Don’t you want to live forever?

I’ve been trying to remember myself by listening to some of the music we listened to as teenagers. There was some really amazing music then. Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Hole, Bram Stoker’s Dracula Soundtrack, various others. And there was also an explosion of art being made about Vampires.

I don’t know if everyone got into it, but I know various people in town here went way into the Vampire thing. I used to go to a club where you could always see vampires walking around and doing . . . stuff. That was a wicked club. They ended up closing because it didn’t make enough money on the liquor license because people were doing . . . other things.

It’s probably one of my most closely guarded secrets, that I totally immersed myself in a vampire community. I read the entire Vampire Chronicles, watched Dracula over and over, went to sleep listening to the soundtrack, latched on to all the music from Vampire points of view. It probably sounds really dark, but it was liberating. Because it was about people who really did live forever. And that was an amazing concept to play with, because it made things much more serious. Plus they were sexy and smart and fought and loved and were of all orientations and genders, which was maybe the most exciting part about it. Finally a movement about even same sex lovers who live forever. And this idea of remaining static in chronological age, even while centuries passed. Plus I think everyone who was drawn to it felt rejected by society in some way, even though maybe we had figured out how to play it really well. It incorporated almost every religion too, it was just this huge thing.

I don’t know where all the vampires went, they kind of all scattered. I don’t know when that started. I do know I found someone in high school and we ended up torturing each other because we couldn’t handle not being able to read each other’s minds. Plus I think it was just scary, it was the early nineties and I was in love with a girl in a rinky dink high school filled with vampires for some unknown reason. I remember the english teacher used to make her read the part of Lady Macbeth over and over and I was always like, “Yay, she’s Lady Macbeth again!” I think she got annoyed though. Because Lady Macbeth ends up with OCD, that’s so sad.

Anyway, yeah, I had a pretty gothic adolescence because the sunny happy side were all these fucked up judgemental gits who didn’t even know what the music was about. I mean you have to realize that there was that shallow side too, which is mostly what we had to deal with. So instead of pretending to be shallow we all got really dark and considered the possibility of immortal love.

And Kurt got shot. I didn’t think it would affect me as much as it did. But I knew it was kind of a turning point, we weren’t going to be allowed to think so deeply on the nature of existence. Since then everything skidded to Paris Hilton instead of Anne Rice. And then the things we loved about life back then went back to being evil and godless, and marriage was reserved for people who didn’t care if it only lasted 16 hours. And suddenly kids were “emo” which from what I can gather is the unusual occurance of someone actually having emotions. Why do people hate emo kids anyway? They’re probably gifted, most of them, if they’re attracted to emotional music and so on. Oh right, geniuses are crazy people now.

What happened? The geniuses became the crazy people, everything slowed down so much until it was only vacuous passion. And then our relationships stopped being allowed to be about love at all.

I’ve never not been in love during this lifetime, or many others. I’ve been in a really long argument, but I never knew what it felt like to not deeply love someone in particular. I find it funny that most people only consider marriage for limited time periods. I’m not against divorce, I just honestly don’t think I ever would divorce someone I loved that much. Even if she was driving me crazy. I think my history is way too deep and complex to ever be able to walk away from it. I tried and it made me a bitter person. I don’t think anyone has ever known how crazy in love I have been forever basically. Because people judge it. And I’m tired of people judging us. I would leave forever to stop being judged for love.

And I’ve been thinking seriously about marriage, because it is finally legal for me to get married. And I realized that to ever get to that point I had to work through something intensely huge.

I didn’t even bother trying to find her again until I started realizing I was dying. I didn’t know what to do, everyone kept telling me to keep taking those pills, and I just started getting sicker and sicker. But nobody noticed. And then I had a dream about her and I kissing, and I knew I had to find her. She was the first person I ever kissed actually. I mean, I was a serious little dudelette around love, I didn’t want it to be with just anyone. I don’t think I really knew what to do after we met again, because I was so sick, physically, and I could barely think, and I was all messed up. I didn’t know how to even start talking about us, because I didn’t even know how to talk about me anymore. Plus I didn’t want to seem flippant about her again, I really didn’t want to seem like a player. And also all of my feelings were too damn complex to just put in a hallmark card. I think in high school we furtively passed each other poems or music because it was all too bizarre otherwise. And she was really sweet when she laughed, because it was hard to make her laugh, you had to be ridiculously clever for it to work or else she was just laughing at you, which could be cute sometimes too. I knew she was ridiculously smart but she was so quiet sometimes, it was intense. And I would just turn and feel her staring at me and I had no idea who she was. And that really drove me crazy, because I couldn’t ever know for sure what she was thinking about.

I think the reason it went wrong is because I wanted a forever and we hadn’t gotten to that point yet, and besides, NOBODY around us thought about what eternity means. And especially not when it’s two girls. I think I seriously thought I was just an experiment, and that didn’t make any sense because she didn’t seem flighty enough for an experimental kind of la di da girl. Anyway, yes, it was a sad falling out between people who didn’t know how to start talking to each other. From grade nine through to grade twelve I couldn’t keep my eyes off her. And then she left me for Jesus.

No, not really, but it’s a funny twist. She ran off to marry some guy and I was left being all sweary about Jesus. And then I have no idea what happened to her until way later when I realized we were still kind of messed up teenagers in a way with no way of processing what happened.

She hates processing though, which is kind of good because honestly I can get trapped in processing forever.

It’s funny, so many terrible things went down between us but that’s not what terrifies me, what terrifies me is the idea I might never love someone as much again. Some people can walk away from that kind of thing, but I don’t think I can. And I don’t think I can ever let go of the concept of eternity either. It’s far too delicious. There are so many things I want to do that I can never fit into a single lifetime.

I don’t think that kind of concept of love really exists anymore, the idea of forever. People have settled for having five long term relationships in their whole life. I don’t want just a few years with someone, I can’t do less than forever.

I can’t believe in the End, because to me some things are just beginning.