Seventeen : 04.11.03 @ 9:58 pm

I think birthdays will always be a flop for me. Must be some sort of cosmic law, but it just applies to certain predisposed people.
Like me.

So I turned seventeen today.
I think my first words, around five in the morning, were "Big Fucking Deal". Then I turned over and went back to sleep for another hour.

What did I do today? Well. I went in the darkroom for an hour after school and excitedly published a few of the pictures I took yesterday. They came out all right. :-) I'm not completely satisfied with the contrast level, but it's a black and white picture... and no matter how hard I try, her face is still going to be some shade of gray (scroll down for the pictures).

Imagine if you will, that you're walking through a parking lot of a shopping plaza in a lower-middle class (read: on one side there's middle class houses, where I live. On the other, there's the so called "ghetto of [insert name of town]" where all the illegal immigrants and drug addicted twenty somethings live) neighborhood when suddenly, there's this hardcore car that drives by you. The driver is in his mid-twenties, he sports a mohawk, several piercings, and to stick him in a group of people, I'd have to say "punk".
The music he's blaring?
Polka.
I swear to god, this tough assed punk is blaring an accordion through the parking lot.

Yea, that was probably the high-light of my day.

My conservative republican recently-converted-catholic (converts always tend to be more zealous, as if they're trying to make up for all the years they were among the sinners) Uncle did a search on amazon for my wish list... which I purposely didn't recently give him the link to... and lo and behold, there's a book called Best Lesbian Erotica 2003 that I jokingly put on there.
He calls up my Aunt and asks her about it... she tells him to talk to my Mum about it.

My Mum actually looked up my wishlist. Geezz I really didn't make that list for my family. It was made for my friends and for myself. If they don't like what they see on there, it's their own damned fault.

Even though I've been out for over a year, when I found out that my Uncle knew, a knot formed in my stomach and gradually forced its way up my throat until I felt quite ill.
Which is ridiculous and unexplainable... but hey, that was my knee jerk reaction.

I just can't stand the idea that people that a person who used to read me stories before bed when I was a little kid and who I have always shared so many loves with (history, photography, fantasy novels, Italy, etc.) might think less of me just because of something that I don't even think about half the time anymore.
Yea, it's who I am. I'm quite Queer, but most of the time I forget about that. I'm just... me.

So I spent my birthday watching television with my mother because my sister kicked me off the computer for a ridiculous amount of time so she could play Disney games. I'm so glad I'm going to be living elsewhere when my sister becomes one of those computer hogging teeny boppers that talks on aim all day "lyke dis". Damned preteens. Have I mentioned she plays that Aaron Carter dude? Or used to, until he became "unpopular" with her friends.

Yesterday, when Laura and I were at the graveyard near our school taking pictures, I was going for a better angle and using a gravestone to support my weight. Somehow, the sealing between the base of the gravestone and the actual gravestone had eroded... so basically it was just one tippy stone on top of another. Yes, it fell over. Yes, we we tried to lift the thing back up unsuccessfully.
That basically ended our photoshoot. Even though it wasn't my fault, we still didn't feel comfortable hanging out there. I got some good shots though, probably some of the better shots I've done since I moved here.
Eventually, I'm going to format my photography section (etc > bliss) like the pictures below. I like how it looks. If the entry ends up scrolling sideways, I apologize, but I'm too lazy to reformat this table.
Click on the crop to view the whole image.

Taken with my Nikon FM 10 and 35-70mm f/3.5-4.8 Zoom Nikkor lens
Kodak Tri X
Developed myself.
Note: For some reason, my scanner scanned them in darker/grayer then they are on my photo paper. My photo program can't make it any lighter without it being too light, so just imagine a degree more contrast.

Did I mention Ryan called me and sang me Happy Birthday?
I didn't tell him this, but it made me want to cry. Hell, thinking about it I still want to cry. I miss him and my friends so much sometimes...
I think Kate would have called and sang me Happy Birthday too, but I wasn't home when she called and I think I accidently scared her off when she IM'd and typed it in. Oh well.

/A

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