College Sex Diary Ch. 00

August 23, First Entry!

The number one thing everyone has told me to do to become a good writer is to read a lot of books. I usually just say fuck that because it just results in unnecessary copying and then you just claim that the writers you read are just an "influence" and that you're still original. In all actuality, original thought no longer exists. So I prefer to just live my life however and just write the way that comes naturally to me. That way I could just say that I hadn't read the book or seen the movie before writing my story. I'd be a pretentious asshole if I said that all of my thoughts are my own because like everyone else, I'm influenced by whatever I've seen, whether it's a nature documentary I saw when I was six or the idiotic hentai I watched with some of my friends last week. For all I know, I am not actually a person, but rather an amalgamate of my parents, television shows, movies, books, and a random notion God had.

The second thing people usually tell me to be a good writer is that I should write every day, or at least whenever I can. Sometimes I end up just sitting in front of my computer or sucking on a pen with a notebook in hand spacing out. It sucks, but it beats not being in front of the computer or notebook and having my mom yell at me for not working or being more productive. Some writers even claim that inactive periods are all part of the creative process. Other writers look to mind-altering drugs or alcohol before writing. I have access to neither seeing as how I don't know anyone who holds or deals, and I'm not sure I'd try it even if I could. And I'm technically underaged. I have drunk before. Drunk. The only adjective/verb (that I know of) which is the way it sounds. Hell, most people sound drunk whenever they say the word drunk. But anyway, I was never really one for drinking.

So this is where the diary comes in. It helps me exercise my writing skills and record my life, seeing as how I've had some trouble in the past remembering things that have happened to me or people's names or other important things like that. I'm not going to dramatize my life like the memoirs of some politician or celebrity or make it seem fiery and passionate the way Anais Nin did when she recounted her numerous love affairs. All I can do is write things the way I see them. I once drew a giraffe with a purple crayon when I was watching some kids. A little girl laughed at me and said that there was no such thing as a purple giraffe. I just said "says who?" and kept drawing. So, this diary adopts that sort of attitude. This diary is me and the world reflected through me. If anyone would ever come across this diary and be angered at the way I depict them, then I'll just draw them a purple giraffe to show them that people don't always see the world the same way.

Where could I begin this story? I don't feel like going back to my first memory, especially since there were probably many more interesting things that happened to me beforehand. If I was telling someone this story, I would tell them more about myself and then pick up where my life is right now. I always hated describing myself. It seemed self-serving and ridiculous because usually the way people see themselves contrasts with the way that they are seen by those around them.

For starters, I am a Filipino-American girl, 18 years old with the typical black hair, dark eyes and tan skin of my people. I had the awkward experience of looking different from all of the other kids since my family made the unfortunate choice of raising me in the Midwest. It was pretty horrible in elementary school when everyone was still getting to know each other and asking silly questions like "where are you from?" and "do you speak English?" but when I got to high school, everyone pretty much knew who everybody else was because of how small our town and high school were. My parents had the stereotypical attitude of pushing me to be my academic best and convincing me that the best thing I could do was go to med school at a good university. It is probably needless to say that they were disappointed when I decided to go into English and Rhetoric. They were even more disappointed when they found out that I received little financial aid.

So this is where I started. I would like to think of the college experience as a renewal for me. The whole "today is the first day of the rest of your life" thing always appealed to me not because of the urgency to strike out and do something important, but the fact that tomorrow would be the next today, a new chance to start the rest of my life.

I was about done unpacking my things when I came across something I probably should not have packed. I was about to put the photo album somewhere where I wouldn't find it until the end of the year when the phone rang. After stumbling through some empty boxes I found the cordless. Considering the fact that I had just moved in, and the only people who had my phone number were my new roommate, who had already called to tell me that she would move in tomorrow, and my parents.

"Hi Mom," I said for what was probably the fifth time that day.

"Hi, how did you know it was me?" the sad thing was that she actually sounded surprised.

"How are you doing?" I already knew that things were all right since she had told me so four other times that day, but it was a natural impulse.

"I'm fine, are you unpacked yet?" I wasn't able to throughout the day due to the phone calls, but it was all right since I was usually watching television on mute.

"Just about, and thank God too. I never thought I'd get through all those boxes," I fingered the photo album and started to open it.

As if on cue, she said, "Good. I know you've been trying to hide it, but you're in college now. You shouldn't dwell on some silly thing like that anyway. You should be concentrating on your studies anyway."

Gee Mom, thanks. I thought as I stared at the perfect-looking couple in the picture, smiling widely to tell the world that they had everything going for them in life. The picture screamed of youth, privilege, and a bright future. I still had all of these things, with or without David.

What could I say about David, the person who was once closest to me next to my own family, but now a tuxedoed stranger to me with glazed eyes from a 5x7 glossy print photo? How could I start to tell the story of what most people would consider to be the perfect high school romance? He was the smart, athletic jock: tall, dark and handsome, and I was probably the nerdiest girl in school. The closest thing I did to athletics was academic decathelon, and even then, my hand cramped up from tensing up all the time on the buzzer. We never really spoke to each other until the beginning of senior year when we sat next to each other in some class. Like most of the other people in my high school, David was white. This was never really an issue with my family because my mom was happy that he was tall and planning to go to med school, and my dad needed another excuse to discuss sports to willing listeners.

It seemed like one of those John Hughes movies where the most unlikely people end up together. Then again, we did the stuff that they don't generally show in many teenage romantic comedies. Handjobs in the backseats of cars, blowjobs in the bedrooms while housesitting, I guess these were things that were done in teenage romantic comedies, but never by the "good couple." Of course, we were the "good couple," if only in the yearbook. We weren't on prom court or anything, but it was generally assumed that we would be a successful couple with the happily ever after ending of marrying after college and settling down in a nice house in the suburbs with a nice minivan and a nice life driving our nice kids to a nice soccer practice or a nice piano lesson. Happily ever after, eh?

Like most free-spirited feminists I knew, this was not my dream at all. Yet David was from a traditional upbringing with a stay-at-home-mom and a few notions about the way women should be, despite me proving that there are things that good girls can do and exceptional things that any woman could do with the right amount of effort. I wanted to go to college, travel the world and do something groundbreaking with my writing. It's funny how one of those dreams fell flat as soon as I looked at the future prospects for freelance writers. Now I'd just be happy if someone would print my work and pay for it. This didn't kill my dream of writing and world travel and freedom just yet though.

My first taste of freedom was when I got my driving license the summer of my sophomore year. I'd borrow my mom's boat of a car and just drive around. There really wasn't much to do in my small Midwestern town than drive around, fool around, and fuck around. The fooling and fucking could sometimes be considered the same things, but when you're fooling around with friends, it usually means either getting high or loitering around town, and my friends and I were never really the getting high type. Even my friend Ben who had visited me from New Mexico didn't do much but smoke his smelly cheap cigarettes around me despite going to raves whenever he was back home at his mom's. It was fun just driving around with him and spending relatively no money to have a good time on the town, exploring back country roads and having inexpensive slices of pie in old folks' hangouts. There is nothing quite as sweet as seeing the look on a lot of elderly faces when a girl with orange hair and a kid with a chain hanging out of his pants holding a skateboard walk into their turf. That French silk pie was probably the best I had tasted and the only other time I had that pie was from the same restaurant. Ben was a lot of fun, but I hadn't heard from him since he and his dad moved out of town.

But anyway, what was I talking about? David. Indeed, we were the ideal high school couple with more individual pictures in the yearbook from extracurricular activities than most other students. Yet nothing is ever as perfect as it seems. We both had little time together, and whatever little time we had was spent fumbling around in what were to be the first (somewhat meaningful in my case) sexual experiences of our lives. I actually cared about this guy, enough so to be more sad and angry than annoyed when he left.

I still remember the mechanical sound of his voice on the phone, "You've been great, but this isn't going to work."

Maybe it was the authoritative way he told me that things wouldn't work without asking my input, or just the insinuating way he said "you've been great." It was like a slap in the face, a "thanks for the sex" sort of thing. Maybe I should have told him that I wasn't a virgin, at least it would have been the truth and at most it would have wounded his ego to know that I had someone else to compare him to, possibly rank him lower than. As much as men love competition, they hate to lose to someone else.

I spent the last two weeks of this summer slowly packing up my things, listening to Dashboard Confessional, and writing shitty poetry. This is what I meant when I was talking about influences in writing and why people shouldn't let themselves be influenced. Don't get me wrong, my 16-year-old self loves Dashboard Confessional for the angsty honesty of heartbroken lyrics and vocals, but the 40-year-old woman in me is asking "aren't there more pressing issues in the world than some whiny asshole getting dumped?"

So there I was, sitting on my tiny dorm bed with a photo album in my lap and my mother on the cordless phone. Tears started falling down my cheeks and I sobbed, shaking on my bed.

"It will all right, Anak. You'll find someone else," Mom reassured me.

The thing was, I couldn't tell my mom that it wasn't David who made me cry. It was the realization that I was getting to be too old for Dashboard Confessional and the other emo music I had grown to love since my sophomore year. In my mind I was bidding goodbye to The Get Up Kids and Jets to Brazil. Then I thought about Ben with his adolescent antics and how amusing he was, but how he would probably always be that way with no direction in his life other than having fun. This led to my thought that just because I was going to grow up, it didn't mean that I had to become some deep and serious person just yet. I could still listen to Dashboard Confessional (but not in large doses) and still be pissed off that the economy is down the toilet and we're bombing the hell out of yet another country.

"I know it will be all right," I smiled and searched the room for where I put the kleenex.

"I better get to work," Mom said, and I could already smell the perfume she wore before heading for the late shift at the hospital.

"Ok Mom, good night," I said as I hung up the phone.

Entry continued next morning:

I went to bed last night on that lumpy mattress with the comforting thought that classes hadn't even started yet, but I had already learned something important outside of where the union building was. All though high school, everyone made a huge deal about how alien and impersonal college would be, especially at a large state university like mine. Graduation was a solemn affair, comparable to a funeral, but without the free food. In contrast, the parties afterward were huge orgiastic affairs so full of life and mirth, but bittersweet as if all of us knew deep down that we would never see each other again. Now that I'm in college, I realize how silly it all was, the anticipation and anxiety of making the grade and working so hard disappeared, for now at least. High school is not the end of all things. It is possible to write and call my friends and see them during breaks. Then again, I was never really close to anyone in high school. As far as people being cold or unfriendly, everyone I have met so far on campus has been open and helpful. I think I even caught a guy checking me out, so things will be cool here.

I'm hearing a knock on the door, so I'm guessing that's my roommate and her massive amounts of stuff. That sense of apprehension is starting to come back...

August 25

Yeah, I guess I skipped a day. I was never one for daily journal entries anyway except for when I was bored and had nothing better to do than ramble around in my notebooks. As for yesterday, it was so eventful that I had little time to sit down let alone make a journal entry.

First off, I finally met my roommate, Samantha, in person. The first thing I learned about her is that she hates being called "Sam" because she thinks it's an "old man" name. I always thought it would be cool to have a boy name since I was always a bit of a tomboy, but instead I have a prissy girly name of French origin. I guess things are never quite what they seem, especially when it comes to names and appearances. In Samantha's case, she moved in wearing one of those cutesy sundresses that are considered fashionable now. I always hated dresses since they make it difficult to bicycle, and I had a feeling that I would be doing more bicycling than I had during the summers of my childhood due to the size of the campus.

At first glance, it would appear that she and I were complete opposites. Still, after the experience of being the odd one out in high school, I wasn't judgemental. I was cautious, but not judgemental. Like about 70% of the campus, she was white. My parents couldn't really believe that the whites were still the majority due to the swarming groups of Asians we saw on campus. I figured that they hung out together for the same reason I hung out with the two other Asian kids at my high school along with the punk rock and other "weird" kids, to find a sense of belonging and community in a majority-ruled world. Samantha was nice enough, even though she looked like one of the girls I knew in high school who would have never given me the time of day. So, I guess things really do change after high school.

I left the room to get out of the way as she and her parents unloaded her stuff. I went to the bookstore to buy my textbooks, and nearly fainted when I read the receipt. I was worried that using my check card was too easy and that I would easily drain my bank account without realizing it. Then again, this was stuff I needed. I couldn't be one of those kids who don't read but go to class or steal someone else's notes and still passes the class. In order to survive, I knew I'd have to do more than pass my classes. Still, I didn't want to think about class yet, so I made my way back to my dorm.

As far as unpacking went, I'll just say that she made good use of her half of the room and the empty corner that I hadn't filled with my own stuff. For example, she had brought what she had claimed to be only part of her stuffed animal collection, but it filled a small hammock she had suspended from the ceiling with sticky hooks. I hadn't read the rules and regulations for the dorms all the way through since I'm usually a real stickler for the rules (if only in public) due to my hatred of dealing with authority and paying for damages, so I wasn't quite sure what she did was "legal." I really didn't care either way as long as I didn't get in trouble for it.

After she was done decorating the room with various pop star and movie posters, it became obvious which half of the room (and one small corner) belonged to who. I had my plain, assorted blue bedcovers, and she had her pink side. I had art prints from some of my friends, some more "famous" works. One picture particularly disturbed Samantha. It was the self-portrait my friend Evelyn painted of herself after her third and last suicide attempt. When it had happened, my mom was afraid that me and my friends had formed some sort of suicide pact because of something she saw on Oprah or something. I had thought of death a lot during high school, but looking back on the first two years, they were rough, but the last two years were worth it despite the fact that I had distanced myself from the people who had taken me in as one of their own. Evelyn didn't die, and I was glad for it. After being locked up for awhile, she discovered art, particularly painting. Some of her work was so moving that she got a scholarship to a major art institute in Europe. I thought this was great since the one thing she had wanted most in the world was to get out of our small and small-minded town, whether escaping by death or travel. Nothing made me more happy than seeing her face as she was boarding the plane. I knew I would miss my friend, but it gave me hope that someday I would escape from my small town trap as well.

When she gave me the painting before she left, I was at one of my low points, not just about David but with the fact that I was losing some of my friends and anxiety that I wouldn't make it out there. I told her that it was too beautiful and I couldn't possibly take it. She explained to me that it wasn't something that she wanted to take with her in her new life, but she thought it could help someone else with their pain. Evelyn told me that the painting was what she had seen in the mirror every time she cut her wrists. The darkness of the painting, the shading and the blood balanced perfectly with the light reflected in her eyes and the "inner light" that was almost extinguished due to her inner turmoil. I don't really know much about art, but there was something so lifelike, but surreal about the pleading in her eyes and the surroundings blurring into her, as if she was being swallowed up by something she couldn't control. Not only had she captured her own feelings, but my own in that painting. In a way, that girl in the painting was me.

"Is there any way you could not hang that painting there? I mean, that's not exactly the first thing I want to see when I wake up in the morning," Samantha made a face as she stared at my wall.