Hangin' On The Telephone

Sis called Darkside this evening. I picked up the extension and made faces at them while she teased him about his parents' choice of new neighborhood, and how she lived in the big city where there weren't routine murders. (A hate crime, by the way, of a man of Arab descent. Fuck you, assholes, and may you burn in your own hell.)

Darkside and I chatted for a while, about anime and other things. We got to talking about how evil I was, or wasn't. We got to talking about this, about that, about how he hasn't been getting much sleep, how I was following his advice and actually sleeping, how he needed to sleep, how I was going to get on his case and make him sleep.

I love the way we can just curl up together over the phone in the darkness and talk. His voice is so warm, even when we're talking about issues of trust that leave me barely able to speak through the pain, I still feel cared about, I can still find the words to express the emotions I've never been able to express to anyone else.

One by one, we're hunting through both my past and his, seeking out the wounds, and healing them. One by one.

This time I didn't have to leap up and leave his side and pace the school until I could look him in the eye without crying. This time I was barely able to find the words to say "You have just wounded me, and I don't have words that don't sound whiny and overly bitchy, but I need to say something."

He's learning how very much the subject of trust means to me, how if ever he jokes about trust, he hurts the hell out of me. I'm learning how he is able to joke about trust, somehow, no matter all of his past.

I'm learning how his fingers feel, laced with mine, and I'm learning how his bonks shake my shields and toss me backwards, but don't connect anymore unless I let them, and I'm learning how I lock the door when I'm talking on the phone with him, and I turn out the lights, and I'm learning how I come out of the room with my hair askew and my face flushed and my lips red and my eyes soft and lazy, and I'm learning how when I emerge from my room looking like I just got laid, Sis will wonder what's wrong with me, and Alan will tell the world in general, "Man, she's in love!"

I'm learning how to trust again.

communications

I have a friend I say "ğ" to all the time in IM land. I think it's funny as hell and I hope he does too.

an ex-gf of my ex BJ im'ed me tonight. nice girl, sort of. she just got out of a really bad relationship. not to say i told you so, but ...

...I told her so.

Work is canceled for tomorrow, due to the national tragedy, and seeing as it's the first Sunday after that.

Need to write to DC; need to see if Sis and Darkside and some of my other friends want to start up journals here...

hee.

I am just awesome.

name

on the phone with Darkside tonight (on Saturday night) I noticed he called me Joanie. Wow. He is a close friend/family person, though, so I should not be so surprised ... the people who are close to me do tend to call me that.

It's just the first time I remember hearing him call me by that nickname.

morning.

got in my full 8 hours of sleep, to be woken up by Nephew coming in and wanting to play his computer game. I turned off the sound, but I still woke up. A five-year-old commenting on the game he's playing can be as noisy as the game itself.

Goddamn bigots

Everybody's got their weak spots. I just discovered one of mine, and one of a friend's.

It seems that a friend (who shall remain nameless, even to the point where their name is mutilated here in my journal, but who isn't Sis and isn't Darkside, the two important people in my life) is a complete bigot where it comes to gays. I was talking on the phone with this person, and the topic happened to come up, and I was treated, if that's the word, to a tirade the likes of which I hadn't heard since I'd written it myself to come out of the mouth of a character in my novel who got smacked down the instant he shut up.

I was so furious I could not say a word.

I brought up the topic to Sis somewhat later. "Oh, guess what an interesting conversation I had today!" I said brightly, somewhat steaming. "I was talking about how Nephew loves the rainbow he got for his birthday, and how he's decided he's the rainbow Power Ranger."

We made maternal "aww how adorable" noises.

"So then I got to listen to a rant on how we really ought to be careful with letting him do that."

"Oh? Why so?"

"Because," I said, choosing my words carefully, to stick as closely as possible to the original phrasing, "the faggots have the rainbow as their flag."

"Who said that??" Sis wanted to know.

I told her.

Apparently this person has a bigoted streak a mile wide when it comes to gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and so forth. Apparently I did the exact wrong thing in shutting the hell up and steaming quietly to myself until I could find something polite to say. I did consider hanging up the phone just then....

...I rather wish I had. I really wish I had.

Hell of a thing to find out about a friend.
Sis says that since I didn't say anything, she'll have to have a word with this person, and she should have warned me.

...yeah, probably.