#this is coming from someone who has been desexualised by friends and family because of my disabilities

[mar-mots]

I'm not done with this mole hill yet actually. But genuinely as someone who is aspec/arospec and disabled I am deeply side-eyeing the Viktor is Ace discourse right now because I feel like context is being lost in the conversation.

Viktor ace and/or aro headcanons because you think it fits? Sweet. Queerplatonic interpretations of jayvik also perfectly valid. In fact, any interpretations of the two is completely valid because I'm not your mum. Go do whatever you want forever.

You prefer SkyVik? MelJay? MelJayVik? None? Cool. The point is it doesn't matter what other people think. Do what you want forever.

I also don't care if Linke is an aphobe, homophobe, whatever-phobe because I don't know the guy or his inner thoughts and world. I'm not gonna cast too much judgment over uhhh gay shipping.

HOWEVER...

There is an uncomfortable history of making disabled people and characters ace, essentially desexualising them, and treating them as if they aren't people with their own thoughts, their own needs, their own agency.

This is why I'm deeply suspicious of Linke's decision to state this in the context that it was. Was Viktor ace the intent the whole time? Perhaps. But it does feel a little bit like it was an attempt to dissuade jayvik as an interpretation of a text rife with topics and scenes and whatnot that can be heavily up for interpretation.

Long story short is that what we got is not difinitive proof either way that JayVik is canon. What we got is a deeply complicated story of love but whether that love is romantic, platonic, something that transcends either, is something that is fully up to the interpretation of the viewer. And I think there's something a little bit beautiful about that.

I know how I read it, but that's only my interpretation of the subtext. I'm not gonna begrudge you yours.

And that's what I'm saying on that.

[fireleaptfromhousetohouse]

Tintin in the 21st Century

It’s weird that Tintin is only really known in continental Europe, and obscure as hell in the UK, because it was localised extremely well - so much so that it really confused me as a kid when, in The Black Island, Tintin takes a ferry over to Britain. If he tends to be knocking about in Brussels pre-adventure, I certainly didn’t notice.

What tends to get emphasised about Tintin these days is the racism - as in this Robert Brockway column - and yes, Tintin in the Congo comes off like Kipling’s The White Man’s Burden crossed with those episodes of Looney Tunes that they won’t broadcast any more, but Herge himself disavowed that one as being basically early installment weirdness. There is a good deal of fairly iffy content in some of the others, including, in Shooting Star, a scheming Jewish financier serving as antagonist (which to be fair, Herge wrote while living under Nazi occupation, and later edited), but none of this was key to the comic’s appeal.

What I’m criticising specifically here is Brockway’s assertion that “Nobody knows how to deal with the racism. [Modern adaptations] keep trying to whitewash it -- pun so totally intended, friend-o -- and every time they do, they act surprised that the property has lost all its magic”, an assertion he illustrates entirely with excerpts from Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in the Land of Soviets (an even earlier work than Congo and an anti-communist tract in which Tintin is a prick to everyone in Russia). I’m well aware that this all may come off as a white European trying desperately to salvage one of his Boy’s Own mighty-whitey heroes from the dustbin of history, but look at the following excerpts:

(The next panel is Tintin breaking this awful man’s cane. There’s a lot of instances like this throughout the series, where someone’s being a dick to a POC, and Tintin lets them have it. Yes, it’s robbing the POC of agency in favour of Tintin as mightiest of whities, you could call it racist, but it’s not quite a Klan march, is it?)

Certainly they’re depicting racism, but is anyone really looking at those and getting the impression that the author endorses Native Americans being thrown off their land? Or that the author agrees with the stereotypes he’s calling people stupid for believing? (The stereotypical Chinaman picture serves as a bit of a brick joke when, later on, Thomson and Thompson attempt to blend in.) Those last two excerpts are from The Blue Lotus, often held up along with Tintin in Tibet as a rebuttal to the charges of racism laid against Herge (largely because of Chang, based on one of Herge’s life-long friends). Ironically, The Blue Lotus was criticised for racism against the Japanese: the villain, Mitsuhirato (that’s him in the last panel) is a pug-nosed, buck-toothed opium trafficker who commits seppuku after the climax, so it’s a fair cop, although The Blue Lotus depicting Imperial Japan as authoritarian warmongers claiming more and more of Manchuria on flimsy pretexts has perhaps been vindicated by history.

Brockway’s column describes Tintin as ‘a racist Indiana Jones...for kids’, and this is basically accurate, although I think it’s debatable whether Tintin is more Indiana Jones or James Bond. (Last Crusade, apparently, began life as Spielberg’s Tintin fan script.) You could easily go with both - the crucial points are the globe-trotting, the intrigue, and Tintin’s own indomitable capability. To paraphrase another Cracked columnist, the weird thing about Tintin is that he was awesome. He looks like a cherub but will happily get mixed up in, and win, a fistfight or gunfight any day. He’s about 19 and already has a nemesis - a Greek nemesis. Despite being half a boy, and despite being a journalist who never writes anything, he’s self-sufficient in every way, and as physically capable as a man twice his size - which can flow back into the mighty whitey stuff in some fairly unfortunate ways:

but then again, take the racial dynamic out of that page (or, if you prefer, focus more on the white colonialists bossing about the South Asian guys) and it’s pretty standard protagonisty stuff.

The series is ‘for kids’ in that Tintin is your classic boy hero - given his trusty dog companion, it’s a lot like one of The Famous Five aged a few years and got a real job - and a lot of the humour is generally accessible, slapstick stuff - there’s a bit in Tintin in Tibet where Captain Haddock spends about three pages bumping into people and tripping over. Then, out of nowhere, an international arms dealer will plant opium in Tintin’s luggage to get him banged up by the cops. Seriously, most of the villains are gun-runners, opium smugglers, or both - there’s nothing too graphic, no Trainspotting-style illustrations of the full horror of the global opiate trade, but still, heavy stuff for a comic book. Particularly considering the great costumed comic heroes never even touched the subject of drugs until around the ‘80s, and an endless stream of edutainment telling kids to hey, just say no, man.

One crucial difference between Tintin and Indiana Jones/James Bond is the series’s utter sexlessness. Female figures, on the rare occasion they show up at all, are either damsels in distress, desexualised mother-types, or both. This aspect of the series has drawn its share of Freudian analysis over the years, and, due to Tintin’s best friend and roommate being salty seaman Captain Haddock, came in for a bit of ribbing in the bootleg Tintin in Thailand. If you were to put James Bond into that machine from Red Dwarf that splits things into their good and evil selves, you’d end up with Tintin and Sterling Archer. 

Really, Tintin’s closer to a modernist-era Hitchcock protagonist, who gets swept up in events and has sufficient pluck to see them through, and while I forget which way round the inspiration came, The Black Island bears a striking resemblance to Hitch’s The 39 Steps. To stick with The Black Island a moment - being half-Scottish, it was always a family favourite - I’d just like to present the first page in full:

Take note, any film or narrative that wants me to spend fifteen minutes with idiots, because that’s how you kick off an adventure. There’s your wholesome protagonist out for a walk with his dog, and there’s your bad dudes up to bad shit. Tintin spends the night in hospital, then proceeds to walk off the bullet going after the guys - who, it turns out, are some conspicuously German forgers operating in Britain, in 1938. Again, there’s nothing too graphic, but perhaps that’s bending the definition of the word for a work that involves the protagonist stepping in a bear trap, nearly being consigned to a Nazi asylum, getting knocked out during a gunfight with a White Russian when his bullets smash some bottles of chloroform, and then getting caught in a house fire (all this, incidentally, happens in one sequence of five pages or so).

To return to The Blue Lotus, one of Tintin’s allies in that, Mr Wang Chen-yee, more-or-less fits the bill for @thathopeyetlives and @raggedjackscarlet‘s idea of a mirror-universe Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which Bizarro Frank-N-Furter comes to represent the good side of traditionalism, the idea that ‘here is something worth believing in, if you dare to’:

Yeah, he’s a stereotype - you know it, I know it - he’s that specific kind of East Asian man they invented the word ‘venerable’ for, and the fact that at no point in The Blue Lotus does he use kung fu to devastating effect just makes you more certain he’s a master of it. But crucially, he seems like - as with Speedy Gonzales - the kind of stereotype the people it depicts could really get behind.

Mr Wang is the leader of The Sons of the Dragon, a secret society - and a robust, active secret society at that, much closer to the mafia than to the Freemasons (or, if you like, closer to the classic Freemasons than the modern Freemasons). Tintin first meets him after having been kidnapped and smuggled back into China, on his orders - and Mr Wang is hoping that Tintin will help them to fight opium smuggling. How perfect is that for a secret society? There’s your completely justified underdog, there’s something you can believe in, or at least you could before world governments introduced some anti-drugs boilerplate and fucked everything up for everyone.

There was a very mild religious grounding to Tintin - it didn’t come up a lot, but to be fair these were still the days when religion and a moral core were thought of as basically one and the same. It wasn’t lessons in theology like Linus in Peanuts, it was a more general use of universally recognisable icons, a lot closer to how Baikinman was elevated to go-to antagonist symbol in Japan - here’s the villains of Tintin and the Broken Ear being literally dragged off to hell:

Here’s Tintin invoking heaven’s name to try and stop the villain from capping himself (luckily, his gun’s been switched for a joke one):

And here’s Snowy grappling with his alcohol problem via his good and evil selves:

(That’s not a joke. Snowy’s taste for hard liquor was a recurring theme, at one point leading to Tintin spanking him as punishment for getting drunk in the Himalayas and nearly going over a waterfall - both content which I suspect simply wouldn’t fly today in the face of the animal rights lobby, at least not in a children’s book.)

Interestingly, this isn’t limited to Christian theology - here’s Snowy again, this time envisioning Tintin’s wrath by having him wield Zeus-style thunderbolts:

And a Buddhist monk levitating while in a prophetic trance:

Similarly, bona fide magic makes some semi-regular appearances in the series. In Cigars of the Pharaoh, Tintin is temporarily hypnotised with one glance from a fakir, but the most audacious depiction of this comes in The Seven Crystal Balls/Prisoners of the Sun, in which ball lightning attacks the gang, causing Professor Calculus to levitate, and it turns out the neo-Incas have been using what are essentially voodoo dolls to torment the explorers who looted their temple - this is particularly jarring in Prisoners of the Sun, contrasted as it is with Tintin’s little yay-science moment of getting out of his own execution by exploiting his knowledge of an upcoming solar eclipse.

In a way, all this magic and the various acts of god were an extension of the deus ex machinas that were a staple of the series from the start. Tintin in America is probably the worst offender in this regard, with the most ridiculous moment being a toss-up between the time the meatpackers go on strike and turn off the machinery seconds before gangsters throw him into it, and the time he gets chained to a barbell and thrown in a lake, only to discover the barbell’s inexplicably been switched with the wooden barbell of a crooked strongman.

Come the later adventures, though, the deus ex machinas would take a slightly different form to the literal intervention of god:

That’s not out of context, that’s not an idle aside - in Flight 714, the second-to-last complete comic, the gang gets out of a tight spot (an erupting volcano-cum-ancient ruin, no less!) when literal fucking aliens turn up to save the day and cart off the baddies. And, unlike most narratives of that ilk, they get out of it with definitive proof of extraterrestrial contact - Professor Calculus brings back a bit of metal composed of an alloy that does not exist on earth, although this is played off as a product of his cloth-eared eccentricity.

Even with the time difference, you’d probably say there’s surely a bit of a leap between the wholesome-but gritty early exploits of Tintin, where he’s running around after forgers and smugglers, and where he’s literally encountering aliens. Fortunately, there was an adventure that bridged that gap very nicely:

And you may well gather from that adorably kitsch rocket that this went down long before the actual moon landings - but despite this, Herge had done his research, he didn’t have the place turn out to be composed of cheddar like Wallace and Gromit’s A Grand Day Out, he depicted space travel and lunar survival reasonably accurately. A lot of people credit the white expanses of Tintin in Tibet as Herge’s masterpiece, but man, the inky blackness of Explorers is surely its underdog brother:

The final adventure, Tintin and Alph-Art, exists only as concept art and various bootleg versions. It features some genuinely radical departures from the established norm - a black Jamaican artist gets to have a heroic moment of his own, rather than just being acted upon by white people, and Tintin plans a date with an actual human woman. So the series obviously had come a long way from the days of publishing a version of Heart of Darkness where Kurtz is the good guy. And to go back to where we started - it’s not like we had to write off Bugs Bunny because of all the times he blacked up, right?

[tinderellaola]

the last time I was “in love”

I have not been in a relationship in 4 years and that fucks me up. it makes me wonder if there's something wrong with me. if there's something wrong with other people. if they're hard to please. if I'm hard to please. sometimes I want a hookup and even that's hard to get because men don't like easy women. other times I'll make a vow to not hook up and that's when men enjoy the chase. coming out bisexual hasn't increased my chances of having a partner either. women in Toronto, I'm guessing, want a Ruby Rose lookalike or someone to listen to Tegan and Sara with (I love them but not enough to point it out in my profile, I guess), or they want someone who looks like Ellen Page. I've had the luck of matching and talking to beautiful fellow brown girls just like myself, and who I've sincerely always liked and hope is not some disgusting fetish, even though South Asian brown girls are desexualised (oh yes, even the light-skinned ones!). but eventually I just don't like the girls like that anymore. I start to understand the men who reject me after a first date. even though they're very pretty and nice and still have things in common with me, I just don't feel a spark. I could also bring up the fact that one girl backed away from me once she asked me how did I confirm I'm bi and I answered her.

it's not as if I haven't been in love with ANYbody since my toxic one-year relationship a couple years ago (need I point out that *I* was the toxic one with my yelling and ambiguity of what I want that could be mistaken or actually seen as controlling and manipulative. there was also my insecurity which definitely didn't go hand-in-hand with my ex's superiority complex and sensitive soul). there was, well let's call this guy... Tom (not a name I've ever dated before so this is safe).

Tom was a wonderful chaotic mess. he was a Sagittarius if that tells you enough. but even before I knew his star sign, Sagittarius was one of my two guesses. he had to either be a Sag or an Aquarius. Tom and I matched May 2015, 2 days after I had a hookup with one other guy named... I'll say Carpet. not to mention, Carpet was very nice and fun and considerate by trying to get me home on time to my religious family who I had to lie to by saying I was just out with friends.

anyway Tom and I matched 2 days after Carpet and I hooked up. he messagd me "Strokes shirt = good sign" in reference to the Strokes shirt I was wearing in one of my profile pictures. I checked his profile to try and see who I right-swiped on; it was some white boy with curly light brown hair, small blue eyes, and a goti; he had a posed shot of himself, another where he was diving into a lake from some cliff, and another of him drumming on his kit. so I messaged him back and we set a date for tomorrow pretty breifly into the conversation, with both of us trusting ourselves that we'll just click better in person. I gave him my number, he texted his name and that he's from tinder, I tried to prolong a conversation unintentionally, and got no message back until the day of our date.

he texted me and asked if we were still on for today. I said yes. so we met up a couple hours after that text, on our set time, with nothing in particular planned. he recently moved to my city and was living with his aunt and uncle. even though I've been in the city my whole life, I was not very good at giving directions. so we met up in this quaint downtown and I told him to "meet me at that wine bar if you know it." so yeah we met outside the wine bar, with no intention to go there. so he mentioned having a car and offered to buy some beers at the nearest liquor store, go to the lake, and chat. I said okay. so we did just that.

we sat by the lake and talked, and I gave him some of my Camel cigarettes in exchange for the beers. we talked about ourselves just as any date should be; our jobs/education, our siblings, our parents, concerts, weed, acid trips, our friends, dogs, That 70s Show being the retro weirdos we were, and so on. he did bring up some ex girlfriends and I thought nothing of it at the time. I was just enjoying his company, being happy to have gotten this date and not caring about the hookup with Carpet anymore. hell, I didn't even care if I would hook up with Tom or not, despite having a vow to just hook up with people summer 2015.

the date did end with us fucking in his car though, and he dropped me home even though it was out of his way. we talked some more, and he told me that guys don't actually brag about having sex. like, it's mentioned in locker rooms but no specifics are brought up. I was pretty tipsy in his car so I zoned out sometimes and told him I forgot to tell him to make a turn somewhere. but yeah we found the way eventually, we kissed goodnight, and we joked about who should text who.

the day after, he texted me and asked if I wanted to smoke pot with him tomorrow. I had to say no because my parents wanted me to help out with yardwork, which I didn't even have to do anymore! still, Tom and I had a couple more dates. well, only 2 good ones if I'm gonna be honest now, or 3... I'll explain.

the second date, we met outside "that wine bar" again, went to this pipe shop where he bought the pipe, walked to his car where he claimed to just be picking up the weed from, but got us to sit in the car, and be thrilled about having some cocaine in the same stash he had his weed. I nodded my head slowly, trying not to be so alarmed by this, and just thinking he wouldn't have some lines in front of me. but he DID. he got out a CD case, put some lines there, and once I processed this I freaked out, like "omg you're doing this RIGHT now?" he freaked out back, like, pretending to be considerate and reassuring me that coke wears out in an hour. I reminded him that we're cruising soon so he shouldn't drive just yet. he said he wouldn't, so he asked for my OK. I uncomfortably said fine. I tried to let that slide along with the mentions of ex girlfriends. we had a fun rest of the time finally finding a place to smoke, it was by some beach with just some other couple about our ages there and neverminding that young adults smoke pot.

we also walked and took turns going to a bathroom at the back of a grocery store. then we went back to his car, with the weed high going away even for my sensitive body and my lightweight-ness. we got poutine and went back in the car to listen to the Distillers, the music being my choice because he was cool enough to let me do that (believe it or not, men hardly ever let you choose the movie or music and so on so this was pretty big of him to me!).

we called it ane early night. he started working 5am-3pm shifts, which he happily told me about so that we could hang out earlier than the evenings now. still, after the second date I hadn't seen him in over a week. we weren't even texting. last time I did text him was to ask coke for a friend of a friend and he said he couldn't text anything like this to me right now and that he has to deal with some stuff right now. I respected that, kinda sensing that he was in trouble but still a little paranoid I was doing something wrong myself.

I saw him again after I slept over at a friend's house about a half away hour. we (my friends and I) pulled an all-nighter just partying with some of her classmates and dealing with the cops and inspecting the house (thankfully, these white dudes running the party had their weed in a seemingly obvious spot like by their computers but not where the cops checked anyway). anyhow I was exhausted af. my brother (who is just a year younger than I am and is one of my best friends so we were always rebellious together) picked me up from my friend's place. on the way back home, Tom texted me and told me he just got his own place, still in my city, and was inviting me over. being the smitten kitten I was at the time, I said okay and that I'll be about an hour. I wanted to go home and shower off this party smell and tiredness for a cute dude I've only met twice.

so I did all that, and Tom offered to pick me up. I told him that'd be cool, just not outside my house directly in case my mom would come home from work soon. so I met up with him at a plaza just a block down. he eagerly greeted me and we had some small talk. after that fuzzy stuff, I asked him how his week's been and why he stopped texting and suddenly wanted me around again. he sighed before saying that he got arrested for drug possession, and that he's on probation now. I was stunned. but a 20-going-on-21 year old girl who hoped this guy could be my second boyfriend after being single for 2 years. so I stayed in the car with him, let him drive off, waited in the car and listened to Pond as he went grocery shopping in the same store my aunt worked at, and finally we were at his new basement apartment. he also bought me a new lighter after I left mine in his car after the second date, and the cops cleared his car of any drug utensils. I still have this maroon lighter by the way! after 2 years it still works, so it's a good one.

anyway over at his place I helped him put up a Pink Floyd poster and then a Simpsons one in the tiny and cozy place. he warmed up frozen pizza which we cut with scissors (his idea) and we talked as he set up Django Unchained on his laptop because he didn't have a TV. he didn't have Internet either. so we were pretty old school, like early 2000s old school, by just using a DVD and a computer. I think he said his laptop was like 10 years old too even though it was an Apple. anyway in the talk before the movie he told me that he's bi. I told him that I was too. we smiled out of relief from that, and he ended the moment like, "I like dicks, I like vaginas. whatever" to which I laughed at. and even though we had a heavy fight about reverse racism as we talked through Django, I stayed the night. I insisted we get past this differing thoughts and opinion of a concept even though we were both passionate about it, pretend we never had this talk even though he was mad enough to try and kick me out of his place. I blurted out to him that it can't end this way, because I really REALLY liked him. he said, "well I was starting to like you too!" so that was when I said, "then let's just give this a chance. this is ONE thing we're disagreeing on."

the following night, he gave me a piggy-back around his place, like what they show in white romantic movies. we watched some live Woodstock videos. and we had sex before sleeping on and off through the night.

we spent the next day, a Sunday so I got that cliched Sunday morning date, at his place all sleep-deprived. we watched a movie (the whole thing this time), and for some reason looked at pictures of him and his ex girlfriends on his laptop, and then he wanted to pick up perogies from his aunt at her beautiful big house. so we went to her place. on the way there I told him I had to pee, so he suggested I could pee at his aunt's place. the thought of meeting a fuck buddy's aunt was weird to me, especially in my sleep-deprived state. but I went inside with him anyway. as his aunt had to show him something upstairs anyway, I went to the bathroom and then waited out in the hallway of this beautiful big house with his uncle sitting in the kitchen and reading the paper. I thought of saying hi but also didn't want to in this context, like he didn't know who tf I was and Tom wasn't there as proof that I was a friend of his. so I silently waited, and they were back downstairs anyway. Tom had the pack of frozen perogies in his hand, we both said bye to her, and left.

I stayed a bit longer at Tom's place. we watched The Lego Movie, That 70s Show (which was when he called me smart like Donna by the way, and pointed out I said some things he learned about reverse racism not being real), had sex, showered together, and I decided I should get going. it was 6pm when I told him I should go. my mom called earlier and she asked when I was getting back from "another friend's" house (I told her it was a girl friend). so I told her I was just at the mall now and will be getting back home from there now. she said okay.

but at home I just haaaaaad to make a tumblr post about my sleepover at Tom's place and our lovely Sunday together. I had my older sister on tumblr, and she's basically a third parent. I just figured she wasn't using her blog anymore. but... she was lurking her dash still, alright. she confronted me about it, and was upset I did that. I freaked out at her, because I was mad that I got caught and mad that she wouldn't let me learn things on my own. it was ugly.

luckily for me, I forgot my phone charger at his place. so I texted him and asked if it was there. he said yeah and that I could visit him on Wednesday (like 3 days after the sleepover) to pick it up. I said that'd be good. so we met up again and this time he had a friend coming over so I got to meet one of his friends, and he was nice. we got drunk and talked politics again. Tom was such a mansplainer by trying to cut me out of conversation and saying that I wasn't getting the topic right. his friend, on the other hand, said that I was saying relevant things, which got Tom pretty annoyed.

well anyway I accidentally took his Doors shirt home. I wore it as a joke when we were all drunk but forgot to take it off. so yeah I had it for a while. I washed it before going to his place again and gave it back to him. he was so relieved it was just with me the whole time because he thought he lost it and he wanted to wear it to a show with "a new friend" he was going with. he told me it was some girl. but I tried to let that slide off along with the ex-girlfriends and being a coke-head! but then he started ghosting on me. he pretended he missed some texts from me, and would say he couldn't hang out some weekends. he was friends with some new girl on Facebook who didn't seem like she was an old high school friend or anything. I spent weeks wondering if we were gonna talk again. I had a friend ask me if we were official yet because I knew him for over a month and gone through a lot with him at that point. I had to tell her no we weren't; it was the opposite. I excused that maybe he's busy, busy with the court cases and visiting his family an hour away some weekends, and meeting up with old friends who were visiting the city, busy trying to find a new job after losing the one he already had, and so on.

3 weeks later I texted him and asked if he was busy. he said no. so I asked if he wanted to hang out. he said "sure. where?" I said that his place is fine. so I came and we just watched movies again. he treated me like some relative rather than someone he had all these inside jokes with and wanted to kiss sometimes. we had some cigarettes outside his place and he'd *casually* mention the new girl he was hanging out with and that she spent the week at his place, and he told me the same name I saw on his updated friends list on Facebook. I just changed the subject.

every hangout I had with him, except that last one, we'd always kiss goodbye. but in that last one we didn't even hug. I tried to let that slide, along with the ex-girlfriends, him being a coke-head, an entitled white boy, and the insensitive mentions of the new girl.

I couldn't sleep for a week. I was always nauseous. he was on my mind all the damn time. he even came into my dreams in the rare moments I WOULD sleep. so I knew I had to talk to him. this went on for a week. so I texted him and asked if I could come over. he said he doesn't live in that house anymore. so I said "ok then let's meet up somewhere. I wanna talk." he said that he's living with his folks, who live an hour away so he can call me in about 20 minutes. I said fine. then he asked me if everything was okay. I left my phone in my room that time and was downstairs. so I came back to see a follow-up text which was a "Hello?" I told him yeah it is, and that I just don't know why he got distant all of a sudden. yes, pretty accusatory. but I wasn't sure how else to say it in this nervous state. so we didn't call each other. he replied to my text, getting all defensive and vague. I pressed him, which got him to say, "I lost my driver's license, got kicked out of my place, and have a couple court sessions left. my life sucks right now! I can't deal with anything right now. it's nothing personal." I said, "ok that's fine. but what about the past few weeks before all this?" he said, "I dunno I guess I just got busy." I replied, "with the girl who slept over for a week?" he was all, "I guess. and with family and friends." he sent  a follow-up: "are you mad that I'm seeing other people?" I said no, and that I was mad about him getting distant. I think I'm saying all this out of order. but anyway the talk ended with me offering to be there if he ever needs to vent. he didn't reply.

he kept me on Facebook. but then I saw him tag the other girl in a status of some music video, and it hurt like the flames of Hell!!!!!!!!!! so I removed him and his number and got drunk a lot and cry. I remember this one night I came home after a night out at a pub at my brother. I was making myself a burger at 2am and dropped the spatula and broke down. my sister (not the one who caught my tumblr post. I have 2 sisters) was just coming in that time, and she knew what was going on so she hugged me and told me that this is how you learn stuff, and that he was a dick anyway. oh man I feel pathetic even writing this again.

but anyhow I had my 6 months of being sad over a summer fling. they say that it's supposed to take you only half the time you were with someone to be over them. but for me it was double that, including the ghosting since I *thought* we were still "together." I'd actually drunkenly call him (I kept his number in my diary, no joke), and he'd neverrrrr pick up. I knew he still had the number, hence his outgoing voicecall stating his first and last name. I'm not sure if I even really got over him. well I knew I was missing him and that he was not right for me. but at this point I know I don't want him as a boyfriend. I miss him, even if it was just a messy friendship.

so in this almost-2 years I haven't talked to him, I had to delete my tinder a couple times because I ran out of matches or would want a fresh start or would try and quit tinder for a bit. of course, just the other day on a new tinder account, he was one of my choices. it took me a bit to digest this. but I swiped right to see if he would too.

it's been about a week, and no notification from him has come up. I like to think he's just a Sagittarius who likes to pretend he doesn't care about people he's been initimate with. but I've seen him vulnerable. I've seen him show me his ex girlfriends. I've heard him tell me he doesn't like reading books with someone else because it reminds him of "a friend" he had to drift apart from. he's told me he once had "a bitchy ex girlfriend" who he might have a guilty conscience for. hell, he might have remembered me as "this girl obsessed with the Strokes who cried over them at my place once and drunkenly danced to them." "this girl with strong-ass opinions, like insiting that reverse racism isn't real, although I just don't wanna admit that she's smart and strong for standing up to me."

I had a dream of him last night. we were together, not officially, but it felt MORE together than my time with him. we'd hang out with each other AROUND my family. we cuddled on some beach chairs in front of them. well he was actually young Keanu Reeves at first and then just transformed to him, you know how dreams are. but, even though I wasn't clear about this, I think he had some similarities to young Keanu with his occasional quietness. anwyays we cuddled at the movies at a family outing too. it just really nice.

I tried to tell myself that I just miss getting physical affection in general. but I guess I also miss being his friend. he was someone I had good conversations with even though I know now he was a fake-intellectual. he appreciated me even though it wasn't for a long time. I remember crying after the next guy I hooked up with because the sex wasn't as real as it was with Tom. to this day, I still miss "Tom" even though he was a jerk. I know I would never ever actually be his girlfriend or his wife. but he was memorable.

so remembering him, I don't hold resentment over first dates who realise they don't feel a spark with me after all. remembering him, I realise these first dates didn't give me the same spark as he did anyway, although I could also say that he made me have high standards out of protection of myself. I guess I've just learned so much from him, and miss the feeling I'd get from him even though it got me hurt in the end.