Stable Erection

I noticed that whenever Max and Ben talked, they talked about very serious things. Upon greeting each other, they gave each other robust hugs. This event most often took place in the hallways, during lunch period. I sometimes imagined one of them slapping the other’s ass for some reason, although this never happened. During their conversations, they rolled their heads a lot, and talked in handsome, gruff voices. Many of their sentences ended in the trailing off of repeated words, such as “Yeah, yeah…” They seemed very intent on letting it be known that they recognized each other, though neither of them was at ease.
So what happened next?
I went to Psychology school. At Psychology school, I learned a lot of words. Some of these words include: Imago, emmeniopathy, intermittent explosive disorder. I also made love to many different people. One of these people was a self-righteous Prozac abuser. She claimed that it made her numb to all emotion, and yet it appeared that she felt things that most people would be incapable of. For example, when I made fun of one of her bipolar boyfriends, she hopped onto her hands and knees and began frothing at the mouth.
Did you experience anything else noteworthy while attending Psychology school?
As a matter of fact, I also met a lot of people that had been touched. During their childhoods, usually. I often asked them to elaborate on what being touched meant, but at this they would become scornfully calm and glare at me as if I had said something outrageous. Upon further questioning they began to shake their heads and sigh at me, eventually ignoring me altogether. After many failed inquiries, I came to the conclusion that being touched was something that they held onto to define themselves and use as an excuse not to move beyond a certain point in their lives, either due to laziness or desire for attention. When I brought this theory up during practice group therapy sessions, I was asked to leave.
Yesterday I thought about the sky being one big newspaper, unrolled and flapping against my face indignantly.
I remember one encounter that I had with a woman at Psychology school very clearly. I’d chosen to coax her into getting drunk with me, and once we were both drunk we began to ruthlessly fondle each other, which lead to us agreeing that it would be a good idea to make love, which was fortunate because I had an extra condom in my bag that expired in less than a day, but it turned out that every time I tried to insert myself into her my penis became flaccid. I began to pout. This became a recurring theme that took place during many of my following encounters. Finally I realized that the reason my penis was becoming flaccid was that I was too drunk to sustain a stable erection.
Over time I’ve noticed that girls with smaller breasts tend to wear more fashionable clothing. Although this isn’t always the case, it is very common. Girls with smaller breasts also tend to use more advanced vocabulary, though this observation is less common than the former.
What are your views on excessive cigarette smoking being a symbolic trait of teenagers?
Something very peculiar happened during the ladder period of my stay at Psychology school. I met a girl named Lucielle who identified with a patient that Freud specifically made a case-study. I failed to see the irony in this. She commented on how my cast smelled, that she’d wash it for me if I’d ever take the damn thing off. She didn’t know what I was wearing the cast for anymore anyway that my wrist wasn’t broken. She said that it must’ve been using it as something to hold me together, as a safety. I told her that her analyzation of me had been very motherly of her but she could just as well shut the fuck up.
Now why would you go and say something like that?
I don’t like it when people know how I’m feeling inside.
Were you really using it as a safety?
No.
Then what’s the big deal? I mean, you could have just told her that her assumptions were incorrect and be done with it. She would have humphed and that would have been that. Instead you took it out of context and called her a failed bulimic psychobitch.
She told the manager of your dorm building, who soon after evicted you.
Then she ran off and dated some guy who loved horror movies. He went to film school except he didn’t understand that people no longer found talking goats funny.
Yet at parties, he’d force everyone to watch his films, and they’d clap for them mid-way through in hopes that he’d turn them off and they could move onto beer pong.
But that didn’t happen, and they stood there, arms dangling, smiles fading.
His appearance was very pitiable and gentle. He wore library glasses.
There was always some emotionally regressive girl at his side. Someone who thought sex was special.
Is sex not special?
I think it depends on the people having it.
Well that’s sound reasoning.
Now what do you think about Will?
Will is like a man that sits by a fountain and laughs very loudly as long as there are people around.
Why does he sit by a fountain?
I’m not sure.
Can he play strange instruments?
So I’ve heard.
He tells the same jokes over and over at parties. He judges his friends as people that won’t point out that he’s repeated a joke.
As for Max and Ben, the description that once eluded me as finally come to mind. Hardcore, bro-core.
Hardcore bro-core?
Hardcore, bro-core.
Now let me tell you a thing or two I know about being hardcore bro-core.
It requires being around someone that you feel uncomfortable being around, as long as you’re hearty acquaintances.
I know a lot of very popular people. We take a lot of Polaroids.
What do you think about drinking and driving?
I’m down for that.
What do you think about telling a stranger your life story on cocaine?
I’m down for that.
You should have seen the way the moon looked at me last night. I hugged everyone I greeted.
I know a lot of girls that can’t say no.
At Psychology school I met many ghosts with very stern jaws. They always had boyfriends. I met so many of them and none of them ever returned my calls. It didn’t seem that they were very interested in much of anything unless they were with their boyfriends. I’d see them at parties and watch a piece of them die. They told me that for the next five years there wouldn’t be four days in which they didn’t have a boyfriend, regardless if it was the same one. I said but aren’t you in love? They stared at me longingly and said of course I’m in love.
That’s strange.
It’s not suppose to be. I just used to think it was.
Did you ever meet any ghosts with blonde hair?
Yes. They all pretended to be insomniacs.
In comparison to you, a real insomniac.
I’m not so sure anymore.
I’m having trouble.
I can’t write unless I know someone’s going to read it.
Which means it’s not honest
I learned at Psychology school that sex makes couples stay together. And yet it keeps us apart*
Did you learn anything about love at Psychology school?
Alice is next to me we’re singing.
The chorus to jaws theme swimming
Taking turns between the voices.
I start laughing for no reason
And she thinks I’m making a sexual allusion
And she finishes her line laughing and she says my name
But we’re not together
We’re next to each other but we’re not together
Maybe we want to be?
Did you learn anything about why people do things at Psychology school?

Sure, like why people chew their nails. I learned that mild anxiety disorders can be attributed to repetitious activity; or was that obsessive-compulsive disorder? I scored very high on the why people do thing’s test, I’m surprised I’ve already forgotten.
You’ve always had a bad memory.
I’ve lost a lot of my friends. My good friends.
You should become a space cadet; what do you think about that?
I’m not too keen on it.
I was sitting on the front steps outside of the school, admiring the cracks in the marble.
I was concerned because I was running out of people to ignore calls from.
There was hair floating everywhere. Most of it was dyed.
Some of the more overweight students were playing a concerto over by the fountain. The one Will sat on. One of them was playing an oboe.
He’d recently bought new strings.
I was talking to Trevor we made a lot of plans and promises to see each other more often now that we were over the things that once kept us so busy.
I never ended up seeing him, which made me feel guilty running into him. It’s strange thinking that we were once best friends and now we’re complete strangers. So friendly, clumsy.
I wondered what my ex-girlfriend was doing. Taking pictures of herself in the sand?
Great laugh, she had.
Her voice made it seem like she had experienced things. Really deep, womanly, you know. She hated it.
She’d always fall asleep on the phone with you at four in the morning because your voice comforted her.
What else did you learn at Psychology school?
I learned that no matter how old I get I still feel young talking about sex. And that when girls that look like they don’t know anything about sex, that you don’t want to know anything about sex, end up knowing a lot about sex and write about it all the time, it can be intimidating, even demoralizing.
There was a line of people outside of the Psychology school, waiting for a chance to apply. They clustered together according to their grades and test scores. I went out of my way to talk to some of them. They complained about the others having their parents bribe doctors to diagnose them with ADHD to extend their test taking times. I said, Gosh. Now that’s not fair.
The front doors tore open and a man came barreling out, sprinting towards the cliff that overlooks the city below (the Psychology school is stationed on a platform jutting out of a mountain). He dove off. A couple of the students who he’d gotten the attention of shook their heads. Got denied, they said. They seemed nervous. As the number of denied applicants that barreled out of the front doors and dove off the side of the mountain increased, their nervousness quickly became despair. Some of them dove off the cliff without even going inside.
I lost a lot of good friends. Our tastes in music differ.
Heard about many boys who flourished in college. My mother would always tell me stories. Boys named Zach and Rafe.
In Psychology school I read something about how female rape victims would often feel the erections of men that had been pressed against them long after the event. I said how, if nothing was really there? They said I’d never understand.
I thought maybe if I learned enough Psychology that maybe the nights would become easier. Sometimes I just wish I could find a potential mate that would admit they’re lonely. It’s so frustrating wading through all these people that shove their friends and past acquaintances in my face because they don’t want me to know.
Got nothing done today. Sat in front of the computer for twelve hours and uncontrollably daydreamed, listening to the new CD of a band I never thought would come this far. I talked to some people online about how frustrating it is never to fall in love. My mother walked into the room and said you look like you need to go to bed. She’s scared because she thinks I get wacky when I stay late up into the morning. Which is true, I do get wacky. I’ve lost a lot of friends like that.
I thought maybe now that I’m older I’d have more to say. More advice to give people who long for first hand experience. I thought maybe if I reached a certain age I’d stop procrastinating. That I’d start writing real stories, focused stories, where girls sit next to old men in cars and engage in consensual activities. She reaches beneath the seat and pulls out a bent but still smokable cigarette. Her family life’s got its kinks. Cheating husbands, bottled up wives. Some traces of sexual abuse, pubescent and adult. Whenever I watch TV or read books it seems like everyone’s always sleeping with each other. Where do these people find one another? When you love someone why do you read what they write even if it hurts you?
Will has white teeth. I’ve seen them when he talks to the right people.
Are those the kind of people that…are meant to find one another?
I had a dream and there were girls that admitted they were lonely everywhere. I was with my best friend, who’s got so many personality disorders that being around him is liberating. The old man who was next to the girl in the car, he was a teacher at the Psychology school. Before that he was a lawyer at a famous firm, but he killed someone accidentally.
I’ve found that it’s much easier to fail when you build up excuses to in advance. I don’t know where all the excuses started coming from but I guess it started when I stopped doing my homework in fifth grade.
At Psychology school, they take applicants in from all backgrounds. They require writing samples, two essays. One of them is on the topic of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. The other is why the applicant wants to attend the school of Psychology. How the presence of the applicant will affect the community. Applicants from single-sex schools smile more. Applicants from private schools are generally sensitive and pretentious, and act like they didn’t miss out anything on not going to public school.
The school of Psychology has a very large cafeteria. When I look at someone they say What did you do that for?
I grabbed her hair and tackled her against the amp and told her I loved her and she laughed. Her tongue began to drum and her fingers began to scream and rattle and her legs strung the chords and her eyes spun into mirrors and I was staring at myself in the bathroom, with headphones on. I asked her, What drove her to go and do a thing like that What did you do that for? and she just kept on laughing and I closed my eyes and shrugged, clearly hurt for her to see. The printer’s almost out of paper, the printer’s almost out of ink.
She said, happiness must be something you’re born with because I’ve searched just about everywhere and all I can find is reasons why I should be happy. No, I said that.
I learned a lot at the Psychology school. There were students who I didn’t really think deserved to be there, spots that the other applicants probably should have been given. It’s not really something I had control over though.