this is the last song you will hear

Though I shouldn't be procrastinating, there were some things on my mind that I felt the need to jot down for a bit.

Halloween is around the corner. I don't normally dress up (and haven't really made much an effort in years), but in New Orleans it seems Halloween is a big deal. My friends have come up with all sorts of elaborate costume ideas. Mine is a bit more nebulous.

You see, I've always had a fascination with identity. And one of the fantasies I've always had is being able to walk around in a different skin, so to speak. To appear so unrecognizable that you are no longer shackled to your "identity" or what people expect from you. As long as you wear this "separate skin" you can do whatever want, be anything you want.

Sound familiar? Yeah, because it's the whole principle behind Charlotte and the mask of the Ecstasian Phantom.

In an impulsive move, I bought a wig. I made sure I found one that didn't look too cheap but didn't make me feel guilty about the price. Long, curly blonde hair. I'd always wondered how I'd look with blonde hair, but for practical reasons I'd never dyed my hair. I haven't decided what I'll wear with the wig, but all I really care about is being unrecognizable.

The first time I put on that wig, I was sort of appalled. What was this weird hair color doing around my face? It looked awful. But after some adjusting, including adding a cap, the weird thing is that I started getting used to the look. Not only that, the vibe I give off with curly blonde hair is completely different from my normal appearance. Sassy, wild, fun-loving... things NOT typically ascribed to me.

We'll see what happens on Friday.

The other thing I wanted to mull over...

For a good chunk of my life, I wondered why most of my friends were girls. It sounds like a strange question, but given my personality, it seemed a bit odd. The stereotypical adjectives people use to describe dudes -- chill, no drama, cool -- have often been ascribed to me. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that I naturally gravitated towards girls, because my self-defense mechanism didn't want to deal with the potential pitfalls of navigating the romantic aspect with boys I had no interest in.

Interestingly enough, my anatomy lab group here turned out to be a majority of boys. There are six of us, four boys and two girls. Funnily enough, all four boys have blonde hair and blue eyes. What surprised me the most -- just how well we all get along together. We behave very much like a pack of siblings with very different personalities. And to support my earlier theory, it probably also helps that three of the four guys have long-distance long-term girlfriends and the fourth guy is gay. I adore my group much in the way that I imagine Blue Sargent loves her Raven Boys. (Though, unlike Blue, I have the added benefit of having another girl in my group who can stand in female solidarity.)

It got me thinking, though, about the core of friendship I'd been trying to sketch out in detail for the past year. Yes, I'm going to ramble about EP again, so close the window if you're done here.

I'd always had some problems characterizing the central male friendships in EP, namely because I didn't have much experience in my own life I could draw from. There's three aspects to the dynamic that I had to consider: (1) how the boys (Rhys, Patrick, Leo) were before Rory ever joined the band; (2) how the dynamic changes once it became three boys + Rory (especially if Rory started dating Rhys); and (3) how the dynamic changes again post-Rory and Charlotte enters the picture, two years later.

I'm not necessarily going to base my characters off of my friends, but in my current writing drought, I've been doing a lot of real-life observation and fishing for material, and I've thought a lot about what kind of personalities can coexist so harmoniously together. The only other time in my life I can think of where a group of friends has gelled together so well was the summer after I graduated from high school, when I was teaching English in Taiwan. To this day, I'm still in touch with most of them.

Anyways, back to my anatomy group. I do have to say... one thing I didn't realize was just how raunchy slang I am oblivious to. You know, the kind of stuff you have to look up on Urban Dictionary to figure out... This is something you pick up on real fast when you hang out with a bunch of boys.

And on a final note... I had another morbid dream a few days ago. I dreamed that I was dying, and as my breaths were growing shallower, I had to pick the last song I would listen to in my life. I picked "Wading" by Jhene Aiko. I still don't know exactly why I picked that song.