Jalapeno
July 5, 2008
It took 3 hours to check my email. Fucking bus… I’m officially a slave to the system. Not capitalism. I’ve always been a part of that. I mean metro transit. But I guess they’re both the same thing. I’ve been rejected by both Walgreens and Jack-in-the-Box, but it’s okay because I got a reply from Nell!
July 13, 2008
S.O.S. – same old shit.
Still no job. I need a bag. And a car. Memo: don’t handle jalapeno seeds with bare hands. If that happens, don’t rub your eyes with fingers.
July 17, 2008
This could either work out really well, or it could completely backfire on me. If I’m working around pretty women all the time, then maybe I’ll be less in awe of them after a while. But who said they’d be pretty? No guarantee that they’ll be nice either. Girls are supposed to be mean all the time, right? I’ll have to remember to bring a bucket of water to melt them.
What if they aren’t witches at all, but sweet darlings? Then my inferiority to them will be reinforced by washing their dirty dishes, and I’ll be worse off than before.
So after weeks of being ignored and turned down by fast food restaurants, I got 3 interviews in 2 days… and I get all 3 jobs either by default or by my own charm. What do I do? One is a full-time dish-washing job at a student housing building cafeteria. Free meals, good pay, and isolated work-space… what more could I ask for?
The second job is a dish-washing job at a sorority house. On top of the whole dish-washing experience, I’d be forced to work around girls. How great is that? I don’t know what to expect completely. I may not even come in contact with them… but there’s a chance that I could get over this irrational fear of pretty women. I’m intimidated, but I know I shouldn’t be.
The third job is a position at TCBY. I thought at first that this could be a really fun experience, but it would sound so pathetic if I was working at an ice cream shop full time. Now for my first job to be at a sorority house… that’s interesting. Less money, but what’s money got to do with it anyway? Just to live life? I like to do things now that are interesting so that I’ll have a bitchin’ story to tell later.
So what are you doing these days? Oh, not too much, just working at a sorority house with a load of girls. Sucks a lot, but it pays the rent!
In July, I was living in a student apartment. I got very familiar with Craigslist and found a room near UT Austin where a kid went home for the summer. It was pretty cheap, but he would be coming back in time for school, so I knew I had to find something else.
Financially, I was cutting corners wherever I could. Most of the time I bought cheap hot dog sausages in large quantities and rationed them out so that they would last a long time. I would top them with ketchup packets from McDonald’s and onions I bought at the store. On special occasions though, I would treat myself and get an extra topping such as mushrooms or jalapeno peppers.
And I had an unlimited monthly pass for the bus. The rides were free, but were extremely time-consuming, and I would spend a lot of the day walking to bus stops, waiting, and looking at maps. This gave me a lot of time to think, and more often than not I would catch myself thinking about Nell.
July 19, 2008
Island prison analogy:
I feel like I was on an island. Nobody to talk to when I was down and depressed, nobody to care whether I was dead or alive. My anxiety was the ocean that kept me from everything I ever wanted.
And then one day you came along in a boat. I had wanted to make friends before, but couldn’t because everyone was all the way across the ocean. But you were so close…
I could tell you everything. Life on the island wasn’t so meaningless any more because I could share it with somebody special.
But one day you left the island to go back home. I wasn’t like all the other townsfolk. I didn’t know what I was doing. I couldn’t help getting it wrong because I’d lived on an island my whole life. You were the only shred of consolation on my lonely island of solitude, and I desperately clutched onto you for my life. Yet I didn’t mean a thing to you, who grew up on the mainland full of loving people. You just wanted to tour my island because it was different. Once you saw everything, you didn’t want to come any more.
I soon went crazy and started talking to a coconut, pretending it was you, like in the movie Cast Away starring Tom Hanks where he talks to a volleyball.
But the whale monster Wobal Glarming was growing at an exponential rate, and he wouldn’t stop until he’d displaced enough water to flood my island.
The days passed, and I thought about just dying to end my unwelcome lusts for companionship. I wanted to escape. It seemed impossible until one day I found an ax in the water. I cut down a tree and built a raft.
Will I find the promised land?
July 26, 2008
3 jobs… Do I want financial stability or do I want to be forced to work around women? I’m gonna be like Hugh Hefner only I’m young and not like 90. Can’t find a place to stay though. Slowly but surely, things are falling into place. My place in music seriously is the only thing keeping me from breaking down. And I’m trying to gain weight. Shooting for 155 lbs by next year.
I was made fun of my entire life for being skinny. Sometimes in school, but mostly by my own family and their friends. It could have been a cultural norm in Korea, but it just made me detest and feel super insecure about my own body. I couldn’t gain any weight no matter how much I tried to eat. Along with having selective mutism, this reinforced the belief that I was unattractive and hopelessly alienated from society. Even by being Asian I was in another minority group, and I didn’t think anyone in the world could possibly understand me. It was a huge uphill battle to hold on to any semblance of self-esteem.
The sorority house had an opening for a part-time porter. I was excited to get a taste of a world I knew I’d never be a part of, like a secret agent infiltrating a restricted area. Not only the sorority, but also I felt as if I would get to see real campus life (which I knew I’d never be able to afford) up close.
I had a job lined up and a place to stay. I was slowly building something for myself in Austin, and I started to have some hope that things could actually work out.