"I want to feel what love is. I want you to show me." - Foreigner

"Fuck Most Haunted. Fuck Supernatural. Fuck Blair Witch Project. Okay? I've been into this before all that shit was even made!"

That's what I say to all the haters. The doubters. My friends who think I'm full of shit. I've endured all the jokes about the Stay Puft Marshmellow man and all that stuff. It's okay. I believe even if they think I'm full of crap.

"Isn't it dangerous," they ask.

Definitely. Running around the dark in old rundown buildings. Rabies. Infections. Running into a dirty ass wall.

"Aren't there better ways to get your jollies?" they probably think to themselves. Judging me. They patronize me by listening to the stories then turn away snickering about how a 27 year old's still knee deep in childish mystery adventures like Encylopedia Brown starring in a 90s slasher flick. But it's not about jollies. Not about jolts.

This is about proof. Evidence that humanity transcends anatomy. That the rudimentary emotions, that we sometimes feel kill us actually, allow us to exist beyond physical life. I'm looking for the metaphysical pathways where our souls roam in eternity.

See.

Right there.

Your eyes rolled. This is where I lose people.

Paranormal investigating? It piques interest. Capturing activity? Naysayers check out the door. But to consider this some spiritual bath? Now here is where most people just consider me nuts. It's apparently divine to talk to a holy spirit and reincarnation if you're praying with beads, but if you mix the same ideas with a digital voice recorder or an EMF* detector then you're foolish loser.

"When do you think you'll stop?" most folks ask if they get past the judgment.

When I find her.

"Who?"

The Sentient. The female spirit who, when encountered, bridges you from our physical scientific plane to an alternate atmosphere where the emotions of the dead remain thriving.

They say that she chooses who she encounters. She's a conscious spirit that finds her haunts. Very, very selectively.

"So, she's just as picky as any other female?" the guys usually snicker.

What can I say? I snicker too.

"How do you know she'll choose you?"

A sign. I was backpacking once. I was about half a day behind my friends so I was trying to catch up. In the middle of the night I ran out of my camp to take a leak, and when I came back I saw a mist. It was a glowing mist and it wasn't static. As I got closer it slowly moved deeper into the trees. I followed it before it floated away over a ridge.

It was her.

Don't shake your head. Believe me.

"Why didn't she stay around to bring you to the emotional plane?"

Why? She's playing hard to get? Making me earn it? Afraid of commitment? Maybe she didn't like my hair when it was messed up like that in the middle of the night.

The smirk tells me you're asking if I really believe that.

I do.

And I'm going to keep chasing her until I can't anymore.

"Like, until your dead?"

Something like that.

The window for her to find me closes when I'm 30.

Now, you're laughing and you think this was all a joke. Like it was some allegory about the fear of not finding love before the magical age of 30.

That's fine. Laugh all you want.

She'll find me sooner than later once she realizes I'm here.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 11:18 PM

 0 hands raised

One reason Rob missed Laura (in High Fidelity): "3. smell/taste - self explanatory, human chemistry and senses - it feels like home."

Earlier today, I met up with Reyna at the Debbie Gibson cafe downtown. We call it that because, for some strange iPod luck, we tend to run into a Debbie Gibson song there. Maybe I shouldn't refer to it as luck. Whatever.

We both had work to do and instead of leaving it at the office, we decided to waste away our rapidly deteriorating social lives and took it home with us. In this case, we brought it to Debbie.

Since college we'd tried this: public tables, public seating, public noise, public safe zone for work? Yeah right. Instead, we ended up gabbing about a bunch of silly stuff from reminiscing to times long left behind to those steps into the future that everyone but us seemed to be striding towards.

Don't get it wrong. It wasn't some mundane, woe-be-us regret-fest. We were celebrating - I mean, at least as much as you can with a laptop's bulb shining on your forehead instead of natural sun and the threat of some silly nostalgiaphile unleashing some awesomely bad pop starlet into our otherwise perfect pool of limbo.

"What's that one line about changing and staying the same?" I asked Reyna.

"When you don't change, you stay the same?" she replied with a smirk.

"Oh. The more things change - the more things stay the same. Heard that before?" I asked her.

"It sounds familiar. Why? Feel like changing something?"

"Things don't change. Same shit. New day." My energy somehow exited stage left without any pomp. Circumstance it did have though. And the reason why Reyna's been one of my best friends ever was her response:

"Who is the girl and what you do this time?"

"Snickers." Yes, snickers. I can see your face scrunch in agonizing nothingness the way Reyna's did.

"What, she liked Snickers? So, you broke up with her like that?" Reyna knew. Me. She knew me. But she was wrong, partially. At least this time.

Holly liked Snickers. Reyna was right about that part. But this time, it didn't matter. I'd like to say that this was the first time that the sum - the person in all - overcame those parts that have all too frequently chased me away from otherwise beautiful women. But it wasn't. This happened before. There was Church girl in high school. There was Sorority girl in college. They were the ones who screamed "totally wrong for me" but for some odd reason I couldn't turn away.

So Holly liked Snickers and I hate them. She loved dark chocolate and white wine. She watched CSI but criticized Law and Order. She swore by her Matchbox 20 mp3 collection. I mean, she's a super cute chick but any one of those "situations" would usually kick-start my "be-the-weirded-out-guy" senses let alone all three (plus more!)

"So what was it with her?" Reyna asked.

"Can I say 'it just felt right' without you alluding to her boobs or something?"

"No." She was serious.

"Well, she had great boobs. But they weren't the story." I was serious, too.

It wasn't anything at the beginning. I thought she was hot. We had some common interests: mainly tobasco and red bell peppers (not necessarily together). So, I was drawn to her on the obvious superficial levels. As the days and weeks went on though, we found ourselves in some more serious conversations between banter and bitching about gas prices and dog owners that don't clean up after their pooches.

She threw a lot of baggage out there. I felt like I was playing Asteroid and she was trying to destroy my ship. You know, like she was trying to test me how genuine my affection was. So, I don't know if it was my competitive spirit, but all of those things just pulled me further in. Even though my head was convinced that I didn't want to deal with that drama, the rest of my body couldn't resist. Truth: when I thought of her, when we were near each other, I felt a tinge on the inside of torso.

"No lies," I could see Reyna starting to lose belief. She rarely ever saw me like that.

"You sure it wasn't just your.. uh.. urges getting the best of you?" she asked.

No lies. Those, i don't know what to call them... chills, caught me off guard myself. There was just a honesty in her touch - her gaze that smacked me silly.

But somewhere along the line, she gradually kept stepping away. Slightly each time until she finally just said it wouldn't work even though I think she didn't give it a chance. I mean, how do you ignore chemistry like that?

I just thought that this time was finally it. I thought she was the symbol that I had overcome whatever emotional baggage was driving my quirky dismissals of perfectly wonderful people.

"I'm tired of being a recall," I told Reyna in a much more serious tone.

"Recall?"

"You know. Defective merchandise. It gets recalled. Usually, it's exchanged for one with the bugs fixed. Not me. There's no patch for me."

"Let me ask you a question. Don't take it the wrong way."

I nod.

"Have you given a thought to the possibility that all this melancholy is less about the chemistry you have with her and more to do with her representing yet another failed relationship?"

"Does it ever get easier? If it's not her, then it's me."

I don't think I'm ready to accept that.

"I'm overcome just thinking about it," I said to Reyna. "Get it?" She looked clueless so I cleared it up for her. "Van Morrison? Brown Eyed Girl?"

"Oh. OOHHHH." She got it. And seemingly more.

"Huh?" I didn't get the more

"The EYES. The fricking eyes. It's always the eyes for you."

"I can't deny that. I get lost in them."

Reyna paused for a second. Then she rolled her eyes.

"You get LOST IN HER EYES?!" She just looked at me with a mischievous grin like I wasn't getting something. What was the punchline?

"Dude!" she continued, "'LOST IN YOUR EYES'! The Debbie Gibson song?"

"I think I feel sick."

I exhaled. It's rarely a good day when your emotions are riding shotgun on a Debbie Gibson karaoke-eternalized pop ballad.

God damn you, Debbie Gibson cafe.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 10:48 PM

 0 hands raised

There's nothing like it. You look down at stacks of checks in front of you, you push them forward and say those three words - I'm all in. The gut tells you this is the one - the hand of a lifetime. Next thing you know, you're looking at an inside straight draw with salvation coming on the river. Somewhere along the way, you got careless, forgot about the odds, and now only got one out.

She was that once-in-a-lifetime hand. The one pot that would make you walk away from the game if you took it down. But she was a hand I had no business playing. You know, on those poker shows, they show you the percentages of each player. I always felt sorry for the guy whose percentage lowers with each card, oblivious to the eight percent he's riding. Yet he still calls bets, even raises for God's sake. Somehow he thinks - no, believes he do the improbable.

Then the river card. I don't remember much of what happened after. I saw flashes, then heard cheers. I heard the word congratulations and shook some hands. Then I walked away, into the darkness.

I've thought about that hand since - not obsessively, I don't think. My friends would ask if I'd ever go all in again on gut feeling. You know, she used to say love was a calculated risk, not reckless like poker...well, bad poker anyway. You say I'm all in, but how different is it from saying those other three words? I think I would.

posted by: proper villain

Bell's ringing @ 11:49 PM

 0 hands raised

Of the many things she said that enchanted me the one statement that always made me gag was when she compared her addiction to her ex-boyfriend to that of someone dealing with a health deteriorating drug-related disease. I thought, "shit, are you so lost in your self-victimization you didn't realize that what just said wasn't only ridiculous but incredibly insensitive?"

I AWOKE from a cough. As they say, a lung came up.

It was freezing in her room even though a beautiful Spring day was approaching our world in about 20 minutes. It wasn't any warmer in the sheets. A chilling draft ran down the contour of my spine to remind me where I was. A long 4 hours ago the same bed was as muggy and dangerous as Jurassic Park.

I coughed again. The whole night prior was swimming in my mouth: from the first Patron shot to the fifth last cigarette of the night. Oh, and she still was sweetening my lips too.

What was it about her? What was it that made me arrive at this same place even after every time I told myself the last was already one too late? Before the obligatory regret began to rattle my brain (or it could've been the dehydration - by now, it's happened so much that I can't tell the difference) she moved. Suddenly my back had regained warmth. And I broke.

"I can't fucking do this anymore," I muttered to myself but loud enough for her to take notice.

Unfazed, she turned around and pulled her arm around my bare shoulder. I sat up.

"I'm gonna smoke."

"What's wrong?" she asked - like she didn't know.

"How many times are we going to wake up to this before we realize we shouldn't fall asleep to it?" I said. The frustration had settled into my mood.

She stayed silent.

"I need a cigarette."

A year ago, all of this silly sex shit was fine. Shots, sweat, sex, sleep. Rinse and repeat. But things have changed. She talks about family and happiness, but leaves my name out of the equation. The dudes that made it into the punchline of those designs of the future, have come and gone. Literally. Each time, she knew where to cover her losses. We were all the safety nets - the defacto morning after "what the fucks" to cover up the "tracks" from her so-called addiction. Yep. We are all rebounds. I'm just the championed sucker.

I coughed again as I stepped onto the sidewalk under the window of her bedroom. It really was a beautiful day outside. I never understood what was wrong with the air in that room.

I coughed a few more times. Fucking cigarettes. I took a final drag and flicked the butt into a tin can filled about a quarter way up with stale rain water from the storm three weeks ago. "Someone's gotta clean that up sometime," I thought to myself, "but it ain't gonna be me."

I stretched under the increasingly blue sky, inhaled the freshness of a new day, and unleashed a string of coughing so strong my eyes were burning as badly as my chest.

"I really have to quit this shit," I grumbled to myself. Then I walked back upstairs to the cold room and crawled into bed to find warmth.

posted by: breakfast boy

Bell's ringing @ 9:38 PM

 0 hands raised

I earned this one. I'm not going to pluck it out to a) further thin my hair, or b)kid myself that there aren't a dozen more. Besides. I earned them. This one here, behind my left ear. That's "David". I didn't know what ipso facto meant when it counted most during student teaching, ipso facto, I'd never forget its meaning. This one on top, at my crown? The wiry short one that sticks up when all my other hair is neat in place on a rare day? That is "Rosa". She got good grades, passed the exit exam, and after we practiced day in and day out until she could write a flawless essay about the proudest day in her life, graduating from middle school in Mexico, she was denied the chance to cross the stage at graduation because she couldn't write a perfect essay in 70 minutes. "Rosa" who struggled through school all day, didn't have her papers, and worked all night cleaning offices at 17. "Mo" moves around a lot. I used to pluck him out, but the next day I'd see him. Class clown. Clowned so much that the one day he was serious, and he responded to the prompt, "If you could walk a day in my shoes..." everyone laughed. And he responded, "Why are you laughing?" And put his head down. This one is the one that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got expelled. I didn't help him. And while sometimes I think if I watched the Breakfast Club, I could see Principal Vernon's point of view for once, I carry these gray hairs and refuse to dye them as I kiss my twenties good bye. They are little ghosts of lives I carry among those lives for which I was/am entrusted for 54 minutes, 5 days a week for 180 days. I wouldn't want them gone for anything.

posted by: Ms.Kirwin

Bell's ringing @ 9:46 PM

 0 hands raised

Middle School was crazy for all of us. We were kids. We wanted to be adults, but still be kids at the same time. For most of us, it was the craziest time of our lives. When I got through high school I thought it would be done. How the hell am I back there in my 20s?

Welcome to the 19th Grade. It's back to the Middle School for us adults.

Bell's ringing @ 1:45 PM

 0 hands raised