It’s been nine-and-a-half months, and I’m still having bad dreams about her.  I sort of forget some of the details of the one last night.  She had called me or something.  No, no, she wrote me a letter through the mail.  I lay on my bed with the lamp on.  I read her letter.  I don’t remember what it said, but basically she was telling me how sorry she was and how she wishes she never left me and she wants to marry me and stay with me forever and have kids with me and not him and she wants me only, only me! 
     So I gathered my thoughts, preparing to write back; took a pen and a notebook.  The only blank pages of the notebook were crumply and creased, though I couldn’t find any clean paper.  So I just used the messed up pages.  I began writing.  I kept screwing up my handwriting, though, so I had to restart the letter a few times, ‘cuase, I don’t know…I just wanted the letter to be clean and neat. 
     So Miranda wanted me back (as she always does in my dreams), and I wanted her back so much, too.  But I knew I’d just get hurt again.  And what’s the point of loving someone if they’re just going to cause you a  world of pain in the end?   There is no point.  So I was going to explain this in my letter, my very angry letter, eventually ending with my telling her that, Yes, I will take you back, I will marry you. 
     But I never really got to actually start the letter.  People–family members– started moving things in and out of my house and having a party and making noise, and I was getting really dizzy and stumbling around and running into things and my eyes were blurred…And then the dream went other places and the Miranda subject stayed behind.
     I really wish I could forget about her.  They were the best memories of my life, the absolute best!  The times I actually spent time with her, actually meeting her in person and playing catch in the yard and four-wheeling in a field and holding hands and having tickle fights and tumbling around in the grass and playing hackie-sack and hide-and-seek and climbing trees…we did all of these things while I was there, and it was the absolute happiest time I have ever experienced.  It was bliss.  I’d really give up heaven if I could have lived in those six days forever and with no risk of dying.  I know that’s wrong of me, as a Christian–to choose eternity with Miranda over eternity with God–but I can’t help it.  That’s the way I feel.  Yet as great as those memories are, having them is giving me so much grief.  I can’t stand it.  I can’t stand it!  I wish none of it ever happened.  Give me any old, average, boring life, take away all the money I don’t have, but please, please let me forget I ever knew her.

     I was thinking last night about Miranda and the time we had when I first visited her.  It was December, 2005.  I stayed at her house for 6 days.  One night we just slept out in the living room in our sleeping bags.  We fell asleep holding hands.  I was on my left side, she was on her right.  It was our right hands, the fingers interlocked.  And when we woke up the next morning, we were still holding hands.  All night, around 10 hours of sleep, and we were still holding hands.  And I usually move around a lot in the middle of the night, turning over and kicking.  But not that night.  I was truly happy, you know?  Still holding her hand the next morning, still in the same position.
     And there was another time–a few of them, actually–where I sat in the chair in her room and she was standing in front of me for some reason, and I lifted up her shirt to do that thing where you blow on the person’s stomach and it makes that farty noise and tickles them.  And so I did that to her a few times, haha.  But then I just kissed her tummy and placed my cheek against it, hugging her around the waist.  She loved it and I loved it.  That was such a perfect moment.  Man, I loved her so much.  I loved her so much.

      So I was at the roller disco the other day, sans shirt, and I bumped into <a href=”http://www.xanga.com/kayleeq”>this gal</a>.  She started roller-disco-ing with me, but she was a little drunk, and that’s a huuuuge turn off for me.  Next thing you know, she’s tryin’ to kiss me.  Don’t believe me?  Well, good thing I happened to have my camera on a tripod in the middle of the roller-disco floor, with the self-timer on.  It snapped this shot:

     Dang, all!  Guess what!  I befriended some random people on MySpace, and one of them–a GIRL!–said this to me: “I think I love your personality!  Hahaha, it’s great!”  Freakin’ wow, man, right?   Though I think what she meant to say was, “I think I love you!  It’s great!  I mean, you.  You are great.”
     She loves me so much, in fact, that she drove all the from Virginia Beach–probably a four-hour drive–just to give me a li’l kissing on the cheek. 
     What’s that I hear?  I think it’s some of you turning orange with jealousy, but I think I also hear some of you saying, “Chris, we know you’re just kidding!  Golly, you’re such a hoot!”  But here–I have proof:

     And there you have it.  Now even more of you are jealous.  Never fret, though, my loves, for I have a solution: send me a picture of you, puckering up (preferably a shot in profile–”side shot” for the layman), and just send it to me and I’ll try my best to Photoshop myself into your picture.  That’s not what I did in this picture, mind you–this is real.  But if you all want to brag about how you gave the Chris Graham a kiss–well, now you know what to do

Dear [particular person],

     I am going to post here what I wrote on your page as a comment.  Don’t worry, I’m not going to say your name or your site or give anybody a clue as to who you are.  No, it’s not you, Cathy.  This is someone else.
     For anyone reading this: I’m copy/pasting a comment that I just left for someone, because it pretty much sums up my feelings on a lot of teens.  If you are not the kind of teen mentioned in this, good for you.  Keep it that way.
     My comment referred to the section on her site that tells people about her, and it pretty much hit every one of my pet peeves.  For instance, this person said “music = life,” so that’s what my paragraph on that is all about.  She also thinks she’s fat, so that’s why I talk about that.
     So here it is, my comment on a stranger’s Xanga:

Adult Swim last night.  Watched it, see?  It was funny.  I like it, see?
     Alright, enougha that.
    
Anyway, I went downstairs to my room after my shows were over (around
2:30 in the morning, I think).  I then paced around, sat around
cartwheeled around, and did everything else that one can do “around,”
before I got too bored even to do that.  So then I sat on the edge of
my bed. 
     Something smelled.  I look at my dog.  He looks back
up at me, says, “I didn’t do nothin’!”  I believed him; he’s usually
pretty honest with me.
     Then I remembered the throw-up:
     Two nights ago I woke up to the sound of Tracker, my beagle,
vomiting all up and down the side of my dead grandpa’s chair.  And then
I think I fell immediately back asleep, ’cause then I woke up again and
saw a pile of what I, with my glasses-less eyes, thought was a
palm-sized lump of ductile poop, though I had no recollection of having seen the crime being committed.
     The next morning I put on my glasses (my mom won’t buy me contacts
anymore because I never take them out at night) and bent down to the
rug to study the glob, which was mostly dried by now.  It was grass. 
It was very thing, long, tangled grass.  I remember he was eating it a
few nights ago when I was in my backyard in the middle of the night
with a spotlight and my camera, trying some experimental shots.  When I
was done looking at the stuff, I didn’t bother cleaning it up; I was
hungry.  Food.
     So that was yesterday.  And yesterday night,
when I was finally ready to stop pacing around and sitting around and
cartwheeling around and other-things-ing around, I went to lie down on
my bed: put one knee on the futon, then the other.  Then, as I started
to lean forward to put my hands down, I happened to spot mysterious shreds of dried grass strewn over a roughly two-square-foot area of my bed. 
     “Blaggaflah!” I said in surprise and disgust, backing away from the sickness. 
     I looked over at the floor where the throw-up was the other day,
and, lo and behold!, there was nothing to lo, and there was nothing to
behold.  One of the dogs–probably my other dog who likes to play with
poop and chew on rocks–picked up the dried clump of puke, brought it
onto my bed, played with it a while, and then decided to just leave it
there for me to lie on.  (By the way, when I’m speaking, I always say
“lay,” not “lie.”  But when I’m writing, I use “lie” ’cause I know
that’s correct.)
     What was I gonna do?  Vomit on my bed.  I’d have to clean it if I expected to sleep on the bed tonight! 
     About a half-hour later–after much pacing, sitting, cartwheeling,
and other-things-ing–I decided to clean it.  Good ol’ responsible me.
     I troddled upstairs to get the CVS-brand foaming carpet cleaner,
called “Foaming Carpet Cleaner” (it’s a knock-off of Resolve), and then
I furtled on back downstairs to do the damnable chore.
     I’ll spare you the details of how I went about picking up the
dried vomit, though it really wasn’t that bad at all;  I just don’t
feel like writing it all out.  Call it laziness.  Call it Henry.  You
decide.
     I spent about half an hour cleaning up the crap (meaning vomit,
not actual crap).  It was around 3:44 a.m., and I was one tired
mother!  Time for bed.
     Oops!  Silly me.  The bed is freaking wet!  Freaking.  Wet.  It’s
freaking wet, and I’m freaking tired, so what do I do?  I pace, sit,
cartwheel, other-things.  What do I do?  Do I wait for it to dry?  No,
it’ll take at least twelve hours for that!  Do I go back up and sleep
on the couch like I’ve done for the past month?  No; I’m twice as long
as that couch, and it’s too hot to curl up.  Do I get my sleeping bag
and sleep down here on the floor?  No, ’cause then I gotta unroll it,
plus it’s a very warm sleeping bag, and then I’d have to fold it up
again in the morning and put it away.  No, not worth it.
     So I took my blanket, laid it down on the carpet–the hard, berber carpet on the hard, C-ment floor–and spent three hours trying to falleth asleep.
     And…I think….Yes.  Yes, I have.  I have run out of creativity for the night.
     Goodnight, folks!

I got a haircut a few days ago.   This is how I like my hair.  The reason I let it grow out for three months is because the guy who cuts my hair is expensive (it’s at a professional place).  See, I’d like to get a trim once a month.  But a trim is not worth 40 bucks or whatever.  So I let it get long and crappy so that the haircut is worth my mom’s money.  Yes, good ol’ mom.  So here is my new haircut, both from the front, and from the top-ish (just in case you want to know what it would look like if you were somewhat above me and I was looking somewhat down.  The first shot blurred my face somehow.  The camera must not like me or something.  I don’t know how or why that happened.

Alright–I worked on this poem from April 11 to April 15 during the very early mornings (3 or 4 a.m.).  It may be one of the crappiest poems in the world, but it is one of my better ones.  I haven’t quite figured out the formatting of it yet, though, so for now I’m going to hit Return and double-Return where I think they belong.  But it isn’t permanent.  Here we go:

A cold and quiet sunrise,
the universe opening up above my calm velvet shore. 
Stolen heart, and torn. 

As lonely as I am now, I know it’s better this way. 
You’ve torn off my limbs. 
You’ve completely broken me. 
I miss you.

[© 2008, in case someone out there deems this crap worthy of plagiarism]

Yeah, I only really expect maybe two people to <i>slightly</i> understand what I’m talking about here, but only the writer of the thing he’s written can completely know what the heck he’s talking about.  If you care enough to want me to tell you what it’s about or what’s going on in it (a lot of it is allegorical), just ask. 

     Ashton Kutcher is by far the greatest actor ever to grace the movie screens.  Period.  And this isn’t subjective, you know?  He is the greatest actor; that’s a fact.  I don’t think anyone in their right mind will disagree with me. 
     Have you seen him in What Happens in Vegas yet?  He’s sensational.  He’s like a funny Will Farrell, if Will Farrell were considered a good actor.   There’s a part in What Happens in Vegas when Cameron Diaz  is about to go into the bathroom (presumably to drop a load), and we see Ashton in the foregroud, lying on the couch under a blanket with that impish grin of his.  Cameron walks into the bathroom, closes the door, and a second later we hear a gigantic splash and Cameron scream from inside the bathroom.  Ashton Kutcher then pulls from inside his blanket the toilet seat which he presumably took off the toilet, causing Cameron Diaz (who apparently doesn’t look where she sits) to fall into the toilet, hence the gigantic splash.
     Aside from great acting ability, Ashton Kutcher has a superb sense of style.  You know that look that all the kids who think they’re cool try to pull off, but really only one person can pull off?  Yeah, that look belongs to the Kutch Man and the Kutch Man alone!  It’s the look where you comb your hair across your forehead, as if to say “Yeah, I know my hair resembles what was considered dorky in school in the nineties, but today it makes the ladies think I’m  hip!”  And boy is Ashton ever hip!  He also wears those casual blazers.  You know–the ones that are worn by every…single…band?  Yes, only Ashton Kutcher has the right to wear such blazers.

Yes, the above was sarcasm.  And what follows is a diatribe on the modern youth.  (Please note that I am a “modern youth,” but I am one of the few that the following paragraph does not apply to.)

All you people who wear “different” clothes, straighten your hair over your forehead, and pout your lips and spread your fingers into peace signs when getting your picture taken–get it through your heads: you are not different.  You follow the trends that have become popular (sideswept hair and wacky clothes) and somehow you think that that makes you unique and gives you the right to say, “Hehe, I am a different sort of person & I am my own person, & if u don’t like it, keep moving.  Peace <3!”  Well, following the trends makes you the complete opposite of “different” or “unique” or “your own person.”  Knock it off, you hippie wannabes.  And some of you claim that the reason you wear such clothes is not because it’s popular, but because you like those clothes.  Yes–you like those clothes because other people like them!  If you’re into wearing what you like, why weren’t you wearing those clothes/side-sweeping your hair years and years ago?  I’ll tell you why: because it wasn’t popular back then.  And in a few more years–five, ten at the most–the trend will change, and you will stop wearing the clothes that you claim to love.  Because you’re all poseurs.

And quit claiming you “love everybody.”  That’s a lie.  You only say that because you know that’s what you’re supposed to do.  You wish you loved everybody   

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     I’d have to say the weirdest question I’ve ever been asked is, “What’s today’s date?”  Here’s why it was weird: For one thing, days don’t date.  They don’t need girlfriends or boyfriends, so dating is out of the question.   And, b., I was asked by a cat.
    
     Strange, m’nigga.   

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