Everything’s changing, or so the melodrama in me wants to think. There was a seismic shift this week, a gentle fingertip poke in a different direction, and now Time has become a jittery 16-year-old boy in his gym clothes who just noticed the cute brunette from his physics class is watching him from the bleachers, so he goes double-speed, even though his heart and his lungs are left about three feet behind him.
When Chris gets home from work, we sit on my bed and take turns telling stories from the day. This week, however, neither of us can sit down. He doesn’t even take off his coat and I meet him in the hallway. The news from both our ends is spit out at opera-climax speeds. There is an excitement, and there is an uneasiness, and there is the idea that now we’ll both be so busy that lazy Saturdays spent in bed, eating pancakes, watching movies on his computer and early weekday mornings, before the world begins, spent in lover’s silence - there’s the idea that there will be no time for this, now that we’re officially Adults, now that our Bohemia has relocated to an upper-level office building.
There’s the idea that when I talked to a different him, a him from another lifetime, and he spoke of marriage - there’s the idea that I’m too executive, too grown up, to have time to dwell. And the idea would be right, but there is the moment when time stilled and shifted, when the pear in my hand was halted midway to my mouth, when even the cat stopped circling my ankles long enough to look up, and I had barely enough breath to fill the static with, “Congratulations?”
The psychology behind job interviews thrills me in the “I’m skiing nose-first towards a spiky tree and I can’t stop” sense. Both parties in the interviews are stock characters in some existential play. Both people know the other is acting and reading lines from a crib sheet memory, but the thrill comes from neither person being able to acknowledge the script. In fact, acknowledging would lead to disaster, a type of sci-fi “twins who were never supposed to meet find each other” catastrophe.
I had an interview yesterday with two blonde women my age, or possibly younger. We were dressed the same, had the same long Herbal Essenced hair, held our pens with the same 1980s Denelian style, crossed our legs in a fish-net stocking blasé motion, and yet, the script called for us to pretend we spend our days in formal, chopped one-liners.
“Tell me what your colleagues would say about you.”
I can see a slip of black tattoo peeking through her shirt cuff.
“Well, I think they’d say I’m friendly, organized and tolerant.”
I shift in my leather raincoat. It’s my mother’s from the ’70s.
“Okay. And what are your weaknesses?”
She has a small shadow on the right side of her nose. Freckle or former nose hoop?
“Well. I’m a perfectionist. I really like things done right the first time. You know?”
My fingers are cold, and chipped with bright red polish. Why do I paint my nails? It never stays.
And I want to rip the script out of their hands, make it into a kickass paper airplane and sail it across the office. Then, I want to take off my jacket, fling off my uncomfortable, slightly-too-big black interview shoes, lean back and say
“Look. My colleagues would think I’m weird. Maybe weird in the good way, but only because sometimes I keep to myself, reading, eating fruit in a corner and sometimes I’ll sit on their desk in fuck-me jeans, playing with their paper clips and making jokes about yesterday’s poker game. I’m a perfectionist, but I’m also the most impatient person you’ll ever meet. I’m one of those people that never lets a frozen pizza cook all the way through and I quit a video game the first time my character dies. I eat raw garlic, and I get anxiety attacks like you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t leave the house for six months straight, but I’m fine now. In fact, I’m great. Fuck this. Let’s go get coffee. I’m trying to cut back on dairy, but I wonder if Starbuck’s still has Gingerbread Lattes. I don’t care about the job. I just want to know you. What does your tattoo mean?”
Then we would put on our coats and hats and rush out into the -30 wind-chill and give a big “fuck you” to the idea that you can only get a job by being a neutered, slick version of yourself. Coffee tastes so much better when you’re giving the corporate world the finger.
I went from having zero things to do to having six thousand, all flung in my hands in the same 24-hour period. This is a good thing as there were only so many times I could organize the recycling and my Mp3s, and invent new games with the cat (”I Am A Feline Accordion,” while popular, was getting old).
I have lot of little pieces (”pieces” is said, of course, in your best Masterpiece Theatre vocal styling) to slap up here once I am not nervously running around in my pajamas, trying to stay organized. The pajamas help, promise.
One piece is about a poker player with no ambitions tapping his sock-feet to The Doors late on a Tuesday night and the other is about falling in love with music and people and possibly Krispy Kreme. We’ll see.
P.S.: I’m sorry because I know you’ve read this everywhere else, but, holy fuck, it’s cold. I’m feeling the dire need for sunshine and fresh air, but I value the tip of my nose and the warmth of my lungs too much to even open the front door for more than .0001 seconds.
Typing is a sticky hassle right now as I spilled a cup of orange juice on my keyboard two days ago and wasn’t quick enough on the clean-up. The letters that seem to be sticking the most are the ones that spell out one of the passwords I use, so that’s been a fun, edgy challenge.
The results of the survey have been interesting, for lack of a cooler word. Fascinating, maybe? Not quite. There were requests for bare breasts, pictures of snakes fighting badgers, more stories about the Minnesota winter, cats, poems about toes and, quizzically, a request for more HIEEPEOTJHTJT. Conversely, one person hated my collages of rainbows and unicorns, so I’m really going to try to cut that down to only one per post. Okay, maybe two. There was also a request for less stories about my ex-boyfriends, but I’m pretty sure that came from Chris, since he wasn’t so subtle when filling out the “how do I know you?” portion. (”I am your boyfriend.”) Mostly, what I discovered is that there are a lot of you guys, and all of you are super nice people, and I totally want you all to e-mail me so we can now be best friends. Except I’m pretty terrible with e-mail, so it might be the type of friendship that blossoms over many many years, like a fine wine or aged cheese or, uh, something else that ages well.
A few people wanted to know if I had an organized updating schedule. Ha. Organized. Well, no. Sometimes I update in great spurts, and sometimes days go by without a word. I make promises about writing, and then break them, and then apologize, and basically, I make a pretty shitty web girlfriend.
Also, many people wanted to know what exactly I’m doing in life right now since I apparently seem vague on that end. Do I have a job? the masses* ask. I know you’re going back to school in the Fall, but what you are you doing in the meantime? the millions cry.
I guess I have been cryptic on that front, and while it’s really not some huge exciting thrilling gasping secret what I’m doing right now, I’m not quite ready to get into it. I will, eventually, most likely when I’m doing something different in my life, and then can look back on what I was doing now. Make sense? Maybe? If not, blame it on the sticky keyboard.
So, thanks for your answers. The survey is still open, if anyone wants to slander me or sex me up. I didn’t get nearly enough of both of those.
Later, I will tell you about the Ani DiFranco concert. For now, it’s time to do something productive like cleaning windows or origami.
* and by masses, I mean two.
So, I made this survey for you reader-people to fill out. It’s just a basic demographics thing, with one question about hair dye. Because that’s important, of course. You’ll notice I totally didn’t know what I was doing since the page is titled: [Your Survey Title]. I’m hoping for an existential approach. It’s anonymous, so I won’t know who says what, so take it if you love me. Or even if you love me, but don’t want to take it, that’s okay. If you hate me and take it, I’m down with that. If you hate me and don’t take it, it’s no big thing. If you feel slightly neutral to me, and take it, you’re good with me. If you feel - and yeah, you get it.
Tonight: Ani DiFranco. Last time I saw her, I puked in the theatre bathroom from excitement. I’m hoping for the same level of excitement this time around, with less stomach involvement.
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Last movie that made me cry like a wet baby, even when we walked out of the theatre, where I proceeded to cry into the wall, mumbling things like, “But he was so noble! He looked so noble!,” which caused those around me to think I was an absolute crazy person, except for Chris, who was hiding behind the trash cans weeping with me, too: Return of the King
Last snake named after me: This one
Last concert I would’ve seen if today was tomorrow at 11 PM: Ani DiFranco at the Northrop
Things I’m five years behind loving, which is always the case with things I really love: Lord of the Rings, Eddie Izzard, vanilla soy milk
Name for a kid that Chris and I could agree on, after two hours of hating each other’s name selections, such as his suggestions of “Lydia” and “Name,” and my suggestions of “Layla” and “Elf”: Starla
Number of heart attacks caused in people who now think I’m pregnant because of the last sentence: Three. (I’m not, no worries.)
Number of times I woke up last night convinced Chris was a mutated antelope trying to steal my ears: Two
A month after my high school sweetheart and I went through a very bad break-up, one in which I cried for two weeks straight and he vowed never to speak to me again, we found ourselves freshmen in a college where we knew no one but each other, and so, much to my delight and his reluctance, we drifted back together, as casual, careful friends. Instead of going to the parties and drinking the beer and meeting new people, we began a routine of sitting on a wall on Main St, eating pints of caramel ice cream and people watching. We commented on the young freshman girls in colored shirts and tight pants and white lip bitten smiles. They traveled in packs like peacocks, giggling in high nervous tones. The boys were no better, in their big jeans and plaid shirts and wallet chains. The packs passed each other in wide arcs, giving the up-and-down, the stray cat strut. It was late summer, still hot, and the various perfumes of the partiers gave the air a department store humidity.
We had a snide comment for every person we saw because both of us were too shy to join the pack, to wear the uniform of sociality. This was strange for Nick, as he was one of those people in high school who was everywhere and everyone. Someone who positively glowed in the hallway, someone who was known by the world and well liked. He wasn’t used to this sideline gig, this sitting on the wall in our scrubbiest clothes, observing, instead of being observed.
I had always been the observer and because of this, there was no where else I wanted to be. I wanted to stay on the side of this street, my shoulder slung amicably into Nick’s, eating this ice cream, watching these people. I had no hidden desire to pull out my party clothes, to be checked out by tall dark-haired jocks, to enter parties and hold plastic cups. I was still in love with Nick. And I mean sickeningly, stupidly in love, the kind where it’s like the flu and the first bite of an over sweetened pastry and falling off a boat and running a track meet in below freezing temperatures and snagging your fingers on a metal gate. I don’t know how else to put it, but I was still gone for him and the only thing in the entire world I wanted was to spend the rest of my life on that wall.
He didn’t feel this way. He wanted out. There was a restlessness in him, a party-boy without his party. He watched the people with darting eyes, searching for their secret, for a way in. He didn’t stop me from leaning against him, but he didn’t reciprocate, either, keeping his arm stiff and unmoving. He barely ate the ice cream, taking absent-minded spoonfuls every few minutes. He sighed and never looked at me, expect when I suggested we leave, and then it was only relief.
The next time I came to meet him at the wall, during our designated time, he didn’t show up. I sat, ate the entire pint myself, and kept a running commentary in my head. I didn’t see him in the pack of people, like I expected, because life is a movie, of course. But I knew he was out there, and while there was the small cold recognition of a love unrequited, I found myself not very sad. In fact, I wasn’t sad at all. I still didn’t want to be anywhere but on Main Street in Richmond, Virginia, licking caramel from a spoon, hiding in the fringes like a forgotten shoe.
Sometimes I think that’s all anyone needs to know to understand me.
A completely unremarkable picture of Tuesday Poker Night at my house
I’m in one of those phases where I keep reading fantastic and moving writing that paralyzes my own. I read these things, and suddenly, I’m a deflated writer balloon playing with alphabet magnets. I can’t write because everything seems unfocused and empty and just plain crappy. This is an unfortunate phase since this year, I’m going back to school for writing and applying for writing jobs, all the while convincing myself that I might as well begin making a living from my supposedly innate skill.
The only pride-worthy piece I’ve written in 2004 is my “special circumstances” essay on my transfer applications. As usual, I have bits and pieces of things, such as observations of poker night: Andrew in his straw Mexico hat, secretly glaring at Alex who dominated the table with his loud fast voice and new shaggy hair. I sat on the arm of Chris’s chair like a trophy card wench, drinking juice and nervously adjusting my shirt. This morning: the glazy, shoulder-aching feeling of waiting too long to eat lunch. I take deep breaths to focus my attention and encourage my body to distribute the oatmeal and apple to the correct blood cells, but it’s too late and I’m hazy on jumpy blood sugar.
But what else? I don’t know how to be a good storyteller without being dramatic or dry. You should see me trying to tell a story in person. I stutter, I laugh, I look down, I rush the ending and then I busy myself with a drink or a tablecloth while everyone tries to figure out what I just said.
I’ll keep reading and keep trying to write and hope that something unfolds. The truth is, my love comes from the observation, not the recording, and I’m not sure how to disconnect the two, while still conveying my discoveries.
There’s the idea if you say it all at once, in a jittery eager rush, then it will be out of you forever. If I tell you, tea cup clenched in my fingers, that he didn’t call on my birthday and why should I care, birthdays aren’t the end of the world and neither is he, and if I say to you, slumped on the couch, legs in denim slung over the arm, if I say: what’s wrong with me that I’m so restless and I use rush hour as an excuse to not walk across the street? Why am I so miswired, so electrified, but stuck staring out into the driveway, watching winter people walk from the gas station? Where are my coat and my gloves and why am I not on the other side of the glass?
When I say this, I want it gone from me like a poison. Spit out and dead on arrival and no way to return. I want to stand up, rub my eyes (mascara! I always apply mascara and forget), rummage for my shoes and leave, like it’s no big thing.
I have everything I need in this small space, but nothing seems to work correctly. What does an English degree do? You can write about it, but you can’t fix it. A theatre degree will add the color. But I’ve needed something else, this whole time. If I say it, will I lose it?
Well. I’m 23, and while I had an odd ageist fear of turning 23, the first four minutes of it have been pretty damn good. I spent the first five days of the new year sick as a dog, and the last five in a deep blue funk, but I just took a birthday shot of Pepto Bismal and I’m feeling a little peppier. 22 was one badass brain-breaking year, but, in the end, as painful as it is for my depressed artsy soul to admit this, it was worth it.
So, here I am. Let’s begin again. Or begin tomorrow, as now I’m being coerced into drinking soda (I never drink soda!) and watching Howard the Duck. Tomorrow, I’ll be attending a cheerleading competition. Earlier this week, I was standing barefoot on my front porch watching Andrew fling a bowl of hot water in the winter air to prove to Timothy the science of vaporization. They made a bet, and Andrew won a stale Double-Stuft Oreo.
Things are maybe sort of good, a little.
I’m drinking a beer and about to go to 80s cover band practice. This is a sentence I wouldn’t have predicted myself saying six months ago. I’m also listening to Nine Inch Nails, something my 13-year-old former self would be very excited about.
You’re always the person you think you’re not, and I think if there’s any lesson I’ve learned in the first quarter-century of my life, it’s that.
The New Year will be different. This sentence holds so much blinding promise on January first. I started the year with a deafening head cold, the taste of which was nostalgic and sexual in ways I haven’t been able to explain. I spent the first six days of 2004 spacy-giddy in my clogged and medicated state. Loopy and alive. Now I’m close to well, and everything that subsided during my sickness has returned. A dizzying production of: I’m not really here. I’m not really here. Am I really here? The tightness of neck, the sharp nails, the spotted pupils. The urge to fold, to grow dusty, or, conversely, to lay face down in the snow, a reversed snow angel, and be porcelain, a statue for winter birds. What has this year been that a sinus infection is the highlight? The old song of: I’ll be 23 this Sunday, a nice orderly number, and the scenery looks the same as 22. Have I not moved or does it just never change?
I didn’t want these old tunes. I wanted to say: the clock struck midnight and there was a popping, a lightening, like the relief of a pressured ear after a plane landing. There was something - there’s always something - and I’ve not regressed or thrown my body breathlessly against the bed, resigned and stolen, but I’m still having these moments, these evenings, where I have to steer myself, harness my limbs, close my mouth and wait. Maybe this will happen my entire life and the release will be my acceptance of it. Maybe I will eat the correct number of fruits and vegetables one day, and that will be it. Cured. Maybe I’ll meet a shaman in the middle of Edina and she’ll touch the scar above my lip and - cured. Maybe I will write these things and one day, I won’t be writing them anymore, and I’ll look out the window, notice it needs a cleaning and then realize absolutely nothing is wrong with me.
I’m breathing and drinking my Vitamin C and I’m jealous jealous jealous of nature and Mars and white bowls of oranges on the kitchen counter. But I am breathing and while I’ve always been told that’s the key, I’ve continued to suck in, to conserve. But I’m breathing now, and I can’t say I took a single breath in 2003. If success is measured by air, then I have no further to go.
So much to say and so much to do, but I’m stuck with this marvelous head cold that leaves me half deaf and sniveling over hot silver bowls of water with a towel draped over my ears. I have end-of-the-year site clean-up things and writings to post and stories to tell, and that will all come once I’m not zipped up in a fleece robe, calculating if I have enough energy to walk to the kitchen, open the refrigerator and drink some juice, activities which have the ability to flat-back me for the rest of the afternoon.
. . .
My New Year’s resolution:
“I want it back. The red earrings and blue
slips. Lips alive with spit. Muscles
twisting like boatropes in a hard wind.
Bellies for pillows. Not this ache in my hip.
I want the girl who cut through blue poolrooms
of smoke and golden beers, stepping out alone
into a summer fog to stand beneath a streetlamp’s
amber halo, her blue palms cupped
around the flare of a match.”
— Dorianne Laux