The hour badly spent

I knew, after our talk, during Friday’s annoyingly poetic thunderstorm, that eventually you would get bored or curious and click on that link (I don’t mind that anyone finds it; it’s right out there in the open on my Facebook profile). Then you would read back and see "how I really felt," how childish and petty I really was, how prostrating and selfish I really was, how arrogant and judgemental I really was, how lonely and bitter and embarrassed I really was, but mostly how drunk I really was.

So I knew you would find The Hour Badly Spent and that you would tear through all those posts, and I thought of how easy it would be to just make them private, but then why did I put them there in the first place? Also: I am extremely lazy, so much so that I can’t even be bothered with extra mouse clicks. Also: it’s not really a big deal anyway. Nobody reads this shit except for a few people to whom I’ve given obnoxious nicknames [ed. note: I’m tired of trying to amuse my readers — all 3 of them — with with creative monikers. We’ll be on a first name basis. Except for Professor Potts and Doctor Dodd, because that sounds like they teach at Hogwarts. And Doctor Hately. She went on and on about how hard she studied for that title, la dee da, and if the rest of us don’t damn well recognize or whatever, she is not afraid to shank us. Then she downed a shot of Vegemite with horseradish and yelled "Huzzah, beehotch!" at Princess Glitter Bunny, which was utterly terrifying but also kind of hot*].

This stupid blog was not meant to be some sort of cudgel. So, about all those verbal swipes; umm, my bad. Skimming back through them, I’m actually terribly embarrassed. They weren’t really about you; they were about me: a tabloidey chronicle of what the f, exactly, I am doing here, because otherwise I’ll forget. And if now, I am sometimes disturbingly quiet, it is not because of you or any you-and-me stuff. I had a pretty bad summer, during which I made a terrible mistake and now I’m a thousand miles away and cannot fix it. I don’t mean to play the mystery man but I also really don’t want to talk about it. However, it’s on my mind a lot, and at times it will make me kind of withdrawn and surly until I can think of a witty declaration of some sort, which will usually come in the form of a Russian reversal ("In Russia, declaration think of YOU!"), because those are cheap and easy. Everybody knows how I feel about cheap and easy.

Anyway. So. Not to be all "the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream" over this but it really is all kind of old. A month in blog time is like two years of reality. I’ve aged TEN YEARS since, you know, back then. Which makes me forty-fucking-six. And not to diminish what happened, either, because we did, in fact, have a good time.

It was a good time because you took me to Lawrence in the winter, which was beautiful and white everywhere, and to that party full of Lawrence hipsters — who are much better than Manhattan hipsters because in Lawrence their dresses are smaller. It was a good time because of that morning we laughed together for five straight hours, even though I know you are not that funny and neither am I. It was a good time because we drank way too much and spent nights together and all that other stuff, and perhaps there was just not enough "other stuff" but whatever; you get the point.

Let this be the last of these pretentious livejournal-ish rants of mine. And I’ll try to cool it on the Sonnet 30 references. The Collegian is out! Let’s go make fun of it. And maybe while I’m at it I’ll write more coherently.

*This never actually happened. But it definitely should have because isn’t it awesome? Plus you can totally picture it.

I picked up a vial of mystery pills standing in line outside of the Electric Daisy Carnival. It was a rave! Fifty thousand of Los Angeles’ most annoyingly young, all in one spot and dressed like the X-Men.

Woody, Silly Question and I had been standing in line to get into the actual party for about two hours, intending — along with Fernando (yeah, who are these fucking people anyway? Don’t worry; it’s not that important, and none of us dressed up) — to meet Solomon and Manuel at the V.I.P section, then run away before a bouncer could kick our asses.

While we were in line, Fernando disappeared.

Woody, you’ve got his number. Call him. Good thinking, no?

It won’t work. I’ve got his phone.

Why in the world would you have his phone?

He asked me to hold it.

Why in the world would anybody even ask somebody else to hold his phone?

Why, indeed. He produced it from his pocket: an iPhone. It was silver and liquidey. It looked like a jewel.

You should let me hold it. I’ve got better pockets.

I was wearing my corduroy hipster jacket. It makes me look dashing and protects me from the Hulk. Plus it’s got a bunch of pockets.

So there we were, still in line, not even technically at the party yet and already we’ve lost someone. The line hadn’t moved in thirty minutes. Around us, ravers were getting out of line and rushing somewhere else. That’s when I saw the bottle of mystery pills and, anticipating a pocket check at the gate, stuffed them into my sock.

Silly Question made as if to swat the bottle out of my hand, gave me her hand-wringing screed about ingesting foreign objects, and assured me that I wouldn’t have to resort to popping mystery pills. She had some X and intended to share.

Great! So when can I have it?

Just wait.

Wait for what?

I waited.

Silly Question’s shoulder was getting tired. "Hold this," she said to Woody, handing off her spinach-green satchel.

Rumour held it that off to the left, another gate was actually open and that the line was actually moving while ours wasn’t.

Hey, I’m gonna just go check out the other line; see if it exists, divine its true purpose. Wait here. I’ll be back.

I found the gents’ then checked out the other gate. It did exist, it was moving, and it brings a message of peace and compassion. When I went back to the old line, Woody was gone.

He went to look for you.

Why? I took a leak and was gone for like three minutes.

He also took my bag.

"…"

It had my wallet and stuff in it.

Naturally. Why would you even have handed it off to him in the first place?

She explained.

Yeah, your back hurts or whatever, but so what? You can’t just switch shoulders?

After twenty minutes he still hadn’t shown up, so fuck it, we went to the mythopoetic alternate gate, where we got in after five minutes (I survived the pat-down with my mystery maybe-poison pills). We wandered around for a while, looking to and fro, hoping for Woody to materialize. An hour later he texted: I’m at the front gate.

Can we, umm, take the stuff now?

I wanna wait til later. Meet up with everyone and then do it all together.

Life is short. Why wait?

We met up with Solomon and Manuel, but still no sign of Fernando. He had gone missing hours ago, far back in line, so we circled the front area hoping he was just now reaching the entrance and he’d just happen to notice the rest of us as he finally trudged in, dejected and alone. That plan sucked and didn’t work. Sol had a new one.

From now on we gotta stick together.

Be realistic. There’s six of us. Well, five of us. And fifty thousand people swarming around like desert sands. At some point we will get separated. We need a backup plan. A meeting place.

Right here. Front gate.

Front gate?

Front gate.

Front gate it is.

The vodka I had been sipping out of a Gatorade bottle while we were in line was starting to wear off.

Losing buzz, gimme drugs!

Not yet.

It’s already ten. What are we waiting for?

We decided to go into the Coliseum and do the thing. After we popped the pills Solomon wanted to head back to the VIP lounge and I wanted to hit the football field, which was packed wall-to-wall with naked gyrating hipsters. We agreed to split up and meet back in the cheap seats, and if we didn’t see each other there, we’d fall back to the Front Gate Backup Plan.

Silly Question and I maneuvered our way down into the field, shoving our way as close to the stage as we could. There was also a woman dressed like the Amazing Spider-Stripper threading her way up, down, and all over a big steel cage in the middle of the field. At midnight, we headed back to the cheap seats, as planned, and seeing nobody there, made for the front gate. At some point along the way, Silly Question made a left while I went straight, or vice versa, and we lost each other. FRONT GATE: that was the plan, right? I made it there and waited. Silly Question didn’t show. While I was chain smoking, Solomon and Manuel showed up, grinning and sweating like — well, we don’t make that kind of simile on this blog, but you get the idea.

Where’s Silly Question?

We got lost. I’m waiting for her to show.

The pills work?

No.

That sucks. I am feelin pretty good right now.

Then they left: we’re going to the bathroom, we’ll be right back.

Later on, talking about this with the Poetess, she observed that a rave probably wouldn’t be fun if you weren’t high. She’s right. I was getting pissed. If we’d hit the X earlier, I would have known before one in the morning that the shit wouldn’t work. Then I could have made contingency plans. I could have made vodka plans. In Russia, vodka plan YOU!

Silly Question finally texted me; she was standing out on a hill beside the Coliseum, under a floodlight. Christ, what ever happened to "THE FRONT GATE!" When I found her I let her have it. FRONT GATE FRONT GATE FRONT GATE I said. We went back to the FRONT GATE to wait for Solomon.

A half hour later it was pretty clear he wasn’t gonna show. And I was STILL NOT HIGH. Fuck it, I said. We headed back into the Coliseum to try and dance with the raging hordes. What was the point of coming up with a plan nobody would follow?

We stood near the top of the stadium, facing down the same midnight-black soup of naked hipsters we had been wading through hours ago, peppered gently with their glowey, spinney accessories.

Sorry I yelled at you about the front gate. It’s just that we made a plan. A simple plan. If you’re lost, do this. I thought you, of all people, would just follow it. There are fifty thousand people up in here. Of course we’d get separated! My own effing parents could be down there having wild koala sex and I’d never even know it. That’s why we made the plan. Front gate.

She nodded.

Look at them now! Fifty thousand skanks, with their fishnets and their glowsticks. Elbowing their way through spikey-haired tweakers. Tripping over lovers and empty water bottles. Making out with each other. Look at them now; here and there one lights something up and makes it spin. They have all come together, not knowing how beautiful they look from up here. But you and I don’t matter to them one bit.

Dude, I think your pill is kicking in.

Hm. I guess it must be. Yours isn’t having any effect?

Manuel is holding mine.

Jeez, how long ago did we go through this? You’re gonna thrash this high that I only became aware of mere seconds ago. Happiness is fleeting, like glitter in the moonlight. I know, right? That’s the drugs talking. Mostly.

The night was finally picking up. And yes, I still have these:

Everyone knows I’m pretty flakey. Still, my movie-nerd friend, Silver Bullet, made sure to remind me that I had promised to go with her to her sister Erica’s wedding in Palm Springs.

"Sure. Again, when is it?"

"June something."

June something took place last week. Wednesday night we picked up the groom’s brother Donnie and the groom’s brother’s wife Palim from the airport at 11 at night and right away headed to the little resort town.

We got there two hours later, dead tired. Silver Bullet and I checked in; the room was massive. We sat around, amazed at its sheer amazingness. Then we fucked and conked out for the night.

Her phone rang sometime Thursday morning. Erica was perkily inviting us down to the pool for drinks. And swimming, one assumes. We were still groggy and tired, so no. She hung up and we fucked again, which I was almost too sleepy to do at all, and didn’t even have the presence of mind to make her get on top. Thanks for nothing, doggiestyle.

We woke up for real much much later.

"Is it really noon?"

"It’s the curtains. Hotel rooms always make you feel like it’s twilight outside."

Silver Bullet’s phone went off again; sister still bugging us to come outdoors and socialize, so we did. The pool seemed kind of small for a pricey resort in the middle of the desert. This disappointment, however, was mitigated by the open bar and the fact that everyone was dressed to show off as much skin as possible, which I believe is the only upside to California weather.

Donnie ordered me a vodka tonic, then a screwdriver, then another one, which I noticed they made with tequila instead of vodka. Strange, but best to do as the natives do; in Russia, vodka make YOU!

When we were done swimming, Silver Bullet and I walked around in search of a place to eat. The town is really just a big strip mall and everything looks the same. We settled on a Mexican place. The food wasn’t terrific and neither were the margueritas but at least they were big. Evidently I sucked mine down too fast, because when we got back to our room I lost my lunch.

Then I slept.

I woke up hours later, groggy again, but in time to get ready for the ceremony.

"Hey, if you still feel sick you can just hang out in the room during the wedding. I’ll come back afterwards."

"No, I can do this. This is why ya brought me right?" I got dressed and we walked down and across the street to wherever the ceremony was taking place (my memory’s a little tequilic) and took our seats.

So. The wedding happened. Priest, walk down the aisle, speech, kiss, yadda yadda. I’m sure I was supposed to be feeling something — everyone else looks happy and moved or whatever — but I think the tequila was feeling it for me, leaving me to sit around and be bored. When the thing was done everyone walked further up the street, to a bar and grill where reservations had been made. Still bored, I decided the time had come to start shit.

"So, most of your sister’s friends are assholes, right? Which one is the worst?"

"Christina."

"Which one is she?"

"You see the girl back there in the blacknwhite dress? She’s blonde. Yeah, her."

Later on I sat down with the rest of the family — well, the ones who seemed drunk — and asked the same question: which one of Erica’s friends was most turdish? Christina was universally agreed upon as the most vile, smelly turd in the entourage. Awesome! Although I prefer to actually know and associate with gossip targets (it makes the feel gossip much juicier), this was exactly the kind of thing I’d been waiting for! Besides the sex, of course. Sadly, only Silver Bullet was willing to provide a concrete example of said turdism:

"Once I overheard her say something really mean. It was kind of behind my back, but the way she said it, I know she meant me to hear it."

"Well?"

"She said, ‘if I were as fat as Silver Bullet I’d probably kill myself.’"

It doesn’t get much more douchey than that, does it? Silver Bullet is about the nicest girl I know (most of the time); you’d have to be pretty mean to insult her like that — just condescension, no provocation. Maybe Christina should just kill herself anyway.

"Thing is, she used to be really fat. It took time, but I’m pretty sure she only lost that weight from snorting coke."

"Whaddya mean used to be? Also: cocaine is a helluva drug!"

"Are you still drunk?"

"Fuckin tequila. Yes."

The narrative of the Red Tent — a book that I have never read (thanks for lending it to me, Rhymes With Leather!) — begins right after Jacob stole the family’s birthright from Esau and fled to escape the wrath of his brother or something. I’m not cracking open a Bible (which I have also never read) to look up the particulars of the story because eww. So, we hear, in a voice and language reminiscent of the Bible’s beautiful formality, the story of Jacob’s meeting Rachel and Leah, and the births of Jacobs sons and daughters, including the book’s actual narrator: Dinah, daughter of Leah.

The Red Tent was an actual tent that travelled with Jacob’s family and housed the women during their menstrual periods. This was not an exile or a punishment; rather, being in the red tent was an honour that all Israelite women shared. Jacob’s family scorned the women of Esau’s family for not having a red tent. In the tent, there was an underlying mood of solidarity among the women — even among rivals, like Leah — Jacob’s fruitful first wife, and Rachel, who, though nearly barren, was the one he loved most passionately. It is in the red tent that Dinah learns what a family is and what womanhood is. As she grows up, the story of Jacob becomes more peripheral while we, the readers, get a distinct portrait of womanhood in the time of the patriarchs (I don’t know if I should capitalize that and I’m not going to).

There is a formal, romanticized feel to Anita Diamant’s narrative voice. Landscapes, personalities, cooking, even sex and death all burn with a gentle glow in Dinah’s narration. I was impressed with how thorough this voice was: perfumey and smooth, somehow encapsulating all of Dinah’s personality.

So what made her story worth telling? Is it because she grew up knowing bigshot asshole patriarchs? There was something else lurking underneath this voice, thorough as it was, that seemed slightly frustrating and dishonest. Dinah doesn’t seem to be fully there when conflict arises. Because of this, at times it seems more like she is more interested in observing her own life than moving it along, as though it were just part of the scenery she was describing so sweetly.

The best example of this is a retelling of Genesis chapter 34: Dinah’s marriage to the Prince of Shechem. Although Dinah is wooed very tenderly and beautifully and falls in love with the prince and they have lots of great sex (yes, that’s pretty much the only part I paid attention to. Or, at least, I would have if I had actually read the book. Ahem), and the prince agrees that he and all of his kinsmen shall be circumcised to prove good faith before Jacob and his god, Dinah’s brothers act as though she has been raped. They take "revenge" by storming the Prince’s house at night, murdering him and all the other Shechemites there.

Dinah, obviously, is not too happy about this. But what could she do? Did I want her to go upside one of her brothers’ heads? Sure. But she couldn’t. Because they acted under Jacob’s sanction, and it is not possible for Dinah to act against the family hierarchy, whether the H.J.I.C. is male or female. And then it hit me: her lack of agency wasn’t dishonesty; it was her reaction to power and the structure of patriarchy: another lesson learned in the red tent.

Few things are more awkward than when a girl brings her friends with her on a date. Like backup in case the evening goes south, and the guy knows it. Saturday night I got to be one of those judgemental cockblockers; Ariana was meeting a soldier for drinks at Mae’s, and she invited everyone along with her.

As soon as I went down the stairs, I was greeted by a bunch of reporters in red T-Shirts. The Collegionnaires were pubcrawling tonight! "Hey, come with us across the street to Pat’s" said Brett King. Hey Brett & Co., just because I may have, on occasion, posted a few unflattering comments about  a tiny portion of your writings, this does not mean we can’t be friends, right?

They looked like they were having fun. And I did want to go with them, badly. Nevertheless, I had made a promise to Ariana. You know that I’m like the least manly person you know? That’s true, but it’d be great to have you there anyway. Besides, I really want you to meet him. By the time I showed up (an hour fashionably late), everyone was already drunk and surprisingly huggy - Ariana (felt good!), Cate (felt good!), Carolyn (felt good!), Cherry (slightly awkward!).

I spent an hour or so floating between Ariana, Ariana’s date, and Carolyn, who was kind of down because the football player she was seeing got mad at her for no apparent reason and slammed a door on her foot. That’s a definite no-no. He’s supposed to do that to the other team’s girlfriends!

When the soldier went to the bathroom, Ariana turned to me. You’re not trying to get with Carolyn are you?

Probably not, I said, drinking something that was in front of me. I’m not really in a flirty mood, and besides, my type looks and sounds much more like Ariana (reddish hair!) than Carolyn (skinny & blonde).

And then she hugged me again. Why is she so huggy tonight?

So how are you, The Hour Badly Spent? Her vowels are normally long anyway. Tonight all her small talk comes out like singing.
Super!
You know you can talk to me.
About what?
About anything. I search out her eyes. Maybe she really does want to get to know the real me.
How drunk are you?

By this time, Cherry had surrounded herself with guys, all of them much older and taller than her. One of them was like 50. Looking at her daddy issues on display from across the bar, I couldn’t help but feel cold and dark inside, like I was watching a puppy in a ritual sacrifice, except I can’t tell who’s the puppy and who’s the knife-wielding priest, who exactly is fucking whom, and maybe they are all victims with no predators or maybe they are all predators with no victims or maybe it’s just extreeemely creepy seeing some kid with old guys floating around her like stormclouds. If they’re going to swarm and compete to stroke this girl’s ego, why not just put their dicks on a chessboard? That’s a game I could play, because I get erect in an L-pattern.

At any rate, I settled into a booth, just sort of fading into the scenery. Ariana’s talking to her date. Carolyn left a while ago. Cherry’s doing whatever it is she does with clusters of older guys. I could sit here forever. I could also just go.

So I did.

Outside I tried to catch up with the Collegiannaires. How sick is it that although they’re snotty red-staters I really wanted to drink with them? The streets were full of people, cigarette butts, and vomit. There were purple T-shirts. Baseball caps. Girls with short skirts, long legs. Douchebag guys with their douchebag friends. A girl, frantically crying and pleading to an annoyed cop; her friend being responsible, "Christina, settle down. He’s not gonna do anything." No journalists. Starting with Pat’s, I went from bar to bar (the back of O’Malley’s smelled like gin and semen), skipping the ones with cover charges, peering through and around girls with impossibly clear skin, wriggling around more baseball caps, more short skirts, more long legs, more purple tees. Still no reporters. I went back into Mae’s and told Ariana that I was heading home.

Over Xmas break I worked for this lady — a professional screenwriter — doing odd errands for her and getting no pay in return, a relationship known as an "internship." I thought it might be nice to get the experience of being around an experienced writer blah blah blah, but the more she talked — and she loved to namedrop — the more I realized she was a self-centered drama queen. This weekend I got a Facebook message from her. Things like this make me avoid Facebook.

1. I took A DAY (OMG!) to respond because (A) I had shit to do, and (B) I didn’t feel like resolving a 40-ish-year-old woman’s ‘crisis.’ Since she’s messaging me on Facebook, she must have seen my status update: "I just don’t give a shit." I really don’t.
2. "Negro?" I know we’re both black and therefore we have that unspoken camaraderie that enables us a certain familiarity. Nonetheless, not even my own mother talks to me that way, and you don’t know me like that.

 

The reason I addressed her like that is because when a boss is acting like a childish wanker (did I use it right that time?), said boss should have his or her twittery vomited back with a clear explanation as to why it’s coming. As a bonus, I like to throw in a middle finger.

And I wasn’t kidding about the apartment thing. She called me one Sunday afternoon, from Los Angeles, while I’m in Manhattan Kansas — which she knew — and told me she wanted me to find her an apartment by Monday morning. The reason? She had a psycho roommate (her 2nd or 3rd this year — I don’t bother keeping track) and COULDN’T TAKE IT ANY MORE and somehow this was suddenly my problem too.

Part of being a grown-up is learning how to negotiate with the people around you, instead of throwing a shitfit when someone takes a sip of your orange juice or smokes your weed. Right?

See? We’re getting her GOOD SIDE here. Don’t you feel lucky? In her defense, she really did endure a severe personal tragedy last year. Which had absolutely nothing to do with me.

 

It’s tangential, but this conversation reminds me of an episode of Blind Date I saw years ago. A guy from New York was on with a girl from a small Texas town. The texan was superhot, not a ditz, and she seemed to be putting some effort into the outing. The New York asshat wasn’t having any of it. The whole time, he was all "It’s just that you’re from this small town, where everyone’s so narrow-minded. I’m from New York, where there’s so much going on, so many people from so many different cultures, and it’s really broadened my horizons. Blah blah blah blah, New York is soooo great but your podunk town sucks, ipso facto, you suck and always will." The irony was not lost on the Texan, who kept going "Well, what do you mean? How can I make this date better?"

Of course he couldn’t say what he meant, so I will. "Broadening horizons" doesn’t actually give you a deeper understanding of other people; it just makes you more condescending toward them. In New York, you don’t mix with other cultures. You mix with New York culture. So here’s the question: what is it, exactly, about the Big Apple, that brings out the douchiest in people? That is, of course, rhetorical; I don’t give a shit.

In my crackpot bid to merge my soul with the id of the English department, I started documenting the heroic exploits of the department’s all-stars in a faux tabloidish style on this blog. To my surprise, my wildly inaccurate portrayals of their wit, as well as the gratuitous vagina jokes, have been found and re-googled by some of their subjects (Here’s the drum: whenever you visit The Hour Badly Spent, my site metrics page shows me what search terms you used to find me).

The Saucy Aussie insists - in a funny accent, of course - that I’m upping her street cred, because in truth she is extremely prim and proper, not "tart as a nipple-shaped jawbreaker," as I may have suggested in various bathroom-stall etchings throughout town. Nevertheless, I can’t help but imagine that these hyper-literate googlers get together and peek at the screen over each others’ shoulders and do to my blog exactly what I do to the Collegian - scoff with derisive indignation (No fair! You guys know I can dish it out but I can’t take it), except the bonza English professors probably do it better than me because they use words like trope and metatextual, and I’m deadcert Anne Longmuir likes to make obnoxious literary puns and everyone else has to awkwardly play along like they get the reference.

Anyway, just saying, if you’re going to squiz me regularly, it might be prudent to bookmark The Hour Badly Spent or add it to your RSS reader. That way I won’t see the Google searches on my site metrics page and won’t know it’s you. If, however, you would like for me to know for sure that you’ve been by, feel free to comment the living shit out of this beehotch. Ideally, your responses would consist of:

• backhanded remarks about my personal hygiene.
• wild exaggerations of my sexual prowess.
• well-deserved umbrage whenever I post something stridently offensive or wrong or unfunny or off-limits or just plain too prolix. Fair dinkum?
• witty and pretentious English-majorey jokes as they relate to the post at hand. Because I, too, would like to dust off my L’écriture et la Différence and undo the chain of logocentric binary oppositions that characterize Western thought, but I can’t do it alone. It’s really hard.

It’s not like you have papers to grade or anything.

 

So far I’ve gone to see Stop Kiss, the Modigliani String Quartet, Huck & Tom and the Mighty Mississippi, Too Many Sopranos, Brian Pemberly’s poetry reading, Dunya Mikhail’s poetry reading, Denise Lowe’s poetry reading, Allison Wallace’s memoir-reading, and lots of other fun stuff, all independent and date-less. But Thursday night’s performance of Romeo & Juliet was different. I’d been looking forward to this since last semester. I needed someone — and not just ANYONE, but someone special: another hyper-literate bastard, to sit with me and make mischief. Otherwise, the whole experience is ruined by constant thoughs of "I’m awesome and everybody else in the world missed out, because they all suck." So, Rhymes With Leather, my favorite nerd, heroically restored my faith in humanity by coming with me to this affair.

The acting was superb all-around. Notable roles:

The lanky Mercutio, of course. He swaggered around with a pimp cane and dick jokes, fucking dominating every scene in which he appeared. Pure awesomeness.

Benvolio delivered his urgent tone with a rich clarity to his voice.

Unfortunately, Romeo couldn’t accomplish this. His lines tripped out over each other at the same high speed throughout his performance; his sense of urgency overpowered, instead of underlining, his emotional expression. No joy, no despair, no delight, no pining adolescent lust, only the same homogenous desperation. Perhaps I was disinclined to like him because of his tousled hair, Ivy League chin, and piercing, intense eyes. But Rhymes With Leather didn’t seem to mind that stuff too much.

He had that kind of angsty, teen aloofness. You know? He reminded me a lot of the way that Leonard Whiting portrayed Romeo in the Franco Zeffirelli version. The fact that he was in love kind of takes over and of course he’s going to go crazy with desperation. His joy was and is Juliet, so–brace yourself–like Edward essentially can’t find his happiness without Bella, Romeo has all of his joy in Juliet. Basically there was no point in finding joy in anything else. This Romeo, I thought, handled that very well, and therefore I was pleased with his performance. He’s a teenager in love; what more can you ask for? You see that Twilight reference I slipped in?

Duly noted. Maybe she should be writing this review.

"It’s a girl thing," she explained during the post-perfomance reception, as I attentively guzzled mimosas. I see what she’s saying. And Romeo truly did a good job of body-acting; gestures, fluid grace moving across the stage — that stuff enhanced his part, and ultimately I did not dislike him.

I was originally disinclined to like Juliet solely on the basis of her pretty blonde tresses. And as The Grey Lady pointed out, Juliet held a doll with her in a lot of scenes, reminding us that she’s playing a 13-year-old, which we didn’t really want to think about. Nevertheless, it was clear early on that the actress really inhabited every scene she was in. Her voice was clear and pleading. She delivered her lines at a musical pace. Every word hung in the air, like the last line of a song refrain. And as she spoke she would move to and fro, across the stage or across the balcony, starry-eyed, clutching her hands and pivoting gracefully on her heeled shoes, putting a lot of body movement, along with the words, into delivering her character to us. Tres magnifique.

All in all, I was on the edge of my seat, the whole time, taking in every movement on the stage (some scenes had a lot of activity; fighting, dancing, more fighting. Those were a real treat) and every word that fell from everyone’s lips. I tip my hat to the pretentious bastard who actually threw the script together.

He strides into the party with mirth and fanfare, as generous with his beer as he is with his condescension.

He has travelled far and wide, to mysterious Eastern lands and exotic European capitals. He has gathered a treasure trove of knowledge and wisdom, which he makes no attempt to hide from you.

If he didn’t talk down to you, he wouldn’t be saying anything at all.

So there you are, in his massive apartment on Saturday night, watching him sink into a frantic guitar-plucking trance.

The girls with long hair and gypsy skirts whirl and dreidel around him, hipster ballerinas shitting their small-town angst. He ignores them.

The others languish on the couch, heads propped up on cushions, on shoulders, on curiosity. He ignores them too.

Like this, he’s caught up a zenlike blissful dismemberment. His body fades into nothing, just hands and ears, whipping everyone around him, hornists and dancers and bored onlookers, into a froth of masturbatory coolness.

But you’re getting into it too, and he doesn’t sound half bad, actually, and maybe you could party even longer, maybe even forever, just as long as he doesn’t open his mouth again.

Yesterday I woke up to shitty weather, a sore throat, and a big ass screenwriting assignment due. A Thursday hat trick! Bonus: since I’m sick, I can’t smoke. Without cigarettes, I’m not nearly as smart or funny as I think I am, which makes it hard to write a sitcom script (or an entertaining blog, for that matter), but eventually the script got done and I felt fifty shades of relief. I celebrated by…oh right, no smoking. I took a nap.

I woke up at around 7:35. Five minutes late for the Take Back the Night rally - just in time to miss the strident speech expressing solidarity with women everywhere. I’m sure it was grand. I arrived just before the march started. Those girls I hardly ever see anymore were there too. The ladies marched to City Park. I ducked into the library then met up with them in an auditorium at the park.

There were tables set up. And explanatory pamphlets. And a band. And T-shirts. It wasn’t quite what I expected. The atmosphere was…. kind of, I don’t know, fun? Except that there weren’t really that many students here. Or professors. Or townies. Or local law enforcement. And the weather outside was frightful. The girls I hardly ever see any more left shortly before nine. I decided to stay, in order to spite them (I’m kind of petty) and express solidarity with the cause (I’m kind of noble. Chalk it up to the dual nature of man). Curiously, once they left, the party picked up. Or maybe I just payed closer attention to it.

The band was two MILFs with quirky, subdued humor and a good rapport, one on keyboard and one on guitar, and their songs were actually pretty catchy. The few people who remained even started dancing. It got to feel like I was watching a bunch of friends hanging out. Good times for all, except those who had to trudge back home in the rain. Suckers, I said, before I noticed that my socks were soggy and my umbrella was fucked up. I don’t know what else to add, because I’m still sick and I really have no idea how to frame a coherent narrative without nicotine.

Don’t you ever wish people would stop making such a big fucking deal over the word ‘nigger?’ Two of K-State’s "best and brightest" journalism students (take that, Whitney Hodgin!) interviewed Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder in front of a crowd of captive hearts in Forum Hall. So Deborah Muhwezi asked him what was up with his characters’ frequent use of the n-word.

"I’d rather people say ‘nigga’ than say ‘n-word’ because n-word is stupid. It’s fundamentally immature, like saying ‘dookie’ among first-graders; like we are running from a truth we all know is there."

"I certainly understand the sensitivity and power behind it," he continued. But it’s vapid and pointless to huff and puff all your outrage on that. "There are lots of people whose job it is to keep the conversation of race at the level of ‘we shouldn’t use the n-word on TV’," he said, which keeps us from finding any real resolutions to real social problems.

Yeah, so politics is kind of a downer, and McGruder is in the funny business. How does he make it work?

"If you set out to tear down stereotypes, well then that’s positive, and we definitely try not to be that. We have to find a way to make it funny."

In his comedy, McGruder spins a version of what black people seem to talk like behind closed doors when they’re really fucking drunk (like me) and high (not like me, but I’m working on that). The nature of comedy and storytelling is such that positive portrayals are inherently boring; showing us the parts of ourselves that are dirty and embarrassing gives his work a special kind of truthful bite. Servicey!

"We don’t find the stuff very controversial. In other words, we’re not very sensitive people."

Also, without a line between entertainment and news, those two mated and gave birth to a voracious infantile media machine that’s set up to gobble up ratings out of whatever shlock it can find but then use our collective brains as its diaper. So fuck Fox News. And CNN and MSNBC and the whole pundit industry in all its incarnations. But mostly Fox. And BET too. And if Whitney Hodgins’ article ever goes live on the Collegian web site I’ll make sure to link you, ya know, whenever I get around to it. In the meantime I’m doing homework and NOT prowling for Boondocks episodes on teh YooToobz. Probably.

 

I have no idea what an assistant stage manager does. However, I know that the assistant stage management of Dancing at Lughnasa was excellent, because that was pretty much the talk of the town after the play was over. I thought I was the only person impressed with the assistant stage management I know nothing about until I overheard two of my friends raving over it:

"What did you think of it?"
"The stage was unbelievably well managed. Assistantly."

Of course, those friends were imaginary, as are all my friends (the conversation, however, feels real). I’ve given up on asking actual people to go with me to these events, because either I’m 100% socially inept or you all suck. And as it turns out, you all do not, in fact, suck; Dr. Donna Potts, hanging out in the drizzle in front of the theater, got sick of waiting for one of her lame English 310 students to show up, opting to give me that student’s ticket - the last one available for opening night!

Whatever, so I’m inept. Back to Lughnasa: a snapshot of a 1936 Irish family holding together long after the passing of its parents; the turmoil of five lively sisters staring into a canyon of spinsterhood that’s staring back at them; and the return of their brother, a wild-eyed barely-there misfit, after 25 years of missionary work in Africa.

The dialogue felt fresh and immediate. Much of my enjoyment came from hearing the accents; the nearly-rolled Rs, the brisk Ts dotting word endings; the long "I" that glides into an "o-i" dipthong ("cider" sounds like "soyder"), the overall birdlike, musical pep of conversation.

Each sister’s inner tensions were barely held in check, always balanced against the concerns of the other siblings by the pious, heavy-handed oldest sister, Kate.

With that dynamic, another strength of Lughnasa, even better than the cute Irish lilts, was the sisters’ interior tumult. It came out most strongly twice. Second, when Kate, distraught over the apparent disappearance of the flighty Rose, angrily demanded that Agnes confess information Agnes have. So angry, she slammed Agnes against the furniture.

But it came out first when they boogied.

They sang and danced at every chance, devouring music like it was soda bread. Would that they could just dance their cares away forever! They really gave it their best shot during an early-on, more joyful outpouring of passion. For a brief time, during this hasty portrait, during a few minutes of music belting from their moody radio, they were all fluid like the sea, all crashing against each other and coming together again.

Michael, the seven-year-old son of Chrissie (the hottest sister — for real, homegirl’s a ringer for Rachel McAdams), largely observes from the periphery, but occasionally interrupts from the point of view of a grown-up narrator to reveal flashes of information on the fate of the family. Despite his upbeat delivery - Michael is genuinely excited about his family and all its quirky, tragic characters - it’s all kind of a downer for everyone, which, as more is revealed, sharpens the nostalgia, the value of this snapshot, the desperate importance of this summer, 1936, in a house on the Irish countryside. This summer is the last time the family is a family before people up and leave, people lose jobs, people die, peoples’ Peter-Pan father figures jaunt off with unsatisfying explanations then it turns out (spoiler!) all along they had another family way down south in fucking Wales, and general disappointment and failure set in for everyone.

It’s all hinted at during the play. Underneath obligations, bickering, the soothing chirp of a Marconi wireless, smoldering behind it all lies an inability to share each others’ sorrow, and deep yearnings that will simply. Not. Pan. Out. But for this one last summer, Time would let them dance and be Golden in the mercy of his means. **

 

** I’ve been waiting forever to unload that pearl!

 

I’m kind of puzzled. Former yearbook staffer and passive-aggressive gesturist Adrianne DeWeese seems to be on fire with her profile articles, artfully translating slices of someone’s life into something strikingly detailed, so that the readers get a coherent snapshot of her subject. Case and point: "Retirement community resident has seen little change by aging process," in which I found out that at 95, Helen Toburen can beat me at basketball. Whatever; I’d still win at cigarette smoking.

But why can’t looker-awayer Adrianne do the same thing with stories that are not profiles? Case and point: the first two paragraphs of "Study finds more people living to, past 100:"

A recent study suggests the compression of morbidity and compression of disability might be separate phenomena, making it easier for people to live to age 100.
Compression involves delaying morbidity or disability so it takes up a smaller percentage of a person’s total lifespan. The study was published Feb. 11 in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

By the time I finished her article, I had prostate cancer.

 

 

I met up with Cate, Carolyn, Jordan, Cherry, and Johnny (an old guy dressed up like a vampire) at Rusty’s for Cate’s 21st birthday. Over the course of three Captain Cokes I figured out exactly what it is about this whole clusterfuck of Thursday-night undergrad social interaction that makes me so suicidal.

Seeing all these kids so effortlessly happy and in-tune with each other, I can’t help but self-indulgently compare it to my own inner turmoil. Their enforced shallowness, the terse, hollow exchanges, their hypercasual "hey good times, see ya around," sending me into stifled palpitations of last-call blues as I attempt various ploys at securing a future reunion, and I come off looking half-insane. The whole shin-dig starts to feel sort of like going to church; you came here wanting to belong, to be accepted for your flaws and whatnot, but they keep making you sing these damn hymms you don’t even know and you just fumble trying to keep up, choking your ability to be honest with yourself or anyone else around you in this chapel of mirth, and you’re no better off than when you first walked in the door.

Also, you probably still had steam to blow off from that nerve-wracking Thursday screenwriting that makes you feel stabby.

[update: an anonymous tipster informs me that "grad students are worse then undergrads because they’re all neurotically self-absorbed." Great, now there really is nothing to look forward to. Except, of course, church. Party on].

Alex Peak and the rest of y’all think you’re all so stressed in college, probably because in high school you got good grades without studying or doing homework and still managed to be peppy and popular, but suddenly a few years later it’s getting close to finals and the teachers just fucking pile on those exams like Halloween candy and you’ve actually got to study. So listen up kids: that is not stress. Stress is fighting 10 miles of highway traffic to eek into a job where you juggle your coworkers’ backbiting, passive-aggressive bullshit with the demands of a boss whose idea of encouragement is not firing you, and after ten, eleven, twelve hours of that every day you fight traffic again going home so you can catch the last fifteen minutes of Grey’s, which is really all you wanted all day long, and as you nod off for the night, you ponder what your life has come to and has it all been worth it or whatever. Then you wake up three days later in a Mexican jail, with a heroine dependency and a case of the runs, right in front of two middle-aged Federales who are seconds away from cumming in your face, and you think to yourself, "shit, this is just like high school." The awesome thing about college is that once in a while you can just call up someone sexy and interesting, get high and play hookey, and just come back whenever you get around to it. I, unfortunately, am old, and those days are far behind me.

I left the building, glancing
At white-haired old stranger with a
Marlboro in her left hand, cheap paperback in her right.
And she looked back at me like she just didn’t give a fuck.

I’d been picturing this moment in my mind the second I came here and saw the band: their dark suits, their swing-dancing wingtips, the trumpet and the sax, and every time it runs through my head it goes like this:

"Hey, let’s dance."
"Whatever. I’m leaving.

But the band’s been at it for an hour, ta-tum tum ta-tum tum, and they are kicking ass, and I’m tapping my feet and swaying my head, and for some reason I got all dressed up tonight; new hairdo, favorite shoes, favorite tie, favorite shirt, and I just can not help myself. It’s now or never. I turn to Madeline and ask her.

"Oh, I have no rhythm." That’s not the point! This is Auntie Mae’s, not Soul Train.

But is this one of those times when I’m supposed to be a man and just go for it? I can never tell. So I make for her hand and she moves them both under her bottom. "No means no." Umm, it’s a dance, not a rape, but point taken.

It is never "one of those times."

She gets up to use the bathroom and while she’s gone a couple of girls walk by, going into a holding pattern right at the empty bench.

"Uh, sorry. Someone’s sitting here."
"That’s okay. I don’t want to sit there anyway." The way she says it makes the word there point at me and stick its tongue out. Saucy! As she walks away, I notice a tramp stamp: a ship’s helm (I guess it’s so the seamen know where to go).

Madeline comes back and the band is still going. The helmsgirl flutters back this way, onto the dance floor, with Jimbo (That guy knows everybody). They are dancing and the song winds down and the band announces their next one:

"This is a song by Duke Ellington. He still has it doesn’t he!" That makes one of us. I turn to Madeline again.

"Should have come here with a different girl." Duly noted.

And fifteen minutes later they start up another number, with that tempo again just right, ta-tum tum, called "Let’s drink wine." I know now if I can’t find someone to dance with me on this one I’ll be a miserable failure, sitting here with a stupid twisty hairdo and a stupid black shirt and stupid jolly-roger vans and stupid polka dot tie. I turn to the curly-haired blonde on the barstool next to me.

"Hi there. My name’s Swingie McJazzhands."
"Hi! I’m Anna."
"Nice to meet you Anna. How are you? This band is great, aren’t they?"
"Yeah, I love it."
"Would you like to dance?"
Oh, I can’t. My friend and I were waiting for someone and now we’ve gotta head out."

True to her word, they skedaddle up the stairs and out the door, presumably to a better, albeit torturously jazzless, party.

Jimbo’s on the floor with that girl again. There is exactly one other person here who I already know, and she is sitting front and center, so what the hell, might as well take another crazy chance and ask her. So I do. A moment later I take her by the hand and we start swinging and grinding like we were born for this night.

Ha ha, just kidding. She shot me down too.

What is it about Thursdays that, by early evening, right as screenwriting class ends, makes me feel hollow, torpid, and dissatisfied?

First thing: one more hour of Spanish this week. It’s actually not so bad - Ms. Diaz is much more simpatica than she seems; but last semester’s god-awful class left a bad taste in my mouth and I’m probably just still just still dry-heaving it.

Second thing: the few people I do know here tend to become scarce all weekend, and there are no new episodes of anything on the tubez, leaving me with nothing to do except write.

Except I can’t, because (third thing) by now I just feel cold and dead inside; no imagination, no oomph, so I end up basically napping from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. Then Sunday night I scramble to finish the homework I put off.

This list is on my mind, halfway through a gin & tonic - extra lime - when the Communist Spy sends me a text.

If you’re not doing anything right now you should join us at Kathouse.

Cigarette in hand, I pound down the drink, dash out the door, and am at the Kathouse in five. I’ve never been here before. The Communist Spy and her cadre of five other girls - Darcy, Leshia, Maureen, Katie, someone else, and a Gentleman who Travels With Katie - are here to see a band. Of the six girls in the group, 9,340 of them have hooked up with someone in the band. The Spy motions for me to take the corner seat, next to her.

"Took you a while."

"I was at Auntie Mae’s."

"You smell like Auntie Mae’s." (In Kansas you can still smoke indoors and Mae’s has a basement, which, aside from the absurdly cheap drinks, is why I like it there).

While I’m waiting for a drink the guitars fire up. It’s funny; all week long, you think to yourself how badly you just need company; the violent jolt of social contact might inspire "emotions," "longing," "happiness," or something. How going day after day with this feeling of isolation makes you feel like a dismal failure; that you should just get out more and be around people.

But then on Thursday night you find yourself in a big dark room, resenting the three-dollar cover charge, the band working the crowd with skill and confidence sharply reminding you that you’re about 3,000 years old, the dizzying pockets of sparse lamp light, the watered-down drinks, the throng of blondes fenced around the barkeep like tube-topped Vikings laying siege to the coast. And the barmaids who ignore you. All of it just grates inexplicably on your nerves. You can fake it for a while; ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before you have no choice but to slink away, find the exit, and disappear into Friday morning.

Criminologist discusses gender, urban inequality among African Americans

If Adrianne doesn’t want me to criticize her, why does everything about her March 14 story, from the headline to the ending quote, sound like it was written by a first-year PR robot?

I’m pretty sure she has, tucked away in her repertoire, a passive-aggressive gesture of disapproval for writers who (1) lead with a quote, and (2) lead with an inflated, verbose block of text. So how does she justify this: "Youths’ descriptions fit quite closely to scholars’ examinations of how structural inequalities negatively impact the ability to generate social ties and protective networks necessary to combat crime."

I’d probably paraphrase thusly: "Experts claim that a in white-male centered society, crime is the only path to social mobility for poor urban ethnic kids, and - surprise! - poor urban kids agree." And confirm it with the expert, of course, who in this case was "Jody Miller, associate professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri - St. Louis."

At the end of the article, a source says "It was really interesting to hear a qualitative interview process and getting to see the actual quotes of what people saw in their communities and neighborhoods."

See that? His reaction to the presentation was "It was really interesting," perhaps as opposed to "It was really boring" or, more specifically, "I sat in the ninth row and felt up my girlfriend." People spew "it was interesting…" quotes when they don’t actually have an opinion or any information. At least he provided a handy, concise summary of the event. Maybe that’s how the lede should sound?

 

 

 To recap:

I drank a lot.

"Movies" were "viewed."

I borrowed my friend’s car and managed to avoid a moving violation.

I played rock band for the first time and was not impressed.

I hit the bars! Then I hit them again.

I quit smoking. Then I quit nonsmoking.

I had a blog smackdown! It was even more boring than it sounds.

I read some of Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay, and it’s pretty good. I didn’t get around to reading Twilight. Don’t tell Heather.

I revealed the presence of this awesome blog for the viewing pleasure of the teeming masses. The masses said "meh," then went back to listening to pop music and making out with each other.

And now, my hair looks different.

In Brett King’s latest neocon rant, he compares the presidential debate to a circus. No fucking kidding. A CIRCUS.

As we near the end of the state primaries leading up to the Republican and Democratic national conventions, many voters are beginning to realize how each party has put forth candidates who have no business or experience running this country.

With fun-house mirrors, candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., enters the tent showing people distorted images of his experience and the future.

Apparently the Collegian is phoning in its analogies these days. But what motivated the need to wax all creative with the extended metaphor? Does having a viable black candidate remind him of a minstrel show? Does having a viable female candidate remind him of a burlesque show? Because both of those are absolutely HI-larious. Just like a circus! Maybe having strong Democratic candidates reminds him that the Elephants should have been roped in four years ago. Zing!

One day, the summer we
lived together, I found,
tucked like a whisper, between
pages one hundred thirty-eight,
and one hundred thirty-nine, of
“Handmaid of Desire,”
an old snapshot of you,
which you are never, ever
getting back.

I.
Late at night, you
used to take me
by the hand and,
voice like a halo,
say those three little words:
Come to bed.
How did you ever do that?
What kind of magic makes a whisper glow?

II.
The best part
about having a girl with glasses
always came
right before you took all your clothes off
slid into bed
draped your leg over my hip
and we’d made love;
right before that, when you’d
set your glasses on
the nightstand.

III.
That spring night, when you
wearing that nimbus-white nightgown,
fiddling with your fingers, sat up, because you
couldn’t sleep;
That was the night you told me you loved me for the first time.

That fire-red hoodie,
Those sparkly slippers;

Your virgin-white nightgown.

The cut-off denim miniskirt, on which,
while you drove, I liked to put my hand -
Not-so-secretly
loving
the pleasant resistance of your thigh
underneath the fabric;

Also, the longer one, the dark gypsy skirt, which, each time you put on,
you’d show off for me with a flourish
and a smile.

And that smile: it really went with the skirt.
Perfectly.

Potterhead: I’m having caffeine withdrawal. I saw a guy playing bagpipes today. And last week I saw a guy on a unicycle.

Too Prolix: Glad you feel better. I’m not seeing any bagpipes or unicycles here. I haven’t left my room in a month. I’m crouched in here in the same bathrobe I’ve worn for 4 days, etching emo poetry and mathematical equations on the walls. On the plus side, I think I’ve discovered hyperspace.

Potterhead: D’ya think you can forget about the emo poetry one night and totally go to the Wizard Rock Concert next Saturday at the Union? The tickets are free and you can get them at the UPC office in the Stuni. :D
Hyperspace? Cool.

Too Prolix: Why am I up so late? I’ve had coffee too! Except it wasn’t really coffee; it was vodka, the coffee of the gods! A rock concert, you say? The idea of a “concert” or a “dance” or a “get together involving music” takes me all the way back to high school, where I always used to sit on the sidelines, forlorn and miserable, looking on while all the cute girs had fun with all the guys who were more muscular and less nerdy than me, and who wants to relive aww fuck it who am I kidding - Saturday, eh? but I don’t hafta like it.

Potterhead: Not like Wizard Rock? That’s ridiculous. You have to like it because I said so.

I was invited to the Sexy Communist Spy’s roommate’s birthday bash (in Russia, Party throw YOU!). This one had a theme: "thug party," which meant there were a bunch of dry-humping, ass-smacking, half-drunk, red-state 22-year-olds dressed like Missy Elliot. True to form, I showed up late wearing my Super Mario Strikers jersey (I fucking represent!), a pick in my hair, and I threw up lots of gang signs (I don’t actually know any gang signs). K-fed came by too.

An hour after I got there, the party died down. Umm, it wasn’t my fault. This time. Birthday girl was still juiced and wanted to hit the bars, so we did just that (in Russia, bars hit YOU!). I danced and barhopped and met a super-superhot townie and got to mackin’ to this bitch named Sadie (Sadie!) and generally made merry while Birthday Girl zigzagged from table to table, friend to friend, stranger to stranger, nizzle to nizzle, so proud to have people watch her turn 22, but she was also - I dunno - pretty stressed out?

It was obvs she missed her boyfriend pretty badly and no one in these bars could have possibly made up for that. I wanted to tell her to stop, be cool, roll down the street smoking endo sipping on gin and juice, laid back; just chillax and enjoy yourself. It’s YOUR birthday! Tha homies are supposed to come to YOU! But she never really got the chance, because not five minutes after I inhaled the sandwich she got me on her maxed-out Visa, as she dashed off to say hi to a familiar face 10 yards away, she tripped, fell, and busted her lip. While she sat there, crying, bleeding, and ashamed, I promptly revoked her pimp card.

It’s roughly a twenty-minute
walk up hills
around stone walls
across the street
to reach the dimly lit
smoke-filled room
where the bubbly girl
behind the counter
doesn’t know your name
but remembers what drink
you like and her smile,
much too bright for a place like this,
is
the only human contact
you’ll have all night.

Cherry had a birthday this week! Friday night she threw a party and everyone showed up. Obviously, no good could come of this, yet I went anyway. I brought her a 3-foot paper-mache rose, a card, and a bottle of Jack (the bottle was really for me. I need it a lot more than she does). Although a dozen people were already there, I somehow managed to sneak the big-ass rose by everyone and smuggle it into Cherry’s room.

Cherry’s parents were there - three weeks ago they threw a Superbowl party and Cherry took me along, and so that’s when I met them. They appointed me the Bartender and Keeper of Cover Charges. I carried this out dutifully, except for when I stepped out to chain-smoke with the Poetess, leaving Chelsea to watch the money.

I hadn’t seen the Poetess in weeks and she looked great. We went out to the porch, down the steps, to the driveway, out by someone’s Honda, and lit up.

"So earlier this week when I told you I was feeling great? I totally lied."
"Me too! Grand. So what’s got you down?"
She related detailed information of a sensitive personal nature. "So hon, your turn."
And we talked some more, then disappeared back into the party; which, for me, was a haze of cash/liquor exchanges, with an occasional pause for me to dose up on whiskey. The chaperones had left by now. Life was great, until I saw Cherry making out with someone on the coffee table.

If I could have just vanished, just poof! and a cloud of bats and I disappear into the night, I would have done exactly that. Instead I had to actually go gather my coat, and my scarf, and my man-purse, and collect my dignity (which - ironic on so many levels - was inside the man-purse), and this took long enough for Cate to see me.

"What’s going on?"

I led her through the crowd, to the porch, to the side of the house, and told her everything.

A couple of people must have heard us talking. All the right players, in fact. Arianna! Chelsea! A bunch of other people! Thankfully not the Poetess. I didn’t know what to say to them other than "Hi guys." So I leaned into Cate’s ear. "LookIhaftagothanks."

I think Arianna kind of knew.

"Where are ya going?"

"Home."

"You’re leaving?"

"Yeah, I’m leaving."

And I left.

When I got home, I remembered the cash cup. It wasn’t safe back behind that bar. I called Arianna and asked her to get the cup, grab the cash, put it in her purse, and deliver the money to Cherry tomorrow. She was fairly drunk so I stayed on the phone with her.

"Hyper-literate bastard, I’m sorry. I can’t find it."

Perfect.

The assistant manager in me decided to head back and find that fucking money my fucking self, and of course I didn’t find it, but now of course I’m back stuck at this thing, the most god-awful party I’ve been at since I was in grade school, and I can’t look anyone in the eye; the kid who was making out with Cherry is now making out with the rest of the theater department (kids these days!); Jimbo, another geeky English major, is grinding with Cherry, and no matter how many times I snap my fingers and whisper "beetlejuice" that fucking money still won’t show up. When I see Cherry alone for a second I let her know it’s missing and swear I’ll pay her back (yay! a reason to whore myself!). Then I finally grow a pair and dance with the birthday girl herself. She was wearing a slinky black strapless number and she was sporting that hemlock-laced smile I love and fear at the same time. So, yeah, we danced for a little while and then separated.

The next time I went looking for her she was nowhere to be found. Neither was Jimbo. The porch, around the side of the house, the garage, the kitchen, the living room, her room, nada. Then I remembered there was another door in the garage. I opened it and there they were (what did I expect?), standing together and talking. OhSorry! I said, slamming the door, maybe a little too fast. "Hyper-literate bastard, wait!" said Cherry. I opened it again and she was fumbling through her coat. "Wish I had my cigarettes," she was mumbing. "Iknowwheretheyare!!" I shut the door again, took a breath, dashed off to the living room, grabbed her swank, shiny, fully stocked cigarette case, returned to the yard, handed her one, and put the case in her pocket.

I held the lighter in front of her.

She hates that. She likes to light them herself. She moved to grab it from me, but I have the reflexes of a meth-addled ninja tabbycat. Plus, she’s pretty drunk. I lit it for her.

"I kind of hate you right now," she said.
"Aw shucks, I know you don’t mean that."
Small talk ensues. A minute later:

"Gimme the lighter. I wanna re-light it.
"Don’t be such a baby."
Jimbo and I both laughed at Cherry. Then he went inside.

"So, are you having fun?"
"It’s your party. Are you having fun?"
"I guess." It’s complicated.
It’s pitch black except for the smokes. Nevertheless, I’m pretty sure we’re both looking at each other.
"You seemed like you didn’t wanna talk to us yesterday."
Pardon?
"Me, Cate, and Arianna thought you didn’t wanna talk to us at the play."
Umm, hello, I’ve been lonely, depressed, and ashamed for a few weeks. Errr, I mean:
"I got the opposite impression. That you didn’t wanna talk to me. I mean, I know you were busy with Mud-River-Stone, but you just never called me back or gave me a text."
I continued. "And I missed ya, a lot, but last night I really didn’t know what to say."

"Listen, I was hoping that, after the party dies down, maybe I could - stay? Spend the night? With you."
"Yeah, sure," she said. "A few other people are crashing here, so no problem."
I didn’t mean it in the sense of "crashing here," but whatever.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

We went in and danced some more. A few hours later, Liz, a drunken emo townie, went ape shit over I-don’t-know-what and refused to let anyone drive her home. The girls went outside to talk her down. Negotiations lasted about an hour and killed the party. Finally, Drunken Emo Townie came back inside; Cherry’s little sister agreed to walk with her to the car. It was 6am. I was out on the porch, chain-smoking, when they walked by me. Not wanting them to get dragged off and raped, I asked quickly:

"Want me to walk with you guys?"
"Yeah," mouthed Jasmine.

We made it up the street a little ways, to the Townie’s car. Although she’s still drunk, she patently refuses to give up the keys or the driver’s seat. In the end we relented and let her almost kill us swerving up Sunset Avenue (doesn’t this defeat the purpose of coming with her?). But we made it to wherever she wanted to go, and she headed inside and sent us on our merry way. Yay! Everyone’s still alive! Now I get to trudge back to campus in this 20-degree dawn. I am not dressed for a 20-degree dawn. Also: since I’m not from this town I have no idea where the fuck I am. Jasmine led the way, up the street, down the street, across the park, a left on Anderson, back to Sunset, up again, to the left, and presto, Cherry’s casa. The sun is fully up and Cherry is probably completely knocked out, so I bid Jasmine good day and go back home, completely cockblocked by that fucking Townie. C’est la vie.

I talked to Cherry again at noon. Hi how are you did you like the party thanks for the rose I might be too busy to see you the rest of the weekend but I hope you had a good time don’t worry we got the money.

"You got the money?"
"Yeah. Earlier, I grabbed the cash cup and I hid it."

Relief.

Determined to meet other, better English majors and silently judge them, Friday night I hiked to downtown Manhattan for a poetry reading at the Streckler-Nelson Art Gallery.

 

What’s more sad: that this kewgr leers down at me on my way up the stairs to the gallery, or the fact that I kind of wanted her? Just kidding! These are both cause to celebrate! I’d never been here before so I gave myself a quick tour. It seemed to be about the size of 10 dorm rooms, all full of paintings and pottery and plants. I would have taken better notes but I was too busy prowling for grad students to hit on. After a minute of this I remembered I don’t know anybody and made my way to the room full of chairs. I sat two seats down from a Pretentious Literary Douchebag who had his nose in Penguin Classics’ Medieval Literature. Jonathan Holden, a poetry professor with furious, leonine eyebrows sat in front of me with his wife. Apropos of nothing, I like to secretly sit behind my professors and snap photos of the back of their heads whenever I see them at some function.

See, I snapped this one of Donald Hedrick - perverted Shakespeare professor - last week at the violin concert:

 

Meanwhile, the grad students around me made small talk:

"Aren’t we having fun?"
"Fun fun fun!"
"By the way, I put arsenic in your club soda!"
"Great! That way I won’t have to see your douchebag face anymore!"
"Super!"
"Grand!"

Once we got started, the rule was that anybody with poetry of some sort should just walk on up to the podium and show off. Lisa, the first reader, was boring. The guy after her, Joe, wore a button-down shirt two sizes too small, and no matter what he did, he was showing off his triceps. He had taken a passage James Joyce had written about snot and copied it onto a roll of toilet paper. After him, a hipster cutie presented her "Studies in Prepositions," poems consisting of the same preposition repeated musically for entire stanzas. "It does neat stuff in your head," she explained, which I took to mean when she’s done I won’t know whether to hate her for thumbing her nose at conventions I continually fail to get the hang of, or to love her for her playful, impish mastery of the quirks of language. I put this dilemma to rest the instant I realized that this chick was probably kinky enough that if I could give her a really clever pickup line, she might tie me up and ride me so hard I couldn’t stand up straight for three days. In that context, her poems were pretty rad. Her last one was somewhat more traditional. "This is where we move past morphology into syntax," she said. Hot!

Next: until now, all the poets had the common decency to read TWO or THREE of their favorites and then sit back down (Joe: "I’m gonna share a couple of these and then stop ruining your life"), but this particular reader, Nelson, had written a bunch of Really Deep poems about birds and the night and vegetables and breasts, earnestly challenging us to ponder things like The Night and Love and Curiosity and Truth and Beauty and Birds and the size of his thesaurus and, well, Breasts. He must have used the word "breast" every stanza and the thing is, well, the thing is I have NEVER IN MY LIFE WANTED ANYBODY TO STOP SAYING THE WORD BREAST LIKE I WANTED HIM TO STOP FUCKING SAYING THE WORD BREAST but he just went on and on (like this sentence), with these awful mosaics, so many of them, their roman numerals crashing against my BREAST like kamikaze pilots, a sickening montage of VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI…… until finally he was done.

It is my secret wish to become the school’s Pretentious Literary Douchebag. But the guy sitting two seats across from me, his nose in Penguin Classics’ Medieval Literature, had me completely outclassed. He was a slender man, with a strong chin, gold-rimmed glasses, hair like a field of sun-kissed Kansas wheat, eyes as blue as swimming pools and flowing with erudition; he wore an oxford and a blazer that had a gold star pinned to the collar, as though he had just stepped out of Dead Poets’ Society and materialized in this very room, Streckler-Nelson Gallery in Manhattan, at 7pm this Friday night in February. He got up and introduced himself.

"Those of you who know me know I’m rather fond of medieval literature," he smirked, leading me to reflect wistfully on James Joyce’s snot. While he read, I got up to get some wine.

The lady after him was excellent; she recited from memory a poem about having an orgasm (or was she really just having an orgasm right before our very eyes?). Climax notwithstanding, she used a lot of muted synechdoche and really managed to craft a good poem. Some other people recited some other stuff after her, but I wasn’t paying attention because an orgasm is kind of a tough act to follow. Then the thing was over! I probably should have stuck around to meet people, but true to form, I had a better party to go to, so I bounced. But not before snapping a pic of Lit MILF Elizabeth Dodd:

 

Hot pants, Liz! I mean, Ms. Dodd. Ahem.

It occurs to me that I’ve gone slack on shitpicking at this paper. I haven’t paid attention to the ambiguous headlines, the typos, and the other mediocrity on these pages. And picking on you guys always makes me feel better about myself. So without further ado:

Just kidding. There will be some ado, regarding the candidacy of Pirates and Ninjas: Elise Podhajsky’s interviews cleared a lot of things up for me. While both sides have put forth excellent candidates, and either of them will most likely reinstate the right to duel at dawn, anywhere, I’m gonna have to throw my endorsement behind the Pirates. Ninjas, although you’ve got mad skillz, your ultraconservative anti-rum rhetoric bothers me a lot. Additionally, although you believe ninjas can offer students the best security, I don’t think you’re in any position to fend off the invincible Armada. There; it’s done. Now go disembowel yourselves with honor.

No more bra-burning: Movements have progressed much since 70s. Seriously, as a reader, all the information I need is right there in the headline. Had I known that beforehand, I wouldn’t have had to snooze through "The types of organizing that typefied social and political protest in the 1960s and 1970s have been supported and sometimes supplanted by technological advances and increasingly complex cultural identities."

I say the types of organizing that typefied social and political protest included more fucking drugs, which made everything look more colorful, and color is exactly what this article needs.

K-State Rodeo starts tonight at Weber Arena
"…K-State will compete well in goat tying, barrel racing, and calf roping, and….there is a member of the team that is good at the team roping event. The girls are in really good shape as far as being where they need to be."

They sure are.

Coulter uses shock, biased language to remain in spotlight
A minor objection: Coulter hasn’t been in the spotlight for some time. Why don’t we discuss someone more immediate and relevant to K-Staters, like Brigitte Brecheisen - the Ann Coulter of this very campus? Yeah, call her out and get right up in her grill and put the smack down. What, are you scrrrd?

4 local restaurants lend support to cancer-research fundraiser

"Booyah" is the term chosen to represent the recent community effort to combat cancer, according to Amanda Keim.

Amanda’s loose, fluid writing style is a dollop of pure in-your-face exuberance, which is exactly how a word like "booyah" feels. Sort of like hearing Robocop explain nipple rings. Please Amanda, go on.

"Booyah is a term that represents feelings of euphoric celebration upon fighting through extreme adversity and overcoming daunting obstacles, and we’re using it in this context to emphasize our belief that we will conquer cancer in our time," said her source, who could barely contain his own feelings of euphoric celebration.

I think what Amanda’s trying to say is that Booyah is a knee in the gut from the floor on the chin at night sneaky with a knife brought up down on the magazine of a battleship sandbagged underhanded in the dark without a word of warning. Garroting. That’s what Booyah is, when we’ve all got to be tough enough and rough enough to fight cancer. From the hip. Get it?

This morning snow was falling. On my way out the door I realized I’d gone through the entire pack of Parliaments I bought last night at eleven. How the hell did that happen? Whatever. Last time it snowed I fell 352 times. My Aqua Ducks(TM), comfy, springy, and waterproof as they are, offer about as much traction as a surfboard, so I find myself slipping on snowflakes wherever I go. Fun fun fun! The night of that last snow, Cherry and I went sledding in the street on that hill by her house. Today I don’t feel like sledding so much.

Speak of the devil: I bumped into her on my way to class this morning.

"It’s so cold," she said, grimacing. Button up, I say. For a moment it occurs to me that she is overworked and stressed, fraught with the piling-on of test week and increasing tension for the play she’s in (tonight is opening night).

"I think I’m gonna head inside." She can shortcut through the library and warm up on her way to class. Or maybe this is just an excuse to scamper off the other way.

Yeah, with all that on your plate, I can see how it might be hard to call someone back. If you’re an asshole.

She about-faces through the doors and I go my own way to class.

Thing is, I know I’m gonna see the play tonight. It’s inevitable, like a midterm or an execution. But since I absolutely refuse to go alone I called up Heather. And OF COURSE she can’t go with me. Surprise; she’s sick and overworked. So I’ll be alone for the evening. Should I still see the play?  The crushing certainty of it, the unspoken expectations to guess at - should I linger afterward and say hi? And after that - will she ditch me for a drama party? Will she call? Like hell. I’m not going. There is homework; math, Spanish, physics; an essay to type up, a book to read (ALWAYS a book to read!). And after that? Two-dollar bloody marys. Again. So I guess that’s that. Definitely not going. Another night of self-imposed exile.

So…seven PM. I’m resigned to finish up my homework and head out for drinks. Surprise! Cate calls! You coming to Cherry’s play? Super! Wanna meet us there? Grand! Yeah, I guess there was no avoiding it after all.

Although I got there without much time for small talk, it took her and Arianna about 10 minutes to notice I wasn’t my ordinary self (probably because I wasn’t cracking so many dick jokes). Big whoop, since I’ve pretty much been drifting through strangers in crowds for two weeks and never really worried about being "on." Cate seemed different too. Kind of nervous, kind of withdrawn, kind of unhappy. What’s up with that? During intermission, I beckon her to the empty seat on my right so she can let me in on The Secret, in third person. "Saturday night Cate and Brandon got really drunk and had sex."

I know I was supposed to act surprised - she had kind of been hoping Brandon’s BEST FRIEND - JOOOOSH! - would make a move, for the past FOREVER. But if anyone needed some sex it was her, and at least now I see why she’s been out of touch.

She’s afraid her big crush will never look at her again. Not that she’ll remember what I say, but I let her know that she should probably go talk to Josh right away, like RIGHT NOW, like YESTERDAY, because if too much time passes he’ll get bitter or something, and that’s no good.

Later we went outside to enjoy my last sample of Fine Tobacco Product. There is much more to Cate than I realized. She’s curious about what’s up with me, but I sort of still hate everybody and I’m not quite ready to sing. Don’t get me wrong; I want to, but what exactly would I say? Consider it deflected.

The play, by the way, was really something else. I loved it. The writer tied each character’s background to a relationship with Africa, showing a canny, realistic understanding of African social norms and their recent disruption against the backdrop of myriad civil wars (right, what would I know?). And OF COURSE I couldn’t take my eyes off Cherry the whole time she was on stage. After it was over I hugged her and told her she was terrific, that I really liked the play. And I meant it. So after I got home, I figured FUCK IT! and went out for drinks again anyway, and after that things started looking up, because when I was done, it was Friday.

I’ll never be one to get up and dance
but I like to watch.
And if you look closely, you might
see me sitting here
swaying to
the same tune as you.

And if you could
meet my lingering glance
halfway
with your own eyes

And if you
could follow
the tip of my smile, like a faded trail on a crinkled map

And if you could feel the tug of my heart, invisible, lovely
like the tides

And if you see my lips, locked up tightly, and if you could read between them

You might
discover me so
by these faint
indirections.

I never thanked you
for taking so long
to call me back.

A moment too soon and I never would have discovered

this book of poetry and the soothing noise crowds crowds make in small spaces
this dimly lit table, this ashtray, my first cigarette in two days
the clink of glasses in the hands of this barmaid,
who forgot my name as soon as I pronounced it
    but will remember what I came here for:
    this two-dollar bloody mary.

To think! With you, I might never have found out!
Or worse: I would have had to share.

I know you cringed the instant I whipped out the envelope, even if you tried not to show it.
Well, you can un-cringe. This is not that kind of letter.

I wasn’t sure what to make of the whole "relationship" talk. I walked away with more questions than I started with. Why did she assume I wanted a relationship? Did I give off that vibe (probably tried too hard to impress Mr. Goins)? Did I secretly want a relationship and was just too afraid to say it? Is she avoiding me? If so, why? What gives: a minute ago I had no questions. Now questions are multiplying like goblins. Time to put a stop to this, for my own peace of mind.

I know you don’t want a "relationship." But what does that even mean? I have no idea. It’s just a word. I imagine the only reason it came up is because of a conversation like this:

Cate:         You know, he likes you a lot, but he tries to hide it.
Cherry:       I know. Who does he think he’s fooling? It’s kinda creepy. Men are dumb.
Arianna:      Just watch; I bet you $5 that any day now he’ll hand you some sappy letter, full of tender feelings and shit. Ha ha!
Cate:         You’re on. Hey Cherry, can I get some of those nachos?
Cherry:       Get your own fucking nachos, bitch.
Cate:         One o’ these days….
                (chorus)

Or not. Maybe you don’t sit around and discuss me with anyone. What do I know? (Everything I know can fit in a teaspoon).

Here is what’s in that teaspoon: I am lonely and fairly shy. I’ve sat around for a long time feeling ashamed of those facts, like they were some sort of crime. I think this guilty feeling has prevented me from honestly articulating my needs to myself or to anyone else, blah blah blah.

Thing is, I know it’s not a crime. To be shy and lonely is the most natural thing in the world. It’s perfectly human. It’s also perfectly human that I like you. You’re fun, smart, cute (cute is the new hot), and stylish. What’s not to like? (That’s a rhetorical question). It doesn’t make me some emotional parasite, IN NEED OF A "RELATIONSHIP." It just is what it is.  

So this is what I really want: I would like to see you more than I have been. I am not going to ask to marry you or go steady or whatever it is emo kids do in Kansas. I’m not going to suck up time you don’t want to give. I don’t mind if you’re with other people, too. I just like you, and I like your company. The most natural thing in the world. I don’t know what you wanna call that, but there it is. Simple as that.

I would also like to know if you feel anything like that too. Possibly, you’d like to visit me and are kind of shy. On the other hand, probably not. Maybe you’re tired of these "talks." Maybe you’ll despise me for writing a long and earnest letter, redeemed only by the mention of fucking nachos. I just didn’t know how else to reach you, so I took a chance, and here it is; that’s all.

And if you don’t feel anything, and if you have no desire to see more or less of me than what we are doing, that is no crime, but I would really like to know. No rush, of course. The beauty of getting a letter is you can take all the time you need to reply.

If you could transmute silk into music, it would sound like the violin.

What I like about classical music: I can listen to it even when I’m not listening. With, say, rock or rap, I need to tune it out to gather my thoughts. But with violins, it’s different.

This is a blessing.

The Modigliani string quartet, four men, black shoes, black suits, black hair, and white ties; all of them, all at once, suck in their breath, lean back, like throwing a punch, and with a flourish, strike the fist note.

Violins playing is like looking at the world through a waterfall.

Tonight, this is a curse.

My mind wanders. I think of you, what you told me last week. "I don’t want a relationship." What does that mean?

The artists sway with their rhythm. One melody swings around, piggybacking another. Distilling one long note into the emotion of a lover’s voice. Pure and so frail, just like life.

Did I want a "relationship?" What made you think I did?

The sound of the music, now like an oak tree, full and sonorous. Low, like a hungry animal.
Now as high as a songbird in the morning. Dainty and light, like petals.

And why not a relationship? Are you too lazy? Too selfish? Are you seeing someone else?

Sometimes the one on the left likes to put his ear all the way up to the violin, like it’s whispering secrets to him.
For the faster bits, his hand moves frantically, like a sewing machine, like he’s slicing meat.

So hungry.

Is it me? Am I not worth the space on the bed? The jabbing interruption, occasionally, of my voice in the room? The hours in the morning with me and only me? The hand, lost inside mine, when we sit together in the dark?

And sometimes, he leans into the violin’s neck, all the way up to the scroll at the tip, as though he might fall off the end of the note.

I.
The old man
reclines on his chair in a bottom-floor office
His bookshelves burst with novels I know. Phillip Roth! Carol Shields! Anthologies! Histories! Truth! Beauty!
So many magazines; Writers’ Digest, Writers’ Quartely, Writers’ Review, Poets’ This-and That.
An old metal typewriter, a monument, squats against the wall on table of its own.
He’s got papers all over the place. Letters, clippings, rough drafts of his own, assignments not his own.
There’s a classmate’s poem on one sheet. Like what students write these days, it’s full of scattered images, tossed all over the page like fairy dust.

-Sometimes I wish I could do that.
-What, you mean wing it?
-It’s so fluid, so playful.

Nah, you’re not that kind of writer, he said.
Much too serious.

So fucking serious!
Pardon my French.

II.
The other
lives in a bowl of soup.
She writes poems like she’s serving dinner, dishing out love and memory in bite-sized portions, scattered like coins spilled from a piggy bank.

One time,
She came to visit me. We talked, and talked, and talked, all night, while she made a big charcoal sketch of me. The sketch is still hanging on her wall.

And this other time,
she took me to a party, and I found out that when she dances, her hair, long dark and tangly, looks like the edges of a stormcloud. Meanwhile, I got drunk
And met the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

But that was nothing like the time
She drove me forty miles east of here, turned onto a dirt road, chugged past an iced-over lake, and stopped at the top of this hill.
A graveyard,
Where lay her revered father’s bones.
Big, black, and smooth, his tombstone was the most stylish one around.
And though I didn’t know the guy, seeing him like this almost made me wish I had.    

 

 

I volunteered to go on-stage for Fred Winters’ hypnotism show last night, and it was so educational! He sat the volunteers down on stage, 18 in all, in a semicircle. He talked with a pleasant kind of authority to his voice, and played some 80s music to relax us while he spoke.

It was nice! It was working! I was relaxed - not as deeply as the other recruits (the kid sitting next to me - dressed like Mystery - fell asleep with his head in my lap) - but I felt completely at ease. I didn’t feel the stage fright I usually feel, oh, all the time. I knew the audience was out there laughing at me, but that didn’t seem so important. "Nothing you feel is wrong," said Fred, rightly. They were still laughing, but it was like they were far off, behind a glass wall, up in space. Their volume was turned way down. Everything was fine. There was only music and the Voice of Fred. My feet were on the floor. My hands were in my lap. My eyes were closed. The Voice went up, it went down, it stayed the same, all at once. He counted to ten.

Suddenly, "Sleep!"

The way he said it, fast and powerful, like getting socked in the head; the same jolt, the same flash of white light at the moment of impact, but no aggression, can’t hit back, don’t even want to, just wanna sink into the chair.

"Sleep!" Pow!

My breathing was slow, steady. My head tilted forward toward my lap. Everything was so heavy. Everything just wanted to stay put. Everything was fine.

At first.

My arms and legs felt like cinderblocks, just like he said they would. That was nice. But the part of my brain that connects dots, articulates nuances, makes jokes, appreciates art; that part was turned off. Shut down. Out of reach. As though I could touch it, but the part I could touch was only a memory. I get that same stupid feeling from weed, which is why I hate being high.

After that his suggestions got hairy. Deep down, I didn’t really wanna dance, I didn’t really wanna see Fred naked, and I didn’t wanna act like Fred was invisible. He commanded us to forget our names. Yeah, right. He went to each recruit and asked them, one by one, "What’s your name?" Some were silent. Some stuttered. They even bantered with Fred about shit I’ve forgotten. But they. Just. Could. Not. Say. Their. Names. What gives? I could remember mine, "Hyper-literate Bastard," but it was distant, like the audience, up on a high shelf. I could just reach up and grab it - that’s all! Fred kept going. Students kept forgetting. Until Jeff.

When Fred asked his name, it came out right away, not even missing a beat. "Jeff." Suddenly the spell was broken for me, too. The microphone came down in front of me. I reached up to the shelf and gave Fred what I found: "Hyper-literate Bastard."

These things happen, he said.

From then on, the audience and the lights still had that same distant quality, but not as much so as before. The spell was broken. I didn’t feel like dancing anymore. Earlier, Fred told us that all he does is suggest; that hypnotism won’t work if we don’t open our minds and just let it happen. Well, it wasn’t happening. Maybe I had other things on my mind. Or maybe it’s because I was waltzing with a fat lesbian (Actually, I didn’t mind that so much. By the way, what is it with me meeting all these gay girls? Last semester I couldn’t meet a minority to save my life. Now they’re multiplying like goblins). At any rate, when he told me to act like I had laid an egg, I faked it.

Hyper-literate Bastard,

I worked very hard with you last semester and helped you when you were new at the Collegian. I stayed at the paper one too many times too late waiting on your content to come in. I did my best to work with you and how am I repaid? With rude blog comments about my reporting and writing, which I pour my entire heart and soul into. Did I ever insult your writing and reporting? Nope. I respect your decision to exercise free speech via your blog, but realize that your words are hurtful. I’ve worked my ass off for four years at K-State and at the Collegian, and while I’m not perfect and not even a "real" journalist yet, I don’t appreciate your words.

-Frustrated Editor

————————————————————————-

I believe all the problems with the Fourth Estate are right here in this self-indulgent "complaint." To illustrate:

1.    I didn’t criticize her personally. I didn’t even criticize her overall writing style, which is so bland it makes me want to slit my own throat just to make sure I can still feel. I criticized a specific element of a specific article she wrote. I also criticized other specific elements of other specific articles other Collegian staffers wrote. BFD. Yes, my tone was breezy and irreverent. Hello? That’s my writing style. She’d know that if she exercised any reading comprehension skills on the rest of my post; all my remarks were made in a catty, condescending voice. I’m not trying to tiptoe around the tender feelings of these so-called "writers." I’m trying to make fun of them. I won’t flinch. And I’ve got A LOT of material.

2.    She tried to work hard with me? That’s up for debate. Yes, I was extremely late on several articles. Not that she cares (she made it quite clear that her own crankiness is The Most Important Thing In The World), but when deadline came around, I was also studying for 18 credits worth of midterms AND working on ways to scrape up enough money to, you know, stay in school (out-of-state fees are a bee-hotch). I’m fairly sure this has happened to lots of Collegian staffers. Whenever I tried to talk to her, she’d act like she didn’t have time (BTW, impatient supervisors are a real pet peeve of mine. You sign on to a position of authority only if you have enough patience to sit down and engage other people. If you’re gonna sigh like you’re too important to be bothered with the paeons, well, grow up. "Working with people" implies a certain measure of patience and helpful, friendly advice, not arrogantly forcing people to pussyfoot around your frazzled nerves). She’d edit the story without reading it; moving chunks of text here and there, changing the flow of the story to make it suck, then leaving me to clean up and make new transitions so it did not, in fact, look like it was edited by a careless snob. The best part: whenever I turned in a story early and left it there for editors to review at their leisure, the next day, the story would appear in print with EXTRA GRAMMATICAL ERRORS (We copied and pasted but left out the prepositions! Oops!) or factual errors (copyeditors should probably not work their "magic" on numbers and figures).

3.    "Free speech?" Don’t be so dramatic. Make no mistake; this is not the Washington Post. This is a dumb blog nobody reads.

 

Fact is, there was nothing wrong with my specific criticisms. The problem lies in the newsroom. I want to stress that this is not the fault of any one particular editor. They all believe that They Are The Deciders. Therefore, they put out a rag full of dull, misleading headlines, factual errors, grammatical mistakes, op-ed columns made of moronic drivel, and STILL THINK THEY’RE DOING A GREAT JOB! They have no capacity for criticism - from themselves or from the hoi-polloi - because in that newsroom, when heads go up asses and don’t come out, they start to think their stuff don’t stink. But when the rest of us actually read the paper, we can smell it just fine.

 

 

 

“i know its not really any of my business, and you probably dont care how i feel, but…if you were to hook up with cherry, id probably be really upset. id like to think im a cool person with no hang-ups, and im not really into her, but truthfully it would just piss me off. maybe im just hallucinating, anyway, and she isnt into you, and you arent into her, but. yuk. i cant really say why the idea of you two together wigs me out so much, but it really really does. so i figured id tell you and maybe youll care and maybe you wont, and maybe it doesnt matter anyway.”

-Madeline

And so began Thursday.

There ought to be a word that conveys the sense of “fuckittyfuckfuckfuck,” but - as in mathematical parlance - to the nth degree. Perhaps something like “I want to crawl under a rock somewhere, let maggots pick at my worthless husk, and then in 500 years when I wake up all this will have blown over, even though I’ll look like hell.” Too prolix, no?

Obviously, she’s suspected for weeks. I spent all day turning this dilemma around in my head. Tell the truth, piss her off, watch her walk away. Would she ever come back? Why would she say that I don’t care? How could she even think that? And wouldn’t I have to, like, make it up to her? But how? And what sort of relationship would that be, centered around a debt? Madeline’s been nothing but fantastic to me and now who knows what’s gonna happen? So many questions.

Alternately, lie. Keep my friend (for now, because obvs she’ll find out before long if this keeps up). So I turned this thing around all day, this sword of Damocles, sitting in my head and in my gut, wondering what to do about it? Where to put it? Who to tell? What to say? I thought about this all damn day long. Chain smoking. Physics class. Reading the Times. Eating. Waiting for Cherry to call. Screenwriting class. Another cigarrete. And another.

 

It snowed that morning. I saw Cherry outside the Stuni, and we talked for a moment before her phone rang again (it was her mom). The snow was really coming down; the wind stabbed and jabbed at our faces, our fingers, any exposed skin it could find, stinging and snipping like a juiced-up prizefighter. She got off the phone and I walked with her to class; we shared schedules; she’s got classes and rehearsal all day long and so I probably won’t be seeing her later; I wanted to tell her about Madeline, but what, really, would I be telling her? So when we reach Bluemont I just hugged her goodbye and headed off to physics. My cig went out and on the way as I fingered through my pockets, juggling papers and quarters and gum and keys and coughdrops and a comb and my ID and STILL NO LIGHTER! So I did it again and then again and then I remembered I handed it to Cherry, and when exactly was I going to see her again?

I was afraid that mentioning this to Cherry would, like, pressure her to give this thing more thought than she’s willing to, which will naturally send her running for the hills. So, is that what it’s come to? Am I supposed to be stuck in this no-man’s land, a streets paved with eggshells, a hazy, dimly lit Hell of Not Knowing? And is this not my own doing? My own timidity, my reluctance to just take charge, manhandle that girl, get up and dance with her and take what I want without apology, albeit in a loving and respectful manner? Niceguyism rears its ugly head once again.

A girl like that, a girl who can do that thing with her lips and her eyes when she smiles, a girl like that is a wicked wicked creature. Being with her is like getting up to dance by the bonfire right after downing a bottle of moonshine, because the fire is so fun and so beautiful and so dangerous at the same time, and while you’re dancing you feel so buyant and alive but also terrified, because that fire could rage out of control and swallow you whenever it wants to, or you could make a single stupid misstep and fall right in at any moment, and you were in fact terrified from the moment you got up to dance but that was really part of the dance too all along, and now its heat is so soothing and so menacing and you can’t stop the dance, even though you know you’re in mortal danger, because you’re drunk and you NEED THAT HEAT like you’ve never needed anything else in your life.

That is Cherry.

At 10:30 that night I stepped outside for (yet another) cig and made that dreaded phone call to Cherry - dreaded, of course, because who wants to be bothered with this shit? I told her what I was thinking about doing (reveal) and asked her what she thought I should do: deny deny deny, adding "Isn’t that what you do anyway?" Excellent point.

At that point, that I hadn’t spoken to Madeline all day probably told her all she needed to know. Nevertheless, I took a stab a the denying thing:

"It is totally your business, and OF COURSE I care A LOT about how you feel, and IT MATTERS. Me and Cherry: not happening.

Having said that, it seems to me that you must have some sort of feelings, either for her or for me. And of course, I can see why you’d be after me; after all, with the right haircut, I’m quite dashing; I’ve been drinking beer for a couple years and have developed an impressive gut - THE MARK of a bon vivant, a man who knows what the ladies like; I’m quite good at certain video games, which no doubt you find irresistable; all in all, with my whole nerdy loser schtick, I pretty much have to fight the ladies off of me. On the other hand, Cherry’s kinda cute too, I guess. Whatever."

Although I was more or less talking out of my ass like I always do, was I on to something? Why else would something like this affect her so? I asked her and she said yes, maybe she does have a thing for me, which I suppose explains it, but not really, because to whatever extent that it’s true, it’s pretty clear that she has no intention of DOING anything with me; she’s had sooo many chances - way more than anybody else in this forlorn town, and she’s also got so many options anyway so what the hell makes me special all of a sudden? I doubt being with her would satisfy her in any way; just the same, there’s no way she’s losing any sleep over not being with me. Bottom line: if she thought I was getting together with ANYBODY ELSE in the world except Cherry, she would not have sent me that message at all.

Not that I feel any better about it. Lying like that was the shittiest, most cynical thing I could have possibly done, and I did it did it anyway; now I have to go back and tell her that not only did I "betray" her but I lied about it, and obviously I lied because I didn’t want to lose her but that does not mitigate the cowardly shittiness of what I did. And what does it say about what I have with Cherry that I have to keep it quiet or else fear that she’d just vanish into the night? I hate just thinking about it, but when I look back I have to ask myself, what, precisely, am I getting out of this? Happiness? Passion? Misery? Hell? Is there even a difference?

 

Cherry had literally been dancing all night. It must have been what, 2? Half past 2? She got up from her laptop, with iTunes wide open, dumbly dragged herself to the radio, to the light switch, fumbling with them both til they shut off. She shuffled to her room, baby steps, and disappeared. Chelsea and I looked at each other. She went to go check on Cherry. -Is she out? -Yeah, Chelsea said, gathering her coat and shoes, heading out the door. We exchanged "nice meeting you"-s, then she left and I doubled back to Cherry’s room to check on her myself, and she was on her bed, on her back, totally out of it, catatonic and listless, eyeballs slender white slits through nearly-closed lids, legs slanted off the bed; there she was, the only time I had ever seen her look anything other than absolutely glamorous - I’m thinking of that look she flashed me hours ago, that thing she does when she smiles, with her eyes and with her lips, like tossing sex at me over her shoulder; I will never forget that look as long as I live - anyhoo I picked up her legs and swung them on to the bed, holding her for a moment to make sure she was still breathing, just asleep and not in danger - not that she drank that much but still, I was relieved at the way her stomach pleasantly rose and fell under my hands; for a second I fixate on the hole in her pants (this is her favorite pair), she showed it to me yesterday: a nickel-sized triangle an inch below the knee, then I snap out of it and spread some blankets over her, three or four layers, and I put an extra blanket over her feet (every time she climbs into bed with me her feet are freezing, so I warmly rub mine against her soles while we snuggle and fondle each other), and I look back at her face - the face I couldn’t stop looking at all night long - and her hair, always exploding and falling around her like a burst of fireworks, I take her glasses off, put them on her nightstand, and I kiss her face and whisper "night" into her ear - she won’t remember any of this tomorrow - and I go back to the living room for her coat and her laptop, place it on her other bed, thinking for a moment how nice it would be to get nekkid and crawl into bed right behind her, thinking about the space I can never stop kissing, that space where her neck and shoulders meet, so smooth and sweet like a candy bar, but then what if she wakes up dazed, disoriented, and hung over? She will definitely have one hell of a hangover, all that Jose Cuervo. So I think better of it, don’t want to intrude on her personal space, but before I go, I fidget a pen out of my bag and write on the palm of her left hand: "Call me <3," then I turn the lights off and head out the door.

She’ll wake up in a few hours with a headache, and she’ll call me, or maybe she’ll go to the bathroom and see what’s on her hand after she flicks on the light, then she’ll call me. I’m lighting a cigarette and crunching through last week’s snow. It got cold fast! It was fifty degrees today, but it dropped as soon as night fell, now it’s really chilly, about twenty; I’m passing through a parking lot, and there are four guys standing next to a car under a lamp, one of them - kind of a poindexter - drunkenly trying to goad the others into a fight, but they’re not biting, I overhear. Yes, she’ll call me; the back door to Marlatt swings open, backlighting three girls, all drunk and wobbly, dressed to kill, a boy hugging the back of one of them; I wave Hi as they inch their way out, swaying like cats’ tails against that door. Tomorrow I’ll see her again! She’ll call me first thing in the morning.

So I hooked up with C. the other night and it was fan-tass-tic.

A moment of frisson occured early on during the night, when I noticed the scars on her wrist. Left one. All covered in silicon bracelets, but not really. These weren’t small scars. They were long, jagged, and recent - still healing, actually. My fingers went over them sometimes while we spooned. I was dying to know.

I knew she’d hate me forever if I asked her about them, but I was dying to know, so I did. She shut down for a minute, and I could tell that this was REALLY BAD, so I quickly changed the subject.

Nevertheless, questions linger. I’ve been around suicidal girls, and I don’t quite feel that vibe from her.

How is it that a girl like that could kill herself? A girl SO CLEARLY lovely and amazing; a girl with such large, intense eyes, such smooth, sweet-smelling skin and interesting hair - especially the mischievous lock that streams up like a drinking fountain - a girl so beautiful - how could a girl like that kill herself? A girl so full of stories and unpretentious style; a girl so intelligent, so thoughtful, so individualistic that she is respected by everyone she meets, friend and antagonist alike - a girl whose very smile is so full of passion I could go through a hundred lovers hoping for someone to smile at me the way she did that night - in short, a gem of a woman; how could a girl like that kill herself?

Who stopped her? Who found her, naked, bloody, crying and shivering, and saved her life? Could she have really ever felt so alone? One day this might become a case of "but she always looked so happy." And that would be utterly tragic.

I saw you today at work, in the hallway, for about ten seconds.
You were trying to heave a cart up some stairs.
I was about to call out to you, go up to you, say hi, something.
But you looked busy, so I thought better of it.

In hindsight, that was sort of silly of me. What was I afraid of? How did I convince myself that I hiked all the way to Derby just for the food?

I can’t thank you enough for the friendship you’ve shown me this semester. Truth be told, I was pretty lonely before that night we went to the movies (Superbad?) together. And I was really taken aback the first time you waited for me after class. And the time after that. And the time after that. Funny how it works; gestures of kindness so small, and at the same time, so large.

If we were talking face to face, this would be the point where I meaningfully look away, into the window, then turn back and say something profound. The true meaning of Shakespeare or whatever. All I can come up with is this:

I like you. There. I said it.

Was it really that hard to say? And I’m not saying this to put the moves on you. I can see that you’ve got a full plate and I don’t intend to add yet another mess.

Although, rehearsing this moment in my mind, all sorts of scenes played out.

Like, we’d be out walking somewhere on campus.
"Wait," I’d say, suddenly overcome with emotion.
Then I’d take your hand. Your mouth would screw up with a perplexed expression.
I lean in to kiss you. You pull away, eyes cast down. Now everything’s awkward. We don’t say anything after that.

So poignant, so cinematic. I know.

These past weeks, I’d been waiting for the perfect moment to tell you; finally I realized there is no such thing. And then I realized there is such a thing, and this, right now, is it. There. I said it.

Anyway, my whole point is just thank you for being terrific. I suppose I was bound to feel this way. You’re terrific, I’m thankful, ipso facto, silly crush. So it goes. That is all.