I really hope we get the house in Edina, like, tomorrow so I can get a job and be a productive member of this great society because there are only so many days I can sit cross-legged in old blue swim trunks eating grape freeze pops while watching Chris and Dan play Tiger Woods Golf for XBox. And, really, there are only so many evenings I can eat peanut butter and honey sandwiches on slightly molded wheat bread while trying to unlock all the characters in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, or to be accurate, watching Chris unlock all the characters in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance. I am turning into the teenage pasty-faced male lounging lizard I never wanted to be.
Nothing says unemployed in-between school life by waking up at 7:30 AM in a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt to eat plain toaster waffles and play Mortal Kombat for two hours.
I always have these big plans for writing about things (such as Memorial Day weekend at Chris’slake cabin), but the moment passes, and I’m left with scraps instead of any real narrative. I suppose there’s not much to write about, anyway. Just sense writing, classic elementary school style: the wailing of the loons at night, the smell of campfire and roasted mushrooms, the blue of the lake in the evening, the styrofoam squishiness of key lime meringue and fingers touching sunburned necks. Good enough.
The house hunting continued on Tuesday without me. I woke up with Robin’s (who’s my fellow refugee at Chris, Minh and Alex’s place until her house for the summer is ready) cold, so I sat at my computer, looking up information when the group called (I’m totally The Matrix!) from Minneapolis. They found a house they all loved in Edina, big and sunny and IMMACULATE (says the ad), so we all put in applications and should hear by Friday or Saturday.
It feels like we all got suddenly thrown into adult-dom. Bills and houses and excitement over appliances! Appliances. If we get this place, I’ll be out of Duluth within the next week. I think I’ll miss it in a way I never missed Virginia.
In other news, I found a cassette tape Matt, Erik, Andrew and I made sophomore year when we played hide and go seek at midnight on campus. We all sound about five years old and spastically happy.
No more mediocrity. It’s 80 degrees outside and I still have freckles waiting to break through.
Writing to come, but I’m sleepy. Abbey, Andrew, Chris, Mark and I spent at Chris’s lake cabin. Right now, I have sunburned shoulders and homemade Key Lime pie lingering on my (also sunburnt) lips.
House hunting is exhausting, exciting and frightening. Andrew, Chris and I went down to Minneapolis yesterday to pick up Abbey and traipse around the town to find houses. The day began at 6:45 AM. I get sleepy just typing that time. We had three appointments, all looking at houses in the outer suburbs of Minneapolis. The first house was in New Brighton: a small, dusty town about 10 minutes (on a good traffic day) from Minneapolis. The house is huge and beautiful (on the inside; the outside isn’t really telling); the rent is cheap; there’s a practice space for the band in the basement; and I don’t know how to properly use semi-colons. The landlord was a kindly older man who offered to have the band play at his Ballroom Dancing Club.
Chris and I dressed up in business casual, him in gray dress pants and a green dress shirt; me in a demure black skirt and beige shirt. Our attempts to be professional adults also resulted in us saying ridiculous things like: “Oh, there’s a church near by! That’s lovely!” and “Yes, our band is a folk-jazz fusion,” nothing to belie the atheist/agnostic rockers we all are (almost, with the exception of Rick, our fifth roommate, who is both religious and folk-like).
The second house, in St. Louis Park (next to the city I lived in last summer), was nice, but had a man living under the stairs and no basement. The third house in Golden Valley had a pile of cute kittens and an overeager landlord who lived next door. Those were both out. We’re going back on Monday to look at more places, which exhausts me even thinking about it. I wish I could throw on my ratty jeans and t-shirts, and then kick back on the couch with my laptop in all the houses while everyone else said their, “Oh, this kitchen is lovely, is this new tile?” and, “Yes, there’s five of us, but we’re really searching for a quiet neighborhood.”
The New Brighton house had a duck, which makes it the most promising.
The bag breaks, spilling glass shards and cracked CDs onto the front steps. Erik steps over it. His ‘hello’ tells me something is wrong because I can still tell, you know. A year of being broken up doesn’t erase the ability to decode.
I clean the windows with orange scented Windex. Everything is orange scented lately. In the Godfather movies, oranges represent impending demise. I’m not buying that metaphor, and neither should you.
I greet Erik in the upstairs bathroom. He’s cleaning while pouting, his jacket still on. Apparently, there’s a misunderstanding. You were supposed to clean the front hallway. No, you were. Well, I have to leave. You don’t have to leave as much as I do. That’s Erik. I lean against the wall, self-conscious of tangled hair and stained pants. I say,
“What do you have to do that’s so important?”
He says, “I have to say good-bye to my girlfriend for the year. I won’t see her. And here I am, cleaning my stupid house.”
I am ruthless. “You should’ve made time.”
He had no time.
I turn to leave, throwing over my shoulder, “You shouldn’t have gotten a new girlfriend, then.”
He means this next statement to hurt. I can tell in the calculated pause. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Touché.
So, I start to cry, of course. I dump Pine Sol (lemon) into a dusty bucket, and mop the floor, crying. I drag the vacuum upstairs to my bedroom, which is next to the bathroom Erik is cleaning, and I vacuum, crying. Do I want him to hear me? Maybe. But most likely not.
The fingers at the end of my right hand shut off the vacuum. In the hallway, I think of what to say. How do sad endings work in movies? They say, “Have a nice life,” which means exactly the opposite. So that’s what I say.
He says: “You’re leaving. Bye.”
Silence, from my end. Not dramatic or awkward silence, but an empty styrofoam silence, a black hole of hallway air.
I say: “I probably won’t see you again.”
This could be true. He looks up for a moment, takes in my wet eyes, shrugs, says, “Okay,” and goes back to scrubbing the tub.
And that’s the last time I set foot in the house.
. . .
“And it wears me out, it wears me out
It wears me out, it wears me out
And if I could be who you wanted
If I could be who you wanted
All the time, all the time.”
Hi, kids. It’s been quiet because I’ve been moving out of the house I’ve been living in for two years, and moving (very temporarily) into Chris’s apartment. I’ve also been doing general getting-my-life-together things, which is harder than it sounds (ha!). Many many things are going to be different come next year, such as the absence of school in my life (for one semester), working an honest-to-goodness job with health benefits (when I find it), living in a new city (Minneapolis, when I find a place) and other piddly stuff.
This is the plan, at least. I’m relatively calm about it tonight, despite my usual hair-pulling freak-out sessions. My parents, to say the least, are not happy about my decision to take time away from school, but I, uh, don’t really have a choice (I won’t get into it), and working will be good for me and my independence and blah blah blah encouraginwordcakes.
I’ve been non-stop busy this past week, which is a pleasant change from my usual schedule of sleep, eat, surf the internet and fall asleep again in a wad of my own drool. Like I said, I’ve been moving, which is an annoying, overwhelming job. I’ve been reading the Ender’s Game series, so I’ve been thinking of doing a little Speaker of the Dead write-up for the end of this Nerd Era, if you’re familiar with that concept. We’ll see. I’m not too big on nostalgia right now, as it’s dangerous and sticky. Also, I don’t feel nostalgic, not really. I’ll miss the way the nerds and I were two years ago, but I can’t say I’ll miss any of my roommates when I leave, with the exception of Matt, who I’ll be seeing a lot anyway, since he’s in Sunny Wicked.
Many nerds graduated college on Saturday: Chris F., Abbey, Andrew, Alex, Dane, Rick, Mark, Erik (who fell asleep during the ceremony) and Chris J. to name a few. Here’s a link to the cast page, as linking all those names exhausts me.
Things I’ve been meaning to write here:
a. Rebekah Dot Org is back up. I first stumbled on her website in 1997, and was so impressed that I decided to make my own website, just like hers. She’s zosiablue’s momma, you could say.
b. I’ve been reading Sarah Hatter reverently lately because she is beautiful and brilliant.
c. A while back, two fellows wrote and asked if I would include a shout-out for them in my website. The shout-out, from NDawg and “ill”iams: “We would like to have shout outs to the following people:
T-Huck, Paul W, Acie, Biskithead, C-Toe, Sean Flynn, Loh, K-nipe, PM, TK, Dusty D. & all our indy people.”
d. Last Spring, Dane made an awesome music video to Sunny Wicked’s song Seraph. Here is the video. It’s a hefty 30+ meg download, but hey, my breasts are featured in it. It’s worth it!
e. Sunny Wicked has two new CDs out - a studio demo and the live professional recording of Chris’s senior recital, which was amazing stuff. If you’re interested in sampling an Mp3 or even buying a CD or two, let me know.
f. I know I’m forgetting things. My computer is finally all set up in a little corner in Chris’s room and I have much free time for the next few weeks, so I’ll be writing a lot. Peace out and word to mothers.
I wait up. I think I always have, even when I was in high school, when my parents were working graveyard shifts. I would lay half-asleep under my covers, listening for the grind of the garage door and the scattering of dog toenails, signaling someone was home. I would hear one of my parents talk softly to the dogs, pad up the stairs and peek in my room. By that time, my eyes were shut, as if I had been blissfully dreaming for hours. I would only open my eyes again when I heard the click of the lamp in the room across the hall, and then I would comfortably fall asleep to the soft glow that shadowed my ceiling.
I still wait up. When Erik began working longer nights in the last year of our relationship, I performed a similar ritual, though unconsciously. Again, the lying in bed, under his old down comforter, eyes half-lidded until I heard the loud bang of the door and his tramples up the stairs. I would say he could never do anything quietly, but he always opened my bedroom door with such a silent care - amusing in contrast to his herd-of-elephant jog up the stairs. Again, I would feign sleep, though when he crawled into bed he would always whisper my name and kiss me lightly on the forehead.
And here I am tonight, waiting up. I’ve long since abandoned the lying in bed schtick; now I sit at my computer in an electronic daze, convincing myself I’m not really waiting up. I’m just too lazy right now to hop in the shower and go to sleep, that’s all. I’m too content mindlessly flipping through the internet and chatting with friends to curl into bed right now. But, truth be told, I have my ear cocked towards the door, listening for the slam of the car door and then for Chris’s stealth entrance. And when he opens my bedroom door, I’ll smile at him from my computer, and feel instantly sleepy.
In my cheesy look-to-the-future secret heart, I hope someday (if) I have kids, they, too, will be lying tucked in beds with still-awake eyes, straining to hear my footsteps outside their door. And I know, already, on nights when I’ve stumbled into his apartment, regretting I’ve had more to drink than I intended, Chris has been waiting up. He turns to me with tired eyes, and we sleep.
Quickly, quickly: I was getting too much junk on my other zosiablue address, so you may now reach me at zosia AT zosiablue DOT com. Easier to remember, too.
Last night, I did indeed get sweet-young-thanged up in a sparkly shirt and poetically smudged black eyeliner. After many 7&7s, Dane and I took the the rather barren dance floor to flail and shimmy to Sunny Wicked. We danced until we were both sweaty messes, while the less brave set on the edges at tables, enjoying the music with more decorum. I can’t express the serenity that enters me when I have a little liquor + music + dancing. It’s meditation. Of course, as I left the dance floor to sloppily hug the rock stars, there was a twinge:
because there was a time when all the nerds were unified and when half of them saw me as something other than a dirty cheating liar. It’s true! There was a golden age! But circumstances intervene. Stories get twisted, exaggerated, ballooned into truths. We all have different brands of psychosis and insanity, and not all mesh with a loving aftertaste.
I thought all this silently, smoke-covered, angstily, in the car on the way home. I felt deep, dark, desperate. I thought: I can’t wait until I’m 40, and then I can say: “I was a mess in my 20s! I had ulcers, migraines, anxiety, depression, a cocktail of unhealth! I had just discovered that the world was one big lie, and I was struggling to find a single element I felt was truthful! I disliked myself and everyone around me. And then _____ happened, and everything changed.”
What is the _____? The big question.
At the same time: “I was a mess in my 20s, but I had it better than I knew it. I had relative beauty, misplaced intelligence, charming friends, the sweetest boyfriend! I had no bills, a car, a disposable income that wasn’t even mine, music, unlimited books, a keen eye for observation and compassion! I had no truths, but was in awe of finding them! I disliked myself, but was excited to change. And then ___ happened.”
Here’s a picture of my chopped-off hair. You also get a close-up look of the scary tendons in my shoulders.
Tonight, we dance. Sunny Wicked is playing their last show in Duluth at the NorShor tonight for the Homegrown Music Festival at 10 PM, so if you are 21 and/or have an accurate fake ID, you should come join in the sweaty jubilance of a college rock show. Sunny Wicked is practicing in the basement as we speak, and I have a feeling this will be the last time I’ll hear the drums vibrating my heating vent. They’ve almost become a comforting sound, something two years ago I never would’ve thought possible (four hours of constant drumming during nap time!).
Duluth is almost in Spring. Looks are deceiving. The sky is cloudless and the grass is starting to ripen, but the chill fucks everything over.
I’m still slightly sick, though it’s been a strange sickness, devoid of snotty noses and raw throats, and full of weird nose-bridge migraines and fever dreams. This will, however, not stop me from wearing a young-sweet-thang outfit tonight and ordering many 7&7s whilst stuffing the stirring straw in my pocket, only to be found later at the bottom of the washing machine and remembered.
I owe you and me both some writin’.
I’m a little delirious with fever right now, on the brink of flu or SARS or diphtheria or all three. I never have fevers when I get sick, so I’m new to the stereotypical fever haze. Everything seems overly acute, from the white plastic bag in the oak tree on 4th that I swore was a flock of seagulls or the bumper sticker on the back of the green rusted redneck truck in front of me that read “U.S. Bombs.” (U.S. Bombs? Is that endorsing the action or is it an incomplete sentence?)
I wanted to tell you about my mother’s visit, which was lovely and psychological. It becomes a vain behavior study: oh, that’s where I get my space cadet-ness from and my arched eyebrows and my mushball heart. I have an awesome mother. I wish I knew how to tell her that.
She made us (being Abbey, Andrew, Minh, Robin, Alex, Chris and I) a genuine Southern dinner the night before she left. Chris and I peeled red potatoes on the porch, kicking the peelings into the grass, throwing the small potatoes to the neighbor’s hungry looking dog. The eight of us feasted on fried chicken, the creamiest mashed potatoes in existence, real green beans, corn on the cob, Caesar salad, cornbread and real Southern sweet iced tea. The smell of frying chicken and buttermilk and cornmeal almost made me cry. I miss home, sometimes. At least that part of home.
My fever is alternating my fingers between hell hot and ice cold. Interesting. I should probably write out some sort of will, or I could just take some Nyquil and put my pansy ass to bed early.
Happy May Day. This day has a number of significances for me, but I’m not one to dip into history much anymore.
