly from the ray of the florescent light. This can’t be real.

The Modest Mouse Adventure!

Here’s a summary of my adventure at the free Modest Mouse concert presented by the Twilight concert series.

I left work at 4:30PM to meet up with my friend Mike, so we could jump aboard the fast-tracks next to Union Station. Mike use to be my General Manager at KWCR, when Mike left he was replaced by a different Mike. Mike also lives right across the street from where I work. Once aboard the train we talked about all the crazy things we could write blogs about. The best idea was probably the one where I write a fake letter to Katy Perry telling her that I secretly listen to her music and if she would send me an autographed photo.

When the train entered Salt Lake City we walked down the street which hosted all the halfway houses. I put my guard up assuming that at any moment someone was going ask me for spare change, so they could run off to the closets drug dealer or liquor store for their next fix. One fellow we passed on our way to Pioneer Park was so mentally unstable that he walked down the sidewalk like an Egyptian, hands pointed straight and everything. The Bangles wrote the hit song about it, but I just figured that it was a joke, I guess not.

Inside the park were hundreds a pond hundreds of people. Half the vendors I talked to had been to Desert Rocks. (A magical place I’ll talk about in a different blog). Most of the food lines were a mile long and I never realized that so many lesbians liked Modest Mouse. A sixteen year old girl with green braces came up to me and asked if I wanted to go back to my place to make out. (She must of been turned on by my cheap wayfare sunglasses which I had over my prescription frames and the neon green sweatband I had on my forehead). In figuring out a spot to stand so we could watch the show, Mike and I decided to stand behind a dude in a wheelchair; doing so would allow us to always have a view of the stage. I’m always amazed at how many people get wasted even before the show starts.

In a nutshell here is what happened during the almost two hour Modest Mouse set. About fifteen different folks climbed the tree next to us. For some reason it was a real cool thing to do. A dude decided to relieve himself on the same tree. A five foot tall girl danced up on me for Modest Mouse’s hit song Float On. The Mayor called Modest Mouse, “The Mouse.” I might of got a contact high from the three different people smoking pot next to me. And at least a hundred people stepped on my foot while trying to pass me.

The worst and most disturbing part was seeing a 21 year old male getting it on with a 50 year old female. It was one of those things you witness where as badly as you want to stop watching, you just can’t take your eyes off it. It is what I call the freak-show syndrome. Whereas strange and weird it might seem, we as human beings can’t take our eyes off the so-called “freak” because we find it so fraking curious. I’ve seen some MILF’s in my 25 years and this 50 year old was no MILF. I couldn't tell if the motley cure couple were so drunk off their rocker that they couldn’t tell what was happening or if the 21 year was just that desperate to get some action.

At the end of the concert Mike received a call from his wife, telling him that she was feeling pretty ill. Mike decided that we should use our “manly courage” and take a three mile walk through the heart of Salt Lake City ghetto to get to his wife’s place of work. Boy! Was our manly courage tested because I could have sworn that a monster or hobo was going to jump out of the dark and shank us.

On the drive back to Ogden we talked about Christian rock music. I impressed Mike’s wife with my vast information on popular Christian rock artists. All in all a good evening.

TCB (That means Taking Care of Business)

For the last two months I was able to keep my laptop on my work desk. Doing this allowed me to watch movies on Netflix while I spent countless hours scanning documents. Now that era of white noise movie watching is over. Scanning all days makes me fall asleep. I don’t care who you are but you’d probably fall asleep too, if all your workload required was pushing sheets of paper through a tiny fujitsu machine.

In the past I would just listen to music, but my ears would get tired of the Pandora tunes. Listening to my iPod also gets old. I get tired of trying to figure out what artist I want to shuffle to next. Since my boss cut me off from my laptop I’ve been using my iPod to sneak in my movie watching. It’s kind of ingenious when you think about. I lay the iPod in front of my keyboard, that way I have complete control and large body covers the small device. Now don’t jump to any conclusions about me. It’s not like I just seat at my office desk and stare at my iPod screen like some sort of couch-potato. I really do my allotted work load. I just need something to help the time pass. It keeps me focused. I’m the same way when it comes to homework. I don’t know what it is about silence but it causes me to procrastinate.

Things pertaining to taking care of business is my desire to beat my video games. I usually don’t go crazy on purchasing video games but the Game Crazy near my apartment was closing so all their games were super cheap. I ended up buying 6 new videos games for the price of what it usually cost to purchase a new PS3 game. Now I face the dilemma of finishing the games I’ve already started or beginning the new games. I only seem to get maybe four hours of game play in per week so this is a big decision for me.