I Just Don't Want To Feel Like I'm Burning

Burning love.

First, it's not about setting fire to love. Which, since it's me, you could reasonably expect. Burning Love is a band. Burning love is a lyric, with "a hunk of" before it. Burning love is something I've never felt. But I've felt on fire and never had the words for it. It took Matt Fraction (writer of the Immortal Iron Fist, the Invincible Iron Man) to admit that he was an alcoholic and went into rehab before the phrase made any sense. Mr. Fraction, in the back of Casanova, has run interviews and intruiging backmatter and in number four, I think, he had an interview with Mike Doughty (Soul Coughing singer, now independent artist) where Mr. Fraction said Mr. Doughty was his sponsor through Alcoholics Anonymous.

There's three times Mr. Fraction uses the words fire or burning, but there's the one that's relevant: I went into recovery because I didn't want to feel like I was on fire all the time. When I first read that, I knew it was important, even without truly understanding the phrase. It was last night, going out kids for drinking, walking in Piazza Navona, that I finally understood what burning was.

Burning love is a love so powerful, so immediate, so visceral that it's all-consuming and globally encompassing in its personal scope. And immediately, I knew why Chris Colohan (Left For Dead/Cursed/the Swarm vocalist) named his new project Burning Love. It's the manifestation of an obsession, consumptive desire. It has little to do with love and lot more to do with burning.

As for 2666, I think I understand just how committed Bolano is to breaking the reader's face in the murder and rape in Juarez. (Read this article, then try not to cry. Then, watch this report and wait for the last thing the reporter says. In the six hours we spent there, there were seven murders.) I thought I was finally closing in on the end of the chapter and I found out I had another 50 pages left to go. I just want to throw the book to the floor and never look at it again, but it's important to see this fucker through.

There's sly little moment in the book, where there's a character with an announcement to make, in front of a bunch of exasperated journalists who are all thinking the same thing: Stop giving us fucking preamble and give us the name of the killer/rapist. Given that it's been 250 pages of brutal rape and it's not over yet, it's not hard to see this as Bolano's way of saying to the reader, I know how you feel.

Which means: He knows it and he wants to make certain we are as horrified and exhausted by the killings and murder that have become routine in the city and its real life equivalent. No, you don't get to get out because you're tired of it, I see the text saying. I'm not sure if that's brave, stupid or hardheaded. But I can tell: Bolano is enraged and consumed by the senseless and unending murder of the women, violated and humiliated before their death.

He burns about it and writes it the same way. It will hurt you, if you let it. One of the fiercer female characters (who is a forward thinking Mexican congresswoman) is hopelessly homophobic, and hopes, painfully, that her only son will never come back to Mexico, as it's no good for him.

For a person that tries to manage the country: That's just cold.




There's little to nothing to do with the post except that the song is morose. It's a song off the new Kanye West disc. I mean, Kanye's a guy that pretty often talks about girls like they're a renewable resource, but even he comments here, with more than a bit of sorrow: american apparel girl in just tights/ she told the director she just wants to get into school/ the director said/ take them glasses off/and get in the pool.

Oh and the Raekwon verse at the end is a wizened, resourceful look back over the hinted-at guitar solo, keys and thunder in the distance drums.

Casanova: Not A Comic Book Reference This Time

I start an weekend adventure tonight (Walk through a European city at midnight I've never seen before to get to a hotel I've never heard of? It saves me $20!) , so I lined up a guest post. Say hello to my good friend, Emmy Dee.


I was in love once. His name was Tyler Lawson and he had blue eyes and dirty blond hair that he gelled in the front a la N’SYNC. Unfortunately for me, he was spit-your-slushie-out-on-the-playground cool, and there were plenty girls far more eligible then I was. Tyler was a certified seventh grade bad boy, dating first one uber-popular girl then another. Finally, he dumped them all so that he could shamelessly hook up with anyone he wanted (To this day, I wonder if the rumors of sex on the soccer field were true.) For me though, Tyler was just the start of my Casanova crushes.

In high school there was Ethan, who broke my heart and acquiesced to be my prom anyway. Then, when I was a senior, there was the one good guy that came into my life for years. He was perfect, captain of the football team and ranked in the top ten of the class; we went for endless walks and he talked about how he wanted to save Ecuadorian orphans (no really, I can’t make this shit up.) I had practically planned out the wedding in my daydreams, until one of my best friends broke up with her boyfriend and pounced. I’ve never been much of a pouncer myself, so I went off to college glumly resolved to live out my own version of “Never Been Kissed.”

When I arrived at college something extraordinary happened. Guys started noticing me. More then that, guys started HITTING on me. Woah. Heartbroken as I was over The Last Good Guy, I decided that I had what it took to play the field. I was a fucking idiot. It’s not that I don’t have game, I can flip my hair and stick my boobs out as good as the next girl, It’s that I way underestimated what guys will do to get what they want. In short, I met the Ultimate Bad Boy, and stupidly I fell for him. He was charming and suave and I have to say, an amazing kisser (Sorry, Drew Barrymore.) He talked about kids and dogs and Obama and I fell further and further into infatuation. But he, like Tyler Lawson, wasn’t happy with just one girl’s attention; and he knew how to keep all of us coming back for more. Inevitably the truth of the situation was revealed; In the end I was the other woman, the legitimate girl had spent the year broadening her cultural horizons in France.

I spent the ensuing months listening to hours upon hours of Taylor Swift and A Fine Frenzy; watching with savage pleasure as blond haired blue-eyed boys died in various crime shows. Even though I had known for almost the entire affair that he was bad for me, I had still let myself slip into infatuation. There was something inexplicably exhilarating about caring for someone who was a little dangerous and who treated me with flippant disregard. I wanted him more because he didn’t need me; I was sure that I could prove to him that I was the one girl who was worth it.

It would be easy to blame my delusions on pop culture and the media, I suppose. Too many romantic comedies end with the asshole-jerk realizing that he had it all wrong and presenting the heroine with dozens of roses and a ring. I could blame these movies, except that I know that I’m smarter then that. I knew what I was getting myself into, I’m not (generally) an airheaded ditz who really believes in this stuff (somewhere, my friends are scoffing in disagreement.)

So why is it that intelligent girls like myself perpetually fall for the “bad boy,” the one person who is sure to hurt them? I suppose it all comes down to this: Every girl wants to be THE ONE. We all need someone to confirm that we’re worth it, even while we’re being taken advantage of, hurt, and insulted. A good friend of mine put it like this: “The bad boys are like the perfect storms of genetics sent from wherever to make good girls turn into raving lunatics.” The more abusive the guy, the more I want to prove that I am the girl that he will change for.

Beyond wanting to feel the self-validation of being wanted, there is just something about edgy guys that is downright sexy. Confidence. In order to be a “bad boy,” you need to believe that you have power. By dominating the situation these men create an aura of success, even if inwardly they’re insecure (and believe me, in my experience they mostly are.) Personally, I like to feel protected, men who display confidence and power appeal to that part of me. I know-it’s 2010 and I shouldn’t WANT to be protected by a man. Blame my tween years spent reading Jane Austen and other period romantic novels. It doesn’t matter how much I strive to be the modern independent woman, in the end I want someone who could save me if I needed saving. Nice guys just don’t seem like they’re up for the job.

I saw the Ultimate Bad Boy out a few weekends back. I was at a bar and it was homecoming so it was packed. He was there. We walked within two feet of each other. We pretended not to know each other. Two years ago this would have killed me, now things have changed. I have someone new in my life, someone who loves me and treats me with care and respect. And I love him too. So, instead of spending the rest of that night crying or texting or slinking back with him to his apartment, I stayed out with my friends and danced. When I finally went home I slid into bed with the person I love and I feel asleep. Finally, it seems I have found someone who makes all the bad experiences and spiteful people fade away...

And yes, he’s a little bit of a bad boy.

“Almost Lover” (A Fine Frenzy) became my anthem the spring that I had my heart broken by my college infatuation. Everything about her pleading, soulful voice defined how I felt. This is what I was silently screaming at him. To this day I can’t listen to this song without smelling the sweaty dust of the all-boys floor that he lived on. Someday, I have promised myself, I will ask him. Did I make it that easy/to walk right in and out of my life?

Getting Around

Quick hits, because they both have to do with getting around:

1) A girl from Duke's class of 2010 collates her highly detailed fuck list, sends it as a Power Point to her closest friends and of course it gets spread on the internet. The guys, who were named, with pictures, didn't know and didn't consent to being publicly dissected. Fraternities do it all the time, she notes, but that doesn't make it good when she does it. Maybe there is good, though. Maybe it will make dudes think twice before adding to the community knowledge of girls' sexual habits. Maybe it will give them a new perspective on disrespecting people's privacy. I mean, it wasn't done for that purpose, according to the girl, it was done for a laugh amongst friends. But, there is possible good that can come from this.

I mean, this is basically the opposite number of the juicycampus debacle that was basically a clearinghouse for Greek flavored gossip and hearing about which girls are good in bed and which aren't, in that a girl is publicly, and in a way that's comprehensive, spreading privileged information about popular guys on campus, with her name attached to it. I hope her fifteen seconds of internet fame are good to her.

I guess she should have thought when she put it in that kind of a format that it's easy to send around that she probably ought not to make it that easy to spread. I mean, I'm not going to tell people not to talk to their friends about their experiences, but, for fuck's sake, don't put it in a format with an infinite half-life.


2) I finally found a comic book store that has comic books in English (Forbidden Planet, in case you were wondering), which means I had to spend a couple hours going on the hunt. (To be fair, I was looking for a place that had dice, and was told by a GameStop employee that it was a "manga store." But even that was close enough.) Once I closed in, it made me excited in a way that...I hadn't felt in months, like I was finally finding something that I had gone without for far too long. My steps were more sprightly and energized, as if the idea of possible D&D players and paraphernalia was replenishing my HP.

Man, I felt like I had warm blood running through my veins again. I don't mean that in some I'm a/the world is a vampire way, but recognizing a portion of my personality (and prioritizing my unfashionable desires) after a month plus of having it in little, impersonal, and untactile ways. Refreshed doesn't begin to describe it. An invigoration. A full-throated scream after being muzzled? Maybe this is what it feels like to be a toy and have a new set of batteries in.

And that's gotta have parallels. I think I know a couple.




This song is a female vocalized, sex-positive single. It's real good. It's also called I Get Around. I must have thematic consistency.