And the fish aren't really biting. How can they be? I'm not really fishing.

I


  made the mistake of taking a sip of my infamous vodkatea in front of an officious type here in UVA's Cocke Hall. The penalty? He told me I could keep my cup but I couldn't drink from it. Its very doubtful that he knew it contained such a naughty beverage.

Now he's obscured behind a maze of monitors. I can hear him typing but he's out of sight. He is powerless to stop me. It's Friday; the alcohol must get through.

---

Mind you, I'm not saying I have any real friends on the Internet either. The people there are intangible. They have personalities, but they're completely disembodied.

T


his week, I have been fully living up to the ignorant American's stereotyped view of the Internet geek. I have had no social life at all. I even realize now for the first time in that for whatever reason, I don't have any true friends in the real world. I have housemates, true, but I can't really relate to them unless I'm drunk. I feel like there is too big a part of me that I can't even hope to explain to them. Mind you, I'm not saying I have any real friends on the Internet either. The people there are intangible. They have personalities, but they're completely disembodied. If it weren't for pages like this, I couldn't even imagine them going to the bathroom. And the whole idea of cybersex is laughable to me. But like most of you, I am eager to find out exactly what Elly and Rudy do when they're alone together across 10,000 miles of fibre optic cable.

I'm so pathetic at 8pm on this Friday night that I'm updating my web page. I've apparently given up on having a life in meatspace.

Matthew Hart tells me that Thomas Bowles, the head chef at the C&O, thinks I have some kind of ego problem because of the existence of this online journal. That anyone would think such a thing disturbs me more than I'd like to admit. But then, upon considering it, I've decided that anyone who "presumes" to do anything must have an ego problem. I encountered a version of this view from "real artists" back when, completely unschooled, I started painting. And now the fact that I "presume" anyone wants to know about the social world in which I dwell or the "struggles" in my mind is viewed as arrogance. I'm willing to agree, but I'd go further and say so does charging $20 for a plate of roast duck. A writer writes, and writings from ones own experience appear to me to be the least arrogant of all forms of writing. Of course, Thomas probably has never even seem my musings. Like most people in the real world who first hear about online journals, there's an assumption insanity is at work. Keep this in mind: an unusual need for privacy could be a form of insanity as well.

Throughout the movie, guns are continually the cause of problems. But they behave more like axes than guns; when someone gets shot, he doesn't just get a hole in his body.

O


kay, the stuff about me not having any friends was a pretty dismal and terribly inaccurate view. If I can't take charge of my social life, it's certainly not the fault of my friends.

Before the ABC store closed, I picked up a litre of vodka. Deya and Rory had apparently found something interesting to do; they'd left together in her car. Drinking vodkatea alone by myself, checking email compulsively over a sluggish 14,400 baud modem, and playing Tool on the stereo, I felt pretty damn miserable and abandoned.

Matthew and Leah came home from dinner at the C&O and were drinking Apricot-flavoured beer. Together we watched The Doom Generation, an especially gruesome movie about the violent lives of a group of teens, two boys and the girl they both have sex with. The filmmaker, Gregg Araki, usually makes homoerotic movies, and this one had a strong homoerotic foundation. Throughout the movie, guns are continually the cause of problems. But they behave more like axes than guns; when someone gets shot, he doesn't just get a hole in his body. No, he loses his head, an arm or some other body part. The stumps are shown in close-up as blood spurts out. Evil infects even the trivial details; for example, every purchase comes to exactly $6.66. The violence and even the sex didn't seem to serve much of a purpose. I got bored and headed off to the Corner. I was very drunk, but the memories I have are still reasonably vivid.

T


he plan was to take more charge of my social life. There's always an element of anchorage that my friends give me when I accompany them. And I've become so socially lazy, depending on them to come up with ideas of things to do, that they're always with me when I'm out of the house. I've been showing no independence. I've been making no friends of my own. Not that I haven't been good at making friends in the past, but it's always been a conscious effort, usually in times far more horrible than these.

There was humourous column in the last C-ville about Farrell, saying he'd vanished without a trace and offering a reward for his return "bow tie and all."

I found Farrell on the street, with a random girl (not surprising) and without his trademark bow tie (most alarming!). He looked like a little kid without it. There was humourous column in the last C-ville about Farrell, saying he'd vanished without a trace and offering a reward for his return "bow tie and all." Not being able to collect the bounty, I shook his hand instead.

I ran across red-faced Colin and some of his homies in front of Little Johns. He complained again about the lies on my web page, but this seemed more like helpless whining than the vitriol of a tough guy. I wasn't interested enough to deal with him, so I went upstairs to Michæl's Bistro, which is a bar that only admits people who are over 21 years of age. Yes, you'll be pleased to know that I was acting a little more my age.

I ordered a glass of Guiness and then sat with Josh, the bass player in the Curious Digit. I don't know what we talked about, just chit chat. I like him for some reason. I was proud of myself for carrying on like an adult in the absence of my youthful housemates.

But I didn't do what most guys in my situation would have done, that is, hit on her.

In front of the White Spot, I came across a girl I know. She's a 24 year old nurse at the nearby university hospital, and she was still dressed in her nurse's outfit. She told me all about a tragedy that had befallen her earlier in the week. News had come that her live-in 26 year old boyfriend had sex with some seventeen year old "bimbo." The boyfriend is full of regret, but she broke up with him all the same. They still live together, and this makes the situation very difficult. She spoke of how unfair this was, that she'd never done anything like this to anyone since she was a teenager. For some reason, I make a pretty good therapist, and she talked for longer than I'd expected. I asked her all kinds of nosy questions like did he break her heart and does she still love him. But I didn't do what most guys in my situation would have done, that is, hit on her. Still, when she left to collect a $40 debt from the cheating bastard she suggested we go have drinks some time.

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