The night ended with a drunken brawl across the street. We walked out of the Varsity and a group of ten or fifteen college guys fell into the street, throwing loose open-fingered punches that were too fish-floppy to connect, but something connected anyway because a boy on the ground stood up with a hand to his temple and suddenly blood was everywhere, down his face, down his shirt, down his knuckles, on the pavement and for the split second I watched I had a stigmata-like reaction. My palms itched and my chin felt wet and I turned around to face a store window advertising paint colors.
I heard a bottle smash, and in my mind, it was a non-descript brown bottle, some remnant of a speak-easy, living its last seconds as a whole entity hovering over the face of some babyfaced 18-year-old. I kept walking, but then David stopped us all, said we had to watch because we’re journalists and journalists observe everything. But it’s just a bunch of frat boys with poor impulse control, someone said, maybe me. Andrea said, this happens all the time. Drunk Nate, whose liquor made him mean, crossed the street to the fight. Everyone yelled, so Mark ran across and pulled him back.
Why did you do that? asked David in the car. Because it was interesting, replied Nate. Nate is not a journalist, so he can walk in the throng and see the blood up close. Belted in the backseat, I wondered what it would take for me to walk in the middle of broken bottles and smashed faces, and ask, hey, what’s going on here? Instead they dropped me off, and in my building, I hesitated on the stairs by the mailboxes for a minute, trying to decide if I was wasted or tired or bored. My jacket smelled of all the drinks I spilled, of all the different places I stashed it during the night, and strangely enough, of the copper-alligator taste of new blood. When I finally made it up the stairs, I put my ringing ear to the door. I wondered if Chris would smell the blood. I took off the jacket and folded it neatly by the shoe rack in the hall. I could hear someone breathing, a cold sound. I waited until it slowed, then went inside.
September 1999 - December 1999
Dorm room the size of a closet on the second floor of Johnson Hall, VCU
Richmond, VA
My obscenely small dorm room at VCU has been well documented here. I was dating a rebound guy who was nearly seven feet tall and the span of his body was longer than the length of the room. How we did what we did in that room remains a physics mystery.
The ex-boyfriend, the one for whom I wanted the private room in the first place, was only there once. I took a picture that day. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and his hair is mussed-up and he’s making a really stupid face, one that, right after the camera clicked, I yelled, “GOD, why did you just do that?” A week after the picture was taken, the boyfriend met me by a tree in a park cheerfully nicknamed “Rapists’ Courtyard,” and gently told me never to speak to him again. I ran back to my room and ripped up the picture and stood on a chair with my head touching the ceiling to reach the small, barred window so I could throw out the pieces of the picture. It was a hot, unmoving September and the picture stayed on the sidewalk for a week. I walked by the pieces once with my rebound-boyfriend and he said, “Who would rip up a picture like that?”
The only other existing picture of the room (existing in my time period, that is. If I saw a photograph outside of those months, I doubt I’d recognize it) is one I took at 3 AM on a Wednesday. It’s a self-portrait of my bony, sunken face. It was the end of the semester, and I wasn’t really eating and I wasn’t doing much of anything except sitting in student commons with my legs slung over a blue chair, drawing slow, detailed sketches of my hands on notebook paper. In the picture, my right temple is scraped and bloody and my eyes are red, but I’m smiling hugely, an awful, carnival smile with my incisors biting on my lower lip.
In the background, the wall is blank and glowing white. Earlier that day, I’d taken down the collection of “thinking of you” cards my mother had sent me over the semester. I did not rip up this picture, but I should have.
Something about bones: I didn’t stop eating for a particular reason. You could say I was grieving and grief fills you up, or that my ex was into fashion and I wanted to pare myself down into something more attractive, but it wasn’t really any of that. It was more an obsession with bones. If I could whittle away skin, if I could tighten and smooth it, have a face like a snare instead of a discordant and messy keyboard, then I had accomplished something. It’s like when you look at yourself in the bathroom mirror after you’ve done something you’re unsure of. You look to see if something’s changed, and during those months, the changes I saw surfacely weren’t enough. I wanted to change from inside out. I wanted to be marrow.
I’m going to tell you something weird: in general, I’m not a happy person. It’s not because my life is hard or exceptionally tragic or anything you could sit down and highlight in a book; it’s just how it’s always been, and I’ve accepted it. It’s personal to me, and something I’ve fit into like a skin; I’d rather be otherwise, but I’m okay with this for now.
Here are the past happiest moments of my life in since 2000: one, a night in which I connected with three people so cerebrally, so soufully, the type of connection you have with one person a century, much less three, and we stayed up all night and ran up a hill over Lake Superior and collapsed into the sunrise and all that jazzy shit; and then there was — one moment, right before I saw a play I was really excited about, when I turned to my boyfriend in the parking lot of the theater and we were eating Byerly’s brie and crackers and I hugged him, and thought, GOD, this is great. And then — tonight.
It’s up there. I don’t know what it was — I got my hair cut and I loved it. I drank three drinks, perfectly, and I drank them with people I love to the ends of the planet, in my ribs, in my shoddy ventricles, in my lungs that hiccoughhed all the way to the womens’ bathrooms. I shared cigarettes like kisses, because, sometimes, when it counts, cigarettes are as close as you can get to public kisses. I saw two bands I adore, and listen: I’m a music-lover, but I don’t love all music, and to be a good music critic, I think you have to love all elements of everything. Hyperbole and amen. But tonight, my two favorite local bands played, and I stood in front with my third 7&7, smacking elbows with strangers, biting lips, curling toes, squinching eyes, feeling the aortic bass and — okay.
Here’s what it is: I was happy tonight. Some people are stingy with “love,”; I’m stingy with “happy.” It was here and it sparkled and I let it do all the things I normally shake my head at it. It was there, and we won’t analyze it. I’ll let you be the one who felt my happiness sixteen miles away. I think, “why?” and I’m unafraid to tell you — this is why. For now, at least. For 3 AM on January 21st of 2006. I think you want to go with me, too. I think you believe my tipsy evangelism. Okay? No fright, no worries it means what it means or if it’s right for the time — it is. And I’ll go. Okay? We’ll forget my sloppiness here, my repetiviness, my bad spelling. It glows, and I’m with it. Let’s go.
My parents found a temporary place to stay. It’s a small two bedroom in a neighboring city that used to be a collectible card shop. (The house, not the city.) The walls are made of corkboard, which triggers my Mom’s vertigo, and the bedrooms don’t have doors. Otherwise, there’s a place for the dogs to run, and my parents are both closer to work than they were in the old house. They’ve always wanted to live in this particular city, and now the talk is not “when we go back to the old house,” but “if.” Much of the stuff in the house went through its ozone treatment, but the actual framework of the place won’t be repaired until early summer.
My mother, a long-time lover of candles, is afraid of them now, even though the fire was determined to be electrical. (Electrical what, no one knows. I guess electricity just busts shit up, sometimes.) One night, the city’s tornado sirens went off to warn sleepers of bad weather, and my brother stayed on alert all night, just in case. All elements are enemies now. Despite this, my family is mostly settled, and doing well. The jumpiness doesn’t leave, and mentions of fire make them queasy, but given the circumstances, the recovery is smooth.
I started school on Tuesday. I’ve walked more in the past two days than I have in three years, and the back of my thighs ache. I like my classes — isn’t it amazing how universities coddle their students? There’s a bank, a coffee shop, tax forms, a travel agency, free hot chocolate and helpful smiling people every step of the way telling you exactly what to do. I suppose I paid for it, but suddenly, life outside the U of M microcosm seems desperately difficult in a way it didn’t before. I want to cuddle in the breast of the U of M forever, suckling the sweet easiness of the life there. Or something less graphic.
I’m caught up in business. I’m planning my 25 and 2 months birthday at the Hexagon for March, so be on the look out for that if you’re in the area, or if you’re not. My head is swimming with the learning right now, so I need a nap.
I’m feeling horribly awkward and hungover today. What’s with the 331 Club? Every morning after I’ve been there is king pain. They did serve tator tot hotdish and Frito pie last night, so I can’t complain too much.
It was a good birthday. Low-key, no fireworks, no ponies jumping out of cakes. Rick and Andrew sang me a little birthday song and I consumed my weight in hush puppies. Why do I keep mentioning food? I think it’s dinner time.
WORST HANGOVER EVER: Summer 2000; Duluth, MN; morning after Abbey’s surprise 19th birthday party. I don’t know what the hell I drank, but it was in the days when we mixed drinks with 19 parts Silver Wolf to one teaspoon Hi-C. Everyone else seemed to wake up fresh-faced and energetic, and I spent the whole day on the couch, watching the movie Billy Bathgate which was on repeat on some cable station. TO THIS DAY, Billy Bathgate makes me think of puking in a mop bucket, getting some of the puke in my hair and hurting too much to wash it out. Sweet sweet youth.
Two thoughts I always have at shows: a mixture of — I’m going to live forever! Yes, yes, sir, I am. I’m going to live forever, sitting in this chair at the front of the stage with my legs slightly spread in a skirt, drinking the cliche whiskey, nodding my head, thinking — shit, I don’t need money. I don’t need anything. I’ll take unsatisfying, soul-splitting jobs, just so I can sit in dive bars in the middle of the week and listen to my friends play good Band covers. Right? Right.
But there’s the moment in the bathrooms — leaning too close under the squinchy fluorescent light, holding one eye open while the other droops under the weight of drink drink drink and stupid idealism. The look in the mirror — the, what I am thinking? This moment, it lasts two hours at the most. The car ride home will be head against the window, the pigeon-white light streaming past, thinking, “Okay and okay and okay. Back to it. Back to it, again.”
I had this thing, I was thinking it hard when I was in the front row, in my long skirt and tall boots, ankles crossed, in the mood for a cigarette and a kiss against a brick wall. I was thinking it, and I forgot it. Is this age? Maybe not. Maybe the age was the mirror. Maybe the age was denying the cigarette; opening my laptop at the back booth to check my e-mail at midnight while the band was dismantling the drums. Maybe the age is zipping up my coat to cold and wishing I had gloves. I had this image of walking straight onto Lake Calhoun in my boots, right to the black fishing house some knob slash pioneer left in the middle of the lake. Being adventurous. Being beautiful in some sort of stupid moonlight. Being unlined. Too much to drink, tonight.
When I was 15 and imagined myself on my 25th birthday. I didn’t picture me, in pajamas with totally fucked-up tangled hair, lying on the couch on my stomach, eating french fries out of the last clean bowl. I pictured…buisness suits. Very straight teeth. IRAs. A garage and a husband. Why I thought this, I don’t know, considering that even at 15, I knew I wanted to be a writer or an actress, and that I didn’t want to get married.
I guess I thought I would come to my senses when I was 25; that a different sort of lifestyle would appeal to me. It was all — okay, you can mess around as a kid for a while, but 25’s it. End of the line. Time to be a grown-up. I mean, I’ve discovered that the parts of me I thought were immature or things I would grow out of are, in fact, facets of my actual personality. 25-year-olds lose their wallets, too. And sit in chairs with their legs twisted around each other. And wear old t-shirts and drive badly. But you know? I thought I’d be famous. I didn’t know I’d take all the detours and the crises.
Everyone says it, I know. It’s a cliche, really. But I didn’t know I’d still feel so much like a kid at this age. In many ways, I’m a grown-up — I’ve lived on my own for seven years now; I take care of my finances and my health; I cook and I clean and pay bills and write thank-you notes and have dinners with friends that don’t end up in keg-stands. But I still feel so gangly, tongue-tied and little; hiding behind my hair, curling my toes when I’m nervous, making french fries at midnight, crying when something hurts, slamming the occasional door when I’m angry. Does it end? I mean, I can see it in my face that I’m older — I said this before, but there are things in my face that weren’t there two years ago. They make a difference, these shadows and grooves.
I’m terrified of aging. I always have been. There’s a lot of catchphrases to be thrown at me, but I won’t believe them. I believe aging can be tragic; look at all the obsessed poets, the endless odes to innocence.
This is all the age panic I’m allowing. Here’s a lesson I’ve learned in my old age: things get figured out whether I worry or not. I will not be happy all the time; given how my brain works, I might not be happy much of the time. But it gets worked out. It ends or it continues or you move away, but nothing stays tangled forever. Why is that?
Other birthdays: 24, 23, 22, 21, 18.
I’m learning about fire. I learned there are companies who specialize in getting the smoke smell out of clothes and books. They put the items in an ozone room, shut the door, and flip a switch. I learned smoke is oily, and it makes your skin feel fishy and slick and the smell sticks to you for days, no matter how much you scrub. I learned that not everything burns; the beds and the oak drawers and a chest of my mother’s homemade quilts are gone, but her purse and all its contents survived. Her glasses, which she calls her “bling-blings” because they have a cluster of fake diamonds on the side (Mo-om!), are charred, but intact. My brother’s fiancee found my father’s class ring under a pile of insulation on the back porch.
Did you know firefighters throw everything through the window while they’re spraying down the room? Chairs, bottles of nailpolish, framed pictures, lace pillows — they break the window with their hose and throw it out. I learned that the guest bedroom — the one I sleep in when I visit because my old bedroom is an office (it burned) — didn’t catch fire at all. The door is black and the ceiling is water-spotted, but the room is intact.
The contractor will soon walk through and pile everything outside. I worried about the big boxes of papers I had in the closets, old notes and love letters and school things. My Mom said, they’ll go in the ozone room, too. I learned a destroyed house only takes five months to rebuild. They can return in May.
The night of the fire, my father couldn’t speak to me on the phone. My father is a brilliantly articulate man, and for the first time, he sounded his age — 71. My parents are half-full folks. My Mom has always rolled up her sleeves with tragedies and fixed them, and if she couldn’t fix them, she rearranged them so they didn’t seem so bad.
But I was in the thrift store yesterday, collecting things in a basket to send to them. They don’t need anything, really. Their friends are helping. Insurance will pay for everything, even the hotel stay. But I needed to do something, so I picked out clothes and candy and books and it felt almost unbearable, this idea that I was putting together a package for my family whose house burned down. I keep picturing my mother opening the door to the bedroom, where the fire started, and seeing a room of flames. What would that be like? To think everything is normal, and then to open a door and see everything you knew on fire. What does the heart do?
I know when I heard the phone message, I screamed, but my heart kept going. The scream was strange and involuntary; it slipped out like an accidental siren. To me, the house doesn’t mean much. I grew up there, but I don’t seem to get attached to places. What screws me up inside is picturing my parents on the lawn, watching their house burn. My Mom with no shoes, holding onto the dogs’ collars. My Dad, who is sensitive about these things, who wants so much for these things never to happen, on the street as the fire truck pulls up. My brother, his fiancee, the neighbors, the dogs, the chaos.
But how there must’ve been this silent black hole forming in each of their stomachs. The thought of living 71 years without seeing a single thing burn like this. How everything you love is tied up in what’s burning. I only know how I felt the moment I played “what if” — what if they didn’t get out time? Everything I love would be tied up in what’s burning.
This isn’t something I’ve felt before.
My parents’ house (and the house I grew up in) caught fire yesterday and burned. Everyone’s fine — including the dogs — and holed up in a hotel right now. I’m going to write more, but I needed to get this out there. It’s surreal and it’s terrible, but no one was hurt, and more will be saved than originally thought. Okay, New Year, let’s start with a story.
Three things apparently in for 2006, if evidenced by my behavior in the past three days:
1. Wearing your pajamas to work and passing them off as real clothes by accessorizing with sparkly earrings
2. Home haircuts. A mistake yet again, of course.
3. Shutting off all the telephones, because, really. Who actually likes the sound of a ringing phone? Our home phone rings constantly because our number used to be Bella’sfuckingNails. My favorite is when Chris answers the phone and a potential manicuree is completely baffled by a man’s voice at their nail place. One woman asked if he gave manicures, even after he informed her that this number did not, in fact, lead to Bella’s Nails. He does not give manicures, though I bet he wouldn’t be bad at it.
P.S.: I love news stories like this. Just because. Mozart’s skull! Maybe it’s just the two words pushed together.
So! Happy New Year and all that. Here’s a picture of an insane-looking Chris and me a few minutes after midnight, as captured by David De Young. We were at the Varsity, guzzling cheap champagne and surrounded by women in fishnet stockings. David was close to the end of his marathon rock show tour and in a amazingly focused zone, so when I held out my glass to offer him a drink, he leaned back to take a picture of it instead.
The Varsity was spilling over with a palette of people — thin men in fedoras, short men in red flannel and baseball caps, women in white debutante evening gloves, twin sisters stamping hands and checking IDs, dark-eyed 20somethings in jeans and lingerie tops, with straight hair and shy feet. It was a mix of glam and ordinariness, and while I spent some time on the floor, most of the night was in the lobby, in a corner by a drink table, eyeing the partiers, watching servers balance round trays of champagne glasses. Always the observer, never the participator; always a Nick, never a Gatsby. It’s what I’ve cultivated and it’s what I like. I think.
New Year’s has notoriously been my favorite holiday, mostly because I feel like I can throw off all the crap and the weight of the previous year, and recharge some of the hope that’s inevitably on empty by December. I feel hesitant about this year, for some reason — not in a negative sense, but I’m walking into it like a new relationship, standing a few feet away with hands behind my back and hair in my face. I’ve had “Pictures of You,” in my head for a week, mostly the line, “You finally found all your courage to let it all go,” because, well, you know?
All of it, all the days I spent with my hands on the edge of the sink, insulting my face, pulling at the fat on my hips, tonguing my crooked teeth, cringing at a stomach that won’t stay flat. All the days I put an apology in every word I said, even “hello,” as if I offended by breathing. All the nights after I laughed too loud and worn too much eyeliner and leaned too close to strangers, all the nights I came home and sat on my bed and held on with my eyes closed, reeling the soft parts back in. All the days I watched others do things better because they wanted it more than I did, my desires so bloaty and edgy that they cancel each other out. A friend told me he never felt older than he did at 24, and since I’ll be 25 in a few weeks here, maybe it’s time to reverse, stop my brain from catapulting 20 years in the future, stop clogging it with “what ifs” and consequences. Just do more, and think less. I don’t usually make bad choices, but sometimes I don’t make any choices, and I’m sure there’s some quotation somewhere warning against that existential danger.
2005 was a bizarre year. A good year for growth and all that shit, but a bizarre one. I wish I could tell you everything. Maybe in five years? We’ll make a date. I’ll say, “Can you believe ________ happened?” and you’ll say, “Who are you again?”
To steal from another friend, here’s to being brave and honest and kind in 2006. Always and forever ever with the kindness. Even when you’re jealous and angry and sad and disgusted and don’t believe in the inherent goodness of the people around you. I think we’re all just scratched up and weary for comfort. You want to be liked. You want to be successful. You want to be right. Me, too. The universal me and the universal you. Okay? Okay. Let’s do it.