Thoughts on the Season Upon Us
Secretly, I love the Christmas season – not the commercialism or the after-Thanksgiving shopping, but the hot chocolate and O Holy Nights and candles in each window. I think the season has a breathtaking beauty not found in any other holiday, which is the exact reason I shut off the radio and blow out the candles. The only way I can deal with my sappy fractured heart is to ignore beauty until I am able to experience it wholly as myself. I have an unfortunate pattern of falling in love with someone and then making that person and all I find that is beautiful inseparable.
Thoughts on Adapting to Homelife After Being a College Student
The coffee pot in my parent’s house is the most spectacular piece of architecture and technology I have ever witnessed. I made coffee this morning in an awed daze. The machine beeped happily at me at spontaneous moments and gracefully squeezed liquid out of grounds in its sleek black body. Also: in Duluth, I eat about three veggie burgers a day because they’re easy to make, come in bulk and are the yummiest vegetarian option in my opinion.
My house in Virginia is covered in mounds of foods. I feel like I’m at a grocery store, with the five different types of cereal and two different types of milk. I could have anything, anything I want! Last night, I had a veggie burger. Also: Whole milk? Who drinks whole milk anymore? Also: It’s amazing that all these condiments belong to one family and I can use any one I wish! In Duluth, I have my one treasured peanut sauce condiment that I lovingly pour on everything. Also: 800 channels! Why?
Thoughts on Relationships
In this life, you will, on your most basic day, find two types of people: loungers and doers. Doers are not deer, but they are the type of people that must be constantly doing something. Downtime to them is wasted time and the idea of settling in to watch a movie or a play a video game is equal to breaking a commandment.
Loungers, on the other hand, need their lounging time. This is not to say they are lazy, though some loungers are – it is to say that loungers enjoy laying in bed for hours talking or watching two movies in a row and spending hours drinking coffee and waxing poetic on the finer points of life. Doers and loungers can date, though conflict often arises. I am a lounger. I am dating the first lounger of my dating career. We have lost all muscle tone.
Thoughts on Movies Seen Recently
8 Mile : Surprisingly good. Weak plot. Eminem , as the critics said, is a natural actor, though I’m not sure he could play a character outside of the one in this movie.
Harry Potter: I spent the first half nauseous off the Long Island Iced Tea I consumed beforehand, so it was a little lost on me. Better than the first one. Good golly, I love Rupert Grint .
Die Another Day : The first Bond film I have ever really liked. Halle Berry was awful, contrary to what the critics may think. Rather artistic filmaking.
Vanilla Sky : An epic. Tom Cruise was awful. I fell in love with Penelope Cruz . What a damn cutie. Kept me guessing, but kept me confused more than anything.
Monster’s Inc. : So clever I want to squeeze it.
Office Space : My second viewing. Not as funny as the first time. But still hilarious.
Home sure may not heal with ails you, but it is a mighty fine salve. I am back to speaking Southern, which means I must now also type Southern, hence the phrase “mighty fine.”
Thanksgiving shout-outs: I am thankful for the usual – my dorky loving parents, my disobedient wild dogs and my abundant and close supply of food and shelter. But I am also thankful, today, for extra buttered popcorn, coffee out of a mug with tulips painted on it, new gloves, bubble baths, Anne Murray, green bean casserole (much better than the sorry soupy casserole Chris and I made for a Thanksgiving party on Monday)
Also, for the fact that Chris and I spent a good 20 minutes on the phone tonight talking about green bean casseroles, the blue fleece blanket my mother made, my father’s excitement for The Lord of the Rings, this Sylvia Plath poem, the age ability to have a drink when I want it, Canadian penpals, missed voices, sweetness, frappucinos, coconut cake and most of all, the ability to, even if not completely, enjoy it all.
Goodnight.
I am home in Virginia? I only phrase that as a question because I feel rather numb to the experience. I believe I was expecting a spectacular fireworks of yellow light and a lightening revelation to hit as soon as I walked off the plane, but instead I was very very tired and very very thankful to not have burned in a fiery crash over Lake Michigan.
Last night at 3 AM, I was sobbing like the Sob Master I am lately, proclaiming to the airline gods that there was no way in heck or heaven I would be getting on that plane. I’m terrified of flying, or so I believed, so after a hysterical phone call to my mother and a gasping bit of hysteria in Chris’s arms, I was sure I would never be able to see Virginia again. Thanksgiving would be spent alone, weeping dramatically, writing page after page of turkey and suicidal-like poetry. Instead, I woke this morning with Southern Steel.
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Fully maximizing my tuition money, I spend just about every class completely ditzed out. This may be because I’m used to my theatre major where most classes are studio classes where we’re bouncing around the room pretending to be rabid chipmunks or something of the sort. It also may because I lately have the attention span of a snowflake, which is not a fair analogy as I’m uninformed of snowflake brain power.
So, instead of trying to pay attention to Samuel Johnson today, I decided to attempt to record my wandering thought pattern. This proved difficult because once I decided to write down the connecting thoughts, the only thing I could think about was that task. But here are my thoughts, for 5 or so minutes, in all their fragmented glory:
“God, I want some fucking coffee. I wonder if I have time before my 11:00 class? I think I’ll get a flavour shot this time, maybe vanilla. I must be the only kid in school who gets decaf coffee.”
“Why the hell does my ear feel like someone chewed on it during the night? It’s also clogged, like I swam a few miles in my sleep. It is couth to be digging around your ear in public? I really don’t know the etiquette on that.”
“Man, that kid looks like my friend Greg from my one semester at VCU . This guy is a lot cuter, though. What is up with that other kid’s eyebrows? Holy cats, they’re like ski jumps, but very sharp unibrowed ski jumps. Hmm, I wonder if the girl and the guy who have dreads in this class talk to each other? Do they feel like they have to talk to each other just because they have similar hair? I wonder what the etiquette on that is.”
“Fuck, I’m flying home in two days. I am scared to death, oh no, there goes my heart racing thinking about it. I wonder what kind of drink I’m going to have to get? Funny how my Mom and Chris , both avid non-drinkers, both encouraged me to down a stiff drink before getting on the airplane. Maybe I’ll get a scotch. Maybe Erik , who’s taking me to the airport, will buy me a drink.
Should I bring a carry-on? That might be a hassle. Should I bring my teddy bear? I have every other time, but I would have to bring him in my carry-on bag and last time it was so embarrassing when the young hot security guy dug through my bag and saw my bear.”
“Did I ever finish reading The Trial senior year of high school? That’s such an interesting concept for a book. Maybe I should write a modern version.”
[insert obligatory young virile 21-year-old college girl sex thoughts here].
“I’m tired. I might be hungry. Oh look, my pen leaked in my pants. Oh look, I really don’t have any cuticles, I am such a freak of – ”
And at the point, I was called on to provide a scholarly well stated answer to a question that never reached my ears. The entire time I was typing up those thoughts, my mind was racing on a whole other plain. I wonder if I’m ever truly conscious?
So, everything doesn’t have to be so dark and depressing night after night, right? There’s a fine line of okay-ness running through the house right now.
Beth is in her room doing homework.
Corina is in the kitchen making a chocolate cake.
I can hear Matt’s bass floating through the vents from the basement.
Erik , across the hall, has fallen asleep in his computer chair, snuggled in the zebra blanket I snuck over and covered him with.
My room is still in shambles, but it smells like water lilies and is warmly lit. My windows are rattling as they do every winter. I have some literature to read, a paper proposal to write and then at midnight, I’m slinking out into the snowy night in my pajamas to watch a movie with a boy I love. When you’re not pushing, everything rights itself, if only for an evening.
Okay, I haven’t been writing because I’ve been in a badass blue funk, and I realize that the site has been a blubbering mishmash of black clouds lately. You know how everytime I reread my high school website , I want to slap my bitch up? I have a feeling in a few years, I’ll read over all this angst from this year and want to do the same. I want to be able to write about mundane everyday things, from work to school to brushing my teeth to watching a blood red sunrise, but I can’t seem to manage it.
I’m just not a happy camper, boys and girls, not nearly. In fact, I’m the camper who forgot extra clothes and got caught in the rain and rubbed up against poison oak and got bitten by an itchy spider and is now sulking in her lopsided tent, watching the other campers run around doing fun camp-like activities.
What can I say that’s not obvious? I’m not taking my break-up very well. I know I precipitated it, and I know I have a wonderful other person in my life, but it’s been difficult for me to accept the closed door of three years of my life. Our break-up isn’t going well. We’re both handling it in a terrible, though opposite, manner. My brain, though I’ve been through this before, can’t conceive the time warp from cuddling and midnight grilled cheese parties and secret kisses in the ballroom to indifference and “fuck yous” and constant tears. What does his hair feel like? I can’t remember. How can I not remember? It’s only been three months. That line of thinking is what nails me.
I’m also unsure of where I’m going to be in a year. My friends are graduating school and I’m not. I don’t want to stay here and the only option seems to be to move to Minneapolis, where I also don’t particularly want to be. Also, my grades aren’t faring so well this semester, so I might not even be able to go to school.
I still don’t have a bed. My house is still haunted and difficult to be in. I’m selfish and self-asorbed and feeling cheap, like I’m only using whatever looks I think I have to get by, while anything substantial is chipped away.
Depressing, huh? The time keeps slipping away and things keep getting uglier and angstier. I’m not crouching in my room weeping – I’m going on double dates and to concerts and movies, drinking Long Island Iced Teas and reading feminist literature and buying candles and ice cream. But it all feels a little false, like I’m biding my time. But for what?
So there’s a little explanation. I’ll try to keep the sadness to a minimum on here. More humour! More pictures of puppies and naked women!
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The Methodology of Cohabiting with A Male Specimen with Whom You Used to Copulate, subtitled: Living With Your Ex-Boyfriend Two Months After The Break-Up Fucking Blows Balls, In Metaphor Form
The warring parties fight with music. Who can drown out the other? From across the hall in the North, a weird country funk mixture blasts under the closed door. In here, Southern Steel territory, our weapon is Ani DiFranco’s Serpentine, the only thing, really, this camp has been listening to since the concert last Friday.
The North is whistling and there is shuffling, and in here, there is near tears (but no! The confederacy is made of steel here, there is no crying in baseball) and there is a rubbing of eyes and a question: “Is it worth it? Is it worth it to open my mouth and release the last doves in my arsenal?” The answer is undecided, but the outcome is surely this: the doves will be shot because the North may have won, but that doesn’t make them less brutal.
The North says: You know, I always hated the fact that you were so overdramatic about things you didn’t like. Why couldn’t you just dislike something? Why is it always Oh God I hate that could it be any worse good grief this is awful. -ed, past tense, as if we here at the Southern camp no longer exist, poof, like we have vanished in a cloud of cannon smoke.
The South rebuts: That might be true, but did you ever pay attention to the fact that when I love something, I love it just as overdramatically? All the excited monologues I gave you about books I loved, movies, people, songs, all the rushed speeches to your yawns and the back of your head. The same could be said for you, Northern soldier. I loved you just as overdramatically as I hated Margot Wagner or the hard cider you drank on Monday nights. You said I never loved enough – the case is always of loving too much.
The North emerges from the closed room. Do we dare exchange glances? Was there ever really a time when Minnesota and Virginia shared borders? It seems impossible now, when there are Michigans and Ohios broadening the gap.
Ah! So we are correct. The South, for once, goes to concede. Let’s talk, this camp says, let’s figure out why we can’t get along, after years of sharing a bed. But the North ignores. The North says, in so many words, you are below me – literally – and I’d rather shoot myself in the face than speak with you.
So the South slink backs, defeated. The war continues, but only one-sided. The North has seceded.
Dooce is moving far far away from LA, so today she shared some celebrity sighting stories that made me salivate with envy. I am a maybe-closeted celebrity gawker, but I’ve had very few chances to actually spot and/or exchange words with the famous and fortunate. In honour of her post, however, here are a few snippets of experiences I have had:
I met Brandy in a sunglass shop in Greenwich Village. Okay, I didn’t actually meet her because I had this thing about not approaching famous people if I saw them, privacy and all that junk, but my starstruck friend dragged us into the shop and made me take pictures of her and Brandy. From what I recall, she was nice and had flawless skin.
On the same trip, I saw Fairuza Balk jogging in a multi-coloured ensemble in Central Park.
When Chicago came to Richmond, Nick , as usual, made me stand in the freezing cold in a tiny miniskirt by the back door so we could meet the cast. Ernie Sabella was the first to emerge and he was very sleazily nice and touchy-feely, putting his arm around my shoulders and inviting me backstage to “warm up.”
Also in Richmond, Nick and I were at a showing of Life is Beautiful in the local artsy movie theatre. In the middle of the movie, a fire alarm went off. The funny side anecdote of this story is that when the alarm went off, very loud and obvious, no one moved. The movie didn’t even stop. Nick and I were the first to stand and say, “Um, hey, fire?” As we were standing outside, we happened to bump into Jay Mohr , who was in town filming Cherry Falls.
That might be it for my celebrity arsenal. I feel like I’m forgetting someone, so if you’re a celebrity I’ve met and you’re reading this, highly offended that I forgot to mention you, drop me a line and I’ll be sure to include your story.
This weekend was a long twisting beautiful semi-bizarre dream sequence. Friday night was the beginning and the climax, with a drive down to Minneapolis. I have slightly ill associations with the city now after my Summer in the Dank Basement , but coasting into the city on Friday was one of those lifting-exhalation-of-stale-breaths experiences. Thank heavens for a place that is not Duluth, said I.
My favorite lounging buddy took me to dinner at my favorite restaurant , where we mingled with beautiful tall people and nerds in orange light with pocket protectors. The main event was Ani DiFranco at the Northrop. The place was packed with hot young hip people, all who turned to glare at us as we took our second row center seats. I was so excited I puked my delicious dinner. Literally.
Ani, with a broken foot, sat in a chair with her guitar on the stage and was tinier and more beautiful than the pictures I’ve seen. The performance was so amazing that I alternated between weeping like a sentimental baby and staring frozen-faced. Her set was short, but powerful (“Small, but fierce !”), and my lounging buddy and I stood in the lobby, hugging and stunned. Saith I: How am I supposed to go back to a town I sleepwalk through everyday? Saith him: Open up the town, start over, make it new.
After we were able to pull ourselves from the stupor of being inspired young artsy people, we went to a place we had been daring each other to go for months now. Instead of naming the place and/or giving the inevitable hilarious descriptions, I’ll give you a few overheards:
Before we even entered the place, a girl took her purchase and waved it around outside the doors. “Fuck, does this come with batteries? What kind of batteries does this thing take?”
“Shit, don’t get her one that vibrates. She will fucking flip out if it moves.”
“What kind do you think she likes? Hmm, the All-American Male model. She likes Americans, right?”
(Huge masculine man with tiny girlfriend, pointing to ten inches on the wall): “Is that what you want? Huh? Is that what you NEED?”
“Excuse me, where are your inflatable dolls?”
Today I finally felt like I woke a little from the dream sequence over raspberry Mimosas and biscuits at the local hip brunch hangout.
Now it’s back to sleepwalking, at least until Thanksgiving.
My messy room is my project for the day. I am a slightly messy person normally, but I usually can’t stand my mess for more than a few days, so I clean. I haven’t cleaned this junk up in weeks – first it was for weird sentimental reasons and now it’s because I have lazy bones. I was going to tackle this cesspool of trash yesterday, but all of Duluth got snowed in, and I was far from home.
. . .
On a possible corny note that may come off sounding like a tired e-mail forward, but one that made me feel better, anyway, here is my mother’s definition of the phrase Southern Steel:
“Put the game face on, hum a few bars of ‘Let It Be’ and wait for the answer.
Southern Steel is putting your best foot forward and daring the world to tell you that there is anything out there that can beat you down. You may wing me, you may wound me, but you will never, ever defeat me. I will draw a circle of my own and in that circle my world will be wonderful and hopeful and mighty.
Southern Steel is rage at its finest and most dignified. Our Magnolia mouths can singe and cut and blister with the utmost propriety.
Southern Steel is making a dinner out of popcorn and sweet iced tea and serving it on Irish linen and Waterford crystal.
Southern Steel is standing on your front porch confronting the world with might and power. It’s saying, yes my heart hurts but buddy it won’t hurt forever. I will find someone who is equal to my fire and my infinite capacity to love. If not, well, I have myself don’t I?
Southern Steel is putting money in a bucket for a homeless person in Venice Italy as someone very dear to me once did.
Southern Steel is maintaining your composure when every fiber of your body is suffering. Southern Steel is saying it like it really is and then making people like you in spite of it. Southern Steel is a process, an evolution.
Every Southern woman has it. It is a matter of degree and tapping the inner part of you that houses this precious gift.”
Nature is refusing to orgasm for six months starting now; that is to say she is frigid and my gloveless fingers nearly blackened and fell trying to scrape the frost from my car this morning. I got through the morning with one tap of the snooze button, and only because I was able to trick my anti-snooze button sleeping buddy into thinking it was an accident. But I arose, one-night stand face and hair as usual, and froze my way to school. My driver’s side door mysteriously and stubbornly refuses to open now.
As I walked into school, I passed The Girl. Isn’t there always The Girl, in songs and literature and teenage poetry? I had been avoiding The Girl for sheer sanity of my ulcered tummy. We locked eyes, very dramatically and I blinked blinked a snowflake caught on my iris and I looked away. Funny: I didn’t feel the annoying hotness of jealousy or irrational hatred. I felt: I should have said hi to her. Why didn’t I say hi to her? I felt: compassion! What must it be like to date someone whose former lover of three years still lives with him? Difficult.
In class, I dozed open-eyed, watching the weighted clock sludge sleepily through the numbers. I thought: I don’t want to go back out in the cold. I wish I had gloves and a hat. My next class: I read, prayed for The Teacher not to call my name, and I thought: I wish I had gloves and a hat, and I wish I had said hi to her. Maybe even, “How’s it going.” I drank coffee machine caffeine, even though I shouldn’t, slowly, watching the powder form DNA strands on the froth.
Walking back to my car, I passed a hat-and-glove stand in the student centre. It’s like whoever runs the place is saying: Look, I can’t get your old life back for you and I can’t help you start your new one, but I will give you this one wish, okay? Look, there are some gloves to match your favourite scarf and look, here’s a hat in your favourite shade of blue. Be warm, be fashionable, go forth.
At home, I think: for a few moments, nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Cliché! In the long stretching hours in this house where my mind conjures up blood on the bathroom floor and burning schoolyards, there is also the same mind saying: look, you have power, too, you know. What belongs only to you? The fact that you secretly delight in listening to Rush Limbaugh on the drive home. Your new blue hat, which you are still wearing, woolly and warm as it may be. The constellations that you pause to trace before you enter your lover’s house for the night. These moments you spend writing this drivel, fresh from three hours of not paying attention to anything in class. The first sip of coffee, the sweetness on your dry lips.
Secret to you: we share this one, but I’ll include it: despite the bruises and the bitterness and the anger and the name calling, hurried exits, the imagined scenes in both of our minds (Her: “Does he curl around her like he did with me?” Him: “Does he make sure her feet are uncovered when she sleeps, like I always did with her?”), you still make sure my most precious friends are safe and warm, neatly tucked in. I’ve taught you the value of silent souls, and knowing that you keep them warm sweetens my nights.
Secret to no one: I was afraid of snow falling and afraid to clean my room, afraid what dead memorial I would find under the clothes and papers, and today both is occurring, and I believe I’m going to survive, for this afternoon, at least. I’ve always had trouble waking up, snoozing and throwing my head under the covers for hours. So waking up stings and it blows, but eventually, you find your Southern steel and you kill the morning with kindness.
This is a diorama.
Though I’m not one to play favorites, yesterday was my favorite day of the past month. As usual, I had planned an in-depth description of it, but the favorite day and favorite feeling that goes with it has passed, so instead you get this summary:
I found my wallet, under a newspaper and 6-month-old muffin in my car. No comments, thank you. Even though Mount Royal Fine Foods is the World’s Absolute Worst Grocery Store, I did find my favourite kind of Pasta-a-Roni, a kind I was sure had been cruelly discontinued. After a delicious bowl of that, I spent a comfortable and inspiring few hours at Amazing Grace with my lounging buddy, drinking turtle mochas and pretending to do homework. We’re in the part of the relationship stage where you have long excited ambitious conversations about the future – not necessarily your future as a couple, but futures as young invincible artsy people.
I was home for a while before I grew restless, so Dane picked me up and we met Alex and his friend Ben at the Twins Bar, where a person under 50 is a rare endangered species. Quickly, I drank to the point of charm, and fell in punch-drunk love with the friend Ben, who was entirely delightful and dog-loving.
After that bar closed, we went to The Capri in Superior, where more was to be drunk and ping-pong was to be played. The bartender was a witty kind woman and gave me my last 7&7 at closing, saying she had sweetened it for me, which I soon discovered meant loaded to the brim with about four shots too many.
I have not been stumbling spinning Southern (meaning my accent appears full force) drunk since freshman year of college, so when I stumbled and spun into Alex’s house (which is also Chris and Minh’s house), I surprised even myself with my hick tongue and vertigo. Though I meant to actually try to spend the night in my own bedroom for the first time in two weeks, the whiskey shackled me to the bed there and I didn’t wake until 10 AM this morning.
Surprisingly, except for a slightly husky voice and remnants of whiskey vertigo, I felt fine. And the favorite day has passed, so it’s back to being an angsty black cloud.
On a side note, I’m not happy with my novel anymore as it’s beginning to sound like a terrible soap opera, so it may get thrashed and trashed. We’ll see.
Here are some excerpts for National Novel Writing Month:
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A short vignette: My typical morning this past week, with accompanying commentary:
I wake up five minutes before I have to leave for class in a bed that is not my own. I haven’t spent the night at my house in a week because my house is haunted, or so I’ve come to call it. I’ve found it impossible to sleep in my house since Erik and I “separated,” so I am constantly shuffling out of here, bundling up to the four AM freeze, driving until I am in a familiar territory, one he hasn’t touched.
I go to school looking like I’ve just come from a one night stand. My teeth are brushed, but my undereyes are wearing last night’s mascara and my hair is squashed and oddly waved, flat with fly-aways. I’ve been wearing the same jeans for two weeks now, so much that they’ve loosened around the hips, threatening to tumble down at any moment. More than once, my shirt has been on backwards or I’ve forgotten to wear socks. My eyes are bloodshot, glazed, because I am still asleep and will be for the next two hours.
Once in class, usually late, I pull out books I didn’t read, if I have them. Most of the time I’m unprepared, either no paper, pencil or that day’s homework. I’ve borrowed paper and pens so many times from my neighbors that I’m now afraid to ask. Today I took notes on the back of a receipt with an eyeliner pencil.
I sit in class, looking around, hating everyone who has their shit together and hating myself for being a big whiny baby and just stewing in my own hearty self-pity. After my first class, I linger in the hallway, deciding whether to attend my next class. Today, I didn’t hem nor haw over it – I just sped my way through the hallways, back into the cold, to my car and left.
. . .
I’m still thinking about what to say about the Republicans controlling the Senate right now. Obviously, I would have preferred things to swing the other way, but I’m not handing the world to Pandemonium yet. My fellow liberal pals are flipping out. I’m not so sure it’s that dramatic, but I could be wrong. I want to read and research a little more before I can have an official political freak-out.
Almost four years ago to this date, I lost my wallet at a gas station in Norfolk, Virginia with Nick. We had just come from a mediocre performance of RENT, which was disappointing because not only had we driven a few hours specifically to see it, all our dreams and fantasies of RENT being the Best! Musical! Ever! were dashed a bit. Nick and I had been broken up a few months at that point, and our aftershock friendship was just beginning to yellow at the edges, become coffee bitter to the taste.
We almost hadn’t gone to see RENT this time, but had decided we couldn’t let whatever was spoiling between us ruin something we jointly loved. So there we were at midnight in a gas station in an unfamiliar town, barely speaking to each other, both silently dreading the drive home in which one of us (me) was inevitably going to cry and one of us (him) was going to get angry enough to speed recklessly down the highway, almost wishing for a crash. Almost.
I didn’t discover my wallet was gone until the next afternoon while sitting on the floor in the school’s theatre. In that wallet was my meager life on paper – stacks of movie tickets, pictures, hotel key cards. This all translated to: oh, remember when we were both so excited to see the movie 54, well, mostly you, because you were so obsessed with Ryan Phillippe and remember how we spent hours on Geoffrey’s computer trying to download the trailer for it and then remember how we walked out of the theatre, neither of us looking at each other because we didn’t want to admit we had just worked ourselves up for a crappy movie?
Or: Remember how racy we felt when we told the homecoming photographer we wanted to take a picture with you kneeling on the ground next to me, and me pulling at your tie, and oh wow, do you remember how I wore that magenta sheer dress without any underwear because I didn’t realize how see-through it was until the chaperones pointed it out to me? or: Remember how grown-up we felt renting a hotel room in Virginia Beach, summer after senior year, and how everyone else went to the clubs and the parties, and we fell asleep like a middle-aged couple to the television at midnight on a Sunday, secretly content with just being able to share a bed together?
I never got that wallet back.
Last night I was at a gas station in Duluth, Minnesota. It was not the usual one I went to and I felt almost ridiculously uncomfortable at this one. I finished up and drove over to Chris’s, sat on the couch, reached for my wallet and it was gone.
Erik and I have been broken up one month now, maybe two, maybe four, depending on who you talk to. There are no paper memories in this wallet – I learned my lesson – just your usual credit cards and license. But it still feels eerie, like this is the universe’s way of letting me know that our relationship is officially kaput, lost like a black faux leather wallet on top of a gas pump.
Part of me hopes I find it in my car, wedged under a newspaper and six month old muffin. But the other part of me knows it’s gone, not even stolen, just gone, lost to the wind, to the lake, to wherever wallets go when they escape confining coat pockets.
It’ll probably be months before I buy another wallet.
This year, I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month and like everything in my life, I’m dawdling on working on it. I’ve started about sixteen million times, all with different concepts and different wild zany ideas. Here are some first sentences I’ve tried:
“In the corner with the magenta flippy hair and dark-framed glasses sits New York, sucking on the end of a pen as if her cigarette break is in five minutes and she’s unable to wait that long.”
“Here is your shrine: we have church bells inside us, cracked and whistling.”
“Examine: the killer, thin arm extended straight, a green pistol aimed at the musician’s skull.”
“I am outlined by the sun coming through the passenger side of the car.”
“She had suggested that the ocean might eat them up, swallow them whole with white cap licks.”
” ‘I don’t believe in an afterlife.’ ”
“The first thing I think as I run into the street is a completely inconsequential thought: I’m not wearing any underwear.”
“There is the geologist who played with knives, island arc scars across his knuckles.”
I went with one of them, but I’m not telling you which one. I’m also thinking I might have better success publishing a novel of first lines only. Thank you and goodnight.
Okay, as much bitching as I did about the dramatic pain of holidays, I had a nice time last night. I avoided the parties and the bars and the restaurants, and instead watched three hours of TV (which is about three hours more than I’ve watched in a year), ate cheesecake pudding, made a spur-of-the-moment trip to McDonald’s, all with my favorite lounging buddy. That was enough to cancel out any Halloween angst I was building, at least for this year.
. . .
There are rare moments when you can look outside of yourself and think, “Holy cats, I look ridiculous.” I remember a specific moment in one of my acting classes where we were traipsing around the room in the classic acting exercise, “If your character was an animal, what would she be?” I was on all fours, yapping like a hyperactive puppy and I blinked for a moment and realized I must look absolutely incredibly stupid. And I looked around at my classmates, leaping like frogs and chattering like squirrels, and I wanted to stand up and say, “Guys, come on, we’re 20 years old here.”
And then tonight, I’m in a blue milkmaid dress, trying desperately to get my stubborn stick thin hair to curl, and I happen to catch my reflection in the window. Various metal contraptions are jutting out of my hair and one milkmaid strap is passed out toward my elbow and my eyes are completely bloodshot. The past few days have been a test of “Don’t think about the obvious. Stop! Don’t think about that! Stop! Good job not thinking about it. Keep not thinking about it!” I try to fake my way through with curls and Halloween parties and dresses, and then I catch my eyes in a reflection and I’m slapped in the face with, “Oh. Oh. I’ve been thinking about it this whole time.”