hardcore days & softcore nights

they said, "do you remember when you saw her last?" i said, "her skin is cinnamon, her skin is cinnamon."

2005-08-30T00:54:00.000-04:00

Everybody's sick of it, so I'm not saying anything.

I'm not saying his name (or that other name either).
Only when I'm by myself.
Just to remember what it sounds like. What it feels like in my mouth.

I'm not saying anything. I'm not pointing out all the reminders in a day:
the plastic bag under the sink,
the movie on the shelf,
a fifteen-second section of that song that was playing a minute ago,
the shirt I soaked through with sweat,
a pale staircase up to the chemistry building,
the back of my eyelids (on a general and ongoing basis).

I'm not saying anything. I'm not mentioning what I watched last night, at least ten times, even with the sound broken, doing it because there's a moment where his eyes look right into me, a moment like the ones where he was here and it's not like I don't remember what I'm a martyr for but it's nice to double-check.

I'm still not saying anything. I am not admitting to the public that I'm an addict. I can keep the needle under my sleeve and they will never know the difference. I am not on record as stating that this town is more or less dead until he comes back. I cannot be quoted as confiding in anyone my fear that he might not come back, nor my antipathy toward the idea of Business As Usual. I refuse to confirm the rumours that I am in love or, worse, 'in a ... thing.'

I'm not saying anything. I am only saying,
"I think I'm in trouble."

same old fears, wish you were here

2005-08-22T01:33:00.000-04:00

It would probably be kind of hard for a young woman such as myself to return to a town I haven't lived in for years to attend a funeral and a wedding, and not get any action. Unfortunately it was bad action. Not even bad, because bad would make a good story, just midly unpleasant.

Where I wanted to be and where I was obligated to be were a couple of hundred miles apart. At the wedding reception I kept wondering what was happening at the other party, who was there and what they were doing and who was dancing and how they might have looked at me. I felt mired in my old life -- not even, there weren't enough people from my old life, it was more like a brief aberration, a temporary alternate universe. He was calling a taxi and I didn't know he was an awful kisser yet and I looked out the window and thought Wrong place, wrong time, wrong city, wrong guy. Tonight was supposed to be different.

I have never been happier to go home to my mom's basement. ALONE.

when in doubt, pick 'c' or the longest answer (3/fin)

2005-08-13T14:47:00.000-04:00

"Things never got weird, with ...?"

"Well yeah, they got weird, but then they stopped being weird."

"That's good."

"Yeah."

"I miss playing with them a lot. I like my job and everything, I like my life now, but I still kind of regret leaving."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. I don't know, you always end up missing things you can never go back to, stuff that doesn't really exist anymore? Like even if I dropped everything right now and they kicked Jason out so I could come back ... it wouldn't be the same. And I'd just end up missing other things I left. So." He shrugs, takes a drink and stares at the wall for a few seconds. "I miss everything though. I even miss you."

"I miss you too." I smile at Ben and he smiles back, a little. It's funny -- it's kind of like we both went through break-ups with Todd, even though neither of us ever dated him (for what I'd assume are pretty different reasons).

"If someone were to overhear this, they might really get the wrong idea."

"Yeah."

Ben scratches his head and gets this look -- squinting a bit, half-smile, and I recognize it from a few other occasions, most notably seconds before the time he pantsed Todd in the middle of a song (he was wearing red plaid boxers). "What if it's not the wrong idea though?"

"What?"

"I mean, okay, I'm kind of drunk, but I would stand by this sober. I think. Wouldn't have the balls to do it maybe, but otherwise."

"I know what that's like."

"So, Ann. I like being around you, I like you, who you are, a lot, I think, and I think you're cute. Right?"

"Okay." After the ridiculous number of hours I've spent getting ready to go see this fucking band, I'm glad at least one of them eventually decided I looked good.

"And you like being around me, and you think I'm ... I'm not going to say cute, I feel I've outgrown cute. Handsome, at least kind of attractive, right?"

(Ben has not outgrown cute.) "Right."

"But we're both not really into each other that way."

"Right."

"But how do we know? Like, have you thought about it?"

"About what? ... Oh. That. Yeah."

"And?"

"It didn't seem right, partly for, you know, obvious reasons." Ben is unaware of the related, less obvious reason. "But it didn't seem that wrong either, it just kind of was ... I think you know what I mean. Have you thought about it?"

"Yeah. And maybe it could, I don't know."

I bite my lip and look at my socks. A moment of silence as we hurtle toward the abyss.

"So, I think we should try to make out."

"I ... D- ... What?"

"Well, we've both tried to figure out if we're sexually attracted to each other, and we're not sure even though we're sure about the other stuff. So obviously more thinking is not going to get us anywhere. But if I kiss you and it feels like kissing my brother, then I'll know. And then you'll know."

If it feels like kissing your brother? "Uh-huh."

"You don't want to. That's okay. It was kind of a weird idea and --"

"No, I just ... this is not really where I thought my day was going, you know, this whole -- give me a minute to think about it."

"Oh. That makes sense. Okay."

Just one kiss. One drunk, silly kiss, a good story if nothing else. With the best friend of the guy I was once convinced I was going to marry, and the older brother of the person I'd spent the last few months informally planning to seduce the next time I got a chance. Simple. Right. But were the things I was holding onto going to do anything other than drown me? Todd and I were never ... sure, anything could happen, but probably, we were never going to happen. Even thinking "never going to happen" still felt like the quick pinch of a headache, leaning on a bruised arm, stepping on a Christmas light. Mark and I, we had a good shot at maybe. Months had gone by and some nights he was still all I could think about -- not thinking, it was prior to thought, it was prior to choice, just instinct and reflex, memory and desire. But it didn't take a genius to guess how that plotline would develop. Supply and demand were only unbalanced on one side of the equation. He'd sail off again, other cities, other girls, other shows, and I'd be a wreck.

I look at Ben, whose face is more familiar than I'd thought from the corners of so many of my memories. His hair is falling into his eyes a little, and he's just watching me. I've never seen or even imagined him this quiet. I listen to myself breathe and realize I'm not scared, not of him, anyway, and I like that.

"Why not?"

Ben exhales and smiles. "Why not!" He puts his beer down on the floor; I watch him do it and sit up again before I figure out that I should too, and roll my eyes at myself while I'm leaning down. The awkward shuffle closer to me on the bed is jolting: a lightning strike moment on an empty horizon, a piece of time that seems more specific and real than the moments before it. Wrinkles in blue sheets, the shades of difference between the colour of our jeans, his hand more tanned than mine, a faint scattering of pimples across his forehead. He puts his hand behind my neck and ruffles the hair there; no one's played with my hair in a long time and I missed the feeling.

I want to make a joke but don't say anything. I close my eyes after he closes his. I can smell the beer on his breath but I know my breath smells like that too, and I don't mind it, it's kind of comforting. His mouth presses against mine a little too slowly to feel natural; all this scares him more than it scares me, maybe. His lips are slightly chapped. It feels okay, not any better or worse than warm skin against warm skin. So now we know.

He pulls back, still terribly careful. I've blinked a couple of times before his eyelashes even flicker. Ben's eyes are wide and darker than they were a minute ago. That must have felt different for him than it did for me, and I'm not sure what to say. But I'm tired of waiting, and tired of not being needed.

When I kiss him again, I remember mornings when I used to walk down to the shore of the lake and watch the water, contemplate the patient confidence of low tide. This time there's a shiver at the nape of my neck right away, and it ripples all the way down to the base of my spine. It's like that scene in some movie or book, probably a bunch of them, when you see a whale's tail in the water from the side of the boat, and as the entire world suddenly lurches, you realize the boat is on the whale's back. I put my hand on his shoulder to make sure I stay upright. I always thought "DANGER: SHORELINE EROSION" signs were funny, since it's not like there would be a sudden catastrophe of shoreline erosion, crumbling big chunks of land all at once. He pushes my mouth open with his tongue, still gentle but not scared. I think about Todd's hair glowing red under stage lights and the laugh in Mark's voice and feel guilty. It was surprising how unwilling I was to throw overboard an entire crossed-out life and an outline of nights full of hands and mouths, but it looked like I'd done it anyway. I feel guilty about that too.

I need to look at him, to make sure I understand who I'm kissing, so I untangle myself as gracefully as I can, not without ignoring the beginnings of other instincts.

"Yeah. I definitely like you," Ben says.

"Well, we're in trouble now, aren't we?"

He laughs and makes up our minds: "I don't care."

I lose whatever thought I might have had when he kisses me again, and starts using his hands to row us toward strange islands that will never swallow our treasures or our secrets, that would mark us as their territory rather than the other way around.

oh the weight it must be light wherever you are, and i know you don't think twice wherever you are

2005-08-08T03:17:00.000-04:00

I stopped having him sing me to sleep a couple of months ago because it made me sicker as well as soothed, a second cousin to drinking myself drowsy. But even sweating in my bed with just the sounds of traffic, I'd learned all the aches and cracks in his voice, could call them back if I wanted. Misquoting everything off by heart.

Before I talked to him the night we met -- the night we really met, the autograph table a few months before that doesn't exactly count -- we were leaning against the same section of the bar. He knew who I was, I'd seen his friends fill him in. (He might even have remembered me but we never talked about that.) I was watching the band with my arm stretched out behind me on the top of the counter holding my drink, not paying attention to it. I was pretending not to pay much attention to him either at the time, since it had just taken almost an hour to get my hands to stop shaking. He was sitting by himself; his friends had left him alone, or he'd left them alone, or they had left us alone, or some combination thereof. And I noticed that he was keeping an eye on my drink for me.

"... And I always think of that when people ask, 'What are you doing with Lloyd Dobler?'"

I went outside to watch for shooting stars but none fell. Then I was going to compare him to one before I realized I'd already used that as a much less apt metaphor for another boy, back when I was in highschool. If this is the one I finally get to say something good to, I hope I have something good left to say, not recycled false starts and the clever bits of my broken hearts, leftover valentines and greeting cards with crossed-out lines. (I basically could have written the first paragraph of this last summer and the summer before, about a different person each time, and now a third.)

Sometimes I swear I can tell he's thinking about me hundreds of miles away and I don't need the highway to go find out. I know I'm going to get hurt, I just want something to show for it this time.

Read some things over a few days ago and realized I'm incapable of writing a simple love poem; it always gets mixed up with fear and need, philosophy and anger, drugs and narcissism, power and betrayal, sex and death. I guess tonight things aren't any different.

when in doubt, pick 'c' or the longest answer (2)

2005-08-05T15:38:00.000-04:00

While he's gone, I flip through the photo album, which seems to cover Ben and Todd's last couple years of highschool. Ben was still "the fat kid" then, but there was something kind of cute about him anyway -- the smile, the messy hair, a sense of energy. He always looks like he's having a good time. There are pictures from their band's first few shows, Todd apparently going through an unfortunate grunge fashion phase. He looks so young. I guess I would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time, same age as Mark was, and hundreds of miles away, with no idea that any of them even existed yet.

There are pictures of bush parties, days at the beach, prom. It's strange to have spent so much time fascinated by this bunch of people, trying to break into their circle, and end up with a short study of their history dumped in my lap. It's strange that I'm even here at all, since they're not my friends, exactly. I used to go to all of the band's shows -- still go to most of them, although they'll have a "real" album soon and I won't be able to follow them out of town, due to no car and no cash and an actual life to keep up with. They noticed me after a few times and were nice enough I guess and I was trying pretty hard (too hard, probably) but it never worked. Todd was difficult to get to know, and Ben was always good to talk to, but then he moved away to go get a "real job" and quit the band. I only managed to end up at the party because I caught a ride to Toronto for the weekend with friends from Ben's year, ended up at a show where his other friend's band was playing, and he invited us all back to his place after (something Todd never would have done). I still felt guilty about going, like unwelcome interference in their lives, like static around your favourite song on the radio.

I lean back against the wall, which feels refreshingly cool. It's the wall Ben shares with Mark, when Mark is around, so I lean my head back against it too and close my eyes for a few seconds. Mark had visited Ben and Todd a few times during the school year and had introduced himself to me at one of their shows. The first thing he said to me was "So, I hear you're a big groupie" and grinned, his brother's smile but more graceful somehow, and I was pretty much done. Actually, when he walked into the bar and I looked at him I was pretty much done. Not a complicated story. Well, it turned into one, but it shouldn't have; sometimes you should think with your crotch.

Wonder who he's fucking in Vancouver. The thought has passed almost all the way in and out of my head before it makes me feel sick.

Ben walks back in shaking his head. "Gosh, frickin' idiots," he says. As he starts closing the door behind him, someone yells "DON'T KNOCK HER UP!" He stops and we look at each other, and both start giggling at the same time. Ben doesn't even bother giving anyone the finger before he closes the door. There's a poster for The Life Aquatic on the back. I do feel a little bit like I am in a submarine, something closed-off and secret and submerged. I'm not sure if I'm drifting, or sinking.

"Yeah, maybe we should be using protection. I mean, all this sperm just floating around everywhere." While that's something I would normally think, it wouldn't normally come out of my mouth. I blame the beer. Which is a good reason to take another drink.

"It's amazing that you can even breathe."

"I know."

"... Okay, I'm sorry, that was kind of disgusting."

"Yeah, a little. But if there is a kid, can we name it Big Baby Jesus?"

"Can't nobody hold us down. You know, it's funny, Todd always thought --"

"That I was pregnant? Ouch."

"No, no. He used to tell me that I looked like a pregnant lady a long time ago, though. Plus I ended up with pregnant lady stretch marks. No, he thought you had a crush on me." He looks at me and I realize that Ben is actually kind of serious and I've probably never seen him like this before. This makes me freeze for a moment and forget to reply so he says, maybe a little too fast, "I never thought you did, though."

"No. I did think you guys thought that I liked you, though. And I did have, like, a big platonic crush on you? I don't know. It's hard to explain."

"What does that even mean?"

"Well, I started talking to you because you weren't as intimidating, I don't know why -- my friend Stephanie is still terrified of you for some reason, anyway -- and then I talked to everyone else later but you were always easier to talk to. I just had . . . more fun with you? And you were nicer. And you just sort of, like, ooze awesome and benevolence from every pore."

He blushes. "Thanks. Although I don't know how I feel about the word 'ooze.'"

"Yeah, sorry. So I kind of cried when you left, and got really excited whenever you visited and stuff, you're kind of one of my favourite people to see" -- holy fuck I need to shut up -- "and even people I knew were like, 'Are you sure you don't like Ben? 'Cause it sounds like it' but I pretty much was sure. It's not like you weren't attractive, but I thought high fives were a totally adequate consummation of our relationship" -- oh man, why am I still talking? this is just creepy now -- "but I mean, I never got like this over a girl, so . . . yeah."

"You liked Todd, didn't you?"

"I did." This is
1) an enormous understatement, considering that I spent almost a year referring to him as "my future husband" and being mostly serious, and
2) possibly a lie due to the use of the past tense. I mean, I think it's over. I spent a couple of months beating it out of myself, and I think it mostly worked. But sometimes I look at him and don't feel like anything has changed.
". . . Oh God, does he know? How do you know?"

"I don't think he ever figured it out. I kind of tried to suggest it to him a couple times but he didn't get it. It was just a guess. But a few times I saw you looking at him and it seemed like, yeah."

I smile, a little embarrassed. "I used to, uh, come up with stuff to say to him before, and then most of the time I would freak out under the 'pressure' and choke, so I'd end up talking to you instead and you'd get all my A material."

"At least it wasn't technically recycled."

"Sometimes I would end up saying it to him later, though, and it was annoying because you always found everything a lot funnier and he'd just kinda, you know, stand there."

"He has a tendency to do that."

"I noticed."

"Well, it was funny. You are funny. I always liked talking to you a lot, plus you were always so into it, and it was really nice to be able to look out and see that. You looked really happy, every time."

"When you guys were playing, I was. Still am."

when in doubt, pick 'c' or the longest answer (1)

2005-08-04T01:27:00.000-04:00

"No, seriously, you've gotta see these pictures," he says, laughing and looking at me over his shoulder. "Todd's like ... there are no words."

"Thanks a lot, Ben," he yells from the couch, but there's not much fight in him and he's busy trying to get his girlfriend to stop doing tequila shots. Ben casually flips him off with his free hand, two Carlsbergs in the other, and I follow him into his room.

He opens one of the beers with his T-shirt over the cap and hands it to me before pulling a photo album off of a small bookcase that's mostly full of old textbooks, music biographies and hipster fiction. It must be the wrong one because he puts it back and squints at the wall. If I'd ever imagined how his bedroom looked -- which I never did -- I doubt the real thing would have been far off from what I guessed: clothes on the floor, taking up almost an entire corner; not vacuumed in the recent past, but quite likely Febreezed; wall posters carefully laid out, maybe even using a ruler, all '90s indie rockers and slightly arty movies. Ben kicks a pair of jeans toward the perimeter of the room before he bends down and pulls out another photo album.

"Yeah, this is the one." He grins, so I'm smiling back before I even see the picture -- it's Ben, you can't not -- and then I'm pretty much howling when I recognize Todd, in his thinner, even more awkward highschool incarnation, wearing what looks like a coconut shell bra, what are definitely short shorts, and a curly blonde wig, frozen mid-contortion on top of a coffee table. Aside from the Adam's apple, and the leg hair, he makes a surprisingly appealing woman. I'm really not sure how I feel about that.

"This was your birthday present? It's more like a nightmare."

"Well, it's been the gift that keeps on giving. I can still kind of hear my retinas burning when it's quiet and I have my eyes closed."

Even with the picture in front of me, I can't quite imagine Todd doing a one 'whoa, man' airband to "I Touch Myself" by The Divinyls, but apparently he'd done it despite my lack of faith. He seemed too reserved -- a little uptight, even -- but maybe that was just around me (which I preferred to generalize to how he was all the time). "When is this from again?"

"We were in, uh, Grade 12. Oh man, there are some pretty great pictures in there. Lemme see." Ben sits down on his bed and I sit next to him without thinking about it, because it seems like the natural thing to do. There's a little shock when the mattress bounces back up and I realize I just sat down on a guy's bed, which is not something I do that frequently, but it's Ben -- and anyway the door's open, so we can still see into the living room where everyone's drinking and talking and air-drumming to a mix CD of "ironic" '80s rock and hair metal, leaning out of the window with joints. Friday night in the big city, young and anchorless. I'm a little drunk I guess, just enough to feel a warm glow, probably don't look or sound it at all, except my eyes.

I take a drink and watch recognition flicker across Ben's face while he turns pages. It softens his features, makes him look less tired. His mouth falls slightly open. Between my finger and thumb, the blankets are soft, and the room smells like somewhere else I can't quite place, maybe like the house of a friend from when I was younger, something like that.

"Mark did The Tempest once. Beginning of highschool. Look at his fucking pants." He pushes the album over into my lap and there's Mark, maybe fourteen, not quite grown into his ears yet and certainly not suited to the crushed velvet the costumers stuffed him in, then or now. It's a shock to see him so young, his face not finished changing, those intensely memorable features still deciding what to turn into, but the eyes are already there; he's looking at who must be either Ben or their mother, embarrassed, a little annoyed, but there's still a spark, something that feels like it might leave a scar if I don't look away but makes me think that being burned alive might be a good idea. Then again, I'm probably reading it back into the picture, remembering it overtop of what's there. It's not even a particularly clear shot.

"Wow."

"It's Hammertime."

"How did he not get his ass kicked?"

"Kid can fight. Of course, everything he knows, he learned from me."

"Right."

"He's out in Vancouver for the week. Shooting. You know he's gonna kill someone on C.S.I?"

"Yeah, Todd told me."

"I don't even remember which C.S.I."

"Who can?"

Some guy I don't know appears in the doorway. "Ben. Corkscrew?"

"Kitchen drawer."

"I looked, I couldn't find it."

"The one next to the sink?" The guest shrugs helplessly. "Fine, I'll get it." Ben stands up, half-turns at the door to say "I'll be right back, just stay there." He misses his friend raising his eyebrows at me and making a scandalized facial expression. I don't even dignify it with a reaction. Apparently Ben has some stupid friends.

dying to tell you anything you want to hear, 'cause that's just who i am this week

2005-07-13T15:37:00.000-04:00

I've been doing a lot of laundry, and looking forward to the day when I am no longer too lazy to get my computer fixed so that I don't have to sit next to interestingly-scented characters at libraries. Tonight I start my new job and I am less afraid of actually making mistakes than I am of being reprimanded for making the mistakes. If no one found out or got mad about my fuck-ups, I wouldn't feel that bad about them. But I have a violent aversion to getting in trouble, which is maybe part of why I like skateboarders -- compensating for my acquiescence by being attracted to a lack of respect for authority.

"Is there a good reason why your apartment smells like Bourbon Street?"

This summer brought me letters from Toronto and Thailand, the former not quite begged for and the latter barely solicited. Badly spelled with unexpected gaps in memory, or written like Irving and remembering everything. Would I rather be sung to by a good-natured wandering whore who says most things between blinking, or told stories by a brilliant binge-drinking thief who speaks until he's drawn the outline of the space around the truth? I'm not even sure that I have both options, or that it's entirely my choice. In fact, I hope it's not.

I would like to go hanggliding; I wish my balcony was higher.

this song is for people who know what rock 'n' roll is about!

2005-07-09T02:13:00.000-04:00

Tonight I danced during a band's last song when they asked people to dance, and I was the only person who did, and then their singer bought me a beer for dancing, so I'm a little drunker than I wanted to be right now.

I later sincerely told them they were on the cusp of greatness, while making a mental note: If you ever play a show, and a stranger you don't know looks really into it, buy them a beer. Pay it forward.

During the first couple of bands I met this really awesome girl, the kind of girl who talks to a near-stranger about having green phlegm, and she needed to go home to get her debit card to get money to buy more liquor so she could dance. Except she never came back. I was supposed to walk her but I decided to stick around in order to get my free dancing beer. So now if she got raped and/or killed it's totally my fault. I'm an asshole.

A really rock 'n' roll asshole.

we were holders of hands, we were make-believers, just losing time

2005-07-03T18:36:00.000-04:00

1. My most serious, physically tangible romantic interest at the moment is the sample of Calvin Klein Obsession Night for Men that came in the magazine I picked up at a movie theatre lobby a few weeks ago. That's the hotness right there.
2. On Canada Day, I passed gas in a former residence of our first Prime Minister. "I like my girls the way I like my Fridays: no class."
3. At church this morning we sang "Amazing Grace" and I felt my ribcage shaking because I was starting to understand the small-scale miracle of forgiving and being forgiven by the person who was standing behind me. "Distilling the thunder of God" indeed.
4. It's probably rude to tell someone "Almost dying in a car accident is the best thing that ever happened to you," so I didn't, but it's true.
5. Happy birthday to a boy I was crazy about who I am gradually going sane for.

head-smashed-in buffalo jump

2005-06-28T19:29:00.000-04:00

- How much did you drink?
- I don't even know ...

Hours of beer and broken watches, hardwood floors, porch lights and mosquito bites. Tongue crippled and limping from the alcohol, believing I was as frustrated by not being able to speak as he is waiting for surgery so he can walk again. Correcting grammar mid-sentence, a stream of substitutions that got farther and farther away from sense until I packed my silence in tightly between the crush of other voices, surrendered and scared. Swaying against the fence on the shore of the lake, already hearing myself telling him "I bruised my knuckles" in some imaginary room future-filled with dark wood and golden light.

One leg out of my pants, pissing on the rocks in the dark, in the neighbourhood of 4 AM -- thinking it was easier than I'd expected. Already embarrassed at being so sloppy and wasted and stupid for the first time in more than a year, an interval that implied things had changed.

- You're too old for this shit, you know better.
- Well, I guess I forgot, didn't I?

Walked straight lines to show off for the taxis passing on the way home. Sunrise was only an hour or so away, and for a while I thought I'd just stay awake to watch it. (I had an 8:15 bus to catch, which I would miss, and then spend much of the bus ride that followed it violently expelling various things in the bathroom.) The sky settled heavy and soft over the water and it reminded me of his eyes in February, and how badly I wanted again to be pushed down into each second as it passed. Still expecting the weight of his body to balance me out. I thought of how to explain everything, beautiful soliloquies broken and shipwrecked on booze. And you, and YOU and I miss ... and you, and I wanted ... and then there was God, you know, He saw everything ... The unblinking cold regard of the moon on a wobbling drunk.

I was disappointed when my roommate woke me up and I saw my knuckles weren't even pink.

Late for the bridal shower I'd been travelling for, but not hopelessly late. Eating appetizers in the kitchen and got some on the floor, apologized and said "I promise I'll have some manners by the time you get married" but knew that I wouldn't, not if they hadn't arrived by now. I'd barely managed to arrive at all.

The aunt thanked the other bridesmaids for their help organizing things, while I felt more irresponsible than exempted by distance.

What am I doing here? I'm a mess.

prop me up beside the jukebox if i die

2005-06-24T14:23:00.000-04:00

Now, my aunt isn't the brightest woman in the world to begin with, but last weekend when she started asking me if I wanted to "visit [my] dad" I thought she had perhaps reached a new intellectual low. I was sure that I had to be missing something and that I was not, in fact, going to have to explain to her that unless she had some way of dropping by The Great Beyond, this wasn't possible. Luckily I was missing something, and she meant his grave. I don't really consider a bunch of ashes buried underground to be my father, but as far as his side of the family is concerned, I'd just be splitting semantic hairs.

It could be considered strange that I didn't have the faintest idea where my father's grave was for a year-and-a-half, but in context, it wasn't unusual. I hadn't even wanted to go, but my aunt wouldn't stop mentioning it so I just gave up and pretended to be interested in going.

We drove up the road through the middle of the cemetery with my grandparents in the car behind us. The cemetery is just across the street from the land that used to be my grandparents' farm, which they sold after their children moved away and which has now become a large subdivision, awkwardly big and new in a small town. My dad used to do a lot of maintenance work on the cemetery grounds, actually. I made a joke about his "earning his keep" which was, apparently, not funny.

When they showed me the grave, I had to try really hard not to laugh. A year-and-a-half and it's still unmarked, just a little stone 'D' at either corner. It's just some patch of dry grass. And this was apparently expected to make me cry, or fill me with grief, or give me some sense of "closure." But as far as I'm concerned it's a bunch of dirt and grass, with some stuff underneath it, and none of it has anything to do with anything, pretty much.

I'll be honest, I spent most of the time we were there looking at the selection of fonts on the gravestones. The Andersons? Looking sharp.

I think my grandfather is now technically in charge of cemetery grounds maintenance. He must be in his 80s, has suffered a stroke, and walks with a cane. While we were there, he used the cane to unearth dandelions near wherever he was standing. He doesn't say much; in fact, I think my dad learned a lot from him about being an unresponsive asshole. He generally ignores me because I'm a girl and women don't merit a great deal of respect or attention in his eyes. I was absolutely shocked when he made one statement to me while I was at their house, just before lunch; it was: "Commercials. Nothin' on TV these days but commercials." Grandad also managed to miss most family gatherings while I was growing up by carefully scheduled hunting trips.

So my granddad stood there in the cemetery in a trucker hat, stooped over with his cane, black suspenders holding up dirty khaki slacks over a short-sleeved plaid shirt, chewing on a gone-to-seed blade of grass he'd picked up, and said:
"See the Rose's stone over there?"
"Yeah."
"That's the colour your grandmother and I's headstone is going to be. A little pinker."
"... Oh. That's ... nice."

To conclude, Black List style, visiting my father's grave: emotional impact, D-; surreality, A-.

I've got to write a boy an Internet letter, and I really don't want to do it, even though this one's really not rocket science. (It will still be the most heavily edited five-line e-mail ever, full of subtleties he will be completely incapable of noticing or understanding.) I guess in part I'm scared but a lot of my reluctance is probably just because I'm really lazy.

that's what i love about these highschool [boys], man: i get older, they stay the same age.

2005-06-22T01:32:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, I let a 16-year-old boy get me kind of drunk at my cousin's piano recital reception. It was largely because he reminded me of someone I used to not really know, but I totally would have let him get away with making out with me in a closet. He wanted me to buy him cigars but I'd left my ID at my uncle's place and anyway I was far less interested in corrupting his lungs. He plays drums in a Christian rock band, his mom was the piano teacher, and he was wearing a tie-dye Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon shirt. Once the beer in the backyard coolers was gone he started going downstairs to get me his mom's Coronas and continued his awkward attempts to act older than he was. I might come back for the kid in a few years.

"Dude, don't open my beer on the rusty wheelbarrow, you'll give me tetanus."

After I was a little buzzed, I decided it was my civic duty to start flirting with the 15-year-old who'd played the Moonlight Sonata from memory and looked like the kind of boy I would have had a crush on in highschool, except he wasn't an inept jerk. I had just seen the first episode of Beauty and The Geek the day before and, while I was no Beauty, this was definitely a Geek who could use the attention. He had the prettiest eyes behind his glasses, all blue-green with dark thick long eyelashes, classic conservative nerd-parted hair, and what looked like the beginnings of the beginnings of acne. After having the sheet music for less than a week, he'd already committed most of an advanced version of "My Heart Will Go On" to memory, which he played for me. (This was not the only Celine Dion song he could play off by heart.) I told him he was a bad influence and joked that I was going to leave on the back of his motorcycle wearing gold lame hot pants. He looked stunned enough that I didn't feel it necessary to add that I actually bought said hot pants on Thursday.

I have been drinking every day since last Thursday. Whoops.

falling into place

2005-06-13T18:04:00.000-04:00

By the time he comes back in the fall I should be able to walk in those white stilettos, and I should know what I want, and I should be glowing with it. In the meantime I'll pray for destiny to be as kind to us as it was the first time, before I got scared and ran home in the snow.

I'm not sure if I made a bargain with God or the devil and to be honest I'm not sure I care yet.

sail through memories, only to run aground

2005-06-05T15:20:00.000-04:00

Beautful early summer day after beautiful early summer day, the cars are whirring and the birds are singing and the new-green leaves are photosynthesizing and I'm not in love, exactly, but I'm in something and I wish I could write him every day about all the things I see, make him want to visit all the unremarkable things that I magicked into beauty and wonder and bizarreness for him. Rub his shoulders while the coffee's on, run my fingers gently along his hipbones under the covers.

I spend afternoons and evenings out on the balcony missing people I barely ever knew.

two-and-a-quarter similes

2005-05-31T00:56:00.000-04:00

A brief but sudden awareness of the impression I am capable of accidentally leaving is like ...
trying on a shirt you see on the rack at a clothing store that you like, that you think would be perfect for you but it's not in your size so you figure it won't fit, but you try it on anyway because it's basically your dream on a hanger -- and then it does fit, and it turns out you've been wearing the wrong clothes and the wrong sizes of everything else when this was how you were really supposed to look the whole time.

Sending him a letter I don't expect an answer to seems like ...
writing "I love you" on a hundred paper airplanes and throwing them all into the lake.
Except really it's like ...
if the water still really wanted and deserved to see it and soak it in, just for being that beautiful and unbelievable, even if it couldn't or didn't say anything back.

afternoon pages

2005-05-27T16:48:00.000-04:00

I'll never make it to bed at a decent time tonight because I got up at 3. That, and the gaggle of attractive men who will undoubtedly follow me home from the concert, and to whom I will have to patiently explain that I am not currently accepting any gentleman callers, unless they have footage of themselves skating a handrail with at least 15 stairs or like to foam at the mouth during spontaneous impressions of animal slaughter. I can't love anything if it's not at least slightly ridiculous.