Here there be monsters (socratic) wrote,
Here there be monsters

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I'm just staring at the ceiling staring back at me.

I could write an entire entry on how wonderful it is to have someone else laugh with you. I frequently find myself laughing alone, sitting in a room of however many people and being the only one who finds something funny. Maybe it's something that only I noticed, maybe it's something that only my perverse mind can find funny, maybe a combination of the above. It's lonely to laugh alone in a crowd of people. That is, I think, the one thing that really drew me to her. She is also unafraid to laugh alone. That's what I think it often is, fear. Fear of that loneliness that comes with being the only one who finds something funny, the one who disrupts the seriousness of the proceedings with the power that even a discrete snicker has. Nothing ruins gravitas like laughter. I'm not afraid to laugh. I hate gravitas.

She is an incredible laugher. It doesn't hurt that she has one of those beautiful feminine laughs that harmonize with anything, a pleasant background noise complimenting whatever a speaker is saying instead of a harsh burst of sound competing with it. It's not just the laugh though, it's how frequently it appears. It's the sonic equivalent of a migrating flock of Monarch butterflies. You'll be sitting there focusing elsewhere and these beautiful things will just drift by you. Sometimes in large clumps, sometimes one or two together, sometimes packed together like commuters in a standing-room-only subway train and sometimes seperated out like a few solitary snowflake drifting from an azure sky. When you manage to do or say something to call it forth yourself, it's like catching one of the Monarchs in your hand, sure it may be as common as a blade of grass but when held and examined on its own merits it is still beautiful beyond comprehension. You hold it for a second and then release it back to its friends, out to play in the winds of the wide world and drift away beyond the horizon.

She and I laugh at different things, or at least at different times. I tend to be a pre-emptive laugher, I elaborate everything I watch so I often get jokes before the punchline and laugh as soon as I can figure out an explanation as to why something might be funny. I don't know her internal process, of course, but I imagine her to be more of a reactive laugher, someone who waits for the jokes to come to her before reacting. To use an utterly inappropriate simile I'm a brawler and she's a counterpuncher. Neither style is better per se, but the latter is a hell of a lot more graceful. Anyway there were points during the semester when I would snort (I have a snorting laugh, it's not something I'm proud of) then a beat would elapse and she would laugh. Then there were times where she laughed and I was unamused, or visa versa. That was okay though, at least it wasn't one of those situations where you're the ONLY one laughing all the time. The moments of synchopation were the best though, someone else to laugh with. You could have taped those sessions, put them on CD as "The Princess and the Pig. Laughing again." I think I will miss that at least a little.

See the thing is, that's what I long for the most these days. Someone to laugh with. Not just laugh with but, talk to. Beautiful girls don't need to worry about finding someone who understands their sense of humor, at the very least they can find someone willing to fake it for a chance to touch their breasts. Us double chinned deepset eyed oily haired geeks? It's a different story.

It's not that I don't have a sex drive, or understand the desire for faceless sex with many partners. Heck my masturbatory fantasies are full of all sorts of perverse delights, like vagina buffets and beds made up entirely of writhing naked women with breasts for pillows and, well, best we don't talk about how the night lights are mounted. I wouldn't want that in the real world though, and couldn't imagine it being anything other than degrading for all parties involved. Okay degrading and SUPER HOT. Anyway, the thing about the real world is that in it women are real live people and not just collections of dripping wet soft body parts to be pried and rubbed against until ejaculation. Some men find this rather inconvenient. I prefer to think of it as a good thing. See while I like carnal pleasures as much as the next guy (so long as the next guy isn't Hugh Hefner or Ron Jeremy) where I really get my jollies is in the realm of the cerebral.

I love thought and argument. It's an endless stream of entertainment. I go through my life thinking about all sorts of topics trying to put perverse spins on them. The things I regret most are not failing to go out to a bar, get hammered, and make a clumsy pass at a football player's girlfriend. They are being too busy to get into a philosophical argument with the student who wore the "Kantians do it out of duty" sign or not picking a particularly interesting topic for one of my papers. I try to reduce the what-ifs in this aspect of my life, saying most of the things that I want to and living my life, at times, like a stand-up comedian trying out new material. What would happen if I sent around an attendance sheet that declared itself to be 'now with MORE ricin' and had a slot for nicknames? The answer is "a fair amount of disruptive snickering." What would happen if I tried to apply a name to every point of a Badminton game? Some classics (5-5 is Stalin's favorite score, you have to say 7-all not 7-up for copyright reasons, 10-14 is the age range of a Michael Jackson personal ad) some amusing oddities (4-6 is Corey Haim's favorite score while the official theme song of 5-6 is "I wear my sunglasses at night") and some flubs/scores that I couldn't think of anything clever for.

I think that this tendancy might be partially responsible for my social ostracism. I am not only ALWAYS talking but usually trying to be funny and saying obscure/oddball things. I used to constantly be told that I wasn't funny and that my jokes were corny. That has died down recently. I don't know if it's because I've gotten funnier, honed my timing, or that my colleagues are just more mature or polite. It doesn't really matter. How can I regret responding to the professor's saying "Watch this part of Nanook, in case you're ever stuck in Riverside park and need to make an iglo" with "As long as you have a machette on you" when he responds "actually I think that's an ice saw made of bone." While I understand that he was just correcting me, it brought to mind a world where just about everyone went to the park carrying ice saws made out of bone and anyone who didn't was just an idiot plain and simple. It would lead to exchanges like this:

Rick: Joe, did you forget your ice saw made out of a walrus' jawbone again?
Joe: Come on guys, it's August.
Rick: I'm getting sick of your excuses. What if we have to evacuate to Alaska. Do you even THINK?

Why would I want to miss that?

Maybe I'm a 6th grader, lacking in self control and social skills. Heck that would describe me in many of my aspects of development. Lives with mom, afraid of pretty girls, NOT a snappy dresser? If maturity were apples I would not be the proud owner of an orchard, instead I'd have a few small cans of gerbers and maybe a juice box.

Walking along riffing on the ramps of Lerner hall, that's my idea of a good time. Cracking jokes about hypothetical guys in wheelchairs ("How is he supposed to avoid the bowling ball? He's in a wheelchair. He'd need cat-like reflexes, and if he had those he wouldn't BE in the wheelchair to begin with, would he? I mean he's the guy who, after someone yelled 'LOOK OUT,' still got hit by the falling brick.) is my idea of a good time. Moreso than getting drunk or hanging out at a party having my eardrums beaten in by lewd references to milkshakes and striking out with striking women in dresses cut so low that they have toe cleavage.

I would like someone to share it with though, someone who's down for more than 10 minutes of discussion in between class, who wants to hear my off-kilter thoughts and can handle the fact that sometimes I get so offensive I want to slap myself (and do, from time to time.) If that person happens to be a beautiful chick who also totally loves obscene acts involving 5 pounds of jelly and no less than three different species of hummingbird, so much the better. Heck if she wants to include ME in those acts then let me just say cha and ching. (That's cash register onomatopoeia, not a badly mangled racial epithet.) That's not necessary though. I'd settle for a decently kempt homeless man so long as he could take no for an answer.

Will I ever find such a person? Survey says no. That's okay. I'll make do with captive audiences and stolen moments. Alongside memories of girls who laugh seemingly from nowhere with neither fear nor embarassement they should be enough to tide me over.

Please note that this entry does not count as obsessive mooning over LHG because the narcissistic content is enough to file it under navel-gazing. I want to state that for the record.

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