traveling swallowing dramamine

yaaargh.

poor dean. i think he might be fucked. but that shit is funny. (deangoesnuts.com has some lovely remixes of the iowa caucus concession speech; i recommend the NOFX one.)

anyway, i'm feeling pretty yaaargh myself--with all of the mania but none of the energy and desperate hope that dean seems to have. i have somehow gotten myself into this fairly intense and extremely retarded love triangle. again.

the last time this happened i was a sophomore in high school and it was not a love triangle but a love pentagon, and it was horrible and dramatic in a way that only 10th graders can pull off. at least the current triangle isn't too dramatic, probably because we're older and better at being straight-forward. some of us, anyway. it's still frustrating as fuck, though. i've never been good at geometry. i am, however, the master of unrequited love. i'm talking years of experience. so i guess i've got that going for me. 

what a terrible fucking talent.

i'm looking for, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel or whatever, but it's hard to see because i've been blinded by the glare from my new hubcaps. see, jason found these ghettto-ass hubcaps somewhere on the streets of baton rouge, and they've been sitting in front of my apartment for months. meanwhile, my dad has been on me about how i need to find a replacement for the hubcap that fell off my front right tire about, oh, a million years ago. (i don't see what the big deal is--i suspect he feels that it's trashy for me to be missing a hubcap.)

anyway, two days ago adam and ian got the brilliant idea to stick one of the ghetto hubcaps where the MIA hubcap used to be. then they just went ahead and replaced the rest, as breton laughed hysterically and i shielded my eyes--oh, the horror. it's just that...they're so shiny. and self-conscious. it's all very...er...bling.

i went to a party last night, and all of this dumb boy crap happened, and i was hoping that maybe i would go to bed and wake up and it would all have been a bad dream. then i went to bed and had a dream about the party, but at the party in my dream, everything ended happily. then i woke up. and i realized that the party was, in fact, not a bad dream, but a bad reality, and that the good dream didn't really happen.  it was so sad.

tonight i went to another party--this one was a reception for the cinematographer of this documentary project that i'm working on, through LSU. and the party consisted mostly of faculty--and they were all drinking. getting drunk. my work study professor, the one who's heading up the project--he was hosting the party--and he was wasted. it was pretty entertaining. if a bit strange. i don't know, it's one thing to see your friends acting like drunken jackasses, but it's another thing entirely when it's your professor/boss. but apparently the english faculty at LSU get drunk with their students on a regular basis or something. at least that's what the graduate students tell me.

ohhhh, i can't wait till grad school. MFA-schmemFA. it's the three years of drunken debauchery that i'm after. that and the company of other people who use words like "garner" and "tepid" in casual conversation without batting an eyelash.

attention: OED

dealbreaker (n., deel'-brake-er): the seemingly trivial or insignificant personality quirk in a potential mate that nevertheless compels one to write off potential mate as unsuitable for coupling. see example in Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding):

He turned round, revealing that what had seemed from the back like a harmless navy sweater was actually a V-neck diamond-patterned in shades of yellow and blue--as favored by the more elderly of the nation's sports reporters. As my friend Tom often remarks, it's amazing how much time and money can be saved in the world of dating by close attention to detail. A white sock here, a pair of red braces there, a gray slip-on shoe, a swastika, are as often as not all one needs to tell you if there's no point writing down phone numbers and forking over for expensive lunches because it's never going to be a runner.

having been in "serious relationships," and thus out of circulation, for the past three and a half years, i never appreciated the wisdom of bridget's advice until my recent break-up with jesse. but now i've been single for over three months, and apparently he's been kissing on other women, so i feel as though i ought to buckle down and hunt in earnest for a suitable relationship partner. or at least someone to make out with.

the thing is, i have a great deal of experience with monogamy, but not much experience with variety. i've only had two boyfriends, both long-term, and they are also the only two boys i've ever kissed. not counting, you know, that one time with the boy sitting next to me in mass practice in first grade. or murray, spontaneously, in the lunch line in high school. or jake, inadvertently (we were going for a cheek kiss but we missed) the other night. and in all those years with the long-term boyfriends, i always had something of a morbid curiosity as to what it would be like to kiss different boys. i  never went through with it, of course. i couldn't cheat on a boyfriend. i have way too much catholic guilt.

so now that i'm single, you'd think i'd be running buck-wild through the streets of baton rouge, kissing everything in sight. shockingly, you'd be wrong. it's not as if the opportunity hasn't presented itself. i've been on dates. with nice boys, even. and i've really enjoyed them. it's just that, at the end, there's that awkward kissy moment, and i get this sinking feeling in my stomach, and i realize that kissing is just not on my agenda for the evening. so i do something retarded, like offer up a high-five. yes, i've actually given a high-five on a date. (i think there was a low-five involved, too. scandalous.)

i'd been saying, towards the end of my relationship with jesse, that i thought i needed time alone to sort myself out. and indeed i have learned a lot, even in these few months. what i've discovered, more than anything, is this: i don't think i can kiss someone and not mean it. as my kierkegaard professor might put it: i'm morally incapable of such an act. if it's not someone that i'm really interested in, and attracted to--i just don't see the point. i don't know, i guess mild curiosity isn't enough to inspire me. i need a gigantic crush. or maybe a lot of alcohol and a random boy that i've just met and will never see again. but that's kind of whorish, and whoredom isn't really my bag.

i guess the biggest deterrent for me is that the boys who want to kiss me are my friends, and to kiss them would mean crossing into strange new territory, in which they assume the right to make demands on my free time as if i am obligated to see them again, and often. and that's exactly what i don't want to happen. rikki and i were discussing this yesterday; she likened long-term monogamy to living in a plastic bag: "and now, it's like, you just got out of the plastic bag, and you're gasping for air, and all of a sudden they want to put you back in it." and i don't want to go back in the plastic bag! i don't! 

see, what i like most about being single is the freedom i have to spend my time as i so choose. if i want to sit at home alone, i can. if i want to rent a movie, i can watch whatever i want, with no bickering or compromises. if i want to put off my homework until 1AM, and in the meantime go over to a friend's house and play poker, there's no one to stop me. no protestations, no questions. i report to no one. i feel obligated towards no one. i spend my time with whomever i please. and after three and a half years of largely biding my time with just myself and my boyfriend, i am anxious to be around as many people as possible, as often as possible. so now i've got these boys that seem interested, and i'm interested too, but what i'm interested in is the kind of dating that our grandparents used to do, back in, like, the fifties. back when there was dating, and then there was "going steady," and to date a boy didn't mean to act like you were married. but i don't think these boys are into that kind of dating. i think they want exclusive ownership rights.

what's worse, i don't even know if i'm capable of that kind of dating. i tried it with jesse and matt, after matt and i "toned things down" and agreed to see other people--and the experiment was a miserable failure. they both watched me expectantly, clearly waiting for me to choose, and it made me feel like shit. so i don't know if i can deal with more than one boy in a romantic context. presently i've been keeping the interested parties at bay--refusing to see them alone two days in a row, keeping my weekends open to hang out with groups of people instead of going on dates, and of course the aforementioned high-five tactic. but i don't want them to think that i'm only interested in them as friends. however, as ian pointed out tonight, unless there's kissing involved, you're still in friend territory. but then kissing seems like a slippery slope into coupledom. like i said before, i can't kiss and not mean it. i have to be emotionally involved. and emotional involvement of any degree of intensity with more than one boy strikes me as a complication that i may not be able to handle. it sounds...confusing. i hate being confused.

in the midst of all this, i'm enjoying the time i'm spending with boys, as friends and as dates. i met a nice guy the other day, whilst watching the superbowl with barrett. i don't know if he's even single, but he was very friendly and he sorta reminded me of this guy i had a crush on in 7th/8th grade (after the joel-meghan incident). the three of us ended up going to the grocery after the game, and barrett found this fringed yellow satin sash in the back of the guy's car. i thought it was a graduation stole or something, but when barrett asked the guy about it, he informed us that it was his kung fu belt.

i hadn't even been consciously thinking "gee, this guy has some potential! i want to date him!" and there are worse hobbies than kung fu. i respect the martial arts and all.

i mean, i never said dealbreakers weren't petty. 

and where the hell i've ended up on this glary random day

and i poured my heart out / and i poured my heart out / it evaporated / ...see?

i just listened to "evaporated," by ben folds five, and it made me feel better. if you have never heard this song, you should listen to it. right now! it is beautiful and good.

i got home today: so tired, so hungry. it was 8:30pm. we'd been on the road since 4. me and jacob and katie went up to monroeville, AL last night. a group of us from LSU went to shoot DV for this multimedia performance art piece called "thirteen ways to kill a mockingbird." (monroeville was harper lee's hometown and the basis for maycomb, the setting of TKM.)

anyway, trish, the director, was kinda stressed out and thus kinda bitchy, and we were all tired from driving and also from sleeping on the rock-hard beds at the Budget Inn, but it was a fun trip nonetheless. i got a lawn flamingo made out of PVC pipe. i also tasted my first fried twinkie. (it shall not be the last...) jacob and i split one (they were two bucks each!) and agreed that they tasted like moist beignets. they looked like beignets, too. they even had powdered sugar on them.

on the way home, we got to this split in the interstate where I-65 ends and turns into I-10E and I-10W. and i'm in the lane that splits, and i start to take 10W, and jacob starts flailing his arms and saying, "the other way, the other way!"--as in, take 10E. and i'm thinking, "baton rouge is west of alabama, right?" so i take 10W but i'm freaked out because he's like, yelling and waving his arms, you know? and then abruptly he stops and goes "oh wait. nevermind." and it was funny. so now i get to make fun of him for the rest of his life.

so i get home and i'm fucking exhausted. i haven't gotten a full night's sleep in a week, because of mardi gras and my joyce midterm. and i'm broke, because road trips are expensive, and i'm hungry. and on friday, while i was desperately trying to finish my joyce midterm, i ordered papa john's because i didn't have time to leave the house to find food. i ordered a small pizza, thinking it would be cheaper than a large--but it's also, you know, a lot smaller--so i ended up paying 13 bucks for what amounted to two meals--as opposed to a large, which would have been a few bucks more, but twice as much food. anyway, i was pissed with myself for paying 13 dollars for a small pizza--but i told myself it was alright, because i'd only eaten half the pizza, and when i got back from monroeville i could eat the other half for dinner. and it would be okay. so i get back from monroeville and i unload my shit. my room is a disaster, because i'd basically been holed up for three days working on my joyce stuff: there are clothes and dishes and papers all over the place. and i'm annoyed, because i hate when my room is messy. so then i think, "well, at least now i can eat my pizza." and i look in the fridge, and lo and behold: the pizza is gone. gone without a trace.

i wanted to cry. i'd been thinking about pizza for the past, like, two hours. the pizza that i paid way, way too much money for. gone.

so then i'm like, fine, i'll make some pasta. so i fill a pot with water and put it on the stove and turn the stove on--and ten minutes later i walk downstairs to see if the water is boiling, and it's not, because i turned on the wrong part of the stovetop.

so i'm like fine, i'll make grilled cheese. i throw the water out the pot, put the pot away. then i discover that we're effectively out of margarine. i'm pathetically scraping margarine off the sides of the container...i manage to put together something that resembled a grilled cheese sandwich. while i'm toasting the bread, i go to fix myself a glass of water. we drink water out the tap at our apartment. and the tap water isn't very cold, so i use ice. we have three ice trays. all three of the ice trays were empty. all three of them.

so tired, i am so tired, and sunburned. typical. typical of me to get sunburned. my cheeks and nose and forehead are pink. and i have a stupid-looking sunburn on my neck. and i'm tired, and i'm hungry, and there's no ice, and my pizza is gone. and my room is a disaster.

and all i can think is: this is when you need a boyfriend. the shit nights where nothing is really wrong but everything is fucking wrong and the only thing that will make you feel better is to curl up next to him. because being in his company makes you feel better no matter what. and he says nice things to you and is patient with your ridiculous complaining about pizza and ice trays.

see, i know that i'm being ridiculous. in the grand scheme of things, my missing pizza is completely irrelevant. my family is alive and well. that is enough for me. but you know, if something horrible did happen, i would have friends to get me through it. i don't need a boyfriend for the big tragedies. i need a boyfriend for the stupid trivial shit nights. nights like this.

but i don't have a boyfriend. and i don't really want a boyfriend. and what that means is, at the end of the day--good or bad--all i'm left with is myself. that's a good thing, i guess. what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, etc. and the whole point of being single, right now, for me, is to be alone and be okay with it.

but goddamn.

=======

kierkegaard says:

"[The knight of faith] has grasped the deep secret that even in loving another one should be sufficient unto oneself."

i will not rely on other people to make me feel happy or whole. i can do that on my own. that is what this is all about. figuring out how to do this on my own.

and when all else fails, there's always ice cream. chocolate, chocolate ice cream.

briefly:

i was just reading through the journal i kept this summer in london--i had written in it a little bit after i got home, mostly about jesse and the ups and downs of the break-up period. and that stuff was really sad.

but then, for fun, i started flipping through my really really old journal, which i kept from 6th-10th grade (although most of it is from junior high). and this entry--from the first day of 8th grade--caught my eye:

Tuesday, August 20th, 1996 ...6th period--------S.S. [Social Studies] Mrs. Dooley. CB and I got our old desks back! (We sit together in homeroom, too.) Anyway, we had to find places on a map of LA. I was having a little trouble, because since the cities were labeled as letters, and waters as #'s, CB pointed out that Lake Charles should be with #'s, not letters. Well, wouldn't you know, Lake Charles isn't a lake at all. It's a city! We laughed for quite a while after that.

oh, little 12-year-old ann. could you be any more retarded? i guess there's a little bit of irony in it. it's kind of poetic, in retrospect.

ah, if only i had known...

a girl and her muffin: a love story

(not that muffin. pervert.)

last year, a PJ's coffee shop opened across the street from LSMSA's campus. while i was working at ADVANCE last summer in natchitoches, i spent many an evening chilling at PJ's with the staff and the students. it was there that i was introduced to the Cranberry-Orange Muffin. to make a truly terrible pun: it was love at first bite. it was--dare i say it--the beginning of  a romance that will last a lifetime.

when i got back to baton rouge, i didn't know if there was a PJ's nearby. to satisfy my longing for The Muffin, i found some cranberry-orange muffin mix at winn-dixie--but they turned out really gross. (i thought maybe it was because i used muffin wrappers my mom had sent up from home--they looked like they were made circa 1975. but breton licked a couple of the wrappers and said she thought they were fine.) it seemed as though there was no hope for my cranberry muffin craving, but one desperate night last semester during finals week, i drove in my pajamas to the CC's on perkins and discovered that they, too, sold cranberry muffins. it was a joyous, muffin-filled evening.

i was even more thrilled to discover that cranberry-orange muffins are apparently pretty commonplace in coffee shops, because highland coffee sells them as well. i've been going to highland coffee once a week since the spring semester began, because my faulkner discussion group has designated it as the official meeting spot. the group is comprised of me, tobey, courtney, and cameron. cameron, who's also in my joyce class, is finishing his second semester with the exchange program; he's from australia but talks like he's from england (he'd lived in the UK for six years before he came to the states). 

anyway, i always get a cranberry muffin and an iced tea when i go to highland coffee. and i am incapable of eating the muffin neatly. i didn't realize what a gigantic mess i made in my muffin consumption until stosh kindly pointed it out one night, thereby making me incredibly self-conscious of my muffin-eating style. it's just that, you know, they're coffee shop muffins, so they're gigantic. and they're muffin-shaped. it's hard to find a good way to bite into it delicately. you inevitably wind up with muffin all over your face and crumbs everywhere. at least, i do.

my faulkner group meets at highland on sunday nights at 8. and i get my muffin and make a gigantic mess. about a month ago, we were all at highland doing our group thing, and i was making my muffin mess, and cameron looked at me kinda slyly and stole a crumb off my muffin plate. it happened again the next week. the third week, i broke off a piece of muffin and handed it to him--then he picked up my muffin wrapper and scraped off a cranberry remnant and licked it from his finger.

now, i'm feeling pretty ambivalent about this whole muffin thing with cameron. i mean, part of me is thinking: this is cute, he's flirting with me via muffin crumbs. but the other part of me is thinking: man, i hope he's not eating my muffin crumbs because he's, like, starving. 'cause, you know, he's an exchange student, and he lives in a really shitty neighborhood north of campus...so then i start to feel bad: like i'm giving him my muffin castoffs. he's eating my rejected muffin particles.

last night i met stosh at highland, and i ordered a cranberry muffin. while i was waiting in line for my muffin, cameron came up to me and we started talking about our joyce midterms. when my order came up he told me that i could send my muffin crumbs over to his table if i wanted.

stosh ordered a blueberry muffin, which he ate by tearing it into small, manageable pieces. i tried out his ingenious technique and found it quite satisfactory. anyway, i ate most of my muffin; when i had a few pieces left i walked over to cameron's table and handed him my muffin plate. and he looked at me and laughed. 

earlier that day he had sent me an email asking me to get in touch with courtney so that we could meet as a group on friday instead of sunday. i sent out a mass-mail that night to the group, which said:

cameron suggested that we meet on friday during our regular class time in lieu of our sunday evening coffee date. i vote that we meet up in 132 and walk to chelsea's or something. (do they serve lunch that early?) cameron's already had his weekly allotment of cranberry-orange muffin crumbs, so.

to which he responded:

So? my little Chelsea girl. A place like that makes me want to drink, can you think of anywhere else?

"my little Chelsea girl"? i don't quite know what to make of this. i told barrett, who agreed that it was a bizarre email. but that's becaue barrett thought cameron was calling the restaurant his "little girl" that makes him "want to drink." and i suppose that's possible--but highly unlikely. on the other hand, i have no idea why he would refer to me as his "little Chelsea girl." it is very strange. but still for some reason makes me smile.

ohhh, flirting is fun.

and we all went to heaven in a little rowboat.

or, as melissa, one of the choreographers, said in dance rehearsal today: "start moving at the part where he says...um...what does he say...it's like....and they all left. in a small boat."

lunch at chelsea's was cool. it was just me and cameron and courtney, because tobey failed to show. we ended up talking about baton rouge and southern culture--which is, um, sorta relevant for a faulkner class, right?--and cameron said he'd never eaten boiled crawfish. so courtney and i told him that we would have to make a crawfish date. (is anyone up for a crawfish party? or a group crawfish excursion? i haven't had any boiled crawfish all season; i've been craving it.)

so i keep having these bizarre conversations with cameron. i guess it started about two weeks into the spring semester. he would come up to me and go, "hey, so, what were we supposed to do today for the faulkner class?" and i would say, "um....the same thing we do every day for  that class. read more of the book and be prepared to discuss it." i mean, literally, we do the same thing every day. every day. the assignment never changes. and i swear he's asked me about it on four separate occasions.

and then today he did his skit for the joyce class, and afterwards, when we were walking to meet with the faulkner kids, he was saying, "i'm glad that's over with. what a relief." except he said it like five times. and then after lunch, when we were walking to the library: "what a relief that's over with. i'm so glad. it's over. what a relief." i was just like........yep.

jesse said he must be trying desperately to make conversation. i guess that makes sense. jesse also said:

geojesslsu: come on ann
geojesslsu: he has a ponytail
grapity purple: i never said i had the hots for him
geojesslsu: hehehe
grapity purple: and he doesn't have cameron rose hair, anyway
geojesslsu: i'm just messing with you
geojesslsu: i met him in front of the library once and we introduced ourselves geojesslsu: he's a pretty nice guy
grapity purple: seems that way
geojesslsu: but wears both a ponytail and combat boots
grapity purple: well, he's from australia
grapity purple: maybe they...do things differently down there?
geojesslsu: is he the crocodile hunter?
grapity purple: you walk around barefoot and had a fro, jesse
geojesslsu: does that make me australian?
geojesslsu: and i did not have a fro
geojesslsu: i resent that
grapity purple: no, but it does mean that you have zero room to talk

anyway. the whole cameron thing is funny to think about but isn't really weighing too heavily on my mind. first of all, he's like 26 or 27. secondly, he's going back to the UK in august. third, even if he were interested in me, i'm not interested in dating anyone. not now, not in the forseeable future.   

however, he does seem like an interesting person, and i would like to have a normal, extracurricular conversation with him that does not involve a) our faulkner homework or b) his Ulysses skit.

i really must eat crawfish very soon. any takers?

smothered bones and gravy.

had our weekly required faulkner "co-mentoring session" at serrano's yesterday afternoon. it was supposed to be just me, cameron, and courtney, but about half the class ended up joining us. courtney had just gotten paid, so she treated us to margaritas, which i desperately desperately needed after the week from hell. we had so much fun. we even occasionally talked about faulkner.

becca and elizabeth's green party highlights:

ben's baseball pants: which we found at the family thrift center off florida blvd, and which he only wore for half the party and then exchanged for his less-revealing jeans ("i'm the only person at this party wearing tights!" he complained). i can't really call him a sell-out for changing out of his green pants, though; i had bought a $2 green taffetta dress at the thrift store, and cut it up into a skirt, but i wound up wearing something else to the party, because the skirt made me feel fat. (becca said, "well then you did the right thing. you should never wear anything that makes you feel fat." fuckin' A.)

jake's borrowed accordion: i parked at highland coffee and met up with stosh and jacques and groh, and we walked over to state together. we passed in front of jason and travis' house on the way, and jake was standing outside with the accordion he borrowed from the music school. apparently he just went over there and asked if they had an accordion lying around that he could borrow, and they did indeed. jake then demonstrated his mad accordion skillz by playing a godawful rendition of The Sweater Song. it was very, very entertaining. also a little painful. i tried my hand at the accordion, but it was really bulky and awkward, and i probably needed to adjust the shoulder strap but didn't. also i was, er, holding it upside down. needless to say, it didn't work out too well. but man, i would love to figure out the accordion. that shit is crazy.

stosh's declared ambition of becoming a break-dancing master: he informed me that he's been living in his imagination for too long, and needs to show a little follow-through with all his brilliant ideas--for example, he decided that he wanted to learn to break-dance--and by god this time he's really going to do it. i told him he was lame for wanting to break-dance--but looking back on the evening, i guess i have no room to talk. after all, i don't think my desire to play the accordion falls under the category of Really Cool Things To Do.

breton's outfit: because it looked just like mine. why does that always happen? it's the worst with the bandanna things. somehow we always wear them on the same day. there was one day last semester--i was wearing my pink bandanna, and i was walking to the library, and breton and becca were standing out in front chatting--and they were both wearing red bandannas. they called me over and we stood there laughing because we looked so ridiculous together--finally i left--i told them it was too humiliating to stand there with them any longer.

stosh's brush with death: he left the party and came back maybe half an hour later to tell us to be careful. his story, which he told much better than i'll be able to: he was walking back to his car, which was parked on chimes street, and this dude was like "hey. hey!" and stosh turns around. and the dude pulls out a switchblade. and stosh is like "uhh...goodbye," and starts to walk away.

and the dude is like "haha, no, man, just kidding." he puts the knife back in his pocket and then asks stosh to help him find his car--a silver vw beetle. they look along the street and in the parking lots on the campus side of chimes street--and then the dude asks him to help him look on the other end of chimes--the dark, deserted end. and stosh kinda hesitates, and the dude is like, "don't worry about it, man. you don't have to if you don't want. but i wouldn't jack you. when i jack people, i don't put the knife away."

this could only happen to stosh. because this is the absurd world in which stosh lives. a guy pulls a knife on you, and then puts it away, saying haha, just kidding.

a smiling and fury-lurked and incredible indigo sea.

if happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

yesterday in my kierkegaard class, dr. whittaker was lecturing on hegel's myth of the world egg--whatever the hell that means--and i was struggling to pay attention--as i always struggle to pay attention in that class--and i'm sitting there, chewing on my pen, with my notebook open, and i'm thinking "maybe i should be taking notes. should i be taking notes?"

so i look over at the guy to my left, and he has filled up a solid page, single-spaced, of notebook paper--he's still writing--carefully, methodically filling up the lines single-spaced with neatly formed letters in blue ink.

and i think, "holy shit, those are some hardcore notes. should i be taking notes? maybe i should be taking notes."

then i look again at the page he has filled with his neat blue writing. i look at the top line. i can't read the whole thing. but i got this much: "whitney, my love, i am sitting in my kierkegaard class..."

he was writing a damn love letter.

i thought that was so damn cute.

for tazo's brambleberry tea and ben's yellow flipflops; with gratitude.

i am telling this story because i don't really understand what happened, and i think maybe if i write it out i will be able to make sense out of all the little details.

on my refrigerator is a picture taken early last semester. in the picture, i am sitting on the lap of mike the tiger, flanked on either side by chancellor mark emmert and his wife delaine. i am wearing pink and smiling a huge cheesy smile.

people always think this picture is strange and funny. sometimes they think the man and woman in the picture are my parents; i've overheard someone say, "man, ann's parents are really weird-looking." sometimes they think the man and woman are cardboard cut-outs of the chancellor and his wife--and let's be honest, they might as well be. sometimes they ask me if i'm smiling for serious. but wouldn't you smile ridiculously big if you were taking a picture on your college mascot's knee?

jordan, a boy from monroe whom breton met last summer in canada, stayed with us this week for spring testing. he saw that picture on the fridge. and he told me last night that he thought that picture was hilarious. "because," he said, "you look so innocent. but really you're a vixen."

a vixen? moi?

well, good goddamn, apparently so.

last friday, ben asked me to go to goodwill with him to buy green stuff for becca and elizabeth's green party. it was kind of out-of-the-blue. ben and i are cool, but we've never hung out one on one before. and i almost turned him down. i don't know why; i guess it's one of my anti-social hang-ups. i don't know ben that well, and i didn't know if it would be awkward, and it takes so much energy to sustain a conversation--especially an awkward one with someone you don't know very well--but for some reason i said yes. and we went to a few thrift stores, and then we went to dinner together afterwards, and it was really nice. and a lot less weird than i thought it would be.

over the course of the afternoon, i mentioned the cameron situation to ben, and told him that i wondered if cameron had been hitting on me. and ben said, "maybe he's just being friendly." and that gave me pause. i don't know, lately i've started to wonder if any completely, totally, utterly platonic relationship can exist between the sexes. it seems as though one of the two parties involved will inevitably, at some point, want something more. and with guys--i don't know. it takes so much effort to strike up a new relationship--and i mean "relationship" in the "sustained interaction with another human" sense of the word. and--well, as barrett put it today at lunch, "men are about agency; women are about community." that may be a lot of biological predetermination bullshit, but. i don't know many guys who would put forth a lot of energy into a relationship that they didn't think had the potential to turn romantic (or, more accurately, sexual).

my point being, ben asking me to go to goodwill, and then getting dinner--i was kinda suspicious--not paranoid, but curious--as to why. was he just being friendly? and when he suggested that cameron was "just being friendly," i concluded that ben must be one of those rare guys who does put effort into simple friendships.

at dinner, i can't remember how it started, but i told him my theory that i could probaby make out with a girl but i couldn't ever have sex with one. and ben has had girlfriends, but, as i understand it, lately he's been experimenting. and so when i said that i could make out with a girl but not have sex with one, he said, "you know, that's what i've come to discover about myself and guys." and he went on to explain how girls are much nicer to kiss.

anyway, thursday night i went out with breton and jordan and ben and becca to the spanish moon for '80s night. i'd never been to '80s night before; i didn't really have any interest in going to '80's night; however, breton needed to go out, and she asked me to go, and so i went. i thought it was going to be lame. i was sorely mistaken. i think that was probably the most fun i've ever had at a bar. it had little to do with '80s night. it had everything to do with my friends, who are fucking incredible. we all danced, the whole time. there was none of that awkward high school bullshit about dancing in a little circle and wishing someone would dance with you. i danced with breton, i danced with becca, i danced with jordan, i danced with tom and laren (we found them there)--i didn't really know what to do with ben. jordan and tom are gay, so the whole flirtation thing was moot. but with ben--i didn't know how he would take it. so i very deliberately didn't make any kind of advances towards him. but he made a move towards me. so then i danced with him, but kept a respectable distance between us. and he closed the gap. anyway, we danced a lot, and got all sweaty, and it was ridiculous and wonderful.

the situation is entirely too complicated to explain here, but suffice it to say that i wasn't sure how kosher it was for me to be doing anything that could be construed as flirting with ben. but by the time the bar closed, it was pretty clear that there was at least a little something going on. to further complicate things, jordan told breton he thought ben was hot; apparently ben told becca he thought jordan was hot; becca and breton decided they would try to hook the two guys up. so breton tells me this, and i'm thinking, "hmmm...what's really going on here?" i thought maybe ben was outwardly flirting with me but inwardly he wanted jordan.

so we decide to go to louie's. and becca's driving, and breton's riding shotgun, and i'm sitting between jordan and ben in the back. it was ben's birthday, and he was wearing a button-down shirt and a tie. and he kept swatting at me with his tie. mind you, he was sober. we were both sober, which only makes the fact that i had fun dancing at a bar more incredible. and he was swatting at me with his tie. and then he took the end of his tie and tied it around my wrist. these are silly things a drunk person might do. but he was not drunk. he was sober. and i was even more confused.

after louie's, i drove me and breton and jordan home--and we dropped ben off on the way. and so we said goodnight, and from the driver's seat i gave him my hand like i expected him to shake it--and he looked at me and shook his head and leaned in to give me a hug.

the next day i told him i'd go with him to see "accidental death of an anarchist"--breton had work, but jordan said he wanted to come. and breton repeated her desire to get the two boys to hook up. and i am totally confused. we meet ben at the show, and at intermission he asks us if we want to go dancing that night. and i'm thinking "geez, we just went dancing last night" and i tell him that actually, i was gonna go drink at chelsea's. after the show was over, i asked him what his plans were, and he said that maybe he would just go home. and i said that he should come to chelsea's. and he said ok.

so jordan and i go home, and i feed the cat, and i call barrett and tell him to come out with us, and eventually we wind up at chelsea's. cameron is there with some german exchange kids. and barrett shows up kinda drunk already. and then ben shows up. and anna is there, and he goes over and talks to her for a while, and jordan joins him. and me and barrett hang out with cameron and the german kids. there was a terrible band playing--bandname: Ballzack--i'm sure you can imagine the horror. it was like crappy Beastie Boys. eventually the german kids leave, and anna leaves, and it's me, cameron, barrett, ben, jordan, and ben's friend reese. and cameron and ben decide that a good thing to do would be to buy some beer and whiskey and go someplace else to continue drinking.

at this point, i have had one and a half jack and cokes. i am drunk. i am sitting next to cameron, and i tell him, "i am drunk." and he says, "really??" and i say, "what, aren't you?" and he says "no, no."

so we pile into jordan's jeep--me and ben and jordan and cameron. and reese and barrett follow us to ben's house. there is a piano at ben's house, and so i play piano drunkenly while ben and cameron go out in search of alcohol. finally they come back with beer and jack, and ben fixes me another jack and coke, and everyone else takes shots, and we attempt to play some stupid drinking game with cards but we fail miserably. and barrett is wasted at this point, and i am too. i say "i am drunk," and cameron says, "really??" and i say, "what, aren't you?" and he says "no, no."

then he accidentally kicks over my drink. we were sitting on the sofa--barrett, me, cameron--and i had put my drink on the floor, and it was mostly full, and cameron kicked it over. and ben grabs some towels and wipes it up, and i grab a fallen ice cube and drop it down cameron's shirt, because i am in fact twelve years old. so he does me one better: he grabs another ice cube and drops it down my underwear. i was wearing a skirt, and he dropped it down the waist in the back. and then he held it in place. so basically he's grabbing my ass, and there's ice, and it's very cold.

at some point i get up from the sofa, and when i return, ben has taken my seat between barrett and cameron. and ben and cameron tell me to just sit down on top of them, and so i do. i'm slouched down, halfway on ben's lap and halfway on cameron's. and i say: i am drunk. cameron says, "really??" because of course, he's not drunk.

ben goes to take a sip of beer and he somehow misses his mouth and spills beer on my stomach. and it is very cold and i start laughing because it was cold and i was drunk and he spilled beer on my stomach and it was cold. and while i am laughing, he straight up pours the rest of the beer on me. on my stomach. pours it. and i am dying laughing. then he apologizes and gets me a t-shirt to change into.

so i change into the t-shirt and when i come back, ben is sprawled out on the other sofa, surrounded by pillows like a little cocoon. and i tell him that his pillow nest looks very comfortable, and he tells me to come sit by him, and so i sprawl out on top of him, and then cameron comes and sprawls on me, and then barrett comes and leaps on top. and it was painful. and then we de-pile. cameron stands up and wanders around the room for about ten minutes, looking really lost and confused. i am a little concerned. then he sits down and promptly falls asleep. passes out. because he was stone-cold sober.

i am still laying next to/on top of ben on the sofa. and barrett is talking excitedly to reese about god knows what. and cameron is out. and jordan is looking a little forlorn. and ben whispers to me, "you should stay a little longer." and i am so confused. and jordan is drunk. and ben whispers, "we need to get jordan to take a nap." and jordan won't. ben gets up for a minute and jordan tells me that he really wants to hook up with ben, and do i think he has a chance? and i'm like "ummmmm...ummmmm...i dunno...."

at this point i'm sobering up and i decide i will bring jordan home and then come back to hang out with ben. and i stand up, announce my intention to drive home, and ben is sitting on the sofa, and i lean in to tell him that i'll be back, and he kisses me. jordan is sitting right there. and ben kisses me, and i can't even move. and finally i straighten up, and ben leaves the room for a minute, and i sit down and jordan's like, "did he just kiss you?" and i'm like "ummm.........i dunno......" and he's like "you don't know? if he kissed you?" and i'm like "i guess he did...." and jordan is sad because he wanted to hook up with ben, but he says that it seems like ben wants me more than him, and that's ok. and i apologize, and tell him that i don't actually have any earthly idea what's going on. and he says it's cool.

anyway, i brought him home and took my car back to ben's house. and cameron was still passed out on the sofa. ben was fiddling with the stereo. and then there was a lot of really excellent kissing. really, really, really. he tells me that he had wanted to kiss me thursday when we went out dancing, but he thought maybe i was just teasing him, and he was afraid i would have gotten freaked out. and he tells me he can't believe that i am kissing him after he poured beer on me. and i laugh and say that i can't believe he missed his mouth and spilled it on me in the first place, and he says, "um...it was a little more deliberate than that." and i say, "what, you did it on purpose?" and he says, "well........yeah."

the sun came up and he fell asleep and of course i didn't, because i never do. i lay there with him for a while, and at 6:30 i got up out of bed. and i was gathering my stuff and he pulled me back into bed by the back waist of my pajama pants. and he kissed me and told me, "you should stay here. all the time." and i laughed and said, "all the time?" and he said, "yeah. what do you think about that?" and i said, "but ben, i have to go to sleep eventually." then i kissed him and told him goodnight.

let me take this opportunity to say how amazed i am by boys right now--particularly by boys whom i know to be painfully shy. ben included. i don't know how these guys manage to be effectively aggressive with girls. i am not painfully shy and there is no way i could ever make anything that could be clearly construed as a move. playful flirting i can handle; veiled references as to my actual feelings are harder but manageable; straightforward aggression i couldn't pull off if my life depended on it. i stand in gratitude and admiration for these boys. i'm so glad they exist. otherwise i would be doomed to lead a sad and lonely life plagued by my own chickenshit unrequited love.

anyway. we talked a little bit between kisses, but i left with a lot of unanswered questions. for example: why me? and how long has this been going on? and what does this all mean, anyway? and don't you like guys? i didn't ask him any of these questions because i didn't want to freak him out; i was enjoying whatever we had going that night and didn't want to spoil it. if it was a one time thing, that's fine. if not, it's going to require a lot of explanation as to what i can and can't handle as far as relationship stuff goes right now. which is such a pain in the ass.

also at this point i wasn't even sure if i had fucked up horribly, because i had reason to believe ben was off-limits for me. i wrote a note to breton when i got home; it said "oh breton. i need to talk to you." so she woke me up when she saw the note, and i told her what happened and she got all excited and said it was very cute. and i asked her if she thought it was kosher, all things considered, and she said yes definitely. and i felt better.

so i keep stopping and standing and thinking about it--i can't stop thinking about it--i think about it and it makes me a little bit breathless.

sometimes it does suck to be single.

there is a wasp on my ceiling. he has been there for hours. i am deathly afraid of wasps. i have some wasp killer but the bottle says never to use it indoors. i have a shoe that i could throw at the wasp, but i'm afraid my aim isn't that good, and the ceiling is really high, and slanted, and i'd probably end up pissing off the wasp instead of killing it. i don't know what to do. i've left the window open with the hope that the wasp will take the hint and leave. no such luck. i won't be able to sleep if he's still there when i go to bed. i wish someone would come kill the wasp for me.

anguishing is a word.

two carloads into the new house
and
a full ballet class
and
breton said after ben dropped me off sunday night he went to sharky's house to play video games
but
i started the last story in Girl With Curious Hair and it's hilarious
and
after ballet i took a shower and got really cute
and
i met stosh at highland and we exchanged travel stories
and
my cousin patrick sat with us and was generally obnoxious and funny for an hour
and
i walked with stosh to the new house and tried to give him the tour but it was dark
and
we walked to louie's in the rain
and
i devoured a cheeseburger.

but
i slept in the hoover dam shirt last night because it still smells like him.

nothing could beat complete denial.

i was going to write all about my beautiful weekend: sitting on the grass, in the sun, soaking up music, watching the neo-hippies hulahoop their own arrhythmic whirling dervish patterns into the field on ivanhoe street.

the boy that kept almost meeting my eyes at the rebirth show, and i kept looking away, because in a bar like that you don't want to give any lameass guys a reason to come up and dry-hump you on the dance floor. but he was wearing an old WRNO beatles concert t-shirt. he looked like the only person at fred's that i would have talked to besides the kids i came with. i didn't make eye contact with him, because i thought maybe he was just a frat boy in a cool shirt. but i saw him saturday at the ivanhoe street outdoor music festival, he was wearing the same shirt, and he was looking at me again.

the second-to-last band, Friends of Gravity, came on around 9:30pm. they were playing some pretty tight jazz, which was a change of pace from the rest of the day (folk/rockabilly/jam), and the drummer was amazing. and looked just like the rebirth boy.

then i heard people talking, and it turns out the drummer was simon l___. i've been hearing about simon ever since i moved to baton rouge. he's a hot shit jazz drummer, and he plays with my friend patrick, whom i met at the LSU in london program last year. simon also plays with this other guy brigham, who used to hit on B.J. in the lobby of the new music building before women's chorus rehearsal freshman year. brigham is also dating sid, ben's ex-roommate. further connections: simon lived in ben's house on geranium before sid moved in.

so after the Friends of Gravity set, which kicked ass, i walked over to introduce myself to this guy. and i'm planning on feeling very awkward and groupie-ish and saying something lame like "we know the same people"--but i'm spared, because patrick is fucking there. he goes to BC but school doesn't start for him till after labor day, so he's in town. and he's like "i'll introduce you." simon walks up and patrick's like "hey, this is my friend ann," and simon goes to shake my hand and immediately says "we had a class together."

this happens to me all the damn time. people always remember me from their classes, because i talk so damn much. but unless they're outspoken too, i never remember anyone. because i'm oblivious. clearly i'm oblivious, because otherwise i should remember this guy. because he's sort of....incredibly charismatic. and by incredibly charismatic, i mean hot.

anyway, he's like "we had a class together," and i'm like "oh no, which one?" and he says, "brit lit II." and i'm like "don m___?" and he's like "yup. that dude. he loved you." and i say, "i hated him," and i told him how i always felt like such an asshole in that class, because first of all it was a huge waste of time, and the professor would ask these stupid questions, and no one would answer, so finally i would raise my hand and answer, and i could hear in my voice how incredibly impatient and bitchy i sounded. and i was so afraid everyone in that class thought i sucked. so i tell simon this, and he's like "no, dude, i thought it was hilarious."

so it turns out he was not the rebirth guy--though i saw the rebirth guy again later that night. but he is playing at the mellow mushroom with patrick on september 1st. and that will be fun.

speaking of weird connections and the house on geranium: amy g. flagged me down today as i was walking to the M&DA building, and we talked for a few minutes. amy and i were supposed to live together our sophomore year at LSU, after meghan had to back out of our apartment arrangement. and then amy backed out, which is how i ended up living with the lovely ladies of the Fortress: becca, breton, and elizabeth. anyway, amy told me she was living on geranium, and i told her i was living on violet, and then i was like "wait a minute--which house on geranium"--and she's living with sid. in ben's old house. which was simon's old house. fucking baton rouge. this fucking community. is so ridiculously small. sometimes i love it, like on saturday at the music festival, with the field full of babies and puppies and everyone i've ever known. but sometimes.

like tomorrow i have class with ben at 10:30, unless he dropped. i wouldn't be surprised if he did. he's got a whopping schedule and i'm sure he'd like to avoid me as much as possible. especially given the new information i received from breton this afternoon. i've never been into confrontation. in fact, it terrifies me and usually i'd rather cower or sulk. but shit is about to go down. because i can't keep going like this. i saw him saturday on ivanhoe, he came up with reese and hugged me (again, he does it so fast, it catches me off-guard. it's a guilty nervous hug.) and he handed me a beer and asked me how i was doing. it was the first time i'd seen him since breton told me. and i couldn't even be cool. i started rambling spastically, like always but nervous, awkward, flailing hand gestures on steroids. i can't keep talking to him like this, like nothing's wrong and i'm fine with it. because he might not think i know now, but eventually he'll assume that i do, and if i never say anything to him about it--it's tacit approval. in the silence-equals-consent way. and i can't have any fucking shred of dignity intact and allow that to continue.

so this is a post in which i will not talk about the conversations i've scripted in my head where i tell ben that he has no balls.

that post comes later.

for now, i'll say that i love my linguistics class already. it filled me with glee. except for the part where the teacher tried to make a point about southern louisiana dialect by showing off her "pen pin"--which, if you're from south louisiana, you actually pronounce correctly--the "pin pin" pronunciation is more a north/central thing, i think. i'm just glad she didn't call on me, because i would have called her piece of jewelry a "pen brooch."

and anna and mary passed me in anna's car on my walk home from campus, and they honked, and stopped, and rolled down the window. and anna was like "hey, want a ride the rest of the way home?" which she knew was only, like, a block. so i got in and they were both really sweet. which was such a relief. i was so afraid anna was going to be weird with me because of all the bullshit. i was getting really sad about it. so that made me happy.

i'll end here. and i won't talk about the phone call, or the sleep-to-cope i sought at four in the afternoon but couldn't get because my blood was throbbing so hard.

tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. tomorrow. tomorrow.

except that every time i think it's getting better, it gets a little worse.

out of the hot thin air.

the "confrontation" and-i-use-that-word-loosely with ben on wednesday took maybe ten or fifteen minutes. i said all i wanted to say, and he said all he wanted to say, and then we sat in awkward silence. not knowing where to look, and not wanting to look at him, i watched an ant crawl across the white plastic patio table. ben was wearing his red united way shirt, which i had returned to him the night before, when he came over with sharky. it was the first shirt he ever left at my house, and because it was soft and smelled like him--like dark wood and something warm and boyish--i took to wearing his shirt to bed. i slept in that shirt almost every night for four months. even after we broke up. by that time it smelled like me. i returned it to him unwashed, and he was wearing it the very next day, and i was thinking how can he wear that shirt, it smells like me. boys are so clueless. and it looks better on me anyway.

i blew on the ant. i looked up and ben was watching a different ant--his was examining the corpse of an ant that had been squashed against the plastic table top. "ew," i said. he laughed and cried out, in a mournful ant voice, "daddy!"

which made it possible for us to then sit there for an hour and talk about everything else that's been going on. in a pleasant sort of way.

and it's a good thing, too, because if that conversation had ended with us shouting obscenities and storming off to our respective houses, i'd be destined to suffer a tense semester. seeing as on thursday, i ran into him four times. the first time was on my walk to campus for our 10:30 class. we met on the corner of iowa and geranium and walked together. i went and took care of some paperwork for my independent study. then we had that class, which is on india and the short story form. it's a discussion class, and whenever he would contribute something i would add to it, and vice versa, so it ended up being a sort of conversation between the two of us mediated through the teacher. which was a little bit weird.

i ran into him again as i was walking to campus for my 1:30; he was walking home. i turned a corner and there he was. i was running late, so i didn't break stride--just laughed and said "creepy," and he shrugged, smiling, to the effect of "we live a block away from each other, what can you expect." and called "bye" over his shoulder. then i was walking back from my last class at 4:30--i was in front of coates, and he was walking to the union--i didn't even see him coming, he came up behind me and tapped me on the back--he turned to look at me as he passed, and i said "ben. i mean. really." because it was ridiculous at that point, and he was laughing.

the reason i was standing in front of coates was because i was waiting for janey. who is in my russian lit class, as of thursday. i was walking to the classroom, thinking "i hate the honors college, i should drop this class" and then there she was. and i thought "well, at least this will be interesting." i sat next to her and we had a brief and standard "hello, how are you, how was your summer" conversation. then she looked at me and narrowed her eyes and asked "so who are you seeing?" which is such a janey thing to do. and i said "actually, i just got dumped."

so on the walk back from class, i told her the story, and she asked me who ben's new girl was. (what a question.) and i told her "georgia. who works at louie's." figuring janey would know her. and of course she exclaims "oh, georgia! oh, i love her! she's so wonderful. i mean, she's just wonderful." and i rolled my eyes and said "great, janey, i don't want to hear this." and she kept going: "oh, she's just amazing!" and i shushed her. what a ridiculous thing for her to do. and so bitchy. but you know. i can't be seriously annoyed with her about it. four years going on five, and some things never change, and by some things i mean janey.

laren called me wednesday night to see if i wanted to go to the spanish moon for '80s night on thursday. and i said yes of course. but i called breton on thursday afternoon, and she told me she was going to twiropa in the warehouse district for '80s night with jesse and clint and jay, and i should come. i told her that i had already made plans with laren, and besides, i had an 8:30 class on friday morning.

but the more i thought about it--

she's leaving for france next thursday. becca asked me if i wanted to go with her to the nola airport, but i can't because i have class. and it's breton's last weekend--and twiropa sounded like fun--

so i called laren to see if she wanted to drive down to new orleans with me--she couldn't, but becca said yes definitely, so i picked her up and off we went. on the way out we stopped at the CC's drive-thru on perkins, and becca wanted a tall caramel mochasippi, no whipped cream. so i say "one tall caramel mochasippi, no whipped cream--and--uh--actually, make that two tall caramel mochasippis, no whipped cream--no, one with whipped cream, and one without--wait, are there flavors other than caramel--okay, so, one tall caramel mochasippi and one tall chocolate mochasippi--" and the guy over the PA says "do you want whipped cream on the chocolate?" and i say "no. yes. no." and he says ".....alright, drive around." and becca is cracking up laughing. we pull up and there are two CC's girls in the window, also laughing, and one of them leans out and drawls, "are ya'll fucking stoned?" and becca loses it completely, and i say, sincerely, "no, i'm sober and i'm really this retarded."

twiropa was fun, but i think the spanish moon is funner. the new orleans crowd is so self-conscious. at first i thought the boys were cuter, but then i realized they were just trying harder. which is too hard. it was great to see breton again, though. she was so excited that we came. and as i was getting my hand stamped to get in, i saw this guy sitting on the front steps who looked a lot like a boy i knew in high school named bryan f___. and then i realized that it was, in fact, bryan f___. i stared at him and he looked back at me unfazed, like, "of course it's perfectly normal that i haven't seen you in three years, since the flogging molly show at the shim sham, and it had been three years before that, but here you are at twiropa for fucking '80s night and here i am sitting on the front steps."

bryan was a senior at jesuit when i was a freshman at mt. carmel, and he and his friend tommy did theatre with me. ironically. as in, they did theatre in an ironic fashion. they were straightedge hardcore punk rock thrash metal, and they adopted me as their very small innocent and uninitiated little pseudo-sister. bryan made me mix tapes and tried to get me to write for their 'zine, The Hatemonger. tommy and i have kept in touch through email off and on since i moved to natchitoches. they are the reason i'm on my fourth pair of chucks (not counting my fifth grade high-tops). they are, in fact, the reason boys in beat-to-hell converse make me weak in the knees. as a freshman i had little schoolgirl crushes on both of them, simultaneously. they were smart and funny and i could never take anything they said seriously, but they were always kind to me.

so that was kind of crazy. also strange: we were inside, there was this lanky brunette chick dancing next to me, and she was wearing a black sex pistols t-shirt with a red plaid skirt. upon closer examination, i realized that it was the st. catherine of siena uniform plaid. i grabbed her skirt and i said "DUDE. you are wearing my grammar school UNIFORM." and she laughed and said she got it from goodwill, which i had presumed already. i told her i had three skirts just like it in my damn closet. then i asked her what her name was, and she looked at me kinda funny and said "izzy." and i realized that i had met her two weeks ago at breton's going-away party. she's jason's ex-girlfriend, pre-lsmsa.

so rikki and reid are both leaving for the weekend, which is depressing. but i'm trying to remind myself that i do, in fact, have friends. in support of this notion: laren called me wednesday, adam apparently called me last night at 1am, jeff wants to hang out saturday night, becca's going to come help me break in my new clothesline at some point this weekend. i think i'm going to go through my cell phone, write down the names and numbers in my phone book, and tack the list, entitled You Have Friends, to my wall.

and if the weather's nice this weekend, i'm going to sit in the sun on my front lawn and drink lemonade.

all her dreams are prophecies.

parts of this were written on a series of napkins at highland coffee between 10 and 11:30am.

[[first]] i should know better than to read Lorrie Moore when i have pms. a woman just came up to me and told me she "liked my colors." (as in, what i'm wearing today.) in linguistics this morning, i phonetically spelled 'house' as 'haeus' and dr. oliver said that my pronunciation was "kind of canadian." friday night i saw Garden State with stosh. good movie. it was nice of them to make a movie about my relationship with ben. it's also nice to know that, in the movie of my life, natalie portman stars as me.

i woke up saturday morning--actually, fred wouldn't let me sleep--and my right eyeball hurt. it hurt from behind. i thought maybe i have a sty. i've never had a sty in my life, i don't even really know what a sty is, but that was my best guess. then all of a sudden i started feeling nauseated. i lay in bed, because i couldn't do anything else, and i tried to go back to sleep, but i couldn't, and i'm thinking maybe i have food poisoning. i have food poisoning. and a sty. food poisoning and a sty, what are the odds? ???. !. but then i dry-heaved over the toilet for a while and realized that what i had was a migraine. baby's first. induced by emotional stress? can i blame this on ben? please?

mom and mad visited this weekend. they helped fix up the house. actually, they fixed up the house and i watched and issued directions when prompted. it looks so good. i cleaned my room. i sewed for three hours monday night because i really didn't want to do my reading for russian lit. i dropped russian lit [fuck the honors college] three hours after the drop deadline and got my first W.

[[second]] breton keeps updating me on the bad news of ben, and i've discovered i don't want to hear it because i don't want to know. i'm at the stage post-break-up where what i miss most is a boy shirtless in bed with me. but i will accept no substitutes. rikki says if he were single this is when i'd be calling him and hooking up. i script conversations in my head where he tells me he wants me and i turn him down. i wonder if i could do it in reality. i'm going to see patrick and simon play tonight at the mellow mushroom. i will look cute. many people are coming,

[[third]] including, possibly, nicolas the french guy. jason called me last night. he's leaving for england on thursday. he asked for my address, said he's gonna send me something. jeff also called last night, i need to call him back. i called becca this morning, we're going to pick her car up from the shop in a little while. i might hang out with patrick this weekend. i like writing on napkins. i'm doing alright.

(i'm doing alright.)

--------------

this is all bullshit.

just so you know.

because i have to fill the spaces with manic energy activity happy noise. because to leave the anger and sadness lingering is somehow to admit defeat. defeat is pathetic. this is a disguise. hide the pathos. but i'm not fooling anyone. i can feel it in my eyes, there's something strange and sad and desperate there, and it scares me, and i feel like everyone else can see it. or maybe i'm just paranoid as usual. i'm rebounding so hard in my head, but my body won't give, and so i'm left sitting still and smiling a little too big, my eyes are a little too big, and there's something twisted or twisting inside.

run like hell.

and i'm looking around and thinking this is so lonely. not ben. not that. i mean all of it. i mean feeling disconnected, a lifetime of disconnect, and occasionally thinking maybe at least one person gets it, and at least it's us against the world. but it turns out not to be. it wouldn't be so hard if it didn't seem like everyone else was moving in packs. slip in and out quiet without leaving a mark, but it's not very satisfying. self-sufficient, yes, complete unto oneself, but isn't it all about relationships anyway? not romantic ones, either. human relationships. connection. the baby monkey that dies without mother-warmth. the feral children. why are all my stories about relationships. what else is there to write about.

i look around and wonder am i the only one.

i want to know that i'm not the only one.

you took your coodle and stood in the rain.

you were always crazy like that.

last night we were sitting around the piano playing stupid jewel songs and of course singing along at the top of our lungs. (reid excluded.) (from the singing, not the playing.) and then rikki went to leif's to do homework and reid went to his room to listen to music and i sat in the living room and watched The Man Who Wasn't There. alone. and it was, in fact, lonely. and i thought about calling around for '80s night. but i went to sleep instead.

earlier that night, on our way to the Versatile Three-Way poetry reading at cafe reggae, rikki and i talked about play, and not getting any. and how it's basically been four months since i've gotten any consistently. (natchitoches in june, prague in july, dumped in august.) not that i haven't had the opportunity. and this isn't about sex. but i do crave physical contact, and when i don't get it i start feeling kind of cold and dead inside. and rikki said be patient, and surely when i meet someone i'm attracted to, it'll be mutual. and i said yeah, but sometimes the circumstances aren't right, and sometimes you're attracted to people that you shouldn't date.

and so i'm thinking about having someone to think about. the crush i used to have. the crush i wish i had. the crush i almost have. the crush i'm trying not to have.

the nice thing about being single is that i feel totally in control of my life and my emotions. i make my own decisions, i choose my own circumstances. i feel sane. i feel even.

what's interesting about being in a relationship, though, is that it intensifies everything. intensely jealous and possessive and irrationally sensitive and neurotic, yes. but also intensely giddy and playful and ridiculous and hot. and i understand why people want to avoid making themselves vulnerable. because they shield themselves from the unpredictable and the insane. but then you don't get to experience the full range of human emotion.

it's what i hate about relationships. and it's what i miss.

reid's been playing The Sims 2; he made our house, with us as characters, and then he made another smaller house with just him and a "mom." and his character and my character have crushes on each other, and they made out last night.

my fucking Sims character is getting more play than i am.

but. barrett gave me a ride to class this morning, as he does every monday, wednesday, and friday. and i asked him what he did last night, and he said "i tried to call your stupid ass twice, to see if you wanted to come to a show at chelsea's." but apparently my phone is fucked up and he couldn't get through. so. i may have been lonely, but at least i wasn't forgotten.

apparently i'm entering the post-breakup bridget jones phase.

v. annoying.

there are all these things i want to do, cute date-y things, and i don't have anyone to do them with. i mean, i have friends i could these cute date-y things with, but that just seems wrong, and not the point.

and Bloom came out on DVD, and i saw it in blockbuster when i went to rent a movie with rikki and leif and reid and heather (yay for being the fifth wheel, yaaaaaay). i really really wanted to rent it. and i had this horrible moment where i realized that the only person who would watch that movie with me was ben, and i didn't want to have to watch it with ben, because...well...just because. and Etre et Avoir came out finally, and i was so excited when i saw it on the shelf, but who would watch that with me either. then i thought, well, jesse would watch it with me. or matt. and how fucking retarded is it, that the only people who are interested in the movies i want to see are my ex-boyfriends. there have got to be other boys in baton rouge. i mean, come on.

and then i remembered barrett was in that joyce class too, and he would watch Bloom with me. and that was sort of a relief.

i was sitting on the couch with rikki this afternoon--she was reading richard wright for class, and i was distracting her. i told her how i would like to meet someone new, which is good, because for a while after ben and i broke up i couldn't even think about it. but now all i can think is that i'm never going to meet anyone that i'll like enough, because every guy i see seems to be so fake. and i keep comparing them to the guys i already know, and the guys i know are so smart, and genuine, and kind, and it's starting to seem like no one will measure up. but i can't date the guys i already know, because i already know them. so what the fuck.

and rikki pointed out that my guy friends are in the same boat i'm in. and the ones who aren't had been for a long time before they got into their current relationships. which is true.

so maybe we all have a hard time with this.

last year i thought it was so cool how everyone i met seemed to fit somehow into the group of people i already knew. it was this vast and ever-expanding social circle.

the problem with this is that the circle is not, in fact, ever-expanding. rather, it loops back around on itself.

i'm trying not to want it too much. because i'm superstitious, like all good catholics. and it's like telling your birthday wish. also, because it's pathetic.

i told rikki: this is an improvement, certainly, over wanting ben.

but it's kind of a shitty alternative.

easier than i thought.

i've been sleeping too much. but the following things have, in their turn, made me happy. ecstatic, even.

--i went to highland to get some work done, and i thought i might have enough in my wallet for a muffin and a small iced tea. three bucks and some change. i told the guy behind the counter that i wasn't sure if i had enough. william from louie's was in line behind me, and i showed him the contents of my altoids box, pennies and nickels and a bobbypin, and he threw in two quarters. the highland guy gave me my order and said, "so are we gonna have to make you wash dishes back here?" but i had enough. i thanked william for contributing to the cause.

--reid was supposed to stay for carlotta this weekend, but heather couldn't get off of work in lafayette, so he went up to hang out with her. when i got home on friday for lunch, he was pulling out of the driveway. i flipped him off and he made weird hand motions at me. when i looked in the passenger side window, he said, "get in the car." so i got in.

he said, "i'm going to atcha's or something before i head to lafayette. do you want to go to atcha's?" and i said, "i've been craving izzo's." and he said he didn't think he could eat izzo's because of his teeth, but then he said maybe he could eat nachos. and i said, all excited, "oh can we split nachos?" and he said, all excited, "oh can we get them to go, and then come home and watch another episode of My So-Called Life?" and i sort of hopped up and down in my seat and flailed my arms because it was so perfect.

--someone knocked on the door and i opened it and it was the mailman, this young black dude in a lime-green shirt. and he said, laughing, "he's just...hanging there. just chilling." and i was really confused. i thought maybe he was referring to the letter i had posted on the mailbox. but then i realized he was talking about fred. fred spends his afternoons staring out of the front window from his perch atop the big chair in the living room. and the mailman says, "i see him every day, like, seriously, every day he's just sitting there staring. and i come in and i put the mail in the box and he watches me. he, like, moves his head to see what i'm doing. and he's just chilling. every day, i swear." then he handed me a package. it was my birthday present from matt.

--my roommates and i had gone to goodwill to help find a halloween costume for reid. we were in the pajama section and there was this robe thing. it was made of red fabric, calico, with tiny blue flowers. and it was quilted. i pulled it off the rack and i had that moment of slow-dawning realization, you know the terrible moment when you find a skirt on the rack that has possibilities, and you pick it up and you realize it's not a skirt, it's culottes; the skirt has legs. well, the robe had legs. not only did it have legs, it had red cuffs on the wrists and ankles like a sweatsuit, and a pointy collar, and it zippered up the front. "what the fuck?" i said, and i held the monstrosity up for my roommates to see. someone said, "it looks like a giant oven mitt." and the thing is, it looks exactly like a giant oven mitt.

thus i was a giant oven mitt for the carlotta street party. and i wore a pie tin on my head like a bonnet.

i spent most of the night stumbling around with a nice boy i met many months ago and was sort of slightly interested in. i went back to his apartment with him--he lives on carlotta--and we talked a lot and made bacon and eggs. i told him i liked cracking eggs, and he gave me six to crack. then we watched TV till 6 in the morning. he actually let me have the remote. he made several comments throughout the night about how i could, you know, come over whenever to hang out. and you know, i could crash at his place if i needed to. or whatever. i wasn't sure if i wanted to or not, but rikki was home by then--she called to check up on me--and i was sober enough to walk home alone but it was still dark. we were sitting on the sofa in the dark, and then he was saying i could sleep in his bed. and i said, "where will you sleep?" and he said "i can sleep in my roommate's bed."

so i let him.

this is the third boy in three months. he was only waiting for the go-ahead. isn't it nice, that they wait for a signal? and i didn't give it. i've been sort of depressed, really, about boys and the lack of them in my life right now. and then i was depressed about how pathetic and desperate i must be by this point. but apparently i'm not so pathetic or desperate, because when the opportunity has presented itself. and the other two boys, i couldn't have done anything with them in good conscience. it would have been a bad decision and it would have happened for the wrong reasons. this one, though. this would have been okay. but you know, i really just didn't feel like it.

i woke up in his bed at eleven, and i wrote him a nice note, gathered my things, and walked home in my wifebeater and boxers, which i'd been wearing under the oven mitt/robe thing. the football fans were tailgating all across campus. and i looked like an old man who'd lost his pants.

i suppose what this means is that i'm okay, and i don't have to worry, because i'm not throwing myself at whoever shows the slightest interest.

it doesn't make me ecstatic. but it is sort of a relief.

and lovely and strange.

isn't the universe a strange and wonderful place.

(i'm slightly drunk.)

after i broke up with jesse, i had an intense crush on a boy, and then there were other boys that i was going on dates with, and none of it was working out to my satisfaction. and the day i decided to stop worrying about it and let it go was the day ben asked me to go thrifting with him, and that was the beginning of that whole relationship. it was so out-of-the-blue, and the timing was so precise, it was uncanny--i felt like the universe had sent him my way. which is new age-y of me, perhaps, but that's how it seemed.

so ever since i've been single, i've felt like i shouldn't bother worrying about how it seems like there are no decent and interesting and dateable boys in baton rouge. (excluding, of course, all of my male friends.) because sooner or later the universe will take care of it, and i'll meet someone interesting, and it won't be anything i can predict or forsee.

it's a hard hope to hold onto. in the meantime i've been kind of a hermit. so lately i've been trying to get out more.

to wit:

about two weeks ago, my new neighbors moved in. their names are ross and paul. my old neighbor's name was also ross. he was cute. he still is. he lives in the house behind me now, with his girlfriend. he is friends with the new ross, and also paul. they are both cute. cute neighbors, hooray!

right. so last saturday, i ran into ben and travis and some other nice people as i was leaving highland. it was travis's last day in town and i gave him a hug. there was this other guy with them, and he introduced himself--andrew. he was cute and he complimented me on my argyle socks. he was wearing black low-tops. you know how i feel about boys in converse. anyway, he's talking about how he's going to go see I Heart Huckabees and i'm thinking "gee he's cute" and then he and ben start talking about setting up electricity and january 1st is coming soon. and i  knew already that ben is moving to new orleans after he graduates in december, and it occurs to me as i'm listening to them that andrew must be his new roommate. which he is. which figures.

so after highland and ben, i went and ushered for "Macbeth" at Swine Palace. there was this techie guy at the show who kept kinda looking at me. when i got home from the theatre, paul was out on his front porch chatting with some people. i went inside to change and then i came back out to see what they were up to. the techie guy from "Macbeth" was there, with this other girl named elaina (i think). elaina is a theatre tech major. when i introduced myself, she was like "oh, i've heard about you." apparently through matt. (matt, you better have said nice things.) 

so this other guy was inside playing basslines from Dookie and i sat down at the keyboard, which was cluttered with theory and composition books. paul said they were his books, and that ross was a composition major. which is cool, because reid is also a composition major, and i haven't met that many of them. so after Dookie boy leaves, paul plugs in the keyboard for me, and i play the opening bars of "Boxing"--except i fucked it up--i hadn't played it in a while. and ross hollers from his bedroom, "who's playing that?" and paul says, "it's Neighbor Ann" and ross is like, "Neighbor Ann, you are fucking awesome. that's like my favorite ben folds song." and i'm like "how the hell did you even recognize it, i played all of three notes and i fucked it up."

the other people had left by then, and paul was going with them to a cast party, so i headed for the door. ross came out of his room--he'd just gotten back from work and had been changing out of his uniform--he works at ruffino's, which, coincidentally, is where my dad took me for my birthday dinner. there's actually a whole long story about why we ended up going to ruffino's, involving karma and the mysterious powers of the universe. before then i'd never even heard of ruffino's. but apparently ross works there.

so he goes onto the porch to smoke a cigarette and we start talking about music, and we have this really nice conversation--one of those conversations where you're thinking in the middle of it, wow, this is a really nice conversation. he reminds me a lot of matt in his mannerisms. and he kept saying "oh ann" for emphasis and it reminded me of my friend jason from the london trip.

(additional bizarre coincidence: i saw jason-from-london this week, after not having seen him for about six months, and he called me the next day and we went to bingo and then to louie's and he bought me food. it was the closest thing to a proper date that i've been on since ben. not that it matters, because he has a girlfriend, etc. but it was still nice.)

so ross asks me if i'm going to the Q and not U show at twiropa on sunday. becca had already invited me but i wasn't sure if i wanted to go. i told ross that, and he lent me one of their old CDs, instructing me to listen to it all day and all night and then to go to the show. which is what i ended up doing.

at the show i saw everyone i've ever known, including ross, paul, maggie, peyton, jordan, stevie k (she updated me on gary k's whereabouts--and no, he hasn't fallen of the face of the earth--and yes, he really did spend a year in hawaii), the highland coffee guy, and bryan, who gave me flyers for two shows in new orleans and one in baton rouge. and of course becca was there. she'd mysteriously disappeared while the second band was playing, and reappeared bearing half-eaten Trolley Stop blueberry pancakes, which i devoured on the curb in front of twiropa. because becca is just that awesome.

i haven't had a chance to talk much to either of my neighbors since the show. but yesterday morning i ran into ross while i was walking to my 8:30 class--he was going to his theory lecture. he'd gotten a head start on me, so we just waved and went our separate ways. he turned to walk down aster, and i glanced back at him, and he was looking over his shoulder at me. it was that sort of discreet sneaky way of looking--the way you look at someone when you don't want them to see you looking. 

tonight i went to the library and checked out a book written by my fiction teacher. i spent about an hour at highland reading it. ian and katherine showed up and told me they were heading to northgate tavern to hear jordan and zach play. $5 cover, totally worth it for the ridiculous experience of huddling in the cold with your former classmates (janey and mari and bailey were there) watching your seniors play. i felt like a junior again, but in a surreal and ironic sort of way. their band name is Crash Landing, i think. janey gave me a lot of great drunken hugs and told me she loved me and thought i was fantastic and then she bought me a gin and tonic. the cup made my fingers cold.

the boy that she was standing next to looked familiar, but i'm so bad at meeting people...i asked janey if that was her boyfriend, and she was like "hell no, he's a friend" and i asked her what his name was, and she said "andrew." which is what i thought. andrew from highland, with converse. so then i went up to him and we reintroduced ourselves and ended up chatting most of the night. he's 19, he met ben in a photography class, he was a photography major but he dropped out and now he works for his dad washing windows. he's from baton rouge, but his mom graduated from mount carmel.

i asked him how Huckabees was and he said he didn't get to see it because no one would go with him. i told him i was going to see it tomorrow (which i am, with laren and rikki) and invited him to come. we exchanged numbers. he gave me sips of his high life, and told me that there was a show at his house on sunday and i should come. i paused, dug through my purse, and pulled out a crumpled flyer that bryan had given me at twiropa: sunday,  november 14th, andrew's house in baton rouge. i was like, dude, that's fucking spooky.

so. so so so. this will be a weekend. and my other neighbors are having a housewarming/birthday party tomorrow night. and i want to bake a cake. and i still have to give ross his CD back.

like i said. the universe. is strange and lovely.

hour to hour, note to note

okay, so this is really-not-a-big-deal. and right now i can't imagine that i'll want it to turn into anything particularly substantial. but it's been three months since i've been able to get legitimately excited about anyone, so i'm going to dwell on the details, because it makes me feel good:

the movie date was pushed to sunday; laren and rikki couldn't make it. so it was me driving to andrew's house and andrew saying "did you want to ride together to the theater?" um, yes. but the car conversation was somehow not awkward at all. when we got to tinseltown and i pulled out my wallet, he shook his head and said "i've got it" and i actually exclaimed "no way!" i didn't think it was going to be a date-date. so i told him i'd get the popcorn. which i did.

and the movie was really happy and good and i was so happy at the end. our elbows were touching at one point and i wasn't sure if it was on purpose or not. he moved away after a bit. as we were walking out, he offered his arm and i sort of skipped into it and we cake-walked through the parking lot. i asked if we could get a doughnut from krispy kreme (we were on siegen) and they weren't hot but they were still good. we talked about mckenzie's. i really, really miss the chocolate-covered cake doughnuts from mckenzie's. 

we were inside krispy kreme, and he asked me if i wanted to eat there or drive home. i wasn't sure if he had other things to do, so i shrugged, and he shrugged, and we drove home. the conversation on the way back was good--i found out he was home-schooled through high school, which explains the vibe i got from him the first time i met him. it's the same vibe you get from jake, or jeff. real happy-go-lucky and kind of a pure soul despite the world. that sounds retarded, but i don't know how else to explain it.

when we pulled into the driveway of his house, he asked if i wanted to hang out or what, and i told him i had homework to do, which was true. i told him i'd see him that night at the show (the one at his house). as i was driving home i noticed for the first time that i was kind of shaky. i hadn't realized how nervous i'd been. it felt like an audition or a test or a job interview or something. it felt like a first date, i guess.

actually that's the first first date i've ever been on. matt and i didn't go on a date until spring testing of our senior year. my relationship with jesse started in the honors dorm. and ben...well, ben was initially a random hook-up.

the show ended up getting cancelled. he called me while i was doing linguistics at highland and told me i could still come over--a bunch of people were there smoking. conveniently, jeff had just called to invite me to a barbecue, which gave me a legitimate excuse to turn him down.

but i thought about him during the week. honestly i wasn't sure how well the "date" went--andrew seems really cool--and he actually used the phrase "let me preface this by saying," which i thought was fucking adorable--but there were moments where i wasn't sure if i was being a drag or something. and maybe he only invited me to hang out because he was being polite and felt obligated.

so stosh said if i were going to call him--and i felt like at this point the next move should be mine--i should wait "two, or three, or four days." which would put us to thursday. i was thinking about inviting him to come help us paint our living room saturday afternoon. but i didn't want it to be a really formal invitation. i just wanted to call him up friday night and be all casual, like, "oh yeah, we're having some people over and we're going to paint and eat cake and drink margaritas, you should come."

so thursday night i was playing piano when i heard my cell phone ring. it always surprises me when my phone rings. it was actually my voicemail alarm making its god-awful squawking noise. because andrew had just called and invited me to a show that night at northgate. thursday: he called me: he waited four days and then he called me to go to a show with him. and i exclaimed (i've been doing a lot of exclaiming lately) "that is so fucking cool!" except it was to the voicemail. so i called him back and was like, all casual, "yeah i'll see you there."

he said he would be there around 11:30 and the show would start at 12. i was afraid i'd beat him to northgate and have to sit around by myself feeling like a big loser, so i was kind of nervous as i walked across chimes towards the bar. then i heard music coming from the back deck--and it was anna! and i got really excited. i knew a bunch of the people there--laren, lee, megan v, sarah jane, michelle. anna's set was great--it was just her, without the band, and i told her afterwards that watching her was like louisiana school but with better chords and better sound. and then andrew showed up and gave me a hug and we sat down in front of the stage--everyone sat--it was dax riggs, and he was amazing--sort of a cross between jolie holland and chris carraba. that makes him sound annoying, doesn't it. chris carraba for the metal background, not the puppy-love lyrics. at any rate, he was great. he did a good cover of "country road"--i told andrew that i always thought the chorus went "west virginia, aunt jemima..."

and he asked me to get him a beer (he turns 20 in january)--it was $2 abita amber. i kept stealing sips, so he put the plastic cup between us. and we were both leaning back on our hands, and then my right hand and his left hand were next to each other, and touching, but i wasn't sure if it was on purpose--but this time he didn't move away. and when he went to pick up the cup of beer he didn't move away, either. and maybe it was during the buddy holly cover that i decided i wanted to kiss him on the cheek. but i didn't. but i thought about it. and then i thought about my brother, the kiss he got from a girl at a show, and how it's such a strange place for romance, and how junior high do i feel right now. but in a really fun way.

he walked me to my car, and then i drove him to his--he was parked on carlotta. i'd told him earlier that night about the painting party--he said he didn't get off work till 3pm, and i said we probably wouldn't even be waking up till around then. so we're saying goodnight and he gives me a huge hug and it lasts longer than hugs normally last and then he says "call me when you wake up saturday." and he said it like he really, really wanted me to call him when i woke up on saturday.

which is cool. 

additionally--and i'll save the details on this one for another day--i, um, have a sort-of crush on my neighbor.

i told laren: when it rains, it pours.

she said: yeah, and when it doesn't rain, it's a fucking drought.

picnic, lightning.

partly composed on an index card (research paper-in-progress, postcolonialism) at highland coffee, 9:30pm:

adam's got an electric chord organ

and i want to throw myself at some boy, any boy. i want to kiss him, and i want him to kiss me back.

and saturday night i spooned with andrew on my sofa.

afterwards we sat, nervous and awkward, as i talked too loud about the cat. looking anywhere but at him.

i did not kiss him.
i did not want to kiss him.
i was holding out.

(for what?)

breton said:
i'm so confused. i've been with people of every age, gender, and nationality, and now i don't know what i want. someone nice to hold my hand? a real relationship? a smart person to talk to? a good fuck?

why not all of the above? i asked.

is that even possible? she responded.

i don't know. i don't know. but i'm holding out.
--------
and then and then and then in the middle of research and rapidly cooling mango tea at highland, i get a text message--i've never gotten a text message before--and it's from andrew and it says had a great night, hope i didn't keep you up too late... and i blush and bite the cuff of my sweater sleeve. too distracted to read anything more tonight about mimesis genre empiricism the third world ghetto--

i realize i have to respond somehow.

having determined on saturday night (or sunday morning, it was four when he left) that really i shouldn't kiss him because right now he's my buddy, albeit one i have cuddled with, but if there's kissing it's on. and i don't know if i want that.

but how else are you gonna know what you want, or if you want it? reid points out.

yeah but by then it's too late. because there's the expectation of the kiss being repeated, repeatedly, and if i don't want to i'll have to explain, and there's no way to explain rejected kisses without it sounding like "you suck you suck you suck."

except i don't actually know how to text message on my phone. in fact i didn't know i could even get text messages until tonight. (my phone: circa may 2001.) i tried to figure it out by sending a practice message to myself. but i kept accidentally inserting numbers instead of punctuation marks and i don't know how to delete. and then the battery died.

i don't want to lead the kid on. i'm not even sure if i'm actually attracted to him. i suspect that maybe it's the idea of him.

so why the fuck am i blushing?

this is the 100th post.

i'm at work right now. on my way out of the house, i checked the mail and found an airmail letter addressed to me. to me! it even had the blue and red stripes around the edges. and it was from cameron.

i tore open the envelope and dumped out its contents: a half-full stamp card from highland and a full eCommons punch card. (eCommons is the union bookstore coffeeshop; it's also where cameron and i used to meet for lunch.) also enclosed was a sheet of double-ply toilet paper with the following message printed in dark blue ink:

Hi Ann.
HAPPY XMAS
I had 2 cards for Starbucks.
But lost the last one. Sorry!
Hope you are doing well

Love Cameron
XOXOX

how fucking cute is that. i'm trying to figure out how to reciprocate. i considered buying a cranberry muffin and sending him the crumbs. that would be funny. but also gross and possibly weird. maybe i'll buy a cranberry muffin and send him a picture of me eating it. at least that would be more useful to him than stale muffin crumbs. theoretically.

maybe i'll send him a picture of the muffin and i'll put the crumbs in a baggie.

if i don't get some sunshine soon.

everything looms so much larger

i'm freezing my ass off

warm boy or electric blanket

will king cake make this any better

oh god it's lonely in my head.

...

hm. king cake with cream cheese filling.