update on the apple green headphones, 1304 starbucks, chris

los angeles, lost sunshine —

andy here — to lose, i refuse —

the update on the apple green headphones is that since i tripped on the cord and destabilized the plug i ordered replacement ones from amazon, and also an identical model but in a kind of pale pink, which will not be such a match to my skin as the apple green pair, but which will be good nonetheless. in a happy bout of return, the pink pair arrived yesterday in an overstock.com package — i thought perhaps chris had sent me this; with message: you, michael, are extra and surplus, to be burned — but, that didn't happen, what happened is that the pink headphones arrived, they are usable, they are quite awesome, though the color is not as fab as the apple green (on order at amazon) which perfectly match the bizarre green sunglasses that i have but cannot really wear except with the designer apple green headphones, to match. i still have the broken apple green headphones, and when i was over at berklee this morning i went to the sprint cum radio shack store and they sold me the plug apparatus which i was told was replaceable with (such) and that i would need to youtube a how-to video to do it. fine, i bought the replacement, shiny gold, at $5, but i will find an electronics store to do the needlework as i will no doubt fuck it up. but — in the end — i will have a pink pair, and 2 apple green pair — replacement apple green to arrive not until mid-feb — and i will give one of the three to chris, if he wants one — i assume the second apple green pair — and then on some days we will match headphones if not anything else.

i don't think patrick was at the store this morning, and thus i don't think he will receive the package from the manager, but i don't know. i now realize that i don't care all that much, that operation 141 was a kind of distraction, and i almost feel as if i simply wasted a copy of the book. he won't read the site, he won't read the book (but he will get it, it will be given to him by the manager), but hopefully he will be harassed a bit or made fun of a bit by some of my students; they would be at the ready to do just that.

i did get quite a bit of photocopying — scan to pdf — done yesterday and today at berklee, though i will have to go back in tomorrow and all weekend to finish it up, classes for me start monday night; there are also bits of the website and fact sheet that will have to be amended, slightly, in anticipation of its host of student interest. they marked up my book from $39.99 retail to $52 — which is obscene, though peter says it is the usual mark-up — but this would be fine, to keep afloat an independent college bookstore, except it's not independent, like everywhere else, it is corporate, barnes and nobles, which is so unnecessary, as berklee has plenty of money to subsidize a bookstore that probably would lose money otherwise if it were not (is) corporatized. anyway, i took a couple of shots of the book on the shelf downstairs, i'll post them in a bit, after i scope out the new donut shop down the street, which may, like me, open early and close early, which would be perfect for me and my laptop.

the weird delusion about the eharmony invite from chris passed after about 4 hrs; i didn't get very far into the site, anyway, and i didn't make any payments or fork over my credit card, it was actually sort of fun to fill out bits of it, and post my pic, though this was all done under the delusion that i was playing for him which, after a few hours, i realized i was not, which is fine. if he were a computer maven — and were interested in me — he would be able to pull of such a caper, though perhaps it would take too much effort and time, be unnecessary and excessive, which it was, at least in the fantasy.

after a week, i'll have to admit to myself that this charade is over, which is fine. i am not sure what went wrong; i feel certain that he was interested in me — why, we could not know — and that he swiped the book, looked at parts of it, at least — and was still interested enough to take my sticker and spend some time with the site. but there must have been something about the site that bothered him, something must have emerged from the site that put him off, and he decided that he wanted nothing more to do with me, evidently. in some ways, this is very sad for me. unlike losing someone you know, i have lost a fantasy, or a future, or a projection, which of course is the most precious, he is at the most valuable to me now, in fantasy and projection toward the future; if we had gotten together, he would have crashed to earth and been no less beautiful for it, but he would have been real rather than ideal, and this ideal that i lost — an inhuman preciousness — is profound. i will probably mourn for months — maybe just weeks — but it will discolor at least the start of the spring semester.

it is frustrating not to know what precisely was the deal-breaker, but i suppose it was something that was disclosed on the website; if he had read the acknowledgements to my book — which i suppose maybe he wouldn't — he would see that i identified myself as bipolar, so he would have known that at the time that he grabbed the sticker and went for the site. but i imagine that the severity of my illness put him off, that he would recognize that such mental illness would be too much to take on, that he wouldn't be able to cope with that, it wouldn't ultimately be worth it, etc. i do understand this perspective — even if it is very prejudicial in its way — but i also think that chris would have miscalculated at this point. i would insist — or promise — that i am worth it. if this is the cause of his recoil, i am surprised, because what i thought i detected — or imagined or fantasized — in him was a different orientation, to everything; i misread there, i guess.

the other possibility is that he liked what he read of the book — and what he saw in me — but he was upset, or bothered, or put off by the aesthetic and sensibility of the website. perhaps he didn't like the absurdist/crass sexuality, or the design, or some of the writings in the fact sheet, perhaps about him, i don't know, i'd have to go back and look at earlier entries, which i won't do, i suppose i don't self-censorship ever, so i may have written something about mental illness or about sex or about him that he just really didn't like. if this is the case, there is truly nothing i can do about that. the website — like the book — fully presents my subjectivity, i would say completely and in total, and though i am talented in a few ways, i am not talented enough to change my sensibility, i don't think anyone can do that, as an intentional and agentic project. that he was put off by something on the website, written or textual, is an index only that i misread him, and of course i would, as i know nothing about him.

i think another real possibility is that the patrick dimension of the website was a bother to him, for several reasons: one would be that he might think that i am still enamored to or obsessed with this guy and so he would only be transitional; i can see this interpretation, it makes some sense to me, and i wish i had in some way indicated on the fact sheet or the website that i was over patrick, that i really am exclusively interested in him, but i guess i didn't do that, this was my mistake, though i can't see how chris would not be able to feel the love, it's obvious over the website that i am completely in love with, for reason we don't know; two would be that i exposed some vile vengeance and retribution, which really does not speak positively of me, and he turned away from me because of operation 141; this is possible, though it would be surprising, and i would think that as as a gay guy he would intuitively or experientially understand the situation — empathize with it — and even bond with me over it; a third possibility for a turn off re the patrick storyline is that he perhaps identified a repetition with the barista — from patrick to chris — and that perhaps he concluded that i had fallen for an ideal type — or a situation, or a function — rather than a person. this is probably true, but in my defense i would say — 'that's me' — and so he would have to just sort of accept, and perhaps even celebrate — the way that my desire works. but if he read my book, he would certainly have known that before going to the website, before being introduced to the patrick storyline, this interpretation would be surprising.

i also think that perhaps he thought that my various sexual dysfunctions — some of which are real, some of which are just for fictional play on the fact sheet — would interfere in a possible relationship, and so he exited because he wants some hardcore sex that it would appear that i can't deliver. but if he thinks that the cialas and erection talk was entirely real, he missed the playful edge of that discourse, and that in itself would be almost shocking.

perhaps chris felt that i had structured our future relationship too earnestly around a daddy/son or olderbrother/brother relationship, and he isn't interested in that. the rejoinder here is that if he read my book, he would see that part of my masochistic fantasy involves that, so he he would have to have been at least interested in that style of interaction before visiting the website. and of course the daddy/son bond is not really what i'm looking for at all — i wouldn't really know what i was looking for until i found it in chris.

finally, perhaps he felt that i loved him too hard, too intensely from a distance. i can only plead guilty to that, as i do feel that i am in love with him, and hard. i would feel not only guilt but shame for this, except i have come around to thinking that 'love at first sight' — he would have gotten that reference on the site — is a kind of talent, it takes some ability, capacity, skill, to fall in love at first sight, and hard. i did not formerly have that talent, i don't think, but i have developed it, and i have fallen in love at first sight (basically) twice now, perhaps harder with patrick, but also possibly more intensely with chris, it's difficult for me to gauge. it is a talent, it is a skill, and it is of course related to my excessive affective life, outpouring of feeling, that chris would have to ultimately appreciate, if we were to make a go of it, rather than recoil from, or be scared of. in the end, perhaps he feels that i expect too much of him, that my fantasy of him (which i am well aware it is) makes it such that he can't approach as real the level of my ideal. this is all correct. but we would have to make a go of it to see how that would unfold — how the reduction of chris to the real, and i suppose, perhaps, of the reduction of andy to the real, would be responded to, by andy and by chris. the aperture of our relationship — in whatever form — would be coping with the transition from the ideal to the real, from the fantasy to the world. it is strange to me that perhaps he thought i hadn't recognized this risk, or phase. i could go on, but the keys are sticking, and i have to go. but we are worth it, even if we lose each other, or what we had of each other, when we first lost.

i love him, i know it, and i suppose i wouldn't bother to pursue someone who i didn't imagine i was in love with. what would be the affect — not thought, not motivation, not intention — but what would be the affect of pursuit if not love?

if i had not fallen in love with chris, i never would have built a website for him, nor would i have donated a book to him. i'm curious, if any reader wants to send me an email on this: what would the other affect for pursuit possibly be other than love? like? curiosity? i should say that it is much to my credit that i pursue from love.

andy pink

i do really want to touch his hair, not sure what that's about.

but it is notable that i presented myself and he refused to do so — he offered nothing, not even a formal rejection. i think it is the cowardice of that invisibility, withdrawal, that hurts and surprises me the most. yet again, i read my own text instead of his.