Miss Misery by Andy Greenwald

dance on the edge of your toes until you finally hear the gun saying MOVE GO NOW. But it wasn’t the moment that you finally did get to fucking move that I got off on. It was the second just before that. Knowing it was going to happen, that there was nothing you could do to stop it. Knowing and not knowing. Being completely powerless, at the mercy of some random stranger(s). That was the best part.
    And that’s how I feel right now.
    Good night, Toronto. Good-bye. Don’t wait up for me.
    [from http://users.livejournal.com
    /˜thewronggirl87 ]
    Time: 1:31 a.m.
    Mood: Poetic
    Music: Dashboard Confessional, “Carve Your Heart Out Yourself”
    In blood red I
    Saw you, watched you, waited for you
    Crossing the street
    Crossing your heart
    Hope to die?
    Yes, I would in a (last)
    heartbeat
    if it only meant
    That you could see again, without
    veils, or vestments, or anything other
    than your naked eyes
    Push them into me,
    break through my skin and
    bones and fragile outsides of
    paper, and books, and traditions
    If your eyes were diamonds
    Then they’d be sharp enough to cut
    Through every ounce of me
    Ribbon my flesh
    And leave me there to be seen by
    only you
    In
    Blood
    Red.
    [from http://users.livejournal.com
    /˜davidgould101 ]
    Time: 2:55 a.m.
    Mood: Drunk
    Music: The Stills, “Still in Love Song”
    Sometimes–on nights like tonight when I’m so drunk/stoned/high/gone that I feel like I’m looking at the city from above like a game board and I know all my moves in advance–I like to think about the way I was before this summer, before I started going out, before I started living like this. And really, what I like to think is that I was pathetic–sitting at home, always pining for something or other, always complaining. Living like an old person in these last few years of youth that I have left.
    Living here and ignoring the nighttime is like going to a movie with a blindfold on–what’s the point? There are so many women, so many bars, so many songs, so many mistakes. What’s the point of worrying about things before you’ve done them? Go, go, go. Hangovers are for tomorrows, and if you never stop, you never reach tomorrow.
    Tonight I DJed again at a bar on the LES–one of those secret ones that doesn’t have a name or a sign. Free drinks and free phone numbers. Making out with girls in the bathroom whose names I never caught. Soundtracking my own descent.
    I never could have had any of this before. It never could have happened. If I ran into the me I used to be on the subway–before any of this, before the drinking and the drugging and the DJing, before she left–I doubt I’d even recognize him. He’d be introverted, sad, pale, and disappearing. And if he stopped me to chat I know what I’d say to him: Everything is terrific. Everything is free. Everything is finally happening.
    Is it possible to be having the time of your life and not remember any of it the next day?
    The day after I wrote that I woke up late again, pushed aside the empty beer cans on my desk, and read what I had written. Ludicrous, as always. I hadn’t DJed a party yesterday. I hadn’t even left my apartment. There had been a part of yesterday when I was watching TV and another part when I had been shotgunning Rheingolds in front of my computer screen and that was about it. I sighed.
    I was beginning to entertain the possibility that I was depressed, but the fact that the possibility entertained made me doubt it. It wasn’t that I was screening calls; I was flat-out ignoring them. And it wasn’t that I was sad or lonely. It went deeper than that—to a place where I could hear the little nags and groans and cries of sadness pinging against the roof of whatever emotional bunker I’d built for myself over the weeks since Amy had left, but I didn’t feel particularly bothered to respond to them.
    Even back when I was nominally happy, my