Paul

My first job in Boston was at the Kinko's in Copley Square. It felt cool to be a part of something, though my second job was even cooler, because it was working in the office at Harvard Book Store, which meant I got to walk through Harvard Square every morning and pick up my vanilla latté from some independent coffee shop I can't remember the name of.

When I started working at Kinko's, I didn't feel confident that I was properly trained to do anything, as the training session was mainly mumbo-jumbo about personality and team building, which seemed a throw-back to the start of the company. I mean, really. It started as a hut that had a xerox machine and folks could come and get copies made. Then it ballooned into this megalith and the company policy is that they try to make it still feel like some cute, corny, little hippie operation when really it's just a corporation like any other.

So there's this thing about working at Kinko's. There's always the lead copy guy. He's the one that takes charge of all the machines and feels sort of infringed upon when others come in and mess up his groove. Paul was this guy.

According to the other employees, Paul was intimidating. He had a goatee which possibly made him look surly, as his facial hair covered his mouth. He wore glasses, so maybe it was hard to see his eyes through the reflection on the lenses. He had thick black hair and good, square, sturdy build, so maybe that seem imposing. He was also rather quiet, so maybe they thought he was always pissed off. But I put on my little orange dress and didn't care what he thought because, fuck him, I wasn't sticking around there forever. I'd worked customer service jobs before, I was in graduate school, I didn't care.

He started training me on the equipment and every time I messed up, I thought that would be the time he lost his patience with me, but he never did. As the days went on, the personal space between us would decrease as we worked on the auxiliary machines together. Jogging enormous documents, coil binding, slicing stacks of postcards. First an arm casually brushing by mistake while reaching for something. Learning glue binding. An accidental movement readjusting the hem of my skirt. Breath on the back of my neck.

Our manager was PaulBrian—a glorious, manic/depressive gay man who was in love with Paul. So the three of us often went on adventures together. We had enormous fun when it was the three of us. One morning, we went out for an extravagent breakfast that ended up costing us $60.

So it seemed natural that Paul and I thought we could go it alone. Our chemistry was obviously there, and clearly we had the extra added edge of feeling like we were somehow cheating on PaulBrian. So we went out. I ended up having to ask him to walk me to the train because it was midnight, but then I feared that I would make the green line in to the center, but not be there in enough time to catch the orange line for transfer. So he walked with me back to his apartment.

While we were in the midst of the sidewalk, he suddenly grabbed my shoulders and steered me aside. It was a movement that was shocking in a way that was at once frightening and thrilling. We had not yet kissed. And so.

We still did not. He was saving me from a skunk that was toddling along, about to cross our path.

I stayed the night at his house and he used my skin like braille, smoothing every inch of it with his fingers. Light dusting butterfly wings. And still, I don't think we ever kissed. But we were working our way up to it. The next time we went out, the conversation was stilted. We were awkward. It was like we were forcing something. A magic that wasn't there without PaulBrian with us. I made the joke that we needed to drink in order to have fun around one another.

As it was coming out of my mouth, I didn't think it was true. Until 3/4 of the words were out, and then I finished the sentence.

I quit Kinko's shortly thereafter, or maybe right before that time.

I sort of wonder whatever happened to Paul. I think if I had been a little more comfortable with myself and confident of other people at the time, it probably would have gone a little better. Been a little less forced. I really did like him, after all. I just couldn't talk to him.

Grant

I fucking goddamn hated Grant.

When we moved to Atlanta the first time, it was me and my whole family and I was 12. My brother made himself instantly popular. He was mostly friends with the soccer kids, but he was also friends with the class fuck-up. In elementary school, they innocently call them clowns. But, come on. I'm talking about the loser kids, here, who don't fit into the system and eventually end up in jail. That was Grant.

And just like all the bullies/ clowns/ fuckups, he was hott.

So of course all the girls wanted him and of course he took them. He was just like that guy Dave that I obsessed over later in high school. Except, my experience with him can be likened to a formative moment in sixth grade involving Chris B.:

I used to stare. A lot. I'd stare at Chris all day, every day. Because he was alluring to me. So one day, he took his opportunity to genuflect before me and beg me to go out with him. In front of the entire class. Believe it or not, the embarrassment I felt from this experience prevented me from dating anyone until I moved to another state for college. I thought everyone who was interested in me was actually just making fun of me.

Anyway, that's how it was with Grant. Except, instead of being in my classroom and being able to go home and get away from him, I'd spend a whole day at school getting humiliated, followed up by a nice healthy bus ride full of kids throwing shit and making fun of me. And then topped off by my brother brining his best friend over to taunt me endlessly. Or at the very least, devalue me and make me feel less than human and certainly not the least bit attractive. The really fun part was that because he was so good looking, it made his statement stronger. If he was just some ugly, unpopular asshole, it wouldn't have bothered me as much. But because I was attracted to him, it made a pretty strong impression on me. It was like he was branding me, in fact.

So I went away to college and then I came back. By that time, my brother and I had figured out a way to tolerate each other or attempt at being friends. Especially since I didn't have any, since I'd moved back. So I went with him to see bands, I went to all of his shows. And just like back in high school, he was in a band with Grant.

One night, we were in a shit hole establishment, watching some band that was friends with them. They sucked. During the show, Grant and I started bickering, and I said, "You're just mad because you can't fuck me."

He said, "You're right."

Then we started making out. My brother turned around and saw us and his eyes bugged out of his head. Then Grant came back home with us and spent the night licking me clean. Then he went home and I didn't worry about it too much, except that I'd crossed a line, so I felt a little dirty. Mostly it was the thing about my brother.

Grant went back home, where he lived with his girlfriend. He hated her. But I liked her. So neither of us told her about it. The kind of sucky thing was that the next time I saw him, he was incredibly sweet to me. It sucked because it was unusual and out of the ordinary for our interactions with one another. I had, in fact, never seen that side of him before, nor did I know it could exist. So that sort of weirded me out. Furthermore, I really did like his girlfriend, so I kind of felt like an ass that way. So I maintained my removal and eventually it passed like nothing had ever happened.

Daniel

I think I already wrote about him. Somewhere else, another time. But I'll do it again so that I have everything collected here.

The night before I left Atlanta to move to Milwaukee, my cat died. This is a true story, though I have incorporated it into many other texts, including Tales from Loser Girl's Attic. It was awful. But it opened up something inside of me. A voraciousness that I did not expect. For the first time in my life, I wanted to fuck everything. Yes, as cliché as it is, I wanted to fuck away the pain. Fill up the hole with fingers and tongues and dicks. I felt cavernous.

I'd read an Aimee Bender story where that happened. So in one way, I wasn't surprised because it was familiar. At least I'd heard of it happening before. I just didn't expect that it would happen to me. I'm a truly vanilla person.

So later that night, I went to see my friend Paul perform at a coffee house for the last time. Opening for him was this guy. The Folk Singer.

Here's what happened: I'd seen him before. He performed one other time when I had been to Eddie's Attic to see someone or something else and he was there performing. The other person, that I was there to see (and can't remember now), was opening for his CD release party. So I was going to leave right after. But he made me stay. I have never before and never since seen anyone play live who was as talented as him. His command over his guitar was overwhelming. And it wasn't even the spell of voracious loss that he was weaving over me. Because the first time I saw him perform I was happily in some sort of lesbian dating relationship or other.

At any rate, I figured he's be a dick, so I never said anything to him or bought his CD or even tried to go to any of his other shows. Because he had that thing. He had that swarthy gypsy look about him. Scraggly black hair and thick dark eyelashes and a smudge of black stubble staining his chin and artfully crafted sideburns and sculpted facial hair where he chose for it to go. He wore vintage clothing that was some approximation of an expatriate or Parisian traveler of the earlier part of the century. Or maybe he was a vampire. Not like a cheesy one, but like a time traveler with class. Thunk. That was the sound of my heart flopping down from my chest on that coffee shop, leaving town night. I was held in awe. His voice was gorgeous, his music beautiful. And I felt as if he were singing directly to me. Or at least I really really wanted him to.

So after he was done and becuse I was leaving town, I decided to purchase his CD this time because this time there was nothing I had to lose. It was, technically, you see, already lost if you consider my cat.

When I went up to him after he was done, I made some sort of small comment that I can't remember. I had been crying all day and digging in the red Georgia clay to bury my cat in a hole and I was covered in dirt, wearing a sweaty T-shirt and horrible clothes with my hair a mess and even my glasses on over my puffy stained eyes. He did a double-take and said something else. And then magic was spun around us and we were both cast in delicious gold. I wanted to tell him to shove me in the back of his station wagon and take me back to wherever he went, kick a trail through the discarded clothes on the floor of his room and ram the back of my head into his wall until one or both of us bled.

But I didn't. Instead, I took his CD home and drove the next day with it playing the whole way from Atlanta to Milwaukee.

When I got there, I looked him up on the internet and wrote him an email thanking him for making music so gorgeous. He wrote back and that's where it started. A lengthy correspondence of escalating material for masturbation. Every day I went to work at my temp job filing insurance documents, thinking of him. My head spinning constantly over what he'd just written earlier that day. I'm surprised no one noticed the smell. Because I was consantly drenched in pure sex.

Finally, when neither one of us could take it any more, we arranged to meet in Indiana. When I got to the pre-arranged destination, he lept from his table and gave me a hug like he hadn't seen me in years because I'd been a trapped in a prison camp for war refugees. We went on a date. I got a hotel room. We sat by the pool. And finally he kissed me. I dragged him back to my room and right when the time came, because I was still a technical virgin at the time, I stopped. We didn't have sex.

The next day was horrible. He annoyed the crap out of me. All he wanted to do was go shopping and all I wanted to do was go home. I got more and more disillusioned with him as the day went on. I noticed that his sense of humor is stupid and for as brilliant of a musican and songwriter he is, he wasn't very bright. I still wish him success because I think the world deserves his talent. But other than that, he was horrible. This was a very clear moment of separating the art from the artist. The heart from the artist.

Finally, when I got back, I was kind of mad that it seemed he felt the same way. Our communication slipped and when I finally found out that he was dating someone else, I was pissed. But at the same time, kind of relieved.

Lauren

The last time I lived in Atlanta was the second time someone broke my heart. Mary being my first. When I moved to Milwaukee, I was hesitantly starting up a long-distance thing with the Folk Singer, but his drawback was that he was from Baton Rouge and this elicited the statement from me, "I think they train people in Baton Rouge how to break my heart." Because the only other times my heart had been broken was by people from Louisiana. I was beginning to feel like a Lucinda Williams song. That guy, though, broke the pattern and it was a different person from a different location that completed the mission the third and final time.

At any rate, I was talking about Lauren. She was my second.

I met her in the way that many people meet their lovers these days. That is, to say, on the internet. She quipped with me some sort of electronic flirtation that let me think there was no way she was going to not be interested when we met. But of course, I was skeptical. I had, after all, had many such similar encounters. So when I met her, I had my guard fully up.

I can't remember where our first date was, but I do remember that she wooed me. Hard core. She was an artist and a graphic designer. She had these enormous paintings in her apartment which were expertly rendered. She had worked on book projects that made me jealous. She'd done work with Lisa Lopez in some aspect or another, which was awesome, and also which was before Left Eye died.

Lauren brought me little gifts. She had long, curly auburn hair. I had never before been partial to long hair, but I have to admit that ever since her, when I see a woman with long curly hair, it makes me catch my breath. She also had all of this roundness about her features. When we had talked on the phone to arrange who we were so that we would know what we looked like when we met, we had both said that we were average shaped and average sized for our bone structure, and it was true. But she was quite a bit taller than me. Even though she had such a pretty pretty face, and such lovely beautiful hair, I always felt a swoon of masculine coming from her. Like she would protect me if she had to. Even though she was kind of shy and probably not all that tough or badass. She was, I think, quite a softie. But there was still that air of protection. Maybe it was just her suede jacket, but it felt like hormones were wafting off of her.

One evening, we had walked to see some folk musicians at Eddie's Attic, near her house. On our walk home, she paused on her street and said, "I have something for you." She reached inside her jacket and pulled out the tiniest little box. I opened up the little box and inside was a little yellow glass seahorse with an orange fringey mane. She said, "See? It's just like you with red hair." She was darling like that. So endearing. Thinking of things. And yes, I was always impressed. It didn't take much to win me over, even though she still kept trying anyway. She always did sweet things for me and that made us take our pace a little fast. If I could repeat the whole thing, I would slow it all down and get to know her better before jumping right in and making her my girlfriend before spending time with her during daylight hours.

Somehow I really thought she was going to be "it." The big one. The next, perfect love of my life. Something better than Mary to make it all worth it. So it shouldn't have been surprised me when one month later, while I was on vacation with some friends in Charleston, Lauren had the perfect opportunity for her unresolved ex to come back to town and take her away from me. It always happens like that. The exes always come back and take them away. The exes are always the ones to do the breaking of my heart. Because I love these people, you see, who have such big and wounded, unresolved hearts themselves.

So when I returned to town, Lauren called me in the morning at work and cried into the phone and broke my heart into pieces. I pictured her beautiful hair and pretty pretty face and all the little gifts she brought me, all that extra thoughtfulness and how I would never see her again. How she would never think of me again and make tiny little ways to make my day compltely perfect. Never again would anyone ever try to make me feel that special. And I put on a shiny veneer, used my chipper voice and said it was no big deal. It was all fine. Later that week, I sold my first novel to Simon & Schuster. And in a funny turn of events, the week that book arrived all bound and printed (a year and a half later), was the same one that my heart got sturdily broken again, for the third and final time.

After that last one, of course, I packed it all up and no matter how much anyone tried to make my day special with tiny little thoughtful things they'd do, I never let any of it affect me again. None of it got inside.

Dave

All throughout eleventh and twelfth grade, I had a painful obsessive crush on some loser named Dave. But this isn't about him. This is about a different guy named Dave.

After college, I was shocked and appalled to discover that I was completely, entirely, and utterly unemployable. Even after holding down an office job all throughout college. This was my first wake-up call to the reality of the pyramid scam that is the college degree. I had another one, later, when I finished graduate school. At any rate, the only job I was able to get was as a receptionist for the second-largest sub-standard car insurance company in the nation. Not only was this job a couple notches beneath the job I held all throughout college (both in pay and dignity), but driving past a couple of schools on the way to work every day served as a constant reminder that I wasn't a teacher like I was supposed to be and had trained for. Also, I had to drive 1 1/2 hours to work every day in horrific solid-blocked sweltering hot Atlanta summer traffic. Because it's always summer in Atlanta. Summer or raining. Add on top of all of that: the only reason I even got an interview for the job was because my mom's friend worked there. So it was my first experience in networking and I definitely learned the lesson that I needed friends with better jobs than that.

So there was a training course. A whole bunch of us getting oriented to the company at the same time. I was fucking pissed. About everything. I'd go out in between sessions for smoke breaks. I noticed pretty quickly that only one other person smoked: it was the guy that looked like Caliban from Clash of the Titans. We struck up an instant rapport.

It was awesome, really. I was a lesbian, he was my age and the ugliest thing I'd ever seen in my life with his tight curly-haired mullet like a Brillo pad. His acne. His pointy features and beady little eyes. His total disregard for and lack of any discernible style. And, oddly enough, super tight jeans that revealed an astounding package. On top of that, I had never before in my life seen merit in the ass as a feature until I saw his jeans.

We flirted like crazy. It was an easy friendship.

He was hired there to do the phone systems. So that meant he was there every day, going to every building, in charge of fixing every glitch in this immensely complicated network of a phone system. I got to see him quite a lot. There were, you see, a lot of problems. Part of me wondered how much of his work involved sabotaging his own work so that he could ensure his employment. I mean, how many businesses need their very own personal phone man?

He'd come by my desk pretty often, and his pants were pretty much at eye level. So that played into a lot of our interactions. And in the meantime, since my desk was situated in the lobby there, it played into a lot of my interactions with a lot of my coworkers. I had a mega-crush on this straight girl, Shuki who I became friends with, but who was never going to fall prey to me. There was also Rich, a married man whose advances I sort of didn't pick up on for a while. When I finally did, I was delighted at the salacious dirtiness of screwing around with someone a year older than my mother. I gave him hand jobs in my car at the park near his house where his wife sometimes took the kids or walked the dog. I let him buy me expensive lunches. I let him feel me up underneath my tight sweaters.

Eventually one day, it came time that I was thank-god-fully no longer employed there and was able to work somewhere else. By this point, Dave and I had a habit of going to happy hour on a regular basis. These outings were usually spent, by this time, at a local strip club (of which there are many in Atlanta) because this other guy we went with, Randy, was dating one of the strippers who was the mother of his brother's child, and also would give us free drinks. One time Dave and Randy did GBH in the car and wanted me to try it too but I said no.

Another time, Dave and I smoked a bunch of pot, then went shopping for his fiance's engagement ring. I was utterly bored to death and paranoid, so I eventually went back to the car to wait for him. I think he took me along because he thought a woman's opinion would be valid. Either that, or he wanted to get me jealous. It was hard to tell, and I can't really remember.

What I do remember is that one night we got way too drunk and I had to spend the night at his house. This was just before I left town to move to Boston. I have to admit that all along, it thrilled me to death that he was so obviously into me. And it turned me on, how incredibly ugly he was and how repulsed I was by him physically. It was this weird push-pull of attraction. So when we got wasted and I crashed in his bed, I put up zero objection to making out with him. It was in the dark and he was an incredible kisser. I put up even less objection to him eating my pussy which he performed incredibly well.

The next morning I borrowed his pants and wore them to work. After that I returned them and went home. Just like a guy, I never called him again, or returned his calls. And I didn't tell him when I moved or where exactly I went. Until, of course, he called one day and my mother gave him my phone number and he reamed me out, several states away. I was sorry, of course, but not too much so. I couldn't handle being actually involved with someone who did a bunch of drugs and cheated like that on his girlfriend. Plus, there was that thing where he looked sort of like a trollish little creature.

Rebecca

During college, I had a lot of jobs. One of those jobs was thanks to the courtesy of my friend Jonathan of all the schemes.

Jonathan was a burly man. Stocky and stout with a full grizzly beard and balding long hair that kanked out in all directions to give him a generally "wild" look about him. He was clever and brilliant and manipulative and was always roping people into things.

One of those things was getting Carolyn to marry him. At our college, you see, we weren't allowed to live off campus unless we were an independent or a resident of the city. He figured out that if you were married, you would automatically fulfill both of those requirements. So since the three of us hung out all of the time and I was an uptight prude who would never go for such a thing, plus a lesbian, and since Carolyn was clearly in love with him and would do anything he asked, he asked her to marry him.

When he got his apartment, the three of us still hung out together all the time, drinking champagne and smoking pot, crashed out on his futon, bathed in the red light from the light bulb in his room. At some point we all went on a road trip to Chapel Hill and he took a bicycle for a test drive and lost control on a steep hill and we ended up waiting hours in the emergency room. By then he and Carolyn were having sex and he wouldn't admit they were dating even though they were married, and she was a wreck while we waited for him as he got his cut washed out and stitched up and ever after that, he still had gravel imbeded in his head, so periodically rocks would pop out. He got a rock tattood on his calf to commemorate the event.

After a while, Carolyn needed a break, so they got their divorce and she quit school and moved to a different part of town, but he was still there and that's when he got his job as a cook for this vegetarian restaurant across the street from school. They needed a dishwasher, he said, so got me the job. I needed, after all, a way to blow off some steam and work out aggression since I was always pissed off at Mary for something or another.

That's when I met Rebecca. Catherine and Rebecca were identical twins and they worked at the restaurant. They were painfully mousy, but also beautiful. They we so obviously damaged birds. So we took them in.

Jonathan and I would talk all the while he was cooking and I was squirting off racks full of dishes, putting them through the industrial washer, and scrubbing out pots. My fingertips shredded and bleeding from the steel wool. "Which one would you date?" One of us would ask. "Catherine," Jonathan said, "Because I think I'd have a better chance. What about you?" "Rebecca," I said, "For the same reason." Little did we know.

We asked them out for drinks after work. They agreed and came with, and both ordered sparkling water. We were miffed at why they would come. Shortly thereafter, though, Jonathan started dating Catherine. And it became obvious that Rebecca was interested in me. I was, however, living with, involved with, and in an on-again-off-again tumultuous relationship with Mary. So Rebecca hated Mary. And then we got our friend Stacey a job there as well.

This was right about the time Stacey started getting hooked on crack, but she thought Rebecca the water drinker was beautiful and I wholly encouraged their going out. Stacey was a cute little perky doll of a thing with long bubbly waterfalls of blonde hair. When Stacey decided she liked someone, Stacey always got what she wanted. No one said no to Stacey. So Rebecca went along.

A couple weeks went by and Stacey started complaining to me. "All she talks about is you." Neither of us could get it. Here Stacey was, the most darling of darling things, and her girlfriend was obsessed with me. And Mary was attracted to Stacey, so she encouraged my friendship with Rebecca. Unfortunately, Rebecca weirded me out like the pink haired girl did in the silence department. I just couldn't figure out a way to get the girl talking. It was always painful and digging in frozen dirt.

Somehow time went along and I moved to Atlanta and then to Boston and Atlanta again and forgot about Rebecca completely. That is, until one day my phone rang. My roommate from Boston calling to tell me an old friend of mine from North Carolina called. "I don't know any Rebecca," I said. But I gave the number a call anyway, just to see. Maybe she meant Rachel, who was another friend.

"Hello?" the voice on the other end hedged. I knew right away who it was.

I dug through the conversation and hung up as quickly as I could come up with a good enough excuse. I was on my way to work. With Melissa.

She called back a couple times, each one, I had to come up with something to say. Finally she said, "I suppose you're wondering why I called."

I paused. I waited. I had given up on digging.

"I'm wondering if you would like to go out on a date."

"Well," I said.

"I know. This is stupid."

Finally something snapped. I had no more reason to try to be polite. "Actually, it is." I said. I wanted to say, "and actually, I'm creeped out." I continued, "We live in different states. How, exactly, do you envision us doing this?"

"I could come meet you."

"And then what? You're going to drive six hours so we can go out on a date? Then what? You'll sleep on my couch? Drive back home? I'm not having you do that."

"I'll tell you what, though. If I'm ever in Greensboro again, I'll give you a call." That last part I shouldn't have said. It left a bit of hope. I should have sealed the door shut completely. But I never heard from her again, so I guess that was good enough. I hated to be mean, especially when the other person is so nice. But sometimes you have to be direct. It's something I wish Mark would have learned, even though I tried to railroad him into it. The goddamn bastard is still too polite.

Rebecca is, however, the one and only person who has ever missed me in my entire life. For that, she wins the prize. What the prize is, I don't know. But she is the only person who has ever had a thought about me after I've left. And honestly, even though she isn't the one for me, that is the one and only way she and no one else has ever made me feel special.

Laura

There was a winter in Boston where colorful hair was my thing. Mine was its normal color red at first. But then I started talking to this girl online and we decided to meet at the museum for a date. When I showed up, she was waiting for me on the steps and just about the cutest thing in the world ever. She was super short so right away I felt like a giant for the first time in my entire life. Adding to that, she was young. Of course, not as young as Joy, so that seemed okay. She was round like a ball of fluff and had the most darling adorable round face in the world. Everything in exact proportions of her tiny little features. She had pink hair.

Instantly I felt awkward because clearly this girl with pink hair was too cool for me and thus, I was the luckiest person in the world for just that day, for the couple of hours that I would get to spend with her. We talked about art and looked at exhibits and she talked about the time she met or hung out with John Whatizname from King Missile. So that was cool. Then I went home and was convinced she didn't like me because there was no way I was near enough cool.

Except I was wrong and she kept calling me, emailing me, wanting to hang out. This made me feel lucky except that I quickly realized the difference between looking cool and being cool. She was adorable, true. But she never talked. I mean, never. Every single conversation was a horrible awkward struggle. I felt like I was digging in frozen ground, so no matter how hard I shoved in the trowel, very little dirt would budge. This made me feel self conscious and weird. So when Christmas came, I took this as my excuse to say I was going out of town and I'd call when I got back. She sent me a picture she made on the computer: a cartoony drawing of a pink haired girl handing a red haired girl a flower.

I couldn't respond. I didn't know what to say. I didn't call when I got back. Instead, I decided that I'd be better off dyeing my own hair. First I went yellow with red at the tips. Then it was just red all over. When I bleached it back out it turned it's own pink, so then I covered it up with blue.

When I went out with my blue hair to the goth club one night, I sat scowling in the corner. A beautiful, exhuberant, busty woman with blue hair came up to me. "I like your hair," she said. "Wanna dance?" We danced all night and at the end exchanged numbers. When the time came to go out, I was surprised to find her with normal brown hair in normal normal clothes. "That was a wig," she said. Oh. Mine wasn't.

We had a fine time and either later that day or maybe it was a different one, I went to her apartment. In one way it was clear she wanted to make out with me, but then she pulled out a pipe and started smoking pot. Her apartment was a mess with piles of tangled messes everywhere. I said it was time for me to go and I'd call her later, which I never did.

Then pink haired girl called me one day. "You said you'd call when you got back?"

"Oh. Yeah." I lost your number or something stupid like that. "I'm sorry," was all I offered because I didn't know what else to say. I was not going to go out with her again. I couldn't bear to stab at awkward attempts to make conversation. It was too much work. It wasn't fun. I felt bad. It was exactly like Rebecca in college.

A year or so later, I was with my roommate at pride. We just saw Joan Jett and were headed back to the T to go home. By now my hair was crayon red and cropped short. I was my own pink haired girl indeed. While we were walking, we passed another girl with short crayon red hair. Our eyes made butterflies in an attempt to not recognize one another, then hers became steel shields.

Adam

He was the first man, so it's fitting that his name was Adam.

Well, not the first first, exactly. Not like the first ever. But rather, the first after Mary killed me. What I mean to say is that I kissed two boys before I was a lesbian. But those were one-time-only deals. One was a drunken dare, the other was a drunken one night stand that ugged me out in a creepy beyond belief way, though it wasn't the guy. It was me. So then I was a lesbian for five or so years and then Mary killed me. The first person I was ever in real love with. And while she was sitting there stabbing and pulling back out and stabbing again with a serrated knife so that the wounds never fully healed right back up the way things were put originally, she said to me, "You're going to date men, aren't you? All of them turn straight after me."

And I said, "No!" Heavens no, I wouldn't do that. I wasn't like that. And I certainly wasn't going to be like them. And then later, when opportunity presented itself and in order to giver her a final Fuck You, I did.

Of course, I half didn't want to because of pride. Like I was giving in to the curse she had given me. But stronger than that was the overriding Fuck You. Yes, Mary, you turn everyone straight. After dating you, none of us can stomach giving ourselves over to another woman again. To get fucked so desperately hard.

Backing up, when I was in high school I used to go to the Bargain Trader in Atlanta all of the time. Used books and CD's, and really great selections. At that time, long hair on guys was sexy and one of the clerks had it and thus was a god.

Flash forward a hundred years, or maybe five. And I'm bleeding to death and need a little music. I moved out of my college town and back home to get away from the site of my murder. Let me rest in peace. So I went to the Bargain Trader. When I arrived, the parking lot was empty and I looked at the sign on the door and I looked at my watch, and both of them said 1:00. Then a guy walked up to my car, looking frustrated and pissed off that an overeager early bird customer got there before him. "It'll be about ten minutes," he said. Then he looked at me and said, "Well, actually, you can come in." He unlocked the door and we immediately set to chattering like old friends.

I spent about an hour looking at stuff and when he was finally ringing me up I said, "You've worked here a while, haven't you?"

He said, "Seven years."

"I thought so," I said. "Because I used to come here in high school and you look familiar."

He took this to mean, "I've always had a crush on you and you're the man of my dreams and I think we should fuck now."

"So would you like to go to a movie sometime?" He asked. I didn't have any friends. I just moved to town. "Sure," I said. Thinking we'd be pals. He was, after all, fun to talk to.

So we went. The first date I made him so nervous, he hit a car in the parking lot. But we went out again. He revealed his obsession with Tori Amos to me. Should I mention at this point that I had long red hair and was often mistaken for Tori by Tori fans, meaning boys and girls who were obsessed with her wanted to date me. Despite this, I made out with Adam. It wasn't great, but it was a good way to really let Mary have it. Although she didn't know. I wished she was psychic. I hoped she could picture this and that it was killing her. As I grinded against his pants, I wanted her seeing me.

But it was always him who called. I never did. Until finally one day, I felt guilty that he was putting forth all the effort, not me. This was at about the two week mark. The length of time, I was slated, for the next several years, to date anyone.

After work, I stopped by the Bargain Trader on my way home. It was monsoon season in Atlanta—one of those famous pouring rains. When I got there, he was happy and surprised. He wanted to show me some new Tori Amos posters they got in. He went into the closet. Then I heard him grumble obscenities. When he came out he flung the posters across the floor, screaming Goddamnit at them.

Customers looked up. They darted their eyes back and forth. I shrank in the corner, hoping not to be suspected of being affiliated with him.

He kicked at the posters. He stomped on them. I am not making this up. He threw a temper tantrum. A full-scale, child-sized tantrum. I said I was sorry and I had to go. Later or the next day he called me and wondered when we could go out and I said I didn't think it was a good idea. He asked why not, began whining at me, freaking out that it was maybe his choice in places that we went. I assured him it was not, but I needed an excuse and somehow didn't think the poster thing was a good one because then he'd try to convince me out of it and I wanted something permanent, so I said, "I think I'm a lesbian after all."

He said, "Don't ever do that to anyone again."

"I'll fucking do whatever I want. I'll do it every fucking time, if I want." In fact, I thought it was a very good idea. An excellent excuse. And I did use it again and again. It was really the best way. Until it got old and I began to feel bad about it. Later in life, I started using more legitimate excuses. Things closer to the truth. But for now, it was good.

Two months later, he called me drunkenly and begged me to go out with him, saying, "Do you know how hard it is to find a good woman? Someone like you?" Yes. In fact, I do think I did. I knew exactly how hard it was. And I was sorry, but he wasn't one of them.

And really, I cursed myself anyway, because I always wonder how many times I'm being told by someone that they are a lesbian, when really they're breaking up with me because I'm a poster stomper?

Secrets 2

Second installation last night. I met G and B at Comet. We determined it couldn't be done there because it was just too risky. We went to Node, Beans and Barley, and Rochambeau. Node was a cinch. In and out. Beans and Barley took quite a bit of convincing with the owner, but she acquiesced. Rochambeau was totally cool with it. Also a plus: it was David's neice working. So that was cool. Hi Fi said no, I'd have to talk to the owners. Fuck that. They're the only ones that said no. Meanies. :(

Anyway. Now for waiting. It's Thursday. I have until Sunday. I hope some people deposit some stuff.

Mark

Sometimes I like to rewind my life to this spot. Because I'd like to know if I could start it over, how would I do it differently so that next time the ending would change?

By the time I was thirty, I decided I ping-pongged across the country enough times and it was time for me to return to my homeland, the place of my birth: Milwaukee. I got a job in the local independent bookshop. It was determined that my section would be remainders. The leftovers. The discards. The overstock. Too much. No longer worth it to us. We're clearing it off. Bargain bin.

The morning I was supposed to start, there was a guy standing at the IBID terminal. Thick dark hair, casually dressed, freaking out about numbers. "Mark? This is Tea. Go ahead. Train her."

He paused his freaking out. Started from the beginning. Went slow. Slow enough for me to catch on because everything he said was important. Important that I get it. "I saw your resumé," he said. "You can handle this. This isn't difficult." Then he admitted, "When I saw your resumé, I was jealous. You're way over qualified. You're smarter than me." I wasn't, though. But he didn't know that.

Every time I was at work, he'd eventually find me somewhere during my shift. Drop what I'm doing, this is important. Come here, I want to show you something. It was a flurry of books. Us unboxing and marking and receiving and stacking. Pulling apart piles. Rearranging and moving around. "You've got a natural knack for this." "Do you know anything about cookbooks?" "What about music?" "Do you like cooking?" "What kind of music do you like?" "Who are your favorite artists?" "Why?" "What about it turns you on, gets your mind going, set things clicking in motion in place?" Firing one question after the next. Us opening up books, showing pictures, holding one up, "Tell me what you know about this."

"What do you love?" "What do you love?" "What do you love?" You.

Not in thirty years of my life has any one single person ever asked me so many questions, wanted to know so much about what I thought. We talked about everything. Fluidly.

It was November. It was snowing. Something about Lake Effect caused the glory of the snow blowing upward from the ground. My first snow since Boston before Atlanta before this.

I went outside for a smoke break. I went for a walk. Wearing my vintage teal coat and the boa-like scarf that I referred to as "The Sea Monster." Mark was standing on the bench outside the front door. He turned and saw me walking toward him. He caught his breath and said, "It's you."

I was the most beautiful, breathtaking thing on the planet. I was what he was waiting for. What his eyes were looking for. Exactly everything that was in his head popped up right before him and it was me.

We went inside and he said, "I suppose you'll be leaving soon."

"Why's that?"

"You move around so much."

"I guess I'll be going at some point," I said. "Maybe within a year. Unless something really important happens or something in my life changes."

Stacks of books. Piles and arrangements. Receiving, unpacking, stickering. "What are you doing here on a Friday night? I mean, I have to work, but you—"

"I've got nothing better going on," he said.

Finally in December, he got around to asking me out for a beer. To exchange some software. We met inside the warm part of a snow globe. Soaked in honey, and giving off light other people eavesdropped on our conversation and nattered in when one or the other of us went to the bathroom. Which he did a lot. Nerves. He stood three feet away from me when we said goodnight.

The next time, though. That was the time he told me he couldn't stop thinking about me for the whole previous month and he didn't believe I was really there with him and I said I couldn't believe a guy like him would be interested in a girl like me because I thought he'd be into someone a little more tailored and then he said, "Oh, Tea." His face went soft, his head tilted under the weight of the string his heart pulled. He framed my face with his hands in the air between us. "When I look at you, it's like there's a glow around you."

On the drive home, he put his hand on my knee, said he knew it was probably too much of a demand on my time, but that he'd like to see me at least twice a week, which was more than agreeable to me. This was the night when he got out of the car to give me a hug before I went in. This was the night I employed my secret tactic. I kept my cheek close to his, slid it slightly backward and he fell right into the kiss. Exactly inevitable. If it didn't happen, I could brush off the cheeck as a mistake. But he landed. And then stars exploded in my knees and my wrists. Plate tectonics shifted. I didn't know that a guy so shy and reserved and bookish could kiss like this.

And it went on like that, the intensity increasing from there. When I was at work, my body knew when he entered the building. My ears were tuned to the gait of his footsteps, the way he cleared his throat. There was in invisible thread, a beam of light connected between us so that I could echolocate him anywhere throughout the store. I could almost sense which stack of books he was moving while I unpacked boxes on the other side. I knew which discarded coffee cups were his, scattered around the counters. After he left, I'd feel responsible for disposing of them. I wanted to cook for him, wash his dishes, clean his house, vaccuum his carpets, do his laundry. Curl myself into his ribs. He was mapped to my DNA.

After that, it was nothing but me looking forward to the next time we could make out. The night I stayed over. New Year's Eve. Him slamming me up against the wall in the hallway, my sweater slipping off to the ground. Him not having sex with me. Because, by the way, he just broke up with his girlfriend of three years three days before our first outing.

And so. Two months later I'm not sure why I was surprised that he went back to her. By the way, I forgot to mention that she hit him—punched him in the face. Slashed his tires. Other things. I felt awesome. Two days after that, he broke up with her again. Two weeks after he killed me, I collapsed when I found out he was dating someone else and two months after that, the ex again. And two years after all of this, after three or four other women and a million hers in between, stabbing me wholly anew every time, I'm not sure why I still held onto my job, kept working down the hall from him. Things flipped. Then it was me asking all the questions, "how could you...?" "why did you...?" "why don't you...?" "why can't we...?" He didn't have any answers for me, but I kept asking. Asking until he was mute. And then until I was. And then I just waited for him to come to me. Us drenched in thick amber of held breath, unspoken words, dead silence. We don't speak.

Joy

The summer that Melissa was scaring me shitless was the same summer that I worked at the gay bookstore in the middle of gay central of the south's gay epicenter mecca, Atlanta. It had to have been the same summer because she worked there, too. That was how I knew her. She'd corner me somewhere—at the espresso machine, near the bathrooms by the dirty magazines, between "fiction" and "parenting", in the supply closet or employee break closet, behind the curtains. Then she'd give me the eyes. Or block my path. Or breathe in that way that was quiet enough to shield against others but near enough that I knew she was responding to a smell other than just my soap.

Actually, it wasn't Melissa who scared me so much as it was her wife. The fact that she was married. And had a kid.

Of course, that didn't prevent me from making out with her, pushed up against my car, secreted by her van, between pools of parking lot lamp light and car shadowy darkness. It wasn't Melissa or her wife or her baby so much that freaked me out as it was the pull of heat I felt spearing through the lacy blanket of "should not"s.

She'd call me at my day job on my cel phone while I was out running errands for the radio station. I'd sit parked in that sweltering summer cargo van, listening to Melissa tug me in one direction just long enough to change course with a snap. Her words were the toy mouse, my heart was kitten arms. The whole thing felt terrible and impossible and dirty and disgusting and absolutely fucking wonderful.

She'd meet me in the park with her kid. She'd get me drunk while her wife was out of town, then offer me the couch. She'd sit half a cusion away, eyes locked on the space just beneath my throat and above my rib cage.

That was the summer I dreamed of escape. For something to change. To feel less pinned. A moth specimen the collector forgot to kill before pinning its wings to the mounting board.

That was the summer that a pixie floated through the front door along with a swoop of Atlanta baked street heat. She looked exactly like the love interest in the book I just sold. Her skin was latté with sweet cream. Her hair was little nubs of bleachy lion yellow. Her lips were plums. Her chin formed a delicate point. Her enormous, round, moist eyes were framed with thick fringes of black velvet. She came right up to the counter and asked for a recommendation of sodas. I directed her toward the key lime. She said I should stop by the museum sometime, where she worked. And so in a move not led by normal character, I did.

That weekend when I arrived she squealed and was embarrassed and shy and tingly exhuberant that I indeed in fact did arrive. We spent enormous amounts of time together. From the moment I arrived for the next 48 hours.

We went to the park and wrote notes, played word games on paper. We napped in her room. We swung on the hammock in my back yard and observed the way the black tree branches wound into the black night sky and silhouetted dark against dark like an Asian fabric painting or print. She said, "Tell me a secret." We went to a rave. She told me she was 18.

What?

Melissa, who was 30, said, "You don't want me because of my black baby. But I guess it's okay for you to have a black girlfriend."

"You're married," I said. "I don't want you because you're married. And you have a kid. I don't like kids. I don't want kids. It's messy. It complicates things."

"You're dating a kid."

Yeah. There was that. The next weekend, Joy took me to her favorite place in the world. Glitter on her cheeks and eyelids, invisible wings shot from her back and spread wide when we got to the woods, the trickling stream. I can still see her fingers, the way they were delicate and small yet long and the bones seemed strong. Short nails, bit down.

She sat on a wet log by the brook, said, "How come you don't want to kiss me?"

"I do," I said. "But you're 18."

I thought she would cry. "I want you to kiss me. I want you to so bad."

Bad. Fucking around with a married woman then getting coerced into a child's request... I kissed her. She didn't kiss back. She left her lips where they were. It was terrible. The most horrible kiss I'd ever experienced except maybe the one where I was way drunk on vodka when I was 17 and Todd and I did it on a dare. Neither of us knowing what the fuck we were doing. But by this time, I did. I couldn't help comparing, though, the firm and intent-filled kisses of the older woman to the nothingness of the younger one.

She said, "Why did you stop?"

"This doesn't feel right."

"That was wonderful, though," she said. "It was magical."

"I can't do this."

"Is it because I'm black?"

"It's because you're too young."

She asked if I would be mad at her if she told me something. A secret. I said probably not. She told me that she looked up something about me. Did some research. Some investigating. She said that the astrology book said that two Scorpios were an intense combination.

I wondered why, then, the only thing I felt was a dull yuck like sugarless cookie dough in my stomach. And why it was that there was still something so intense pulling me to Melissa. I drove Joy home and later that week cut my hand and Melissa had to drive me to the emergency room. I got it stitched up and she quit and later I quit as well, but that didn't prevent her from calling me the next summer to ask if I missed her.

That summer, I missed everything.

Jeet

In 1994 I lived in Oxford. England, not Mississippi (though I do have a fascination with that state's name, but that is another story for another time). The school I went to was a conglomeration of international college students doing a semester abroad, plus English high school students trying to get accreditation for going to colleges in other countries. In my program, there were a bunch of Marquette students.

I had heard of Marquette before because it's where my grandparents always hoped I would one day go. This being, of course, back when we still lived in Milwaukee and I was six. Fourteen years later, and raised in the south, I was running into these Milwaukeeans via North Carolina. I was fascinated by the idea of people my age actually living in what I had always previously considered an old people town, seeing as to how my grandparents were my only exposure to it.

One student in particular was a guy named Jeet. Here was the thing about Jeet: he was perfect. There are times in my life where I randomly run across an individual such as this, a person who fulfills all my little requirements to get my brain chemicals bubbling in that certain way. One of the characteristics required for this combination of synapse firings is that Jeet was in love with my housemate Lydia. Lydia had big boobs. I liked Lydia at first, but Lydia was exactly the girl that this guy always likes: quiet and soft-spoken and seeming so sweet but kind of dumb with not much to offer and then it turns out that she's a cold hard mean ass fucking bitch from hell. At least, that's when I started not liking Lydia so much any more. It wasn't the jealousy over her having Jeet's heart so much (because I was making a go at being a lesbian at the time), but it was about the way she treated Jeet. I could have done so much better. They never learn.

Neither do I. I keep trying it again and again and it's always the same with the same outcome. See: Todd, Crooked John, Mary, Lauren, Carrie, Matt and dozens of others. They all fit the profile of what Nate refers to as "a chump." Nate is my own current chump and I am his Lydia. See: Aaron, Dan-Danny-Daniel, Randy, Sensitive Shoes Guy, Jason, Birch, Rebecca, Joy, Pink Haired Girl, and countless others.

Jeet had a thick head of dark curly dense hair. He had a shy posture and kind demeanor. A smile that lit a warm personal lamp between us and drowned out the rest of the din. He took endless amounts of explosive and bitchy shit from Lydia as she told him to come here and go away where are you going come back for more and he did. He read quietly in his room and made me mix tapes of REM and 10,000 Maniacs and when he was finished with reading one of his books, he gave it to me, inscribing that he thought I might be interested. I never read it and eventually weeded it out somewhere in a yard sale after my third move back to Atlanta. He stood in cold raining line, waiting for the premiere of Pulp Fiction and when they didn't let him in, the last seat sold to the person ahead of him, he came back hom and drew a picture of himself at the end of that long stretching line and gave it to me.

There were some mumblings about staying in touch which we never did.

In 2004, I found myself working in a book store in Milwaukee. I got called to the register to help a customer with something. He was holding my book and asked if I knew if the author had written anything else. "I can tell you that for certain because I am her and she has not," I said. Then I said, "Hey! Are you Jeet Chadha?" He displayed that smile.

I had just been broken by my most recent version of him, so my heart fluttered with hope. Maybe this could be a chance to make it turn right. Maybe he's grown up enough and learned over time and changed in some way, though obviously I had not, myself. We exchanged numbers and emails and I called a couple times, wrote him a note just to see if he wanted to get together for a chat. Catch up on what's new. And I never heard from him again.

Gas

Last night, my mom called to give me an update on my grandmother. She was talking and I was sort of tuning it out because it was all medical stuff. At some point, I realized I should tune back in because it sounded like she was saying something important. She said that the doctors said after she was on this one treatment for a while, if she started feeling good enough and wanted to, she could start chemo. They said that it would only extend her life a couple extra months.

A couple months!? Isn't is supposed to give you a couple years?

So then my mom explained how the doctors probably didn't tell my grandma this, but since my mom's out of town and has to make arrangements and stuff, they wanted her to know that they're only giving my grandma a couple of months now, as it is. I guess I knew this. I saw this at her birthday. But still. It's fucking awful to hear. And I don't know what to do. I guess I should start a routine of seeing her on a weekly basis. I should have been doing that these past two years, all along.

It strikes me as odd, incidentally, that the most pious of the grandparents is going to outlive the more interesting ones who led fun lives. Think only about god, and you prolong the amount of time until you get to hang out with your pal. Seems a strange reversal of things.

At any rate, while I'm talking to mom about this and feeling really fucking bummed out and like I need a hug, Martin's digging in his pan across the room. Suddenly, as he's sitting there, he crouches down and lets out a big, loud, human-sized/ sounding/ length fart.

So then my mom and I talked about animal farts for the rest of the call.

Danger

One of the dangers of writing something that everyone's read before is that you run the risk of comparison. One of the dangers of sticking to your subculture is that what is easily identifiable is also held up for scruitiny. Such is the case with Michelle Tea's Rent Girl for me.

I bought it of course because the graphic layout appeals to me. It is an aesthetically pleasing looking work. I also have been curious about her because of our names and Venn intersection of audience pools. She's "edgy", though. "Hip." Comes from living risky and being a big part of a certain group in a certain city and forming a slam performance with out-loud appeal to the nation's shared subculture that isn't really subversive after all, but wants to be. Sort of in that Jester cap type of way.

Anyhow. Rent Girl is pretty good. Though the editor, or someone, let a bunch of stuff slip. Especially in the last two chapters. But that's what I mean. Those last two chapters should totally be cut. They have nothing to do with the rest of the book. Her biography and who she is, yes. But the book, no. The book's arc should have been about getting rid of the horrid girlfriend. Which, incidentally, she did a really good job of depicting exactly how these types of relationships are. My god. My first girlfriend was her first girlfriend. What a great fucking welcome to the group, huh? Great fucking introduction. Really makes me want to stay a while: having that motherfucking bitchy mean as hell girlfriend. Yeah. I really want this as a substitute for asshole men. Anyway.

So I like it as a trip down memory lane and it feels cool in a way to feel like my story is getting told. We all have these certain commonalities, you see. But the other part of me can't help but feel like, yeah. This is the story that gets told about us again and again. We're so hip and edgy and cool and mean. The same type over and over again. I want some new images of lesbians. I'm sick of the tough edgy hard core shit. What about just plain nice girls who actually love each other and care about someone aside from themselves for a change? Why's everything gotta be so goddamn rough and adverse all the time?

Secret

I am working on a project that no one can know about. But since no one knows about this journal or reads it, I can put my project here. Because, basically, I have to talk about it somewhere. Here I will document the process of the project.

Yesterday I asked Lisa, secretly, if I could use her bathrooms for the first installation of my project. She was delighted and she said yes. She said she would keep it a secret. So last night I smuggled them in and deposited the first one. I couldn't believe how easy. No one saw what I was doing, except maybe Aimee. But then, she always looks at me with suspicion. She regards everyone that way. It always makes me feel shifty. Especially if I have a reason to.

So I went to the ladies' and no one was around. I arranged my birdhouse and took photographs, then flushed the toilet and ran the water for good measure. Complete. I didn't go instantly into the men's. I waited. When no one was around again, I zipped in there. That was easy. The lights were off, so it wasn't even like anyone had been in there for a while. I was nervous, obviously. I arranged the birdhouse and took the pictures. I was comforted by hearing the sounds of flushing and water coming from the one next door, so happily, my excuse was iron-clad if I were to get caught. I waited for the door to open and close so that person would leave. Then someone tried to get in. Oh fuck! I packed up my stuff and flushed and ran the water. Then I apologized to the man trying to get in, explained about how someone was in the other. Was totally fucking comforted by the fact that it was the author because he is a stranger and doesn't know what's in our bathrooms, so wouldn't suspect. However, was also totally fucking embarrassed by the fact that it was our author, and thus was blushing. Introduced myself because, well, we'd already had a comaradeship in the fact that we share an agency. What a circumstance under which to meet him! I instantly wanted to tell him what I was doing. But that would ruin it, right?

Anyhow, two birdhouses are successfully installed. Now for the next.

Aspen

My friends and I made fun of him for being the sort of guy who "played saxophone in the rain." We lived together in a house with 12 hippies. The type of house that had the "if it's yellow let it mellow" rule applied not just to flushing, but to everything.

He had a brown paper grocery bag full of home grown weed that he gave to me because he didn't really have a use for it. So I used it to sell to Kirstie and Eric upstairs at $5 a handful.

At 10:00 one night, he came to my room and asked if I wanted to go to the beach. "Of course I do," I said. So we hopped in his little rusty hatchback and drove six hours east, until we saw water. We didn't really know where we were going, which beach. We didn't even have a map. We just knew we were in North Carolina and would eventually hit it.

We hopped out of the car and ran in the freezing wet sand and got our ankles wet in the cold salty 2 am ocean water. The sand had phosphorescent critters in it that glowed wherever our feet went. It mimicked the stars. Except we could control the movement of light.

Then we hopped back in the car and punched each other in the arms to keep awake on the drive back. Our cheeks hot from tired and flush, our shoulders freezing from wind and coldness and night and tired. Shivvering and hot inside and out. We finally got back, just in time for our 8:30 am classes.

One night, I was sitting on the steps feeling sad and melancholic about whatever stuff plagues little college kids' minds. Something about romance or a broken heart or something. Probably unfulfilled longing, since I had a crush on my housemate. Pattern behavior for me: want the unattainable. Birch listened to me cry and then he sucked in all of the courage he'd been saving up all semester to tell me, "I love you."

"I know you do," I said. "And that's really nice. But I just want someone to love me. I'm so unlovable."

The first million times I heard the word "crestfallen" it didn't mean anything to me other than a cartoon. In fact, it only really had a significant impact on me the time I heard it about seven years later and saw it played out in a cartoonish romantic comedy manner at a friends' wedding where I was the deflater of someone else's crest. But I diverge. What I mean to say here is that crestfallen is the perfect word to describe the way Birch's blinking eyes did a double-take. The set of his jaw was taken aback. He was handing me something precious, an oyster opening its shell not to reveal a pearl, but something even more precious than that: the gooey, vulnerable insides. And I looked at that and said, "ew." Shut that back up. I don't want to see that gross, mushy, living thing.

I think he said something else, too. To try to correct my mistaken misunderstanding of what he said. A cold rail road spike shot through. If I accept this, I have to commit and I don't want to because of the "what if" of all else that is out there. It will be far too permanent. I'm not ready for this. Plus, I think at the time I was trying to convince myself I was a lesbian or something. So I said, "But Birch, I don't respect you. How can I ??? If I don't respect someone...?" Because he was goofy, you see. Carefree. A guy who plays saxophone in the rain. (Which, incidentally, yes. He really did.)

Is it overkill to say that I have regretted doing this ever since? I don't know how it was that I expected things would go on and continue exactly as they had been prior to that moment, but somehow I did. And I was shocked every time I saw him and he was less than happy or cheerful or even comfortable to see me. Is it overkill to say that after I realized my mistake and tried to get him back, it was clearly, already, overwhelmingly, permanently, way too late?