Lend Me Some Shellac, Would You?

Yesterday at 5:00 I was standing on the beach of an island that floats just beyond Boothbay Harbor. My shoes were back in the car, and my toes were sinking into a spongy carpet of seaweed that stretched from sand to tide pool to the water's edge. I had a plastic bottle full of white wine in one hand and a Tupperware container for shell collection in the other. My office-mate was ahead of me, scaling the higher rocks because he still had his shoes on. He had a plastic container of wine, too, and he was remarking about how insane it was that the entire beach was littered with periwinkles.

I was picking up the more remarkable ones--green as pistachios, striped--and trying not to spill the wine--which was surprisingly difficult to drink out of the type of bottle that is designed to use while exercising--and it was the first time I'd been happy in weeks. We'd already been to the aquarium, where I'd held a lobster and a starfish, where I'd petted a shark and a sea cucumber--and then we'd wandered Boothbay Harbor to see the ships and the band and the wares being sold at its annual festival. I bought fudge. I got my picture taken in front of giant sailing ships that had docked for the festival. It had been a nice day despite the clouds, despite the occasional mist. I felt better than I had in weeks.

I don't know what it was there for a while. I guess it was a lot of things. Maine has been under the cover of clouds and rain and clouds and rain for the last two weeks straight, and there hasn't been a day where the sun came through even for a few minutes.

There are also the nightmares. I haven't gotten a good or full night's sleep in weeks. Each night I jolt awake, terrified from one or two or three different nightmares where a variety of people I love or people I don't even know--Conan O'Brien, for example--are dying horrible, unsightly, and very public deaths right in front of me. Or if the people in the dream aren't dying, they are close--like in the dream where I gave birth, decided I didn't want my baby, and left him alone in an apartment while I went out for Chinese food with some friends from grad school.

In addition to all that, the Boy From Work and I decided to quit trying to get ourselves back together earlier this week, so everything has been kind of a mess. And this rain wasn't helping anything. I just need some sun.

And you know where it's sunny? Buffalo. So I pulled out my suitcases tonight, and I started packing early. I'm not waiting around until the middle of next week to go home. I'm leaving as soon as possible. And I'll be gone a long time, which requires some skillful packing. A lot of packing. Every-shoe-I-love-and-a-variety-of-purses kind of packing. So I dragged everything out of my closet and surveyed the mess. Some of my more casual summer purses were filthy with the grime of sand and melted gum, so I began emptying them so I could toss them in the washer. One of the purses had a small writer's notebook in it, and it's an old one, one that was around during grad school and beyond.

I opened that up and found the most ridiculous gems inside. Completely stupid, completely bizarre snippets and ideas and even a romantic intervention. To give you an idea, here's a few things to consider:

Quotes:

1. "I want to shellac the world." -- Me, at Diana's
2. "I'll conjugate his verb." -- Author unknown, although that sure sounds like something I'd say
3. "Will you diaphragm his sentence? UGH! DIAGRAM! I MEAN DIAGRAM!" -- Amy
4. During a discussion on the magazine Cosmopolitan: "It's a female magazine." -- Amy; "A female manatee?" -- Matt
5. "Those girls are big, bearded, plaid-wearing, campfire-making lesbians." -- Jeff

Notes to Self:

1. Sign on 169, heading to Minneapolis: COWS IN ROAD. USE CAUTION. BE PREPARED TO STOP.
2. Oglala. Lakota.
3. Pig! [The exclamation is dotted with a heart]
4. Teacher (young). Gets attention from student (failed a few grades?) Scene: teacher chaperoning @ h.s. dance.
5. Amy wants her gravestone to read: SHE LIKED CHEESE.
6. Unsalted butter. 3 1/2 oz. 2 cups heavy cream.
7. Congratulations Seth & Amanda. Congratulations Seth & Penny. Both on parents' business billboard. Two pregnant girls. Will the parents really announce both?
8. Amy's students think the word sectionalism is dirty. (Caucus too.)
9. My brother thinks these words are gross: seminary, rectory, masturbation

Series of Letters Written by Josh (with My Help) at the Bar Where We Use to Work (The Letters Are for The Spunky Russian He Was Then in Love with):

[KEY: blue = his writing; red = my writing]

1. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Here's what I think: my thoughts are not complete. You are one of my favorite people in the world. When you were here it was amazing. Now you're not and there's a little empty space in me. I've been thinking about that emptiness a lot. Instead of cutting you some... I blame geography and I would love so much to be your BF. I'm not sure, though, that either of us is capable of being in a long distance relationship right now. Let me tell you what I think: you used to intimidate me and that made me communicate poorly with you.
2. Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Are you capable of being with me even if you're in grad school? I simply can't deal with this random on-off shit.
3. Dear Liza, I like your ass. Also, I like your hair. Do you want to be my girlfriend? We can have babies if you want. You can't cheat on me. Promise. Love, Josh.
4. Dear Baby, I'm sorry for this but we have 2 options: (1.) Be my girlfriend and don't cheat on me. (2.) We to back to talking minimally like before (this doesn't mean I'll never see you again.)

None of those letters got sent. (And for anyone keeping track, the night those were written was the night this memorable and urine-soaked event happened.)

That notebook and everything written in it just about made my night. And it--like the few hours yesterday that I spent kicking around the salty town of Boothbay Harbor--made me feel a little bit lighter for the first time in weeks, and I've got to believe that there are going to be more things like that--things that make me feel a little bit lighter, a little bit less like Saturn is continuing to bitch-slap me until the middle of August--coming my way soon, as I run around Buffalo, soaking in everything good that is waiting for me.

A Brief History of Things I Have Stolen: Part Three

Part Three: A Picture of that Boy I Loved --- High School

It was my junior year, the year Amy and I had our lockers downstairs by the shop. Every morning we came into the hallway that smelled like a lumberyard, and we'd put our coats and hats and gloves away. We'd grab our books and stuff notebooks into our backpacks. And we'd do this around one of the other J.S. girls, whose locker was in between ours.

It's important to know my history with this J.S. girl, beyond knowing it's possible that I stole her clay castle from middle school art class. This particular J.S. and I had been best friends for years in middle school, probably longer than we should've been.

We lived on the same road and shared a seat on the bus every day. One morning late in our middle school careers, we were gossiping about some people we knew, talking about how we couldn't believe this and we couldn't believe that, and then J.S. looked over at me, smiled, and said, "This is why you and I are best friends."

It was a nice little moment. We didn't use that term out loud all that often, and it was good to hear it. It was confirmation. Validation. It was intoxicating. I walked around all that morning feeling indestructible. After all, I was a girl with a best friend. A very good, smart, funny best friend.

When we sat down for lunch that day, the other girls at our table were doing what girls of that age often do: mapping out the social circles of our school. They wanted to know who was best friends with whom. Each girl took a turn naming her best friend, and we'd all smile, nod, and turn to the next. When it was J.S.'s turn, she put down her sandwich and wiped her hands off the quilted napkin her mother had tucked into her lunch bag.

"I don't really have a best friend," she said. "I'm close friends with a lot of people."

My stomach rolled over. My heart cracked in two. I stared at her, willed her to look at me, but she wouldn't. She stared straight ahead and then picked up her sandwich again.

It was the worst kind of betrayal I'd ever felt. I wanted to march straight into the nurse's office and throw up at her feet--which seemed possible--and demand she call my mother to come get me, just so I didn't have to ride the bus home and face J.S., that traitor.

We weren't friends after that. There was no fight, no drama, no public shaming. There was just a clean, quiet break. I started sitting with other girls on the bus, and I ignored J.S., who got on near the end of our route. She always had to do the long walk of the aisle knowing she would have to find her own seat, that she might end up sitting with the chubby boy who had a crush on her or--worse--elementary schoolers who chattered on the whole time about monkeys! and boogers! and cookies!

Because J.S. and I didn't have a dramatic dissolution of our friendship, we managed to coexist in the same friend circle at school until we graduated. But I never forgot what she did to me. Ever. And when, at the end of our sophomore year, I started hanging around some boys from the school district over, J.S. suddenly wanted to revive our friendship.

On the bus in the mornings, she would hang over the back of the seat in front of me and try to ask me questions about those boys, who she'd met before, too. She was in love with them. Especially one of them--a skinny, long-limbed boy who liked to dance and sing. If she happened to go somewhere over the weekend where one of them was present, she would leap onto the bus Monday morning to hang it over my head.

This distressed me. This distressed Amy. After all, she and I were part of his little band of groupies, and we thought we knew him better than anyone. He didn't have special nicknames for J.S. He didn't go to Homecoming or the February Twirl with her. He didn't invite her to summer parties at his house. He didn't write her poems. He didn't learn the steps from Usher's latest video for her. He did all that for us, so we clearly knew him better. And when she pretended she and he were just so close, it drove us crazy.

And finally, there was this. The last straw. One morning Amy and I walked into our hallway that, and there was J.S. and her yawned-open locker. She was standing in front of it and taping a new picture inside. The picture was of that boy.

"Look what he gave me!" she said as we came over to spin our own combinations and get into our lockers.

"Cute," I said through clenched teeth.

"Yeah," Amy said. "Cute."

After she left, Amy whirled around and stared at me. "Can you believe her?" she asked.

"I hate her," I said, and at that moment I really did. She'd crushed me years before, and I'd never really recovered. And now she was trying to compete with me--and, as it turned out, many other girls--for this boy's heart. I'd had it with being cordial about everything. This was war.

So I did the only thing I could do: I got a better picture of that boy and I stuck it up in my locker. My picture was far superior in that it included both me and the boy, who had his arm around me. We were in the backseat of our friend's sister's car, and we were on our way home from a night of dancing.

Of course J.S. questioned it the day I hung it.

"Where was that taken?" she asked.

"On our way home from Passions," I said. I passed my hand over it, lovingly.

And J.S. frowned. She'd never been to Passions with this boy, that was for sure. She'd never gotten to squeeze in close to him on the drive home. She'd never gotten to feel his hand on the bare skin of her hip. I wanted that to be clear, and the picture made it so.

And maybe that could've been it. Maybe I could've been satisfied with that frown--which clearly signaled my victory--but a few days later, I had the opportunity to make my victory even more stunning when J.S. walked away from her locker toward homeroom, not realizing that when she slammed her door closed, her jacket had gotten caught in it and was sticking out the bottom.

"Oh my God," Amy hissed. She pointed to the jacket. "I bet I can get it open," she said. "We can get the picture!"

Our lockers were in the new wing of the school, and that meant they weren't nearly as sturdy as the ones up in the old hallways. Those ones were steel and strong. These ones were just flimsy. There was a possibility that we could yank it open, even if the lock itself had clicked into place. After all, every day we watched one of the boys in our grade walk up to his locker, place his fist just so, and then slam it against the locker in this one exact spot, and that locker would spring open without him fooling with the combination. These lockers weren't any great example of modern engineering.

"Go see if anyone's coming," Amy said. It was almost time for the first bell to ring, and that meant the hallways were mostly empty. So I ran down to the end of the hall, peered left and right, and then gave her the all-clear. I ran back up the hall and watched as Amy bent, wrapped the edge of the jacket around her hand, and yanked. Nothing. She yanked again. Nothing. She yanked one more time, and the door swung open so hard it crashed into mine.

We just stared. We couldn't believe it. Then we started laughing and screaming and jumping up and down.

I snatched the picture from the locker and slammed it shut before the first bell rang, and Amy and I turned the corner toward homeroom knowing that now there was only one girl in our school who would have a picture of that boy hanging up in her locker--and it would be the right girl. It would be exactly the way it should be.

Of course, a year later we would realize that many girls at the boy's school had a picture of him in their lockers, many girls were wandering around telling people they loved that boy, they loved him so much, and he said he loved them, too. But right then, on the day J.S.'s coat got caught in her locker, we were twelve whole months from figuring out what he'd been up to, what kind of lies he'd been spinning across the school districts, and we felt invincible and righteous. We were absolutely shining in our small victory, which would, in the end, count for exactly nothing.

Can't Get Enough of Your Hoo-Hoo

This is how Katy tells me she is thinking about getting pregnant soon:

"Soooohhh, Matt and I went to Shopkohhh today..."

I had to interrupt. "Wait a second. That's the most Minnesotan I've heard you sound in a long time, doncha know?"

"Okay, so," she continued, "we were at the Shopko today trying to buy some green beans for our hotdish and lye-soaked cod for our lutefisk..."

"Smartass," I said.

"ANYWAY," she said, "we were in the baby section, and there was the cutest crib there. It matched our bedroom set completely. And you should've seen the bedding! Oh my God, that bedding was adorable. And so I decided I'm going to have a baby and buy that crib."

This wasn't the first time she'd said something like this to me. Ever since we got back from Mexico, Katy's been talking crazy like that. She's been saying she thinks she wants to have a baby, that she's got a major case of the Baby Fever. And every time she says stuff like that, I feel compelled to tell her how I really feel about it. And how I really feel about it is simple: IT FREAKS ME OUT.

And because I am nothing if not consistent, I mentioned that to her this time, too. "Every time you say something like that, my heart dies a little," I told her.

"It dies?!" she said.

"Well, okay, it doesn't die, but I do lose my breath. When you say stuff like that, my heart skips a couple beats and I can't breathe for a minute. I can't handle this."

"But I think I'm ready," she insisted.

"Because you found a crib you liked?" I asked.

"It was really cute," she said. "And you should see this other bedding they have at Target. It's adorable."

"You're never going to come visit me," I said. "You'll get pregnant, and you'll never come to Maine. And you've been promising you'll come to Maine for, like, a long time."

"I'm coming!" she said. "I swear it!"

"Right," I said. "Listen. Listen. You can't get pregnant until at least this time next year. I need some time to get used to this idea."

"Oh, that's a long time to wait," she said.

That panicked me even more. "Oh my God!" I hissed. "You're going to get yourself knocked up immediately?"

"Well, not immediately," she said. "But within the year. Soon."

And that's when I told her that kind of talk was seriously stressing me out and because of that I was now turning the conversation to other things. Frivolous things. Things that involved the Christmas present I got her--one of those super gay ornaments I found in the Old Port this summer. If there was any subject that could be considered the exact opposite of Baby Fever, it was the Sparkly Gay Mermen Christmas Ornament subject.

Of course, my freaking out has nothing to do with Katy and her ability to be an excellent mother. This freaking out has everything to do with me. It's just that everyone in my friend group seems to be moving on to the next stage in their lives and I'm not. My best girls are either moving in with their long-time boyfriends, getting engaged to their long-time boyfriends, marrying their long-time boyfriends, getting pregnant, or contemplating getting pregnant. Me? I'm trying to remember that I need to buy a new pair of red panties for New Year's Eve because I've read that there are certain cultures that say if you wear red panties on New Year's Eve, you'll be lucky in love in the next year.

Is all of this stereotypical nonsense? Yes. Am I being an oh-so-predictable girl? Yes. Am I becoming one of those TV characters I always scoffed at? Oh baby, yes. But it's just that I never really anticipated how scary everything would seem at this age. I obviously know that I don't need a man to survive, and I know that I really like living on my own because I can be alone with my anal retentive patterns and rules, but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes catch myself acting like Charlotte from Sex and the City and parading around saying things like, "Oh, when am I going to get married? Who am I going to marry? Do I even know him yet? And just when am I going to have babies? Do I even want babies?"

It's all the bad, clunky dialogue I hate most from shows that feature lonely, single, wandering girls who are putting up the good fight and trying to find love. And I realize this, and I hate myself for it.

Still, there's a different side to this panic, too, and it has to do with this: it completely floors me--absolutely boggles my mind--that my friends and I are of the age that we're starting to talk babies. Weren't we just sitting in the back of the auditorium after play practice, after we'd been scolded by the director for being too giggly and chatty and distracting--and weren't we just crossing our legs and settling in back there for a long talk about naked boys and how we weren't sure we ever wanted to see one?

Am I--and my friends--ready to be the kind of person a mother has to be? This is the crucial question, I think. After all, today Amy and I were sitting in traffic after just having finished our last-minute Christmas shopping, and while we were waiting for the light to change, we were listening to some unknown song on the radio. The singer was crooning, I can't get enough of you-ou-ou! but what it really sounded like was this: I can't get enough of your hoo-hoo! And so that's what Amy and I started singing. We sang, I can't get enough of your hoo-hoo! to the cars that passed us in the other lane.

"Oh Jesus," I said as the song's final notes evaporated into the air, "we are such assholes."

And I'm not exactly sure if that type of girl--the girl who's singing about hoo-hoos while the holiday traffic streams by her--is ready to bring a baby into this world.

Well, I Want to Marry Her Again, So That Means It's Official: She's Back

The first time I ever thought about what it might be like to be a lesbian was in the year 2000. Amy and I and a bunch of our college friends were sitting in front of the television on a Thursday night. The VMAs were on. We were watching them because that's what most college students were doing on the first Thursday of the first week of fall semester.

It was an okay show. We were talking more about our new professors and the crappy selection of food at the Williams Center--were they ever going to get take-out chicken fingers?!--than we were the actual show itself, but that all stopped when Britney Spears came on.

Now, it's important to know that I have had a storied love affair with Britney Spears since she broke onto the scene at the beginning of 1999. The first time I heard the opening beats of Baby One More Time, I was hooked. After all, I loved to dance, and that song made me want to shake it eighteen different kinds of ways. I bought the CD immediately, and I've bought each of her CDs since then. And I don't even want to talk about the slightly embarrassing moment last spring when, after I'd agreed to drive a few of my colleagues to the local mini-golf place for a thank-God-it's-the-end-of-the-semester round of putt-putt, I turned my key and Britney's latest came blasting out of my speakers. "Oh my God," I said, "I'm so sorry you had to hear that." But I wasn't sorry I was hearing it. I blared that CD everywhere I went, and the only time I turned it down was when I came into the college parking lot. I didn't need any of my students knowing about my Britney obsession.

But back in 2000, my Britney obsession was just starting to intensify to manic status. Her VMA performance was a mix of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Oops!.... I Did It Again," and she came out on stage in a spangled suit which was, after the opening Rolling Stones riff, ripped off, leaving her bouncing around in nothing but a nude body suit covered strategically with rhinestones.

At the beginning of the performance, there was a slight wardrobe malfunction, and part of the spangled suit--black, business-like--edged down, and the audience caught a glimpse of something nude underneath it. I, like many people in America, assumed Britney's costume was about to fall off and there was a good chance she was going to be nude on the VMAs. But she went and ripped it off anyway, as had been the original plan, and then she went on with her business.

And in that moment--the moment where she ripped off her spangles and revealed the nude bodysuit underneath--I screamed. I don't know why I did it, but I screamed and screamed and screamed. There was something terrifyingly exciting about that moment. There was something very nasty about it all. And that was the precise moment I fell in love with Britney Spears.

Of course, it's been well documented that my grandmother thinks I'm a giant lesbian, and I've spent too much time trying to point out how boy crazy I am, but I'm not even going to pretend that I wouldn't run away with Britney if she asked me to. Maybe--somehow, some way--my grandmother knew about my reaction to the 2000 VMAs. Maybe she saw how my eyes widened, how my mouth fell open, how I shrieked until my vocal chords went numb. Maybe that's what planted the seed.

It sure planted the seed for me. The one woman I would ever go lesbian for is Britney Spears.

I cannot tell you how much this displeased some of my boy friends in grad school. They found this fact about me to be disgusting, trashy, ill-advised. "Britnnnney?" they would moan. "A silly pop star?!"

Yes, a silly pop star. A silly pop star who, whenever she wanted, could create an international sensation with a flick of her hip. The power she had was immeasurable. I wanted to be close to it. I wanted to touch it. I was sure that that power would feel like the hum of a million bee hives roiling under my palm. And just once--just for one second--I thought it would be interesting to be so close to something so beautiful and powerful.

Of course, all the power and beauty didn't last forever. Britney went and turned herself into the world's biggest punch line, and that lasted for a few years. There was the whole Federline business, the whole reality show business, the whole being immortalized in a sculpture that depicted her giving birth on a wolf-skin rug business. There was that whole shaved head thing and the tabloid reports of her traipsing into gas station bathrooms without shoes on. There was an incessant love of Cheetos and anything fried. There was chubbiness, zits, cut-off shorts, messy hair. And the world ate it up. One of the most beautiful girls in the world had lost her mind and gone to pot.

But then the tabloids kept saying, She's coming back! This will be her moment of triumph! She's going to have the world's biggest comeback! And then Britney would go out, get drunk, and show off her delicate areas to the paparazzi as she was exiting a car with Paris Hilton. It was all very ugly.

And I knew that everyone was wrong--she wasn't coming back just yet. I knew in my heart--because of the storied love affair, of course--that she wasn't ready yet. I knew everyone's predictions were premature. I wasn't going to get excited about a comeback until I saw her in public, appropriately panty-ed and with hair that had recently seen a comb. I wasn't going to get excited until I heard her give an interview without popping bubblegum before she spoke. I wasn't going to get excited until she stopped going places wearing wigs and speaking in British accents. I knew she needed to go crazy before she reeled herself back in. (Or before someone reeled her back in.)

And today I feel like finally that day has come. The comeback is bubbling. Am I 100% positive our girl is not going to go back off the deep end? No. But I am fairly sure she's going to be around in her current state--groomed, trim, long-haired, and beautiful--for a while. At least until she sells a substantial number of records.

And you can bet I'm buying the new one. Or at least that I'm requesting it for Christmas. After watching this video--finally released today, in celebration of the new album--how could I resist? How can you?

Visitors, Round Two

Today marks the arrival of my next visiting couple, Jason and Amanda. Ex-Keith and I are the entirely responsible for bringing those two together, forcing them on each other, and making them like each other. You better believe we got a special mention at the wedding.

And what a wedding it was. The night before, at the rehearsal dinner, Amanda announced that if any of us even thought about going out after rehearsal, and if any of us got so stinking drunk that we showed up to the wedding bleary-eyed and hungover, she was going to leave Jason at the altar. Just like that. See you later, Jason. She made this announcement in a stern, no-nonsense voice, a voice I imagine she uses with the high school students to whom she teaches geometry proofs. And as much as that voice might work on a bunch of sweaty, pimply high schoolers, it doesn't so much work on a wedding party that had dealt with her bride wrath for the last month. Afterward, as she was saying goodbye to her family, the wedding party scuttled outside to the parking lot and said, "So, where's the closest bar?"

Ex-Keith was the best man, so he rallied the troops and got us to a bar immediately after the crowd broke up. The last thing I remember is squealing out of the parking lot, leaving Amanda in the dust. She wagged a finger at us and screamed, "I WILL LEAVE HIM AT THE ALTAR, KEITH! I AM SERIOUS!"

The next day even the wedding photographer would make fun of the groomsmen, who'd been instructed if they brought so much as a flask of liquor to the pre-ceremony goings-ons, they would all die long, painful deaths. Instead of putting on their tuxes while having a beer--as, I guess, is customary for groomsmen--they carried giant beer steins of Pepsi.

And even if we seemed behaved that day, I can assure you we did not behave the night before. In fact, Amy drank so much she puked all night long (yet still looked refreshed and rested when she slid into her Maid of Honor gown). I drank so much I made perverse phone calls to the MFA boys all night long as I was supposed to be sleeping on Amy and Becky's living room floor. And while still at the bar, Amy and Keith had a contest to see who could blow the highest BAC on the bar's built-in tester.



Half of that video is sideways because I was so full of vodka I had no idea what was going on. It was a fabulous night. A fabulous night that led to a long wedding, a reception where no one danced (except the ring bearer and the members of the wedding party who milked the open bar), and a party that ended at ten o'clock, which left us in the parking lot, drinking three bottles of champagne Amanda wouldn't let us open when we were getting our hair done ("This," she told me, "is a solemn occasion. I don't want any liquor around."). And sometime during those hours, the wedding photographer--who really thought us bridesmaids were quite the little pips--took my favorite, favorite, favorite picture:



In that picture, it completely looks like Amanda is saying, You fuck this up, Jason, and I will tear the claws out of each of your dogs.

Here's hoping I don't see that look this week, and here's hoping the ban of liquor has been permanently lifted.

If I End Up with a Daughter Named Kathleen, You'll Know Why

No one has ever written a song about me. The word Jess doesn't easily fit into song lyrics, and Jessica isn't much better. Jessie is more promising, but the only people who call me Jessie are my grandmother (who insists on spelling it Jesse), my ex-best friend from eighth grade, and my mother when she's feeling cutesy. I'm just not a Jessie, so songs about Jessie--while close--aren't the real deal.

But when I was younger, that's all I really had. In 1993, this song--"Jessie" by Joshua Kadison--came out and was played to death on adult contemporary stations across the country.



I tried to throw my support behind it. I tried to like it. I wanted to think that somewhere a boy was listening to that song and thinking about me, even if that was a long shot. Still, there was something about the song I just couldn't love. I'd like to think that back then, even at the tender age of twelve, I knew not to fall in love with a song that discussed the feelings of a cat. I also knew there was something wrong with the fact that the Jessie in question was dreaming of a trailer by a sea. What kind of girl dreams of a trailer instead of a house by the sea? Who shortchanges themselves in their fantasies?

I've been patiently waiting all these years for a new and better song that includes my name to come out, and the closest I've come is Lou Bega's "Mambo Number Five," which features my name in the chorus (a little bit of Jessica...)--and, yes, I'll admit that I milked that quite a lot in college, when that song first became popular, but I hesitate to say that the song does my name justice, especially when you consider Lou Bega lists about twenty-five names before the song is finished. I'm pretty sure a Jess-Jessica-Jessie deserve a song of its very own.

So you could say I'm sensitive to songs that have girl names in them. Some girls have really, really great songs, and that makes me jealous. Angie. Rosalita. Brandy. Jolene. Sally. Carrie. Sara. Veronica. Rhonda. Cecilia. Wendy. Emily. Rhiannon. Jane. Ruby. Caroline. Lola. Jenny. Everyone but me.

In college, my best friend's roommate--Amanda--used to blare Boston's "Amanda," and because I went through an impressive Boston-loving phase in college (oh, shut up), I was incredibly jealous of that one. My best friend has Pure Prairie League's "Amie," which might not be the best song in the history of songs, but it is one of those sweet-sounding songs you can't help but sing along to whenever it comes on the radio. And if that wasn't enough, she also has a Ray Lamontagne song, which is pretty much what I want most in the world.

And then there's this song, which is my favorite song ever.



That is Josh Ritter singing "Kathleen." I love that song. I could write an entire twenty page paper about just how good that song is (including a long discussion about how the first line--All the girls here are stars; you are the Northern Lights--guaranteed Josh Ritter a lifetime of ass-getting, and an equally long discussion about the verse that begins I know you are waiting, and I know that it is not for me... and how that verse is everything I've ever felt in my entire life).

I don't even like the name Kathleen, but there is something inside me that wants very much to give that name to a daughter, if ever I have one. I want her to have those pretty words, all those lovely verses. I want her to feel like someone was predicting her future and putting it down to music so that she would know she had been loved always, even before she'd been born.

Sprung

Amy left Wednesday night. She'd been here for a week, and that was a week full of loveliness. I don't know if there is a phrase I can turn to accurately capture how nice it was to have a girlfriend in town. When I came home from work, Amy was there watching What Not to Wear, and I would sit next to her and begin very important discussions like how we could get Clinton to make out with us if ever the situation presented itself to us. Do you know how nice that is? Do you know how nice it is to see someone else have to fan themselves off after Clinton has said something witty about Crocs or Mom Jeans or Shoulder Pads? It's just not as fun when you have to do that by yourself.

What Not to Wear wasn't the only thing that graced the television when Amy was in town. There was one night when we--tired, lazy--decided to pour wine and flick through the channels. We landed on an episode of The Dog Whisperer. And when that episode was over another was on. So we watched that. And we watched the next one, too. By the end we felt one with the animal kingdom. We were walking around the apartment (and, days later, around Maine and Massachusetts) hissing tsssst! at anyone or anything that looked at us wrong.

Of course, watching television wasn't all we did. We toured extensively. This was just the right time for Amy to visit. Maine is suddenly leaning toward lovely again. Everything is melted. It is warm. People are smiling. The number of curse words I utter each day have decreased substantially. Things are looking up all over the state, and so we took advantage of it. We went to Freeport, to Popham Beach, to Bath, to Portland. We even hopped The Downeaster and went to Boston for the day last weekend. We drank cosmos and margaritas. We drank wine. We mixed orange vodka with pomegranate pop and raspberry-lime ginger-ale and Loganberry (official name: The Cowboy Daddy). We posed, too. We posed by lighthouses and moose and historical statues and bronze ducks. We posed by Indians and boots. We posed in the rain, in the wind, in the sun. We hammed it up all over New England.

The whole trip felt just like spring should: kicky, free, happy. It felt the exact opposite of the last few months, which have been gloomy, painful, and sour.

When we were at lunch one afternoon, Amy and I overheard a bunch of gossipy old ladies tut-tutting over how awful, how wretched, how foul this winter had been. Amy spooned more soup into her mouth and raised her eyebrows. "Was it really that bad?" she asked me. What she wanted to know was this: was it as bad as Buffalo Winter?

Well, it wasn't. There weren't days when I couldn't see a foot out the window to the street beyond. There weren't days when I was convinced I had somehow woken up in some wintry ring of hell. But there was snow. And there was always drama. The weathermen would get on the TV and prepare us, warn us, caution us, and everyone would get worked up for what turned out to be nothing. And when it did snow--really snow--it came in big, consistent gobs. It would go away in a day or two, then it would come back again. It was a constant here-gone-here-gone-here-gone that drove me crazy. And living on a narrow road that arcs over a surprising hill in a quiet section of town is different than living on a well-traveled country road during the winter months. My road here was hell, there was no snow removal, the banks towered high and then spilled over into the road, making it even narrower, even harder to navigate. It was demoralizing. I longed for a driveway of my own, for the comforting rumble of the snowplows making their passes at the country road, for space for the snow to move, to fall, to not build toward the sky, blotting it out, making the dark winter sky even gloomier.

But all that is over for now. Now nothing matters. The sun is out, the breeze is blowing in the salty smell of ocean, and I had a good week that reminded me of what's important in life. And no matter how many times this semester I thought What the hell is happening? or Kill me now! or Are you for real? I know that it's all going to be okay now. I'm very close to a summer spent touring to Mexico, Canada, Buffalo, and Michigan. Just a few more weeks. Just a few, few more weeks.

And until then, here are pictures from Amy's visit and our mini-New England vacation.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The Arrival

The best friend has arrived.



The next few days will be a whirlwind of lighthouses and lobster and whoopie pies and, well, moose hunting. If this girl doesn't see a moose--and quick--she's going to be very disappointed.

The Birth of My Backup Spouse

Today is my best friend's birthday.

That is a picture of me and Amy during our senior year Homecoming dance. We look happy and winded, which makes me believe we--mere seconds before--had been rocking out to late 90s classics like No Diggity by Blackstreet or Peaches-n-Cream by 112. In fact, we'd probably been dancing for the last fifty straight minutes. We'd probably been locked in a circle of our friends in the middle of the dance floor. We'd probably been eyeing the circle of boys who were dancing next to us--the ones who were leaping from one foot to another and pounding their fists in the air to Let Me Clear My Throat (P.S.- The girl in that video is my hero).

Not much has really changed since that picture was taken--except for the fact that we are more attractive now, and boys have actually started to like us. Back then, no one was impressed by our strange brand of histrionics. No boys cared that we were expert Taboo players. No boys cared that we wanted to be backup singers. No boys cared that we could carry on a complete conversation in a code language only we understood. No boys cared that we could recite whole episodes of My So-Called Life. These were not desirable qualities in a girl back in high school. We did not possess any of the qualities that the boys we liked would want in a girlfriend. We did not let boys see us naked, we did not sneak away on school trips to make out with boys in places chaperones could not find us, we did not do anything that required us to borrow our parents' car and go to the local Rite Aid to buy pregnancy tests. We didn't smoke or do drugs. We didn't steal or act slutty. We just existed, and that wasn't very interesting to boys our age.

But that was okay because we had each other. Amy and I survived many a crisis together. We survived Math 2 and Math 3 with Ms. Bierfeldt, the scariest and most evil math teacher ever to exist, a woman who, on multiple occasions, told us she just didn't understand why we couldn't learn math, a woman who, on multiple occasions, asked us to go to the board simply because she knew we didn't know the answer and she wanted us to stand there, quiet and twitchy and uncomfortable, while she made an example of us. ("What is it Miss Schwab forgot to do in her proof, students? And Miss Smith? What simple rule did she forget, everyone?") We survived those two years with Ms. Bierfeldt only by spending some serious time plotting a small coup. We wanted to drive to her house and crack open her pumpkins at Halloween, uproot her plants in spring. We wanted to tear things down the way she tore us down. We'd never do those things, of course--again, we weren't very interesting--but we sure did take pleasure in thinking about those things. And getting mad at our friend Steph when she jumped to Ms. Bierfeldt's defense. "You guys!" she'd scold. "Ms. Bierfeldt is so nice! She's not a bad teacher!" Oh, how those moments killed us, so we'd just roll our eyes up to the ceiling and say, "Yeah, Steph, she's nice to you... because you're a evil math genius." And she was. Bitch.

Amy and I were also similar in the respects that we were not (and still are not) sporty. Most of our friends were sporty. They played basketball or volleyball or field hockey. Some even ran track. But me and Amy, we did nothing. The closest we got to sports was sneaking into basketball games to watch our favorite senior phenoms--especially that hot Australian exchange student who could dunk. In high school, we preferred to question why we were being forced to participate in disgusting co-ed games of Speed Ball--which the boys used as an opportunity to whip balls at girls as hard as they possibly could--and Mat Ball, where boys would stand on the sidelines and shout at us to RUN! RUN! RUN FASTER! Once, during soccer game, the fattest boy in our gym class stepped on my foot, leaving a dark skid mark across my sneaker. It hurt. It hurt a lot. For a whole minute. Still, I milked my injury and limped to the sideline, told our gym teacher I was seriously, seriously wounded, and then I climbed up into the bleachers to sit next to Amy and discuss the glories of Greg Manning's perfect, silken hair.

Has much changed since then? Not very much. We might have better hair and better fashion, but we're still the same two girls who bumbled through ridiculous relationships with boys that had us clawing for any kind of justification to stay with them. Once during Amy's fling with a boy she worked with she called me in a panic. She was trying to convince me that this guy was a good guy, that he was worth putting up with, despite all the things about him that made us nervous. "He has good qualities," she said. "I swear!" I asked her just what those good qualities were. I wanted a list. I wanted specifics. She was silent for a minute and the she said, "I don't know... he looks good in red?" And in that moment I completely understood Amy. We were both girls who could be bamboozled by a man if he were wearing a good color, a sporty hoodie, a well-cut shirt.

Amy was there for me when I went through my own ridiculous and destructive relationship with the Wily Republican. She was also there last year when I was lusting after one of her boyfriend's rugby mates. A meeting was arranged at a bar, and when Amy's boyfriend brought the boy over for an introduction the boy took one look at me and turned around and left. He just left. Amy's boyfriend hadn't even finished saying my name, and already the boy was just a back receding into the crowd. What I love most about Amy was that she was so appalled, that she was so fiercely repulsed, that she spent the rest of the night pissed at everything--even her boyfriend--because that boy had been so cruel.

Amy is the girl everyone goes to when they have problems, when they need to scream, when they need to cry. She will always let you sit in her living room and unload your problems and throw things. She will be there to hand you a marker when you get so angry at one of your friends that you want to draw mustaches and nasty captions on every picture you have of her. She will be the one to turn up the music and suggest everyone does the Electric Slide.

I know plenty of girls out there who have never had a friend like Amy, a friend who has stood the test of time, a girl who has managed to teach everyone so much about life and happiness and spontaneity--and I feel so sad for anyone who's never known a girl like that. I mean, if you've never answered the phone at 3 AM in the morning to hear the words, "Seriously, he was dressed as a cow today at work, and I couldn't stop staring at his udders, so I kept losing my train of thought. Seriously, why can't my life BE NORMAL?!" then you, my friends, have never truly known love.

It Was Not What You'd Call an "Awesome Moment"

Last weekend when I was home for a few days, I had to do something that no girl should ever have to do. I had to break down and ask my father if he minded terribly if the Boy From Work spent the night.

The BFW had spent the night before, of course. In fact, he'd done it almost every single night from July 10th until I left for Maine, but I'd been careful and considerate back then. I'd had the decency to keep my bedroom door wide open all night, which gave the impression that maybe the BFW and I had just happened into my bedroom and were hit with such an unexpected wave of tiredness that we took a quick nap. The BFW and I kept most of our clothes on, which I hoped would signal to my father, God forbid he ever had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and saw us together on my bed, that there was no funny business going on. If there's one thing my father hates more than anything else, it's his daughter engaging in any sort of funny business.

I set my alarm every night for some ridiculously early time--usually right around 5:30 AM--so I could sneak the BFW out the front door before my father's own alarm went off. That way it seemed like nothing had happened at all. There was no boy in my bed, and there was no record of any business being done, funny or otherwise.

Did my father know this was going on? Possibly. Probably. Did we ever speak of it? Absolutely not. There are just some things I feel ill-equipped to deal with, and one of those things is trying to explain to my father why I, a twenty-six year old girl, might want to spend the night with a boy in my bed.

But now it all just seems so silly. I'm on the backslide to thirty, and I'm fairly certain I have earned the right to spend the night in a bed with my boyfriend with the door shut and no alarm set to jar us awake at an ungodly hour.

Before I drove home, I asked the BFW if he knew what this meant. It meant I was going to have to admit to my father that there was a part of me that wanted to sleep in the same bed as a boy, which, in my father's brain, might have been translated as, I am a giant nymphomaniac, and I'd like to have lots of premarital sex in a bed under your roof.

I didn't know if my real argument would be good enough for him, or if it would even make it into his brain unmolested by the translation. My real argument was this: the thought of being in the same state as my boyfriend--and, in fact, being within a ten mile radius of my him--and not sleeping in the same bed he was sleeping in seemed cruel and inhumane. What would we do? Talk on the phone until 3:30 AM, me painting my toe nails and munching on popcorn, him surfing through the various ESPNs and having a staring contest with one of his cats? That was what I did when I was sixteen and infatuated with my cousin's boyfriend. We used to talk on the phone late into the night, until he fell asleep and started snoring. If there's going to be a boy snoring into my ear nowadays, he better be curled up next to me and not on the other end of a phone.

(The BFW, it should be noted, does not have a snoring problem. If there's an occasional snuffle, it can be remedied with a quick poke, and I am extremely thankful for that. Going to bed with this boy is a dream compared to the bedtimes I used to have with Ex-Keith, who was--probably is--a notorious snorer. There were times I definitely fantasized about smothering him with my pillow because I could not sleep, no matter how I rolled him or how many times I jabbed him in the side with my elbow. When he rolled out of bed the next morning--fresh-faced and cheery--I wanted to kill him.)

The BFW, however, was not concerned about the potential conversation I would have to have with my father. "Your father likes me," he said. "He'll be okay with it."

Later, when we were talking about the situation in front of Amy, the BFW repeated the sentiment again. "Her father likes me," he told Amy. "He's going to be okay with it."

"Ha," Amy said.

"Thank you!" I said, gesturing wildly at my best friend, who, because she's been around me for the last eight billion years, is well versed in the ways of my family, especially my father. "See? Someone will back me up on this!"

The BFW was convinced I was overreacting, that the conversation wouldn't be awkward, that the idea wouldn't bother my father, not at all.

"Ha," Amy said. "Good luck."

Of course, it wasn't the BFW who needed the luck. It was me. I was the one who was going to be having the conversation, and I was almost certain it wasn't going to go smoothly or elegantly. Somehow, I would foul it up because that's what I am good at.

I was able to delay the conversation until I arrived at my house on Sunday night. When I got there, I found my father stretched out on the couch watching Extreme Makeover, which I settled down to watch, too. On a commercial break, my father turned to me and inquired about the BFW.

"And will the BFW be joining us tonight?" he asked.

"He's working until midnight," I said. I felt a cringe settling into my shoulders. I could already tell where this was going. This moment was going to be my chance, my opening, my way to broach the subject. "He'll be over later."

"After work? Around midnight? Kind of late, huh?" my father asked.

"Well, yeah," I said. I swallowed around a lump in my throat. "Uhm, actually, Dad, I was wondering how you felt about him spending the night."

My father's response was immediate. "On the couch?" he asked. "In your brother's room?"

He'd assumed when I said spend the night I meant in a room that does not in any way contain me or my pajama-ed body.

"Uhm, well, no. In my room," I said, and there it was: those words, the words I knew would sink into the soft gray matter of my father's brain and cause a mini electrical storm that fired back an immediate gut reaction: No! No! No! No!

To his credit, my father kept that gut reaction vaguely concealed. He did not shriek No! No! No! No! into my face, but he didn't really say anything. In fact, he said nothing. He said nothing for a very heavy and uncomfortable set of seconds.

I felt I needed to fill the space. "Well, okay, alright, I mean, it's clear you're uncomfortable with it. I shouldn't have asked."

My father sighed.

I couldn't look at him. I thought back to times before when I'd been faced with similar uncomfortable moments that were brought to light because of a boy and my father's idea of what could happen with that boy if he didn't somehow control the situation. And controlling the situation usually meant telling me what I couldn't do with that boy. I couldn't see him. I couldn't talk to him. I couldn't be in an room with him if that room did not contain at least one parent.

I wanted to turn around and plant myself, face down, in the couch cushions.

"You mean in your little twin bed?" my father asked.

Then I did something really, really stupid, but--if you look at it the right way--really brave.

"Keith and I slept in my twin bed all through college," I said. Immediately, I regretted my quick decision to throw that snippet of information in my father's direction. On one hand, I wanted him to realize that this wasn't a new thing, that I'd been having sleepovers since I was eighteen years old. But on the other hand, what I did was pretty stupid. After all, I didn't want my father to reach back in his memory and think about all the boys I'd possibly shared a bed with. He didn't need to go down memory lane like that, because I was almost sure it would do nothing for my case. Therefore, to cut the mood and the air--which now felt like it weighed at least a hundred pounds--I tried to be funny.

"And Keith got really fat near the end of college, but we still managed," I said.

My father sighed again.

"It's okay," I said. "Forget it. No big deal. You don't like the idea."

"No, no," my father said. He scrubbed a hand across his face, a gesture that admitted defeat. "You're twenty-six years old. I guess it's alright."

I was so thrilled that I almost went on and said things that didn't need to be said. I was so thankful I almost said, We won't even touch each other, I swear! or I'll wear really ugly pajamas to bed, so you don't have to worry about anyone giving anyone else the eye!

But I clamped my teeth down on my tongue and remained silent. It was enough that we made it through that moment without one of us slowly disintegrating into nothing or else exploding into a million bits of buzzing red matter. I would take it, and I would be good. I would climb back into my tiny twin bed with my boy in the late hours of the night, and I would whisper in his ear, This feels just like summer, doesn't it? And the next morning I would be so, so careful about making an exit from my bedroom without the BFW, so my father, when I arrived in the kitchen, would be able to fool himself for a glorious few moments, trick himself into believing I was the only other one in the house and there wasn't a freckled boy tucked under the covers just a few steps down the hall.