Contact

She slowly and carefully crossed her legs

All the while watching him from

the corner of her eye.

She grazed every inch of his body with

the tips her lashes

(You know how it goes).

Ernest and gawking she says,

"Friend come home with me,"

or

"I'll take the couch."

I'm tired of taking the bus and having nowhere to look and so, inevitably I watch people, looking quickly away when they watch me back. Yes. I practice human contact through the most awkward of gestures and I'm sure I've made many people nervous or at the very least, annoyed. This is the easiest way to observe others as very rarely do you ever need to actually speak to your targets (unless they're confrontational). I realize it's not always pleasant to be caught staring, but if you're good at what you do, you can generally manage to quickly blur your field of vision with a glassy, empty looking gaze, verging on the pretense of deep philosophical thought (or drugs). I look but do not see, say your eyes straining to avoid any focal point whatsoever. It may seem to some like yet another mundane daily occurence that everyone occupies themselves with from time to time--and to most extents it definitely is. However, try as I might to avoid some of the thoughts I have, it occurs to me often that we come into contact with enormous amounts of people every day...We pass countless individuals on the street, at school, in stores. They clog shopping centres, and congest hallways. They occupy the same space as me and sometimes, whether by circumstance or interest, eye contact will be made, just for a second. Most likely, I'll never see this person again. It seems only natural to me to study faces on the bus, you know, just in case. Future refence.

Day after day, I see the same people, older women with tired looks and clotted, black mascara on the 5 o'clock bus commuting home (I would assume). They read romance novels; their gaze intent on the page--truth is, they don't know where to put their eyes either.

I don't know what it is about women and romance novels...Personally, I've never bothered to take them seriously, rolling my eyes in dramatic gestures, smirking my cynical, judgemental little smirk (which even I begin to weary of), turning a deaf ear to reason at the mention of Danielle Steele. Lust I think, somewhat condescendingly as I see the paperbackcovers with their cheesy paintings of long haired, open shirted men.

Then I think that lust, as riduculous as romance novels seem to me, is rather an addiction for the lonely who feed their hearts with remnants of romantic possibility. Minds charged with painful desires and memories of intense embrace. Lame, I think. The fact that my hostile, antisocial little mind thinks this depresses me most, however. I'm not sure I've ever felt a great deal of want for anybody. Admiration for certain people, their appearance, mannerisms, and such have not gone unrealized, true, but never quite so that I feel a need to let said person into my world, make a habit of letting them share my bed, or use up my toothpaste. Certainly not. Maybe 'I just don't want to feel anything anymore'. --Is this a phrase coined for people who have actually felt?--or am I also eligible to utter such an atrocity? In some of my more worried moments I wonder whether I've simply fallen for the appeal of loneliness and the sad sort of freedom it offers...("in love with my sadness?"--SP), like, me against a world that's paired off and are sitting on the couch, making out.

Ugh. Quite simply, ugh.

I am so sick and tired of the same old things over and over again. This city is getting me down. Highly lacking. I refuse to go out and "enjoy" Ottawa nightlife anymore and people think there's something definitely wrong with my social skills--Perhaps those who judge my character are deluded, but given the intense annoyance I feel for most strangers from the get-go these days, I'll leave the question open for further speculation. It's like how in almost all North American cities, there'll be a strip of megastores (Loblaws, McDonald's Chapters, Payless, Shopper's DrugMart, Second Cup). You drive for 10 minutes before the eerie notion occurs that you've arrived in your place of departure. Except, instead of Second Cup and McDonald's, there'll be a conveninetly located Starbucks and Burger King, respectively, to serve all your caffeine and meat/garbage related needs. This, is what Ottawa's nightlife is like.

Clubs, with the same god awful, 'please-molest-me-as-I grind-up-against-some-stranger's-hip,' "music" deafen and upset the inexperienced, while girls sometimes pretend to make out with their best friends in order to attract guys who are so programmed by the media to think that because Maxim tells them so, 'Hot girl-on-girl" action is desirable to x percentage of men. Ergo, not becoming aroused and a) Copping a feel or b) Making conversation with the alleged lesbians in the hope they'll be accepting of a third, male companion, ultimately threatens their identities as good, heterosexual, predominately college males wearing over-priced hip-hop apparel.-- Because a) They have no sense of personal fashion, or b) It coincides with the aesthetic of barely there tank-tops laced with J-Lo inspired sequins, and ass-cleavage revealing parasucos that so charmingly allow hip pudge to spill over the sides, like an awkwardly made vase/kiln explosion.

It makes me miserable that the world is drowning in fluff (mostly pink). And being wholly repulsed by this (and hopefully, therefore, immune to it), I refuse to be here when the last of us get sucked in. But where, really, can I go....?