The Eighth of August

It was a warm night in Minnesota. It was late. You could smell the soybeans from the processing plant across the river. Everything was as it should be.

I was on the sidewalk with the Wily Republican and his best friend and his best friend's girlfriend. We'd been bouncing between bars for the last few hours, and now we were hungry. What we wanted more than anything in the world was fried mac-n-cheese from one of the bars across the street. So we were paused at the intersection, waiting for traffic to go by so we could cross.

"I was a cheerleader, you know," the girlfriend said.

"I would've guessed that," I said. She was a peppy sort--bright, bubbly, full of spunk. She was smart and had freckles. I liked her.

"Watch this," she said, and she flipped into a string of cartwheels she unraveled down the sidewalk.

The boys whistled. I clapped.

"Very impressive," I said.

"I know," she said. She stood back up and blew her curly hair out of her eyes.

The light changed then, and we went across the street and into the bar where we could get our food. The Wily had worked there once, his first semester at school, and back then I would sit at the bar and watch as he brought cases of beer and liquor out from the back room or stood watch at the door, sending away the undergrads who were testing out a new fake ID. Those were some of the moments I remember most about my time with him, and they were moments that happened before we kissed, before we screwed everything up just by being us. Back then there was nothing better than sitting there sipping a lime vodka tonic and smiling at him when he smiled at me.

Inside, the WR and his best friend went to order our food and talk to the guys behind the counter, who they knew a little bit, and the girlfriend grabbed my arm and dragged me into the bathroom.

We stood in front of the mirrors and fixed our hair, leaned in close to consider our makeup.

"Wily loves you," she said.

It came out of nowhere, that statement, and for a second I thought maybe I'd hallucinated the words. I stepped away from the mirror.

"What?"

"Wily," she said. "He's in love with you."

And standing right there, in the bathroom of the bar where it all really started, my heart broke open from the weight of all the blood that had flooded it, frantic and excited. I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth. I closed my mouth. I opened it again.

She was still in the mirror, looking back at me through its pane. She smiled. "It's pretty clear," she said. "I've never seen him act like this around a girl before. Never."

"Like what?" I asked. "How does he act?"

She waved her hands in the air. "Oh, you know. Like he does. The two of you are very cute together. And you should hear how he talks about you. He talks about you all the time."

"Oh my God," I said. This was better than any number of dreams I'd had about the Wily Republican--and there had been some pretty fantastic dreams along the way.

The girlfriend finally turned away from the mirror and wrapped her hand around my arm. She leaned in close and pressed her shoulder against mine. We were conspirators. We were insiders. We were drunk, and we were in love with best friends. We thought we knew things.

"Don't worry," she said, squeezing my arm. "You'll be at my wedding, and I'll be at yours. I'm sure of it."

Here's what I can tell you now: that girl did marry the Wily's best friend, but I wasn't there. And today the Wily will stand at an altar and wait for his bride to come down the aisle, and that girl won't be me. In fact, I won't even be in the audience. Instead, I'll be here, in Maine, and I'll be thinking about him.

The fact that the Wily Republican is getting married today doesn't make me sad, but it does make me reflective. It doesn't make me want to stay in bed all day with a pan of brownies on the pillow next to me, but it does make me remember things. It does make me amazed by things.

Like it or not--and I know a lot of you (and me, sometimes) won't like it at all--the Wily Republican really got inside my head and shook things up, changed me, challenged me, made me the girl I am today--the good and bad parts, both.

This summer I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and in it she wrote about her own maddening, toxic, unshakable relationship, and how she recognized her man was wrong for her, that he was making her crazy, that he was like a drug, but at the same time she was sure he was her soulmate. Of course, for Gilbert, the definition of soulmate isn't the one we throw around often--the one that's fizzing with hearts and exclamation points. Instead, this type of soulmate is a person who comes in and picks you up and challenges you and makes you crazy because they are the opposite of what you are--or close to it. That kind of soulmate is your balance. That kind of soulmate has the potential to teach you immeasurable lessons about yourself. With that person in your life, it is suddenly that much easier to define yourself, to say, Here I am. This is who I am. Love me even if you think it's a bad idea.

That can be a hard love, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth having. And I think at that point in his life the Wily Republican really needed me. When he's feeling kind and generous, he tells me I'm his voice of reason, that I'm the one he needs around to say, "Listen. You're unreasonable. You're wrong. Here's why." And I did that for him for years. I said, "Wily, you're an asshole. Do you want to know why?" And he always did. He always does.

And at that point in my life, I really needed him, too. An MFA program is fraught with all kinds of drama, and it's incestuous and intense, and there were days in Minnesota when the last thing I wanted to do was talk to another sulky writer, another frowning English major, but I was surrounded by them. That's when the WR came in handy. That's when I called him and said, "Please save me." The Wily Republican did not want to discuss what was literary and what was not. He did not want to tell me that all I write about is sex and that I should stop it, for Christ's sake. He did not want to get drunk and talk about killing himself. What he wanted to do was tell me I was fun, I was a hippie--a sweet one, but a hippie nonetheless--and I wrote things that made him want to read. What he wanted to do was get drunk and kiss.

It wasn't a bad life, but it's not mine anymore. It hasn't been mine for a long time, and it seems strange to me that today it becomes someone else's life. He's marrying the girl he wanted: a pretty little Republican doctor, someone who smiles at him and says, "Yes, Wily, yes. You're right about that. You're so right." She shares his ideals and has what he refers to as a "strong moral code. She won't be any trouble for him.

But he's always been trouble for me. He's always been the one whose memory I can't quite sweep from the darker corners of my heart. And today I won't even try.

Lend Me Some Shellac, Would You?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quotes:

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

Notes to Self:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buy It. Buy It Now.

Today is a good day. Today is the day this book comes out:



And let me just say this about its author: Diana Joseph was one of the best parts of my whole grad school experience.

She will invite you over for beans and rice or creamy cauliflower casserole or chicken noodle soup. She will invite you over and tell you the one thing she believes in is this: everything is made better with a can of Ro-Tel tomatoes. She will invite you to Wal-Mart so you can help shop for things to stuff inside a pinata for Cinco de Mayo. She will invite you to TJ Maxx so you can shop for things to give out if someone gets a baby you've baked into the cupcakes for her party. She will invite you over to walk next door and say hi to her neighbor, the one wearing the bathrobe and making a turkey sandwich, the one she thinks you should have a fling with.

She will let you cry and curse and yell about the people you hate, the boys you've loved, the friends who have done you wrong. She will let you fuss yourself out on her couch, at her kitchen table, over a glass of scotch. She will say things like You're okay, baby. You're okay. in a voice that somehow makes you believe that, hey, you are okay and everything will be fine. She will swing her hair around and around and around and tell you you should swing your hair around too.

A girl like that has an awful lot to say, and don't you want to listen to her say it?

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.

Strip Club Signs That Say "Money Make Me Come" and Other Great Things You Can See in Michigan

On Saturday I spent the whole night on a porch with one of my best friends from grad school's best friends. They were playing The Kinks and drinking whiskey and telling stories about Greg. We were all telling stories about Greg. We were telling the isn't it weird that Greg is married stories and the do you remember the time Greg got drunk and did that funny thing stories. I didn't go to bed until 9 AM.

I'd flown into Michigan a few days earlier. I came with a suitcase full of cute dresses and shoes. I felt it was important to look good because Greg's wedding was a pretty surprising occasion, if you consider the way Greg used to badmouth marriage. He said it was stupid, he hated it, he wasn't going to get married, not ever. One night, after a few of us had spent a few hours staring up at naked Midwestern girls at the local strip joint, we sat at an all-night restaurant and drank coffee, ate plates full of bacon. Greg told us he wanted to die. He wanted to kill himself. There was nothing about life that could save him--especially not love. He said it just wasn't enough.

You can imagine my surprise when he moved back to Flint, met up with a pretty girl, started dating her, and was suddenly living with her and talking about marriage. And kids. In the conversations we had after Greg started dating Shelly, I constantly had to pinch myself to make sure I was still alive, awake, conscious, and that this wasn't just some alternate universe I'd cooked up where Greg was dreamy and happy.

But it wasn't an alternate universe. It was real. And he was engaged in a matter of months.

And so I booked a flight to Michigan, where I saw some of the best things a girl can see:

It was a great weekend, and I spent most of it having to dab at my eyes so I didn't ruin my mascara. I'd stored up a lot of tears over those few days--mainly because I'd never seen Greg like that before. I'd never seen him so content, so happy. I'd certainly heard it in his voice for the last few months--and I'd call up our other grad school friends and say things like, "You should just hear Greg. He's an entirely new man."--but it's a whole other thing to see a man in that condition. He was beautiful.

I Wanted to Keep Them Around Just to Hear Them Say Their Vowels

Rachel and Dan were here for a few days last week, and those were some mighty fine days. I hadn't seen the dynamic Wisconsin duo for over a year, and it was refreshing to wake up every morning and have them puttering around my apartment. In fact, over the course of their stay, they proved themselves to be excellent house guests. It seemed like every time I turned around they were doing my dishes, taking out my trash, picking up my wet towels. I would've married them, if that type of thing was allowed.

I first met the pair when I was in grad school. Rachel was in my two-week crash course on How to Be a Instructor of College Composition before the fall 2003 semester began. On the first day of that training, we went around the room and introduced ourselves. Rachel said she was from Wisconsin (and thus believed you pronounced the word "bag" as "bayyg") and that she was engaged. This was good news for me. After all, I had a major crush on one of the grad student mentors in that course, and I had been assessing every girl in that room since the moment I walked in. And now that I knew a lot of the cute girls were either married or engaged or supposed lesbians, I felt better about my chances. Rachel put my mind at ease.

Rachel had a hellish first semester at grad school. She had a lot of work, a lot of stressful classes, and a lot of things to get done. She was in a different program than I was--she was an English education girl--and when we would badger her to go out with us, she would always turn us down. She finally came out at the end of our first semester, and she was kind of shocked by the whole group of us. We were a little wild, a little crazy, a little too familiar with each other, and we scared the crap out of her. I kept looking across the bar table and seeing her stricken face. I could tell she was thinking, Oh Jesus. What the hell have I gotten myself into?

But once we rolled her into the group, there was no stopping her. One of my fondest memories of Rachel was a night we were all at a friend's house, just sitting around a kitchen table, drinking, gossiping. Rachel had a few too many glasses of wine and then decided she was too drunk to handle a delicate wine stem anymore, so she got up, got herself a straw, and plopped it down into the glass and guzzled her Merlot that way. Resourceful. Half an hour later, she suggested we try on each others' clothes, so all the drunk and giggling girls clambered up the stairs and tore off their clothes and started pawing through our hostess's closet and trying on things like a T-shirt that had the words SQUEEZE ME painted across the chest. That night and the conversations and all the girly nonsense is not one I will ever, ever forget.

Of course, you don't get a Rachel without a Dan, and what a delightful little perk that is. Cute, funny, sweet (he learned one of Rachel's favorite David Gray songs and played it and sang it for her right before he proposed), and a pilot, this boy is a keeper. One of my favorite Dan memories is this: he took me flying. He took me flying more than once--Rachel refuses to fly with him anymore because she had the unlucky pleasure of being in the plane when Dan was simulating a impending crash and a subsequent recovery--but my first time was my favorite.

The flight was my birthday present. He and Rachel kidnapped me the morning after my big birthday celebration. They told me to get in the car. They told me not to ask any questions because I was getting a surprise. And then we showed up at the small town airport, and Dan took me out to his plane. It was fabulous. It was fabulous even though I'd woken up in a foul mood--the Wily Republican and I had gotten into it the night before--and it was fabulous even though I was hungover. My stomach might have turned over on itself once or twice, but it was worth it. It was one of the most glorious birthday presents I've ever gotten.

And it's been hard to live so far away from Rachel and Dan. I don't like being separated from them. Not one bit. So you can imagine how happy I was for the few days they were here. I tried to show them some of my favorite places, tried to convince them to move to Maine and take up residence in my spare bedroom. I don't think I was quite successful in that last effort--especially considering they definitely aren't in this apartment right now--but at least we were able to saturate ourselves with Maine-y goodness for a few days. Here are a few of the highlights:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Start Spreading the News

Here's where I'll be tomorrow:

I'll be returning to the mother ship.

The first time I went to the AWP conference I was a first-year in my grad program. The conference was held in Chicago that year, and a bunch of us hopped into a caravan and drove off to our hotel, loaded down with the necessities: dozens of cookies, bottles of vodka, a case of Red Bull, and high-heeled boots.

Here's what I can tell you about AWP that year: I was drunk for most of it.

I was drunk at lunch. I was drunk at dinner. I was drunk at midnight. I went to bed drunk and giggling.

I ran across the city like a girl possessed. I wanted to see everything I could in the few days I was in Chicago. I wanted to eat a deep dish pizza whose crust was made with two sticks of butter. I wanted to walk the Miracle Mile and press my nose against all the windows keeping me from all the fabulous things I couldn't afford. I wanted to stand on the edge of the lake and look East. I wanted to wander through the aquarium, wide-eyed and blinking at all the glowing tentacles. I wanted to listen to writers talk about writing--especially my ultimate author crush. I wanted to read my own writing and have people listen. I wanted to be drunk.

I did all of those things. I did the last one--the getting drunk--for a pretty good reason. There was this boy, and I'd had a momentary crush on him when I first got to Minnesota. He found out about the crush and somehow thought I would wilt, I would wither, I would become a lumpy pool of girl on the floor after I realized he didn't like me back. So what did he do? He called me up, asked me to meet him for a drink, and then he told me--out loud, to my face, sitting mere inches from me--that he was sorry but he would never like me like that. He told me he liked someone else, he was going to pursue this other thing, and he really hoped we could continue to be friends. "Listen," he said, kindly, near the end of the already horrific conversation, "I'm sorry if I maybe gave you the wrong idea about things. And I'm sorry you made the decision to come to Minnesota because you thought something was going to happen between us."

At this point in the conversation my head almost fell off my neck. This boy had been an ambassador for the college when I rolled into town after getting my acceptance. I was there to look around, see what there was to see--which turned out to be, uhm, soybeans--and to find an apartment. I'd promised myself to the school. I'd promised myself as a teaching assistant. All of this made me nervous, and this boy was around to take some of that nervousness away. He did a good job. He also did a good job of being cute and charming and sweet. His was the first set of Midwestern blue eyes I ever encountered, and looking at them made me think, Sign me up.

But to think I'd come to Minnesota because of him was ridiculous. I'd already sent in my paperwork and started planning my schedule. I'd already spent precious hours meditating on my first day's outfit--and that day wouldn't happen for months. I was settled. I was devoted to Minnesota. Say what you will about me, but I've never been the kind of girl who stays or goes depending on a boy. You can say I'm frivolous, boy-crazy, and silly, but you can't say I don't have a good head on my shoulders.

So in the moment this boy revealed he was just so concerned about me, a little girl from Buffalo who had packed up all her things and driven West because he was just so irresistible, I wanted to vomit up all the vodka-cranberries I'd mainlined in time I'd been at the bar.

I sat up straight. I tried to look strong. "I did not," I said, "come to Minnesota because of you."

And he smiled at me and patted my hand, like, Whatever you need to tell yourself to make it through the day.

I wanted to run out the front door, screaming all the way down to the river, where I would promptly throw myself in and drown out of embarrassment.

Anyway, the embarrassment didn't last for long. I got over it pretty quick, in fact. I had lots of things to occupy me from that point on, and one of those things was the Wily Republican. He and I had taken up together a few months before AWP, so I didn't really care what that first boy thought anymore. I knew what I was thinking, and I was thinking, Thank God for the military and the way it develops boys with great abs. That first semester we ran around together, the WR still had his military-built body, and when he took his shirt off it was really a thing of beauty.

But when we got to AWP, suddenly I was face to face with the embarrassment once again. After all, there was that first boy with his girl--the one he'd been referring to when he took me out for a drink--and they were sitting on each other's laps, cooing into each other's ears, gazing into each other's eyes. And they were doing it right in front of me.

I knew the boy had told his girlfriend about what happened with me, and that made me feel so foolish--mostly because this girl was achingly beautiful, more beautiful than I could ever hope to be. I felt that whenever she looked at me, she did so with pitying eyes, eyes you use when looking at a beauty pageant contestant who has everything going for her--body, poise, brains--but a jacked-up face. It's a look that says, Oh, you were so close to being pretty, and then this whole face thing happened.

The girl probably wasn't thinking that, but I felt she was. I'd already suffered through the embarrassment brought about by her boyfriend, and I didn't want to suffer through any more. And so I drank a lot. And I ate a lot of cookies. And whenever I felt like I was going to vomit from the embarrassment of everyone knowing what happened, I would think about the Wily and his big bed and his good shoulders and eyes and arms and legs and everything. And that made me feel a little bit better. A lot better. So did the drinking.

But now I don't have any of those issues hanging over my head. Now I am a different girl. I am gainfully employed, boyfriended, stable. Which makes me wonder what this little trip is going to be like. Who will I see, what will I remember, how will I feel when I get to spend time with the people who picked me out, shaped me up, and set me singing?

I'm ready, ready, ready.