if i was going to name one event that changed my life for good it would be the day i...well forget about that actually i shouldn't get that personal here just yet or tonight rather. i'd say that physical contact with a person is a great thing. it's one of the best feelings in the world just lying with someone doing absolutely nothing staring at the ceiling talking about how bad your hair was in high school or how your first kiss was a horrid experience that scarred you for life. i remember mine now that i think back to it. it was behind the johnson school in nahant massachusetts with colleen kelly. i can still remember her mouth tasted like cigarettes and lipstick. i still remember how neat it felt to a young boy. months later we played spin the bottle at lisa nelsons house. actually she lived in that big orange and white coast guard building in nahant right when you get to the main island. we were up in that tower thingy that you can see for miles away. i kissed colleen again, and then lisa. in the closet for two minutes or something like that. lisa would not open her mouth, colleeen would. hell, what did i care i was finally getting to kiss a girl. just like on tv. a girl. i had seen girls naked before. playboy magazines that that one neighborhood kid would always be able to get his hands on. big blonde naked ladies. as i get older i realize how big those ladies looked. big...tall...tan...etc.it's not like that i think now. they're all short. there's no such thing as a tall woman. if so, i've never met them. now though i can kiss someone and it's almost the same feeling as back then. it's a new experience. a new person to be around. there's all different ones. i always seem to remember the best ones and the worst ones. the last three people i've kissed have been very good at it. before that, it was a neverending slobber festival. one after the other. yeah, because i just kiss so many women. i can't think about kissing anyone right now. it's been a short time since the last time, but i realize when it's not there, it's not happening. it's empty and boring. i don't even want to look for that. i have no idea why i'm talking about this right now. i feel all over the map again tonight. i just got back in. i was out late yet again. i've literally had three to four hours of sleep every night for the past week or so. before that it was a little more i think, but i would be up late thinking too much. spending time with yourself is dangerous. i spend i'd say 80% of my time by myself. no sorry, i'm just going over here. i like being out. right now though i've felt so away from where i was a month and a half ago, i almost wonder if i'm being too much on myself. am i killing myself doing this? am i just losing touch with reality slowly everyday? i went to the gig last night and didn't really talk to anyone. not because i didn't want to, i just didn't. again with the timing. you walk in you walk out. i felt like i was there for fifteen minutes. i felt like i wasn't paying enough attention to anything around me but the cigarette in my hand, and what i would listen to when i got in the car for the ride home. what i would listen to when i got home. what i would eat for lunch tomorrow. what i would be thinking about later on. i have been alone now for just over a month. when i say alone, i mean just going my own way. i think it's dangerous for me but i keep at it. i told myself in the middle of a hot night in june i would end up here in the middle of july. it's now the middle of july and i'm here. it's cold outside, and it's cold inside. can't say i enjoy this, but i can't say i miss me five months ago. i have absolutely no idea how to act like that again. i feel like i've been branded with this mark. no you don't understand me, get away. yeah, i love you, but right now i love myself and hate myself and i can't figure anything out so leave me alone. standing around and chatting get's me in a good mood again. tonight i did a little bit of that. throw some wit around, bounce it off each other, and drive away with a smile on your face. you get home and you're faced with a keyboard and a bed waiting for you to sleep in an hour from now for a few hours. a small bed that wouldn't even be able to fit anyone else if i tried. my bed is a symbol of where i am in july of 2000. so today we had that orientation meeting thingy at work. what a nightmare that was. picture this if you will: the most shy person you know attempting to address a group of twenty five strangers with no material whatsoever. just memory of how he thinks the meetings went in the past. that was me this afternoon at 2pm. speaking in broken sentences. broken up voice. sure i can sing into a microphone if i have guitar on me, but put me in a blank white room with 50 pairs of eyes staring at me, mostly women, very attractive women, and i'm a fucking mess. so that was my lowlight of the day. I'm a little bit close to calling in tomorrow. i've had no energy at all at work this week. i'm getting my work done, i just feel exhausted in the afternoon. here i am up past 1am writing and smoking and listening to music and complaining about how i will feel tomorrow. i won't call in though. i need money desperately. i am taking contributions if anyone wants to send me a couple thousand dollars. i've not even thought of looking at what i owe right now. i'm not in trouble by any means. just not taking charge of that part of me right now. i have more shit on my plate then worrying about how i owe columbia house one-hundred dollars or whatnot.

nobody can take the place of you. we loved each other so much. we hated each other under our breath all the time though. well i never hated you, that was a strong word. we aggravated each other a whole lot. we made our own jokes, our own language. our secrets only we knew about. we were so much cooler just sitting on the park bench than the guy walking toawards us and his girlfriend. we were a much better couple we thought. our sarcasm and senses of humor worked very well together. you with your silly little jokes, and me with my cynical comments about everything uder the sun. it never got to you. you were the only one in the world that knew underneath i was the sweetheart. i knew when i woke up next to you that we would wake up the next morning as well. the sun and heat waking us up each morning. looking forward to another day of having you in my head at work all day. looking at the clock at 5:30 wondering how boring of a night we would have. the most boring night with you was the best night i could have though. the arguments were a million times better than sitting in a hotel in tennessee in the middle of the night with a silent television and a tenor saxophone coming out of the radio by myself. years later i thought we would be talking about how it was and what it once was, and how much better it was. i knew something was going wrong, but i denied myself those feelings until you told me how you really felt. i immediately wanted to scream and cry and jump around on the bed. i wanted to blame others for me fucking it up. i wanted to rewind the tape and see if i could act out the movie differently. mick jagger told me not to worry about it. mick jagger told me i was fucked though also. he told me that i would never be the same after that. the biggest thing that's happened to me in my life. real love. i'm pretty sure that's what it was. i wasn't resentful or bitter. upset. depressed. yeah, she's gone now. it's just me again. i just told all of my jokes to the mirror tonight. no i didn't get bitter or pissed at you. it was true love. true love would respect your choice and be content that you were happy now. how could anyone in real love hold any animosity towards someone a week before they kissed like it was the first time kissing that person. everytime we kissed it was like that. i never told you that. i think you knew it. you could sense it in the way i held you. you know i was honest that whole time. you know i felt that you were the queen of every girl in the world. there was no girl cooler than you. i knew that, and it hurt like hell that someone else would find that out. jealousy, what a fucking attribute that has been throughout my life. i knew you would make it without me, and i was jealous of that. you were stronger than me. move along christian. move along now. you'll be happy trust me. you'll find me someday again. i doubt that even now. it's been so long and so many phone calls and cheap dinners and shitty kisses that i doubt that. maybe you did lie to me then. maybe you were wrong about me. just because we connected i thought that meant we were supposed to be connected for life. the one thing i never realized was that you were a gateway for me. a gateway to someone else. someone inside me that is. i was connected to you, but it wasn't in the horoscope in the newspaper that particular week. "You will take a long journey and eventually find what you think you want. It won't come while you are on this journey though. Prepare to get very tired though."

before & after