What's your favorite disguise? [/meta]

posted by letter shredder @ 11:59 a.m. on 1/20/2006

"Great art is about conflict and pain and guilt and longing and love disguised as sex and sex disguised as love..."
-- Lester Bangs, Almost Famous

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Forgive Our [Lack of] Sense of Humor

posted by letter shredder at 3:07 PM

In college, Kate and I are the "Luke and Butch" of Mass Comm (at least to some close friends who know who "Butch" is).

When one gets to talk to us both, we cannot promise that his or her head (and tummy) won't ache in a few minutes due to our random sense of humor (combined).

Besides pissing humor-intolerant people off, Kate and I have our own episodes of "dork shopping" and "dork talk." At times, as it appeared to me, people get lost when the two of us talk about HTML and CSS codes over lunch.

When we were assigned to visit and take notes of a fair, we found ourselves comparing the arcades at Megamall.

Among our close friends, we both don't live with our parents and that factor alone made us attend all concerts and watch movies we could accommodate in our schedules.

Even after graduation, we, together with some of our friends, get to meet and have coffee together.

And last Thursday, we produced these pics:

BEEstiality

Our idea of Half-Nekkid Thursday.

One word to describe us: GAY SPONTANEOUS.

Thanks to Kate for the laughs, tears, music, fries, and grass rippling that we've shared together. Here's to more laughs, dude!

Cheers!

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Note: Bushwacker pic by Greg Oliver, from CANOE.

MORE IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a tribute. wink wink

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[Edit]

If you still have time to read, read on.

Kate wrote this one. Nice.

HOLES

I have a body made of holes.

As a child, I have been taught a riddle in the language – this guava has seven holes? And the answer would be my head.

These are the holes I have in common with my boyfriend of three months. Two holes to see with; two more to hear with. Through two more I breathe, through one big gap I talk in whispers, screams or both.

But more than that, I have a hole between my legs. It bleeds for a week every month; it’s almost like a wound, only it doesn’t heal. My mother used to say, this hole was what made me different from boys. And the wound, what made me different as a ‘woman’.

(And to be different as a ‘woman’ also meant swollen chests, sharp manicured nails and stiletto heels.)

All this fuss with jewelry and fashion and makeup, I feel, have always been attempts at covering up for something I innately lacked. As if this hole at the entrance of my womb signifies a lifelong need to be filled.

So I pierce my earlobes and hang something shiny; paint my parted lips deep blood red. I colored my eyelids ash blue tonight, because he said blue signified purity, and I am pure.

(He said if I really loved him, I would want to see if we fit.)

Pure. My cigarette is done. I look past my toes and crush the embers out with the tip of my boot. My mother used to tell me smoking was like pushing holes into my lungs. But then, there are many other holes in my body. Many other holes – mostly unseen and not of my making.

All this preoccupation with being filled and covering the gaps. Does it make me less of a woman, to be untouched? Does it make me empty?

They’re always talking about needing a man. Because a woman needs a man. Like puzzle pieces completing a picture.

(He used that line on me, once. When men put it that way, it’s just an illusion of a supposed equality. And illusions are useful tools for seduction)

But the bottom line is – it is never fair. I know we are not complements, like the image of conjoined puzzle pieces suggests; he does not need me more than I need him. Because this body is one big hole, and it’s all for him to fill. Or mend. Or patch up. Or something like it.

And it just strikes me, how he’d probably known that all along.

There’s liquid seeping out of the hole at the corner of my eye. I stare at my reflection off the dingy motel’s window and see it running past the curves of my face, leaving an ashen blue-black trail in its wake.

They say: A woman needs a man; needs to know if she fits in with another; needs to have the gaps covered; needs the hole filled. They say: A woman needs.

I have two holes for eyes, two holes for ears, two holes to use for breathing. One big gap to speak out in whimpers and yells. There are holes in my earlobes for pretty, glittery things, and a wound between my legs.

I didn’t ask for such a hole-ridden body; but looking at the way my sallow reflection can still hold a certain beauty, I just think maybe – maybe, there shouldn’t be anything else left to need.

0 revealed their disguise

0 Masks: