A conversation with Josh:
Josh: I want to go back to school. What should I go for?
Me: Maybe you should go to bartending school.
Josh: Maybe I should. But that doesn't seem important enough.
Me: You could be a fancy bartender. You know, the type that makes up famous drinks and gets profiled in Bon Appetit.
Josh: Hmm. Maybe.
Me: You'd get a lot of pussy.
Josh: Yes. Wait. Wait just a minute. What did you say? Did you just say pussy?
Me: Yes.
Josh: Don't ever say that again. Like, ever.
Me: Fair enough.
Showing posts with label Josh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Josh. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The King of Romance
My friend Josh left over Christmas vacation to go out to Colorado. Colorado sounded good to him, and he likes to snowboard, and he thought he could probably get a job somewhere, he could probably find a place to live for a few months, and if he couldn't, well, he knew a few people out there and he could crash on couches and figure something out.
He called tonight to tell me he signed a lease today, and that means he's staying in Colorado for at least nine months. He got an apartment with some of his friends, and he got a job as a ski lift attendant, and at night he and his friends climb up the mountain they live on and they snowboard down in the pitch black.
But that's not all that is going on in Josh's life. On his way to Colorado, he stopped in to Wisconsin and had some times with some friends, and one night all of those friends--there were, like, fifteen of them--got a hotel room. And they went out and danced on bars and got drunk, and that's when Josh decided there was a pretty girl he wanted to hook up with. But fifteen is a lot of people to cram into a hotel room--so little privacy!--and he knew he needed to have an alternate plan if he wanted to get some.
So Josh turned to this girl and said, "So. On a scale of one to five, how bad do you want to fool around in a handicapped bathroom stall?"
And this girl looked up at Josh, and she smiled. "Five!" she said.
This, of course, was after Josh had strolled into the lobby of their hotel--a Holiday Inn--and asked the guy behind the counter if he could rent a room for maybe just an hour and a half.
"I've got this girl I want to hook up with," Josh explained. "Can I get a hotel room for that long?"
The guy said he'd have to ask his manager, but the news wasn't good. The Holiday Inn was not in the business of renting rooms by the hour so that a kid from New York could show off his best moves for this girl who was eager, who was ready.
So Josh had to improvise. And he remembered the handicapped bathroom on their floor. It was across from the vending machines.
So now he had the green light from his girl. She was excited. She was going to show him a good time. And she started tugging him toward the bathroom.
"Wait," Josh said. "Shouldn't we get a blanket or something?"
But the blanket was too much to maneuver, so they settled on a lone white towel that they spread out before having sex right there in the locked handicapped bathroom, while across the way the vending machine full of Twix and Lifesavers and Doritos and Wrigleys hummed and hummed and hummed.
The next morning Josh woke up nervous. Scared. He and this girl hadn't used a condom, and in the morning Josh suddenly realized that was a horrible, horrible idea. He started to feel a little like he did for the span of years he refused to have sex with girls--he was convinced he was going to knock someone up, no matter how safe he was--which is why he tried to convince every girl he got naked to do some anal. Real sex was too dangerous. And the morning after the handicapped bathroom, he remembered just how dangerous.
This is why Josh went straight to Target, walked up to the pharmacy counter, and asked for a pack of the morning after pill. Then he took that out to the parking lot, where his girl was standing with their friends, and he handed her the pack.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
She looked at the package. She looked at him.
"Will you take this pill?"
When she didn't say anything, Josh reached over and popped the pill out of its package. "Can you take it?" he asked. "And can I watch?"
And you know what? All of this happened even though there was a surplus of condoms hanging around. I know there was. In fact, the world knows there was. Why? Because they did this:
And let me put that in perspective for you. The British one? Yeah, he's the guy I got detained with at the border this summer.
Disgusting little felons.
He called tonight to tell me he signed a lease today, and that means he's staying in Colorado for at least nine months. He got an apartment with some of his friends, and he got a job as a ski lift attendant, and at night he and his friends climb up the mountain they live on and they snowboard down in the pitch black.
But that's not all that is going on in Josh's life. On his way to Colorado, he stopped in to Wisconsin and had some times with some friends, and one night all of those friends--there were, like, fifteen of them--got a hotel room. And they went out and danced on bars and got drunk, and that's when Josh decided there was a pretty girl he wanted to hook up with. But fifteen is a lot of people to cram into a hotel room--so little privacy!--and he knew he needed to have an alternate plan if he wanted to get some.
So Josh turned to this girl and said, "So. On a scale of one to five, how bad do you want to fool around in a handicapped bathroom stall?"
And this girl looked up at Josh, and she smiled. "Five!" she said.
This, of course, was after Josh had strolled into the lobby of their hotel--a Holiday Inn--and asked the guy behind the counter if he could rent a room for maybe just an hour and a half.
"I've got this girl I want to hook up with," Josh explained. "Can I get a hotel room for that long?"
The guy said he'd have to ask his manager, but the news wasn't good. The Holiday Inn was not in the business of renting rooms by the hour so that a kid from New York could show off his best moves for this girl who was eager, who was ready.
So Josh had to improvise. And he remembered the handicapped bathroom on their floor. It was across from the vending machines.
So now he had the green light from his girl. She was excited. She was going to show him a good time. And she started tugging him toward the bathroom.
"Wait," Josh said. "Shouldn't we get a blanket or something?"
But the blanket was too much to maneuver, so they settled on a lone white towel that they spread out before having sex right there in the locked handicapped bathroom, while across the way the vending machine full of Twix and Lifesavers and Doritos and Wrigleys hummed and hummed and hummed.
The next morning Josh woke up nervous. Scared. He and this girl hadn't used a condom, and in the morning Josh suddenly realized that was a horrible, horrible idea. He started to feel a little like he did for the span of years he refused to have sex with girls--he was convinced he was going to knock someone up, no matter how safe he was--which is why he tried to convince every girl he got naked to do some anal. Real sex was too dangerous. And the morning after the handicapped bathroom, he remembered just how dangerous.
This is why Josh went straight to Target, walked up to the pharmacy counter, and asked for a pack of the morning after pill. Then he took that out to the parking lot, where his girl was standing with their friends, and he handed her the pack.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
She looked at the package. She looked at him.
"Will you take this pill?"
When she didn't say anything, Josh reached over and popped the pill out of its package. "Can you take it?" he asked. "And can I watch?"
And you know what? All of this happened even though there was a surplus of condoms hanging around. I know there was. In fact, the world knows there was. Why? Because they did this:
And let me put that in perspective for you. The British one? Yeah, he's the guy I got detained with at the border this summer.
Disgusting little felons.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Energizer
At 4:18 PM on Christmas Eve I was in my father's kitchen. I was baking cookies and listening to holiday classics. That was exactly when Josh decided to text.
What are you doing? he said.
Baking cookies, I said.
So, am I going to see you or what?
Right now? I asked. I'm baking cookies. Come over. I'll make you a drink!
I figured I'd make him a festive eggnog--made with a liberal dose of amaretto, of course--and he could sit in the kitchen and watch me pull the last few sheets of cookies out of the oven.
You should come over here, he said. No one's here.
Fine, I said. I'll be over after I get the cookies done.
When I got to Josh's forty minutes later, I found him scrubbing at his bleary eyes.
"I'm hung over pretty bad," he said. "I'm disgusting."
I'd heard from him the night before, shortly after he and his friend John had decided it was a good idea to do two things: eat all the steak they found in the freezer at Josh's apartment and then go sit in John's car and drink a whole bunch of liquor straight from the bottle. I'd gotten a picture of it.
Now, we went into the living room and sat on the couch and watched CNN and then a soccer game. After a team had finally, finally scored, Josh turned to me and said, "Want to know what I got everyone for Christmas?"
"You got everyone the same thing?" I said. Already it sounded like a pretty bad idea.
"Yes," he said. "Batteries."
"Batteries?"
"Yes. I bought a shitload of batteries. All kinds of batteries."
"You got everyone in your family batteries for Christmas?"
"Yes! Come on--that's awesome!"
"Oh my God," I said.
"Think about it," he insisted. "Everyone always needs batteries."
"So when your mother opens her present tomorrow, she's going to just have a pile of batteries sitting in her lap," I said.
"Yes," Josh said. He was so proud of himself. "Isn't it a great idea? It IS! Really!"
Honestly, it sounded like something my brother would do. He is notoriously odd about gift-giving, too, and has been known to wrap packs of gum and give them out as seriously as if they were boxes of jewelry. But if I told Josh that--if I'd compared his gift-giving technique to Adam's--I know he would've taken that as a good thing. It might have even made his day.
What are you doing? he said.
Baking cookies, I said.
So, am I going to see you or what?
Right now? I asked. I'm baking cookies. Come over. I'll make you a drink!
I figured I'd make him a festive eggnog--made with a liberal dose of amaretto, of course--and he could sit in the kitchen and watch me pull the last few sheets of cookies out of the oven.
You should come over here, he said. No one's here.
Fine, I said. I'll be over after I get the cookies done.
When I got to Josh's forty minutes later, I found him scrubbing at his bleary eyes.
"I'm hung over pretty bad," he said. "I'm disgusting."
I'd heard from him the night before, shortly after he and his friend John had decided it was a good idea to do two things: eat all the steak they found in the freezer at Josh's apartment and then go sit in John's car and drink a whole bunch of liquor straight from the bottle. I'd gotten a picture of it.
Now, we went into the living room and sat on the couch and watched CNN and then a soccer game. After a team had finally, finally scored, Josh turned to me and said, "Want to know what I got everyone for Christmas?"
"You got everyone the same thing?" I said. Already it sounded like a pretty bad idea.
"Yes," he said. "Batteries."
"Batteries?"
"Yes. I bought a shitload of batteries. All kinds of batteries."
"You got everyone in your family batteries for Christmas?"
"Yes! Come on--that's awesome!"
"Oh my God," I said.
"Think about it," he insisted. "Everyone always needs batteries."
"So when your mother opens her present tomorrow, she's going to just have a pile of batteries sitting in her lap," I said.
"Yes," Josh said. He was so proud of himself. "Isn't it a great idea? It IS! Really!"
Honestly, it sounded like something my brother would do. He is notoriously odd about gift-giving, too, and has been known to wrap packs of gum and give them out as seriously as if they were boxes of jewelry. But if I told Josh that--if I'd compared his gift-giving technique to Adam's--I know he would've taken that as a good thing. It might have even made his day.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Because He Wanted It
I'm home. I'm back in Buffalo. ("I wish you wouldn't say that," Josh said. He was on the phone with me as I was crossing over into New York from Massachusetts. "You're misrepresenting yourself, you know. You're not from Buffalo. You're from the country. You grew up in a town an hour from Buffalo. Don't be a liar."
"Don't be a pussy," I said. "I can get to Buffalo in half an hour.")
Two days after I got home, my mother and I decided to spend a day making Christmas cut-outs and our family's (hard! ridiculous! pain-in-the-ass!) fudge recipe. Here's how that went: The oven started on fire and we ruined the fudge.
Later, my brother came home from work in a pissy mood. He's mad at our mother. He's avoiding her and not speaking to her. Why? Well, recently he passed the test he'd failed twice before--the test that allowed him to enroll in an intense one year nursing program his girlfriend had already gotten into--and this made him happy, but that happiness was short lived. Back when he started trying to get into the program, our mother told him that if he did get in, he could stop paying her rent, rent that he has been required to pay for a while now, since after he flunked out of auto mechanic school it seemed possible that he might just freeload off my mother forever. Since she has been collecting rent (forty bucks a week), my mother has been socking it away for Adam so that she can give it to him when he moves out. He doesn't know this. He has no idea that he has several thousand dollars saved up in his name for when he and his girlfriend get an apartment together. Surprise!
So, because he doesn't know this, and because he is under the assumption that my mother is collecting all his hard-earned Ass. Head Cashier money and then throwing fistfuls of it over her head as she rolls around in the rest on her bed, he is pretty angry because he came home and said, "Hey! I passed! Looks like I don't need to pay rent anymore!" and my mother said, "Uh, no. I said when you started the program you won't need to pay me rent anymore. You don't go to school until October." She told him to pony up the dough. He told her she was black and evil inside.
"I mean it!" he said. "You're black and evil for doing this to me, Mother!"
And then he stomped away and hasn't really spoken to her since (unless you count our family dinner on Sunday, when, after we finished our stir-fry, he brought out his recent acquisitions, a book called 400 Sauces and a book called The Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, and gave us all a lecture on the superiority of European lobsters and the importance of a good Bernaise). He's still pissed about his money. He wants that $160. He's got stuff to buy. Important stuff.
Like a robe. A really good robe. A really, really good robe. This was at this top of his to-buy list this past week, and he made a purchase--sad because he didn't have an extra $160 to do it with--that he unveiled at dinner. He was chilly, he said, so he needed to put on a robe. Now, it's important to know that the child has a perfectly fine, perfectly good, perfectly normal robe already, but it's also important to know that this robe, this new robe, spoke to him. It called his name. It whispered in his ear: Adam! Touch me!
And Adam did. And he loved the robe. And he purchased the robe.
The only problem? It's a girl's robe. It's a red, satin-trimmed, fluffy-necked girl robe.
"Nice robe," I said.
"Thanks," he said. He petted it. He rubbed the fluffy neck against his cheek. "It's the best robe ever."
"It's also a girl's robe," I said.
"I don't care," he said.
His girlfriend rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"You're wearing a girl's robe," I said.
"IT IS COMFORTABLE," he said. "IT'S THE MOST COMFORTABLE ROBE I'VE EVER TOUCHED. OKAY? I WANTED IT!"
"Okay," I said. "Fine."
And then he reached for some more duck sauce and another egg roll.
"Don't be a pussy," I said. "I can get to Buffalo in half an hour.")
Two days after I got home, my mother and I decided to spend a day making Christmas cut-outs and our family's (hard! ridiculous! pain-in-the-ass!) fudge recipe. Here's how that went: The oven started on fire and we ruined the fudge.
Later, my brother came home from work in a pissy mood. He's mad at our mother. He's avoiding her and not speaking to her. Why? Well, recently he passed the test he'd failed twice before--the test that allowed him to enroll in an intense one year nursing program his girlfriend had already gotten into--and this made him happy, but that happiness was short lived. Back when he started trying to get into the program, our mother told him that if he did get in, he could stop paying her rent, rent that he has been required to pay for a while now, since after he flunked out of auto mechanic school it seemed possible that he might just freeload off my mother forever. Since she has been collecting rent (forty bucks a week), my mother has been socking it away for Adam so that she can give it to him when he moves out. He doesn't know this. He has no idea that he has several thousand dollars saved up in his name for when he and his girlfriend get an apartment together. Surprise!
So, because he doesn't know this, and because he is under the assumption that my mother is collecting all his hard-earned Ass. Head Cashier money and then throwing fistfuls of it over her head as she rolls around in the rest on her bed, he is pretty angry because he came home and said, "Hey! I passed! Looks like I don't need to pay rent anymore!" and my mother said, "Uh, no. I said when you started the program you won't need to pay me rent anymore. You don't go to school until October." She told him to pony up the dough. He told her she was black and evil inside.
"I mean it!" he said. "You're black and evil for doing this to me, Mother!"
And then he stomped away and hasn't really spoken to her since (unless you count our family dinner on Sunday, when, after we finished our stir-fry, he brought out his recent acquisitions, a book called 400 Sauces and a book called The Encyclopedia of Cooking Ingredients, and gave us all a lecture on the superiority of European lobsters and the importance of a good Bernaise). He's still pissed about his money. He wants that $160. He's got stuff to buy. Important stuff.
Like a robe. A really good robe. A really, really good robe. This was at this top of his to-buy list this past week, and he made a purchase--sad because he didn't have an extra $160 to do it with--that he unveiled at dinner. He was chilly, he said, so he needed to put on a robe. Now, it's important to know that the child has a perfectly fine, perfectly good, perfectly normal robe already, but it's also important to know that this robe, this new robe, spoke to him. It called his name. It whispered in his ear: Adam! Touch me!
And Adam did. And he loved the robe. And he purchased the robe.
The only problem? It's a girl's robe. It's a red, satin-trimmed, fluffy-necked girl robe.
"Nice robe," I said.
"Thanks," he said. He petted it. He rubbed the fluffy neck against his cheek. "It's the best robe ever."
"It's also a girl's robe," I said.
"I don't care," he said.
His girlfriend rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
"You're wearing a girl's robe," I said.
"IT IS COMFORTABLE," he said. "IT'S THE MOST COMFORTABLE ROBE I'VE EVER TOUCHED. OKAY? I WANTED IT!"
"Okay," I said. "Fine."
And then he reached for some more duck sauce and another egg roll.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Fruit, Not Fire
It's hard to think of what to say these days. I'm in the middle of something ugly, I know that, and it's hard for me to think in full thoughts. If I tried to write about what was going on lately, I wouldn't even know where to start. Each day seems to be pieced together out of random happenings that have no link, no common thread, like these:
1.
My kitchen is covered in flies--fruit, not fire or anything else interesting. They arrived one morning after my friend Emily and I had another Martini Sleepover. We got drunk on raspberry bellinis. We stayed up late watching Project Runway and talking about ex-boyfriends who got fat. I didn't clean up any of our sticky cups or empty champagne bottles or bowls of apple crisp. When we woke up the next morning, there were flies bring their luggage into the kitchen, setting up house in the caps still sweet with vodka, the glasses still red with raspberries. They haven't left since. I've tried different things to kill them. I've tried to kill them by clapping them between my hands--I'm surprisingly good at this, and it's surprisingly satisfying to see the crooked wings flat against my palms--but that's slow-going, and they're reproducing faster than I can kill them. I've put out saucers of sweet-smelling soap, hoping they'll get stuck in the thick liquid. I've chased them down with a bottle of hairspray, releasing long streams that make them slow and dopey, but not dead.
2.
I drove the two hours down to Boston on Monday night to get Josh. He'd been in France, teaching English and missing America, and he came home because he couldn't stand it anymore. He'd taken to buying beer and standing on the urine-soaked corner the bums gathered on. He'd been eating a lot of French hotdogs and drinking a lot of cheap wine. He couldn't find a second job that would bolster his meager finances--after all, a guy doesn't make too much teaching English to fifteen year old French girls who use their English to ask, "Can you take us home with you?"--and he was sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, his only friend an Irish guy who'd knocked up a French girl and was thus stuck in France with his own bunch of students.
So he came home. And as I rode the escalator down to the International Arrivals section of Logan Airport, I felt like I was in the opening scene of Love Actually. I scanned the crowds of people tugging suitcases through the gate, and on the other side of the room I saw Josh, the boy who, when I dream of him, arrives as Conan O'Brien ("Seriously, that kid looks just like Conan!" Emily's brother said after we'd all had martinis at the darkest basement bar in all of Portland, the best place to carry on illicit love affairs), and I started running toward him. We hugged.
"I love America!" he said.
For the next few days, I'd spend my time trying to entertain him. I handed him the pack of sex flashcards Diana had sent me. "These are stupid," he said, but when he got to MISSIONARY POSITION he laughed and turned the card toward me. On the front a man in a tuxedo was leaning close to a woman with close-set curls. The caption said Let's start with the missionary position and go from there. He also liked FELLATIO (After fellatio, he was putty in my hands!) and CUNNILINGUS (You may have heard about me--I specialize in cunnilingus).
The next day I handed him The Pop-Up Book of Sex, another gift from Diana, and he said, "This is ridiculous," but then he spent the next fifteen minutes using the tabs to rock the pop-up characters back in forth in different sexual situations. His favorite was the spread of pages that explained the Mile High Club. He made the male passenger's hips batter the stewardess, who was wearing fishnet stockings and too-red lipstick, over and over and over and over. "Ha," he said.
"When was the last time I told you how much I love America?" he asked.
"Five minutes ago," I said.
"Well, it's time again. I love America. I love it a lot."
I made him omelets. I brought him beer. I poured him wine. He did his laundry and watched French television and soccer. We got drunk and watched So You Think You Can Dance, and I tried to explain to him that this was the second time that SYTYCD had a contestant who looks like a boy from my past. This season, every time Legacy steps onto stage my head feels like it's going to fall off because he reminds me so much of this boy it's overwhelming.
"What do you think of his partner?" I asked. "Do you think she's pretty cute? Would you do her?"
"Does she have a pulse?" Josh asked.
Later, he downloaded the new Bone Thugs song and played it over and over and over. He played it on our way to the Chinese restaurant, on the way to Freeport, where he wanted to buy new pants, and on our way to Portland.
"How much do you love this song?" he asked.
I liked it okay, so I told him so.
"Will you listen to it after I leave?" he asked. "Will you listen to it every five minutes? Hey, Jess, have I told you about America and how I love it?"
We got into debates about everything. Josh was argumentative ("I'm not argumentative!" he insisted. "I'M NOT!") and he wanted to debate the word "nice" I used to describe him when he asked me to list his good qualities. He wanted to debate formal grammar instruction.
"YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY!" I told him. "WHY ARE YOU BEING LIKE THIS?!"
"THIS IS WHAT I AM LIKE! YOU JUST DON'T KNOW ME!" he said.
"You're right," I said. "Sure, yeah, absolutely. That's it. I don't know you at all. I haven't been your friend for NINE YEARS."
Josh tried to love Abbey. It looked promising at first. He walked through the door on Monday night, let her smell his hand, and then he scooped her up. She let him kiss and hug her, and when he let her down she threaded through his legs. After that, though, things got rough. There was hissing. There was growling. There was swatting.
"This kitten is a bitch," Josh said. "I hate her. She's cute. Why doesn't she like me?"
And the thing is, I don't know.
3.
My mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend are coming to Maine for Thanksgiving. I'm throwing the celebration. This makes my brother pleased and excited. He's been promised lots of Freeport outlet shopping on Black Friday, and he's been promised unlimited lobster rolls.
Today I texted him--you don't ever call my brother because he's bad about both answering the phone when he sees it's someone other than his girlfriend, and he's equally bad about returning phone calls that were placed by anyone other than his girlfriend--and I asked him if he wouldn't mind so much going to the liquor store and bringing me a whole bunch of New York state wines when he comes.
Sure, he texted back. I'll do that. So, what's new? How's the man situation?
Ish, I said. Well, I mean, I don't know. I've been on a few dates with one guy. He's nice. He's a singer.
Woah boy, my brother said. My gaydar just went off. And does he love Will and Grace too?
Very helpful, I said.
1.
My kitchen is covered in flies--fruit, not fire or anything else interesting. They arrived one morning after my friend Emily and I had another Martini Sleepover. We got drunk on raspberry bellinis. We stayed up late watching Project Runway and talking about ex-boyfriends who got fat. I didn't clean up any of our sticky cups or empty champagne bottles or bowls of apple crisp. When we woke up the next morning, there were flies bring their luggage into the kitchen, setting up house in the caps still sweet with vodka, the glasses still red with raspberries. They haven't left since. I've tried different things to kill them. I've tried to kill them by clapping them between my hands--I'm surprisingly good at this, and it's surprisingly satisfying to see the crooked wings flat against my palms--but that's slow-going, and they're reproducing faster than I can kill them. I've put out saucers of sweet-smelling soap, hoping they'll get stuck in the thick liquid. I've chased them down with a bottle of hairspray, releasing long streams that make them slow and dopey, but not dead.
2.
I drove the two hours down to Boston on Monday night to get Josh. He'd been in France, teaching English and missing America, and he came home because he couldn't stand it anymore. He'd taken to buying beer and standing on the urine-soaked corner the bums gathered on. He'd been eating a lot of French hotdogs and drinking a lot of cheap wine. He couldn't find a second job that would bolster his meager finances--after all, a guy doesn't make too much teaching English to fifteen year old French girls who use their English to ask, "Can you take us home with you?"--and he was sick of being stuck in the middle of nowhere, his only friend an Irish guy who'd knocked up a French girl and was thus stuck in France with his own bunch of students.
So he came home. And as I rode the escalator down to the International Arrivals section of Logan Airport, I felt like I was in the opening scene of Love Actually. I scanned the crowds of people tugging suitcases through the gate, and on the other side of the room I saw Josh, the boy who, when I dream of him, arrives as Conan O'Brien ("Seriously, that kid looks just like Conan!" Emily's brother said after we'd all had martinis at the darkest basement bar in all of Portland, the best place to carry on illicit love affairs), and I started running toward him. We hugged.
"I love America!" he said.
For the next few days, I'd spend my time trying to entertain him. I handed him the pack of sex flashcards Diana had sent me. "These are stupid," he said, but when he got to MISSIONARY POSITION he laughed and turned the card toward me. On the front a man in a tuxedo was leaning close to a woman with close-set curls. The caption said Let's start with the missionary position and go from there. He also liked FELLATIO (After fellatio, he was putty in my hands!) and CUNNILINGUS (You may have heard about me--I specialize in cunnilingus).
The next day I handed him The Pop-Up Book of Sex, another gift from Diana, and he said, "This is ridiculous," but then he spent the next fifteen minutes using the tabs to rock the pop-up characters back in forth in different sexual situations. His favorite was the spread of pages that explained the Mile High Club. He made the male passenger's hips batter the stewardess, who was wearing fishnet stockings and too-red lipstick, over and over and over and over. "Ha," he said.
"When was the last time I told you how much I love America?" he asked.
"Five minutes ago," I said.
"Well, it's time again. I love America. I love it a lot."
I made him omelets. I brought him beer. I poured him wine. He did his laundry and watched French television and soccer. We got drunk and watched So You Think You Can Dance, and I tried to explain to him that this was the second time that SYTYCD had a contestant who looks like a boy from my past. This season, every time Legacy steps onto stage my head feels like it's going to fall off because he reminds me so much of this boy it's overwhelming.
"What do you think of his partner?" I asked. "Do you think she's pretty cute? Would you do her?"
"Does she have a pulse?" Josh asked.
Later, he downloaded the new Bone Thugs song and played it over and over and over. He played it on our way to the Chinese restaurant, on the way to Freeport, where he wanted to buy new pants, and on our way to Portland.
"How much do you love this song?" he asked.
I liked it okay, so I told him so.
"Will you listen to it after I leave?" he asked. "Will you listen to it every five minutes? Hey, Jess, have I told you about America and how I love it?"
We got into debates about everything. Josh was argumentative ("I'm not argumentative!" he insisted. "I'M NOT!") and he wanted to debate the word "nice" I used to describe him when he asked me to list his good qualities. He wanted to debate formal grammar instruction.
"YOU ARE DRIVING ME CRAZY!" I told him. "WHY ARE YOU BEING LIKE THIS?!"
"THIS IS WHAT I AM LIKE! YOU JUST DON'T KNOW ME!" he said.
"You're right," I said. "Sure, yeah, absolutely. That's it. I don't know you at all. I haven't been your friend for NINE YEARS."
Josh tried to love Abbey. It looked promising at first. He walked through the door on Monday night, let her smell his hand, and then he scooped her up. She let him kiss and hug her, and when he let her down she threaded through his legs. After that, though, things got rough. There was hissing. There was growling. There was swatting.
"This kitten is a bitch," Josh said. "I hate her. She's cute. Why doesn't she like me?"
And the thing is, I don't know.
3.
My mother, my brother, and my brother's girlfriend are coming to Maine for Thanksgiving. I'm throwing the celebration. This makes my brother pleased and excited. He's been promised lots of Freeport outlet shopping on Black Friday, and he's been promised unlimited lobster rolls.
Today I texted him--you don't ever call my brother because he's bad about both answering the phone when he sees it's someone other than his girlfriend, and he's equally bad about returning phone calls that were placed by anyone other than his girlfriend--and I asked him if he wouldn't mind so much going to the liquor store and bringing me a whole bunch of New York state wines when he comes.
Sure, he texted back. I'll do that. So, what's new? How's the man situation?
Ish, I said. Well, I mean, I don't know. I've been on a few dates with one guy. He's nice. He's a singer.
Woah boy, my brother said. My gaydar just went off. And does he love Will and Grace too?
Very helpful, I said.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Damn You, Make Me Babies.Com!
So, the other day I was on Facebook, and over in my news feed an odd little picture popped up, and what it was was this: it was a picture of a baby that had been generated when my friend's picture had been combined with another friend's picture.
As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to have my own composite baby. Which meant I followed the link on that picture to the website that made it. Which meant I spent a good chunk of time uploading pictures of all the guys I know so I could plug those pictures in with mine.
In my defense, this was in the name of science. I wanted to know which of my friends (or exes or imaginary lovers) would produce the best looking child. Here are some of the results:
Reaction:Fair enough. I was wrong. If Ryan Miller and I do ever manage to fall in love--which we so should--our offspring wouldn't look as hideously long-faced as previously thought. I think I'd finally be able to tell Keith to suck it; after all, he was the person who said that if Ryan Miller and I ever had a baby, it would come out looking like the Scream mask.
Reaction: I have the feeling that Josh would never allow one of his children to dress up as a duck. I'm fairly certain that when Josh does have kids, he'll dress them up for Halloween as members of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
Reaction: This one freaks me out. It is eerie in its accuracy. If someone else had combined these pictures and then shown me the result without telling me who the parents were, I'd be able to take one look at that and say, "Holy God, that's the Wily Republican's baby, isn't it? That's what the baby would look like if he and I had had kids?" That kid looks so much like him it's ridiculous.
Reaction: I saved the best (funniest? most disturbing?) for last. Keith and I? Yeah, Keith and I would've had fat, fat babies.
As soon as I saw that, I knew I had to have my own composite baby. Which meant I followed the link on that picture to the website that made it. Which meant I spent a good chunk of time uploading pictures of all the guys I know so I could plug those pictures in with mine.
In my defense, this was in the name of science. I wanted to know which of my friends (or exes or imaginary lovers) would produce the best looking child. Here are some of the results:
Reaction:Fair enough. I was wrong. If Ryan Miller and I do ever manage to fall in love--which we so should--our offspring wouldn't look as hideously long-faced as previously thought. I think I'd finally be able to tell Keith to suck it; after all, he was the person who said that if Ryan Miller and I ever had a baby, it would come out looking like the Scream mask.
Reaction: Sad. You can totally tell this girl is going to grow up to have a uni-brow. My genes and Ryan's genes should just never meet.
Reaction: Apparently New Boy and I (remember him? Oh, who could forget?) would have very rosy-cheeked babies. Rosy-cheeked babies that look like they might grow up to become Jonathan Tucker. I'm not against that.)
Reaction: Apparently New Boy and I (remember him? Oh, who could forget?) would have very rosy-cheeked babies. Rosy-cheeked babies that look like they might grow up to become Jonathan Tucker. I'm not against that.)
Reaction: Hey, look at that. If I'd ever had a baby with the Boy From Work, she would've been cute. And a fan of daisies, apparently.
Reaction: I have the feeling that Josh would never allow one of his children to dress up as a duck. I'm fairly certain that when Josh does have kids, he'll dress them up for Halloween as members of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
Reaction: See that baby right there? That baby's got the look of a very precocious literary superstar. That's what happens when you combine the genes of a fiction writer and a poet.
Reaction: This one freaks me out. It is eerie in its accuracy. If someone else had combined these pictures and then shown me the result without telling me who the parents were, I'd be able to take one look at that and say, "Holy God, that's the Wily Republican's baby, isn't it? That's what the baby would look like if he and I had had kids?" That kid looks so much like him it's ridiculous.
Reaction: I saved the best (funniest? most disturbing?) for last. Keith and I? Yeah, Keith and I would've had fat, fat babies.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
A Conversation with Josh
A few weeks ago my friend Josh left for France, where he will be teaching English for almost a year. Today I got this report from Boulogne Sur Mer:
Josh: So, I've never met my housemate, but he left me a note over the toilet today.
Me: What did it say?
Josh: Merci de nettoyer le wc apres votre passage. Sounds elegant, huh?
Me: What does that mean?
Josh: It means thanks (in advance) for cleaning your leftovers from inside of the toilet after your passage.
Me: DID YOU LEAVE POOP IN THE TOILET, JOSH?
Josh: Well, there was like a tiny bit of a poop mark on the outside and that was it. Nothing more.
Me: That's gross!
Josh: Whatever. This guy's a total d-bag. I want to come home.
Josh: So, I've never met my housemate, but he left me a note over the toilet today.
Me: What did it say?
Josh: Merci de nettoyer le wc apres votre passage. Sounds elegant, huh?
Me: What does that mean?
Josh: It means thanks (in advance) for cleaning your leftovers from inside of the toilet after your passage.
Me: DID YOU LEAVE POOP IN THE TOILET, JOSH?
Josh: Well, there was like a tiny bit of a poop mark on the outside and that was it. Nothing more.
Me: That's gross!
Josh: Whatever. This guy's a total d-bag. I want to come home.
Friday, August 28, 2009
Dating Advice from Josh
"Jessica!" Josh says. "If you get nervous, here's what you do: you just go to the store, buy a six pack, and slam that thing. If your date says, 'Are you drunk?' just tell him, 'Hey. I was a little nervous before I came, so I slammed a six pack.' And that's the end of the story."
Friday, July 31, 2009
Ejected with an Englishman (and Josh)
Here's what I can tell you about today: it started with me thinking I was going to go to lunch with Josh and his friend Felix, who had just flown in from England for a month-long vacation, before they left for a road trip to Wisconsin. In reality, I ended up sitting in the holding pen at the Canadian border for several hours before the country demanded I turn around and get the hell out.
Here we go:
Josh calls.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey," I say.
"How do you feel about going to
"Uh..."
"Actually, he wants to ride the Maid of the Mist. He saw it in Bruce Almighty, and it's all he wants to do."
"Uhm, okay," I say.
"Okay. How quick can you get here?"
I am sweaty from my early morning walk, and I look disgusting.
"Uhm, I can probably be there by
"Okay," Josh says. "Great."
I arrive at Josh's. He and Felix, who is tall and has a stellar accent, are throwing darts.
1:15
We are in the car. I am driving because Josh's car is sketchy about being put in reverse. We are running a few errands before we head for the border. Josh needs to go talk to his supervisor for a bit, and then he needs to go to the community center where he works.
As we are driving toward the first location, Josh spots his supervisor walking down the street.
"Pull the car over!" he says. "I'll run her down!"
He goes to find her, and I turn the car around and wait for him.
Felix and I, who met mere moments ago, are now alone in the car and forced to make conversation that is not initiated by Josh. Naturally, this means we start talking about masturbation.
Since he and Josh worked with special needs children at the summer camp in Wisconsin, I figured he would appreciate some of the stories I hear from my teacher friends who preside over special needs classrooms, so I lead with the story about my best friend and the boy in her classroom who has a penchant for masturbating during nap time, which, as you can imagine, is pretty uncomfortable for my best friend and her aides.
He has a few thoughts about the masturbators from camp, and we have just finished comparing masturbating stories when Josh comes back to the car.
1:30
At the next stop, Josh dashes into the community center where he works. Felix and I are alone again, but we have exhausted our witty masturbation stories.
Across the street, a game of basketball has started on the community center's court.
"I love basketball," I say. "I used to love playing. I was pretty okay, too. I could throw a mean shot from far away. In middle school gym class, I was like a secret weapon for my team."
"Basketball," Felix says. He makes a face. "It's not very popular in England."
"No?"
"No. I think you Americans like to make up sports or make adjustments to the rules of sports just so you can say you're the best at the world in them."
"We are assholes," I say.
1:45
We are on the highway, headed toward Niagara Falls. We are just about to pass through the toll to get on Grand Island when Josh gasps. When I glance over at him, I see there is horror in his eyes.
"Oh my God," he says. "I forgot my passport."
1:46
We turn around to go retrieve the passport.
1:50
We are back on the road, and now everyone has their passports--even Josh, the boy who grilled me about my passport as soon as I walked in the door.
2:15
We are on the Rainbow Bridge, sitting in the line and waiting our turn to go through customs.
"Do you have any Beyonce?" Josh asks.
"Yes."
"Single Ladies?" he asks. "Can we listen to Single Ladies?"
2:16
We are on the Raindbow Bridge, sitting in the line and waiting our turn to go through customs, and we are listening to Beyonce sing about putting a ring on it, and Josh looks about as happy as I've ever seen him.
We can see the Falls--sort of--to our left, beyond the bridge. It's as close as we'll get to them all day.
“I need to pee,” Josh says.
“Me too,” I say.
At customs, we answer the standard questions about nationality and how everyone in the car knows each other. The agent writes out a yellow slip and hands it to me.
"You're going to need to pull in over there," he says. "That guy needs to get his passport stamped."
He is not specific about which guy needs to get his passport stamped, but we all assume it's the foreign guy sitting in the car, the one who has already said bollocks (which made me want to clap I was so excited by it).
We park and go inside the holding center, which I have been in once before when my mother’s boyfriend swore that a parent did not need to bring a proof of citizenship for his child while trying to cross the border. We told him that things had changed, and while that sort of lax nonsense had been allowed before 9/11, it certainly wasn’t allowed now. He got huffy about it, so we shut up but then at the border we were pulled over because—aha!—you need to provide birth certificates for minor children when passing into Canada—yes, even when you’re a citizen of New York, and, yes, even when you’ve lived in Buffalo all your life and crossed the border a million times without issue. We sat there for a long time being investigated for possible child abduction and smuggling, thus delaying our trip to the Niagara Falls Butterfly Conservatory.
This time at the center, we are a little less sure about why we were there. The sentence That guy needs to get his passport stamped isn’t terribly informative—after all, we aren’t sure which guy or why the passport needs to be stamped. Still, we are directed to a line and we wait.
Josh is not a good wait-er. He gets antsy. He gets irritable. He gets annoyed at the delay in plans, in the deviation from the way things were supposed to be. Further annoying him is the fact that there are three agents sitting at the desk our line is diverted to, and only one of those agents is actually calling people forward. The other two are busy on their computers.
“Oh, you know they’re probably on Facebook right now,” Josh says. “They’re two inches from your face, checking their walls, and you will never know.”
There are several groups of travelers in front of us. There are some Latinos, some Asians, and a few Europeans. Behind us are more Asians, a cute couple that looked to be honeymooning, and a bunch of tiny Asian nuns that are dressed entirely in white. White habits, white headdresses, white stockings, white shoes. Two of the nuns are wearing nondescript shoes, but the third is wearing a strappy white sandal with a little heel. I like her gumption.
The few groups in front of us take forever. It is unclear what the problem is, really, but part of the problem might be that no one speaks English very well.
“Do you think there’s a bathroom in here?” Josh asks.
“There’s got to be,” I say, although I can’t see any English/French signs that direct the way. There is a water fountain in the corner, but that’s about it. “You’d think they’d have to have a bathroom in here,” I say. “I mean, this is a long wait, and some of those people in the chairs along the walls have been here since before we got here.”
Josh starts shifting his weight from one foot to the next.
“Assholes,” he says.
It is our turn. Another agent has come out from the back room—where seized contraband is stored; I can see locked cabinets labeled with bold print: LOADED WEAPONS. NARCOTICS. ILLEGAL WEAPONS.—and she seats herself at another computer. She calls us forward.
Felix hands her his passport—again, because we thought the problem was him, the guy from
The woman gestures to Josh and me. “I need all three passports,” she says.
This is a surprise, but we dig ours out and hand them over. She arranges them in front of her and starts typing on the computer.
“Okay,” she says. “Has anyone here ever been denied entry to
“No,” I say.
"No,” Felix says.
“No,” Josh says.
“Oh really?” she asks.
This doesn’t sound good. She narrows her eyes at Josh.
“Well, back when I studied abroad in
“So the answer is yes,” the agent says.
“But they let me in,” Josh says.
“The answer is yes,” the woman says, clearly disgusted. She motions to the chairs. “Go sit down,” she says. “Wait.”
“I really wanted one of those ponchos from The Maid of the Mist,” Felix says.
We are sitting along the wall, far from the original line we’d been in. The place is filling up. The seats directly across from the area we were sitting are full of people are also having a tough time getting access to
“I am going to piss myself,” Josh says. He looks pale and sick. He looks like he might just piss in his pants.
There is some shouting from the other end of the room, and it sounds like one of the agents—maybe ours—is shouting. It almost sounds like someone is shouting, “JESSICA!”
I lean over and listen. “JESSICA!” someone shouts.
“Do you think they mean me?” I ask. There are a lot of people in the room, and the chance that someone is shouting “JESSICA” and assuming only one person will step forward seems odd.
Then I hear my whole name being shouted, so I launch out of the chair and head back around the curve to where our agent is tapping my passport on the edge of the desk. She is impatient. She is annoyed. She thinks I am pretty stupid.
“Yes?” I say.
“Jessica,” she says, “what’s your social security number?” I give it to her. “And how much money do you have on your person right now?” she asks.
“Uhm, well, I don’t know exactly. Probably only twenty dollars,” I say. “But I’ve got my debit card and my credit card.”
She nods and then narrows her eyes. “Let me ask you this,” she says. “Have you ever been convicted of a crime?”
This is a laughable question. I am, after all, the girl who was so nervous about being caught aiding and abetting the boys who were climbing the fence of the town pool to take a dip on a warm summer night that I cowered in the parking lot of the church down the road until the boys were ready to go. Still, I do not laugh. Nothing is funny about this agent and the way she is looking at me. This woman hates me.
“No,” I say.
“And have you ever been called upon to stand before a judge in this or any foreign country?”
“No.”
“Fine,” she says. “Go sit down and wait.”
“Okay.”
I turn and walk back to the boys.
“What did she want?” Josh asks.
“She wanted to know if I was a criminal and how much money I had in my pocket,” I say.
3:45
The boys are called up in turn.
When Josh is up there, I tell Felix it’s okay, this will all work out, we’ll go get a beer afterward and some lunch—we are starving—and after lunch we’ll get on that boat, and we’ll go for the ride up to the falls, and he can put on his poncho and be happy that he got to do the thing they showed in Bruce Almighty.
When Felix is up there, I tell Josh it’s okay, this will all work out, see? See? Felix is smiling at the lady! It must be okay! It must be working out! It’s looking good! Why would he be smiling if it isn’t working out?
“Oh boy,” Josh says. “This doesn’t look good.”
In fact, that’s about the time Felix flashes the woman a big, fake smile and a hearty thumbs-up. He storms away and back to us.
“This,” he says, “is ridiculous.”
Apparently, she’d been insisting he had a felony on his record, and, while, yes, he did have a scrape with the law when he was in the
Still, the woman behind the desk was sure, was certain, was definite about one thing: the Englishman was a convicted felon, and he was not getting in the country.
“I told her I just wanted to get my passport back then so we could go,” Felix says. “She told me to sit down and wait for the paperwork to be done.” He sighs. “She told me that I could never come here. Never. And she said that if I came back in the next ten days, they were going to throw me in jail and keep me there for a few days.”
Josh slumps down in his chair. “I really need to go to the bathroom,” he says.
“Did your agent say you could go to the bathroom?” the new agent asks.
“She hasn’t told us anything,” Josh says.
“Well, I don’t know your situation, so you’ll need to go ask your agent permission.”
Josh sighs and slouches over to the other side of the room, and we can’t see him asking—begging—to go to the bathroom, but when he comes back he is not pleased.
“She said no,” he says. “She told me I couldn’t. She told me to sit down and wait. I told her it was an emergency, and that I might just go in my pants, but she told me to just sit down.” His eyes roll back into his head. “I might do it. I might piss in my pants.”
“Does she want us?” I ask.
“Are we supposed to leave?” Felix says.
“Did she mean we need to go over by the door?” Josh asks.
We have no idea, just like we have had no idea all day long. We have had no idea what the problem is, what our status is, what we are supposed to do, and what is going to happen to us.
The agent leaves through the door, and we look at each other. We shrug. We decide to go after her.
She is waiting for us outside. She shoves a piece of paper in my hands and is walking away, speaking to us but pointing her head in the other direction.
“Excuse me?” I say. I have no idea what she has said to me, although it seems fairly critical.
She turns and heaves a sigh in my direction. “Drive over there,” she says, and then turns and speaks the rest of the sentence into the wind.
"Could you say that again, please?” I say.
“THE GATE!” she says. “DRIVE TO THE GATE.”
I don’t really know where the gate is, but I know I can’t ask any more questions, so I nod and the boys and I get into the car.
I drive around the building until I find the gate, and the gate is a gate to the
“Give these to the agent over there,” the guard says.
And that’s it. That’s our explanation. That’s our status.
“Can I ask a question?” Josh asks. “Can I ask you what happened? Why aren’t we being let in?”
She points at him. “You don’t have enough money,” she says. “You need to have at least twenty dollars in cash to cross the border.” Josh looks horrified. I'm sure I look horrified. I have never, ever, ever heard that rule. Next, she points at Felix. “You need special FBI clearance or else you’ll go to jail if ever you come back here.”
“I’m not coming back,” Felix says. “Ever. Trust me on that.”
“And what about me?” I ask. “Does this affect me?”
“No,” she says, and then she waves us on our way.
And then, a few minutes later, we are safely back in the U.S., and we make the decision that that has been just about enough excitement for the day—Felix doesn’t even want to attempt to see the Falls from the American side—and so we decide to go back into the city and drink until we are a little less annoyed.
And Josh? We stop at the first gas station we see, but the gas station doesn’t have a bathroom for its patrons, and while I pay for the coffee Josh is desperate about getting, he dashes around the corner of the building and finally gets to do his business—which seems about just the right note on which to end our little adventure.
“Weird stuff always happens to me when I’m with you,” I tell him as he gets back in the car.
“I know,” he says, “but this is really weird. I mean, even for me. It’s just really weird.”
Sunday, July 12, 2009
This Is a Story That Ends with Almost-Naked Guys Drinking Beer in a Pool They Aren't Supposed to Be In
Yesterday the girls and I climbed the stairs of the lodge at a local campground, where our 10 year high school reunion was being held, and presented ourselves as a united front. We gripped each other for support and crossed the threshold, and there we were, the class of 1999--well, 28 of us anyway; the turnout was dismal--and we had all grown up. Not surprisingly, most people were married and popping out pictures of babies and weddings. When a new person broke into our circle and started asking after our situations--"Relationships?" he or she would ask--we would go around with rapid-fire responses. It went like this: Engaged. Engaged. Dating. Married. Then it came to me. "I've got nothing," I said.
Beyond that, it was boys in jeans and girls in too much makeup. It was a DJ playing songs like "Mmm Bop" and "No Diggity." It was a buffet line of chicken wings, chicken wing dip, and vats of bleu cheese. It was a whole lot of whispering about a person's skinniness or fatness.
I couldn't take too much of it. It made me claustrophobic. And I knew that down the road there was another reunion--this one at the restaurant where I spent three years waitressing--and that reunion would be populated by absolutely no one who would remember when I was still the only girl in the fifth grade whose mother wouldn't let her shave her legs. Instead, the reunion would be populated by Josh and his class, who were celebrating their six year high school reunion because they missed their fifth.
So I left my reunion after putting in a few good hours, after shoveling a few scoops of chicken wing dip into my mouth, and I drove down to my old restaurant. I went in through the door flanked with balloons that were school colors very different from my own. Inside, it was dark and most everyone was drunk. They were wearing considerably nicer clothes than most the people at my own reunion, and taken as a whole they looked like a much more successful and put-together class. They might have been drunk and loud, but they were crisp and good-looking.
Josh was in the corner near the bar. He had a crowd around him, and he was telling a story that involved very large arm movements. Very dramatic arm movements. Everyone around him was laughing.
"JESS!" he said when he saw me. He hugged me so hard he lifted me off the ground. "You came!"
And then he started introducing me to his friends. There was a boy there called Fweep, so named because in high school his farts--and here's where Katy Clay just got invested in this story--sounded exactly like that. Fweep. Fweep. Fweep.
Then another guy turned around. This one was drunk in the way that some guys get--a way that makes them secrete a slick coat of grease, a way that makes their eyes go loopy in their sockets, a way that makes them too confident for their own good.
"Watch out for this one," Josh said.
"Did you go to this school?" the guy asked. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, so his question could have been more than an inquisition at an unfamiliar face; it might have been him not being able to see who was standing in front of him.
"Of course," I said.
"You got a boyfriend?" he asked.
"Yes," I lied.
"Where is he?"
I pointed in the general area of the bar.
"Okay," the guy said. "All right. But that means he's not right here." He leaned in closer and somehow managed to plant a kiss right on my cheek. When he did it, he opened his mouth a little and let his tongue leave a wet mark behind. I didn't want to wipe it off while he was still staring at me--I don't like to be rude, even to drunk idiots--so the kiss dried to a crusty film, which I later wiped on Josh's shoulder while he was trying to find pictures of his younger self on the collages standing around the room.
A few minutes later, I heard a girl's voice shrieking my name, or something close to it. I heard, "Jessie? Jessie! JESSIE!"
I turned and found myself face to face with my "cousin," a girl I'm related to by marriage--my grandmother's, to this girl's grandfather. This is the girl, of course, who once, at a Christmas party, informed me I was wearing the same color mascara a hooker would wear. And now she was standing in front of me.
"Oh, hi!" I said.
"It IS you!" she said. "I saw you walk in the door a few minutes ago, and I thought to myself, 'That girl looks a lot like Jessie!' And then I saw you close-up over here, and I realized it was you! It was Jessie!"
I smiled as brightly as I could manage. She was calling me by the name my grandmother--and no one else--calls me.
"Are you here with Josh?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "I mean, no. I mean, not like that. I'm here because I know him, not because we're together-together."
"I was going to say!" she chirped. "I hadn't heard that you were together."
"We're not." I lifted my drink to my mouth, wondering what we could talk about now that we got that out of the way. She was the type of girl everyone knew of. I'd always worked in restaurants in the town where she went to school, and if ever anyone found out we were marginally related, they would roll their eyes to the ceiling or make the sign of the cross and say they were pretty sorry about the way things had shaken out for me.
I tried to talk my way to the end of the interaction. "Are you here with a boyfriend?" I asked, nodding encouragingly, as if my vigorous head movements might divine a man who would then come to her side and take her away, back to the bar, to refresh her drink.
Her smile fell away from her face. "What?"
"Well," I said, "I mean, I thought maybe you still had that boyfriend you had... well, I don't know... when is the last time we saw each other?"
"Jessie," she said, raising her voice so everyone around us could hear, "I haven't had a boyfriend since the one who was physically abusive to me in college."
I stared. I stared some more. I wasn't exactly sure where to go after that. I am not skilled in the art of wheeling a conversation back to normal after someone reveals--loudly--that her boyfriend used to smack her around.
"Uhm," I said. "I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know."
"Grandma didn't tell you?" she asked, genuinely surprised.
"Grandma and I don't talk like that," I said, and it was true. We really don't talk like that--mainly because my grandmother thinks I'm a lesbian.
"Really?" my cousin asked. "We talk like that." She paused and then smiled. "I know things about you," she said. "She's told me."
I looked down at my glass of vodka. It was almost empty.
"She thought the Boy From Work was way too young for you," she said. "She thought the way the old restaurant was run reflected poorly on him. Did you know she and Grandpa once went there and waited for ice cream while the couple who got sat after them got their full dinners before they even ordered their sundaes?"
I poured the rest of my vodka into my throat. My cousin went on, and I kept smiling and nodding and drinking until one of her friends called her away, and I turned immediately to find Josh.
"Do not leave me alone with her," I said. "You know the rules."
Josh and his girlfriend and his friends had balloons in their hands. They were going to walk over to the restaurant's regular bar. On the way over, they were going to pop the balloons and fill their lungs with helium.
"What should I say?" Josh asked.
His friend Kristen--the girl who got air-humped by Josh's step-father at the beer tent last week--stood on her toes and whispered in his ear. Josh gulped from the balloon and then started chanting the words to "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear."
After his helium wore off, Josh put an arm around my shoulders. "Do you remember that time," he said, "when I won that gift certificate from the raffle drawing?"
"The one that took place five minutes ago?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "That one. Do you remember it?"
Inside, the bar was what it usually is on a Saturday night: filled with sweaty people looking to get drunk and laid. The DJ was starting to play the usual songs to get people on the dance floor.
"Oh!" Josh said. "Do you think he'll play some Bone Thugs?" He looked at the DJ and then back at me. "What do you think, Jessie-Bone? Do you think he will if I request it?"
Just then a tall blond girl floated by me, beer in hand. She looked me up and down, her eyes narrowing. It seemed possible she was about to reach out and pluck my head off my neck as easily as if she were popping a daisy off its stem.
"Jesus," I said.
"Woah," Josh said.
"She wanted to cut me."
"I'm fairly certain," Josh said, "that you're right about that."
We got our drinks then and played darts (which we won) and erotic photo hunt (first babes, then hunks). Then, after Josh had declared to me for the fifth time that he was really drunk, I leaned over to tell his friend John--the one who could be Adam Levine's twin brother--that we should go outside, where he could smoke a cigarette and tell me about his MFA program because I missed mine, because I was curious, and because there are still mornings I wake up wishing I were in my bedroom in Minnesota, getting ready to go off to workshop.
We were out on the porch talking about our MFAs when Kristen came outside with her boyfriend in tow. She almost fell as she came through the doorway, but she quickly righted herself.
"John," she said. "We're going home. Do you want a ride?"
"Back to your place?" John said.
"Yeah."
"But then I'd be at your place."
And then I took a drink and jerked my head toward Kristen's tall boyfriend. "Going home for the lovemaking?" I asked because it sure looked like a possibility.
Kristen made a face. "I've got my period," she said, "and no one's getting their red wings tonight."
It was her boyfriend's turn to make a face. "I don't trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die," he said.
"No red wings," Kristen said. She put her arm through his. "No way."
A few minutes later--after Kristen and her boyfriend had conducted a long discussion about his truck, sex in his truck, if he'd had sex with his ex-girlfriend in his truck, and if he'd had sex with Kristen in his truck--they left, and a few minutes after that another of Josh's friends came outside and announced that everyone was leaving and they were going to go to his girlfriend's house, where they could use the pool and the hot tub.
Everyone seemed happy about that. They seemed prepared, like they'd known where this was where the night was going to take them.
At that point, though, I just felt old. I was sober and fresh from my ten year reunion. I was standing next to a twenty-two year old girl in a short dress I'd never in a million years look good in and it seemed like everyone in the world was younger and more fun than I was.
"You're coming, right?" Josh's friend asked. "You should come. Come."
Josh's girlfriend--the twenty-two year old in the short dress, a sweet girl--cuddled up to me and said, "Please? Please, Jess. Come with us."
"I'm old," I announced. "I'm very old."
"Please?" she tried again.
"John," Josh said, knowing full well the words would pull more weight if they came from the mouth of a cute boy, "tell Jess she should come."
"You should come," John said.
"Okay," I said.
And so we went. We went straight to the house with the pool and the hot tub. And it seemed like it should have been simple. We should've gotten into the hot tub without problem because I'd stood on the deck of the bar and watched Josh's friend place the call to his girlfriend, who'd said, yeah, come over, let's go. And we were over, and we were ready to go. But the girlfriend arrived on her deck, wet--she'd just been in the hot tub--and sour-faced.
"No," she announced. "No one's going in."
Josh's friend handed out beer. "We're going in," he said. "Come on. We're going in the hot tub."
The rest of us just stood there, looking at each other, and trying to avoid the couple that was--you could see it--on the verge of an argument.
"Please, Tiffany," Josh pleaded. "Just for a little bit."
She stormed off into the other room, and her boyfriend followed. The rest of us went out onto the deck and stood next to the hot tub, looking down at it longingly. On the ride over, I hadn't been exactly sure how I was going to pull off getting into the hot tub--the underwear I was wearing was sort of scandalous because a girl going to her 10 year reunion needs to have as much oomph and confidence as she can get--but now I didn't even care, and all I wanted was to sit in the very big hot tub and listen to those boys say stupid, drunk things.
Inside, the fight went on. Outside, Josh's girlfriend was freezing. "I want to go home," she said. "Can't we go home?"
"I know!" Josh said. He raised his beer can up to the sky. "We could climb the fence at the town park!"
"No," I said automatically because I am old, un-fun, and a girl who remembers what happened the last time Josh tried to casually make his way into a place he wasn't supposed to be. I stared at him and wondered if I should announce in front of his new girlfriend that the last time he'd done something like that he'd gotten his name in the police blotter, and because he was shamed and feeling like an ass, we drove around town and stopped to have a drink with the townies that inhabited each tiny bar. This could be my life, Josh had said. Maybe I'll turn out like one of these guys.
"Okay," John said.
"Yes!" Josh said. "We'll hop the fence and go for a swim! It'll be great!"
"I'm cold," his girlfriend said. "They're fighting. This isn't going to happen. Please, let's just go."
And she was right. It wasn't going to happen, no matter how promising it used to look and would look again. The girlfriend eventually came outside--angry, huffy, stomping--and began rolling the cover off the hot tub.
John started taking his clothes off.
Then the girl stopped. "No," she said. "No, I don't think so."
"That's it," Josh said. "Come on. The park. Let's go."
It was a horrible idea. Horrible. But Josh's girlfriend said she'd ride with me, that we could just follow the boys, drive the getaway car, retrieve them when they were done.
"Come on," she said, dancing on the tips of her toes, trying to stay warm in her short dress. "Let's go."
"I don't think anyone realizes how old I am," I said, "and how uncool I am. I am a good girl. I never did things like this in high school."
"We used to hang out car windows and slam trash cans into mailboxes," Josh's girlfriend said. "Let's go."
I went. I followed the other car--the car holding the boys and their beer--and even pulled in behind it when it turned into the cemetery next to the park.
Josh's girlfriend launched out of the car--she had to pee; she was going to pee somewhere in the graveyard; she didn't want to pee on anyone's grave; she ran for the line of trees at its back--and the boys opened the door to their car, talking about the logistics. How were they going to get through the field? Who was bringing the beer?
"Do you have an exit strategy?" I asked.
"An exit strategy," Josh repeated. "Well, no."
"Where are you going to go when you get out?" I asked. "Do you want us to sit here--in a cemetery, in the middle of the night, and wait for you while you jump into the pool?"
Josh seemed confident that was a good plan. "Uhm, yes?"
"No," I said. "No way."
"Will you drop us off at the pool then?" he asked. "I don't want to walk through the field."
"I'm going to end up going to jail tonight," I said. "I know it."
"You will not," he said. "Come on."
And I said fine, okay, all right, and we drove the cars down to the gate--which was open--and up to the pool, where we turned off the lights and engines and watched as the boys went straight for the fence. They shed their clothes and started climbing the fence that surrounded the pool--built tall to discourage just these types of events.
"Is that a hot tub?" Josh's girlfriend asked, tugging on my sleeve. She pointed to the shallow pool that was separated from the bigger, deeper pool.
"That," I said, "is the kiddie pool."
She frowned. "Oh."
Josh's friend--the one who'd first promised us a night in a hot tub--handed us the case of beer. "Hang on to this," he said.
Josh and John were already over the fence and into the pool. The noise their splashes made almost gave me a heart attack. I looked back over my shoulder, at the entrance to the park, and thought about the excuses I could possibly make if a cop car just happened to turn in toward us.
Josh's friend started climbing the fence. He slipped. He steadied himself. He got himself up near the top and then reached down. "Okay," he said, taking a deep, serious breath. "Now, the beer."
It was passed up to him, and he finished his descent and went into the pool, where the boys floated, drinking, splashing.
Meanwhile, I was picturing life in the big house, eating gruel, becoming someone's bitch.
"I'm a good girl," I told Josh's girlfriend. "I swear. I am very uncool. I'm nervous."
Luckily, I wasn't the only one feeling nervous--all us girls seemed a little panicked by the amount of splashing and laughing going on, by the way the three piles of rumpled clothes glinted in the moonlight--so I told Josh that was it, we were getting in our cars and taking them down the street, where we would park in a lot and wait for him to call us.
And that's exactly what we did. We drove the two cars down to the church on the corner--the church where I took Sunday school and attended Confirmation classes--and we sat outside the rectory for ten minutes, five of which I used to continue to inform the two other girls of how old and uncool I was.
"We better not go to jail," I said. "Do you think I'll still be able to teach after I get out of the big house, after they lock me up?"
They were should that I would.
The boys called soon after, and we went to get them. I drove back up that gravel driveway--each crunch of tire a small death inside my heart, each crunch one more sound that would surely rouse someone and make them call the police to the park, where we would be busted for good--and I parked, let the girls out, and made sure the boys--and their beer--had made it up and over the fence safely. Everything and everyone was intact. And there were no cops lurking in the shadows. And everyone was suddenly freezing and tired and ready to go.
Which is what we did. We said our goodbyes, and then we pulled back down the driveway and out onto the roads that would take us home--Josh's car one way, mine the other--and I drove the road I used to drive on my way home from the restaurant at night, after working another Friday fish fry shift with Josh as my bus-boy, with Josh following me around and reminding me that he loved me. It was the tenth anniversary of my graduating high school, and as I parked my car and crept back into my house and snuck down the hallway quietly so I wouldn't wake my father, I felt about as young as I had in a pretty long time.
Beyond that, it was boys in jeans and girls in too much makeup. It was a DJ playing songs like "Mmm Bop" and "No Diggity." It was a buffet line of chicken wings, chicken wing dip, and vats of bleu cheese. It was a whole lot of whispering about a person's skinniness or fatness.
I couldn't take too much of it. It made me claustrophobic. And I knew that down the road there was another reunion--this one at the restaurant where I spent three years waitressing--and that reunion would be populated by absolutely no one who would remember when I was still the only girl in the fifth grade whose mother wouldn't let her shave her legs. Instead, the reunion would be populated by Josh and his class, who were celebrating their six year high school reunion because they missed their fifth.
So I left my reunion after putting in a few good hours, after shoveling a few scoops of chicken wing dip into my mouth, and I drove down to my old restaurant. I went in through the door flanked with balloons that were school colors very different from my own. Inside, it was dark and most everyone was drunk. They were wearing considerably nicer clothes than most the people at my own reunion, and taken as a whole they looked like a much more successful and put-together class. They might have been drunk and loud, but they were crisp and good-looking.
Josh was in the corner near the bar. He had a crowd around him, and he was telling a story that involved very large arm movements. Very dramatic arm movements. Everyone around him was laughing.
"JESS!" he said when he saw me. He hugged me so hard he lifted me off the ground. "You came!"
And then he started introducing me to his friends. There was a boy there called Fweep, so named because in high school his farts--and here's where Katy Clay just got invested in this story--sounded exactly like that. Fweep. Fweep. Fweep.
Then another guy turned around. This one was drunk in the way that some guys get--a way that makes them secrete a slick coat of grease, a way that makes their eyes go loopy in their sockets, a way that makes them too confident for their own good.
"Watch out for this one," Josh said.
"Did you go to this school?" the guy asked. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, so his question could have been more than an inquisition at an unfamiliar face; it might have been him not being able to see who was standing in front of him.
"Of course," I said.
"You got a boyfriend?" he asked.
"Yes," I lied.
"Where is he?"
I pointed in the general area of the bar.
"Okay," the guy said. "All right. But that means he's not right here." He leaned in closer and somehow managed to plant a kiss right on my cheek. When he did it, he opened his mouth a little and let his tongue leave a wet mark behind. I didn't want to wipe it off while he was still staring at me--I don't like to be rude, even to drunk idiots--so the kiss dried to a crusty film, which I later wiped on Josh's shoulder while he was trying to find pictures of his younger self on the collages standing around the room.
A few minutes later, I heard a girl's voice shrieking my name, or something close to it. I heard, "Jessie? Jessie! JESSIE!"
I turned and found myself face to face with my "cousin," a girl I'm related to by marriage--my grandmother's, to this girl's grandfather. This is the girl, of course, who once, at a Christmas party, informed me I was wearing the same color mascara a hooker would wear. And now she was standing in front of me.
"Oh, hi!" I said.
"It IS you!" she said. "I saw you walk in the door a few minutes ago, and I thought to myself, 'That girl looks a lot like Jessie!' And then I saw you close-up over here, and I realized it was you! It was Jessie!"
I smiled as brightly as I could manage. She was calling me by the name my grandmother--and no one else--calls me.
"Are you here with Josh?" she asked.
"Yes," I said. "I mean, no. I mean, not like that. I'm here because I know him, not because we're together-together."
"I was going to say!" she chirped. "I hadn't heard that you were together."
"We're not." I lifted my drink to my mouth, wondering what we could talk about now that we got that out of the way. She was the type of girl everyone knew of. I'd always worked in restaurants in the town where she went to school, and if ever anyone found out we were marginally related, they would roll their eyes to the ceiling or make the sign of the cross and say they were pretty sorry about the way things had shaken out for me.
I tried to talk my way to the end of the interaction. "Are you here with a boyfriend?" I asked, nodding encouragingly, as if my vigorous head movements might divine a man who would then come to her side and take her away, back to the bar, to refresh her drink.
Her smile fell away from her face. "What?"
"Well," I said, "I mean, I thought maybe you still had that boyfriend you had... well, I don't know... when is the last time we saw each other?"
"Jessie," she said, raising her voice so everyone around us could hear, "I haven't had a boyfriend since the one who was physically abusive to me in college."
I stared. I stared some more. I wasn't exactly sure where to go after that. I am not skilled in the art of wheeling a conversation back to normal after someone reveals--loudly--that her boyfriend used to smack her around.
"Uhm," I said. "I'm sorry to hear that. I didn't know."
"Grandma didn't tell you?" she asked, genuinely surprised.
"Grandma and I don't talk like that," I said, and it was true. We really don't talk like that--mainly because my grandmother thinks I'm a lesbian.
"Really?" my cousin asked. "We talk like that." She paused and then smiled. "I know things about you," she said. "She's told me."
I looked down at my glass of vodka. It was almost empty.
"She thought the Boy From Work was way too young for you," she said. "She thought the way the old restaurant was run reflected poorly on him. Did you know she and Grandpa once went there and waited for ice cream while the couple who got sat after them got their full dinners before they even ordered their sundaes?"
I poured the rest of my vodka into my throat. My cousin went on, and I kept smiling and nodding and drinking until one of her friends called her away, and I turned immediately to find Josh.
"Do not leave me alone with her," I said. "You know the rules."
Josh and his girlfriend and his friends had balloons in their hands. They were going to walk over to the restaurant's regular bar. On the way over, they were going to pop the balloons and fill their lungs with helium.
"What should I say?" Josh asked.
His friend Kristen--the girl who got air-humped by Josh's step-father at the beer tent last week--stood on her toes and whispered in his ear. Josh gulped from the balloon and then started chanting the words to "Fuzzy Wuzzy Was a Bear."
After his helium wore off, Josh put an arm around my shoulders. "Do you remember that time," he said, "when I won that gift certificate from the raffle drawing?"
"The one that took place five minutes ago?" I asked.
"Yeah," he said. "That one. Do you remember it?"
Inside, the bar was what it usually is on a Saturday night: filled with sweaty people looking to get drunk and laid. The DJ was starting to play the usual songs to get people on the dance floor.
"Oh!" Josh said. "Do you think he'll play some Bone Thugs?" He looked at the DJ and then back at me. "What do you think, Jessie-Bone? Do you think he will if I request it?"
Just then a tall blond girl floated by me, beer in hand. She looked me up and down, her eyes narrowing. It seemed possible she was about to reach out and pluck my head off my neck as easily as if she were popping a daisy off its stem.
"Jesus," I said.
"Woah," Josh said.
"She wanted to cut me."
"I'm fairly certain," Josh said, "that you're right about that."
We got our drinks then and played darts (which we won) and erotic photo hunt (first babes, then hunks). Then, after Josh had declared to me for the fifth time that he was really drunk, I leaned over to tell his friend John--the one who could be Adam Levine's twin brother--that we should go outside, where he could smoke a cigarette and tell me about his MFA program because I missed mine, because I was curious, and because there are still mornings I wake up wishing I were in my bedroom in Minnesota, getting ready to go off to workshop.
We were out on the porch talking about our MFAs when Kristen came outside with her boyfriend in tow. She almost fell as she came through the doorway, but she quickly righted herself.
"John," she said. "We're going home. Do you want a ride?"
"Back to your place?" John said.
"Yeah."
"But then I'd be at your place."
And then I took a drink and jerked my head toward Kristen's tall boyfriend. "Going home for the lovemaking?" I asked because it sure looked like a possibility.
Kristen made a face. "I've got my period," she said, "and no one's getting their red wings tonight."
It was her boyfriend's turn to make a face. "I don't trust anything that bleeds for seven days and doesn't die," he said.
"No red wings," Kristen said. She put her arm through his. "No way."
A few minutes later--after Kristen and her boyfriend had conducted a long discussion about his truck, sex in his truck, if he'd had sex with his ex-girlfriend in his truck, and if he'd had sex with Kristen in his truck--they left, and a few minutes after that another of Josh's friends came outside and announced that everyone was leaving and they were going to go to his girlfriend's house, where they could use the pool and the hot tub.
Everyone seemed happy about that. They seemed prepared, like they'd known where this was where the night was going to take them.
At that point, though, I just felt old. I was sober and fresh from my ten year reunion. I was standing next to a twenty-two year old girl in a short dress I'd never in a million years look good in and it seemed like everyone in the world was younger and more fun than I was.
"You're coming, right?" Josh's friend asked. "You should come. Come."
Josh's girlfriend--the twenty-two year old in the short dress, a sweet girl--cuddled up to me and said, "Please? Please, Jess. Come with us."
"I'm old," I announced. "I'm very old."
"Please?" she tried again.
"John," Josh said, knowing full well the words would pull more weight if they came from the mouth of a cute boy, "tell Jess she should come."
"You should come," John said.
"Okay," I said.
And so we went. We went straight to the house with the pool and the hot tub. And it seemed like it should have been simple. We should've gotten into the hot tub without problem because I'd stood on the deck of the bar and watched Josh's friend place the call to his girlfriend, who'd said, yeah, come over, let's go. And we were over, and we were ready to go. But the girlfriend arrived on her deck, wet--she'd just been in the hot tub--and sour-faced.
"No," she announced. "No one's going in."
Josh's friend handed out beer. "We're going in," he said. "Come on. We're going in the hot tub."
The rest of us just stood there, looking at each other, and trying to avoid the couple that was--you could see it--on the verge of an argument.
"Please, Tiffany," Josh pleaded. "Just for a little bit."
She stormed off into the other room, and her boyfriend followed. The rest of us went out onto the deck and stood next to the hot tub, looking down at it longingly. On the ride over, I hadn't been exactly sure how I was going to pull off getting into the hot tub--the underwear I was wearing was sort of scandalous because a girl going to her 10 year reunion needs to have as much oomph and confidence as she can get--but now I didn't even care, and all I wanted was to sit in the very big hot tub and listen to those boys say stupid, drunk things.
Inside, the fight went on. Outside, Josh's girlfriend was freezing. "I want to go home," she said. "Can't we go home?"
"I know!" Josh said. He raised his beer can up to the sky. "We could climb the fence at the town park!"
"No," I said automatically because I am old, un-fun, and a girl who remembers what happened the last time Josh tried to casually make his way into a place he wasn't supposed to be. I stared at him and wondered if I should announce in front of his new girlfriend that the last time he'd done something like that he'd gotten his name in the police blotter, and because he was shamed and feeling like an ass, we drove around town and stopped to have a drink with the townies that inhabited each tiny bar. This could be my life, Josh had said. Maybe I'll turn out like one of these guys.
"Okay," John said.
"Yes!" Josh said. "We'll hop the fence and go for a swim! It'll be great!"
"I'm cold," his girlfriend said. "They're fighting. This isn't going to happen. Please, let's just go."
And she was right. It wasn't going to happen, no matter how promising it used to look and would look again. The girlfriend eventually came outside--angry, huffy, stomping--and began rolling the cover off the hot tub.
John started taking his clothes off.
Then the girl stopped. "No," she said. "No, I don't think so."
"That's it," Josh said. "Come on. The park. Let's go."
It was a horrible idea. Horrible. But Josh's girlfriend said she'd ride with me, that we could just follow the boys, drive the getaway car, retrieve them when they were done.
"Come on," she said, dancing on the tips of her toes, trying to stay warm in her short dress. "Let's go."
"I don't think anyone realizes how old I am," I said, "and how uncool I am. I am a good girl. I never did things like this in high school."
"We used to hang out car windows and slam trash cans into mailboxes," Josh's girlfriend said. "Let's go."
I went. I followed the other car--the car holding the boys and their beer--and even pulled in behind it when it turned into the cemetery next to the park.
Josh's girlfriend launched out of the car--she had to pee; she was going to pee somewhere in the graveyard; she didn't want to pee on anyone's grave; she ran for the line of trees at its back--and the boys opened the door to their car, talking about the logistics. How were they going to get through the field? Who was bringing the beer?
"Do you have an exit strategy?" I asked.
"An exit strategy," Josh repeated. "Well, no."
"Where are you going to go when you get out?" I asked. "Do you want us to sit here--in a cemetery, in the middle of the night, and wait for you while you jump into the pool?"
Josh seemed confident that was a good plan. "Uhm, yes?"
"No," I said. "No way."
"Will you drop us off at the pool then?" he asked. "I don't want to walk through the field."
"I'm going to end up going to jail tonight," I said. "I know it."
"You will not," he said. "Come on."
And I said fine, okay, all right, and we drove the cars down to the gate--which was open--and up to the pool, where we turned off the lights and engines and watched as the boys went straight for the fence. They shed their clothes and started climbing the fence that surrounded the pool--built tall to discourage just these types of events.
"Is that a hot tub?" Josh's girlfriend asked, tugging on my sleeve. She pointed to the shallow pool that was separated from the bigger, deeper pool.
"That," I said, "is the kiddie pool."
She frowned. "Oh."
Josh's friend--the one who'd first promised us a night in a hot tub--handed us the case of beer. "Hang on to this," he said.
Josh and John were already over the fence and into the pool. The noise their splashes made almost gave me a heart attack. I looked back over my shoulder, at the entrance to the park, and thought about the excuses I could possibly make if a cop car just happened to turn in toward us.
Josh's friend started climbing the fence. He slipped. He steadied himself. He got himself up near the top and then reached down. "Okay," he said, taking a deep, serious breath. "Now, the beer."
It was passed up to him, and he finished his descent and went into the pool, where the boys floated, drinking, splashing.
Meanwhile, I was picturing life in the big house, eating gruel, becoming someone's bitch.
"I'm a good girl," I told Josh's girlfriend. "I swear. I am very uncool. I'm nervous."
Luckily, I wasn't the only one feeling nervous--all us girls seemed a little panicked by the amount of splashing and laughing going on, by the way the three piles of rumpled clothes glinted in the moonlight--so I told Josh that was it, we were getting in our cars and taking them down the street, where we would park in a lot and wait for him to call us.
And that's exactly what we did. We drove the two cars down to the church on the corner--the church where I took Sunday school and attended Confirmation classes--and we sat outside the rectory for ten minutes, five of which I used to continue to inform the two other girls of how old and uncool I was.
"We better not go to jail," I said. "Do you think I'll still be able to teach after I get out of the big house, after they lock me up?"
They were should that I would.
The boys called soon after, and we went to get them. I drove back up that gravel driveway--each crunch of tire a small death inside my heart, each crunch one more sound that would surely rouse someone and make them call the police to the park, where we would be busted for good--and I parked, let the girls out, and made sure the boys--and their beer--had made it up and over the fence safely. Everything and everyone was intact. And there were no cops lurking in the shadows. And everyone was suddenly freezing and tired and ready to go.
Which is what we did. We said our goodbyes, and then we pulled back down the driveway and out onto the roads that would take us home--Josh's car one way, mine the other--and I drove the road I used to drive on my way home from the restaurant at night, after working another Friday fish fry shift with Josh as my bus-boy, with Josh following me around and reminding me that he loved me. It was the tenth anniversary of my graduating high school, and as I parked my car and crept back into my house and snuck down the hallway quietly so I wouldn't wake my father, I felt about as young as I had in a pretty long time.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Just Call Him Mr. Dime Nipples
Last night at eleven, when I was driving home from the first round of weekend fireworks, my friend Josh called me. When I picked up, I could hear a bad band playing in the background and an awful lot of shrieking.
“JESSICA!” he shouted. “I’m at the beer tent! You need to come to the beer tent!”
In our hometown, the weekend surrounding or close to the fourth of July is dominated by the firemen’s carnival—in its 60th year now—which is all about the Italian sausage, the strawberry shortcake, and the beer tent. There are rides set up on the baseball field of course, but that’s not really what the majority of the town cares about. After the kids go to bed or get shuttled off to the babysitter’s, the adults and the underagers who are using someone older to score beers for them gather under one of the picnic shelters to drink cheap, watery beer and fling themselves around the dance floor.
“My mom is here!” Josh said. “She is drunk and she is dancing!”
Josh’s mother is like no one else’s mother. I love my mom, and I enjoy having some drinks with her, but there isn’t any bone in my body that has the desire to see my mom guzzle a ton of beer and then run around hugging me and all my friends, dance suggestively with her man, grind up and down in the middle of the dance floor for everyone to see. But Josh wants that, and for good reason: his mother is hilarious when she’s had a few, and that pleases Josh who values, above all else, a person’s ability to let loose and make an ass of herself. It is surprisingly easy to make an ass of yourself when you are with Josh.
“Who else is there?” I asked.
“Kristen,” Josh said. “And John. Jooooohn.”
I have always tortured Josh about his friend John. He is artsy and cute. He is a boy who is getting his MFA and looks like approximately like Adam Levine. One of my favorite pastimes is informing Josh of the extent to which I wouldn’t mind making out with John.
“Oooh,” I said. “John.”
“Are you coming?” Josh asked. “I can’t hear you! Are you coming?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m coming.”
And I did. I pulled into the park at midnight, which meant the beer tent would be open for approximately another hour. I parked my car on the muddy lawn behind the picnic shelter where the band was playing.
I walked around slowly, staying at the edge of the crowd, searching for Josh or his friends. I saw chubby girls jiggling across the width of the shelter. I saw teenagers with hair dyed black-black-black wearing purple eyeliner making sour faces as they searched for someone to buy them beer. I saw mothers still sporting the same unfortunate hairdos they had when they were in high school: big bangs and curls that had been attacked with a pick until they frizzed.
Men hung near the corners of the shelter, holding beer and cigarettes, and they watched the floor, assessing the selection of women available for hitting on.
Volunteer firemen were manning the pizza stand, the sausage stand, the beer stand. I recognized men who used to work with my father when he was a volunteer, and I wondered if they would know who I was by looking at me.
I couldn’t find Josh. I called him. “I’m here,” I said. “Come get me. Where are you?”
“Where are YOU?” he shouted. “Wait. Wait. I see you! You’re walking toward me!”
And suddenly I heard Josh’s voice, and it wasn’t on the phone. He was running at me, full speed. He was wearing a patriotic ensemble: a red-white-and blue t-shirt and a slick Pabst Blue Ribbon hat that was cocked crookedly across his forehead.
He snatched me up off the ground and hugged me like it was the first time he’d seen me since I’d been home, like he hadn’t just seen me the night before, when he’d had mojitos with us and then insisted that I ride on the back of his bike from one bar to the other, which, if I hadn’t already had four drinks, I would have recognized was a horrible idea. I’d clutched at Josh and screamed, “I DO NOT KNOW WHERE TO PUT MY LEGS! JOSHUA! WHERE DO I PUT MY LEGS?!”
But at the beer tent, that was all a distant memory.
Josh set me down and we made our way back to his friends, who were sitting at a picnic bench that was drenched from the earlier rain shower.
“Do you want a beer?” Josh asked. He was drunk and loud. “DO YOU?”
“You can have this one,” John said. He flicked a half-empty cup sitting in the middle of the table.
“Yeah?” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s only spiked with a roofie,” John said. “No big deal.”
“I have a ticket,” Josh said, and he shoved it in my face. It was pink and said BEER!
“Will you go get it for me?” I asked. I gave him my best smile.
“Oh, okay,” he said, and he disappeared.
When he came back, he set the beer down and collapsed on the bench next to me. “Kristen,” he said. “I want to see your cats. I want to make love to Chumba.”
Josh and Kristen, who live together in the city, often have her cats living with them, too, and Josh loves this more than anything. He is crazy for cats—especially Kristen’s cats. He likes to balance them on top of doors to see how they will handle the new heights.
“I love the cats,” Josh said. “Hey. I saw Wagner in there. He’s such a fucking pussy.” He poked me in the side. “My mom is here, Jess. Are you going to write about this night sometime? You are, aren’t you? My mom is drunk.”
And not long after that, his mother made an appearance. She came up behind Josh and caught him in a hug.
“Hi, Val,” he said. “You’re drunk.”
She had with her a beer and her husband. You might remember them from one of the funniest conversations of my life (#3).
“Your uncle’s in there dancing on the table,” his mother said. “It’s great.”
“Mom,” Josh said, “do you remember Jess? This is Jess.” He put an arm around me. “Jess is the writer.”
“Josh!” his mother said. “Josh, you don’t have to introduce her by her profession. I know who she is. She’s a human being, not a profession.”
“You’re right,” Josh said, very seriously.
Now, Josh’s step-father was wiggling his hips to the beat of “Sweet Home Alabama.”
“I remember you,” he said. “You were at our house that one time.”
I’ve been at Josh’s house a lot, but usually no one else is home and we end up drinking wine and vodka at 3:00 in the afternoon and running around shooting leaves with BB guns.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You’re the writer,” the step-father said.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
"The writer!” Josh’s friend John said. He raised his beer and cigarette into the air.
“You’re very observant of all this,” the step-father said. He narrowed his eyes at me. He made the universal I’m-watching-you sign and gestured two fingers toward his eyes. “Me too. I’m like that too. I watch everything.”
Josh’s mother was hugging him and hugging Kristen and hugging John.
“You like to watch everything, take everything in,” Josh’s step-father said.
“I do,” I said.
“She’s going to write about this,” Josh said. “I know. I can tell.”
Josh’s step-father stepped to his right and began to hump the air around Kristen’s head.
Kristen closed her eyes and drank her beer. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Mom!” Josh said. “Mom, he is HUMPING KRISTEN!”
Josh’s mom was dancing to the music.
“Mom!” Josh tugged at the sleeve of her denim jacket. “Can you make him stop?”
“This is just like when I used to serve shots at the strip club,” Kristen said. Josh’s step-father held his beer carefully as he continued to pump his hips in the air.
“Are you going to come drink with us?” Josh’s mom asked. “We’re leaving.”
Josh shook his head. “We’re going to see the cats at Kristen’s.” He made a dreamy face and pretended to snuggle the air like it was a cat. “I love those cats,” he said.
“We’re leaving,” Josh’s mom said. Her husband stopped humping and brought his beer back to his lips.
“Okay,” Josh said. “Goodbye, Val!” He launched into her like a football player attempting a tackle, and he hugged her tight.
After they left to continue their drinking elsewhere, Kristen began taking pictures of the two boys. She conducted a pretty rigid photo sessions. “Turn your head an inch to the right. Okay. Hold it right there,” she would say. “Lift your eyes a little. Look up at the sky. Don’t breathe. Okay.” Then she would take the picture with the phone and turn it for us to see, and there was John or Josh encased in some frame that made it look like they were being swallowed by a shark or wearing a an old West sheriff’s hat.
The boys thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Josh laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he wheezed and leaned against me until he caught his breath.
“Pose like you’re sucking dick!” Josh insisted of John. “Do a little dick sucking!”
“Wait,” John said. “Am I posing like I’m sucking or being sucked?”
“Sucking!” Josh said. He demonstrated.
“Oh,” John said. “Right.”
The results were funny, and Josh leapt off the picnic bench and bent over, laughing. He started talking nonsense.
“Vagina,” he said. “Dick sucker!” He spun around at the precise moment a short but scrappy man walked by. Josh opened his mouth to say something, and I started to pray that he would have some small shred of sanity available to realize speaking like that in this guy’s direction was going to be a bad idea. The guy, who looked like he was the type to haunt any of our small town bars, drinking whiskey and telling other guys what motherfuckers they were until one of them challenged him to fight, narrowed his eyes at Josh.
Josh turned abruptly around. “Jesus,” he said and sat back down.
It went on like that through a few more beers. Josh couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved Kristen’s cats—“You really like them,” John said. “Are you going to finger-bang them?”—and people they went to school with kept floating by.
Josh slung his arm around a tall, chubby girl. “I bit her in elementary school,” he told me. “I got sent to the principal.”
“Hiiiiii, Josh,” another girl said. She walked by an sent a sly, flirty look over her shoulder at him.
She was ignored.
Kristen gestured to Josh. “Josh has nipples the size of dimes,” she said. “Seriously. That’s at their biggest. DIMES.”
“Dime nipples!” John said.
“Show us your nipples, Josh,” Kristen said.
“No,” Josh said.
“Come on!” Kristen said.
Josh shrugged. “Okay.” He tugged his shirt up and showed off his nipples.
“See?” Kristen said, smug. “Dimes! Told you!”
It started to rain soon after, and we decided to go—but not before the boys snuck off to go to the bathroom behind the tents and food stands, not before John told me about the new playground just behind the carnival setup, not before we walked straight into the dark and examined the new playground equipment, not before we climbed the slippery rock wall, not before John insisted I stand in the middle of the rickety, swingy wooden bridge so he could bounce me like the boys would do to the girls when we were little.
After we were finished on the playground, we headed off to our cars, and on the way Josh and John got into a scuffle—they were trying to wrestle, see who was bigger, badder, stronger. They locked arms and tried to force each other to the ground. This happened in front of the shelter, where the band was packing up, where everyone else was finishing up their beer.
“Oh Jesus,” Kristen said.
There were cops loafing in the dark, standing underneath the now-closed pizza stand, and one of them stepped forward, not sure if Josh and John were serious with their sloppy brawl.
I thought it was fairly easy to see it wasn’t serious—there was an awful lot of giggling going on, after all—but the cop bent close to say something to them.
The boys popped up and started talking back to the cop.
“Oh Jesus,” Kristen repeated. “I think we better go get them before they say something stupid.”
“Hi!” Josh said brightly as we approached.
“Good evening, ladies,” the cop said.
“Hello,” we said.
“Are you here to claim these guys?” he asked.
We nodded.
“You sure you want to?” the cop asked.
“Mostly,” I said.
“They need to go home.”
Josh was singing lyrics under his breath. He giggled.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Have a good night then,” the cop said. “GOOD NIGHT!” Josh shouted, and then I took him back to my car, and he waited patiently while I made my way through the mud to unlock the doors.
“You’re going to write about this?” he asked. “Aren’t you? I love when you write about stuff like this. I love YOU. Hey! I’m going to get to see the cats!”
“JESSICA!” he shouted. “I’m at the beer tent! You need to come to the beer tent!”
In our hometown, the weekend surrounding or close to the fourth of July is dominated by the firemen’s carnival—in its 60th year now—which is all about the Italian sausage, the strawberry shortcake, and the beer tent. There are rides set up on the baseball field of course, but that’s not really what the majority of the town cares about. After the kids go to bed or get shuttled off to the babysitter’s, the adults and the underagers who are using someone older to score beers for them gather under one of the picnic shelters to drink cheap, watery beer and fling themselves around the dance floor.
“My mom is here!” Josh said. “She is drunk and she is dancing!”
Josh’s mother is like no one else’s mother. I love my mom, and I enjoy having some drinks with her, but there isn’t any bone in my body that has the desire to see my mom guzzle a ton of beer and then run around hugging me and all my friends, dance suggestively with her man, grind up and down in the middle of the dance floor for everyone to see. But Josh wants that, and for good reason: his mother is hilarious when she’s had a few, and that pleases Josh who values, above all else, a person’s ability to let loose and make an ass of herself. It is surprisingly easy to make an ass of yourself when you are with Josh.
“Who else is there?” I asked.
“Kristen,” Josh said. “And John. Jooooohn.”
I have always tortured Josh about his friend John. He is artsy and cute. He is a boy who is getting his MFA and looks like approximately like Adam Levine. One of my favorite pastimes is informing Josh of the extent to which I wouldn’t mind making out with John.
“Oooh,” I said. “John.”
“Are you coming?” Josh asked. “I can’t hear you! Are you coming?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m coming.”
And I did. I pulled into the park at midnight, which meant the beer tent would be open for approximately another hour. I parked my car on the muddy lawn behind the picnic shelter where the band was playing.
I walked around slowly, staying at the edge of the crowd, searching for Josh or his friends. I saw chubby girls jiggling across the width of the shelter. I saw teenagers with hair dyed black-black-black wearing purple eyeliner making sour faces as they searched for someone to buy them beer. I saw mothers still sporting the same unfortunate hairdos they had when they were in high school: big bangs and curls that had been attacked with a pick until they frizzed.
Men hung near the corners of the shelter, holding beer and cigarettes, and they watched the floor, assessing the selection of women available for hitting on.
Volunteer firemen were manning the pizza stand, the sausage stand, the beer stand. I recognized men who used to work with my father when he was a volunteer, and I wondered if they would know who I was by looking at me.
I couldn’t find Josh. I called him. “I’m here,” I said. “Come get me. Where are you?”
“Where are YOU?” he shouted. “Wait. Wait. I see you! You’re walking toward me!”
And suddenly I heard Josh’s voice, and it wasn’t on the phone. He was running at me, full speed. He was wearing a patriotic ensemble: a red-white-and blue t-shirt and a slick Pabst Blue Ribbon hat that was cocked crookedly across his forehead.
He snatched me up off the ground and hugged me like it was the first time he’d seen me since I’d been home, like he hadn’t just seen me the night before, when he’d had mojitos with us and then insisted that I ride on the back of his bike from one bar to the other, which, if I hadn’t already had four drinks, I would have recognized was a horrible idea. I’d clutched at Josh and screamed, “I DO NOT KNOW WHERE TO PUT MY LEGS! JOSHUA! WHERE DO I PUT MY LEGS?!”
But at the beer tent, that was all a distant memory.
Josh set me down and we made our way back to his friends, who were sitting at a picnic bench that was drenched from the earlier rain shower.
“Do you want a beer?” Josh asked. He was drunk and loud. “DO YOU?”
“You can have this one,” John said. He flicked a half-empty cup sitting in the middle of the table.
“Yeah?” I said. “What’s wrong with it?”
“It’s only spiked with a roofie,” John said. “No big deal.”
“I have a ticket,” Josh said, and he shoved it in my face. It was pink and said BEER!
“Will you go get it for me?” I asked. I gave him my best smile.
“Oh, okay,” he said, and he disappeared.
When he came back, he set the beer down and collapsed on the bench next to me. “Kristen,” he said. “I want to see your cats. I want to make love to Chumba.”
Josh and Kristen, who live together in the city, often have her cats living with them, too, and Josh loves this more than anything. He is crazy for cats—especially Kristen’s cats. He likes to balance them on top of doors to see how they will handle the new heights.
“I love the cats,” Josh said. “Hey. I saw Wagner in there. He’s such a fucking pussy.” He poked me in the side. “My mom is here, Jess. Are you going to write about this night sometime? You are, aren’t you? My mom is drunk.”
And not long after that, his mother made an appearance. She came up behind Josh and caught him in a hug.
“Hi, Val,” he said. “You’re drunk.”
She had with her a beer and her husband. You might remember them from one of the funniest conversations of my life (#3).
“Your uncle’s in there dancing on the table,” his mother said. “It’s great.”
“Mom,” Josh said, “do you remember Jess? This is Jess.” He put an arm around me. “Jess is the writer.”
“Josh!” his mother said. “Josh, you don’t have to introduce her by her profession. I know who she is. She’s a human being, not a profession.”
“You’re right,” Josh said, very seriously.
Now, Josh’s step-father was wiggling his hips to the beat of “Sweet Home Alabama.”
“I remember you,” he said. “You were at our house that one time.”
I’ve been at Josh’s house a lot, but usually no one else is home and we end up drinking wine and vodka at 3:00 in the afternoon and running around shooting leaves with BB guns.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You’re the writer,” the step-father said.
“Yes,” I said. “I am.”
"The writer!” Josh’s friend John said. He raised his beer and cigarette into the air.
“You’re very observant of all this,” the step-father said. He narrowed his eyes at me. He made the universal I’m-watching-you sign and gestured two fingers toward his eyes. “Me too. I’m like that too. I watch everything.”
Josh’s mother was hugging him and hugging Kristen and hugging John.
“You like to watch everything, take everything in,” Josh’s step-father said.
“I do,” I said.
“She’s going to write about this,” Josh said. “I know. I can tell.”
Josh’s step-father stepped to his right and began to hump the air around Kristen’s head.
Kristen closed her eyes and drank her beer. “Oh my God,” she said.
“Mom!” Josh said. “Mom, he is HUMPING KRISTEN!”
Josh’s mom was dancing to the music.
“Mom!” Josh tugged at the sleeve of her denim jacket. “Can you make him stop?”
“This is just like when I used to serve shots at the strip club,” Kristen said. Josh’s step-father held his beer carefully as he continued to pump his hips in the air.
“Are you going to come drink with us?” Josh’s mom asked. “We’re leaving.”
Josh shook his head. “We’re going to see the cats at Kristen’s.” He made a dreamy face and pretended to snuggle the air like it was a cat. “I love those cats,” he said.
“We’re leaving,” Josh’s mom said. Her husband stopped humping and brought his beer back to his lips.
“Okay,” Josh said. “Goodbye, Val!” He launched into her like a football player attempting a tackle, and he hugged her tight.
After they left to continue their drinking elsewhere, Kristen began taking pictures of the two boys. She conducted a pretty rigid photo sessions. “Turn your head an inch to the right. Okay. Hold it right there,” she would say. “Lift your eyes a little. Look up at the sky. Don’t breathe. Okay.” Then she would take the picture with the phone and turn it for us to see, and there was John or Josh encased in some frame that made it look like they were being swallowed by a shark or wearing a an old West sheriff’s hat.
The boys thought it was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. Josh laughed so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he wheezed and leaned against me until he caught his breath.
“Pose like you’re sucking dick!” Josh insisted of John. “Do a little dick sucking!”
“Wait,” John said. “Am I posing like I’m sucking or being sucked?”
“Sucking!” Josh said. He demonstrated.
“Oh,” John said. “Right.”
The results were funny, and Josh leapt off the picnic bench and bent over, laughing. He started talking nonsense.
“Vagina,” he said. “Dick sucker!” He spun around at the precise moment a short but scrappy man walked by. Josh opened his mouth to say something, and I started to pray that he would have some small shred of sanity available to realize speaking like that in this guy’s direction was going to be a bad idea. The guy, who looked like he was the type to haunt any of our small town bars, drinking whiskey and telling other guys what motherfuckers they were until one of them challenged him to fight, narrowed his eyes at Josh.
Josh turned abruptly around. “Jesus,” he said and sat back down.
It went on like that through a few more beers. Josh couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved Kristen’s cats—“You really like them,” John said. “Are you going to finger-bang them?”—and people they went to school with kept floating by.
Josh slung his arm around a tall, chubby girl. “I bit her in elementary school,” he told me. “I got sent to the principal.”
“Hiiiiii, Josh,” another girl said. She walked by an sent a sly, flirty look over her shoulder at him.
She was ignored.
Kristen gestured to Josh. “Josh has nipples the size of dimes,” she said. “Seriously. That’s at their biggest. DIMES.”
“Dime nipples!” John said.
“Show us your nipples, Josh,” Kristen said.
“No,” Josh said.
“Come on!” Kristen said.
Josh shrugged. “Okay.” He tugged his shirt up and showed off his nipples.
“See?” Kristen said, smug. “Dimes! Told you!”
It started to rain soon after, and we decided to go—but not before the boys snuck off to go to the bathroom behind the tents and food stands, not before John told me about the new playground just behind the carnival setup, not before we walked straight into the dark and examined the new playground equipment, not before we climbed the slippery rock wall, not before John insisted I stand in the middle of the rickety, swingy wooden bridge so he could bounce me like the boys would do to the girls when we were little.
After we were finished on the playground, we headed off to our cars, and on the way Josh and John got into a scuffle—they were trying to wrestle, see who was bigger, badder, stronger. They locked arms and tried to force each other to the ground. This happened in front of the shelter, where the band was packing up, where everyone else was finishing up their beer.
“Oh Jesus,” Kristen said.
There were cops loafing in the dark, standing underneath the now-closed pizza stand, and one of them stepped forward, not sure if Josh and John were serious with their sloppy brawl.
I thought it was fairly easy to see it wasn’t serious—there was an awful lot of giggling going on, after all—but the cop bent close to say something to them.
The boys popped up and started talking back to the cop.
“Oh Jesus,” Kristen repeated. “I think we better go get them before they say something stupid.”
“Hi!” Josh said brightly as we approached.
“Good evening, ladies,” the cop said.
“Hello,” we said.
“Are you here to claim these guys?” he asked.
We nodded.
“You sure you want to?” the cop asked.
“Mostly,” I said.
“They need to go home.”
Josh was singing lyrics under his breath. He giggled.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Have a good night then,” the cop said. “GOOD NIGHT!” Josh shouted, and then I took him back to my car, and he waited patiently while I made my way through the mud to unlock the doors.
“You’re going to write about this?” he asked. “Aren’t you? I love when you write about stuff like this. I love YOU. Hey! I’m going to get to see the cats!”
Thursday, June 25, 2009
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:
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:
- "I want to shellac the world." -- Me, at Diana's
- "I'll conjugate his verb." -- Author unknown, although that sure sounds like something I'd say
- "Will you diaphragm his sentence? UGH! DIAGRAM! I MEAN DIAGRAM!" -- Amy
- During a discussion on the magazine Cosmopolitan: "It's a female magazine." -- Amy; "A female manatee?" -- Matt
- "Those girls are big, bearded, plaid-wearing, campfire-making lesbians." -- Jeff
Notes to Self:
- Sign on 169, heading to Minneapolis: COWS IN ROAD. USE CAUTION. BE PREPARED TO STOP.
- Oglala. Lakota.
- Pig! [The exclamation is dotted with a heart]
- Teacher (young). Gets attention from student (failed a few grades?) Scene: teacher chaperoning @ h.s. dance.
- Amy wants her gravestone to read: SHE LIKED CHEESE.
- Unsalted butter. 3 1/2 oz. 2 cups heavy cream.
- Congratulations Seth & Amanda. Congratulations Seth & Penny. Both on parents' business billboard. Two pregnant girls. Will the parents really announce both?
- Amy's students think the word sectionalism is dirty. (Caucus too.)
- 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]
- Dear Baby, What's crappenin'? Here's what I think: my thoughts are not complete.
Youare 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. - 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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