It's Been Awhile (Listening to: The Two Sides of Monsieur Valentine, Spoon)

I haven't had time to write in a while because I've been so busy with school. Merchant rehearsals are pretty much eating my life.
Anyways, I had an essay due for American Studies about the table I eat at and that larger community, and I incorporated parts of my previous writing about my dad into that. I figured I'd post my rough draft here and any revisions I do I can add as time goes on. (P.S. I love feedback, if anyone reads this)
Without further ado:

My Daddy's Daddies

I don’t eat at my house anymore. Breakfast is coffee and a scone at Stumptown, lunch is something wolfed between classes, and dinner is anyplace but home. My daddy says I live off air and good intentions. He’s wrong, of course; I eat a lot, just not the way I used to.

I remember a time when our house was filled with music. I would sit at the table, tucked into my daddy’s hearty booms of Dylan and Cash. “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?” The air was always warm with the smell of a roasting chicken and boiling dumplings.

Today, this big old house is almost always empty. The rooms are caves where my mama and daddy and baby sister are hibernating bears. I am the quiet ghost, wandering the kitchen like a blind girl, fingers to the fridge and the wooden tables, bare feet numb against the icy floors. The air feels too thin to breathe, but it is somehow heavy, weighing me down all the time with the cold, cold clink of forks and spoons and the things we leave unsaid.

Our kitchen table is a wooden rectangle with carved legs in the shape of spirals. My mama sits at one end, and my daddy at the other. My sister and I have the other two sides. Dinner around this table has become an empty ritual; we push food around on our plates with slack jaws and tongues that do not taste. I don’t eat at all. The food here feels thick and it is hard to swallow. But attendance is mandatory, so I sit at the table tapping my foot until I’m allowed to leave.

No one says what she means. My parents bury their intentions in forced politeness. My sister and I sit in surly silence. None of us ever make eye contact.

“How was your day, Laura?” my daddy says.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to be rude.”

One by one we leave the table and retreat back to our caves. The silence makes me tired; it wears me down until I don’t have the energy to think. I creep back into the kitchen to brew some tea.

As the water in the kettle comes to a boil, it starts to rain. The fat droplets burst on the skylight above my head. The wind picks up. I hear my daddy’s heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

It is always raining with me and my daddy. On sunny days, I stay out as late as possible to avoid the silent dinner table. But when it rains, I stay home and my daddy quits his work to come up to the kitchen and listen to the raindrops hit the roof. And when the sky opens up, so does my daddy.

I like talking to him. The table feels smaller when it is just him and me. It might be the tea, but I feel a little warmer.

When he speaks, his voice is soft. His daddy died in the war. His mama was a beautiful war widow, just twenty years old, already alone with two babies and not even old enough to drink. My daddy never says so, but I know this is how he and my mama got close. They were just two grownup kids with no daddies, crying about submarine explosions and heart attacks on the front lawn and the way their hearts were broken before they were old enough to drive.

He had three baby sisters and two baby brothers and they grew up poor. At Christmas, all they got were plain black turtlenecks. He tells me he felt lucky, because new clothes were a luxury his beautiful mama could not afford. “You girls don’t realize how good you have it,” my daddy says. He leans back in his chair, resting his feet on the beams under the table.

His new daddy beat on him.

My daddy is quiet for a long time. I take a sip of tea.

He says he’s proud not to be the same man his new daddy was. “I promised myself I would never be that way with you or your sister,” my daddy murmurs. I hear in his voice a terror that maybe that beast was nurtured in him too, that maybe one day something in him will break and he will be the same monster his new daddy was. Maybe the world spins in a set pattern, and maybe fate knew my daddy’s life would end up the way it did before he was even born. Maybe no matter what my daddy does he will end up retracing the steps of his adoptive father.

My daddy wouldn’t talk to his new daddy for fifteen years. None of us ever spoke of him at all. As far as I knew, I had no granddaddy. Then my daddy’s mama died and my daddy boarded a plane to California to be with his new daddy and mourn their loss. Before he leaves, he sits my baby sister and me down at the kitchen table. “Life’s too short,” my daddy says, and starts to cry.

Later that night I walk in on my daddy in the kitchen. He is wiping dust off the black and white photograph of his real daddy. My daddy’s daddy’s face will always be young, but the buttons on his naval uniform have dulled with time. His hat sits at a nervous angle. “Can you remember him at all?” I ask.

“Sometimes I think I can,” my daddy says. He smiles, but there is no joy in it.

We sit at our table, the four of us, one to a side. The heavy air presses us from all around, like a long, drawn out punch in the stomach. Our family is a table whose sides don’t quite fit together the way they are supposed to. We are barely held together; each side looks without with a terrible longing, wishing to be a part of something else. We pull at each other, cling to the windows and the doors trying to escape. The weight of the air beats us back together.

When my parents die, when my mama and daddy are only ghosts, when I sit up at night wiping the dust from their portraits, I’m going to feel guilty. I’m going to feel like there was something I could have done to fix the table and our family, like I should have done that thing. Like maybe it wasn’t too late.

I am going to regret not doing anything. I know that. It’s like I can see a car crash years before it happens, but I can’t stop it. I don’t know how to stop it. The world is so huge, and there are so many forks in the road. I feel lost.

This knowledge aches in my gut and my throat. It nags at me, like my broken daddy and this cold house are things I should be grateful for. I resent the silent kitchen with its silent dinner table; I resent our silent house with its silent rooms and the silent spiders that wait in the silent corners. I think our house is perpetually holding its breath, and I resent that, too. I resent my daddy for not singing anymore. But at least I have a daddy to resent. And we aren’t as broken as those families with the daddies who beat on their babies. Like how my daddy’s family was.

My daddy is alone, orphaned. His beautiful mama and both his daddies have sunken slowly into their graves. This silent house and this silent family are all he has left. Thinking they aren’t good enough just doesn’t seem right.

Daddy (Listening to: Muddy Hymnal, Iron & Wine)

When my daddy dies I’m gonna be a broken girl.
When I was little I was scared he’d notice when I stopped calling him that. I switched to dad because I felt like a baby, and my best friend didn’t call her dad daddy anymore.
How am I supposed to forgive him? My daddy is a grownup but he’s lost. He’s so confused sometimes I think, like he’s got this forking of the path in front of him and he can’t pick which way to go. And I don’t feel bad for making him choose, even though I probably should. I mean they always said you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Your best friend and your baby girl.
This Thursday is thanksgiving and I’m thinking about living on my own. I joke about running away. I’d go out in the rain, just leave. I would. I’ve tried. I feel bad joking about it, because I know my face is way too serious.
Sometimes we talk about politics. Vietnam. He dodged the draft, faked diabetes and all they cared about was the psych he saw.
His daddy died in the war. His mama, a beautiful war widow just twenty years old and already two babies and not even old enough to drink. His new daddy beat on him. His sisters and his brothers, they grew up so poor. At Christmas, they got turtlenecks. Black ones, that’s all, and they were happy.
I guess that’s how my mama and him got close. Two grownup kids with no daddies, crying about submarines and heart attacks on the front lawn and the way their hearts were broken before they were old enough to drive. When I have no daddy, I’ll be able to cry on cue. That will be a useful skill, I think. I’ll put it on my resume: can cry on cue, no daddy to hold those tears in.
My daddy is too silly, sometimes. He jokes and jokes, when all I want is him to look me in these big brown eyes and tell me it’s okay. My daddy has never been good at that.
Sometimes, late nights, we’ll go driving through the rain in his station wagon with the blankets in the back and the radio on, just him driving and me in the passenger seat, talking. We don’t do that too much. When we do, he puts on his favorite station, because it’s a Friday night and Shake the Shack is on. They play rockabilly which has nothing to do with rock, actually, is just country songs with some dirty jokes in between.
My daddy doesn’t believe in God, just Bob Dylan. And Johnny Cash. We watched Walk the Line together, one late night, probably raining.
Oh god, it is always raining with me and my daddy. On sunny days I run, run away to my friends or my baby sister. But when it rains my daddy and I sit inside and he reads the newspaper and I talk about The World We Live In. We agree about Lyndon Johnson, for instance.
Sometimes we talk about photography. He loaned me his favorite photography book, this subversive book from 1948 that was published in France first because no American would publish something so unpatriotic. My daddy used to be a photographer you know. He wasn’t creative enough to be an artist, but he did ad campaigns. For beer.
My daddy likes to feel rebellious. He educated himself because knowledge is power and you can’t trust The Man. I think my daddy is scared to be middle class, old, and white. He always surrounded himself with black panthers and radicals and people who acted instead of thinking, these dangerous, glamorous people he wanted to be but couldn’t quite imitate. Even when he was a photographer he was still working for corporations, just a white guy from a poor background at a steady job with average income.
When my daddy was this young guy he had a brain tumor in his head, but he was in China with his beautiful young mama, where she taught English. So he gets his head all fixed in China in the jungle with the only machine they have and he cuts the line in front of all these Chinese people because he is American and his mama knows the right people. Because even though they are dirt poor, tired, working Americans, they are still Americans. And my daddy feels bad, but what can he do?
I think my daddy feels this way a lot. Helpless. Like The Man is beating up on him like his new daddy used to do, like his new daddy who is dead now, the only daddy my daddy ever knew, was really just another lost guy who fell down and made mistakes.
My daddy didn’t talk to his new daddy for ten years. Wouldn’t say a word, hated him. It’s a sad story, I guess. But that’s who my daddy is, stubborn, confused, lost, and he tells me to try and be understanding. To see things as a cultural difference between families. Mistakes, and not to hate.
And I want to tell him hey it’s thanksgiving and it’s supposed to be a day for our family to be thankful and eat turkey and cranberry sauce and that stuffing you make that tastes delicious. But here I am, sitting on the couch with a lump in my throat punching at the tears on my face with my fingers like I’m some boxer, wondering why I can’t talk to him, why he doesn’t understand.
Last month I left the restaurant we were eating at because my daddy didn’t understand me and started walking home. It was only twenty blocks away, but he came after me. It was after dark, and even though I was crying, he made me come back inside. I think parents are like that. They don’t understand enough to care when you need them to care, and then when you hate them for that they don’t understand enough to back off when you need to be alone.
When my daddy is just a ghost, I’m going to feel bad about all these things. Like there was something I could have done to fix them, like I should have done that. Like maybe it wasn’t too late. And hey, we’re not as broken as those families with the daddies who beat on their babies. Like how my daddy’s family was.
I think my daddy is proud, proud that he is not that way with me and my baby sister. I think he feels so scared though, that maybe that beast was nurtured in him by his new daddy, and that my mama might become his beautiful mama any moment, and we be his little sisters, his real sister, his half sister, or his little baby adopted sister.
My baby sister has a temper like nothing I’ve ever known, and she gets it from my daddy. When she was just a little girl, my baby sister spit in my daddy’s face. And my daddy exploded, he hits her and yells because he is so mad and when he was just a baby and his new daddy came to his little house, he was never allowed to be disrespectful. My daddy is always saying things like kids these days, because when he was little he still had to be a grownup. Five little siblings, three sisters and two brothers and he had to take care of them with his beautiful mama and all her mistakes.
When we go to Canada and we’re on our way home, my daddy always gets us into trouble at the border. His documents are never current and he gives the border police lip. He likes to joke, and he doesn’t know when to turn it off. We have to remind him, say Daddy, don’t get mad and don’t feel scared when we get to the border. You’re our daddy and we love you and please shut up for long enough to drive us home.
My daddy doesn’t come up from downstairs very often. He works on computers all day all over town, and then he drives home in that station wagon and works on computers downstairs. Sometimes he comes up for dinner, and sometimes not. He works late, a lot of the time.
He is always gone at funerals. His daddies, his friends, friend after friend after friend and they all fall away into the ground, deep into the ground until all that is left is his brand new best friend by default and his best family, also by default. Only because we were the last ones left standing. And I do feel bad, wishing that all my daddy has left will die before he does, so I won’t have to see him at my daddy’s funeral.
It’s a lot like this at my house. My big house that is so empty so much of the time, with my mama in cold Alaska and my daddy out working or with his machines in the basement, and my baby sister gone or holed up in her room. And me, wandering the kitchen barefoot, fingers to the fridge and the wooden tables, and the way the floors are old and cold and the carpets are worn out because they are fifty years old now and have never been replaced. The air, so heavy all the time with the clink of cold, cold forks and spoons and the things we leave unsaid. My sister and I, fighting, fighting because we’re mad at our family, at our mama and our daddy but we yell at each other instead. The rooms, so cluttered because my mama and daddy never made us clean them. The smell, so dusty and so cold, and the sound of the rain, coming down in sheets and buckets and farm animals across the skylight. That rain, that to me is more constant than any daddy.
I’ve got this ache in me like my daddy and I will never know each other, like this old cold house full of secrets and empty of everything else is somewhere where my mama will live alone someday, somewhere I’ll never come back. Like someday, my mama and daddy will be people I don’t talk about anymore, and like someday I really will be all alone.
I talked to my daddy for real today. About ourselves, not about Vietnamese civilians or the people he used to know. I walk downstairs and tell him I have a place to go if I need to leave. I don’t think about what I’m going to say because then I will be too scared to say it. He says no, no he is not kicking me out because I am a part of this family. And that if he had been a better daddy or faster on his feet we wouldn’t even have to worry about it in the first place. He gives me a hug and I start to cry, cry like the rain on our roof and the puddles on the sidewalk. My daddy loves me.

Portia (Listening to: Knee Deep at the National Pop League, Camera Obscura)

I am Portia.

Glinda isn't Portia. That's what really gets me. I definitely did not expect this. I am so happy, so excited, and so terrified. Batman Boy got Antonio, which he wanted, and Bassanio is this other senior guy who I don't know very well. We're getting lunch together tomorrow, to get to know each other better. So that rehearsing our kiss isn't as awkward. Oh, wow. I'm the female lead in the Advanced Acting play.

My American Studies final was this morning, and I still kind of want to puke. Well, there's nothing I can do about it now. During my study block, Expelled Boy came up to the library from biology and snuck up behind me to give me what turned out to be the most killer back massage of all time. We discussed the final, and I told him I'm Portia. We were in intermediate acting together last year so he was really excited for me. Damn, it's hard to get over him when he comes around rubbing my back and telling me I'm talented.

Almost as hard as it was when he told me I smelled good and put his arm around me. Almost as hard.


Well, damn. Today was weird. I felt like throwing up while being the happiest and proudest I have been in a long time.

Can you see me? I'm starting to glow.

Liar (Listening to: Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan)

Well look at that, I did make time to write.

I’m a virgin. I’m not stupid. I don’t want you to break my heart.

You said you’re a romantic. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it. I don’t think you even know what that means, actually.

You cheated on the girl you said you loved. A lot of times. Look me in the eye, okay?

You like me too much to fuck me? Do you get how fucked up that is? You’re supposed to like the people you sleep with. More than like. If you are really a romantic I think you would know that.

Maybe the way you are works for you. It looks to me like it is working pretty damn well, actually. You get girls. You do. If that’s enough for you, then alright. Okay. There is nothing wrong with that.

But it is not romantic. You are not romantic. You’re afraid of romance.

Maybe you do love her. Maybe it’s the closest thing to love you’ve ever known. So what? Love does not equal romance. Especially not the way you love.

You’re a liar. You lie to her when you sleep with other girls. You lie to them when you don’t tell them about her. And you lie to yourself when you tell yourself that the things you do don’t stop you from being a romantic.

Look, you’re smart. You understand a lot of things I don’t. But I understand this and it looks like you can’t. You’re handsome and you’re talented. You’re kind, charismatic, and magnetic.

But I can’t trust you when you lie to everyone.

I got drunk last night off champagne with Salamander. She's been getting to know Expelled Boy better for a while now because they go out and smoke during break together. Apparently I came up for the first time when they talked a couple days ago, about who at our school they'd fuck.

And he said:

Yeah, the difference between Wendy and other girls is that I actually like Wendy. So I'd feel really bad, because I'd probably like...

Salamander:

Break her heart?

Him:

Yeah, you know.

Well I'm hungover and Expelled Boy likes me too much to fuck me. Where does that leave me? A weird place, that's for sure. To quote The Notwist, I feel like strange, boneless.

Salamander's friend came over. I think he was nice. We snuggled when I was full of warm champagne and empty of inhibitions. I remember talking in French, but I forget the words and meaning.

Also, according to Mike, Paul said I had the best female audition for the play. Also known as, I was the only one acting and not just reading. Also known as very good news. However, he still hasn't cast the show, but he's supposed to send out an email with the list this weekend. Also known as I'm busy refreshing my email every other minute.

All I want is to surprise everyone. Expelled Boy, Advanced Acting, Salamander.
I have a giant sun inside me and I just want to let it out.

Audition Days (Listening to: We Used to Vacation, Cold War Kids)

Today we auditioned for roles in The Merchant of Venice in Advanced Acting. I was up until two last night memorizing Portia's part of the audition scene.
Anyway, my audition went pretty well. I got paired with Batman Boy for my first reading, so he took Bassanio and I took Portia in the scene where he chooses the correct box and the two get married.

Maybe a little background on Batman Boy would be helpful here. He's pretty much the default for romantic leads in drama at our school, because he's talented and gorgeous. I've decided to call him Batman Boy because he has a minor obsession with the Dark Knight. Actually, my friend Alice dressed up as Batman for Halloween. I commented a picture of her in costume on facebook saying: wow, you make the best Batman since.....well, me. (Batman is my favorite superhero and I was Batman in 7th Grade). Anyway, Batman Boy writes on my wall: A little birdie told me you were Batman once. That's rad. See what I mean? Cute, but awkward. Anyway he's dating this girl I went to elementary school with.

Well back to the audition. Paul and Mike, the teachers in Advanced Acting, are big fans of saying: "I need more HEAT!" So, as far as my audition went, Batman Boy and I had something happening. Maybe not the strongest chemistry ever (Expelled Boy still wins in that department), but definitely something.
The other girl I'm competing with for Portia is this senior girl who is new to the class, and she's actually really sweet. We do speech and debate together too. Anyways, she's gorgeous, blonde to my red hair, and she and Batman Boy have been friends since preschool. They can turn the chemistry on and off because they are so comfortable together. My acting is much stronger than hers, but she looks like Portia more than I do (blonde), and she and Batman Boy are close. We'll call her Glinda the Good Witch I guess.

In Advanced Acting, we cast the shows ourselves. Mike and Paul give us a list of the characters and we write who we want to play each role on the sheet. I talked to Glinda afterwards, and we talked about the casting we had seen. Most people had seemed to cast me as Nerissa, the female supporting role (pretty damn good for me considering it's my first year in Advanced Acting and I'm just a Junior) and Glinda as Portia. Well, we'll see, I mean Paul has the final decision, but if most people cast me as Nerissa I will probably get that role. Which I will definitely be happy with. :) Yay for things going my way.

Anyway this is about to be a really busy run for me, so I probably won't get anything up for a while.

Polite Ghosts Fading Quickly (Listening to: Half Asleep, School of Seven Bells)

The last three days have been an odd slew of lovely, contented sighs and tense pain.

On Saturday, I spent a large part of the day with The Expelled Boy. It's been over a year since I started liking him, and it's done: Almost forcibly spreading thinner 'til it dissolves completely.

Sunday, I blew off all my homework and just felt amazing all day. I slept in. Somehow I seemed to be lighter than air, giddy but in an entirely new way. Not in the love I felt for someone else, (The Expelled Boy, Art School Boy), but for the lack of that love. Being alone, and loving that feeling of independence, of self-reliance so much. I know that what begins as an unguarded train of thought, slowly can become an addiction to the slumber of disconnection and the resonance of memory that no longer has a shape but keeps you numb through the hours 'til gone is another day.

Monday started beautifully. I had this vibrating energy inside me and I was so much happier than I had been. Advanced Acting started after lunch. We sat in our own spots on the stage. Mike says to picture someone we love, the person we love the most of all.
I remember this exercise from last year. And I do not imagine the same person.
Last year I picked the girl I now know as Old Best Friend. Our friendship the way we knew it then has also almost forcibly spread thinner 'til it dissolved completely.
This year I imagine Laura, my little sister. When we were younger, when I was six and she was four, I would dream that she had died, that the overgrown rock garden in the corner of our yard where no one goes anymore had become a pond, a deep, dark lake of green scum and shadowy fish and that she had fallen from the balcony into its depths. I used to dream that I climbed down the chain hanging from the roof gutter that directed rain water, to try and carry her out of the lake. She would drown. The sky was always stormy. I would scream and cry in these dreams, and then our friends would peer out of the shadows of our dark house and giggle, laugh and say that they were happy she was dead. They would sing and dance and I would scream and bawl and wake up drenched in sweat.
Mike says picture this person I love most, and I imagine her. Now, he says, this person is dying. What do their eyes look like? What does their hair look like? You can comfort them. Where are you?
Just like that, I am crying.
Now, Mike says, they have one minute. When I call your name, you have one minute to say everything you want to say to them.

He calls my name first.

I need you to know that I love you more than anyone. I love you so much, so much, and I need you to stay with me. I know that life for you has been so much harder than it has been for me and I wanted to take that from you and protect you from that. I never could. I wish it was me. I wish I could die and not you, I do.
Fifteen seconds, Mike says.
I love you. You're going to be okay. It's going to be okay.
Ten seconds.
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you.
Five.
I love you, I love you I love you I love youIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouLAURA.
And she's gone, Mike says.

Another name is called, but I keep crying, silently shaking and shivering and holding my empty hand tight around what I have convinced myself is her limp one. Those dark waters have swallowed her up again and there is nothing I can do.
As I walk from the theater to the bathroom, a senior from the class, Batman Boy, pats me on the back and says: Alice Cooper is a good look for you. And it's true, my cheeks are streaked with black mascara. I wipe it away.
The rest of the day my shoulders feel tense against my neck and I feel dragged through Hell. I take notes in Calculus for once. I can't laugh or make faces behind the teacher's back today.
That headache you get from crying hasn't faded yet.

Question v. Answer (Listening to: Third Planet, Modest Mouse)

We’re so very grounded on this cold Alaskan night. Above us, your sky spins a savory silk for the treetops. We look at the ground and at each other. Our bare limbs are so earthly, so low. My few words tilt softly from behind my lips. The pavement is cracked with weeds. Our feet have led us to the courtyard, the place you say you first kissed me. Maybe I’ve lost track. It would surprise me. You hold me in your arms and I bury myself in you. We both know such Saturdays breed Sunday mornings of goodbye. You nuzzle my head and kiss my lips softly. I pull the strings; I am the puppeteer. I kiss you back. Full, round, dripping fruit. I don’t mind that your hands wander. Your fingers tracing me are compliments and they are comforting. We take a walk at your suggestion (you want more), and amble down the concrete. We sit on the stoop of a dark whitewashed house. You cradle my head as you lay me down to the sidewalk. Your fingertips flow from beneath my left breast to my opposite hip. Your lips pulse at mine. Beyond your head, the frozen starlight blooms. Your warmth is pressing me, enveloping me, sweeping up and down my legs in waves of shivers. I sit up on my elbows. My naked shoulders are pale moonlit horses.

They said I love you.

I know.

He doesn’t love her, does he?

No.

She doesn’t love him either.

Good.

It’s too soon.

Way too soon.

I lay my tousled head on your shoulder. The harbor glimmers slowly. A tangled thicket of masts guards the shore. Neither of us needs to say I don’t love you.

When I first wrote about that night, I wrote about that one amazing kiss in the courtyard. Last night I realized I'd overlooked the important part.

In other news, I told my old best friend (I'm still close with her, but I think "best friend" is too black and white for us) about what happened to me on my birthday. See: Locking the Doors Isn't Enough (August 23rd, 2008) Anyways, I cried for twenty blocks or so, the most violently I have since Alaska when my parents went insane. Today was an awful day, which is what got me started. The aforementioned incident just sort of spilled out.

I had burst into tears in the middle of the restaurant, so I left my family and started walking home. My dad made me come back, because he said it wasn't safe. Funny how when you need your parents to care and notice, they don't, but when you want to be alone they care enough to ruin it. Maybe I'll write something real about this later in the week.

Blue Window, Inherit The Wind (Listening to: I'm Good, I'm Gone, Lykke Li)

I'm in the advanced acting class at my school and I also do speech. This year I have a monologue for acting class and a scene in speech, and I figured I'd just put them out there because they're pretty boss if I do say so myself.

Blue Window, my monologue:
I used to be married to a dentist. We bought a big apartment on East 71st Street. We'd been married about three months. I was standing by the window. It was late afternoon. Everything was blue, as blue as it can be before it gets black.
And Marty said, come out on the terrace. I said, I don't have any clothes on. And he brought me this little robe and we walked out on the terrace. We'd only lived there two months. And he kissed me, and I put my head back to look up at the sky. Our reflections were in the glass. And I put my head back - we lived on the seventh floor, there was another one above us - and we leaned, he leaned, I set my back against the rail...and it just...we were gone. We were over. I saw our reflections leave the window. And I didn't black out. I thought, very clearly, this is bad. This is real. And it's true, you see everything pass before your eyes. Everything. Slowly, like a dream. And Marty was...climbing up me...and screaming...and we turned over once...and we went through an awning, which saved my life. And I broke every bone in my face. I have a completely new face. My teeth were all shattered, these are all caps.
I was in traction for ten months. And Tom came to see me every week, every day sometimes. Marty's family. We sued the building. I mean, they never even attached it to the wall. It wasn't even attached. It was just a rail, a loose rail. There was another one on another floor, the same thing could have happened. I landed on him. I killed him. I can't - it's seven years. I can't have anybody hold me. I can't ever be held.

Inherit the Wind, my scene:
Rachel: Mr. Drummond, you've got to call the whole thing off. It's not too late. Bert knows he did wrong. He didn't mean to, and he's sorry. Now why can't he just stand up and say to everybody I did wrong, I broke a law, I admit it. I won't do it again. Then they'd stop all this fuss, and - everything would be like it was.
Drummond: Who are you.
Rachel: I'm a friend of Bert's.
Drummond: How about it boy, getting cold feet?
Rachel: Bert knows he's wrong, don't you Bert?
Drummond: Don't prompt the witness.
Bert: What do you think, Mr. Drummond?
Drummond: I'm here. That tells you what I think. Well, what's the verdict, Bert?
Bert: No sir, I'm not gonna quit.
Rachel: Bert!
Bert: It wouldn't do any good now anyhow. If you'll stick by me, Rache, well - we can fight it out.
Rachel: I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do.
Bert: What's the matter Rache?
Rachel: I don't want to do it, Bert, but Mr. Brady says...They want me to testify against you.
Bert: You c- you can't. Rache, some of the things I've talked to you about are things you just say to your own heart. If you get up on the stand and say those things out loud...don't you understand? The words I've said to you, softly, in the dark, just trying to figure out what the stars are for or what be on the backside of the moon...they were questions, Rache. I was just asking questions. If you repeat those things on the witness stand, Brady'll make 'em sound like answers. And they'll crucify me.
Drummond: What's your name. Rachel what?
Rachel: Rachel Brown. Can they make me testify?
Drummond: I'm afraid so. It would be nice if nobody ever had to make anybody do anything, but...
Rachel: I remember feeling this way when I was a little girl. I would wake up at night, terrified of the dark. I'd think sometimes that my bed was on the ceiling, and the whole house was upside down, and if I didn't hang onto my matress I'd fall, outward, into the stars. I wanted to run to my father and have him tell me I was safe, that everything would be alright. But I was always more frightened of him than I was of falling. It's the same way now.
Random Court Official: Will Miss Rachel Brown come forward please?
Brady: Miss Brown, you are a teacher at the Hillsboro Consolidated School?
Rachel: Yes.
Brady: So you have had ample time to know the defendant, Mr. Cates, professionally.
Rachel: Yes.
Brady: Is Mr. Cates a member of the spiritual community to which you belong. Do you and Mr. Cates attend the same church?
Rachel: Not anymore. Bert dropped out two summers ago.
Brady: Why?
Rachel: It was what happened with the little Stebbins boy.
Brady: Would you tell us about that please?
Rachel: The boy was eleven years old and he went swimming in the river, and got a cramp, and drowned. Bert felt awful about it. He lived right next door and Tommy Stebbins used to come over to the boarding house to look through Bert's microscope. Bert said the boy had a quick mind and he might even be a scientist when he grew up. At the funeral, Pa preached that Tommy didn't die in a state of grace, since his folks had never had him baptized.
Bert: Tell them what your father really said, that Tommy's soul was damned, writhing in hellfire! Religion's supposed to comfort people, isn't it? Not frighten them to death!
Brady: I request that the defendant's remarks be stricken from the record. But how can we strike this young man's bigoted opinions from the memory of this community? Now my dear, will you please tell us some more of Mr. Cates's opinions on the subject of religion? Will you merely repeat, in your own words, some of the conversations you had with the defendant?
Rachel: I don't remember exactly -
Brady: What you told me the other day. That presumably humerous remark Mr. Cates made about the heavenly father.
Rachel: Bert said...
Brady: Go on, my dear.
Rachel: I can't - Bert was just talking about some of the things he had read. He...he...
Brady: Were you shocked when he told you these things? Describe to the court your innermost feelings when Bertram Cates said to you: God did not create man! Man created God!
Rachel: Bert didn't say that! He was just joking. What he said was: God created man in his own image, and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.
Brady: Go on my dear, tell us some more. What did he say to you about the holy state of matrimony? Did he compare it with the breeding of animals?
Rachel: No, he didn't say that - He didn't mean that. That's not what I told you. All he said was- I don't understand it. What I do understand, I don't like. I don't want to think that men come from apes and monkeys. But I think that's beside the point. You see I haven't really thought very much. I was always afraid of what I might think - so it seemed safer not to think at all. But now I know. A thought is like a child inside our body. It has to be born. If it dies inside you, part of you dies, too! Maybe what Mr. Darwin wrote is bad. I don't know. Bad or good, it doesn't make any difference. The ideas have to come out - like children. Some of 'em healthy as a bean plant, some sickly. I think the sickly ideas die mostly, don't you, Bert?



Note: Inherit the Wind has been cut a lot...don't think this is the original text.

Self-Reliance (Listening to: American Names, Sebastian Grainger)

In my American Studies class we were assigned to read Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance. Here's the full text. There's also a link at the top for a modern English version, because Emerson can get pretty wordy. Trust me though, the long version is worth reading.

I basically fell in love with Emerson reading this essay, and reading another related speech he delivered (American Scholar) only made me love his work more.

One of my favorite ideas is that there is this immense intelligence, this brilliant light, not God or some religious figure, but a universal sense of humanity which you can tap into. I love the idea that this huge, infinite reality is so enormous that it can't exist without being somewhat paradoxical. Anything truly immense has room for mutually conflicting realities. True brilliance is listening to this light that shines into you from all around, these beams of truth. But what brilliance has come to mean is the ability to copy and explain the philosophy of great thinkers before you, following people like Emerson and Thoreau like sheep. (Which reminds me of an amazing movie, Dead Poets Society).
In American Scholar, Emerson outlines how to be a free thinker, if once can even outline such a thing. He says that to be brilliant, you have to tap into this immense intelligence, and that you need to observe nature (because, Emerson says, nature reflects the human soul), you must read books (only using them for inspiration, not as a stifler of your own creativity), and finally and most importantly, you must live. Emerson is one of the only philosophers who cites experience as an enormous factor of intelligence.
One of my other favorite ideas shares some common ground with the Jewish idea of Tikkun Olam, where humanity has been split and you need to gather all the pieces to put it back together. Emerson says that all of humanity constitutes one Man, and that each of us needs tap into the immense intelligence to become instead of a man who thinks, Man Thinking. It's the same concept of gathering the pieces, only according to Emerson, we ARE the pieces.

Did I mention how much I love Emerson?

Anyway the concept of Self-Reliance, independence of other people's ideas and opinions came up in my own life. I won't get too specific, but my best friend since 6th grade and I started having problems last year. I was so scared we were growing apart. I was more terrified by the fact I wasn't sure I loved her anymore than by the thought of her stopping loving me. We worked our problems out for the most part, but then she and my two other friends started doing drugs a lot, and it's just hard to hang out with her now. It's the same thing, but I'm not scared. I don't feel dependent on her. Or any of them. It's not that I don't care what's happening, I just realize I guess that there is a deeper underlying pattern. Another concept we discussed in American Studies. And the pattern here is that people always leave, and I will be fine on my own. I haven't cried since the beginning of Summer. On that note, here is some writing I've done:

Sometimes it feels like the passing of a dream, that dull lack of some inherent sting. I barely feel alive. The pieces of my life have faded like yellowing photographs, and color is more a memory than anything else. Is this purgatory? Is this some hazy death? I used to cry so much I felt electric. I used to feel like overflowing, watching that delicious liquid slosh and dribble and spill. I am all dried out it seems. I thought my tears were brimstone; I thought I was in hell. I thought a lot of things and I believed them. Am I happier now? I can’t remember.

I think I float through your lives as a thing intangible. I have become a lonely recollection, the type that makes you shiver in warm sunlight. I can see your world shifting to cover the holes I once filled. I’m older, wiser. I am the ghost smiling at her old friends and former loves.

This thinning encircles me. I am contained, easily, quietly. Detachment hangs like an anchor from my shoulders. Strangely, it is freeing. I feel infinite. The pettiness I used to cry over, the hate I used to feel, and my fervent desires have all been replaced by a calm certainty.

I am self-reliant. I don’t cling to you. I know, with a tranquil but irrevocable conviction, things which once made me ache to glance at, and they sing to me a lullaby. I am lulled by the song of the universe, by this serene knowledge of my own soul. My vantage is high, and pure of your distortions. I can see so clearly. This tangled web of manic pirouettes and bowing dancers has a pattern, and free of jealousy and fear of loneliness I understand it.

This thinness, this detachment, is but the stilling of my own frantic dance. The clearing of my lovely mind.

Enough of Love (Listening to: Black Cadillacs, Modest Mouse)

Slip me some gum.

Have I got a secret for you.

Let me sing it to you.

Here is your hand on my thigh.

Look how your arms pen me in.

Riddle me this.

I’d give you everything

Myself

To know what you want when you kiss me.

Split my string of pearls.

Don’t you want to break me?

I am your disposable income.

You can be my impulse buy.

Mess me up, I’d like to tousle your hair.

Grab me, squeeze me,

But don’t you ever dare touch me.

Whispers?

I’ll kill you.

Love me?

Fuck that.

Bruise me, use me.

Tear me down.

Let me drink myself crazy.

Won’t you rough me around?

Abacus (Listening to: Horizons, Son, Ambulance)

Use me. Define me. Stencil me, if you can.

Count me on your abacus.

Why I never say hello, you know the answer.

I only wish you would tell me it.

It’s the bridge that I could never cross, even once I had arrived.

It’s the raspberries in my cheekbones and the chocolate I eat while I cry.

You always say I have the best food. (It’s me, it was always me.)

And I lied. I don’t cry anymore.

Break my teapot. Flesh me out.

My fingers have no thoughts these days.

Smashed eyelashes, my whispering belly.

Reeling in my first fish, tears as bait.

I don’t blame you.

I was beautiful.

Kissing clocks and the faces of our knees,

They never seemed so futile. (Chasing white rabbits was always enough.)

Gardens in the small of my back and bleak cities on my brow.

I just wonder why you won’t plant me a tree.

I could really use some oxygen right now.

Sing me the story, teach me the song.

About the way my toes'll curl under with someone else’s love.

The arrondissements and the sunflowers I know I’ll see alone.

Do people get tired of changing?

Do you believe in blank slates?

Tell me your thesis. (Oh, oh, your personal examples.)

Please win me over, I want to surrender.

I was never all that good with guns to start.

Crumple some paper, crinkle my bones.

Have my words all eloped in secret with you?

Curtains and couches and the fact that you won’t settle down.

What do you call a three and a half minute harmonica solo?

Knock me sideways and gnaw me near.

Kick me closer, force my flush.

I don’t want some pretentious, artificial gain.

Brush away my misconceptions. Tell me what remains.

Kiss The Clock, It's 11:11 (Listening to: Light Years Away, Mozella)

It probably won't be by the time I'm done writing this.
I haven't had time to write for weeks. School is basically eating my life et cetera and I'm too busy swooning over The Expelled Boy to write about swooning over him.
Wow, my life is so pathetic.

I thought I'd tell the entire world about it though.
First of all I'm in love with some new music, but I'll totally tell you about that later. Maybe I'll do a top whatever playlist sometime. That might be fun. Anyways, this song I have on repeat right now is an old favorite off my very first painting playlist freshman year.

Also known as two years ago, when the world was still black and white and oh so much easier.

I think I'm happier in color, even shades of grey.

But anyway, this song is beautiful. I've always loved it. It is just so mellow and the rhyming couplets are enchanting. Her voice is beautiful in an ugly-pretty way. I forget sometimes how much music has become a soudtrack to my life. Listening to it takes me right back to some of my first paintings, made in a few hours on the floor of my room with shitty brushes and my mini easel. The smell is...wow. Gotta love sense-memory.

I don't think I got this song back then. Back then I was so innocent; I had never had a boyfriend, a kiss, or even a hand to hold. I forget sometimes how much I wanted what I've had. It was worth it.

I'm remembering how long I spent crying over not being called by Art School Boy. The lyrics really fit that. I never realized it I guess. I was stuck on Tiny Vessels to get me through that crisis.

But:

Boy, looking back I see, I'm not the girl I used to be. When I lost my mind, it saved my life. But I don't blame you anymore, that's too much pain to store.
And I think I cried for days but that seems light years away.
And I'm never going back to who I was.
That life seems like light years away.

My head is so full of stories and things to say. It's totally jumbled.
Songs, my essay about myself, weekend spontaneity, LOVE, death, acting class
I wish I could share them all, right now.
I'll come back to them.


This is terrible blog. I'm pretty sure I'm breaking all the rules.

I Swear We're All Mental (Listening to: Hang Me Up to Dry, Cold War Kids)

Who I am is never going to be good enough for you. I think I get that now. I don’t know how you see me, and really it doesn't even matter. Because even if you thought I was beautiful, even if you thought I was perfect, it wouldn’t be enough. You and I will never happen. I just don’t fit in with the person you are trying so hard to be. I don’t know. Maybe that is you. Maybe you are a crude flirt whose laugh is just a little too loud. You know it sounds forced. To me at least. Maybe to everyone. It’s just a little too long. I’m being mean. But I can see right through you, you know. I don’t know, maybe we all can. I just feel like I know you, like I knew you, I mean. Like you are so much more than this stupid boy with so much wasted potential. A stupid sixteen year old boy. I’m not cool enough for him. I’d like to think I am, or that it is irrelevant and that if you care about me, he will forget his friends and the two of you can become one person. But it does matter. It’s all that matters. I know that. We all know that. I guess the duplicity never occurred to me before. But it was always there, even last year when I thought everything was perfect. You were perfect to me last year. In that one class. The rest of the day, it was like that 45 minutes, that hour and a half once a week, like it didn’t even exist. Only when you were alone could you smile at me, could you acknowledge me at all. I heard you changed. It’s pathetic. You are no different than then. You learned nothing. You are the same stupid fucking boy who bums smokes off strangers and gets caught for the stupidest little shit. I heard you went to rehab. Was that another waste of time? I can’t believe this. I hate you some of the time, I swear. I really, really do. Fuck. Let me tell you something. I was a little disappointed when I heard that you had given all that up, that you were smart and responsible. I wanted to be the one to change you. I wanted you to change for me. This is so messed up. I’m so messed up. God, you don’t even talk to me now. I feel like an idiot. We’re all idiots, aren’t we. Just stupid teenagers. Mentally fucking retarded, I swear.

The Expelled Boy Came Back (Listening to: Sukie in the Graveyard, Belle & Sebastian)

You saw me first, and came over to give me a hug and say hello. I haven’t seen you in months and that distance seems strung up between us like Christmas lights counting the days. My face bursts into a bright, blooming smile when I see you. I can’t quite catch my breath when you’re looking at me, and my heart is almost audible when we’re in the same room. I count the times you touch me. And now I’m sitting here without you, trying to figure out how to put what you do to me into words. It is impossible. It is inexpressible. I remember the things you used to say to me last year, how you seemed to hint at things I was too shy to acknowledge. And I’m still like that; I still bat my eyelashes because it’s hard for me to look right at you, right into your eyes. Somehow I can’t make that contact, and I can’t do more than smile and hug. Talk. Talking to you is hard for me too. I lose track of words when my heart is beating that fast. There are strange and terrible distances between us, a gap that cannot always be bridged, that tangle of twinkling lights. I see you watching me sometimes and it makes me flush, to know you see me too. To understand that you watch me, that you see me. Last year I told all my friends every little nuance of the way you spoke to me, every movement you made in my direction. I understand now that this is only ours, and maybe the milestones are for them, but the journey needs to be all our own. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I don’t know how to say this. I did make a fool of myself last year, it was humiliating and heartbreaking to have it all taken away, all those words and little nothings I watched so carefully, all the time and all the glances in the halls, your smell. There was nothing I could do. I don’t want to throw myself out into that void, to tell all my friends about the way you looked at me today, to risk everything and bank on you being there when I know how quickly and completely it can all disappear. How one day you can just stop showing up. And it’s as simple as this: I’m falling for you. Please catch me.

That was two weeks ago. We barely speak. He doesn't touch me anymore. I missed seeing him around last year when he was kicked out. So now there's this recognition that we don't know each other anymore. That we maybe weren't made for each other. He asked me for my notes today. My heart skipped a beat.

I know you so much better than they do. I saw you open up, I saw all those walls come crumbling down. You're putting up that huge front again and I can see it, I can see you building it. You need to prove yourself to all of them again now I guess, and I understand that. Who we are is so much less important than who we show to the world in high school. And you don't want anyone to remember you for what you did wrong. For your very simple, very real mistakes. You want them to remember that loudness, that crudeness, that charisma.

It breaks my heart.

Because it was your vulnerability that made me love you last year. And that's clearly being buried more and more deeply as the days go by. There won't be any more hearts with bordering vowels on my notebooks drawn by you. To tell you the truth, I almost prefer it. I love organization, and I couldn't erase those doodles even though they drove me crazy. You won't hug me or joke with me or tell me how I smell amazing. Not this year. You won't cradle me in your arms, you won't act in sexually charged scenes with me. You won't open up. Your friends don't like me, I'm not cool enough for them. I don't do drugs. I don't party. We don't belong together. Seduce the foreign exchange student, I know that's the guy you want to be.

But please, I needed you. I know you, not like them. I've seen you, not the way they've seen you. I am different. You need to remember that.

Brighter Discontent (Listening to: How Can It Be, Forever Thursday)

Rereading some of my old work (something I only do at those times when I seem brimful of emotion but unable to express it with words due to a lack of creative or poetic inspiration) I was forcibly reminded of a song by The Submarines called Brighter Discontent.

The song itself doesn't quite describe the same feeling, but there are snatches which are really dead-on. I can give some examples from the song but I think they will be more in context if you've read my writing first.

These were the days when she lay in silent repose in the corners of her white-walled haven. The days when she tugged the shades apart and threw open the windows, when she wore ball gowns she had no use for. These were the days she fit her feet into velvet pumps, when she rouged her cheeks and painted her lips. These were the days she stopped pretending not to care. Sometimes she’d play quiet love songs from years past on an old and wheedling phonograph, others the faint anthems of robins were all she needed to dull the sharp silence. In the evenings, sunlight would leak through the trees, drenching the wooden floors of her room. She’d lock the door; trace the golden baubles of light with her forefinger. On blank and snowy pages she would record pieces of her life. At times they took the form of meticulous figures, shaded into the perfection she had always lacked and riddled with her doubts and love. Most were sheets of innumerable ciphers, slanted and flowing in rivulets from the ink pen she handled as delicately as the stem of a rose. There were some hours when she’d simply leave the pages white, agreeing with her cautious consciousness that some moods were not meant to be described. Yet it was these pages she always returned to in her islands of calm, when she remembered the storms which at times afflicted her. It was at these pages she could stare for hours on end, discovering subtleties within herself that she hadn’t known existed. She would marvel at how many emotions these formless vessels could hold. She imagined them as invisible glass, brimming with substance-less liquid. These silver thoughts remained nameless to her and to the world, remained shadows on the borders of acknowledgment when she could not bring herself to admit them. Sometimes they took the form of faceless ghosts that bobbed and nodded at her until she forced herself to look away. She could neither escape nor define the sepia-toned whispers in the air which surrounded her then. Instead, her eyes nearly always found the naked windows framed with emerald leaves and pink bursting blooms. She would lightly finger the honey wood molding around the glass, unable to shake the tight feeling that she was trapped in a transparent vase of her own making, that she could at any moment become a ghost in her own world, indiscernible and thin as air.

And that's exactly what it was:
A Brighter Discontent. A breaking heart in an empty apartment, the loudest sound I never heard. And I will be fine if I don't look around me now too much for what's gone. If only I can wait here just a little while and let time pass in my room.

How Can It Be that These Things live in Me?

Locking the Doors Isn't Enough (Listening to: All Downhill from Here, Amy Kuney (feat. Tim Myers))

This isn't something I've written, because honestly I don't know if I will ever be able to write about it. Well, I guess technically it's something I'm writing because it takes the form of text that you or I or anyone else is reading.
But it's not like the others, I guess is what I'm trying to say. The others are almost never over a page, they have a definitive start and end, and they capture a moment I want to remember, be it sad, happy, lonely or beautiful.

This is not a moment I want to remember.

I want this moment, stained with shame and humiliation to be a repressed memory I have absolutely no recollection of.

I want this to have never happened.

Most things I tell my friends. Boys, my feelings, I like to share them and feel that I am not alone. This is my only secret I consciously keep. Natalie knows because she was there and she saw my face afterward, the one that refused to acknowledge what actually happened.
And I have to tell the secret to someone else, because someone else out there has to understand what is going on right now. I need to vent it out to you. Because he's back.

The amazing song I have on repeat describes parts of what I am feeling perfectly:

"I have a headache in my chest from all the chaos that you left."

And that is exactly how it is, that aching in my breastbone like a fist against my lungs. It drags down my shoulders in lines that ache. I can feel the cold sweat in the small of my back and the hot blush over my cheekbones. I feel faint. Like I can't quite breathe. It's a feeling of dread, of fear, of embarrassment and shame. My vision clouds a lot, so even my own eyes aren't reliable.

This is the part I have trouble saying. Natalie was there, she knows. I never even speak to her about it in concrete terms. I just say his name and she knows.
My dad's friend, white beard, awkward mannerisms. I know he didn't mean anything, but it was still a physical violation of a boundary. My boundary. Molestation feels like too big a word for it, but I suppose it is a crime of perception. My perception. And that's how it felt to me. I didn't ask for his hands there and yet there they were. And there was my dress....or rather there wasn't my dress, and it seems so trivial when I try to tell it but it was my birthday, my sweet sixteen and all the sugar he drained out of it and all the bitterness and cold that remained.

My dad knew. He made him apologize. He did. I went home.

It's been a month. He came walking up the path when my parents weren't home two days ago. He let himself in, made himself at home. I've been hiding in my room for two days. When I leave to use the bathroom or get some food, I walk on tiptoe. I know it won't happen again but there is a heaviness to the air, to my voice and that fist in my chest when I know that he is here, in my house, because my father let him in, gave him a key.
And I don't want him here.

It wasn't alright, and I....well I'll be alright, I was alright, and I just really can't take this leaden fist and this crawling skin for much much longer.
And I know he's my dad's best friend....but how can he leave him with me alone after that? How can he do that? How can he sit me next to him at dinner? How can he ask me to join the conversation, how can he ask me to GET OVER IT? How can he do that?

Tender Layered Subtext (Listening to: Good Friday, CocoRosie)

I wrote this a little over a week ago, after one of the most surreal experiences of my life. Art School Boy had a nine hour layover in my city on his way to Vegas to visit his sister in college. He caught a cab downtown, and I grabbed a bus over to meet him.

These are paths I have traveled many times before. The corners and angles are familiar to me, and the sidewalk-squares and benches hold faded memories of my touch, my passing. These are the streets of my hometown. But they are somehow warped, twisted, made strange and foreign like reflections in a funhouse mirror by the simple presence of your footsteps next to mine. The words from my mouth sound as if they are coming from across a long distance. My thoughts turn towards the bizarre jumble of different facts, different days of my life which have been compacted into this moment. And I feel very much alone, walking here next to you. We are deep sea divers who fly to the surface when we see our air supply deplete even the littlest bit, and I hate us for it. Still, the conversation flows between us with few halts, and I find myself acknowledging that it could be worse. So much worse. The sun beats down upon the pavement and our backs. I catch you looking at me every now and again in a way which makes me shiver. In the movie theater, you put your arm around me. I don’t know what to say to you, so I keep quiet. I snap rigid when you take my hand in yours. I am brittle as your nose ruffles along the nape of my neck. Something breaks, with a gasp of breath and a quickened heartbeat, and I lean into you for shelter. I forget for a moment that I resent you for coming here, to my home, my sanctuary. But ever-present lurks that sinking feeling of dread. We leave the theater. You walk me to my bus stop and we hug. It transports me back in time to what is now over a year ago. You say goodbye, and lean in for a kiss. My hands between us form a barrier. I don’t think that’s – and you agree, of course, I am so sorry. I hug you. Goodbye. On the bus across town I struggle not to cry behind my shaded eyes, knowing that I know you and can predict your inevitable mistakes. You’ve undone all my work. My weeks of effort to wipe you away. We should have gone drinking; the tender layered subtext of sober conversation is too overwhelming.

I feel like this needs some explaining. I feel so stupid sometimes, like I'm some freak who has no idea how to react in situations where you're supposed to know what to do. I've always told myself that no, I won't do anything with him, I can't, not after all that he put me through after the first year. And then I completely disregard that the second I'm in the real-life situation of seeing him. I know I sent him some pretty mixed signals by letting him put his arm around me in the movie, and then by not letting him kiss me. I didn't know what to say, I guess. It would have seemed so petty.
But I was able to say no this time because I knew what would happen beforehand, and I could make a decision before the actual situation manifested itself. When he put his arm around me in the theater, I knew that he thought that day was something other than what I wanted. I made the decision then that I would stand up to him that time, that I wouldn't just bend and buckle and give in like before. And it's not that giving in before was wrong of me, or that he won in some way, it just meant that this time was the first, and what distinguishes what we had from a girl just doing what a guy says because he says to. I proved I had a will, I guess.
It's also easier for me to forget him and leave him behind if we don't kiss, if we don't undo all that work I've done forgetting him. And I want to remember us as a sweet first relationship, not as a random hookup whenever we're in the same city. That's all.

I Guess I'll Tell You About Art School Boy (Listening to: "Come On Petunia", The Blow)

According to a friend (Salamander):

“Mostly, I'm kind of sorry for you. Maybe that's weird, but so much of you is wrapped in this boy who you only see once a year.”

I guess I’ll start before the beginning, because who I was before he happened to me is so different from what I have become.

I’ll be quick; this story has been told many times. It can get tiresome and I can get verbose. (Note: quotations like “this” are excerpts from writing I’ve done before.)

Freshman Year: I was quiet, with almost no friends outside The Group of ten or so girls who I’d been friends with since middle school. None of us had ever had a real boyfriend, and drugs and drinking were things we whispered about. I was every parents dream, and I didn’t really know then that something was missing. My friends all loved me, there was no real drama, I had a perfect 4.0, and back then I thought that was enough.

That summer I went back to a two week art school out of state. It was my third year, so I had a few friends there already. I was the only one of them who’d never had a boyfriend. I was the only one of them who was there mostly for the classes.

A few days in, a boy asked my friend Miss Mermaid to make out with him so he could beat his friend in a game of who could hook up with the most girls. She said no then, but by the 3^rd of July, they were sucking face under the fireworks.

Then he turned to me. And I told him no. He asked me why. I said I just didn’t want to. He started following me after classes, learning more about me, talking to me, being sweet, becoming my friend. He found out I’d never been kissed, and then things changed.

“I understand why now,” he said.

He was almost two years older than me, and he was a year ahead in school. He was even older in years. His sophomore year he’d been addicted to cocaine. He played drums. He was in a band. He wasn’t a virgin. I was completely overwhelmed by the situation, scared of him, scared of letting go, scared of something I still don’t understand.

At the dance, he kissed me on my cheek.

The next day he kissed my forehead and then my lips at the foot of the steps up to the girls’ dorms. The next day he asked me to be his girlfriend.

The rest of the two weeks, the most we ever did was kiss. He was sweet, he held my hand, he picked me up and spun me when he saw me. He was perfect.

When I flew back home, I wondered

“Can you define the final moment mathematically?

In a repeatable equation?”

Afterwards, he didn’t call. He didn’t talk to me at all, and I couldn’t figure out why. I missed him for months. I knew it was stupid, that we were a fling, but he was my first boyfriend, and I couldn’t just let go. I cried myself to sleep for weeks.

“Maybe you don’t understand who or what you were to me. Maybe you don’t see why what you’ve done is wrong.

I’ll tell you.

For three months, I had myself persuaded that you were the best thing to happen to me in my entire fucking life.

I remembered each specific moment of our parting, and I remembered when you said you’d call me.

You never did. I wasn’t worth a fucking phone call to you.”

And then I stopped worrying about it. I liked a different guy. I moved on. But then he sent me a note saying he missed me, and something in me exploded.

“What makes you think you can walk back into my life after you chose to leave it and tell me of all things that you fucking miss me?

If you missed me, you’d have called.”

I focused on who he’d been before he changed for me, on the boy who kissed girls for points. And that made it a little easier.

Sophomore year, I was focused on forgetting him. My friends resented me for talking about him, maybe even for having had that experience when so many of them were still trapped in how things were freshman year. They started talking about me when I wasn’t around. My best friend stopped being that to me after five years of perfect friendship. I made other friends. I pretended nothing was wrong, that we were all just growing up and that I didn’t care. I cried. I got drunk for the first time, for the second time, third time. And I wasn’t really happy then either, but I still thought it was better than freshman year.

This year, the summer after my sophomore year, I went back to art school. I knew I’d see him, and I dreaded it. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t get back together with him. I couldn’t, not after he’d hurt me like he did. But a few days in, I found out something that changed my mind.

“The hardest and most lovely part of it for me is that you kept the pictures.”

And he had. The same black and white photos I’d hid in my drawer, he’d saved and carried back. I understood it. I could relate to it. I mean, I’d saved mine too. I think that scared me more than anything. But it changed my mind, and before long we were back together. And it was different that time, less pure, but somehow more real. It was tainted with that guilt and that hate and that fear and the eventual forgiveness that had been my life sophomore year.

I made up with my friends, but there is still that subtle undertone of fear and pain and love that was also my life sophomore year.

And I flew home again. Forgetting him was a lot easier the second time around. I don’t think I cried once.

I’m a different person now than I was before him. I don’t recognize the timid girl who didn’t know how to express what she felt, who was so reliant on such fickle people, who was so vulnerable and weak. And when I say I don’t know who I am yet, it’s because I know how much it can change, and how one event can shape a whole year of them.

Who I Am (Listening to: Dog Problems, The Format)

I have no idea yet.

My life began before I got this blog, so I guess if you're reading, you've started in the middle. I may fill you in as I go, but the stories take too long for me to tell you all of them. Besides, how can I show you who I am in writing?

I am an artist. My painting and drawing is what saves me. Recently I've started working with photography, mainly using a Holga (a low-tech plastic camera prone to light-leaks which produces slightly warped, very dreamlike photos). My writing is a quick fix for a problem that only drawing or painting can completely heal. My friends are the most important people to me, but due to recent occurrences I can't even trust them all the way anymore. It's pretty screwed up.

I tend to be bitter about this sort of thing.

I've only been in a relationship twice in my life, and it was with the same guy. Another pretty screwed up situation.

Another thing I tend to be bitter about.
My feelings extend to nostalgia and sentimentality on this particular subject.



This is important: I don't want anyone I know to read this, ever. I've shared some of my writing, which I haven't posted here yet, with a few friends, but this is going to be less censored, I guess. This is everything, this is me. And even though you are starting in the middle of my story, the view you will get will be more complete than any of theirs. I don't need anyone to read this. I just need to send these pieces of my life out into the world.