Monday Through Wednesday

Everyone knows the feeling that something that happened only a few days ago seems a lifetime away from the present. Significantly fewer people understand what it feels like to live outside of your own skin, or at least live outside of the skin that you thought you had to wear. The past week has been the first of its kind for me. And I let go of everything holding me back, even if just for this week, in order to get a look at what it would be like to be happy and fearless in the skin underneath my skin. You see, the skin on the outside is bruised and pale, but let's scrape it off little by little. I mean, you can't rip it off all at once like a band-aid. That'll scar you. But let's peel away the layers to find the red-like-sunburn self just below the surface. Some people don't get it, but I think it's beautiful. But just like that the exposure's gonna change it and make it just like the old skin. It's a constant fight to keep yourself fresh and alive, and sometimes, yes, it is easier to hide. But this time, I didn't.
Monday. We walked into the Bellefield Gym to a group of "obviously" straight guys playing basketball, though we had reserved the gym for the evening. You have no idea how nervous that made me. In situations like that, I'm used to running away, asking for help. But there was no one there to help me. In fact, people seemed to look to me to solve the problem. I tried to stall by inquiring at the security desk, but that just pissed me off even more. I hate incompetence, but even more upsetting to me is rude incompetence. I stormed off, up the stairs and back to the gym, agonizing over what I could say and what I would say in the likely events of disrespectful disregard, and laughter. So there we stood in the corner, exchanging glances that always came back to me, and I knew my response, I knew what it would be. I knew it would be indicative of the rest of the week. So I did what I had to do, scared shitless and too afraid to admit it. I did what any guy would do. I pretended I was fine and threw out my line. They all stopped moving. And they listened. And within five minutes, the floor was ours.
For what? Well, we played dodgeball. It was the most fun game of dodgeball that I have ever played because I didn't have to prove anything. Every time we played dodgeball in elementary school and high school, I rarely got the ball. Some boy would run in front of me to grab it, or maybe people would just laugh when I missed someone or tripped because I didn't have the right kind of shoes for the gym floor. So, like everyone else walking into the gym that evening, I was a little concerned about the repressed emotions that might rise to the surface once the game began. But it was so different from those days. Maturity is a funny thing, and it's ironic that its presence should be so strongly felt in a game designed for the prepubescent crowd. I ran, sweat my ass off, and pelted queers and straights alike with bright yellow balls. It was glorious.
Tuesday. I was already beginning to feel the pangs of sleepless nights that I had only heard about in years past, but I trudged into the Kurtzman room for the second event of the week, expecting to be bored to death. I mean, I'm not usually a fan of listening to people read poetry because most of them end up sounding the same to me. Alix Olson floored me. I think she's the first poet who has ever made me feel the rhythm of the words I was hearing--the first I've heard who grasped the concept of the musicality of poetry, and of language in general.
Wednesday. This was the day before the Drag Show. It was also the day before my two exams of the week. I felt like I was going to collapse, but I knew I needed to work on all three of those things, so I found it necessary to skip the event, a showing of Paris is Burning. I was so drained from the first half of the week that I locked the door to my office at work and slept on the floor, with my head resting upon my backpack and my cell phone alarm set for a time ten minutes prior to my usual departute, for about two hours. Later that evening, I spent three hours at the Pete with my backup dancers, and I knew that everything would be just fine. I spent the rest of the night studying Physics furiously and frustratingly, and I knew everything would be just horrendous. I'm sure that I failed. And this deeply upsets me because it makes me feel stupid.
Thursday. This day really just blended with Wednesday due to the lack of sleep. I pushed through my two exams, feeling thoroughly abused, hating the idea of going to my next two classes. I handed in the homework for Snaptic Transmission, fully intent on staying for the entire lecture. After thirty minutes of listening to Dr. Wood tell me things that I could very obviously read online the next day, I packed up my belongings and scampered out the back door into the sunlight. And so I went to get a tan. Say whatever you will about that, but it's a wonderfully relaxing process, and the results are pleasing. I felt slightly more energized as I seated myself for my final class of the day, though with dim lights and an old movie playing, it became just one more obstacle for me to overcome.
Soooo DRAG SHOW.
This needs its own little section. I don't really feel like I can write about Thursday or Friday at this point. I need a little more time to collect my thoughts on those nights, and I'm not in the best of physical health right now. I'll save those days for another time.

What else am I thinking about? I'm obviously stressing over the amount of work I have left to finish before the semester comes to a close. But who isn't?