Chris used to catch fireflies in his mouth when he was young. He’d block off his throat so they couldn’t fly down and then he’d turn to his sisters and smile with bright green teeth. It had a ghoulish effect, though I’m sure he wanted it to be magical.
We were sitting around a camp fire at midnight in Longville when he told me this. He was burning old credit card receipts and junk mail, standing up every few minutes to move the paper around with a stick. The paper only burned on the outside for a while, leaving the writing still readable. I had an insane moment in which I wanted to reach in and save the junk mail, because what if? Who knew what was really being burned? We were talking about fireflies because Chris thought he saw a shooting star over the lake. I’ve never seen a real shooting star, so I don’t believe they exist. I told him it was probably a firefly. And he then opened his lips and grinned.
I was thinking about this last night when I was on a couch in the basement of a club, taking a break from the chaos upstairs. There was a handful of people in the lounge, and the music was dense and muffled. I was sleepy. I didn’t like what I was wearing, and I was out of money. Next to me was an old piano no one played. I assumed it was broken, but who knew? I’d never seen anyone try.
I was feeling cheap and zapped, the way I often do when I have too many conversations with people whose insides are on their outsides. I put long hard hours into keeping myself tucked away. Maybe there’s a moment when I climb a stage and yell into a crowd that doesn’t yell back (it happened), but for the most part, I stay in a basement slouched on a sofa, waiting for it to be over.
In the doorway, the lights from the upstairs stage traveled and pulsed green. I recollected and went back, but not very bravely. There is nothing magical in what I do; it’s easy to disappear inside yourself.
At one point, I asked Dave, “Are you afraid of the stars?” It was an open-ended question. He said, “I don’t think I’ll be getting close to the stars anytime soon.” Fair enough. At the end of the night, I walked to the corner and waited, unlit cigarette in my right palm. The sky was clouded with everyone’s smoke, so I saved mine. Chris drove up, but I hesitated. The car was dark and I couldn’t see his face. Which side was he on, you know?
May 2000 - September 2000
House on College St.
Duluth, MN.
Part one here.
Part two here.
Summer after freshman year, Abbey and I subletted her sister’s house on College Street for the summer, a beautiful two-story a mile from the school. It was my first summer away from home, but I’d never considered going back to Virginia. My bedroom was unfurnished, so I borrowed a leaky air mattress and a desk from the basement, and essentially lived out of my suitcase for three months. It never occurred to me to decorate. Growing up in a military family makes you reluctant to put tape on the walls and clothes in the drawer.
I’d never been on my own in that way before. Abbey, a stage manager, pulled long hours at the repertory theatre all summer. I was working phones in the financial aid office at school. Erik and I were dating, though I was reluctant to commit to anything serious. He was living in Fargo, working at his father’s hospital, so we switched weekends driving the dull four-hour stretch.
I’d never had to cook for myself before, so I ate cans and cans of green beans and corn and TV dinners. I pretended to smoke cigarettes in the bath tub, pretending because inhaling made me cough and I was afraid of setting the curtain on fire. After work, I’d sit in the old Barnes and Noble on the hill, and read book after book on subjects I’d never considered studying outside of school - thick volumes on black holes, dry biographies on poets, even car magazines. I got to know the regulars, and we’d wave and smile when we saw each other. I went running in the evenings, straining up Duluth’s horribly steep and twisted hills. I’d wake to my air mattress deflated in the morning, and would pump it while I drank my coffee. Some weekends, friends visited and we had boozy parties, mixing disgusting drinks that only 19-year-old stomachs can digest.
I was lonely, but I was content. I read a lot and pined a lot, but Duluth in the summer is the perfect place for that sort of thing. A lake that size can make anyone feel romantic, but it had a different effect on me. It felt like a cushion and an opportunity. I was the most independent I’ve ever been - I wasn’t attached to my parents or a boyfriend or even friends, really. My time was mine, and it was long and it was dull, and it was quiet and sweet. When we moved out to start the school year in September, I had a suitcase, my computer and a few boxes, which all fit with room to spare in the back of my Hyundai. My hair was red from the sun and hit just above my waist.
I don’t know who owns that house now.
Chris calls from downstairs. He’s just gotten home from work. He says, there’s a rainbow! I’m in the kitchen making spaghetti and holding a plastic colander in my hand. I look out the window and tell him I can’t see it. He tells me to come downstairs. I’m wearing pink pajama pants and a green tank-top. My hair’s still wet from the shower. I tell him I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a rainbow, though suddenly, I do.
My senior year of high school, 4th period Sociology. Our school had an overflow, so half our classes were in trailers. I’m inside, waiting for class to begin, when someone runs in and says there’s two rainbows in the sky. The whole class rushes out, my very pregnant teacher included. We ooh and ahh. My teacher holds her stomach. In two years, she’s going to die of cancer, but for now, she’s thinking of telling her baby about the double rainbows. Or so I assume.
Today, I walk outside barefoot, holding the phone and the colander. Chris is by the garage. We crane our necks, but can’t see it. He says, come over by the church parking lot and then he notices my bare feet. The alley is covered in rocks. He offers his back to me and I hop on without thinking, even though I’ve always been afraid of piggy-back rides. He carries me down the alley and into the parking lot. I’m laughing, a little nervous about being dropped, but suddenly aware that love is happening, that some sort of moment is happening here, and I’m in it and then I laugh loud enough to snort, which makes him laugh and my arms squeeze his chest, my wet hair draping across his face as I lean in.
He lets me off in the parking lot and the rainbow’s huge, with a pale afterimage next to it. We talk about the last time we saw rainbows. People drive by and look up to see what we’re staring at. A car pulls to the side of the room and a man gets out to look. We watch for a long time, then walk back through the grass so I won’t hurt my feet. The spaghetti’s boiled too long, so we eat cheese and crackers on the couch, and lean in.
I didn’t take a picture, but you probably know what I mean.
It was my friend Dave’s birthday last night. Highlights include having a dance-off with a guy in a mesh shirt, white cupcake mustaches, intense conversations about torties and vanilla beans and David Byrne look-alikes. My photos are here, and other photos from the night can be found here. If you didn’t know before these photos, I’m pretty much the most awesome dancer you’ll ever see.
Hi, I’m going to return to normal posting frequency and more after I take my last final on Wednesday and then go to the Hexagon and drink a lot of liquor. Last night, I had a dream the Constitution was trying to kill me. This was shortly after the dream where Wikipedia spoke at my wedding.
In the meantime, you can picture me in the same jeans and hoodie I’ve been wearing for two weeks straight, my hair braided like The Sound of Music and Zwan on repeat, because apparently reading about the Middle East reminds me of Billy Corgan. Until then.
I started an unintentional not-so-art project on my Flickr page. It’s not meant to be as mysterious as presented, but I suppose it represents my station of sorts, the eternal waiting room and all that flowery shit.
For the past week, I’ve been crash-coursing myself on the Middle East for school, reading thousands of pages, writing clinical papers, underlining key sentences on the bus while I chew mints to keep from losing my gut to the person next to me (the busses have been bumpy lately). I could tell you so many things. Do you want me to tell you things?
I went to a bridal store with Abbey on Saturday. She’s getting married in July, but she fears bridal stores as much as I do. This one required you take off your shoes. I was wearing a stained hoodie and sandals, so I walked barefoot through the store with my ratty rained-on hair, curling my toes as if that would somehow hide my feet. Abbey looked at veils, and a fancy older woman who worked there asked if Abbey had bought a dress yet. Abbey said, no, I’m going to wing it.
The woman nearly spit on her in disgust. Wing it! But what about alterations! Abbey said, eh, I’m not worried. I actually came in here to look for a hat. The woman said, don’t you need a dress first? Her thought would’ve been complete if she’d ended the sentence with, you stupid bitch. We put on our sandals and walked back into the rain. Was she real, that lady? She was dressed like a violin player. Do you think that’s what Martha Stewart was like, pre-prison?
The thing is, I’m not thinking lately. Life isn’t a poem, here. It’s a work ethic and a weird whiny sound in my car engine. I painted my toes red, and the paint’s chipped, already. I keep finding red dots littered throughout my clothing. Is it toxic? Did Saddam have WMDs? In the mornings, I stand on the corner of Hennepin and Franklin, breathing in the fumes of commuters. I cough into my sleeves and my eyes water. I don’t think I’ve seen a kind face in weeks, but I haven’t been looking.
May is a hazy time for me.