When I was in college, I met a guy through some bullshit, threadbare, cheesecloth-like network of acquaintances. He was a gymnast and would perform tricks on the lawn as we’d hang out there, talking up a storm about his love for Skinny Puppy and mine for poetry. My big dreams of inviting people over for tea. Because that was “grown up”.
He introduced me to his friends, this group of eight guys who were a year ahead of me and therefore far more experienced in college. They seemed so old and so cool and so worldly like they knew what was going on. I grabbed my friend Laurie from across the dorm hall to come along with me and admire their long hair, flannel shirts, combat boots, and sensitive, intellectual nature. We drew comparisons between them and the characters of Winnie the Pooh.
Everyone called him Cutie Steve.
Cutie Steve was first in love with me and when it became clear that wasn’t going to work (because I’m a bitch, because I wasn’t ready yet to date anyone, because I was too much of a nerd and insecure with myself), he moved on to Laurie who thought he was cute at first. After all, his name was deceptive that way. But soon she grew tired of what a clingy and pathetic dork he was, so my roommate picked up the slack. Laurie, Robbin, and I would hang out in our room and Cutie Steve would stop by. Him among all his ladies he adored. All of us liking his company, but even better, being amused by his being a goofball and liking his attention.
Somewhere along the line, we learned he could do an impression of Fozzy Bear. Not sure how that came about. But the important part of the story here, is that we soon made it a requirement for his admission to our room that he say, “Wokka wokka” before entering. Then when he wasn’t there, we would laugh until our stomachs hurt, saying, “Wokka wokka.” Laurie and I would prank call each other from across the hall, too, saying that we were Piedro, this foxy Italian student we were crushing on that year. Very grown up. Amazing that Piedro wasn’t just dying to really call us.
Sometimes, we would look out the cafeteria window during lunchtime and see a lone girl walking. She wore Kelly green shoes with an army green jacket and olive green jeans. We laughed about how much she wore green. She always wore green. All those unmatching greens. “Green must be her favorite color,” we would say. Brilliant observation, Watson.
One day we looked out the window, and there was Cutie Steve, walking along right beside the green girl. They stayed that way for the next three years and I’m not sure what happened after that.
But we were really happy for them. And a little ashamed of ourselves. If only we’d been cool enough to wear mismatched greens and not care. We could have let down our defenses enough to actually accept a man who loved Skinny Puppy and did gymnastics and said Wokka wokka to impress us. We could have looked past color combinations and aesthetic choices and courting tactics to actually see who he was. But then, if he looked past our stupid exteriors, he might have seen who we really were as well. Thankfully, he found a green girl who was worthy of him.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Joe
"You love those dogs more than you love your children," my mom used to joke with my dad. He spent hours in the yard with them, refused to let anyone discipline them, always made excuses for them, like the time Max (our St. Bernard) knocked me down on my roller skates and pinned me to the ground with a snarl or the time Tasha burst through the bedroom door, grabbed my kitten, shook it and a couple hours later Alice died of shock.
But we weren't supposed to take that to heart.
Anyway. He's the sort of fellow that has at any given moment a few dozen open beer cans scattered about in various stages of temperature and liquid level. He's the guy in the basement chain smoking cigarettes as he writes feverishly in his yellow notepad: song lyrics, radio scripts, letters to the editor. "Hey, come here, kid. Tell me what you think of this."
He's the guy that had his arms folded, tugging at and chewing his moustache, waiting for me to come home from somewhere so he could tell me he found my journal and knew that I smoked pot and then I yelled at him for invading my privacy. Spun the tables.
He's the one that wore those darkened 70s glasses at the kitchen table and put his cup down so firmly and half the time he was mad and half the time he wasn't and I could never quite figure out the correlations or patterns, so I was always scared when he placed down his cup because I could never tell what was in his eyes through those glasses and then my mom laughed hysterically when my brother "accidentally" broke those glasses by setting down the radio on top of them. Once, he flung my brother across the room and my brother bounced against the wall, landed on the bed, and got a cut on his hand between his fingers. I think he was 9, but he could've been younger. It was when we still lived on Herman St. in Bay View, where I was never older than 6.
It was kind of well known in our family that he was the one that never wanted children, but my mom wanted three, so they compromised at two. She fell out of love with him pretty quickly, if she ever had been, which I wonder about because there's a story of her flinging the engagement ring at him down the street. But her mother told her that his heart was breaking and his mother thought he would kill himself so my mother relented. What a life saver. What a martyr. I guess at least one of them figured he owed her, so children it was.
But, you know, "You never wanted them." So it was fun growing up with that hanging over me while we heard them fight through the paper thin walls at night. Not falling asleep. Wondering if they'd get divorced and being so very scared of that, but wouldn't it have been better? Wouldn't a quiet night time been more bearable? Wouldn't I have avoided insomnia later in life? Couldn't my brother have had a better role model? Someone a little more involved in the idea of having a family, not just a servant to the woman he loved so desperately that he was willing to do anything, including putting two lives into the world, just to keep her... to keep her happy. Which she wasn't. No one was.
He was hard to talk to. Mostly because there were two modes: not wanting to be bothered and therefore referring you to the dictionary to look it up (how I hated the dictionary!) or feeling chatty and wanting to be the dictionary. We had a joke. You ask him what time it is and he tells you how to build a watch and the complete history of clocks, starting with the sun dial.
He's the guy that taught me two things.
One. That there is no such thing as unconditional love. That men do not have a complete set of feelings. That I will always be unworthy of love. That there is something that lacks in me and no one can quite put a finger on it.
Two. If I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night, why don't I write something down? How about poetry. I'm a pretty good writer, so why don't I try that?
But we weren't supposed to take that to heart.
Anyway. He's the sort of fellow that has at any given moment a few dozen open beer cans scattered about in various stages of temperature and liquid level. He's the guy in the basement chain smoking cigarettes as he writes feverishly in his yellow notepad: song lyrics, radio scripts, letters to the editor. "Hey, come here, kid. Tell me what you think of this."
He's the guy that had his arms folded, tugging at and chewing his moustache, waiting for me to come home from somewhere so he could tell me he found my journal and knew that I smoked pot and then I yelled at him for invading my privacy. Spun the tables.
He's the one that wore those darkened 70s glasses at the kitchen table and put his cup down so firmly and half the time he was mad and half the time he wasn't and I could never quite figure out the correlations or patterns, so I was always scared when he placed down his cup because I could never tell what was in his eyes through those glasses and then my mom laughed hysterically when my brother "accidentally" broke those glasses by setting down the radio on top of them. Once, he flung my brother across the room and my brother bounced against the wall, landed on the bed, and got a cut on his hand between his fingers. I think he was 9, but he could've been younger. It was when we still lived on Herman St. in Bay View, where I was never older than 6.
It was kind of well known in our family that he was the one that never wanted children, but my mom wanted three, so they compromised at two. She fell out of love with him pretty quickly, if she ever had been, which I wonder about because there's a story of her flinging the engagement ring at him down the street. But her mother told her that his heart was breaking and his mother thought he would kill himself so my mother relented. What a life saver. What a martyr. I guess at least one of them figured he owed her, so children it was.
But, you know, "You never wanted them." So it was fun growing up with that hanging over me while we heard them fight through the paper thin walls at night. Not falling asleep. Wondering if they'd get divorced and being so very scared of that, but wouldn't it have been better? Wouldn't a quiet night time been more bearable? Wouldn't I have avoided insomnia later in life? Couldn't my brother have had a better role model? Someone a little more involved in the idea of having a family, not just a servant to the woman he loved so desperately that he was willing to do anything, including putting two lives into the world, just to keep her... to keep her happy. Which she wasn't. No one was.
He was hard to talk to. Mostly because there were two modes: not wanting to be bothered and therefore referring you to the dictionary to look it up (how I hated the dictionary!) or feeling chatty and wanting to be the dictionary. We had a joke. You ask him what time it is and he tells you how to build a watch and the complete history of clocks, starting with the sun dial.
He's the guy that taught me two things.
One. That there is no such thing as unconditional love. That men do not have a complete set of feelings. That I will always be unworthy of love. That there is something that lacks in me and no one can quite put a finger on it.
Two. If I'm having trouble getting to sleep at night, why don't I write something down? How about poetry. I'm a pretty good writer, so why don't I try that?
Friday, February 25, 2005
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.
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.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 22, 2005
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.
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.
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.
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.
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