...when you could be voting for me?!?

UPDATE: This suspense is killing me! Wake me when it's over, but only if I win. If I lose, then just throw dirt over me.

One of the, um, benefits that I got when I started bottling shit up back in the Summer was that I was suddenly able to remember things that I'd either forgotten or, more often, failed to even notice before.

I've been able, by piecing these newfound memories, together with new information passed onto me from others, to confirm, once and for all, that I am an idiot.

Man, there were a lot of commas in that sentence. Way too many, if you ask me.

But I digress. Back to the me being an idiot stuff. I know this comes as no big shock to any of you, and it didn't really come as that big of a shock to me, but being pretty sure of something is very different than being fucking positive.

Hey, here's an example!

I remember this one night. I even wrote about it. I've already kicked myself numerous times for the way I handled that particular night. Or didn't handle it. Whatever.

So it's already not my favorite night to think about, but it got quite a bit less so last night, when one of those damned doorways in my head creaked open to reveal...

The conversation.

I'm not going to get into exactly what was said and who said it and how hopeful one person was and how retarded another person was. I'm just going to say that, and I know that I'm repeating myself here, I'm just going to say that I'm an idiot.

In fact, I am such an idiot, I hereby claim my rightful throne as The Supreme Idiot Of The Entire Fucking Universe and I defy anyone to challenge me in this, my kingdom of retardation.

---

This shit has been happening to me a lot in the last few months. As I've become able to think about certain things at all, I've become able to remember all sorts of fun little tidbits like this.

Every now and then, after remembering something particularly annoying or intriguing, I tell myself, Self, you fucking dumbass, you need to pick up the phone, or get on a plane, or something. You can't just keep ignoring this shit. That's what got you into this mess in the first place.

But then I tell myself, But Self! Everything I'm remembering happened a year and a half ago! No matter what was going on or might have been going on back then, it's just too late now.

And then I say to myself, You really are a pathetic waste of space, Self.

And then I say, I know you are, but what am I?

And it all sort of degenerates from there, and I end up doing nothing but writing about what an idiot I am.

I think, in the end, I was just expecting too much from the tournament.

Last year, I was in the middle of all this drama. I was still reeling from LaptopGirl leaving. I was in a bit of an emotional blender with MixedSignalGirl. I had all this shit going on with my life, but for a week, while I was at the tournament, I was happy.

All of my problems were reduced to making a shot, and getting position to make the next shot. I got to be a pool player for a while instead of some fucked up guy. I was in charge.

This year, I guess I was hoping for the same type of catharsis. A chance to step back from everything else that's going on and just be me again.

Didn't happen. And a part of me knew that it wouldn't happen before I even got there on Friday. That's why I hadn't felt like I'd been looking forward to the tournament as much as I had in the past. That's why I hadn't been practicing nearly as much as I should have.

I was, deep down, actually dreading the thing. Because I knew that it wasn't going to be enough, not this year.

Last year, pool was enough to distract me from my problems, but this year there was a different challenge. Pulling me out of this funk, this fucking drifting state that I've been in for months - this turned out to be too much to hope for. Even for this, the one thing that I've always looked forward to more than any other for the past several years.

A part of me knew all this going in, but it wasn't until Friday at around noon that the rest of me knew.

I was there, and I was miserable, and I had nothing but more misery ahead of me for the next three or four days. I was not going to be cured, or distracted. Not this time. And then the realization of that caused me to become even more miserable.

I'm glad that I lost my first match. I'm glad that I didn't exercise my buy-back option.

I said in my pool 'blog:

...people are going to believe whatever they want, but this is the truth.

Losing that match was not the problem, it was only a symptom. Losing that match did not cause me to leave and come home, it allowed me to do so.

As I've mentioned before, some of my friends are trying to turn Mondays into Gay Night at Rich O's, and I've been named an Honorary Gay for these occasions.

That's honorary only, so you girls just go ahead and breathe those sighs of relief.

Monday was my last day of vacation. I normally don't like to go out when I have to work the next day, but I figured that since I was technically still on vacation, what the fuck.

It was a pretty quiet night. I think that Gay Night might be a bust - most of them have been quite sparsely attended. I drank three bottles of yummy Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier (413) and talked with SassyGirl, SassyBoy, TacoBell, and LibraryGirl.

I guess SassyGirl's brother is getting married in February. I may go to that, even though I don't know the guy. It would give me something to do, plus it'd be nice to meet some of SassyGirl's relatives. The wedding will be in Eastern Kentucky, right next to West Virginia, so it'll probably be full of redneck clichés and stuff.

Let's see, what else?

SassyGirl took this lovely picture of me.

SassyBoy saw a guy out in front of Rich O's that he said looked like me, but I didn't see any resemblance at all, except that we were both wearing glasses. I guess all straight men look alike to SassyBoy.

This one bull dyke came in, but it was just a coincidence- she didn't know about Gay Night. Her girlfriend was a very hot brunette though. I thought about asking her to put on my glasses, but I was afraid that the bull dyke would beat the shit out of me.

On a completely unrelated note, I've deleted VigilanteGirl's information from my cell phone's memory.

On another unrelated note, HatGirl was a no-show (she's another Honorary Gay) so that sucked.

I'd like to have a vagina for just one day. Okay, two days. I'd spend the first day masturbating, and the second day I'd try to gain some insight into the female species.

A year ago, I sat in this little bar at The Executive West hotel in Louisville. I talked for a while with a friend from the Internet, and I drank some BBC Dark Star Porter. After my friend left, I stayed for a while. I looked at the empty chair across from me, and I imagined that she was there with me, smiling at me, laughing with me.

Tonight, I sat in that same bar. At the same table in fact. I drank the same BBC Dark Star Porter (154). It was a different friend that sat with me this time. More of an acquaintance really. Just one of the local players. Most people think he's a jerk, but I think he's an okay guy.

After he had left, I stayed for a while, and I looked at the empty chair across from me.

She wasn't there of course. No more than she'd really been there last year at this time. No more than she's really been in my life at all since she moved away.

She wasn't there, but that didn't stop me from seeing her.

Just as an experiment, I loosened my grip just a little bit, and I allowed the slightest trickle of that which I'd so successfully stopped back in the Summer. Just to see what would happen.

It was good. It was a happy delusion.

An awful lot has changed in the past year, but some things remain the same.

I have this nearly overpowering urge to do something to break this silence, to see what's going on. But I won't.

I don't know what I'd say anyway.

So I guess I'll go to the tournament and watch for a while.

...is that I'm a little bit too honest sometimes.

For this, you can blame MixedSignalGirl, for showing me the value and freedom of open and honest communication. If you want, you can also blame the fact that the last time I was anything less than completely honest, it didn't particularly end well for anyone involved. Especially not for me.