Part One:
Thanksgiving
OK. So I have successfully spent an entire week doing nothing in England. I stayed in and tried to cure my European cough, but it persistently continues to burn like fury from the vents of my chest. While I may not have actually done anything terrifically exciting this past week, I got really into updating my blog, which I think at this point in the trip might be most important. Everything I'm thinking and feeling right now is going to be way more valuable to me than getting another pasty or another round trip to London Bridge in a few years....especially when you feel like you've seen it all. I've allowed this blog to expand past the point of "today I saw a castle, it was blingin" and have opened up to the prospect of tearing myself apart on a website.
I've really taken to "blogging". I've always sort of blogged. I never kept a journal but my computer is filled with years worth of metaphorical rants left unpublished or unseen. I like "blogging" because A. It is wayyyy more organized...B. Somebody might read this, and C. It's making me feel level. I feel really leveled out lately, and calm, and normal. So yeah, what I'm saying is I'm opening a new blog once this one ends, and I think I'll just continue to do this until death do us part.
Cheers if you liked my list of things I'm thankful for. ONE LUV XOXOXOX.
Thanksgiving was actually really great. I found myself to be in the best mood I'd been in in weeks going into the night, while I waited for everybody. I blasted Trans-Siberian Orchestra and drank beers with my flat mate (and dare I say...friend?) Kyle, and I was wearing this very metrosexual sweater with slacks and I combed my hair and I laughed because two years ago I would have kicked my own ass for looking like this. What happened to the days of sporting a huge Busch Beer Gut with long,sweaty, floppy hair, and an untrimmed and uncared for red beard? Who knows. I guess I've changed huh?
Anyway I was in an exceptional mood and Chris and Kate...and myself, made my flat look great for Thanksgiving and the whole thing had a very humble little "yeah WE did this, we're grown ups", feel to it. We don't need our moms to have Thanksgiving anymore.
I can't cook anything but I made up for it but acting like I still have a lot of money and buying lots of wine.
Everything was fantastic. All the food. Even though I don't like Turkey, Chris prepared a good one but his apple pie was OFF THE HOOK.Like, seriously, where did I go wrong in my life that I never learned how to bake a pie like that? Awesome. Kate's sweet potato things might've won the award for "thing I liked/ate the most of", and her stuffing was top notch. Everything was great, I didn't miss anything about food from home. Oh and Joe's Tortilla con ketchup came out superb I was proud of him. All the food was great. I polished off everything Daria made a few hours later drunkenly at about 5:30 in the morning. Gam's mushrooms were delicious, even if they didn't make me really big and make me smash blocks with my head (i'm using alot of Mario references today...why?) Kelly got her pumpkin pie, I don't like pumpkin pie, but I'm glad she made it because she really wanted it. Well,I knew deep down I wasn't going to let her have Thanksgiving without it, if she didn't find it I had already found 3 websites I was ready to order it and have it delivered from....
I led us off in a toast, to which I said " To the fact that the most interesting part of studying in a foreign country was getting to know a few people from home".
Cheers.
I put a lot of thought into that toast, knowing in my heart that when someone said, "who will make a toast" they'd say "ANDAYY!" and I'd be the one making it,so I thought of it the night before when I stayed up all night and dwelled on my life. I like this Thanksgiving blog. It's like a behind the scenes guide to my mind.
Anyway, we all went around the table and gave a little speech. I'm with people who are very in touch with their feelings and it feels good.Later in this blog I'm going to draw connections to the people at home, and how this sort of thing follows me. People at home do this same thing, just differently.
Everyone has really nice things to say about each other. It's really beautiful I think, especially because I used to hate the world so much and be a cynic. Now I feel so positive, or ambitious at least. The days of being quiet are over. I've been expressing myself in abrupt and awkward moments of honesty all semester, and I don't really care, this is just the way it is and I think without this character trait it would have been more difficult for me to tell these people how much I needed them uniquely and individually during this Study Abroad. I hope they appreciate it on some level, I'm sure they do.
I know what it's like to spend days, weeks, months, alone. I don't ever want to experience that again. I know what it's like to wake up in the middle of a February night and wonder if I died. I know what happens to the human mind when the lights go out. You don't need someone to be happy, ever. But you need someone sometimes to help you understand you're unhappiness. .
As I went around the table and spoke I found myself uncharacteristically nervous. I was nervously fidgeting and unable to make eye contact with my peers as I filled them with word's I'd baked the night before. It's hard to tell someone how you really feel about them, there is nothing more frightening to do than tell someone out loud how important they are or what they have meant to you. But it's something we as humans should do sometimes, you know, let the others in our world know they exist to us. It's what creates a real human experience, rather than a frat party. I used to be awkward and unable to speak. I was insecure. I'm no longer insecure, hence, I no longer feel awkward. On the first day here I didn't speak during "would you rather"...
Ten weeks later I just told a room full of the same people that I love them.
The night got drunk and we had a whip cream fight and threw eggs against the wall. I haven't had so much fun while drinking since I've been in Old Bridge. We sang C,G, Am, F songs. I hope they know I can play other songs besides these easy songs ...heheh, I feel like a chump. Maybe they'll all come see Noistradamus some day.
Then everyone left and me Joe and Monica spend the night doing Post Colonial Theory on ourselves.
Part two. Femininity. A Biography.
I have just spent two weeks exclusively spending most of my time with five girls. I used to spend all of my time (post Franklin street) with NO girls. Just guys. All the time. I remember a few days before I left, I was drunkenly explaining life to Murphy on the jungle gym at the old park by my house, and I told him.
"Our lives in Old Bridge are homosocial. We only hang out with guys. We've created a dude-world, where we drink and cheer each other on for acting like maniacs and I think we all need some chicks around because we're getting fucked up".
I said to Gerry once
"Do you think it's unnatural that we don't really hang with chicks?". He said "yeah, I mean we're 21, shouldn't we be like dating people or something"
We just shrugged our shoulders and laughed over a cup of coffee.
When I came here to London, I didn't want the new people I met to get to know the "me" I had created at home. I defined "me" by the person I was at home. The person I was at home was the person I was while drinking with my friends. I didn't want them to know about any of that, any of those years, peeing on the floor, drinking competitions, getting thrown out of bars, breaking bottles against a wall, being punched in the face on my front lawn, sleeping outside, running from police etc. Although I did eventually start talking about those years a lot, at first I was hesitant because I know deep down that the person I am in all those memories necessarily like....me. I didn't want to be defined as they type of person who stands in a fire. I didn't want to be misunderstood for a maniac, because I'm not....but I did do those things didn't I? So who am I? What am I getting at?
A return to girls.
( by the way, look how much I've learned about myself, I'm kind of in disbelief as I'm typing)
I grew up excursively hanging out with girls. I had no guy friends really besides Tom Corbett until the fifth grade. My three main friends all through out my childhood were Kristen Giovinco, Brittany Giovinco, and Jackie (Apples) from across the street. While other male kids were playing sports, I was playing house. I was putting on shows for our parents. I was doing girly things. I played with lamb chop dolls. I learned sensitivity. I cried about stuff. I just hung out with girls.
It drove my dad nuts, I'm sure.
I was bad at sports, I was bad at male relationships. I couldn't watch wrestling at first or play with action figures. I spent every waking second of my childhood in my own imagination, and I liked playing with just girls because they were inventive also. I never, ever saw anything in throwing a ball against a piece of wood or into a hoop.
I spent my whole childhood in my head. I would literally go into the living room so I could "daydream". My dad would say "what are you doing in the living room for four hours" and I'd say "daydreaming". I absolutely remember this. It was an activity I created. I would just sit and think and imagine stuff. Imagine scientists mixing things in a lab or I'd make up a show in my head and play it out.
I wasn't nuts, I just spent all my time in my imagination.
I remember in fourth grade wondering what my teacher did in real life. I invented scenarios in my head where she got married and was really happy. I was always thinking of the weirdest stuff.
So I grew up with girls, because I had always seen them as more of the mind than of the body. Men can't think, they can throw balls, but for some reason I found I could think.
I remember in 5th grade developing my first feelings for Kristen. I remember this well. The first time I ever felt that feeling in your stomach I currently identify as "love" or a crush. I remember having this at the age of nine. I remember we were rolling around one day in front of my yard, two nine year olds, playing some imaginary game, like kids do, and I was overcome with the urge to kiss her.
So I did.
And we laughed but I was in love. My first childhood love. Whatever that means.
It was about that time that I wrote my first poem that I still have in my room to this day.
5th grade
If I tell you I love you
and you say no
Than I will have hot tears on my face
But if you say you love me too
we'll be married one day.
That was my poem in the 5th grade.
Turns out Dad, I wasn't gay, I was a 19th century romantic. Things haven't changed too much.
I asked Kristen out to the 5th grade dance that year and she said no and I was heartbroken. I went home and cried and her parents called my parents and it was a whole mess.
Stupid kids.
I did grow up though.
Our friendship dwindled and we grew up and went to middle school and I met males and started watching wrestling (I remember starcade 2000 being the most important thing int he world to me) and I finally played sports, I got decent at basketball and soccer and I didn't daydream anymore unless to write a story or get the best grades in English class or win spelling bees. I hung out and used words like "faggot" and "nigger" and "bitch" and "pussy" and I was one of the guys. Actually, I was one of the guys who started bitching around other guys. I was the one in control. Me and my friends in 8th grade vandalized houses with eggs and looked at playboys and did just about everything the way kids do it.
High school was high school, I wrote about it extensively in my Abbey Road blog. I discovered music, and no longer needed sports again because I was imagining again. My male relationships became based entirely on who I can jam or smoke pot with or do both. I discovered books. I discovered there was a real outlet for these thoughts in the adult world. I wrote lyrics, I wrote short stories. I wrote songs. I sang songs. I put all this crap in my head into action.
It worked.
The point of all this is that after thirteen years of hanging out with just "ma dudes", (I mean, besides my girlfriend...she fits into my life story somewhere right? Heh). I returned to hanging out with just women, here in London. ( I know Joe and Chris were there too, but when we all went back at night I primarily hung out with women) I was hanging out with all girls again. I even did girly things, like the grease video, and I left behind my life of drinking with the guys,calling people pussies who can't drink, and discovered that outside of my society, I was free to analyze myself again. What I have accomplished the most in London I feel, is that I have created a real person in myself. I have reflected and reflected. I have analyzed. I thought about my past. I have become, that part of me as a kid that wanted to imagine, and a working member of the male social world I can't wait to rembrace at home.
I finally leveled out. I finally found a balance. I AM the person who drank too much at parties and pukes in your bathroom or calls a Monmouth cop a bitch to his face. I didn't do these things because of society. I did it because I wanted to (and maybe because of society, and maybe because I was young and immature). I'm also the person who listens to you talk late at night, when the party is over and the beer has stopped. I'm also the person who can tell someone I need/want them, whether it be over a Thanksgiving table or caught somewhere in a doorway. I can be a bastard when I'm with my friends at home,I may say the wrong things, and do stupid stuff, but I'm still a romantic who will fall in love with a girl if she plays house with me long enough. Dualism. Balance.
. My friends, tough as they may be, have done the same thing I did here on Thanksgiving. I actually learned this from people at home. I realized that my masculine friends in Old Bridge actually have that feminine balance. We all need each other. We've sat around fires and told each other drunkenly (and maybe less eloquently) that we need each other. The bonds I have with the people from Old Bridge are unbreakable. We tell each other we miss each other all the time. I feel like anyone in Old Bridge would take a bullet for me, and I'd do the same. Everyone I've ever met, everyone I've ever shared the experience of telling them I was grateful to have them in life, whether it be in Old Bridge on the dirt road or around Becca's fire, or in London, it doesn't matter where you go or who you strike up friends with, at the end of the day, you will be missed when your somewhere else. I think that in our missing of each other, from all angles of perception, proves that we are capable of being human.
Everyone I've met in my life has contributed to this new found sense of balance...and I'm grateful to everyone that I have it.
I remember when Kristen moved my senior year of High School I told Melissa I was upset because I felt like my childhood was moving with her. Me being me, I wanted to meet up with Kristen (who I had barely spoken to since elementary school besides stupid jokes) and just go over our friendship from when we were children. Ask her if she remembered playing house or lambchop or me asking her to the dance. I remember I caught her coming out of her car and I said, "hey do you think we can go out for coffee before you move?". She said yeah, but than she just moved, and the conversation never happened. If that conversation had happened, I wonder how much more I'd have to analyze.
It took me two and a half hours to write this blog.
Cheers.
Andrew
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going to scooop someone is the best
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