Sometimes the degree of self-knowledge I exhibit in the Wayback Journal startles me.

Today you will hear the litany of contradiction that described my inner world.

This amazes me: my gut told me that Mr. K was wrong. I was fighting his influence on behalf my own vision, my own integrity. That battle raged for my entire high school experience. You'll see how it evolved.

I asked: Am I creating the JG thing from nothing? I wondered what the hell was going on. I was right to wonder. That 22-year-old definitely took a more than casual interest in me.

I wanted to scream. I should have screamed. All that anger and confusion...

But I can't it would upset my parents.

Clearly their feelings were more important than mine. I should have screamed, and they should have heard some of what was bothering me. But I had a huge stake in being the good kid and so that wasn't an option.

If I could see this enough to write to it down, why couldn't I own it? Why couldn't I take it seriously? Because, the ultimate post-modern reader of my own prose, I knew I was an adolescent and adolescents are supposed to be miserable and conflicted and I didn't want to be typical. I didn't trust my perceptions. And I couldn't possibly have asked for help; I didn't think they would take any of it seriously either.

11:39:42 PM    please comment []

Michael Jackson and I are the same age. I remember there was a contest when I was in, I think, 6th or 7th grade, in which the grand prize was a date with Michael. I remember thinking, how horrible that must be for him.

To see what can become of an extravagantly talented person who has evidently never been comfortable with himself, look at this.

It's sad in so many ways, I don't know where to begin.

10:53:38 PM    please comment []

Probably not, but I won't be signing up anytime soon to find out, and here's why:

18. You give us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, sublicenseable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise all copyright and publicity rights, in any existing or future media, known or unknown, over the material or User Data displayed in Your listings.

Ummm, I think I'll pass. If I read this correctly, anyone whose blog is displayed in their frame is automatically granting them SUBLICENSEABLE rights to their content. It's not that I think I'm purveying deathless prose here, or anything, but it's still mine gosh darn it.

And the moral of this story is: Read before you click. (And you thought the RIAA was bad!)

12:48:37 AM    please comment []

In this entry, the substance hits the fan.

The first weekend I'm left home alone, my parents in New York, and I manage to lock myself out of the house. My parents go ballistic ~ and the pleasure of responsibility and independence is shattered.

I share my emotional turmoil with a trusted adult (Mr. K, who, twenty years later would be dismissed from my school for the emotionally abusive way he interacted with generation after generation of students, particularly girls ~ Mr. K, King of Mindgames, how he must have been licking his chops, internally!) and in the process feel humiliated in front of a young man whose good opinion is important to me.

I called myself depressed. I had a juvenile understanding of depression, but I think I probably was experiencing the symptoms of depression that I've only lately come to recognize as an undercurrent running through my life.

I thought adults had it all solved. Ms. B + E were divorced a few years later. Mr. K ~ enough said. I have no idea what became of DM and JG. Mr. M, a genuinely decent human being who aspired to be a writer and never achieved his artistic goals, well, who knows how happy his life has been.

Who was Mr. W, the flatterer? I have no memory of him, or what he flattered me about.

And why did JG think I was brave?

The pain still rings off the page for me. Can you hear it too?

12:05:52 AM    please comment []