Asexual. Basically, being indifferent to the sexual advances or desires of anyone else. That would sufficiently explain everything. That would explain his non-chalance when I throw all of my best material into his unawaiting arms....the head tilt, the extended look and the worst of them all, complete avaliabilty.  If he is asexual, then maybe I can stop punishing myself for continuing to like him despite his apparant disregard for my rules of attraction. And I can most certainly ignore the fact that for two months, he has been the writer, director, producer and sole star of my indepependent film...heavily rotated and remade for my viewing pleasure. It helps me to know that his lying next to me and feeling completely uninclined to reach for me, is dictated by a biological restriction; one that physically prohibits him from experiencing the eighth wonder of the world.  His asexuality consoles my bruised ego, my wounded spirit and, one day soon, my broken heart.  Thinking that he doesn't want anyone lulls me to sleep, as sweet thoughts of romantic indifference dance unbridled in my head. It feels wonderful to know that the seriousness in which I want his companionship is abated by the sole fact that he'd rather touch himself than me....or maybe he doesn't. I mean, I guess there's a slight chance that his non-chalance is actually a polite refusal.  Or that his stoicism is a diplomatic means of maintaining our strong friendship.  But that would all mean that my virtuosity, the bare essence of my indivdiduality wasn't enough to move a mountain, to rehabilitate a drug addict or to get a quiet admission from the one I've waited for.  

"Girl-who-has-always-been-pursued-and-who-now-must-suffer-for-her-cockiness."

                 
                                    From this point on, I will be entirely honest. Every thought and emotion will be unadultered....except for my name. I find that names, as intended, reveal too much about people. It gets complicated when many people place very different associations with your name. To person A, you might be funny but a little introverted. Person B, however finds you possessive, spiteful and detached. Are you then, because of these associations, one or the other? A mixture of both? Or neither? It is quite possible, that just because people know your name, that they have no knowledge about who you are. Names are irrelevant. They only bring baggage that hold its listeners in a mental prison, where specific emotions are automatically evoked. It gets so bad, that sometimes just the mention of someone's name will make me nauseous, or indescribably sad, or on a few rare occasions, happy. I've made it a point to replace actual names with my own descriptive monikers.  Example: Today I had a conversation with " girl-who-hides-behind-her-insecurities-in-hopes-that-someone-will-refute-those-notions-and-uncover-her."  That's an identity; it tells more her true nature than Becky or Mark or Desiree.  It's a person's actions, faults and feelings that shape their identity, and I'm tired of letting people hide behind that one positive interpretation of their name. 

               My new favorite pasttime is clock-watching.  Frivolous as it sounds, the art of scrutinizing the very infrastructure of time is hard to master. For starters, you have to have absolutely nothing to do. So much nothing, that your thoughts become whispers and are no longer successful in keeping you otherwise occupied. Next, you need a clock; preferably one with big hands. You see, the bigger the hands the more noticeable the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the seconds between seconds. Each movement of the second hand celebrates a tiny fraction of time passed. After building up enough wasted time, you earn a minute.  After about 200 minutes you begin to realize the power of time. It's the only thing that can be manipulated through location or daylight savings, but can never be recovered....like the hour and fourty minutes I just lost. Lost time inevitably equals lost opportunities, suppressed into the infinite space that fills each consecutive second, making them impossible to reclaim.  Life lost. Among my greatest intangible loses: human contact, academic advancement, self worth. Elements of myself muffled under the deafening tick of a mechanical hand; unforgiving, unstopable and unsympathetic.  My predilection for clock watching also helps me control time; control how many exact seconds to minutes that I have let disappear. Only thing is, time cannot be created, only destroyed and one day, one minute, one second, we all will be forced to watch the last of our time elapse....don't blink.