Also, whenever someone whips out an engagement photo or mentions having to go to sleep early because of work in the morning, I want to shake them and the planet and scream, “Can you please turn into the crazy streaking puking drunk you used to be! Can you please go back to knocking on my dorm room at midnight in only your underwear to ask me if I want to go to Perkins for coffee or fries! Can you please take that grown-up stubble off of your chin and morph into a skinny 18-year-old with unconfident hands!”
But no one ever listens. I never thought I would be the person left behind, the one who wasn’t ready to go where everyone else was going. But, here I am. I could handle this crisis of age much better if I had more money and more of a drive to be immature and nuts. Immaturity only seems to work if the idea of a good time isn’t hiding at home with a book or Scrabble. I don’t want to grow up, but I also don’t want to be my age. Is this the eternal plight or something?
A busy week. Our house normally holds five 20somethings and two cats, and this week, it’s held my mother, Dan, Luke and soon, Minh. Sunny Wicked played a fantastic gig at Lee’s on Tuesday, and, man, if you live in the Minneapolis area and you’re not seeing these guys — you’re missing out. I’ve seen them sixteen thousand times, and they still manage to blow me into the future. There was a surprise trombone at the end of the show, and I can’t resist surprise horns.
Thanksgiving was food in Young America with Chris’s family and my mother, and, of course, my Mom managed to nestle right in, as she does in all social situations. In terms of being social, she’s what I’d like to think of as me at my best or drunkest, but, really, no amount of perkiness or whiskey could make me the Southern charmer my mother is.
The weekend has more activity to go, and I’m feeling overstimulated by people and food and smells, so I sneak time to myself when I can. If I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever known loneliness. I feel fortunate for this, but there might be something vital I need to learn from being lonely. I’ll search for the lesson elsewhere, however.
I’m going to ruin my ears and like it. Then, not only can I say I lost the hearing in my right ear because of the Shingles Mishap of 2004, I can also say I went completely deaf because of a rock concert in a bar that looks likes a VFW.
The only reason I’m not an alcoholic is because I don’t have the money to really commit to it.
Oh, oh, this* is what I really am — not the rock star’s girlfriend; not the shy hermit who avoids phone calls and doorbells in fear of having to sustain a personality — but this, the girl who loves whiskey and drums and sits back on her haunches and howls.
The letter to the drunk feeling is: dear you, don’t go, don’t go, don’t go.
Suddenly, being a writer appeals to me in way it never has. I went the writer route because there was nothing left. But this — the girl with tangly hair who scribbles poems on napkins on dirty bar floors — I can handle this role.
Why weren’t people made to be like this? The third drink, the ending bass vibrating the floor and my skin — this seems perfect. Here are my friends — 20something, beautiful, brilliant, playing trombones, slick faces, long fingers, white smiles — there is something to be remembered here.
*on the napkin, I actually wrote the HTML for italics
In between the literary magazine panic-fests, this has been a weekend of games. Last night, I played two intense games of Clue at Chris’s boss’s house (and lost both), and tonight, the boys are playing Lord of the Rings Risk. The Clue games last night were preceded by a candlelit Italian dinner and all-natural pumpkin pie. Board games in the past used to be drunken screaming fests. Though I think I prefer this civilized, less liver-intensive version, I still felt about five years old and gangly. I have a feeling this might never change for me.
To make myself feel better, I took a blurry mirror picture.
It’s weird to hear ice cubes rolling around in a plastic cup in winter.
In other news, this has been an extremely stressful week, 99.9% because of the literary magazine I edit. I won’t go into the details just yet, but let’s just say I’ve woken in a frenzied panic for four days straight. I even drank beer last night and woke up at 9 AM on a Saturday. I really hope everything gets resolved today, though it’s not looking likely. I don’t know what’s worse for me — the beer or the 9 AM. Either way, I’m feeling wired and out of sorts.
I’m weary of my outrage filters. I think this is what higher education has done to me — filled my brain with the theses of loud, established, highly opinionated people and while I eventually expect to break away and form my very own insightful, fascinating ideas, for now, I’m stuck with six levels of filters my mind shuffles through before I can have an opinion.
There was a commercial on the radio today about something political or something serious at least (I completely forgot what the actual topic of the spot was in the two minutes I’ve been writing this). It featured the voice of a bubbly, ditzy young woman extolling the virtues of her rearview mirror, which was apparently going to aid her in keeping track of the serious subject at hand hand, whatever that subject may be, which I don’t recall since I’ve completely lost my last memory marble in the span of this paragraph. Anyway, the girl ended the spot by saying, “And this way, we can be informed and look good!”
Here’s how my filters go:
1. Oh, how horribly sexist!
2. Now, wait a moment. Is that sexist? What’s wrong with embracing femininity and desiring to be beautiful? Just because I’m not the girliest of girls doesn’t mean it’s sexist to be a girly girl.
3. But isn’t this just perpetuating the stereotype that all women care about is appearances and won’t consider a serious issue unless they can be beautiful while doing so?
4. Wait. I wear mascara everyday. Does this make me a girly girl? Am I trying to deny my own girlishness because I don’t want to perpetuate a stereotype?
5. Am I sexist against my own gender?
6. Fuck!
And so forth. This has been happening at least sixteen times a day to me. I come home, exhausted and brain-dead.
. . .
Occasionally, I get the urge to write a list of all the things I positively, firmly believe in. Whenever I attempt to begin, however, the filters kick in and I question each value I’ve written. The only one that’s ever passed the test is: “I believe in being kind to each person I meet. I especially believe in being kind when it’s difficult to do so.” After that: nothing.
. . .
I don’t think I’ve ever said this before, mostly because I’m not normally a busy person, but: I need a vacation.
Also, continuing with the Chris Has a Drink Saga, during a cutthroat game of Balderdash last night with the house, Chris actually got slightly tipsy on half a Peach Schnapps and 7UP, and one shot of said Schnapps. I kept asking him every five minutes if he felt something, and his reply was always, “No, I don’t think so.” But then he told a long, confusing story about a previous game of Balderdash involving small children and Guatemalans, while giggling hysterically in between each sentence, and that’s when we all realized what drinkers like to call “a slight buzz” had been accomplished.
On a sidenote, did you know a “dandypratt” is a midget? That somehow seems inappropriate.
I’m not poor in the hardcore definition of poverty — I have shelter, food and a car — but I don’t have luxury money. All entertainment has to be free or someone else’s treat and I’m fine with that, for now, since I know everything will eventually change, for a variety of reasons. Chris is in the same situation, but he came into some extra money yesterday and decided to take us out to lunch at the good vegetarian restaurant in the GALLERIA: SHOPS OF DISTINCTION.
The GALLERIA: SHOPS OF DISTINCTION is the upscale strip mall across the street from our house. The five of us live on the border of a verrrry wealthy city in Minnesota — one of the wealthiest — and so whenever we venture out in our thrift store pants and old army coats, we get looks. I mean, we don’t look completely out of place — we’re clean and well-groomed, just rumply in comparison to the diamond-encrusted Ladies Who Lunch of this city. Yesterday was no exception. Chris was in a hoodie and torn jeans and longish hair, and I was the same. We got a few looks, but that’s not really my point.
We were in Williams and Sonoma, looking at ten dollar whisks and red tomato knives. We hadn’t eaten breakfast and were starving, but our table in the restaurant wouldn’t be ready for another 20 minutes. Williams and Sonoma had a free bread and oil bar, so we surrounded it, trying our best to appear as if we were just sampling the GALLERIA: SHOPS OF DISTINCTION’S fine oils, instead of stuffing our faces with free bread. There was also free hot apple cider, so we took the little cups from the wary saleswoman’s hands and perused the wall of rooster china and gourmet mustards.
Chris and I find ourselves in situations like this all the time, just as I imagine most just-starting-out 20somethings do. We make our plans in places like this. We play the, “When we have our own place….,” and “When we have money….,” game. When we have money, we’ll have matching dishes, all blue. We’ll have a good coffee machine and a sharp set of knives. When we have money, we will most definitely not buy junk we don’t need, such as a “greens drying towel” or a special knife just for the tomato. We’ll be sensible. We’ll have a plasma screen for movies, but won’t get cable TV and we’ll have a huge bed with down covers, but only four pillows. Sensible.
In the restaurant, we marvel at cream in the silver pot. Cream in its own pot! This is also a game we play. We pretend neither of us grew up in fairly well-off upper middle class families (which we both did) and have never experienced luxuries, like cream in its own spouted pot. To be truthful, since we’ve been in what’s considered the Adult World, it feels like all these things are brand new. Exotic grilled vegetables. Sweet-smelling flowers in a white china vase. New winter coats with fleece insulation. All of these things feel like a foreign country. At home, we have spaghetti and thrift store scarves and well-loved board games. This is still not the point.
I guess the point is this: after lunch, Chris, the sweet addict he is, had an intense craving for chocolate. There was a small chocolate kiosk across from the restaurant with glass cases full of gaudy candies. Chris decided he would buy one piece, if it wasn’t too expensive. In front of us was a couple our age, but obviously in much different circumstances. They looked like sleeker versions of us. They even smelled expensive, the type of perfumey scent you always smell in fancy department stores. The man was buying the woman a box of chocolates, and he handed them to her once he had paid. They both looked absolutely bored. She stuffed the box into her purse, and they walked away.
Chris took ten minutes to choose his one piece of caramel pecan dark chocolate. The women working at the shop were round and jolly, perfect for their occupations. They carefully wrapped his chosen piece in gold paper and handed it to him reverently. The smile on his face ripped my heart in little shreds, the good way. He took small bites for the next twenty minutes. By the time we pulled in our driveway, the corners of his lips were full of chocolate and I was suddenly so happy I had to leap over and kiss his mouth clean.
I need to start drinking gin. All good poetry seems to involve gin. I do drink whiskey, another poetic alcohol, but I drink it with soda and don’t really like it. Gin sounds like an achievable goal.
In related news, if you want me to come home all mooney-eyed and write long, disjointed jazz poetry about you, be a writer who knows what he’s doing with that punch in the heart.
Sometimes I feel like Minnesota is a spoiled cake for me, and as we all know, I can’t bake worth shit. I don’t have patience to search for measuring cups, so everything is calculated by my completely a-mathematical eyes. My cakes taste eggy and lumpy, and I always forgot to wait for the frosting to cool before I write the birthday message. This is, of course, based from the one cake I’ve made in my entire life, but that one cake was experience enough to know I needed to make a new one. Which I didn’t. People ate it, semi-reluctantly, but it could’ve been better. And so I feel about this state.
I feel like I’ve muddied things up and down the river in Minnesota, and I just want a fresh start. Everything is a little too beyond repair to stay and fix things. This is all metaphorical, of course, because I’m finally at a point where I can say things are going well at the moment, with the 4.0 average and the cats and the nice boyfriend. But the feeling of “shit, I need to get out,” never quite leaves — leftovers, I suppose, from being an Army brat.
I won’t leave. I know it. I moved here five years ago with the intention to be gone in a year, but shit happened, as it does and shit continues to happen, and pretty soon, I’ll have sixteen Minnesotan children and a mortgage in my name. Where is Bohemia? Where are my gypsy wiles? Lost, I suppose, to needing to eat and needing a warm winter coat. I’ve never been a distance fighter, anyway. I’ll fight for a while, but a comfy bed will win me over every time.
I’m pretty sure what this site needs now is some cats:
Do we all feel better yet?
I read this, and then I went to Wal-greens to spend a gift certificate. I bought eyeshadow and bronzer because I feel ugly lately, which I suppose is just another element of what I like to call my 20something RePuberty. I don’t know why I think eyeshadow and blush will help this. It doesn’t even enhance much and I’ve always looked alien-ish and squash-colored with tan cheeks. But I bought it anyway and walked to my car and felt like smashing the bag against the light pole. Smashing things is also a symptom of the RePuberty.
And though I’ve never wanted to be the person that says, “How stupid is buying eyeshadow on a Friday night when hate is being published in textbooks? Why bronzer, when legislature wants to brainwash children, encouraging dangerous alienation?” I’m usually the one who counts on the eyeshadow and peach tea and green fuzzy sweaters to get me through things like this. Oh, here goes the world, but I have two gray cats and AirAmerica on my car radio. But even AirAmerica was replaced by a football game tonight and I couldn’t stand the fact that I was buying make-up while eleven states congratulate themselves for being hateful.
The internet is full of people saying, “Stop being melodramatic! Shut the fuck up, you whiners!” But this isn’t whining. This has suddenly changed to something hotter and more urgent. A year ago, I wasn’t involved with anything. I didn’t leave my house for six months and slouched at my computer and felt nothing. There’s been a seismic shift. I don’t need slate gray shadow, #332. I need a fucking plan.
I think it’s time for another super sexy Demographics Survey! It’s completely anonymous, unless you don’t want it to be. Indulge my nosiness and love for statistics.
P.S.: I didn’t include this, but don’t forget to give me your website address, if I don’t have it. I like new people.
Hi. I feel sort of sad about humanity right now. Before, I was drunk on brandy shots and in a room full of people throwing purple styrofoam bricks at the television, but now I’m home and sobered up and feeling heavy in the heart. I’ve been feeling completely broken over the nasty nature of people this week, anyway, but this — like I said on another internet home, this feels like a personal offense. But they say it’s too close to call.
While drunk, I tried to rationalize the human instinct to be mean to fellow members of the species. Evolutionary wise, it makes sense — one needed to defend food and land, and the less people in competition for those things, the better. I think compassion is learned. I think empathy is an instinct — but compassion takes practice. Maybe most people are too lazy for compassion. Maybe it’s easier to believe we’re not all in the same fucking boat here.
I think a revolution needs to happen elsewhere — I don’t think going door-to-door cuts it anymore. We’re in the age of bright lights and naval piercings. Inflitrate the media. Don’t become a reporter. Become a CEO. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were that easy?
Also:
“I fight it as if I’m drowning. When I get to feeling I am an army of one standing out on the plain waving my ridiculous little flag of hope, I call up a friend or two. We remind ourselves in plain English that the last time we got to elect somebody, the majority of us, by a straight popular-vote count, did not ask for the guy who is currently telling us we will win this war and not be ‘misunderestimated.’ We aren’t standing apart from the crowd — we are the crowd. There are millions of us, surely, who know how to look life in the eye, however awful things get, and still try to love it back.”
–Barbara Kingsolver
Here we go.
Click the blurriness for more
Last night was a high-rolling dinner at The Melting Pot for Andrew’s 24th birthday. We ate fondue for five straight hours. Our waiter ran face first into another server carrying a tray of glasses and then swooped into our party room and yelled, “I ain’t cleaning that up.” Someone in a Hannibal Lecter costume walked by and the blue strobelight fire alarm flashed for about an hour, but dinner was fun and giddy and I only spilled my drink once and I didn’t get any cheese or boullion on my clothes, a feat in itself. And now Andrew is 24, which means I’m next. Is 24 the age where people start taking you seriously?
. . .
In an unrelated note, sometimes I’m thankful for the small things that remind me I’m grateful for my roommates and my friends. Every once and a while, I’ll spend an unnecessary amount of nostalgic time and energy trying to repatch old friendships or, at the very least, keep in touch. The grapevine is not the best place for news, but it often contains more truthful information that one would receive directly, and, so, I got the kick in the ass I needed: people have left my life for a reason, and though I always want the cinema, it’s best that most of the people I left behind in Duluth (even if they have since relocated) stay there.