Distractions

I'm sitting here at work with two kids' programs in front of me.
I need to come up with a Health lesson for our he/she student, which shouldn't be hard to do.
Puberty for boys... and girls?
I need to assign our twelve-year-old gang enthusiast something for Life Management.
Some video about prison maybe. Preferably with allusions to butt-sex.
The sixteen-year old father of two needs a rewrite since he doesn't make it to class enough. He's too busy working two jobs and spending the wee hours of the morning placating the egos of two hormonal, drama-ridden females.
But I keep getting distracted.

I keep staring out the window at my beautiful new car that will most likely commence to killing me every month for the next five years while my credit score builds and builds and I pay loads of money to "the man."
But who cares. When I leave this place at 4pm, all the angst and negativity just melts away. I crank my mix cd, and drive my mind far away home.

Life Expectancy

How can the life expectancy in this country be so high if people routinely practice lifestyles that are pretty much designed to kill them?
Smoking, drinking, junk food, drugs, sex, anorexia, carbonated beverages, tattoos, sedentary lifestyles, salt, sugar, Red Bull.
And then there are other things we continually do that kill ourselves in other ways.
Lying, cheating, passing judgment, gossiping, stealing, manipulating, being selfish, being stingy, and sometimes just plain being difficult.

Last night I was standing outside by my car and I could have sworn I heard this ticking noise. It sounded like the second hand on a clock. I kept moving around, stepping quietly in different directions trying to find the origin of this ticking-clicking noise. But every time I took another pink panther step in any direction I couldn't hear it anymore.
I was trying to decide whether or not it was the "beating of his hideous heart!" when I decided that, even better, it was my ticking clock revealing itself to me. It was counting out how much time I had to live.
And while that "new anxiety seized me" I kinda started to spazz out. Because seriously, some day I won't exist. And everything I do now does have an effect on that.

...Have I ever mentioned to you how mortified I am of death?

An Ode to Valentines Day 08

Love grows in me like a tumor,
parasite bent on devouring its host.
I'm developing my sense of humor,
till I can laugh at my heart between your teeth,
till I can laugh at my face beneath your feet.

Skillet on the stove; its such a temptation,
maybe I'll be the lucky one that doesnt get burned.
What the fuck was I thinking?

Love plows through me like a dozer,
I've got more give than a bale of hay,
and there's always a big mess left over.
What did you do?What did you say?

Skillet on the stove is such a temptation,
maybe I'll be the special one that doesnt get burned.
What the fuck was I thinking?

Love tears me up like a demon.
Opens the wounds and then fills them with lead,
and I'm having some trouble just breathing.
If we werent such good friends I think that I'd hate you.
If we weren't such good friends I'd wish you were dead.

Oh it's so embarrasing
I'm this awkward and uncomprable thing,
and I'm running out of places to hide it
I'm running out of places to hide it...

--Jenny Owen Youngs

Quote of the Day

"They was talkin good about this program!"

The sheer incorrectness of it took me aback for a second, and I couldn't figure out what number came next in my Sudoku puzzle. 

She went back to sitting awkwardly in her chair then, sipping her coffee, and staring blankly into space. And its not even as if she was in thought, really. She's just staring. As if the corner of the table has become very interesting. Formica? Sheet plastic? What is this mystical table made of!? 

That woman can NOT have a masters degree. There is no way on this green earth.

Weird Decisions

Jason Murphy was in a play with me when I was in college. I can't remember how or why we started flirting. But I know I was dating someone else at the time. This, of course, seemed an unfortunate fact that meant virtually nothing to me then, as I continually talked to Jason after play practice and continually neglected to mention that I was dating anyone at all.

What I do remember is that Matt Elliston was in the play with me as well, and was the lead, and did that very well, and didn't much make a single blip on my radar at that point. It would be another year before that came to be. 

But about the play. Yes. There was a moderate amount of flirting going on during rehearsals, mostly involving him prattling on and on in his conservative wisdom. This was indeed during the 04 elections. I cringed at every word. However, a week before the play opened I suppose I overlooked his obvious character flaws (what with being on the enemy team and all) and we ended up having our own kinds of rehearsals on the second floor of the business building where there were some conveniently hidden couches. 

We made out for much longer than I would have patience for now. I sold my personality, but nothing really came of it. Not because he didn't want me, but probably because I didn't want him. Maybe because he was a virgin in more ways than one. Because he had college debts and no direction in life. Because he was a singer who was just a little overconfident about his choir experiences to turn me on. And because I felt like I could do better than him. Because kissing him was like walking into a stuffy room with no air conditioning. It was warm, and musty, and slightly uncomfortable. Safe. Benign. Inconsequential. Dull.

And looking back on that now I know that unlike Matt Elliston, he didn't feel spurned. He threw me off the same way. Our connection was hush-hush and when he started dating a girl named Angela who was practically a midget even by my standards, I didn't miss him. 

He married Angela, and one day I saw her buying Frontline at the pet store I worked at during the summer. I called her on marrying Jason Murphy but didn't mention the part where I had had my tongue down his throat and he with short quick breaths had pressed his weight into me so that I fell backwards into a paneled wall once in an elevator. I knew she had no idea. Though maybe she did in another sense, right?

And now I think maybe it's these early, near misses that shaped the relationship-me. I forget about them, but there I was at the time inching my way along, decision after weird decision. Because I now think that was pretty stupid, don't you? Fleeting and fun, perhaps. But it doesn't exactly enhance my romantic resume. Thank god for mutability.

The Mandy Club

(recut 9-13-08)

So last night I go see Justin because Jacob ditched me and I haven’t seen Jonathan (the hippie) in a long time.

As predicted, the minute I get there he’s pulling out a blunt that he’s rolled from his glove compartment. I get in his truck. He hands me the broken window crank and we roll down the windows. He puffs on the blunt and lays it in the ash tray.

“Have you ever heard how loud my speakers go?” 

He cranks up his hippie music and we get to the stop sign. He pulls out a pack of cd’s from the glove compartment. “Just wait until you hear Outcast!”

“What!?” He is yelling over the music. Silence ensues and then suddenly Andre 3000 is apologizing to Ms. Jackson for making her daughter cry. Justin punches the stereo up as loud as it will go and the truck rattles with the bass line. 

People are looking at us through the windows.

Justin looks at me, heavy lidded.

“Awesome,” I say, grinning back at him. Jonathan cracks me up.

Anyway, we get to Fat Willie’s which is the unfortunate name for the pool hall that Justin works at. Thankfully no fat guy named Willie frequents it. I’m sure all the overweight Williams and Bills stay far away and play pool at the bar on Northwest Broad. But regardless of its mildly ludicrous name, Fat Willie’s is where Justin works. So we walk in.

Immediately he’s greeting everyone and introducing me, which I have always appreciated from him. It becomes apparent, however, that Justin’s brain is fucked beyond belief because as he’s yelling at the captain of one of the pool teams, I realize that his words are slurring really badly. For a second, I worry for him. But Justin has always been this way. 

He’s thirty-two and can be both remarkably mature and immature in the same breath. We went through the teacher-education program at the same time, though he didn’t finish. Though that probably had little to do with the millions of brain cells he's killed by doing so many drugs at concerts and on tours and in crappy bars and at home and once, he claims, by eating a whole block of weed as the cops pulled his friend over.  

We sat down at a low table with comfy chairs and watched the rest of Justin’s pool team suck or not suck against this guy named Larry’s team. Eventually Justin got up to play, and I hung out with the previous player, Ferrell, who was apparently 27, worked at Lowes, lived with his parents, and was hysterically funny. He had lost his match, and some of the other players were giving him a hard time about how much we was around and still hadn’t practiced enough to beat the 21-year-old blonde, nerdy guy who had beat him. 

Justin came over after a break. 

“So I just had to talk that guy out of being pissed because some girl was spreading rumors that he was gay.” He gestured at the door where apparently the guy had just left. 

“Dude," Ferrell spit some tobacco into his empty New Castle bottle. "Blame it on Mandy. Just blame it on Mandy, dude! She had a big mouth and she don’t even hang out here any more!”

Justin shrugged and went back to playing. 

“Hey, Mandy doesn’t hang out here anymore?” Someone asked.

“Nope,” and Ferrell took a swig of what I assumed was a different bottle of New Castle. Though the color of the liquids was frighteningly similar. “Yeah, have I mentioned that I’m a new member of the Maggie club?”

Someone laughed. “Yeah, and who else is it? Like John, and… Frank, and…”

“The Mandy Club?” I asked them. 

Ferrell cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, she’s this slut that a bunch of dudes here have--”

“--Oh.” I said. The Mandy Club? I was horrified! 

“She got you too, didn’t she, Ferrell!”

“Well, it’s more like I just fell into it.”

Thoroughly disgusted, I now had the mental image of Ferrell,with his cheek full of disgusting dip, literally falling into a giant vagina.

Justin won four games in a row against a chubby guy with glasses whose name I’m sure was not Willie and clinched the top spot for the pool team he was captain of, Balls Deep.

Yes. It was a classy day in Murfreesboro.

That Mandy Club was disturbing though. And I wondered if there was a girl somewhere named Mandy who was having a great time with her friends, or riding in her car to a fast food restaurant, or watching the nightly news with her mom. I wondered about this real person who was being torn down and degraded into the punch line to a bar joke, and I wondered if she was happy somewhere, or if she hated herself. Did she even know what she was to them? Could she?

Accessories

"Ask me anything,"

Edward Cullen says to Bella. I am already gagging over my insertion of their sappy, illegitimate bread-pudding-lust-slash-vampire-love names when, for some reason, the pit opens up and I'm in the meadow again.

And this time I'm freaking out because I think, surely I will never fall in love. I'm too self conscious. Or self-aware. Whatever you want to call me. And sometimes, on a particularly bad day, I think I have too many things to hide. Or rather, too many things to reveal to someone later. There are so many skeletons in my closet, and reasons why I am the way I am, that there is NO way anyone (friend, soulmate, what have you) in their right mind would sit there and respond with an, "I don't care. I still want you. You are what I want." You know, regardless of laborious accessories. 

Because I do come with a cute pink Barbie purse full of guilt and the occasional twinge of self-loathing. I even have my own removable coat of fear! Perfect for a night on the town with Ken! What a fashionable girl I am! 

I make this shit look good. 

Now. If only I could buy into Trust-time Barbie instead of Rush-into-things Barbie, maybe my accessories would become a little less hard to carry around. Because, you know, I hear Trust-time Barbie is so much fun that you can actually lose your accessories and still have oodles of fun with her. 

Yes. I did say oodles.