Come.

And it's infuriating, it really is.

Beautiful, beautiful women all around me. Intelligent, exciting, daring, sexy, cute, capable, interesting women who seem, for some reason, to enjoy spending time with me.

And what do they have in common? They all have boyfriends. Of course.

And I have my own. An ace in the hole, as it were, a distant trump card who refuses to be understood or categorized. A wonderful shining spark in the dark that I grow more infatuated with every day. Is she what I need? Yes, absolutely. Is she what I want?

...yes. A qualified, grudging yes, but a yes nonetheless. I love the prospect of her, like a vast undiscovered realm, so different from everything I know, and yet so earthy, so familiar, like a home I never knew I had.

But these girls. These goddamn fucking girls everywhere around me, looking so good and smelling so nice. They strut around talking about these amazing boyfriends they have, looking at me with the stunning eyes in their devastating faces, daring me to break, to pursue them into their world and abandon mine.

Or maybe I'm just lonely.

To.

Two brilliant moments in lyricism, brought to us by Portland, OR:

1. When Courtney Taylor sings the line "I hope he doesn't get too bummed about sleeping on the couch when I'm there" in Bohemian Like You.

It so perfectly paints the picture of emotional decadence that although he's very much into the girl (or guy) that the song is about, he perfectly understands that while he's not around, the object of his affection is going to invite her ex-boyfriend into her bed. I mean, he still lives there, and he pays the rent, so why not? He's not threatened by the guy at all, because how can you threaten the emotional stability of someone so far removed from their emotions? He's like a character out of Ellis or Plath, so utterly convinced by the shroud of cool around his own heart... or maybe he's just being humble.

But I don't think so. Because there's a knowing brilliance to how Taylor leaves the most poignant part of the line for last, after the last bar ends and we're already ascending into the song's euphoric, anthemic brilliance of a refrain: the words "when I'm there." Ordinarily, the object of affection would of course permanently boot the ex-boyfriend out of her bed, leaving him to sleep on the couch until he finds a new place to stay. We think the line will end with Taylor insinuating that he'd prefer the ex keeping his distance from the girl permanently, so as to make room for the budding relationship between her and the song's protagonist.

But no, Taylor (or the protagonist of the song) understands that human physical need is more complex and more simple than that, and if they're still living in the same apartment, they're going to fuck, simple as that. And he doesn't mind. Because he's just that cool. All he asks is that the other guy crash on the couch when Taylor comes around, because, cool as he is, he apparently can't handle the three of them in bed together. Or maybe there's just not enough room, whatever.

2. When Elliott Smith sings the line "And if I went with you, I'd disappoint you too" in Twilight.

Elliott Smith spends the entirety of Twilight confessing his affections and judgements for a girl. He's already involved with someone else, so he knows nothing will come of it. "I'm already somebody's baby," he near-sobs in that fragile mumble of his, and it's understood: if the situation were different, you, for all your faults ("those drugs you take won't make you feel better") would be someone I could give my heart to.

But as always, Smith's true brilliance lay in his ability to hate himself more than anyone else in the world. With the last line before the instrumental verse, he spins the entire premise of the tirade on its head, revealing that he doth protest too much. He's only warding the girl off, using his present beau as an excuse to not have to break one more heart. I'm just trouble, and you should feel lucky I don't love you.

The purity of Smith's self-loathing when he delivers the line is quietly devastating. It's like the last desperate argument of a fight between a couple, when all anger and vitriol has proven worse than useless, and the only thing left is defeat and resignation. "I'm tired of being down, I've got no fight," Smith sings at an earlier point in the song, and as with many a great heartbreak anthem, it sounds all too much as if he's trying to convince himself hardest of all. That girl you just met might just be the next big love of your life, but who cares? It's all gonna end in tears, right?

Right.

About.

When there's a want, there's a way. That's what they say, isn't it? When there's a want, there is a way.

But what is the want? And how do we know it's really there or not? How do we quantify desire? When is it enough, just right, or too much?

When projected over a distance or an obstacle, all longing is magnified, distorted grossly so as to bear little or no resemblance to the original feeling. Sometimes it even springs from a different feeling altogether, in no way related to the desire it manifests as. Sometimes you'll want a person that's far away just because you feel misunderstood, or just plain lonely. The ones close to you just aren't good enough, but that one person? That one really far-away person? Fuck, does she seem awesome, if only because she hasn't had the chance to disappoint you yet.

Your only choice is to hang on to that fleeting possibility that you've latched on to something special, something real, and against all odds, you have the chance to pursue it. In a life that's this short, you'd be a fool not to delve into it.

But in the end, you know you're only going to have to hurt her, too.

Was.

Love letter to what I have lost:

You are my idea of perfection. You make me truly feel as if I have touched something pure and unperturbed by the obnoxious machinations of society. You indulge occasionally, granted, but that's to be expected; everyone wants to belong, and I know it can't be easy belonging to my world.

You are beautiful and somehow beyond the petty windfalls of fate, and that is why I know you will wait. I know very well how evil the scheme I'm perpetrating is: I'm gonna let you cling for a few extra months while I expend my typical early-twenties male virility on some dumb teenagers, then I'm going to come crawling back to you, worshiping you like the absolute goddess you are.

You are fucking amazing though, no-one could deny that. Even if I end up with someone your complete opposite, I'll always respect you as the ultimate personification of everything a man could want: intelligence, beauty, sex appeal, dignity, morals, ethics and mystery.

You are supreme. The human imagination would be hard-pressed to conjure your equal.

Love is a weak word to describe what it is I feel for you.

I.

I stumble through the doorway to the sound of the alarm system. It's supposed to be reassuring, telling me no-one's broken in and stolen my shit while I've been out, but what it's really telling me is: no-one cares that you've been anywhere.

In my scripts I fantasize about girls waiting for boys at doorsteps and calling to them from windows; in reality, girls are whisked away by persistent yet indifferent bad boys who hint at things without saying too much, who don't appear to want anything, but have yet to discover how badly they need a geeky young girl to drown in their world.

I sit here waiting for some girl, any girl, to impress me, to make an effort, to show the slightest indication that she wants something from me, but is there such a girl? A girl prepared to put herself out there for me? And if there is, could I handle her? Would I even want someone like that?

I suppose there is no perfect encounter. It all just happens randomly; any intervention, any engineering and the illusion is gone. Nobody wants to feel like they planned to fall in love, they want it to just happen.

I wonder if I'm a hard man to please. I mean, I'd like to think that anyone with heart could make the grade, but I have the feeling that I'm far more brutal and exacting than that.

I suppose that should, in a way, please me. I have high standards; I'm not easily swayed. But really, it just makes me that much more miserable in the end.

Then.

It's futile. It's over. I'm fucked. Why even pretend to have a social life anymore? I'm throwing my friends out at 1 AM after a uniquely dissatisfying evening spent doing nothing. I turned down every single opportunity to have anything resembling a good time, and I'm fairly certain that doing all those things would just have bored me too.

What's happening to me? I find myself trying to remember what it was I used to do to have a good time, and I can't. All my time seems to have been spent wishing I was doing something else. When I'm sober, I can't wait to get drunk and be stupid. When I'm drunk, I curse myself for even touching the stuff, and wait 'til I'm sober so I can get shit done.

And that fucking girl. I leave her for no particular reason, and then find myself inexorably drawn back to her, for no particular reason. Would being with her make anything better? Probably not. But here I am, doing nothing, wishing I was doing her.

I need a hobby.

Now.

Thought I'd eschew the usual esoteric bullshit for some real stuff, at least this one time.

Met up with two female friends, both of which I've fucked, to watch Twin Peaks. Being 23, it's kind of rare to find people who haven't seen it, so I decided to watch it all with them.

We're halfway through the second season, and I decide to show them one episode upstairs, on my mom's TV, with the Dolby 5.1 system on -5 Db. They freak out when Bob/Leland Palmer kills Laura's identical cousin.

Afterward, one of the girls is feeling sleepy, and I convince her to stay behind, even though all I do is watch The Wire. She makes a timid move, but I'm bored with fucking her, so the move is not reciprocated. She goes home after one episode.

Halfway through the next one, a girl I've fucked twice before, once recently and once when I was 17, starts messaging me on Facebook. She's drunk out of her mind, naked and Skyping some Swedish guys she barely knows. She's dirty and gives interesting head, plus she says she has about 50 bottles of wine left after some party, so I walk the 10-minute walk it takes to get there. On the way, some foreign guy asks for my help; he needs to gas up his SUV, but he's forgotten the PIN on his card. Unfortunately, my card only works at ATMs. I can't help him.

At the house, the girl is indeed very drunk, but all her wine's been stolen, except for some half-finished bottles of Maipo, and someone else's Smirnoff and Passoa bottles that she finds in a liquor cabinet. She wants me to come upstairs with her and I do, but only take a small refill from one of the wine bottles, so as to have an excuse to go downstairs regularly.

She lures me into bed after Skyping with the Swede for a while, and the sex is okay, but I cum too early. We pillow-talk for a while about her brother, whom I know, and random other shit. After a while, she mentions the blow-job she gave me last time and asks for another go, and it's pretty good. Her teeth get in the way occasionally, but the fact that she can deep-throat and wants me to pull her hair a lot more than make up for it. We fuck and neither of us cum, so I pull out, but she pulls me back in and it feels different, stingy somehow. She tells me to slow down and I ask what's wrong, and she says her ass hurts, and I realize I've been assfucking her for a while without noticing it.

My phone beeps and it's my Ex texting me. Since the Ex is 15 times the lay this girl is, and my business here is about done anyhow, I make up a horrifyingly lame excuse (the girl even calls me out on it, but I elaborate well enough to convince her... I think) and leave, stealing an 8-year old Maipo bottle and the Passoa as I leave.

Now I'm sitting here typing this, and I don't think my Ex is even gonna show. Not that I care, it's not like I wanted to spend the night at the other girl's place anyway.

Just another night in a western civilization that's past its prime.