It's a Whole New World

The other day, after Katy read that The Lady-Killer had procured a pile of chips from a dumpster outside a Frito-Lay warehouse in town, she called and said, "You're SO going to eat those chips. I know you are! Jess of five years ago would have never eaten those chips! It's a whole new world."

I told her I wasn't going to eat those chips. I told her there was no way in the world I was going to eat those chips. But guess what? I ate those chips. TLK opened the bag of cheddar-sour cream Ruffles, which are, like, one of my favorites, and he said, "Hey! Look! These ones aren't even expired. They just didn't have a lot of air in the bag! I bet that's why they got thrown out."

And I tasted them. I just wanted to see. I tasted the dumpster chips.

I TASTED DUMPSTER CHIPS. What the hell is wrong with me?

Life As I Know It Is Now Over

Friends, the semester starts tomorrow morning. For the last four months, my life has consisted of the following things: sleep, kissing, food, a lot of driving, vodka, and more sleep. Starting tomorrow morning, my life will consist of the following things: department meetings, committee meetings, syllabi, dry erase markers, and papers.

That second list is a lot less cool.

But to celebrate the fact that a.) I got everything done before the start of the semester... even though I slacked off for all of May, June, July, and August; and b.) it's been a hell of a time, let's review some of my favorite pictures of the summer!

I got an iMac. iMacs come with built-in cameras, and we made use of that camera often. See also:

We're fancy.

We're cartoon-y.

We're on the moon!

Also this summer, there was a Pink Torpedo bachelorette party to deal with! And deal with it we did.

See? We dealt with it with penis. Pink penis.

And also some chocolate penis.

And then there was the Great Pink Torpedo Wedding of 2010. Remember? There was puking!

But more important (and less disgusting) than the puking, there was the bride and the groom (and that gorgeous headpiece).

There was also some magnificent ROCKING OUT.

And then there was the trip to the Midwest, which was unlike my other post-grad school trips to the Midwest in that its main purpose was not to be inebriated for five days in a row. Its purpose was to spend every available moment cuddling babies, like this one. He's a Wisconsinite. He belongs to two of my favorite people in the universe. He and I are best friends.

And here's the other baby. It might be true that she and I are not yet best friends--I brought her a tutu to, you know, selfishly buy her love--but she wasn't having it. Someday, though, she'll realize I'm uniquely handy--like when she's pining away after some blond football star who doesn't know she exists. Madelyn, your mother isn't going to want to talk about that stuff with you. But let me break out the reams of rhyming poetry I wrote about that situation in sixth grade, and if you're good I might give you half a glass of wine while we bond. Promise.

What I learned about babies: They can wear robes!

This picture was taken outside Lorrie Moore's office (!!!!) at UW Madison. It was a big moment for me. Also, just so we're clear: That sign totally says EROTIC POETRY.

My summer was filled with babies: newborns and not-yet-borns. I did hours of art therapy with the not-yet-born and his mother.

I think it's quite clear that this was an excellent summer, and I'm sad to leave it behind, but--as always--I'm happy too. There's just something about first days, about the hope that comes along with them.

I'm ready.

All right, I won't lie. I'm not ready. But bring it on anyway.

On the Occasion of Everyone I Know Being Knocked Up

Holy shit. Everyone I know is pregnant.

This all started in October, when Katy and Matt showed up in Maine.

"So," Katy said, "if we drive by a drug store, we should probably stop in."

"What do you need?" I asked. I am a girl with plenty of sundries, and if she needed anything--deodorant, lotion, tampons, laxatives--I would be able to accommodate those needs without having to pop over to a CVS.

But Katy just grinned. "Well," she said, "I took a pregnancy test last night, and it was positive, so I think I should take another one to get a second opinion."

And then I squealed. I squealed a lot. And then, after we ate a lobster lunch on the rocks of Cape Elizabeth, we drove straight to the drugstore and wandered up the family planning aisle.

Katy couldn't help herself. She stared at the prices--pregnancy tests aren't cheap--and then she reached for the cheapest one on the shelf.

"NO!" Matt and I said, in unison.

Her hand froze in midair. "What?" she said. "Seriously, what's wrong with a cheap pregnancy test?"

"You get what you pay for," I said. I was remembering last October, when I visited Minnesota and Diana threw a party after the Good Thunder reading, and we made Babies-in-the-Cupcakes, and whoever found a baby in his or her cupcake got a present from the grab bag. We'd combed the aisles of the local dollar store for an hour, just looking for good gifts to hand out later. We'd selected some boas, some statues, some tubes of dollar store lube, and, of course, a pregnancy test. One of the boys was lucky enough to choose the pregnancy test, and he strode upstairs with a beer in one hand and the test in another. He did his business while we all gathered outside to talk him through the process, and then he came out of the bathroom beaming. It was good news: He was with child.

So, a year later, standing in the family planning aisle of the Cape Elizabeth CVS with Katy, I felt compelled to remind her of that. "Will we really feel confident about the result from a cheap test?" I asked.

Katy frowned.

"Don't be cheap," Matt said.

Katy frowned even more, but she edged her hand higher, toward the more expensive brands. "Can I at least get this brand?" she asked, poking to a store brand box. "It's a two-pack! It's a deal!"

Matt and I sighed. She plucked the box from the shelf and went off to pay.

A few hours later, there were a tense few moments in my bathroom before Katy came out waving a stick in the air. "Look!" she said. Oh, and we sure did:



And then we celebrated:



Yes, I put the stick Katy peed on very close to my face. In my defense, the gross end was capped.

Matt and I were excited by the results. I think it will please Katy that I've put a very rare picture of me in sweat pants out here for the world to see.



I can't remember what Katy is drinking here. It might be Loganberry. I might've been so pleased that I mixed her a big glass of Loganberry because, well, she earned it.

Not long after Katy and Matt left Maine for Mankato, I got more news. This time I was in my car, and I was driving the two hours down to Boston to pick Josh up from the airport after he ditched France. I had just crossed over into New Hampshire when Rachel, another of my best grad school girls, was having a baby, too. The kicker? She was due only three weeks before Katy. The two of them were going to be having babies at pretty much the exact same time.

At first I felt a stab of jealousy because my brain went fast-forwarding through the next few months, and I could see them pushing their stomachs together and posing for pictures, shopping for cute maternity clothes, comparing aches and pains, secretly swapping name ideas. And then, as quickly as it came, the jealousy disappeared and was replaced by another feeling, and that feeling has been simmering for a while now.

It's hard being away from my old friends. They're spread out from Buffalo to California. They're everywhere in between. They're nowhere near me. And it seems so odd that I was there for their weddings, for their first big steps into adulthood, but now I won't be there for the next. It seems completely bizarre to me that they will be pregnant all that time, and I will not see them. I'll never get to put my hand on their swollen stomachs and wait patiently to feel a kick. The night I first realized that, I was overwhelmed with sadness. I wanted to pack a bag and fly to Minnesota right then, right that second, but I couldn't, and I didn't, and instead I am trying to find comfort in the fact that, yes, this summer I'm driving out, and I'm going to spend time with the new babies in the Midwest, and, yes, Katy is forcing me to change my very first diaper then, and, yes, I will do my part in spoiling the new babies, and that's all great and wonderful and lovely, but it still seems just so quick, like those girls are going to snap their fingers and then, before you know it, before you can even orient yourself, everything is different, and I wasn't even there to see the change.

The End of the Semester: Notes

(1.)

I go to school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and then I am done, done, done.


(2.)

I call my father. I need gift ideas for his fiancee.

I say, "What does Kathy want for Christmas?"

He says, "She never tells me."

I say, "How about toilet paper? Do you think she'd like some toilet paper?"

I recently bought what I'll quantify as a WHOLE FUCKING LOT of toilet paper because, well, it was a good price. (I felt very thrifty, very Midwestern at the exact moment I was cradling the giant package of toilet paper in my arms and hiking it back to the registers. Really, I was channeling my inner Katy.)

When I arrived home with my whole fucking lot of toilet paper, I realized I didn't have enough room for it. I am in toilet paper surplus. I have more triple-roll spools than I know what to do with. Right now, they are in my closet, stuffed behind garment bags full of dresses.

"Toilet paper, huh?" my father says. "Well, sure. Now there's a gift. Who wouldn't love getting that?"


(3.)

I call my father again, later.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "Are you Christmas shopping?"

"I am doing the dishes," he says. "Hey. Guess what. We went to a wedding last night."

"Whose?"

"No one you know. A friend of Kathy's. Anyway, I skipped the wedding itself, but Kathy went. When we met up before we went to the reception, and she told me she had a surprise for me. Someone we had in common was going to be there, and we'd get to sit with them during dinner."

"Who was it?"

"Your brother."

"My brother?"

"Yeah. And you should've seen him." My father laughs. "That kid was a dancer last night. I've never seen him like that before. He was spastic. He danced with everyone... even the groom. I think he might've had one too many pops, if you know what I mean."


(4.)

So, there's this student. This student is a male, around my age, an auto guy. I think it's safe to say he has a crush on me. I make this assumption because of the following items: a.) Last weekend I received an e-mail from him that referred to me as "Doll" ; b.) he routinely asks if I'd like to hang out with him on the weekends, even after I've scolded him and told him to stop asking that because I'm his teacher, and he's my student, and NO ; c.) if I come over to help him, he likes to tell me I smell good ; d.) he's said, "So, I bet you have trouble with your guy students all the time, because, you know, you're hot and all." And then he waggled his eyebrows at me.

So, the other day in class, after one of my other students informed me she'd gotten me a Christmas present while she was down in New York visiting her boyfriend--"A boyfriend in New York," I said dreamily. "Swoon!"--the student with the crush said, "Well, I'm giving you your Christmas present next week."

"You got me a Christmas present?" I said. "There's really no need, you know."

"Oh, I didn't get it," he said. "I'm making it."

I think this is something I'm going to have to brace myself for.


(5.)

My grandmother sent a Christmas card the other day, and after I opened it and read it, I sat down to send a card in reply. When I was done, I realized what a poor job I'd done. I had written about how sad my students had made me this semester--what says Merry Christmas! more than an in-depth discussion of the decaying behavior and skill set of college-level students?!--and then I'd tried to change subjects by discussing the fun I was going to have next week when my friend Emily and I go Christmas shopping in Portland on the night they have free wine in all the stores.

When I was finished rereading it I knew I'd have to throw it out and start a new one. The end of the card--what with its shift in tone from downtrodden to upbeat, just when I'd started discussing Emily and all the good, glittering times we were going to have shopping--was just more evidence that I am a giant, hulking lesbian. And I figure grandma doesn't need to worry herself about that at Christmastime.

Illuminating

A conversation with Katy:


Me: Where's Matt?

Katy: The bathroom.

Me: I swear to God, one of you is ALWAYS in the bathroom. In fact, if you guys had a sitcom, that would be the running joke every week.

Katy: And it would be funny every week. You'd see it coming, but it'll always be good.

Me: I would be the wacky neighbor.

Katy: Yes! Like Roseanne's sister! You'd be like Jackie!

Me: Ew! Gross! I would not be Roseanne's sister!

Katy: Okay... you can be the neighbor from Will and Grace.

Me: Jack? A gay man?

Katy: No! The one who shops a lot!

Me: Karen? The drunk one with big boobs?

Katy: Sure! You and the gay guy could sit around and giggle all the time.

Me: Can I just say that I find it disturbing that you know Roseanne's sister's name but you don't know any of the characters from Will and Grace?

Katy: I love Roseanne! I grew up with that show!

Me: I wasn't allowed to watch it.

Katy: Why?

Me: My parents thought it was dirty and crass.

Katy: This explains a lot about our relationship.

Can't Get Enough of Your Hoo-Hoo

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

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

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

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

"Smartass," I said.

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

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

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

"It dies?!" she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burp, Fart, Etc.

I remember it like it was yesterday. Katy was standing at the foot of my bed, digging through a rumpled pile of clothes we'd pulled out of my closet. She'd called an hour before and said, "Oh my God! I don't have anything to wear! Can I come over and borrow some clothes?"

This was an unusual phone call for me to field from Katy at this point in our relationship. After all, she and I barely knew each other. I'd been in Minnesota for only a few months, and I wasn't yet quite sure how I felt about this short blond who hung up motivational posters in the giant bullpen office we shared with twelve other first-year graduate students who were teaching composition.

"You're such a girl!" Katy said as she flapped out a shirt and pressed it to her torso.

Katy was calling me such a girl because I was the opposite of her. Katy was calling me such a girl because I didn't own velour jogging suits that I counted as "going out outfits." She was calling me such a girl because I took a shower every morning, because I put on makeup before coming to school, because I threw out shoes that had holes in the soles, because I didn't teach in sneakers, because I always remembered to put on deodorant, because I didn't have a legendary collection of hoodies, because I shopped at places other than the Kohl's junior section clearance rack, because I refused to buy a shirt that didn't fit me, even if it was such a bargain priced at three tiny dollars. In short, Katy was calling me such a girl because I was very different than she was, and she liked to think of herself as above all that girly stuff. She wanted to be no-fuss and what-you-see-is-what-you-get. She wanted to drink cheap beer and eat baked potatoes at a bar while wearing a pink velour jogging suit.

But still, there she was, shrieking over my clothes, my shoes, my giant bin of earrings and necklaces and bracelets. She wanted to know how I had time for all of that stuff in the morning. She wanted to know how I didn't get overwhelmed with all those choices. And she wanted to see what she'd look like in this shirt, that shirt, this necklace, that necklace. This, of course, was a dead giveaway: sure, she wanted to mock me for my "girliness," but there was also a part of her that wanted to drape herself in all that girliness, too.

At the end of her visit, Katy walked out the door with a few of my shirts to wear, and she threw a wave over her shoulder as she headed for her car. "I'm so excited!" she sang out. "I've got a GIRLY FRIEND!"

For a long time I tried to fight that label. I resented that everyone I went to grad school with--even the boys, especially the boys--thought I was some fluffy, frivolous princess. I resented the fact that because I took care to shower every morning and turn on the light when pulling an outfit out of the closet, because I ran a comb through my hair before walking out the door, because I made sure I didn't stand in front of my class smelling like whiskey and strippers, because it took me fifty minutes from the moment I woke up to the moment I left for school, that I was thought of as a big girly-girly-girly-girl.

But I (mostly) got over it. And I (somewhat) even managed to force Katy into a girly streak of her own for the three years I lived in Minnesota. There were some very important lessons I tried to teach her before I went--things like one should not wear an oversize hoodie with a skirt and chunky shoes went out with My So-Called Life--and some of it took, but some of it didn't. Or maybe it is more precise to say that it took for a little while.

This past week when I was in Minnesota, there was a moment I found myself in Katy's closet, and she just looked up at me with sad eyes and said, "I'm bad, aren't I?"

We'd ended up in the closet because when we were getting ready to go to a party where there was going to be a lot of alcohol and a visiting writer who liked to read stories about anal sex, and when Katy came upstairs in her outfit--work pants and a sweater/dress shirt onesie--I blinked. Then I asked her if she knew she was going to a reading where the word sex would be used more than any other word. I asked her if she thought it was a bit weird she was wearing something she might wear to work--and she works in close vicinity to a cluster of nuns--to this type of function.

"Dress meeeee," she said, picking at the shirt she'd just tugged on.

And that's when she took me in the closet and gestured to my options. And that's when I realized that maybe a few things had backslid the last few years I've been away from Minnesota. I'm not saying she went back to the velour jogging suit era--far from it--but you could tell that the girl hadn't spent any time or money finding clothes that she really loved in forever.

Other things had gone on the backslide, too. The old Katy--the girl I imagine thrived as an undergraduate at MSU--had reared her head over the recent months, thanks to a childhood friend coming back into her life. This childhood friend liked to swill beer and burp and fart and pick her nose and scratch her breasts in public. These are things you will never see me doing. These are things you will quite often see Katy doing. (You will also see her pick "spicy stuff" out of her Chinese food at Yu's buffet, using only her fingers.)

While we were out at the bars on Halloween, this childhood friend of Katy's was with us, and she lived it up the way I imagine Katy used to when she was younger. After this girl--who dressed up as a character from some YouTube clip--took a giant swig of cheap beer, she'd hinge her head backward and rumble out a burp that smelled like fried food and olives. And then she'd giggle. And Katy would giggle. And I would think Ick.

But as much as I was dismayed by this kind of behavior--and some of Katy's backsliding into the not-showering-not-shopping-anywhere-but-Sears behavior--there wasn't much I could do about it. And why should I? I apparently have the corner on that girly-girly-girly-girl market, and why should someone who likes to talk about poop and farts as much as Katy be forced to be anything but what she is, anything but a girl who once thought it is completely fine to have a night out on the town wearing something that is all the rage with the assisted-living set down in Coral Gables, Florida?

A girl like that is one in a million.

Dropping My Ohhhhs As We Speak

There's an episode of The West Wing where there's some sort of prescription drug hubbub going on in the state of Minnesota, and CJ--the Bartlet administration's press secretary--gets wind of it. When she goes to tell Toby--the administration's communications director--about the trouble that's brewing--she begins this way: "Okay," she says, "say you're from Minnesota..."

Toby looks at her and says, "I'm from Minnesohhhtahhh."



That's sort of what I've been up to lately. When I first started mentioning to my students that I was getting on a plane and flying to Minnesota at the end of October, I said Minnesota like a normal person would. Over the last week, though, I've been saying Minnesohhtahhh. Today I even used the word "spendy." I'm preparing for my arrival here:

"Preparing" means dusting off the Minnesota accent I spent three years perfecting. "Preparing" means mixing a CD for Katy, who has been longing to huddle in my arms. "Preparing" means dreaming of all the ways I will cause trouble with my favorite people. "Preparing" means brainstorming what we're going to stick in cupcakes at the after-party for this. "Preparing" also means making sure to pack something that vaguely resembles a Halloween costume because Katy has already informed me that if I come sans costume, I am going to be forced to wear the Hooters waitress outfit from her dress-up bin. And if there's any specific costume I've wanted to avoid my entire life, it's a costume that would, in some way, intrigue my brother, who is a connoisseur of everything Hooters-related. I'd also like very much not to expose my orange-shorted ass in a state where it has already snowed, where it is guaranteed to be freezing.

I'll be there for the next few days. I'll be eating and drinking. I'll be busy being literary. I'll be hording cream cheese won tons and fried mac-n-cheese. I'll be dropping my ohhhs like no one's business. And it will all be beautiful. It will all be perfect.

And While We're on the Subject...

Some of my most treasured moments from my life in Minnesota revolve around the semi-annual sale at Victoria's Secret. If there's one thing Lutherans like, it's a good sale, a good bargain. And if those sales and bargains involve bins--you know, bins they have to dig through--all the better. This lets them show their chops, their skill. This lets them show just how thrifty they can be. After all, who in their right mind would pay full price for a pair of Victoria's Secret panties when they are just going to go on sale in six months? The Lutherans will tell you those things are spendy, so you might as well just wait it out.

And, boy, do they ever. Some of the most vicious semi-annual sale bin-digging I ever saw went down in Minnesota, and it went down with Katy at my side. That girl can attack a bin of lacy panties like no one's business, and she will rip a pair of panties out of someone's hands to get her semi-annual quota of cotton skivvies. She will spend an hour examining the contents of each bin, holding up the really perverted pairs--the ones missing a crotch, the ones with flimsy garters, the ones that have sayings like Knock! Knock! on the front (or back)--until she has exhausted herself.

This might explain why I go into mourning around the Victoria's Secret semi-annual sale. I've gone with my mother, with my Pink Torpedoes, with my cousin, even with the Boy From Work, but no one gets as big of a kick out of the sale as Katy. And now that I am nowhere near her, I have to dig through those bins by myself, mentally cataloguing all the funny or disturbing designs so that I can call her later and ask her if she got to see them, if she bought any for herself.

During this summer's semi-annual sale, I went a little crazy. I went at those bins like I was some sweet Lutheran girl, filled with hot dish and hope, and bought a large assortment of new panties for my collection. One of the pairs was a turquoise hipster affair with Swiss dots and ruffles and silver bows. They were the type of panties I imagined some blue-eyed milk maid slipping into before she went off to herd goats and sing songs about cheese. They were adorable.

So you can imagine my delight when I opened my birthday package from Katy--the one that contained origami, Spam singles, kitten treats, kitten toys, and Hello Kitty paraphernalia, as well as a card that included a hilarious joke about grammar--and found the same pair of panties I'd scooped up for myself a few months before.

The support for our eventual marriage continues to compound.

But seriously--just how well does the girl know me? We might as well get married--it's clear that it's already crossed her mind, so maybe we should just get it over with already. I can just picture it now: a reception with plenty of Mich Golden (kegs of it, lousy with olives), Katy in a tux, and a slow dance to some tune by Chicago. I can guarantee it would be one hell of a time.

Just a Little Gay

Tonight Katy calls me from Minnesota. She is drunk. She is in the tub. She is drinking wine and writing sestinas about me in the tub.

To be fair, I might've sent her an e-mail earlier in the day that requested she write a sestina about me tonight while I was in my creative writing class making my students puzzle out sestinas of their own.

When she calls, she reads me a few lines. "This is going to sound just a little gay," she says.

One of her end words was eggplant. Another was meat. There were lines that made us sound like lesbians of historic proportions.

"Oh!" she moans. "I'm not a poet!"

She is a little angry at herself. Before she got in the tub, she'd started brainstorming. She wanted to think of all the reasons she loved me. I love Jess, she thought, because we went to the Spam Museum together. Then, I love Jess because she and I went and looked up Jolly Green's leaf skirt together.

She is not happy with the reasons she'd come up with.

"What's wrong with those?" I ask her.

"That's not real," she says. "Those aren't reasons to love someone."

But I think those are the best reasons to love someone. You someone because she looks at you and says, "I will go wherever you go, no matter how ridiculous it is. I will follow you forever, and it will be the best thing I ever do." And then it is.

Later in the conversation, Katy sighs and tells me she won't be making it out to Maine in October like she'd planned. She won't see any foliage. She won't crack open a lobster. She won't breathe the briny air. And because of this, she is sad.

"I just want to come out there and huddle in your arms for a month," she says.

And that is probably the cutest thing she's ever said to me. And possibly the gayest.

My Friends Think He's a FILF

My father called at 7:55 tonight. When I answered the phone, he wanted to know what I was doing, what I was up to. He wanted to know if I was excited.

"It's premiere night!" he said.

Oh, as if I didn't know. While I might love summer for its sun and beaches and weather that allows me to wear sandals, I love fall even more. Fall, of course, means tastes like pumpkin and apple and cinnamon--which are some of my favorites--and it also means changing leaves and weather that allows me to wear thigh-high boots. It also means the start of the fall television season, and I, as I think has been extensively proven, love television. I especially love reality television that revolves around singing and dancing. Which means tonight is right up my alley.

Tonight Dancing with the Stars starts. And I'm not the only person in my family who loves Dancing with the Stars. My father loves Dancing with the Stars, too. He and I have similar reasons for loving the show: we have massive crushes on the professional dancers or the stars. For me, this season is going to be about the following things: loving Mark Ballas, loving Derek Hough, loving Rocco DiSpirito, and loving Lance Bass--the last one in a way that I know well. After all, I can love a gay man like no one else.

My father? He loves Karina. He loves Edyta. He loves Cheryl. He loves to send me vaguely perverted text messages about them when they--spangled and half-nude--appear on the screen.

I'd like to be her friend, my father texts me at 8:10 tonight, just after Cheryl has swished around the stage, flinging her hips around as easily as she flings her choppy bob.

Gross, I text back.

What's wrong with that? my father wants to know.

Gross, I type.

My father could be watching Monday Night Football like many of America's men, but he's not. He's watching the foxtrot and the cha-cha and he's trading catty text messages with his daughter about the fallen celebrities who are gluing on smiles and padding their bras and stuffing their spandex pants and making brilliant asses of themselves on television.

This might very well be part of my father's appeal. This might very well be why Katy just sent me a card the other day, a card that announced she thinks my father is a FILF.

Gross, I wrote back. You're just gross.

Swanky

Today is the birthday of the one, the only, the classy-swanky-sassy Katy. She is one of the best girls I know.

When I was single, she was always willing to fix me up with that guy she knew who stole flatware from the restaurant where he waited tables or that guy she knew who'd sliced his finger off in a meat grinder down in Iowa. I'll always be appreciative for that level of devotion. I'll always be there to make her meatloaf and brownies and champagne cocktails.

So here's to another year, Kathryn, and all the good things that are going to come your way. Cheers.

Tales from Mexico: That Girl with the Vaginal Piercing

One night after dinner and a show, the four of us went down to the beach and stared out into the dark ocean. It was lovely. It was peaceful. There were a few other people on the beach--a few older couples, a few parents with their little kids--but everyone was being quiet, serene.

After a couple minutes, the Boy From Work decided he was going swimming. He asked if anyone wanted to go in with him. At that moment, no one did, so he dove into the still-warm waves by himself. We watched him tumble head first into the salty foam for a few minutes before a tipsy group of college kids came and crashed down in the chairs right next to us. There were a million other places to sit on the beach--practically every single chair was free--but this threesome decided to sit on top of us. In fact, one of the girls sat in the chair the BFW had been sitting in before he stripped out of his T-shirt and ran to the water.

"Hi, ya'll!" one of the girls--the pretty one--chirped.

"Hi," we all said.

There were two girls, one guy. The pretty girl was tall, dark, thin, pretty. And quite obviously southern. The other girl was blond, chunky, giggly, and squrimy. She was the girlfriend of the guy, a frat boy with a capital F who was wearing a graphic tee and backward hat. He had a puffed-up chest. He walked like he had something lodged in his ass.

"Where ya'll from?" the pretty one asked.

Katy took over answering, which was fine by me. I didn't really want to sit around and make pleasantries with college kids who had already funneled more booze into their systems than I would all week. The girl kept asking questions, and Katy kept answering. And then there was silence for a beat or two before the pretty girl snapped upright and said, "I want to go swimming."

The girls were wearing dresses. The other one drew the pretty one's attention to that fact.

"Oh, I don't care!" the pretty one said. "I'll go in naked!"

A couple yards away from us, a little boy was making sandcastles while his parents rested against their own reclined chairs. Beyond them was another couple that was walking its baby through the sand for what looked like the first time. I stared at them and back at the girl. Did she see them? Did she see the other people on the beach?

"There are some kids over there," the chubby one said.

The pretty one slumped back in her chair and was quiet for a handful of seconds before snapping up again and saying, "I don't care! It's my birthday, and I'm gonna get naked!"

She turned to us again. "Ya'll wanna get naked with me?" she asked.

Katy giggled. Matt laughed. I said, "I think I'm gonna have to pass."

"Okay," she said, and shrugged. Then she was out of her chair and unwinding the ties of her dress, shrugging out of it, pooling it at her feet. And there she was, a naked girl standing a few feet from me.

I hadn't planned on being that close to a naked girl on my vacation. I'd been surprised by some topless sunbathers on our beach earlier that day ("Where does it say this is a nude beach?" I asked, to which Matt sagely replied, "Jess, there is a different culture down here. Nude sunbathing is standard." And then he--and every other man on the beach--ogled their bronzing nipples.), but that was as close to nude strangers as I wanted to get over the course of our stay. But then the southern girl and her very fake breasts were bouncing up and down next to me.

"Come on, come on, come on!" she shrieked and then took off running. She ran right into the water, right out to where my boyfriend was playing chicken with the waves. And then the chubby blond was naked and chasing after her. The guy gave a little shrug and jogged after them, still clad in shorts.

Katy watched the girls with big, surprised eyes. There was something kind of beautiful about that moment--all that shrieking, giggling, splashing. The other people on the beach were grinning and needling each other with elbows.

"I think I want to go in," Katy said, and then she was up and out of her chair and pulling off her clothes.

"Oh my God," I said.

"I'll go too," Matt said, "but I am keeping my clothes on. All the guys have their clothes on."

"My boyfriend is going to see your boobs," I informed Katy, who was already nude. But she didn't care. She was going in, and she was going in naked. She dashed toward the shoreline with her hands trying to cover the important points. She and Matt joined the others who were rising and falling with the swell of the waves. They shrieked and giggled and splashed. They screamed and jumped and dove. They were bright white forms cutting through all that dark, all that night.

And I sat in my chair, tapping my toes, laughing at them, and knowing that the easiest part was over. The getting in--the quick dash to the water, where people could only see their naked butts--had gone surprisingly fine. But now, now they were going to have to drag themselves out of the surf and face the beach and everyone on it--including those couples with the kids, including the couples old enough to be our grandparents--and sprint toward the chairs, where they would have to wiggle awkwardly into their clothes. Trying to get dry clothes over so much wet is not easy, so there would be several tenuous seconds where they would struggle, struggle, struggle to get their slick bodies inside clothes that got stuck, got damp, got tangled in the haste. And I knew it was going to be funny. And, oh, was it ever.

Katy realized all those troublesome things when she started swimming back toward shore. That's precisely why she demanded Matt take off his shorts and give them to her, so no one saw her lady bits. He had underwear on, at least, and could walk out with a little less terror than she would if completely naked. And they scuttled through the wet sand that way--Katy with her husband's pants bunched around her waist, her other hand desperately trying to cover a chest that was too big to be covered with one hand; Matt dripping and laughing and wearing only a pair of underwear.

And it was funny. It was the funniest thing ever. Until later, after the frat boy and his two girls--dripping, squirming, wondering how they were going to dry off and not drip all the way up to their room--said goodbye for the night. When they left, Matt turned to me and opened his eyes wide. "She," he said conspiratorially, "had a piercing... on her vagina."

Which is a sentence I was pretty sure I would not hear on my Mexican vacation.

Muy Bien, Part Two

And here are more of my favorite pictures from Mexico:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Muy Bien, Part One

I have so many stories to tell from our trip to Mexico, but before I get around to that, here are some of my favorite pictures from our heavenly week in salty, sun-soaked Puerto Vallarta:

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Mexico: Seven Full Days of Talking About Poop

My friend Katy likes to talk about poop. And farts. And anything butt-related. She giggles every time she farts. She pinches her nose and wags her hand in front of her face. "Ooooh-ooooh," she says. "That's a bad one!"

Katy enjoys discussing the look and feel of her bowel movements. She even likes to discuss the look and feel of her husband's bowel movements. She likes asking other people about their bowel movements, too. She's naturally curious that way. And I've known this about her for a very, very long time.

When I was still in Minnesota, Katy admitted she was confused by me. I wasn't like her. I didn't like to talk about poop, farts, or other butt-related things. I didn't honk my way through dinner. I didn't rate the smells of my bathroom excursions. I wanted nothing to do with any of that. As far as I was--and still am--concerned, the world does not need to know details about the more intimate of my bodily functions. I think some things are better left to mystery, and pooping/farting is one of them.

Therefore, Katy had one special request: she wanted me to blast out an audible fart when she was in the room. This, she said, could be a Christmas present, a birthday present, or--if I did it in front of her and her husband--an anniversary present! She insisted that's all it would take to please her. But I was never able to muster up the desire to give her that kind of gift, and as I was hugging her goodbye on the day I left Minnesota for good, she tearfully reminded me I'd never once farted in front of her, and that made her very, very sad.

I should've known, then, that Katy would be the type of girl to use our vacation to Mexico--where, it just so happens, she would be meeting the Boy From Work for the first time--to try to bring my boyfriend over to the dark side. She wanted him to talk about poop and farts with her. And she wanted to discuss my resistance to talking about poop and farts. And she wanted to say the word POOP! POOP! POOP! so much that my cheeks would run out of blush.

I prefer not discussing these things with anyone, much less boyfriends. When I was a teenager, my mother revealed the fact that when she first started dating my father he had been a perfect gentleman in every way. He didn't belch the ABCs in front of her, and he didn't raise his cheeks off his chair to rumble out a fart at the dinner table. He kept it under wraps. Until, my mother revealed sadly, my grandfather got his hooks in him. After a certain number of family parties and dinners where my father endured my grandfather's vomit-belching and thunderous farts, my father bent under the pressure, and it was all over from there. I remember thinking back then that I certainly didn't want the same thing to happen to my boyfriends, if ever I was lucky enough to be blessed with a little male attention, and so I pledged that I would be very disapproving of anything toiled-related. I didn't want any of my future boyfriends to think I was the type of girl who would swoon and giggle and find myself charmed by their toilet talk.

And I did okay with that for quite some time. Keith started out gentlemanly and eventually degenerated into a farting machine, and the Wily Republican's favorite topic of discussion was the outcome of his daily offloading, which was as dependable as the tide, but for the most part any boy I was even slightly romantic with did pretty okay. This is a fact that Katy would find absolutely unacceptable.

And this, I think, is possibly why she decided to use our vacation was a way to turn the BFW to her corner. She thought maybe--just maybe--if she could get him talking about it, get him being open about it--which, let me assure you, was no feat, since the BFW apparently doesn't mind discussing those types of things with complete strangers from Minnesota--then maybe she'd be one step closer to getting me to open up about it.

Poop was discussed at every meal. It was even discussed in the ocean. ("Bubbles!" Katy would shriek after she farted into the warm salt water. Then she would dissolve into giggles.) Farts were debated every night as we waited for the entertainment--usually some sort of stage show--to begin. Katy even went so far as to follow me into my room and sit outside the bathroom door as I went. ("Do I hear noises?" she sang as I locked the door and asked her, for the umpteenth time, why she'd followed me there.)

And the BFW was delighted to help her torture me. The three of them--Katy, her husband, and the BFW--ganged up on me all week and tormented me with their tales of tragic bathroom happenings. The three of them listed the foods that made them gassy, the foods that made them poop (for Katy, it's coffee, which is exactly why I wouldn't let her drink the gallon of coffee she craved on the morning of her wedding, a day on which I would be in charge of holding her billowy dress as she went to the bathroom). The three of them discussed Montezuma's Revenge and how thankful they were for anti-diarrhea medicine. For seven days, I shrieked and covered my ears and said things like, "Gross! Eew! You're so foul!" And they were--all three of them--so, so foul.

Of course, I know it could've been worse. The Boy From Work and I could have also gone on vacation with one of our waitress friends, a girl we know from the place we both worked last summer. If she had come to Mexico with us, if she had joined forces with Katy and her husband and the BFW, it would've been unbearable. And I reflected on this tonight as I sat with her and her boyfriend in the darkened dining room of the restaurant where the BFW now works. We were all eating twenty-five cent wings, but our waitress friend paused in her wing-eating every minute or so to announce that she had to fart and then she would squeak one out beneath the table. And right before we left for the night, she cuddled up to her boyfriend and sat on his lap and let another one go, and he--clearly impressed, clearly charmed--smiled and laughed and kissed her.

"Well," I told the BFW, "she would certainly get along with Katy."

Oh, just imagine what Mexico would've been like if the two of them had ever, ever, ever met.

It's Enough to Make a Girl Want to Whip out a Paper-Chain Countdown

When I was a little girl, I had the luck to land in the classrooms of very crafty teachers--ones that prized order and construction paper more than anything else. That's why I'd made about eight thousand of those paper countdown chains by the time I was ten. And I appreciated those countdown chains. I really did. The sheer aesthetic purity of them--one link per day, a line of multi-colored loops draped across my bedroom--pleased me to no end. In fact, they pleased me so much I'm beginning to think I'm not above purchasing some construction paper and gluing together another one--not for Christmas or Easter or any holiday that involves presents or chocolate, but for a trip. A very big trip. A very big trip to Mexico.

I mentioned a ways back that I woke up one snowy morning and drove myself to the travel agent, and once there I begged her to get me the hell out of the United States, to get me to someplace that had a beach and cabana boys and a hell of a lot of fruity-fizzy-rum drinks. I wanted Bermuda. I wanted a cruise. I got the info and headed home, dreams of giant buffets and open-air movies under the stars knocking around my head. But then one of my traveling companions, in her infinite wisdom (or, more realistically, her trademark Midwestern tightwadedness), decided she didn't want to pay that much money to go on a cruise. She wanted something cheaper. She wanted something more southern than Bermuda. She wanted Mexico. Specifically, an all-inclusive resort in Mexico.

And so we did that instead. We booked at a place that boasts--oh, just get this--liquor dispensers in the rooms. Liquor dispensers! And there's a swim-up bar, too! My God, will I ever be sober?

Here's hoping the answer is no.

So there's still a very real chance that I'll string together one of those fancy paper chains so that I can hang it in my office and every morning clip one of those links away from the rest, each clip a tiny yes! and thank God! and take that!, each one a soothing poultice that melts away all the things that made me crazy the last few months.

My Grandmother Would Be Concerned

Thursday, 11:15 PM. A phone call from Minnesota:

Me: It was nice here the last two days.

Katy: Oh, I know what your weather is. I put your town on my weather forecaster at work. I always know what it's doing there.

Me: Oh my God! You are a lesbian! You are in love with me! You want to know what my WEATHER is like!

Katy: Shut up! I just like to know if you need to take a slicker with you in the morning! OKAY?! THAT'S ALL!