Avery McDaniel #1757

Was a technical virgin, a talented actor, a good liar, mildly self-absorbed, over emotional to a fault, and highly imaginative. These latter two combined to create a truly terrible combination and leading Avery to an unintentional yet complete fabrication of strong emotion.
He would obstinately refuse to confront any situation that threatened to disturb his meticulously organized or often meticulously disorganized universe. This was, of course, despite his ironic love of Roosevelt’s quotation, “Do something every day that scares you.” He could have easily been compared to a turtle.
Yet he was a total communication whore, a collector of friends and acquaintances. He seemed to look at most of his life from the midst of some hilarious inside joke. Behind the jokes he hid an ache that he masochistically enjoyed prodding.
He was unnecessarily sentimental regarding superfluous objects. A hanger-on.
He was totally and completely in love with his own creativity. He forced it to surround him, willed it to become his life. In this way, he made pleasing others his life goal. Which suited a boy whose mother had died when he was young.
He was a breaker of hearts, which also suited a boy with a dead mother. He blamed a lack of nurturing for his phantom emotions, which were the death of every sexual exploit, every tentative venture into the land of white picket fences and 2.5 children.
The walls were high.
Even when I used a pick axe, I really didn’t even dent his firm resolve.

Bottom line: Avery liked me because I promised to nurture him. I liked Avery because he was a labyrinth of a boy. And then I got lost in the labyrinth.
To tell you the truth, it was like he was trying to lose me. And when he said that I didn’t understand, he was right. I didn’t understand why he would try to lose someone in that labyrinth he had up there. But it was surprisingly refreshing to climb out and feel the cool simplicity of a person who knows exactly what they want.

I haven’t fallen into any labyrinths since. They’re pretty overrated.

Culturally Challenged #2059

I blew some smoke out the crack in my window and pressed the repeat button on my cd player so that Kanye would stay Heartbroken. I had stopped at a red light waiting to turn onto Harding. It was a long one. I had to stay in the right lane with everybody else or I wouldn’t be able to make another right one hundred feet later. Out of the corner of my eye, someone was staring at me in the next car. I glanced over to see a man wearing a suit and tie waving at me coyly like he was a prepubescent schoolboy.
Why do guys think it’s cute to wave at total strangers in other cars? It must be aesthetics because I could literally be hiding a peg leg behind the car door and Mr. Happy over there would never know.
Considering this idea of the peg leg, I looked forward with a smirk and blew some more smoke out of the window. Then I realized he had rolled his down. The light was still red.
“You are very gorgeous,” came his intro.
I looked over, much more directly this time, to notice that he was actually kind of attractive himself. It might have been the suit. Guys in suits don't usually try to pick up girls at traffic lights.
…All right. And I rolled down my window.
“Thank you.”
“I say correctly?” And I realized he was foreign. Something Latin. He had a nice cream color going for him and his eyes were dark and shining. He looked like he was on the older side of thirty. A wider grin escaped me.
“Yes. Gorgeous. You got it.” The light changed. We both looked up at it, and I shrugged at him and started to move.
“I give you my card!” He yelled over at me.
Card? He had a card. Oh, this I had to see.
Still smiling, I slowed on the turn enough to let him into my turning lane. Three cars behind us hit their brakes before we turned into the post office parking lot.
I stopped in a space with no intention of getting out of my car. He pulled up beside me, windows still down.
“You have a card.” I acted impressed, because I was.
“Yes. Here.” And he pulled one out of his wallet and handed it to me through the window. He had to lean over across his passenger seat. He had on cufflinks.
“Nice suit.” It was a nice suit.
“Thank you.”
“You work at the bank?” I read the card.
“Yes. I am the branch manager for them.”
“I’m sure being bi-lingual helps.”
His eyebrows raised, “How you know I’m bi-lingual?”
“You don’t know how to say gorgeous. You’re a Spanish speaker.”
“How you know that?”
I lifted the card, and eyed him, “Vasquez?”
I should have a BA in flirting.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Here.” Always here, I am so culturally challenged. “You?”
“Where you think?”
“…I don’t know. El Salvador.” Never assume Mexico, even if it’s your best guess.
“El Salvador?! Come on!”
“I don’t know!”
“Cuba.” He looked in the rear view mirror. “I have to go to work. But you call me sometime.”

I never called.

To tell you the truth this happens to me a lot.

There are an estimated 40 thousand foreign born residents in this city, and I cannot tell you how much I love that.

Culturally challenged, I am. Everyone always talks about diaspora and the return to the roots of your heritage. I took a class in college called Black Women as Writers and quickly realized that I couldn’t say much regarding my own heritage except, “I’m sorry.” White people have pretty much run the globe like a free lunch for centuries. Everything in history has been rewritten white. Flippin Jesus wasn’t even white. I feel that my "history" is all some big fable based on lies, exaggeration, and ego.

“I have no good English. You teach me?”
“Oh, you are teacher? I can learn with you.”
“How much you charge an hour?”
No, no, and no no no.

By the time I was student teaching at Murray Middle School I knew I wanted to teach ESL kids. That is, students who are learning English as a Second Language. Almost the whole school at Murray was made up of the foreign born population. Their biggest demographic was Hispanic, then Kurds, then blacks, then whites. I could count the white kids I taught on both hands. Having gone to school at Murray nine years before, I realized that the city’s changing demographic was not my imagination.

But the truth is I feel like I've been teaching English as a Second Language for a long time now.

“Ms. Robinson’s dating a Hondureno.” Somehow, my students discovered the fact, and I quite suddenly became infinitely more popular. "So you're trying to learn Spanish, Ms. Robinson?" Kids who weren't even in my class came up to me. I hadn't consciously sought Spanish speakers, or Gujarati speakers, or Sorani Kurdish speakers, but I think I found them because I was looking for culture. Attempting to improve their English was sort of a bonus.

It's not just that I'm culturally challenged. There's a lot of things that I think white culture keeps from me. We white Americans (maybe all Americans?) are all muddled and confused about the line between independence and selfishness. We don't know when to care for ourselves and when to care for others. We don't know respect. Being edgy and unique has replaced being respectful and honest.
Now this is not to say that other cultures are completely honest and respectful. This is not to say that they don't look down their noses occasionally.

What I'm saying is that there’s just something so base and pure about a lot of these people who come here to chase the ever-elusive "American" dream. The number one source of economic gain in Guatemala comes from wired money outside the country. The whole idea of the nuclear family, often lost on the divorce-ridden, emotionally isolated American populous drives these people in ways I find myself constantly in awe of. They are often moral and spiritual, and despite the fact that they might be able to drink like fish, their ingrained values of family, love, and mutual respect keep them afloat in the mad sea of America. How many college grads or dropouts do you know sitting on their butts waiting for someone to give them what they don’t have the courage or the ambition to take? These people I know have built their lives from the ground up, and they’re living day to day with the determination that they’re going to provide better lives for their children, and their children’s children.

I want those values. I want that determination. I want someone who is so dedicated to me that he would bend over backwards to provide for his children and I. And he wouldn’t forget that he’s doing it because he loves us. I want an extended family of best friends. I want an understanding that no matter what happens, nobody leaves each other high and dry. I want mutual respect. I want passion. I want to be surprised by the small things in life.

It’s all out there. It might not always be glamorous, but it’s so full of love.

Maybe someday I’ll be lucky enough to find it all, and culture too.

Still, I don't think it'll drive up next to me wearing a suit.

Ham Sandwich #4971 (Part II)

I was driving down a narrow street that had mailboxes jutting out of the ground in front of their tiny, beat up, shoebox houses. Maybe the street felt so narrow because people were parking their cars half in and half out of it. At 9 o’clock in the freezing cold, there was nobody around to help me find number 127. I passed the box before looping around at the end of the street. Brody definitely lived in what could be termed “the sticks.”
Tentatively, I pulled my car into his gravel drive and turned off my headlights. I always hate parking at someone’s house to which I’ve never been. You’re never quite sure where to put your bulky car so that it won’t be in the way. Block the driveway? Or park half on the street in the mud? I pulled in next to his Volvo and called before stepping out of the car.
Before it even rang, he was out on the steps to the side door. He smiled and waved me in.

The Fruity Pebbles were on top of his refrigerator in the kitchen. I smiled at them as I walked in through the same side door into which he’d beckoned me.
“It’s really cold out there!” He was wearing a sweater, and he rubbed his hands together inside his sleeves. “How did you do, by the way?”
“I won first in Dramatic Interp! Nothing for Poetry, though. There were a lot more entries in that event.” Speech speak. I didn’t think he understood really, as most people don’t. But surely winning first he would understand.
“That’s great!” He did. I whipped out the tiny marble paperweight I had won. It had the tournament name and “First Place ~ Dramatic Interpretation” written on a little golden plate. How thrilling. I missed the rewards from tournaments in high school. High school speech was so much more gratifying.
“So I’m standing here with a little champion, huh? In my house!” He poked me as he said it, and I giggled before getting him back.
Like I said, it was 9 o’clock, so I sat on the couch for an awkward moment.
“I don’t really have any thing to do here,” he said. Nice move, I thought, inviting me over to do nothing. “I mean, I don’t have tv. I have dvds though. I’ve got the whole series of Smallville.”
He gestured toward an entertainment center loaded with probably every aired season of the same show.
“Like Superman much?”
“So you want to watch something?”
“I don’t know. Its cold.”
He came and flopped down next to me. I got that feeling like something was about to happen. Maybe he had flopped too close to me.
“Oh. Here, let me get you a blanket.” He reached behind the couch and pulled out a red fleece blanket. He draped it over me.
“How cute are you, all taking care of me and stuff,” and I shot him a sideways glance.
“Well you said you were cold.” He smirked back.
“Maybe I still am.”

I don’t know when I decided to major in innuendo, double entendres and flirting in general. But at some point in college, armed with my own car and cell phone, I became an expert on date-acquisition. Perhaps my minor could have been joking my way into a lip-lock, because I don’t know where these things came from. These in-jest invitations were the sole reason I got in so much trouble, I think. Of course, I did have a pretty great time getting into all the trouble.

“Hey,” Brody was standing over me. I squinted into the light of the room and realized suddenly that he was wearing a suit and tie. Which contrasted greatly with what I had on.
“Hi.” I sat up, and he sat down next to me.
“No, you don’t have to wake up, I’ll be back. I’ve just got to go to church, and I’ll be right back.”
…Church?

And he did. He left. I got up anyway because I felt weird being in someone’s house all by myself. I stared at the box of Fruity Pebbles, still unopened. I just didn’t feel very hungry. He was supposed to eat them with me, I had thought. I ended up sitting on the couch under the red blanket peering around at the parts of the room I didn’t notice in the dark the night before.
There were photos on the top shelf of the entertainment system with some blonde girl in them. Sister? Yet upon closer inspection I realized that this blonde had to be his ex-girlfriend. She was pretty. Skinny. I had never thought I was slender enough, though in retrospect I should have relished in my size 6.
It was so quiet! I turned on the television to some very loud static, and quickly turned it off. After sighing rather loudly, I decided to fall asleep on the couch in some cute position so that he would walk in and see me waiting. When I rearranged the blanket, I was shocked to look down and realize that there were blonde hairs all over it.
Thoroughly creeped out, and suddenly mad at the girl from in picture, I threw the blanket off, hugged a pillow, and tried not to feel stupid.


By Tuesday, I had heard from Brody twice since I’d been over. I had called to let him know I got home okay, and then he’d called on Monday for a conversation that lasted less than five minutes.
I didn’t really think that anything was too wrong. I thought maybe he was busy with his grown-up job. I was busy at college, partaking of private Christian school pseudo-bliss. I had a knack back then for carefully ignoring the parts of something that made me feel bad, so I was under the impression that the weekend had been really fun. I replayed a few parts of it over and over, and didn’t think about the rest. I put the paperweight Dramatic Interp trophy in the console of my car below the parking brake. It slid around when I drove, reminding me that I had won something. Even if it was a ridiculously small tournament.

Then I got an email.
I was sitting in the computer lab on the third floor of the Bible Building.

I think maybe things are moving just a little too fast for me. I think it may be that I just didn't realize it. I am just overwhelmed by all of this, you know. First of all I feel like trash for what happened the other night. Yeah that. That isn't me and I don't want to become that. I am very close to God and I betrayed him. He has placed an anointing on my life and I am not going to screw that up. You are probably thinking I am just like those people at your school. But I am not. I am not "religious". I have a relationship not a religion. God is going to do great things through me and I will not screw that up. He has done great things for me. He is the reason I am what I am today. I am sorry I gave you the wrong impression of me. But Hell is hot, and I will not be stupid enough to throw my calling away and end up there. I am sure you think I am nuts. I don't know your beliefs, or even if you believe anything, but I have morals and standards. I blew all of that out of the water, since we have been talking. Second, I don't think I have recovered from the whole ex-girlfriend thing. I still think about her. I try to talk all big and bad, but its still there. I can't help it. Maybe I’m supposed to be alone or something. God let me know last night while I was praying that he had more for me to do before I get my helpmate. I am sorry for everything. You probably think I am insane now. But that's ok. I can live with that a whole lot easier that being in Hell for eternity. This life is a vapor and what we do here is how we will be judged. So I am going to live as clean as I can. To me life isn't about sex. That's how I go without it. God looks down on sexual sin. It's worse than many sins. It's in the Bible. I just want to be pure and clean. I have already asked for forgiveness.Anyway, I have not been doing what I am supposed to be doing so I am going to get back at it.

When I finished reading I felt like my skin was on fire and freezing cold at the same time. It was like each line I read wrapped my stomach in a tighter and tighter knot until I suddenly felt like I was either going to explode or throw up. I opened a response email, then stared at the blank page for a few seconds before closing it. There were only a couple of other people in the lab because it was 9 o’clock at night. So I stood up and walked toward the door shaking, feeling like someone had knocked all of the air out of me.

I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten an email like this, but it hurts more than just words coming out of someone’s mouth. I reviewed this email many times since he sent it, and every time it stung with the same intensity.

I drove home from campus that night and slept in my own bed at home. I told my mom a less damning version of what had happened, and she told me it was ridiculous. But I was just so confused, and so hurt. I snuggled into my twin bed in my room with the sky blue walls and tropical themed border trying to feel safe and whole. I cried a lot, but I was mad, too.
Oh, and occasionally I laughed a little bit. “Helpmate?” Really? I’m sorry, but I was not designed to be anyone’s helpmate. It sounded a little bit like help, as in hired help.
But other than that one little laugh, there was mostly angry crying. I had really liked Brody! My mom even liked Brody! He had so much going for him. But I guess he was under the impression that it was all going so well for him because he stayed away from people like me.
And then there was that. People like me? What was I? I wasn’t some closed minded private Christian school bimbo, I wasn’t a slut, I was confused. Did he think I was a slut?
I cried because I thought his letter was right, I cried because I thought he was an idiot, and I cried because he had, in essence, said he would go to hell if he stayed with me.
“How many people can say someone’s said that about them!?” I said aloud to the seventies style popcorn ceiling of my bedroom.

Even as I was driving back to school the next day, I could still feel the shock wash over me every time I thought of it. And the anger! He had been the one to suggest I come over. He had been the one who started all the goofy awkward what-if stuff. He had picked me up off the couch! It was him! It takes two to tango, sure, but how could he sit there and condemn me and not even care!?
“Self absorbed, arrogant, right-wing asshole!” I yelled at my dashboard.
And then I looked up and noticed that the car 20 feet in front of me was stopped in the middle of the lane.
I pumped the brakes but I could tell it was no good. The bumper with its bright red tail lights were hurtling toward me as my tires screamed. I heard the paperweight trophy slide and smack the side of the console just before I heard the cruch. Which was deafening, a loud popping noise. And the air was suddenly filled with white smoky powder. Had I broken my nose!? I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t stop coughing, but my car had finally stopped.
And that’s how a ham sandwich left me confused about who I was, and stranded on the campus of a private Christian school that I hated.

Ham Sandwich #4971 (Part I)

It all came down to a ham sandwich.
My mother met Brody Valk at work while eating a ham sandwich instead of going out for lunch like she usually did.
She passed her enthusiasm for the 22-year-old, all-american, Christian, home owner Brody to me. I was charmed by his put-together-ness despite the fact that he, like I, had just gotten out of a rather long term relationship with someone he thought he would marry. I was 19. Brody was 22.
We wrote letters through email back and forth for weeks.
There is something to the act of written correspondence.
We saw a movie together and did the whole my-hand-goes-where awkward dance. The kiss goodnight lasted 17 minutes and in the days to come things lurched onward in intensity.

Phone calls were placed two and three hours in length. We discussed music, young adult-hood, and eventually picket fences, dogs, and 2.5 children. We breathed heavy sighs which we quickly caught when discussing what might occur should we ever meet at night in a bedroom. I remember feeling timid, and waiting for cues in order to say what I really felt. I remember pressing my cheeck into the scalding hot cell phone. It had been on a charger since it had run out of battery life forty minutes before.
The feelings were like tidal waves of loveliness that seemed unshakeable, unmovable, incorruptible.
But I was wrong.

In October I had a speech tournament to go to at Middle Tennessee State. Murfreesboro, home of MTSU, was a mere 10 miles east of where Brody owned his shoebox home.
On the phone that morning, he asked if I wanted any specific kind of cereal. It was understood that I would stay the night, the beautiful night, and come home on Sunday. I asked for Fruity Pebbles.

A Marriage Story

Once upon a time there was perfect love. A man would only marry the woman he was made for, and woman only married the man she was made for. And everyone could easily find each other. Because everyone knows that each person is designed expressly with another in mind. We were created to fit togther like halves of a puzzle. Everyone knows that. In this time, a man cared when he hurt his wife's feelings, and a woman understood when to say what. They had children who had perfect childhoods and happy parents, and those children grew up to find their own one-and-only.

This continued for years and years and generations, until one day a certain Eve walked into a bar and met a serpent dressed in black, who wore a faux hawk and had a lip piercing. The serpent tempted Eve, and she was weak. He seemed to like her so immediately; he wanted her. She had never felt such passion or such power. And in the morning, when Even woke up she was different. She noticed Adam throwing his dirty clothes on the floor. She noticed the seat was up in the bathroom. And she noticed the sideways look he gave the girl next door when she bent down to get the paper. Eve burnt the toast that morning.

And after twenty eight pieces of burnt toast, Adam couldn't understand why Eve kept nagging about the seat, and the dishes, and the way they never had romantic dinners any more. He couldn't understand why she wanted to go out with him on Saturdays all of a sudden. He couldn't understand about the toast.

Thinking there was no other way, they had a child. Then another. And they couldn't understand why everything was so hard all of a sudden. They didn't mean to scream about it, but they were so unlike their parents, and their friends. They felt so wrong all the time. There wasn't much else they could do but scream, often at one another.

The children, growing up this way, were ostracized because of their unconventional parents. They went into the world trying to find someone to save them from themselves, and to prove to them that they were special. They didn't find their one-and-only's. They were mixed up. Their minds were jumbles of burnt and buttery toast. Instead they found the wrong people. And they had the wrong children that they would not have otherwise had.

And this happened, and happened, and occasionally someone would get it right. Because even in a sea of wrong, God made sure to create for everyone his or her other half. But the serpent had blinded all the people by making them see, long ago in the bar with Eve. And now its harder to find your perfect love than it is to put a camel through the eye of a needle.

Oh, it can be done.

You just have to trust in the one who made your Other.

Look long and hard, and through your blindness, you'll see.

Atlanta vs. Nashville

"Are you familiar with the Country Ham Festival?"

...If someone had come up to me and asked this question anywhere besides work, I would have busted out laughing.

"No."

But I didn't. Because I was at work, and Melora had come across to my cubicle just so she could ask that ridiculous question. And she had a smile behind it, like maybe she thought something was ridiculous, too.

"Well," she says, "I've been listening to this country music station on the radio and they are advertising the Country Ham Festival. And they said just a second ago, 'there'll also be a hog calling contest!'" She made a face. I awarded her a consolation laugh. "That's exactly the sort of thing my family made fun of me for when they found out I was moving here."

"From Atlanta?"

She nodded.

"Isn't that funny how that always works? Atlanta is actually further south that Nashville, making it geographically more southern, and yet people always make fun of Nashville."

"Well, come on, Atlanta's a big city."

I suddenly feel slightly defensive. "Nashville's a big city."

She looks at me like, 'seriously?' Like I am crazy. Like I'm missing some teeth and have no shoes on.

"When you think of major U.S. cities, you know, it's New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Houston..." She's still waiting for some agreement from me. "You don't think Nashville."

She really must think Atlanta is the shit. And I concede, with a "Nashville's just the right size I guess."

Melora laughed and walked back to her desk. 

In the 4:45 silence of my cubicle, I googled populations of the two cities. I was right. 

Atlanta, population: 537,958

Nashville, population: 626,144

We might be more suburbs and ghettos than big city lights, but Nashville had almost one hundred thousand people on Atlanta. Nashville is both big and quaint, and Melora shouldn't have looked at me like I was crazy. 

Needless to say, one should not include Atlanta in the top ten of the nation's biggest cities. Not even the top 30. I mean, if you're making fun of us for being "country," or for not being a "big city," you are wrong wrong wrong. 

Nashville's foreign-born population more than tripled in size between 1990 and 2000, increasing from 12,662 to 39,596. Large groups of Mexicans, Kurds,^[26] Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, Arabs, and Bantus call Nashville home, among other groups.^[27] Nashville has the largest Kurdish community in the United States, numbering approximately 11,000.^[28] About 60,000 Bhutanese refugees are being admitted to the U.S. and some of them will resettle in Nashville.^[29] During the Iraqi election of 2005, Nashville was one of the few international locations where Iraqi expatriates could vote.^[30]

I can't really blame Melora for thinking Atlanta is superior. That's where she's from. But she does live in a duplex near Little Mexico. Of course she doesn't think she's in the city!

Pretty Ugly

"Great." 

There were people walking in the direction of the wine bar before I even completely turned on to 12th. I knew they were walking to the Italian place next door, but still. From that vicinity, parking was going to be a pain in the ass. 

I circled the block a few times to see if anyone was leaving, to no avail. I was already late to Regina's going away party. It was supposed to start ten minutes before I decided to pull into a spot on the end of a side street down the block. My lateness would be okay though. Regina wasn't exactly the most punctual person herself. What wasn't okay, was the fact that I would have to walk nearly a mile in my suede-like four inch heels. 

"Holy crap," I muttered to myself while climbing the slight incline that began to feel like Mount Rainier. Which was not an exaggeration. Everest, though, would have been over the top. 

The sky had only begun to spit rain as I entered the twinkle-lit wine bar, and I thought nothing of it. 

"Hi! Oh my god!" Regina got up and hugged me, as was her way. She was half Persian and half Happy Christian, if that makes any sense. She wore black rimmed glasses that I was at times jealous of, but somehow diminished the size of her eyes which could often bore holes through her dinner companions.

"I can't believe you're leaving soon." I sat down next to her at the end of a long table. There were three girls next to her and one across the table. I thought that was odd. The two girls to the far left of her couldn't even see her, much less join the conversation. I wondered if they did it on purpose. 

"I know! My plane leaves Thursday!" I settled into my chair. The two girls closest to Regina were discussing wines in a way that made me wonder if they were wine snobs or snobs in general. I decided they were only wine snobs. And the other two girls farthest from Regina were also discussing something absorbing, but with less fervor. They must have just met. 

"So I have some bad news," Regina pierced me with an annoyed look. "The wine bar isn't doing two for ones any more."

"Oh." Damn it! 9 dollars for something-I-don't-enjoy, here I come! "That's okay."

"Yeah, if I had known that I wouldn't have had us meet here." She looked down at her menu and I looked at mine. "Also, Peter got his hair cut. He looks like a model." She swooned.

I cocked an eyebrow and looked around. "Might make him look more manly. He always did look rather boyish with the long hair."

"Yes. It is manly. He also looks like he's gained a little weight. But in a good way. In a way that makes him look manly."

Peter the waiter did look manly. But he didn't look like a model for anything but his longer looking face, and wider grin. He wasn't hampered by any suddenly necessary hair flicks. I ordered a glass of wine from him and began jumping into conversations here and there. I had to, I didn't know anybody.

I'm not really a fan of large gatherings. This is possibly because, as previously stated, I am terrible at making friends. Regina was almost-friends with me in high school. Since then, I used her as a sound board for my awkwardly awful dating life, since she also had many awkwardly awful dating experiences. We agreed that we were mostly amused by the sincerity of overly anxious lovers, but through our wry and sarcastic jokes we hid the fact that we both wished to God that we could actually be overly anxious lovers ourselves. Since all the "anxious" had apparently drained out of us and become wise-cracking apathy. I liked Regina. 

It also helped that when I was around her I suddenly developed an overly confident dry wit. Which would explain the joke that came out of my mouth when the newest dinner-party-goer joined the pack.

"I don't see you very often! I'm so glad you could come!" Regina was singing the good hostess song before the blonde girl even sat down. 

"I know I just work all the time. Its kind of like my work has become my life these days." She sat in one of the only seats left at the opposite end of the table from Regina and I. She was very pretty. Her hair was a highlighted glowing blonde. She was wearing a fitted black shirt, and a polka dotted skirt.

"What do you do?" Someone asked.

"I'm a banker, I work at Fifth Third. You'd think after working late this often, I'd start to hate my life." A banker, you say? A joke suddenly exploded out of the birth canal of my mind.

"Did you say you're a banker?" Everyone looked when I said it. I was at the other end of the table from this new girl.

"Yes."

"A banker."

"Yes." 

"Cool! So you're like rocking at Oregon Trail."

She stared at me with no expression, and the two girls closest to me got the joke and chuckled. Oddly, even without an expression, she made me feel like I had grown a third arm. 

"...You know, because everybody wants to be the banker on Oregon Trail." She still stared. "That's cool, man, because you know I've never meet a person who says they're a banker. That's cool." Bank teller, I thought later. 

Immediately, based on that one failed attempt at making her laugh, I did not like Natasha. Who names their child Natasha anyway? When you're not even Russian, you're just asking for your child to grow up with only-child syndrome thinking the world revolves around pretty-pretty them, la la la. 

Regina went around to the other side of the table to visit Natasha, and I sipped wine that reportedly tasted of bacon fat, but was actually not disgusting. It tasted like wine. I suppose I am unrefined. But I do not care. 

Girl with open face sitting next to Regina's empty seat had a theater rehearsal to go to. She looked like theater. Like silent film maybe. Her eyes were very wide. Red head girl to my right ate a fourteen dollar plate of hors d'oeuvres at a total of probably 40 calories. It wasn't enough to keep a distended Ethiopian alive. 

"So let me tell you what happened on my awesomely tragic night out." Natasha had squished herself into the seat with Regina. She was now practically on top of me. And she launched into this story that started, I'm not kidding, with:

"--so I decided, what the hell, I'll just go on the party bus with her. How bad can it be? So I get there and realize that all of us girls are wearing dresses, are blonde, and have big boobs. All of us."

Big boobs? Oh no she didn't. I looked at Natasha's chestal region. The somewhat unnecessary comment had pretty much invited everyone at the table to do so. They could not have been bigger than C cups. I glanced at red head girl's massive amount of cleavage and then down at my own. Red head and I were both beating Blondie over there by like a mile. Myself especially. I have to buy custom fits because they don't freakin make my size at normal department stores, ya bitchy Barbie. 

Mind you, this comment would not have annoyed me if what came next hadn't come next.

"--So we're getting onto the bus and this one girl can't walk because her skirt is pretty much right at butt level. And her shoes are strapped up the leg. Like hooker shoes. And this is the point where Natasha decides that she's going to drink away the awfulness of it." (*cue overly enthusiastic laughter from surrounding party guests*) "But then it can and does get worse, and Natasha is driven to dance alone, by herself, because she's drunk, and its just too awful to think about." 

"Wow, that sounds pretty awful." Regina smiles.

"Yes, and the girl who can't walk decides that its a great idea to get up on a stripper pole with no underwear on."

"That is awful."

"Yes, now let me show you the pictures."

Now, why would someone having a terrible horrible awful time take pictures the entire night? You wouldn't. You'd just be Natasha, apparently. Who disturbingly continued to refer to herself in the third person.

"Natasha was lookin pretty out of it in this one. Can you tell I totally don't want to be there? She's all like she's my best friend, and I'm like, I totally hate you."

It is only when she passes me the camera that I realize I actually know the girl in the picture. Yes, the girl with the strappy shoes who was apparently a Britney/Paris/prostitute if you asked Natasha. 

Her name was Rachel Stevens, and she was in my class in middle school. She used to be brunette. She used to be obnoxiously out-going and ditzy, though very friendly. She would have hugged anybody if she was in a good mood and liked them just a little bit. That was probably why she was hugging Natasha. Not because she was a drunken armrest, but because she was having a blast. Natasha's rant somehow incited all this empathy for her in me. Natasha didn't know her. And while I didn't know Natasha, or even Rachel really, what I did know was that Natasha was the kind of person I was flushing out of my phone lately. She was negative. Everything she had to say was negative!

The way she looked at me when I cracked that joke. The way she continued to look at everything apparently, like she was bored and "so over it." But I couldn't put my finger on it. 

She wasn't a Blonde-tourage junkie obviously, she wasn't a college grad (banker???), or a feminist. She was getting married to her fiance. He was a tattoo artist, which meant a goody Goode was out. 

She wasn't really anything except the prettiest ugly person I had met in a long time. 

Maybe she just didn't present well.

"Bye! I'll make sure to call you!" Regina hugged me goodbye and I took a last look at Peter the waiter, who was being screamed at from the kitchen door to pick up his orders. His hair cut did make him look good. He was pretty, too. But not pretty-ugly. Just pretty, because you knew he thought horrible thoughts sometimes when the customer was maybe being difficult, or stared holes through his butt from across the room. He never let himself be pretty ugly. He was always just pretty.

I left the wine bar, and walked a mile back to my car in the pouring down rain. 

Obligatory 9/11 Post

I was in the orchestra room in high school, which happened to be above the auto mechanic shop in the vocational building. The In-School-Suspension room was next door to us as perhaps additional punishment. And definitely more for them than us. That one hour when our Strings class was in session playing away on our poorly tuned, gently used violins, violas, cellos, and basses was probably the low point of the day for the "bad kids" on the other side of the wall. Our low point was dragging out instruments through the motor oil scented garage downstairs and up to the tiny room we'd been assigned for the year. 

Still, we were sitting at our stands, instruments at the ready, when a note from the office came. Mr. Hawthorne, our orchestra teacher took it and shook his head in confusion. 

"What is it?" We wanted to know. We had been working on an arrangement of Dvorak's Symphony Number 9. The piece has since become one of my favorites. 

"It's a note from the office that says a jumbo jet has just crashed into the World Trade Center?" And he shook his head again and put the paper down. 

Jumbo jet? If they had said plane, it might not have seemed like a joke. But I remember kind of raising my eyebrows and dismissing the issue. We picked back up where we left off in the sheet music. 

I suppose now that in my mind's eye I saw an empty plane accidentally crashing into an empty building. The word "crash" itself to me implied an accident. Cars didn't "crash" intentionally. It all seemed so ludicrous. 

It was our next class in the main building of the school that made me realize the severity of the issue. Televisions were on everywhere. People were crying. And I realized that we in the orchestra room had been the only ones still working after we got that letter. 

But "Jumbo Jet?" It was only one letter off from Dumbo Jet. And besides, there was no way for us to know any better because of our location!

I later found out that we had been moved above the auto mechanic shop because the new principal, to whom we used to 'Heil Hitler' when she turned her back, had asked Mr. Hawthorne to move Orchestra into the band room. He had refused, and the motor oil reeking vocational room was the principal's revenge. 

Alan Hollis #0741

Alan Hollis was older than everyone else in our English Education classes in college. He was a class clown, and he always sat next to this diminutive mousy girl with glasses named Darla.

It was the understanding of everyone in the class that Darla was going to be an awesome teacher. She always came up with the best lesson plans, and though shorter even than myself at a good 5'2", she seemed to have what it takes to beat the five year turnover rate of the public school system.

Alan, however, could perhaps have taught clown school. He specialized in smarty answers, sarcastic remarks, and the helpless look that meant he didn't mean to be a pain in the ass, it was just all so funny. Class was a joke to him, and to Darla the joke was Alan.

I saw them walk together to multiple classes. They hugged. They flicked each other in good natured flirtation. Everyone thought for sure they were dating.

But apparently they weren't dating.

(*cue dramatic crescendo*)

"Hey! That is so not true! Def Leppard, man! Fuckin Def Leppard was the shit!"

Cue Darla's boyfriend, Roy. Roy was huge, at least six feet tall. He had a shaved head, a goatee, gauged ear lobes and a lip piercing. Frankly, I would not have been surprised if he had a swastika tattooed on his chest somewhere.

Roy liked to be the center of attention, puff up his chest like a game cock, and walk around intimidating everyone with various feats of idiocy and unnecessarily foul language.

I saw them outside of a campus bar at a picnic bench under the covered porch.

"Darla and I here--" he slung his arm roughly around Darla's neck and she smiled and pressed into his shoulder, "--we were going to go to Buzzfest this year, but she had some fuckin school shit to do."

"I'm trying to teach Antony and Cleopatra without talking too much about sex," and she giggled behind her nerdy glasses.

"Oh man, I said. You're teaching that? I have to teach Chiua Achebe's Things Fall Apart. I think I'd rather have Shakespeare." Next to me, Kyle Parson had also been in our classes and known Darla.

"Yeah? I've got to do Faulkner. I found out about that and thought 'what the crap.' I didn't understand Faulkner in college!"

There was a lull and Roy started looking about the room since he obviously had no place in the conversation. He started playing with Darla's hair. His macho affection was actually coming off pretty disgusting. every since Darla had informed us that they lived together, I couldn't stop thinking about how weird they must look having sex.

Kyle broke the silence.

"Have you heard anything from Alan?"

Darla immediately looked at Roy. She opened her mouth a fraction of an inch.

"--Don't even say that name, man. Don't fuckin bring it up." As much as he looked frightening, I had to stifle a smirk because the thought of Alan, who was puffy and goofy looking stepping in and emasculating Roy was just really funny.

Abruptly, Darla got up and excused herself.

Roy leaned in to Kyle and I as we watched Darla round the corner toward the bathroom inside.

"I told that motherfucker if he ever comes near her again I'll fuckin break his neck."

But I kept seeing Darla and Alan together in class. I never saw Roy in the same one hundred foot radius, but the two of them always sat together, always joked, always teased.

When we graduated, Roy watched Darla walk. I saw him standing there clutching a bouquet of Kroger carnations when they caught up in the grass outside the arena. Alan and I ended up with the same student teaching supervisor, so I kept up with him. He got a job at a well-to-do public high school in the suburbs coaching football. He had been dating a woman with special needs who was divorced with two children.

And I couldn't understand how he had time and patience for all that. How he could be laughing and joking and poking fun, and really be coming back to that? But then, I couldn't understand how Darla ever had patience for Roy either.

So I guess it all made sense in a way.

Comment Card

They took away my grilled cheese at lunch!

Every day I get a cup of tomato based soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for dipping and general enjoyment.

Then Tuesday I come to lunch at 12:45 like normal and the dude behind the counter says, "Now, I can't get you grilled cheese no more!"

"What?" I grin at him. I am sure he's joking.

"I can't make grilled cheese any more. I can only make what's on that card up there."

I grin up at the card. I still think he's pulling my leg, and grilled cheese will be up there. ...but no grilled cheese. 

"Are you serious right now?!" 

I walk toward the hot entree side where there are steaming trays of meatloaf, macaroni, and mashed potatoes behind the glass. I stand there. Because someone is required to serve the stuff, usually.

"What's wrong?" Another dining employee who usually greets me has moved around to the hot entree side.

"They took away my grilled cheese!?"

"Yup," he says, picking up a plate from the side table. "And guess what else, this is self-serve."

I suddenly look down and notice that there are spoons sticking out of everything. ...Damn. 

I feel stupid. I throw my soup into the trash before paying for it, and walk toward the parking elevator, and then my car. 

When I get back to work, the heading on the Dining newsletter is as follows: "Dining Facility Gets Back to Basics." Apparently a "Back to Basics" menu has been instated to give customers less choices and streamline the dining process. It is now easier to order the Basic lunch that is much cheaper by comparison to area restaurants.

The newsletter then listed ridiculously over-priced area lunch spots and compared them to a similar lunch in the dining facility.

Still, the price of a candy bar had gone up by 50% and a sandwich had jumped up by a whole dollar. I was a little bit mad.

FEEDBACK FORM:

Comments?

How can you not put two pieces of bread together with cheese in the middle and grill it? I don't even care if the cost increases! Bring back my grilled cheese!

"Back to Basics?" How much more basic can you get than cheese and bread?

Also, with limited contact to service personnel due to the increase in self-service selection, I feel more like a cow among cattle than a person having the unique and homey dining experience I enjoyed before. 

In short, you won't see me in the dining area any more. Have fun serving (or preparing the self-service of) the even fewer number of people who still feel like eating there. 

I kinda felt like I was writing a congress speech. 

Still, though, they're not bringing grilled cheese back. When they serve "old fashioned" tomato soup, I may cry.

The Law of Diminishing Returns

And the word for today is: Dull.

Lately I've been thinking I'm all dull inside. And I think its probably due to the Law of Diminishing Returns. Which ironically was once the the highlight of my day. I had a hopeless crush on my Economics teacher in high school.


"So Brian is eating a cup of chili. It's REALLY good chili. And it's so good that he decides a second cup would be even better. And it is! --Brian, eat another cup of chili."
Brian mimed eating a delicious cup of chili.
"So Brian's second cup was even better! What about a third cup! That would be even better than the second, right?!"
Aaaah... I thought from my second row seat. You are so delicious.
"WRONG! A third cup --Brian, eat a third cup-- A third cup actually makes Brian feel kinda sick. What's wrong? I thought more was better, --Brian eat a fourth cup-- but, it appears that a fourth cup actually makes Brian vomit."
Brian mimed the vomit of the conditionally delicious chili.
"And that's the Law of Diminishing Returns."
Aaaah... I thought. You are even delicious when talking about vomit.


I actually took the Advanced Placement test, paid a whole 50 dollars, and really had no intention of passing the test. While I did have 100's in the class, all I wanted out of the exam were the afternoon study sessions. I wrote page after page of a student-teacher romance novel that, of course, never materialized. I got a 2 out of 5 on the exam. He apologized to me after the fact, and I could have told him that I got exactly what I wanted out of my 50 bucks. But I guess I let him think he'd failed me. He hadn't. I even liked the way he looked apologizing.

Hence, I may be a bit off in my interpretation of the Law of Diminishing Returns. But based on Mr. Formerly Delicious's Law, I have come to the Vomit part of my dating life. Boys, even hot ones, not only disappoint me, but I am bored by them rather than enthralled. I no longer feel the need to gawk at all. Despite my crush on 1oth Floor Indian Guy, or Pink Shirt Wearing Guy four cubes away from me, or even my fantasies about Rafael Nadal, I am haunted by the ordinary-ness of it all.

I no longer anticipate the release and rush of emotion, the flutter of nerves. I no longer go out of my way to encounter them. I don't want to crash crush bury myself in passion. Because passion, I've become aware, is all a big lie.

Now, I've known this for some time. We all do. But its that ohmygod feeling, that cloud-nine, my-life's-like-a-movie thing that keeps us from noticing that this situation isn't different. This is not a lasting relationship. It's infatuation.
Infatuation.
In-fat-u-ation.
It's such an ugly word to be the best feeling in the world.
And maybe it was age, independence, self-sufficience, or the fact that MARRIAGE looms over the horizon like a necessary evil, but I don't even feel like that any more. Ever.

Hot 10th Floor Indian Guy is the most delicious right where he is: Across the room from me, eating tandoori out of an aluminum foil package, at most vaguely aware that the white girl with the scribbly notebook won't stop looking at him. He is the best in my dreams only. In the idea that just maybe he's actually Edward Cullen, and he wants to run away with me and have vampire babies.
This way I never have to find out the mundane truth: that his breath reeks, and that his parents still technically run his life. That he is engaged to a moderately attractive Indian girl named Sonal who is still in medical school. I don't want to know this.
I want to daydream like a little kid.

I want to dream like I did in middle and high school where the most cathartic experience I could have was to write my way into a life with 10th Floor Indian Guy or Pink Shirt Wearing Guy or even my Econ teacher from high school.

I guess what I'm saying is that my dreams have always been more satisfying that my realities. And now I remember what I somehow forgot over the years: that the Law of Diminishing Returns can always be broken when it comes to fantasy. I can have the same dream about Rafa Nadal four nights in a row and still be sorry I woke up.
I never even feel like vomiting!

Adam Anders #7227

In high school there was always that one group of people that you wanted to be friends with and you didn't know why.
Once you get to college, there isn't really any one group because groups are everywhere and they don't really know each other.
Unless, of course, you go to a small private christian school the size of a large high school. But that's another story.
Every now and then there is still a group that you want to be a part of even at the most massive of colleges. There are people you want to be friends with that you feel separated from somehow. There is this invisible bubble around them, and as soon as you try to enter this bubble, it bursts and the magic of the group vanishes in your awkward presence, as you stand in front of these people who know that you do not mesh with their obvious chemistry.

Yet in high school, this chemistry is always seen as superior. This group wears the cool clothes you can't afford. They have the cool parties. They date the cool people.

But when I went to college and found a group of Mass Comm kids, they weren't necessarily superior, just tight knit. And maybe it was the fact that they were doing something with their lives that I really wanted to do. They were all diving head first into the unknown of a life in video production. But I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be friends with them. I don't think I really had that many friends in college. I knew lots of guys who would masquerade as my friends because they wanted to be my boyfriends, but I didn't have anyone I could call simply because I didn't want to watch the next episode of American Idol all by myself.

Inevitably Adam Anders and others went off to their lives in tv, and I went off to mine in teaching. But I always wondered what would have happened if I hadn't been dating like a rabid animal and had actually shown up to the couple of events they invited me to. I wonder if, with their influence, I would have switched my major to Mass Comm. I wonder if I would be making endless copies of repair and commission invoices, or if I would instead be living off of my creative juices. In some capacity anyway.

I've never really put much stock in making friends. I'm bad at it. I always have been. Friendships have always just happened to me, often as the result of some endless source of conversation by way of some deep ingrained thing we had in common. Its exhausting if there is none. One might wonder why it was so easy to date people who were totally wrong for me if I could never come up with anything to say. But I really don't have an answer for that one. I was great at getting dates, and bad at making friends. And I missed out on them. Adam Anders and others. I missed out, and I still don't know how its all done.

How do you make friends with people if you're so uncomfortable around them?
How do you convince someone that you're worth knowing if they don't think so already?

...And Counting

Boyfriend Count: 0

Women Attempting to Fix Me Up with One Count: 2

Book Idea Count: 5

Full Finished Drafts: 0

Dreams I've Had Involving Imaginary Boyfriends: 4

Imaginary Boyfriend Count: 11

These may include: Raphael Nadal, Young Marlon Brando, Edward of Twilight, Eric of True Blood, the hot Indian guy on the 10th floor at work, Gael Garcia Bernal, Elijah Wood, Jack from Titanic just before the boat sinks (He's always so worried about me), Taylor Lautner, George Willard from Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, Slater of Saved by the Bell, and occasionally Rufio from the movie Hook.

Hours I Have to Turn Beautiful, Painful, Hopeless, Longing for Imaginary Lovers into Book Construction: 72... and counting.

Thank you, Labor Day Weekend.

Alec Dorman #3581

Breckin Moore had taken me to a bar on the "downtown" square of our rinky dink college town that had an upstairs that functioned as a concert venue. Local talent, mostly crap, would play thinking they were going somewhere in the music business, which was, often unfortunately, their major.

"Yeah, I'm a RIM major, how did you know that?!"

They smoke packs at a time and borrow money to follow their dreams as an "artist." They wear vintage western snap button shirts and jeans holier than swiss Jesus. They wear old beat up sneakers and perfect the hairstyle that says "I spent an hour this morning making sure you'd know I don't care about my hair." Then of course there are others that really don't care about their hair. Or basic hygiene. At the bar upstairs in said two-story venue bar they wait for the show to start and drink PBR while chain smoking and nodding to whatever craptastic band is playing over the speakers.

Girls in short skirts and leggings wander and laugh aimlessly while seeming to bump into each other on purpose. They wear too much eye make up. Smokey eyes, crazy eye-liner eyes, smeared-because-I'm-already-drunk eyes.

I sat at the bar with Breckin and various PBR drinking RIM majors, I assume. I wore black and made sarcastic-eyes at everyone. Only for a split second though, because I was covering the fact that I was really trying to find people I knew. I didn't live in that city any more. But the waiting game of starting my independent life kept drawing be back to that place where everyone was waiting. Though most of them seemed to be screwing things up while they did so. Maybe I thought I was immune.

"College kids are stupid," my reluctant college freshman brother used to say.

"Guess what, you are one," I would counter.

The bar was starting to buzz with the ensuing show as three boys in vests and loose ties started their sound check. How sweet. They wanted to look mainstream. The bar was full, there were no more stools, and I stood up at my seat to check the text message that vibrated in my back pocket. I flipped it on and illuminated my face with blue smokey light.

Breckin was now completely ignoring me. Some girls near the door to downstairs were discussing something very funny with him and flailing about, lightly brushing his shoulder or arm with their spirit fingers.

"What's so interesting?" I looked up from my phone to see a guy wearing a snap button western shirt in front of me. His hair was shaggy and he had this clueless look about him even though I knew he wasn't. I had noticed him flitting from crowd to crowd around the room. He obviously knew a lot of people.

"Um. My phone." I say this deadpan, because I am actually irritated that he isn't more attractive. At a distance the black rimmed glasses had looked sexy in a nerdy, I'm-a-hipster kind of way. Now they looked like they were trying to be hipster glasses.

"Well duh!" He was unfazed. "You must have a text-ual relationship." I'd never heard of that before. And I told him so.

"Huh. I've never heard of that before. But I guess I do. I'm actually getting pretty fast with this phone texting kind of thing." I had just discovered T9-word.

I glanced over at Breckin, still basking in blonde attention. I had wanted to know where he was so he wouldn't notice what I knew would happen next.

Hipster-would-be wiped his brow.

"I'm Alec. It's nice to meet you. Would you by any chance like to get to know me... textually?"

I don't know how anyone ever got past a line like that. But the truth is that I've always been a sucker for puns.

In high school, I had a Biology teacher who used to tell a bad joke at least every other day. And a Murray Middle I used some of them to teach the "pun" as figurative language:

"You guys hear about the shootout in the Gap the other day? There were many casual-tees."

I considered it the high point of the unit.

Alec started texting me the next day and didn't stop for at least three weeks. I found out he was actually twenty-nine, divorced, and working at a fancy furniture store for eccentric rich people. I pictured him sweating, wearing a snap button vintage western shirt, and trying to force a zebra stripe mohair couch up a flight of stairs.

But that was really all there was to Alec Dorman for me. Once someone tells you they were married before, you don't really think about driving to East Nashville to have a cuddle party with them. Its not fun to cuddle a big ball of debt, repressed emotional baggage, and unfortunate fashion decisions. You draw back, extend one hand in warning, and warily say, "Uh, that's okay. I really can't right now." When the truth is they might have less emotional baggage than you.

An Emergency Post on Vh1's Tool Academy

I just want to SCREAM at that girl. What the hell are you doing!? Get a backbone! He wants to ruin his own life, don't let him take you with him.

...Oh hell no! Do not run after him and calm him down! He should be begging for your forgiveness for making a fool of himself on tv!!! 

Did she take off her shoes?! What!? O. M. G. This--this is exactly what I have been talking about! She's running to him because she doesn't know what to do with herself without him! She's not even thinking about herself! It's all-- he's upset. And let's leave. WTF. Seriously. 

Its just like, all this time I had thought, maybe by arguing I am being selfish. I should just give in. Make peace, you know. Because there wouldn't be an argument if I didn't say anything. And what do you know, after a few months, a few years, I had become my mother. And not only that, I had become something less than a person. People have feelings and opinions and they don't have to be right, they just have to be heard. When you're so over it that you don't even say how you feel, you end up isolating yourself and your emotions and...

ugh, GET THE HELL OUT OF THE LIMO! 

God. I just want to SHAKE her. She didn't even THINK to herself that she could leave without him. It wasn't an option. 

Well its an option for me, I'll tell you that much. I freakin love being alone these days. 

--No no no no no. Do NOT tell him you LOVE him!!? 

I cannot STAND this!!!

But I can't stop watching. 

And... oh yeah, Antonio Sabato Jr. is hot and ethnic, which I love, but has two children. Who as of yet are no where near the set of My Antonio. This means that the show is a total farce. Because he's just another crappy father who apparently left is young children for months to advance his career on Vh1. Yeah, another one of those. 

And with that, I'm turning off my television. So much for winding down.