#lissa aka beagan

[razorsadness]

beagan broke down last night. we left the bar and i just drove her around for a while, and then parked my car in front of her house and just held her while she sobbed and sobbed. cos the boy she loves is going away tomorrow, and he'll be gone for a year at least. all the way in italy. and even now, he is distancing himself from her, tho he says he loves her, trying to make the separation easier on himself. he's been distancing himself for months, now, and i hate him for it. i just want to say: can't you see what you are doing to my girl? i know it's going to hurt both of you when you have to go, but it won't hurt any less just because you're not spending time with her. you should be spending every spare minute with her, soaking up memories. the stupid asshole doesn't deserve her.

when i was driving home, the mix tape in my car played this softies song, "an awful mess." and it said: she's saving it up, it's pulling her down into an awful mess - if you loved her any less, she would go.

i wish i had a magic vacuum so i could suck up all the pain of everyone i care about. i hate the fact that i can't fix everything for all of them.

[journal entry, 12/13/03]

[razorsadness]

73. Pete Shelley died on December 6 & it was really hard for me. I’m writing a longer piece about it (which will probably be published in zine form), for now I’ll just say that I mourned the world’s loss of one of punk’s great songwriters, I mourned my own loss of a man whose kindness meant a lot to me when I was young (yes, I knew Pete; not that we were close friends but we’d met), & I mourned the loss of who I was back when I first heard Buzzcocks—back when I was a teenage misfit always falling in love w/ people I shouldn’t have.

74. the next day was Tom Waits’ birthday, & I used it as an excuse to partake in some nostalgic pleasures; to be my old self if only for an hour or two. or as much my old self as I can still be. I went to the Douglas Avenue Diner for lunch, w/ C. as my date. I thought of Filia. I always miss her most in November & December. & diners make me think of her, & Tom Waits makes me think of her, & the death of old punks makes me think of her. everything reminds me of her. I thought of Hearts Don’t Break, the novella I wrote in ‘02/’03, which was heavily based on our friendship; thought of my description of the coffee-stained comfort of our favorite diner. different diner, different city, different year, but it was comforting to be there. they were playing Christmas carols & the patrons were an equal mix of punks & old folks.

74.5. oh, nostalgia. Greek-American-owned diners like Douglas Ave. make me the most nostalgic, as those are the diners I grew up going to—there are so many of them in the Midwest. I thought of the Alps East in Chicago, the Greek diner I haunted as a broke college student; how I’d go there & order a cup of soup & a bottomless coffee & sit for hours eavesdropping on other patrons, getting ideas for short stories. I thought of the Greek diners in Kenosha, going to them w/ Beagan back when we were dating, sharing an order of spanakopita & a side of rice pilaf.

[from a journal entry, 2/6/19]