Writing About Me

My brother and his girlfriend are moving into my father's garage. My mother is moving next door to my father--with her boyfriend. My grandfather has lost control of his bowels and mows through adult diapers like there's no tomorrow. My best friend's boyfriend of five years left her suddenly. My boyfriend's birthday is tomorrow. The semester is officially done. A student recently told me I need to stop assigning readings about "cancer and dead babies and stuff."

These are some things that have been going on lately.

I know I haven't been here to tell you about them. I've been wondering why I stopped writing. I've been wondering that for a long time, actually. My reluctance to blog started shortly after I started up with The Lady-Killer. Why? Because The Lady-Killer and I spent most of the summer and fall of 2010 in bed, but we did not--contrary to Christine's opinion--develop bedsores. Also, living with someone takes up a lot of time. Seriously. There are days when I get in bed at night and think, "I wanted to do, like, eighty things all day, and yet I spent a good chunk of time lying on the couch reading a magazine and watching TLK play video games." The glorious thing about these thoughts though--and this is showing some real growth here, people--is that they generally do not bother me. The fact that I got almost no shit done would have driven me crazy, pre-TLK. But my world since TLK is like a whole new world, one where a psychiatrist prescribed me a whole mess of anti-anxiety meds. That's right. TLK is like a walking, talking anti-anxiety pill. Plus, he has a lip piercing that feels really good when you kiss him.

And here's another thing. I don't want to tell you some of these things. I mean, I do. I really do. I want to tell you about a million beautiful things about TLK--how he's so funny and charming, how he sometimes makes me giggle until I think I'm going to wet my pants, how he makes really good scrambled eggs because he puts cream cheese in them, how we sleep on the same pillow at night (a fact that, when I told my friends Emily and Christine, almost made them barf)--but I also don't want to tell you those things. I feel more private now. I want to hold some things close to the vest. (I mean, see that list of cute things about TLK up there? THAT IS NOTHING. TRUST ME.) But there's just something in me now that is saying Shhh.

I think it has something to do with me protecting TLK's privacy, and mine. I also think it has something to do with growing up. I mean, back in grad school, you could not shut me the fuck up. I wanted to talk about myself all day and night. And then after grad school, I wah-wah-wahed for months about how sad I was, about how rotten and dumb my life had become now that I had graduated and been forced out of the loving cocoon of the MFA program, where everyone is batshit crazy in really lovable (okay, mostly lovable) ways. I wah-wah-wahed over the Wily Republican, who I now, for days at a time, sometimes forget even exists (oh glorious, happy day that I never thought would come!). Then I wah-wah-wahed over having to take up waitressing when my adjunct gig was over for the summer. Oh my God, how did anyone stand me?

But now, I sort of don't want to talk about myself. And that's really startling to me, because I really love to talk, and I really love to talk about myself. (This, I think, has something to do with my family. Generally, during every phone call my mother and I have, we will spend 15 minutes detailing how stupid our relatives, our neighbors, our coworkers, or other people out in the world are. Then one of us will pause and say, "Well, you know, because we're obviously perfect." Sitting in judgment of others and thus illuminating our own awesomeness is one of our favorite pastimes, right up there with badminton and pierogi-eating.)

Anyway, sometimes I miss writing about myself, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think, holy crap! That thing TLK is doing right now is so funny (or weird! or crazy! or ill-advised!) I really should write about it! (I've said it before, but I'll say it again: TLK is a lot like my brother. He's lovable in the same way and for similar reasons that have made a lot of complete strangers who read this blog fall in love with my brother. Therefore, I think he makes a beautiful muse.)

Still, I have struggled to get it right when writing about TLK. It's easier to write about my brother than it is to write about TLK. A lot of what's funny between me and TLK has to do with the origin of our relationship, and that's one of those private things I'm not willing to share right now. I don't really care about exposing my brother's weird foibles. The kid is related to me, but it's like he's actually not. It's actually like he's some glorious, horrible space alien that took over the room in our house that had been previously reserved for my mother's typewriter. That kid--the one who took over the typewriter room, which I used to think was its own kind of heaven? That kid I'll expose all day long. TLK though? I'd rather not. That one's all mine.

So that's part of it. The other parts I'm really still trying to understand. But right now I have the inclination to be quiet, but who knows how that's going to go and how long that's going to stick around? After all, when I go home this summer, my mother will be convincing my grandfather that he can never again leave the nursing home and return to his house and that she, in fact, will be renovating the house and moving in. (Wait. Did I say "will be renovating?" I actually mean "totally already did it and has already had new furniture delivered. Surprise, Grandpa!)

In addition, my brother and his girlfriend are consolidating all the things they went to the trouble to dig up for their new apartment, which they've only been in for one year, and they will be moving those things into a small room off to the side of my father's garage. They'll be living there for God knows who long, which means they'll be there when I arrive at my father's house for my usual summer R&R. I think this year my stay at Dad's house will be less like a quiet spa vacation and more like a sitcom staring a boy who once frittered away his life savings at a Hooters.

So maybe I'll be back, but maybe I won't. Either way, I wanted you to know that everything is good--more than good--and that I'm just wrapped up in it, loving it, and being quiet about it for right now.

Ass Turned Toward Fire

That was hard.

That last semester and that Christmas vacation, both were excruciatingly hard. I won't bore you with the specifics because they bore even me. Let's just summarize: I worked my ass off; (most) of my students did not. It made me sad.

Then I packed my car, said goodbye to The Lady-Killer and Abbey, and I drove home for Christmas. I looked forward to the trip home. I'd been craving Buffalo for a while. I kept having dreams about pierogi.

At home, I thought, I could rest. Relax. Decompress. But what happened was this: I ran. I ran a lot. I had a billion things to do, a billion places to be. And I also had to meet and mingle with my father's new girlfriend.

And here's where I utter something that makes me extremely guilty: I spent the entire two weeks being really, really annoyed at my father.

I don't know what it was exactly, but I spent two weeks grouching my way around Western New York.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?" I asked the girls, who I was not grumpy at. (It's hard to be grumpy at people who keep me well-supplied with vodka and M&Ms and chicken wing dip.) "WHY AM I SO PISSED AT MY FATHER?"

Everything he did infuriated me. If he asked me where I'd been, if I'd had fun, if I'd seen this person or that person, I wanted to punch him. I kept thinking about that scene in My So-Called Life, the one where Angela admits that lately she can't even look at her mother without wanting to stab her. I just wanted to call up fifteen-year old Angela Chase and say, I feel you, sister.

My father wanted me to do this with his girlfriend, do that with his girlfriend, attend his girlfriend's family's party, go to a movie with his girlfriend, eat breakfast with his girlfriend... and every time he requested these things, I felt my shoulders involuntarily rising until my ears were crammed down into them, making permanent shell-like indentations in the skin.

"I can't do it," I told the girls. "I just can't do it. I'm exhausted. I'm just so tired. I don't have it in me. I don't think I can go to a party filled with strangers and answer questions about myself. And I don't want to ask them questions either."

The mere thought of that made my eyelids go heavy. And then I felt guilty because I was being a brat. I was being selfish. I was being a nasty thirteen year-old version of my self, but worse because I'd never been that nasty when I was thirteen years-old. So I spent the entirety of my Christmas break breast-stroking through vast oceans of exhaustion, tantrum, and guilt.

And then came the incident with the fire.

It was a morning after my father had spent the night with his new girlfriend. I had the house to myself, and I spent the morning lounging in bed. But my lounging was interrupted when my father called at 10:15. "Hey!" he said. "Come to breakfast. We'll be there at 10:30. Join us!"

That last phrase--join us!--made my fingers clench into fists. I wanted to chuck my phone across the room. Why? WHY? I do not fucking know.

I declined breakfast; after all, a lady cannot get ready in three minutes to make it to the restaurant in time. But my father and his girlfriend made an appearance at the house after breakfast. I puttered around in the living room while my father collected things he needed for their New Year's party. I talked to the girlfriend, who is--it must be noted--very nice. And in the middle of the small talk, my father breezed in and said to me, "Okay, well, we're ready to go. I just threw some logs on the fire. Do you know how to use the stove?"

Okay. Okay. Now let's be clear: I am twenty-nine years old. I lived for more than eighteen years in that house, and for all those years that house was heated by a wood stove. When I was young, I was taught to respect the fire--to stay away, to warm myself from a distance--and I took to that warming idea with much glee: there are many pictures of a young me with my bare ass turned toward the stove, the white moon shining in the glare from the orange flame.

Later, when I was old enough, my father took me aside and taught me how to build a fire, how to teepee the kindling and feed the building flames. He taught me how to use the flue. He taught me how hot the stove needed to get before I cut off the oxygen and let it do a slow burn to last through the day.

Let's be even clearer: I have been making and tending fires for, like, fifteen years.

My father knows this. And even if my father had fallen and hit his head and that fall had erased his prior knowledge of me--his only daughter, his firstborn!--and my fire-making abilities, it wouldn't matter because two days prior to his asking me if I knew how to use the stove, he arrived home just as I, who had also just arrived home, finished building a fire to warm the icy house. He even complimented me on my fire.

So when he stood at his girlfriend's side and asked me if I knew how to tend the fire and use the stove, I almost committed a murder. I wanted to run to the family picture albums, pluck out any of the pictures of me warming my butt near the wood stove. I wanted to shove it in his face and say, "DOES THIS LOOK LIKE THE BUTT OF SOMEONE WHO DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO USE A WOOD STOVE, MAN?!"

I don't know what happened to me. I don't know what split open in my brain and let all that rage leak into my bloodstream, but it was awful. And I feel guilty still--worse, actually, now that I've admitted it here, to you.

I need therapy.

Which Reminds Me

Today in one of my classes, a student went off on a short tangent about how she acts when she gets drunk. She doesn't get goofy or giggly or loud or angry. Instead, she gets very formal. Instead of saying, "Hey! I'm drunk!" she will say, "Why, hello. It seems you've caught me in a moment of unexpected intoxication. My apologies!"

I like that she recognizes this. I like that she's conscious of her drunk self because not many people really are. (Generally, it seems, it's the angry ones who are the least aware. Once, in grad school, one of my best friends, who'd been drinking beer for hours, pointed his finger at me and shouted, "I AM SICK OF YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!" This wouldn't have been so bad--I was, after all, aware that he was sick of me taking up with idiots--but it's just that one of those idiots was standing next to me at that very moment.)

As for me, I'm not exactly sure how I am. I've heard conflicting stories. Katy tells me she can't ever tell when I'm drunk. "You act like your normal self when you're drunk," she says, "maybe just a little gigglier."

No one, of course, has trouble identifying when Katy's drunk. After a couple tall glasses of Michelob Light, which she gets with olives--"It's a free snack at the end!" she says--Katy gets loud. She likes to engage the boys by saying inappropriate things, by talking about poop or boobs. When Katy gets really drunk, she likes to bring boys over to me and say, "Hey! Look! Here's this boy! You should kiss him! If you don't kiss him, I'm not going to leave you alone! I'm going to stand here and watch you until you kiss him! Kiss him! Kiss him! KISS HIM!"

And then she likes to puke in alleys or cars.

Of course, Katy might not be the only one who acts up. I just learned recently that I'm "the loud one" in the group--information Diana floated my way as we walked to my car in a Boston parking ramp the day after her reading in town.

I was shocked. I told her I didn't think I was the loud one in any group. In my group back home, back in New York, my best friend was the loud one, and in Minnesota I'd always figured Katy was the loud one, or maybe one of the boys, who were always mixing drinks and shouting poetry--theirs or others'--at the top of their lungs while Diana and I sat on the couch and giggled.

"No, no," Diana said. "It's definitely you. You're definitely the loud one. But that's why we love you."

Probably this shouldn't surprise me. Maybe I should've always known. And today as my student was going on about her own tipsy behavior, it made me--it couldn't be helped!--think of one of my more glorious moments: The first time I met my father's fiancee.

It was the night of my childhood friend's wedding. I was a bridesmaid who was wearing a pretty black dress and high heels, and I was flirting with one of the groomsmen--tall, slim, tan.

Maybe I was a bit bolder than I'd normally be, but there's a good reason for that. As a cost saving measure, the bride and groom bought their liquor from a local bar and then positioned a few of their relatives behind a makeshift one at the reception. What this meant was I could walk up to the bar and say, "May I please have a giant vat of vodka this very instant?" and they would say, "Why, yes, Bridesmaid Girl, you may."

Add to that the fact that the groom's father had made his own wine for the occasion, and several bottles of that wine were on the wedding party's table, and I drank an awful lot from several of those bottles, which may or may not have led to the incident on the dance floor after the cute groomsman caught the garter and I caught the bouquet, which meant we had to engage in this tradition where everyone gathered around and watched as he inched the garter up my leg--each inch another year of good luck for the newlyweds--and this spiraled into a really interesting incident in the kitchen of the reception hall, which then spiraled into a really, really interesting incident in the backyard of the reception hall--and trust me when I tell you it's best that no one but God saw that.

It's important to know these facts. It's important to know that both the incident in the kitchen and the incident in the backyard took a decent amount of time--mainly because they involved a whole bunch of kissing--and that they started in the approximate middle of the wedding party. By the time the incidents were done and we wandered back inside, the only people left were the bride's parents.

Talk about embarrassing.

Worse? The cute groomsman and I were both too drunk to drive, so we had to catch a ride with the bride's parents, who had their car stuffed so full of gifts and decorations that there was barely room for us, and I had to sit on the groomsman's lap the whole ride home.

Oh, but wait. It gets worse.

And then when I arrived home, I realized my father was still up and that he had a visitor--his new girlfriend, the one I had yet to meet. So as I stepped out of the car and turned to thank the bride's parents for driving me home, and to tell the groomsman it was nice meeting him, I knew I was going to have to put on a good show in approximately thirty seconds.

I walked down the driveway and up onto the front step. I took a deep breath. I tried to make my my whole body feel less like it was spinning. I tried to quiet the side of my brain that was saying, EVERYTHING YOU SAY SHOULD BE SAID IN SHOUT-VOLUME. And because I knew my father would ask how the party was, I made a quick list of things that should not be brought up: making out with a groomsman, dancing with one of my father's friends and announcing to said friend that I thought his children were ridiculously attractive, being photographed with a boy's hands--and a garter--three quarters of the way up my thigh.

I steadied myself. I steeled my insides. I took another deep breath and prepared to pull off a serious caper, to pull the wool over my father's eyes, to convince his girlfriend I was nothing but a classy and poised twenty-something.

I pushed open the door.

"Hello!" my father said.

"Hello!" I said.

"Hello!" the girlfriend said.

"This is Kathy!" my father said.

"It's really nice to meet you!" I said. "I AM REALLY DRUNK! SORRY!"

And then, because I'd already revealed too much, and because I was afraid my first revelation would be followed with something else inappropriate--for example: "I pushed a groomsman against a fridge in the reception hall kitchen and had my way with him!"--I decided to run down the hallway to my room and go to bed before I made things worse.

I am, if nothing else, extremely, extremely smooth.

The Mourning

So, back when I had moved home for that year between grad school and Maine, I had quite the impressive little string of vehicular bird homicides. Now, it's not like I wanted to kill those birds, and it's not like I tried to kill those birds--I certainly didn't swerve to ping them, to clip them out of orbit--but it happened anyway, and I always ended up shrieking as I heard the thunk and saw the feathers fly. For a while, my car even drove around with a little feather headdress sticking out of the grill on the front because I couldn't bring myself to clean up the evidence.

And I wasn't the only one on a bird-killing streak that year. My father was too. The worst--the one I'll never, ever forget--was the mourning dove.

It was early evening. My father and I were on our way to town to get some dinner, and we were sailing along the back country roads, the ones cutting through long, tilled-up corn fields, and that's when the fattest mourning dove I had ever seen flapped its way into our path. You could tell this dove was exhausted from hauling its fat bulk around. His flight path was ragged. He appeared drunk and belligerent. Maybe he was a little suicidal. His wings gave out and he sagged near the road, hitting the hood of the car.

And then he exploded.

I am not kidding. I am not exaggerating. It was the strangest thing I'd ever seen. That bird hit the car and exploded like a water balloon. A great gush of liquid--water, blood--washed over the windshield, and my father and I screamed. And then my father turned on the windshield wipers because there was just so much liquid.

And so, now, whenever I see a mourning dove, I can't help but insert sound effects when I watch it waddle around on its toothpick legs. Slosh, slosh, slosh, I think as the fat bird thumps around the deck. I picture its stomach like a mini-washing machine, just without clothes, the water swirling in a perpetually full cycle.

Now, here at home--I drove back to Buffalo a few days ago for spring break--there are mourning doves everywhere. There are a few that like to perch on the back porch, where my father, who, after he turned fifty, decided to take up one of his mother's favorite hobbies (feeding and acquiring certain level of inside information about birds, their habits, and their preferences in suet), puts out many different feeders. This hasn't always gone well for my father. He's battling certain tricky elements--two of which are Fat Squirrel and Fat Raccoon.

Fat Squirrel is fat because he simply climbs up into the bird feeder and parks it there while he fills his stomach with seed. Fat Raccoon does the same thing, just with a little more violence. He's been known to break the feeder, knock it over, kick it off the deck so that it falls and splits in two on the ground.

But sometimes actual birds dine at the feeders, and this afternoon those birds included two huge black birds and one fat mourning dove. You know who's particularly interested in this, in what's going on on the back porch? My cat. Abbey. She's obsessed with these birds. She will sit in front of the back door for hours, her eyes as big as saucers, her limbs tense with the desire to spring through the screen door.

It doesn't make it any better that the birds taunt her. The black birds tittered at her and bounced around on the floor of the deck just so she could get a better look, just so they could say, Fuck you, cat. You can't get out of there!

And then there was the mourning dove. She waited and waited and waited for the black birds to be done with their feeding so she could get in on the free food, but she got tired of waiting and she drifted down to the floor of the deck and planted it there. She folded her legs underneath her and nestled down, turning squarely so that she faced Abbey. The two of them were separated by a few feet and a screen door, and they would stay that way--just staring at each other--for hours. I'd never seen a more lazy (stubborn? cruel? taunting?) bird. She just locked eyes and gazed upon my cat until she finally tired and got up, turned a circle, squatted low, and shit out one tiny pellet onto the deck.

Abbey looked back at me and whined. She wanted me to open the door. Of course she did. I'm just not sure why. I don't know whether she wanted to be let out to make friends with the bird or to eat the bird, but either way I was half tempted to do it, to see what would happen if Abbey decided to leap into the afternoon sun and land on the bird. I wanted to see if it would explode instantly, leaving my cat standing on nothing but a pile of moist feathers. But I didn't. I figured that was probably too much trauma for any one cat to handle. After all, I know it was a little too much for me.

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.

A Conversation with My Father on the Occasion of the Second Bachelorette Party Penis Cake I've Baked

Dad: What are you going to put that cake on?

Me: This board you just cut for me. The penis board.

Dad: No. I mean, what are you going to cover that board with?

Me: Aluminum foil. I used aluminum foil last time.

Dad: Don't use aluminum foil!

Me: Why not?

Dad: Use parchment paper or something, not aluminum foil! Foil is too shiny! Too reflective!

Me: So what? So it'll shine penis back up at the penis. It'll be like a mirror. And it'll make it look bigger. Isn't that what men want anyway?

Dad: You're right. [Pause] We should have foil underwear.

Abbey's Current Obsession

Abbey, seen here with my father, who is carrying her around in a wicker basket because, well, she let him, loves to be lifted into the air. In fact, the current object of her undying love and affection is a box top I brought portfolios home in. Now that it's empty, she will sit in that thing and look up at me with those giant kitten eyes until I do one of two things:

(1.) Hook my finger in a corner and slide that box top--at a very fast pace--from one end of the room to another

or

(2.) Heft the box top up and balance it on my right palm, then carry it around the apartment like it is a waitress tray. Abbey stays inside the whole time, her chin hanging over the edge, her eyes soaking in what all of her stuff looks like from people height. When I told my father this the other night, he said, "But doesn't she jump out?" And the answer to that is no. She'd ride around on top of my shoulder for hours if I let her.

Three from the Move

I didn't take many pictures during the whole moving process, but here's what I did manage to snap:

That's Abbey after we emptied my giant bedroom of all its books and clothes. She was not amused because now there was nothing for her to jump on and kill.

And that's Abbey checking out the new digs. She's standing in the living room, which looks out onto the porch, which looks out onto woods. Those woods are home to many things--squirrels, birds, chipmunks--that Abbey would--no surprise here--like to jump on and kill.

And that's what my father and I look like after we've been driven insane by moving. He's wearing my headband and I am wearing the hat of my best boy from grad school, the hat I put on sometimes when everything sucks, when everything blows. That hat makes me feel better about everything.

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.

Extending the Celebration

Yesterday when I got in to work, everyone from the department was suspiciously hanging out in or around my office. After I had settled in and put my things away, everyone surrounded my desk as the chair of the department brought in a chocolate and raspberry cake she'd made to celebrate my twenty-seventh. It would be my second cake in less than twenty-four hours. If that's not recipe for an excellent birthday, I don't know what is.

My father and his fiancee were in town all weekend long to celebrate my birthday, and we'd spent that time eating lobster and wandering the cobblestone streets of Portland, eating crab and hunting for bargains in Freeport, and, of course, taking the mandatory I'm in Front of the Big Boot picture at L.L. Bean. We had an official birthday dinner where we drank peach martinis and muddled Old Fashioneds and ate duck and prime rib and crab cakes. Then we came home and drank champagne and ate thick slices of coconut cake from a bakery that smelled like spun-sugar, even out in its parking lot.

I totally milked my day. Totally milked it, just like always, just like tradition. I got excited every time I went down the stairs to collect the cards from my mailbox, and I got excited every time there was a knock on my door--the mailman dropping off another package from New York, from Minnesota, from Wisconsin. I got excited each time I tore open the wrapping paper and found books and shirts about cow tipping and Spam singles and treats for Abbey. It was a good day. A very good day. And definitely better than last year, when I, in the first few weeks of my first semester as a full-timer, had to teach until 9:00 and then come home to an empty apartment--no cat, no boyfriend, no family, no friends--and open a bottle of champagne and cut into a slice of dry grocery store cake by myself. This birthday was an awful lot more festive than that, as you can imagine:

If some of you have been wondering all these years where I get that bizarre posing I do in pictures, I think the answer is now abundantly clear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Ha," Amy said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My father sighed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

My father sighed again.

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

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

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

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