traveling swallowing dramamine

fresh bruises.

on my heart?

on my knees. as promised. and also one, inexplicably, on the inside of my left ankle.

so right as i'm getting really frustrated--you know, the trials and tribulations of a single girl--i talk to breton and she tells me, tearfully, about how lately when she and jason lie in bed together, he sleeps with his back turned towards her. and my stomach kind of knotted up--because i remember that feeling so well--and i know breton and jason will be okay, but suddenly i was so grateful that i wasn't in a relationship and didn't have to deal with all the emotional bullshit that goes along with it. all of the work. i mean, i have to deal with emotional bullshit too, in my newly single state, but at least it's a different kind of bullshit. at least it's kind of novel.

i'm sure the novelty will wear off soon. but in the meantime, at least i'm not wasting time and energy on stupid fights, or feeling bad about myself.

a story:

when i was in seventh grade, i was crushing hard on that guy joel--the one who called me annietoes--the one who asked out my cousin. i remember the day he asked her out. actually, it all started the night before--the infamous Skate Night. when meghan--my cousin--made her grand entrance. her debut.

meghan had always been the sweet one, the popular one, wholesome, all-american, apple pie. she had even, white teeth and she drank a lot of milk. and up until The Infamous Skate Night, meghan was generally running around in a t-shirt and umbros. she was outdoorsy. she was athletic. she was...the exact opposite of me. so it's the beginning of seventh grade, and i won't be developing breasts until, oh, somewhere in the middle of my senior year in high school, but meghan's just busting out all over the place. and it's Skate Night for the 7th grade class. that means that Airline Skate Center (or maybe it was still Skate Country back then) rented out the rink for our grammar school's junior high. They had different nights for the different grades, and it was kind of a big social event. so my mom stops by meghan's house to pick her up for Skate Night, and meghan comes out in this tight white baby doll t-shirt and white shorts. short, short shorts. the rumor among the boys that night was that meghan didn't have to bend over for you to see her ass. so meghan comes bounding out of her house, and my mom and i exchange glances, because, as i said before, this was not meghan's usual attire.

so we go to Skate Night, and of course the boys are falling all over themselves. and when it's all over, i go home and go into my bedroom and i am freaking out a little bit, because i can sense that something big is happening, something is changing, things are never going to be the same again. meghan and i had been best friends since first grade. Skate Night was the turning point in our relationship. it all went pretty much downhill from there. it wasn't just me that saw the change--i've talked to other girls from my grammar school and they all point to that night--The Infamous Skate Night--when meghan wore that white shirt and those white shorts--that was where it all started. or ended.

(let me say right now that meghan is currently at LSU--i think she's pre-law--making excellent grades and enjoying the company of her long-term boyfriend. she didn't turn into a prostitute or anything. i know i'm making this all sound very ominous. from my 7th grade perspective, it was. she did go a little bit wild in high school. and it did all start in junior high. on that night. and we really never were that close again. which is sad, because she's a wonderful person. it's just that, ever since that night, it seemed like we didn't have much in common anymore.)

so i'm in my bedroom and i'm weirded out by my cousin's aggressive entrance into the world of hormones and boys and tight, white t-shirts, and i say to myself: this is not a big deal. this is not a big deal unless, like, joel asks her out. and joel won't ask her out, because he wasn't at Skate Night tonight, and he doesn't even know who she is. satisfied, i went to sleep.

the next day i couldn't go to recess because i had math counts practice. yes, i'm a huge nerd. anyway, the bell rang and everyone came inside, smelling like puppy dogs, and we’re supposed to be quiet in the halls but there’s usually chatter--but that day there wasn’t chatter—instead, there was a strange buzzing noise. the halls were buzzing and it was strange and i grabbed my friend amanda and i said “amanda, what’s going on?”

and of course joel had asked meghan out.

i went home that afternoon and i said to myself: if joel is so stupid that he’s going to ask out some girl he doesn’t even know, just because she has boobs--if he’s so stupid that he would pick her over me—well, then i guess i can’t really respect his taste in women, and i don’t need to waste my time worrying about him.

and from that point on, i was over him.

i mean, more or less.

i look back on my 7th grade self and i wonder where the hell that confidence went. i’ve been missing it these past few years. i want it back.

(the postscript to that story is that joel broke up with meghan a month later—he told me he dumped her because her last name was “poo.” he then proceeded to follow me around for the rest of my seventh grade year. when i campaigned for 8th grade student body president, he took a sheetful of my campaign stickers and plastered them all over his body. one girl told me that he wrote “i love ann” on some of them. funny how that stuff works out.)

--temporary--

[[quentin: The Sound and the Fury]]

it is hard believing to think that a love or a sorrow is a bond purchased without design and which matures willynilly and is recalled without warning to be replaced by whatever issue the gods happen to be floating at the time

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. 

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.

talk commas to me.

let's see if i can gather my thoughts and shape them into something coherent.

ben called me every day this past week--from friday to friday. every day. which wigged me out a little bit. but not because i didn't want him to call me. it was because he was calling and i didn't mind. he asked me if i wanted to watch a movie on monday night, and i told him i couldn't, because i had to write a play.

so we watched a movie tuesday night instead. which meant, of course, that we spent a half hour in blockbuster trying to figure out what to rent, and then we went home and turned on the movie and turned off the light and then didn't watch the movie at all. i don't even know what movie we rented. i told him to pick--i figured it wouldn't matter anyway. he noted afterwards that we didn't even make it through the opening credits. which was pretty sweet. it's been a while since i've not watched a movie with someone. i sorta feel like i'm in high school again. in the good way. with lots of sexual tension. and my own bed. and a closed door.

thursday we were going to go to '80s night again, but i just couldn't muster up the energy. there was a lot of "i'll go if you go" and finally he said "well, do you wanna do something else?" and i said "what i really want to do is be very quiet somewhere without smoke" and he laughed and said, "that sounds really nice." and i said "can it involve my joyce homework? is that too dorky?" and he said it was fine, because he had to do the reading anyway.

so we went to charlie's coffee and he got an iced chai and i got some really kickass iced tea and we split an eclair. he was looking at the dessert stuff in the little fridge display thing, and they had tiramisu, and he told me that sometimes he'll get two or three pieces of tiramisu and eat that as his dinner. which is really silly and cute and the thought of it gives me a sugar headache. anyway, we did our homework and talked a lot--we were there for about three hours. and he told me stuff he had learned about obsolete punctuation marks and i got all swoony. (i told this story to michael, who cocked an eyebrow and said huskily, talk commas to me.)

friday i didn't even mean to hang out with him--because i'd seen him thursday night--but he asked me and i said yes before i could even think to say no. i hung out at his house before i went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with rikki and co. and as i was leaving he said, "so you're coming back after the movie." and i pretended like maybe i would and maybe i wouldn't but of course i did. he was leaving at 9AM--he's spending spring break in NYC--and he told me that he'd made me a mix CD and to remind him to give it to me. so when i left i woke him up and asked him where it was and he showed me and i took it and kissed him and left.

i didn't listen to it until i woke up that afternoon and drove to NOLA. it's called "nine things i'll be thinking." he didn't provide a track listing. i employed what little musical knowledge i have and my trusty sleuthing skills (aided by my invaluable friend Google) to decode the mix CD. because, you know, that's what you're supposed to do. especially when the mix CD is called "nine things i'll be thinking."

so here, in order, are the nine things:

1. Talking Heads :: Life During Wartime
2. TMBG :: Man, It's So Loud in Here
3. Beck :: Nicotine and Gravy
4. The Magnetic Fields :: Underwear
5. The Postal Service :: Such Great Heights
6. Indigo Girls :: Mtns of Glory
7. Erykah Badu :: Kiss Me on my Neck
8. Dispatch :: Two Coins
9. Ani DiFranco :: o.k.

once i figured out the songs i read the lyrics--lyrics are so important to this kind of thing--and i have concluded that this mix is proportioned perfectly. it is sorta silly, occasionally sweet, and mostly hot. the fact that there's a Talking Heads song on there pleases me greatly. what makes me even happier is that the CD is not entitled "nine things i'll be thinking about." (he told me friday that i needed to get over my hang-up with prescriptive grammar. and i told him to shut up because it wasn't my fault that i hadn't taken linguistics yet. swooning all the while.)

anyway, he is totally fucking up my plan. i had a plan. it was a great plan. my plan was to stay single at least until i got back to the states in august. i don't want a boyfriend over the summer because i'm going to be in natchitoches in june and prague in july. and frankly i'm tired of having to be all forlorn because my loved one is far away or whatever. plus, if i were single in prague, i could have a torrid love affair or perhaps a random meaningless fling. at any rate, this thing with ben is, in faulknerian terms, not adjunctive to the forwarding of the design.

and it's forcing me to acknowledge something that hadn't really occurred to me--namely, that i'm scared shitless of starting a new relationship.

coming out of my last relationship, i've developed this [admittedly cynical] notion that relationships are basically a slow and painful process of watching the person you love learn to like you less and less. you know, the beginning is always a big fucking honeymoon, and everyone's on their best behavior. and then you learn each other's idiosyncracies, and if you're lucky and in love, you think the flaws and quirks are cute. but in this last relationship--by the end of it i basically felt like i was a neurotic bitch, and that i was being tolerated--my presence was being suffered--but no pleasure was taken in my company. i only felt that way with my boyfriend. when i was with my friends i felt like a normal human being. within the context of my relationship, i felt like shit.

i know it doesn't have to be that way. but i can't help being a little bit wary about getting back into something serious. because "serious" implies that you'll be spending a lot of time with that one person. and right now i'm spending a little time with a lot of people, and i feel great, and not like shit at all. and i'm afraid that if i commit to spending a lot of time with one person, somehow i'll be found out--exposed for the insufferable bitch that i truly am--or something--and i'll go back to thinking that really i'm insane and intolerable .

i can't bear it. i just can't.

so to avoid that whole situation, my plan to stay single keeps me from being subjected to the demystification process. i can keep people at arm's length and they can never make me feel like shit.

it's a good plan; it's been working out well so far. but now: i discover that i like being around ben, and he seems to like being around me. in fact, part of the reason i like being around him is because he seems to like being around me. if that makes any sense. it makes me feel nice, that someone likes me enough to want me around. (adam, i concede that much to you. but please note: i am happy independently of this. having someone who wants me around is just a fabulous fucking bonus.)

so he keeps asking me to hang out and i keep saying yes, and i am filled with dread as i think forward to the seemingly inevitable point when he will no longer be so excited about having me around--past the point of taken-for-granted--when the things he used to think were cute have become merely annoying. when my presence is something to be tolerated, suffered, but not enjoyed.

i guess that's when you break up. and then the whole thing starts all over again.

this is why Eternal Sunshine was so brilliant. one of the reasons, anyway. what if you could start a new relationship with all of the freshness of discovery but with none of the pain? what if you knew from the beginning all of the things that would piss you off or drive you nuts? and you wouldn't have to go through the process of learning to hate each other. you'd already know but it wouldn't matter because you'd be simultaneously falling in love.

i don't know.

what is up with these long posts? jesus. anyway, that's why i'm hesitant to start something serious. i suppose i'm jumping the gun on this over-analysis. true to form. because i don't know what his intentions are. and i don't intend to ask him. at this point i've got all the symptoms of a small and rapidly growing crush. i just don't know how much i should indulge it. so far it seems like i'm afraid to get involved and yet every time he asks to see me i say yes and yes. even though i'm scared. so i guess that's healthy enough. scared but not stopping.

in other news, i went home saturday and had such a good visit with my family. i ate crawfish with my dad and michael--finally--i'd been desperate for crawfish for weeks. and my dad told a joke with the word "fuck" in it--which is major progress. (he bitched at me on a fishing trip in november for saying "jesus christ" when i was trying to bait a lure with a live shrimp.) and then we went back to his house and i played the piano for a while and then he played his guitar and we tried to sing harmony and occasionally succeeded. we did some simon and garfunkel and CSNY and beatles--but kept forgetting the words: "hello darkness, my old friend...i've come to talk with you again...because the vision something....fleeting...left its something something...something...something something...something...sound...of silence..."

then that night i stayed up late talking with michael--we were talking about crushes and dreams--apparently all these girls are having dreams about him--my favorite: this girl told him that she dreamt they were in McDonald's together, and michael was dressed like Ronald McDonald, and she went up to him and honked his nose and kissed him. i was like, i can't believe she actually told you that. and he was like, yeah, she's bold. she's got balls.

and i told him all the shit i'd been thinking about relationships. and he said--kind of out-of-the-blue--that i've changed so much. and i asked him what he meant. and he said, "from year to year--you've changed so much. you're not the same person you were a year ago. and a year ago you were different from the year before." and i said, "like how?" and he said that i seemed to know what i was about. and that i seemed much happier.

and boy did i need to hear that.

the next day my mom made panéed meat for lunch. (that's fried pork chops to you people.) and i asked her if i could bread the pork chops, and she looked at me like i was nuts and said "yes of course" because apparently she hates breading pork chops. i just don't get that. how could anyone hate breading pork chops? you stand, barefoot, in your pajamas, against the counter--crack an egg in a bowl. break the yolk and stir. roll out a sheet of tin foil, pour out some bread crumbs (italian, store-bought). pick up a pork chop--boneless, thin-sliced--dip it in the egg. lay the cold dripping chop in the crumbs. press it down, flip it over, press it down, repeat. repeat. repeat. it's so tactile. the raw egg, the bread crumbs, your bare hands, the soft uncooked meat.

after lunch i took michael to get ice cream. and i gave him his birthday present: Welcome to the Monkey House (Vonnegut) and Found magazine (issue #3). i had a hard time picking out his present, and i wasn't totally pleased with my gift selection, but he's at that age where he's almost ready for a lot of books but not quite. and i can't buy him music anymore; he's light years ahead of me with that stuff. in fact, i take my recommendations from him now.

i needed that visit home more than i had realized. on the way back to baton rouge, i felt like i was breathing again for the first time in weeks.

tell 'em large marge sent you.

oy.

just got in from the PCA/ACA conference in san antonio. i was part of a panel on heritage/tourism with jim, ashley, and chuck--we were all talking about the fall of the american steel industry and the aftermath. i presented the two-minute montage (and a corresponding paper) that i'd cut (with tommy) for jim to show to LPB last fall. the panel went really, really, magnificently well. we had fifteen people in the audience (which is apparently good attendance at these things), and they were really responsive to our stuff. this one older woman told us, when we opened the floor for questions, that she was the daughter of a steel worker, and the granddaughter of a steel worker, and she thanked us for, as she put it, telling the story of her life. she was near tears. it was fucking crazy. considering how much i knew about the steel industry and labor party politics going into this project--ie, absolutely nothing--it was cool to see how this project--which i originally thought would be an incredibly boring documentary on shit i cared nothing about--really connected with these people. 

we drove to san antonio friday--got in around four, took a nap, then walked around the neighborhood. we were staying at the marriott rivercenter, which is connected to a gigantic mall. appropriately enough. (PCA/ACA: pop culture and american culture associations; the full title of jim's documentary is Steel Voices: From Mills to Malls and Movies.) the alamo was literally right around the corner. i made so many basement jokes, it wasn't even funny. really. it wasn't funny at all. especially since no one knew what the hell i was talking about. jesus christ, haven't you people seen Pee Wee's Big Adventure?

ate at some mexican restaurant for dinner; jim bought a round of drinks--i had a margarita--a small margarita--but i hadn't eaten since 11:30, and it was like 8:30, and damn that margarita knocked me on my ass. i was so annoyed. i wouldn't have minded if it had just been me and jim and ashley and maybe chuck, but we were also with this other couple from baton rouge: jenn and justin--she's an english PhD. and he was really nice, but she was kind of a bitch. i'm pretty much at a point now where the grad students don't intimidate me and i'm not so paranoid that they're thinking "god, an undergraduate, how annoying." but this girl jenn, she made me uncomfortable. so i didn't want to be drunk in front of her. oh well. she and justin have been married for five years, and the whole night they were finishing each other's sentences and telling each other's stories and looking like they wanted to bite each other's heads off. it was really tense. it made me really not want to be married ever. or at least, to never be part of a married couple that even remotely resembled them.

chuck had brought paulette, who i thought was his wife. they were really cute together, in contrast with jenn and justin, and they gave me hope that married couples didn't all want to kill each other. but i knew that chuck had three kids, including a ten-year-old. and so when i saw paulette, i was like, there's no way this chick has had a ten-year-old kid. chuck is thirty-two, but she looked really young. i thought maybe she was just a young MFA. then i find out from ashley that they're engaged, not married, and she's twenty. which a) explains why they still seem happy and b) is gross and weird.

anyway, we presented at noonish, finished at twoish, walked around and got haagen-daz and some souveneirs, and then began the drive home--through the worst weather i've ever seen in my goddamn life. the rain was blowing horizontal (like in Forrest Gump!), there was so much lightning that i thought i was going to have an epileptic seizure, at one point it started to hail. there was a tornado warning following us most of the way from san antonio to houston. we were averaging about forty mph. it took us an extra two hours to get home.

I-10 was fucking underwater for a lot of it. we kept hitting these random deep patches of water. one of them totally took us by surprise, and jim, who was driving, exclaimed, "motherfuck! shit in my pants!" and that was pretty funny. (to put this in perspective for you: jim is a tenured professor at LSU with a PhD in critical theory from Brown.) by the time we escaped the worst of the rain it got kinda pretty, i guess. probably because i was no longer fearing for my life. the roads were shinywet and the lightning storm was cool-looking. and far away. 

by the last hour of the trip, i was in a trance-like state of utter boredom.  and i was thinking, for some reason, of ADVANCE--past and future--old friends, last year's staff, whether or not i am supposed to be giving adam a ride up to natchitoches in june, etc. and then suddenly "Dust in the Wind" came on the radio. and i couldn't stop smiling. what a ridiculous song. and what fond memories i have of the ADVANCE staff performing it in last year's talent show, with the guys doing interpretive ribbon dancing in leotards. 

as far as i know, ben comes back from new york tomorrow. which means......hm. i don't really know what it will mean.

we shall see.

i was outside of time.

this gives new meaning to the expression "living on love."

i keep forgetting to eat. wednesday i told ben that i had to do homework that night and absolutely could not hang out, absolutely not, no, no, no--and he's got a cold--and he said maybe later i could just stop by to tell him hello? and then he would immediately feel better? and so i went over there at 10pm and stayed for seven hours. seven hours. we have dubbed this the "seven-hour hello." and it was mostly lying on the sofa and talking. for seven hours. it's fucking unreal. i kept saying that i was gonna leave, because we just can't keep doing this, because he's going to get sick of me. and that's my biggest fear in this kind of situation. feeling unwanted. and as far as i can tell, to sustain the wanting for any length of time, you must keep the other person missing you just a little bit. i'm not talking about playing hard to get. i'm talking about having your own life and your own space and your own time alone. and not spending seven hours together at a stretch.

so i'm telling him he's going to get so sick of me, and he looks at me incredulously--this is around 4am--and he says, "ann, we've been sitting here laughing for the past six hours. i don't think i'm going to get sick of that."

which is very nice of him to say.

anyway, what happens is we get so wrapped up in sitting and talking and kissing that suddenly it's seven hours later and neither of us has had a meal in a long, long time. and one of us will say, hm, maybe we should eat something--and there's this realization: oh, yeah, i guess i am kinda hungry--there's this distant grumbling empty stomach sensation--but it's so far away, like everything else, that it's easy to forget. everything is so far away. i feel like i have tunnel vision. i haven't seen the periphery in weeks. and of course if i'm up with him for seven hours at a stretch that means that i haven't slept, either. and i miss sleep, i suppose, but like the distant hunger pains, sleep is something that i only remember i should be doing when it's too late. like six in the morning when i have a 9:30 class.

of course, physically i am not responding very well to all of this. i am walking vertiginously. things are spinning. by the time i left ben's house on wednesday, i was kind of starting to hallucinate. interestingly: at this point in my sleep-deprived state, i would have expected things to look hazier, but for some reason everything is sharper and brighter and swimming. my body moves on auto-pilot (i really shouldn't be driving); my mind, long since exhausted, has retreated into some dark and quiet corner.

(ben and i are lying on his sofa, facing each other, and we are absently holding hands--his left and my left--and somehow we start coming up with a handshake--a complicated one with, i don't know, snapping and stuff. and i'm not left-handed, and neither is he, and so our coordination is shitty. i say, "let's try it with the right hand," and he says, "that is my right hand." and i look at him, and i look at my hand, and he looks at me, and he says, "oh. well, it's my right hand because we're facing the same way." except we are facing each other. and i look at my hand, hard, and i say slowly, "this is my left hand, isn't it?" because i honestly am not sure at this point. then he starts laughing because it is indeed my left hand, and his left hand, and we are really that tired.)

on tuesday i'd met him on the parade grounds after my kierkegaard class. we sat with anna and mary, and were eventually joined by travis and breton and jesse. and breton and i perfected our cartwheels and handstands. and it was good. and then the group began to disperse. and i'd told ben i was hungry. so travis asks ben, "what are you kids up to now?" and ben says, "i think one of us is hungry." and i said, "what is the other of us?" and he said, "hungry too, i guess." and so we walked arm-in-arm to the chimes and ate.  and it was good. 

i think that was the first time we'd been outside together in daylight with other people. and i guess it was around that point that we started to talk in terms of things we want to do: oh, you've never been to thrift city? we'll go to thrift city. you've never eaten at louisiana pizza kitchen? we'll have to go. and it's crazy, because...you know..."we."

breton asked me yesterday if ben and i were "official." and i said no. because we're not. and i somehow doubt that there's ever going to be a conversation about it. it seems crass and unnecessary. and i don't feel like laying down rules and coming up with titles and all of that bullshit. at this point, when people ask me what's new, i say, "well, there's this boy..."

travis told me last night at meghan's surprise party that he thought ben and i were "adorable." and that he knows ben really well, and that it's going to be really good. and literary. (breton and i have been laughing about this. about a week before it all started, she told me that i'm going to have to marry an english professor so that we can lie in bed and talk about books. and then, you know, ben and i sit in highland doing homework, which eventually turns into a conversation about pro-forms--which he has to explain to me--and i get all swoony--and i tell breton all of this and she says, "see? see? that's what i was talking about.")

and apparently the other day, someone--reese, maybe--told ben that he seemed really animated, and asked what was going on--and he said, "oh. um. ann." which is really cute. for my part: i have this Word document from my senior year in high school--it's a series of letters i wrote to matt over the christmas break--we'd made an agreement to write each other every night and then exchange the letters once we got back to school. anyway, the first letter is dated Christmas Eve, 2000, and at one point i say:

it's very weird. i didn't know what i was in for when we started this whole thing, you know. i didn't expect you to have such an effect on me. but you do. and it's a good thing. i've been seeing a lot of people that i haven't talked to in a long time, and of course they all ask me how i'm doing, and i tell them that i'm wonderful, really really happy--and i actually am--and it's mostly your fault. well, i guess i'd be happy no matter what--life is good and all--i was happy last year--but i wasn't like, actively noticeably consciously happy. and i am right now. because of you.

i've read and reread those letters in the...jesus, the three years since i wrote them? and i sound so happy. i've read them and wondered how in the hell i got that happy, and what i'd have to do to be that happy again. and in the past couple of weeks, when people have asked me how i'm doing--despite the fact that i'm incredibly sleep-deprived--and possibly malnourished--i say that things are good. because they are. it's the first time in a long time that i've honestly responded to that question with something other than "alright."

i will say that going to meghan's surprise party with ben was a little bit jarring. if being with ben and other people in daylight made me feel like part of a couple in the sense that it was new and exciting and different, being with ben at a party at night made me feel like part of a couple in the sense that it was official and obligatory and all of the things i dislike about "serious" relationships. all of the reasons i want to stay as far away from them as possible. the stomach-twisting suffocating. and when i stop and think about it logically, nothing was really different between us on friday. it was just a different setting. and so what's happening, i think, is that there's this nice boy that i like a lot, and we've got this good thing going, and i'm enjoying myself, and then all of a sudden i'm panicking and thinking that maybe this is a bad idea and maybe i don't want to do this yet and maybe i don't know what i'm doing--but nothing has changed--i'm just projecting my own freshly-minted hang-ups onto this situation. that's the only thing that's different about it. it's not him, and it's not how much i like him, and it's not how we interact. it's my own sudden inward freaking out, projected.

i've got to figure out how to turn it off.

i don't want to end on that note. so i'll end with this, instead:

he came back from new york on sunday, and at that point i wasn't sure where we were going with all of this. and so we were lying in his bed and talking about books and i told him how hot it was that he could give me book recommendations. then i said: if things keep going the way they're going, i'm gonna have an enormous crush on you.

and he said, "um...so...what exactly do i need to do for that to happen?"
and i said, "more of the same. like...the books."
and he said, "books? that's easy. i can do that."
and i said, "so....it's ok? if i have a crush on you?"
and he said, "yes it's ok. in fact, it's my most favorite thing."

my most favorite thing: the fact that we're reduced to saying things like "i like you. a lot." last night he said: "you're incredible." and then he paused, and said: "i'm sorry if that's trite. but it's true."

women, shit.

tuesday night, i went to my faulkner professor's house to watch a movie with the rest of my class. i gave cameron a ride home after the movie, and on the way back to my apartment, i got rear-ended at a red light. i watched it happen through my rear-view mirror. i heard this car horn toot, and i looked in the mirror, and there were two cars behind me, side-by-side, and the guy directly behind me was looking at his friend in the car next to him. and coming at me. way too fast. faulkner keeps talking about how you think things in a flash--you think them before you even think to think them--and that's what it was like. i heard the horn, i looked in the mirror, the driver was looking away, he was coming at me fast, and i thought: "he's going to hit me" and then he did. and it was loud. and my head bounced back against the head rest. and then he got out of his car and asked me if i was ok, and i said yes. and then we pulled over and exchanged information. both cars looked fine. which was good. i was shaking and laughing and i told him he scared the shit out of me, and he apologized profusely. it was kinda fun like bumper cars.

so then i went home and ben had called my cell. so i called him back and i said "what's up" and he said "my phone is going to die in three seconds" and i said "what should i do?" and he said "you should come over" and so i did.

i sat with him on his sofa, and drank I Love Lemon tea, and finished The Wild Palms--which was awesome--and started joyce--but then we started talking about our dads, and political-correctness, and words like woman v. girl and "feminism," and abortion, and activism, and fundamentalism v. moderation. it was our first real argument--in the debate sense, not in the fight sense--and it was fun. and then we went back to reading joyce. and i drew a butterfly on his foot. the butterfly had a speech bubble coming out of its mouth quoting the last line of The Wild Palms: "Women, shit." and then i said, "let's make out" and he said, "okay." and so we did. and we were lying in his bed, and i said, "haha, you want me." and he laughed and said, "you say that like you win or something." and i said, "well, i do win." and he said, "well, you've been winning for weeks."

he asked me to spend the night, and i said no (we had joyce at 9:30 and i needed to actually sleep). and he asked me to meet him for lunch the next day and i said okay. we were supposed to meet at 12:30 in front of middleton. and so the next morning after joyce, as i was walking to my faulkner class, i said "12:30 middleton?" and he said "yeah."

i usually eat lunch with rikki on mwf, right after faulkner lets out at 11:30. so i told her in class that i was ditching her because i had a lunch date. and then i headed to middleton to do homework until 12:30. on my way out of allen i ran into ben and cameron, who were standing in the quad talking. and then ben went into allen because he has syntax in there from 11:30 to 12:30.

so at 12:30 i'm reading in front of middleton. i'm still reading twenty minutes later. i look around and i don't see ben. i call his cell and it's off or dead. i go to his classroom and it's dark and empty. and i think: what the hell, i've been stood up. so i meet up with some joyce kids (cameron, naomi, and dumb bitch girl) in front of the union and eat with them. and i'm trying to figure out how ben could have possibly forgotten to meet me. since he would have just gotten out of class, right next door in allen, at 12:30. it's not like he'd had a break where he could have gone home and fallen asleep and or something. and i knew he wouldn't have stood me up deliberately.

i'm annoyed. but it's the first even remotely inconsiderate thing he's done since we started all of this. so i'm not sure how i should react: i don't want to come off pissy; but still, it's such a flaky thing to do. so i'm kind of agonizing over it--because i feel like however i handle it will set the precedent for all future potentially unpleasant interactions. it's like--in the first fight, you kind of carve out a role for yourself in the relationship--i will be the rational one. i will be the sarcastic one. i will be the melodramatic one. i will be the emotional one. i will leave angry messages on your answering machine. i will hang up the phone in mid-conversation. i will write long and careful analyses of our arguments and email them to you. i will storm out of the house. i will curse at you. i will speak through gritted teeth. i will stare at you sullenly and refuse to speak. i will slam the door. i will retreat inward and become emotionally unavailable. and so you carve out these roles, and you stay rooted or rutted in them as the fights cycle through, and you shout and curse at each other from the same positions, in the same patterns, over and over and over.

so i feel like i have to choose my words and my tone very, very carefully in these early moments. because in some sense, i'm casting myself in a role. i get to choose how i want to be cast. so finally as i'm walking to my 2:30 dance rehearsal, i call his cell and leave a sing-songy voicemail: be-en, you stood me u-up. and then i said i was going to see "13 ways to kill a mockingbird" that night at 7:30, and that he should call me if he wanted to go.

i ride the bus home with breton after rehearsal, and she decides to go with me that night to see the show. and we're both hungry, so we drive to saigon for dinner. on the way, we stopped at highland and at ben's house to see if we could find him. and he wasn't at highland and he didn't answer his door. so we go to saigon and order pad thai with shrimp to split and then ben calls my cell (from his house--he'd been asleep when i knocked on his door). and it turns out--much to my relief--that he was indeed at middleton at 12:30. but he was by the front doors and i was on one of the concrete benches under the crepe myrtle trees and so we missed each other. and he met us at saigon and we gobbled our food and hauled ass to the show. which was sold out by the time we got there; i had to run around the back of the theatre and beg trish to let us in. and so we got in and saw the show--opening night--i had seen most of the video stuff but none of the live performance, and i was very happy when i saw it--the show was kinda messy but really interesting and good. and the audience laughed at the appropriate places of my documentary segment. i was psyched. especially because they laughed the hardest at this one spot that i'd spent hours working on--it was a gag with the music, and i couldn't get it to come off right, and i worked in the office one night from 10pm to 2am trying to get it. and finally it sounded kinda like i wanted it to, but i wasn't sure if it was funny (at 2am, when you've been listening to the same 3 second audio clip for four hours, nothing is funny). but the audience was cracking up. so i was really pleased.

afterwards me and ben and breton went to charlie's and ate eclairs and drank iced tea, iced chai, and hot chai (respectively). and we laughed a lot and it was fun. and then breton drove us back to our apartment. and then i brought ben to his house to pick up clothes for work in the morning, and then i brought him back to our apartment, and we hung out in my room (breton and jason and clint were downstairs watching a movie), and eventually went to sleep. (well, i went to half-sleep. which is as much sleep as i apparently will ever get if another person is in bed next to me.)

in the middle of the night, fred came in and tried to jump in bed with us. except he didn't quite make it to the top of the mattress--he was kind of hanging onto the edge--and my elbow happened to be there--so he kind of hooked his little claws into my elbow and hung there--i was like "fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck." and i removed him from my elbow and sort of hurled him off the bed. and then he started scratching at the box spring, which makes this loud awful popping noise. and i'm like, half-asleep, dead-tired, mumbling "fred, shut the fuck up" and he won't. so i push him out the door and close it and get back in bed. and he starts scratching at the door. and i curse again and get up and open the door to let him in and i curse at him and i get back in bed. and ben, who's mostly asleep, makes a sympathetic noise and throws his arm over me. and i say, "fred clawed my elbow and it hurts," and he kisses my elbow for me. and then he tells me that he's just had a strange and horrible dream about his dad.

and so we lay there and i thought: this is nice. it is nice to be mad at the cat in the middle of the night and have someone there to kiss your elbow. it is worth not sleeping to be able to hold someone when they've had a strange and horrible dream. it is so worth it.

fauk!

'twas a breast-filled weekend. verily, i say unto you, nothing makes a girl lose all sense of modesty like having to rip off her clothes (about four layers of tight sweaty cotton-lycra blend) for a two-minute costume change in the hallway of the Music and Dramatic Arts building, while the LSU hip-hop coalition ambles by, waiting for their turn onstage.  at one point, i was tearing off black tights and wriggling into red ones--obviously in a panicky rush--and this random girl wanders up to me and asks me for directions to somewhere--i don't even remember what she was looking for--i stared at her blankly, half-naked and pulling on tights, and said, "um, i don't know." like, "i'm sorry, can you get directions from someone  who isn't naked and in a hurry?"

it's funny, i used to be really shy about taking off my clothes in front of people--i'm talking, like, even in front of my female roommates at LSMSA--i used to change practically inside of my closet. but then came my dance performance junior year--and i was in, like, ten numbers back-to-back--and with all those quick costume changes, you just don't have time for modesty. that was a real turning point in my whole attitude towards nakedness. i don't know, i'm still pretty modest--i don't absolutely love being naked--but there's something different about being backstage at a show--somehow your naked ass becomes irrelevant.

that's part of what i love about doing shows--the backstage environment--it's so intense and other-worldly. the things that go on backstage...if only you knew. but you don't. you can't know: the comaraderie, the tupperware tubs of candy and the bobby pins and the hairspray, the ritual of mutual zipper assistance and shared lipstick, the laughing gossipping nakedness and the secret frenzied energy. that's what's so fun about it: the secrecy: inherent, necessary, because this is what we have to do behind the scenes so that once we get onstage the whole thing runs calm and smooth and, to the audience, apparently effortless.

my favorite moment this weekend: lying on my back onstage for the first number, staring straight up into the darkness, then the music fading in and the lights fading up--and in the dark, from the stage, you can see the shadowy outlines of the audience--but when those lights come up, all you can see is the stage and each other. everything else falls away. the lights come up blazing and it's all i can see and all i can think is "oh shit, it's on." it's the best fucking feeling. i love performing. i'm high for days after. 

i got a lot of love this weekend from my friends, who are awesome and supportive and actually came to the show. i thought that was pretty cool. especially of the guys, who are squeamish about these kinds of things. me and ben and rikki and leif and breton and bradley all went to serrano's after the friday show for margaritas, and i got drunk, and then we went to tabby's, and i got drunker. which was exactly what i wanted to happen. i had my gigantic faulkner term paper (worth fifty percent of my grade) due on friday at midnight, but i had to finish it before the performance, so i'd been freaking out all day. in fact, i'd been freaking out all week. i hadn't gotten a chance to talk to ben in days--we had a fifteen-minute dinner date on thursday before my dress rehearsal--we went to atcha's, and i ordered chicken schawarma and he ordered ashta--and he got his ashta right when we ordered, but my food took a while. and it was time for me to go to rehearsal, and i was starving, and my food wasn't out yet, and i'm all frantic, and ben's like, all soothingly, "do you want some of my ashta?" and in this pathetic panicky voice i say "no, i want my schawarma!" and he's like, "um...ok."

saturday night after the show we all went to the varsity and booty-danced, which was good fun. and then ben came back with me to my apartment and there was an incident on the staircase, and that was also good fun. we went to bed at 4:30, and he and breton went to work at like 9:30 sunday morning. i slept all afternoon, then i got up and cleaned my room and met ben at highland at 6ish. and we read (joyce for him, faulkner for me) but mostly distracted each other. at 8:30 we left to get dinner at izzo's. when we got in my car, he said suddenly, "oh, ann!" and he showed me his neck. and apparently on saturday night i had given him a hickey. and apparently people gave him shit about it all day at work. i was so pleased with myself. i've never given anyone a hickey before. i told him, laughing, "that's fucking awesome," and he said, laughing, "that's your ass."

so we go to izzo's for dinner, and i ordered nachos and he ordered a burrito. but he forgot his money in my car, so he ran out to get it, and in the meantime the guy who took ben's order told the cashier that the veggie burrito belonged to the dude who'd just left. and i said, "oh, he left his money in the car." and so the guy at the cash register rang me up, and then looked at me and asked, "is he your boyfriend?"

what the hell kind of a question is that? what difference does it make? what, if i said "no" was he gonna ask me on a date? i was so taken aback. and uncomfortable, partly because i didn't really know how to answer the question. breton had asked me if ben and i were "official" and i told her no, and that i didn't expect to address the issue with him. but all weekend he kept coming up in conversation with the girls, and i was fumbling for words whenever i had to refer to him--anyway, so Izzo's Guy is like "is he your boyfriend?" and i'm like "um...yeah, kinda." and Izzo's Guy says, "kinda? that's too bad for him." and i don't know what that's supposed to mean either. so i sit down, all flustered, and ben gets his food and sits down too. and i kind of hesitate, and then i tell him what happened,  like, "isn't that weird?" and he says, yeah, that's weird.

so we go back to my apartment. he told me he wanted to read my faulkner paper--which i was embarrassed to show him--and so he read it, and then he showed me his equally embarrassing harlem renaissance paper--and we ended up trading papers and short stories all night. it's hard to explain the significance of this event--sharing your written work. i mean, i guess for non-writers it's not a big deal. but we're both english majors. and for me, it's nerve-wracking having someone you like and respect read your shit--especially if it's "creative" writing, because you're trying to make something interesting, and you're putting a lot of yourself on the page, and so it's personal. but even with formal essays, it's personal--because it's like you're exposing your mental processes--laying out the way you think, the way you formulate ideas--it's all on display. it's you, innermost. and vulnerable. and that's scary. and you want the other person to not think you're an idiot. simultaneously, you're reading the other person's shit, and seeing the way they write/think, and that's a scary moment too--because if i'm reading someone's shit, and it sucks, i have a hard time taking them seriously. that's probably bad of me. but it's true. when i first met jesse, he mentioned that he wrote poetry, and it was very much an invitation for me to ask him to see his poetry, but i didn't ask him. because i was so impressed with him in that first meeting. and if i read his poetry, and it sucked, i wouldn't be able to respect him anymore. so i didn't ask to see it. i read some of it later, though, and it was good, and that was a relief. i mean, if the person doesn't call himself a writer and his writing sucks, that's one thing. but if he's like "yeah, i write poetry," acting like he knows his shit, and then i read it and it sucks--well, i suppose you could file that under "dealbreaker."

fortunately, ben's shit doesn't suck.

so at this point we're intermittently talking and reading and making out, and finally he kinda looks at me, and he says, "um. i'm not really sure how to bring this up. but. um. if we were to go back to izzo's. say, tomorrow. or next week. or two weeks from now....can you see where i'm going with this?" and of course i do but i want to hear him say it. so i say, "no. be explicit." and he says, "ok. so if we were to go back to izzo's, and you ordered nachos, and i ordered a veggie burrito, and i left my money in your car, and i had to borrow your keys and go get my money, and the guy at the cash register asked you if i were your boyfriend..." and i say "yeah?" and he says "what would you say?" and i start laughing and kissing his neck and i say "i don't know, ben, what would i say?" and he says, "i don't know," and i say, "what would you want me to say?" and he starts laughing too and he says "i don't know, i guess it's up to the Izzo's Guy. since he's the one running things around here." and then he says, "because you know, we never really talked about it," and i say, "no, and i didn't think we were gonna" and he says "it's not something that i wanted to take for granted" and i say, "you know, i'm so far beyond that point." and i don't know if he knew what i meant when i said it. but what i meant was that it doesn't even seem relevant, the title of it, and the officialness, because--i don't know--it is what it is. i know, i know, how profound: "it is what it is." basically, we're both in it, and we're both into it, and i suppose that means he's my boyfriend now, and that's fine, but it doesn't really matter what you call it, because what we're doing together is so much more important, and so much more interesting, than whatever it is that we're calling it.

i like him so much.

but a whimper.

i might be losing my mind.

maybe it's the lack of sleep. maybe it's because we're so short on groceries that we don't even have butter. maybe it's the accumulated stress. maybe it's the back-to-back fourteen-page papers. maybe it's PMS.

maybe it's because i have spent every available moment with ben for the past week. and i feel off. because being around him makes me want to be nice all the time. and i am not usually nice all the time. usually i am sarcastic and cynical and, i don't know, sharp around the edges. and right now i feel very blunted. he keeps telling me that i'm sweet. and that word makes me kind of nauseous. i mean, he's not just saying it. he means it. and it's probably true. i am being sweet. but i don't think i usually act like this.

it's that thing that happens to your friends--the funny sarcastic cruel ones, who make jokes at other people's expense, and roll their eyes a lot--the ones who mock people who are "in love"--and then your funny sarcastic friend falls in love, and he gets really fucking boring--it's that thing.

i don't want to be sweet. it makes me feel bland. and dull. and trite.

god, the grass is always greener. either i'm miserable because i'm dating someone who makes me feel like a neurotic bitch, or i'm bitching because i'm dating someone who brings out the niceness in me.

so i went to a barbecue today--it was a london reunion party. and i almost didn't go, but then i went, and it was good. it was refreshing, being around people i don't see very often. then i ate sausage and a hamburger, and i thought i was going to vomit. i haven't eaten that much meat in a long time.

i woke up this morning in ben's bed. for the fourth consecutive time this week. i've finally gotten the sleeping thing down. except it was so hot last night, and i can't sleep when it's hot. so at some point early this morning i got really antsy, and ben woke up and was like "what's wrong?" and i was like "it's so goddamn hot" and he got up and turned up the air and opened the window and opened the doors and fixed me a glass of ice water. and i lay there in bed, with my feet sticking out the window--it was raining a little bit, and the rain was cold--and he hands me the glass of water, and i drink some, and he drinks some, and he says "better?"

and it was. so much.

at 10:30 i was wide-awake and dead-tired. he was still asleep. and i needed to work on my finals, and he needed to keep sleeping, so i got dressed and snuck out. before i left, i took the ribbon that i'd worn in my hair the night before, and i tied it in a bow around his wrist. he kind of flailed when i tried to tie it--i think it tickled his arm--but i managed.

so i got home and went to bed--set my alarm for noon--and he called at 11:20. with asleep voice. and he was like, "what are you doing?" and i said "i'm in bed" and i said "what are you doing" and he said "i'm in bed" and he said "you left" and i said "i have to do work, and i didn't know how long you were going to sleep" and he said "but you're not doing work, you're in bed" and he said "i'm pouting" and i said "oh don't pout." but with some small satisfaction.

and i said "what are you doing tonight?"--it's anna's mary's last night in town, and also reese's last night in town, and ben told them he wanted to hang out--and i kind of figured i wouldn't be tagging along. so i said "what are you doing tonight" and he said "are we going out?" and i said "did you want me to go?" and he said "sure" and i said "are you sure?" and he said "absolutely."

but i kind of don't want to go. partly because i feel inappropriate about it--like i ought to let him have these people to himself tonight. and partly because i haven't seen my other friends in two months and i want to. because i know they will make fun of me, and i will make fun of them back, and no one will tell me how nice i am. i told one of the girls at the london party that i didn't know what i was going to do tonight--this girl is not terribly bright. and she wears fitted polo shirts and big pearl earrings--and she told me that i should just tell him i want a girls' night. and that i want to "suck some cock." i was like "hm, somehow i don't think that would go over too well." and she smiled vacuously and shrugged.

i don't know what my problem is. i've been feeling kinda panicky the past couple of days. i think finals week is fucking with my head.

so i got home from the london party and i pushed back the blinds on the patio door and the trees were thrashing in the wind and i played piano and watched the rain. and i thought about stepping outside and standing there. in the pouring. and then i thought about taking all my clothes off and standing naked in the rain. and then i thought, "fuck, i really am losing my mind."

they're gutting the building this summer.

cameron had decided towards the end of the semester that he wanted a repeat of the drinking party we'd had on ben's birthday, with me and him and ben and barrett all drunk off our asses at ben's house. so i'm like, "OK, we'll call barrett and invite him, and maybe we can invite naomi [also from our joyce class] too, and maybe charles--" but cameron's like, "nah, i'd rather it just be us three."

i tell ben this, and he's like, "that might be a little weird. we should invite more people." so i invite barrett, and rikki, and stosh (cameron has faulkner with both of them, and ben knows them through his other classes and through me), and this cool guy timothy from our joyce class. ben and i decide on sunday that monday night would be a good night to do this. but rikki is in lafayette on monday, and stosh doesn't answer his phone, and we can't get in touch with timothy. and cameron is like, "monday is better than tuesday," and ben can't do it on tuesday because he has to go to an iggy pop birthday party with anna to be her buffer against this lesbian couple that wants to have a threesome with her.

we end up calling barrett, and barrett has edie's keg left over from her finals party saturday night. so me and ben and cameron plan to go over there to help finish the keg--which was miller high life--which at this point is flat miller high life. cameron meets me and ben at ben's house at 10:30 monday night, and i drive us over to barrett's.

except a ton of people were over there: bitoun, jacob, jacob's little brother, jacob's little brother's friend, deville, barrett, ian, sean, murray, philip, daniel, adam, adam's new special lady friend jessica--and then me and ben and cameron. i hadn't seen a lot of these kids in a long time, and i wanted to hang out, but i had ben and cameron with me, and they didn't know anyone, and the point was to drink with people they knew, not with people they didn't. so we hung around for a while--cameron drank some beer and three glasses of rum and coke--i wasn't drinking--ben declined the "champagne of beers" because he'd already had most of a bottle of actual champagne. finally i told them we could cut out and drink somewhere else. and they looked relieved and we left.

i was like, "ok, where to?" and ben suggests that we drink on the levee, which sounds cool, but i knew that breton and jason had a picnic up there one night and got accosted by a policeman, who wanted to know what they were drinking. (grape juice.) anyway, i say, "the levee sounds nice, but could i go to jail?" because i'm still not 21, and having an open container of alcohol out in public is illegal anyway. ben's like, "ok. how about we break into the M&DA building?" and cameron is like "break in?" and ben explains that one of the doors to the music and dramatic arts building used to have a broken lock, and he doesn't think they've fixed it yet.

so we go to the circle K on state street and we try to figure out the alcohol situation. cameron suggests a pack of beer, and ben says, "well, the thing is, ann doesn't drink beer"--which i've never explicitly said. in fact, i've never actually thought about it, but he's right. i don't drink beer. i mean, i'll drink it at a keg party--but i can't ever finish a glass of it--which means that i can't get drunk off of it. so ben says, "ann doesn't drink beer" in this way like he's thinking hard of what we ought to do--and cameron is like "oh really? what does she drink, then?" and ben looks at me kinda thoughtfully and says "bourbon." which is true. and it was one of those moments where you realize that someone is actually watching and paying attention to all of your little details. it made me feel good.

so cameron is like "oh, hardcore," and i'm like "not really--i don't drink it straight or anything"--and they're both like "no, it's still hardcore." which i thought was kinda funny. so ben gets out of the car and goes into circle K. cameron shakes his head and says something about ben being like tennessee williams. and i'm like "how?" and cameron's like "both aries." and i'm like "oh come on" and cameron is like "no, really" and i'm like "well, what are they supposed to be like?" and he says "impetuous." and he says, "i need to be more like that. i need a girlfriend who will make me more like that" and i say "no shit, i'm a total stick in the mud" and he says "no, you're not." and i say "seriously, i'm the least spontaneous person ever" and cameron looks at me and says, "well, your other qualities more than make up for it." and i kind of choke and make aw-shucks noises.

ben comes back with a fifth of jim bean, and we find out that in fact he and tennessee williams were born on the same day. and then i go into circle K and get three fountain cokes. except that they have 79 cent cups, which hold about 16 ounces (too small) and then they have 99 cent cups, which hold 44 ounces (fucking huge). they're out of the 89 cent cups, which probably would have been just right. so i end up getting the 44 ounce cups and filling them three-quarters of the way. and i go back to the car and hand off the gigantic cups and the boys are like "jesus fucking christ" and we drive to M&DA.

ben is driving. he parks across the street in the administrator lot, which has a couple of cars in it, so that we'll be less conspicuous. i guess it's about twelve-thirty. ben opens the bottle of jim bean and pours it into my cup, his cup, cameron's cup. ben says: "and that's the fifth"--the bottle is now empty.  we walk across the street to the front door of the building, holding our gigantic cups. a cop car drives by. alcohol is forbidden on campus. and we're about to break into the music and dramatic arts building. we're holding gigantic cups and there's the cop car and i say "let's walk to the greek theatre" and we swing towards the greek theatre, which is right next to M&DA. the car passes; i ask ben if he wants to double back. he says he'll go check to see if the lock is still broken, and that cameron and i should sit in the greek theatre. i ask him if he wants me to hold his cup; he looks at me like i'm the smartest person in the world and says "that's a great idea." except that it isn't such a great idea because i set the cup down on one of the benches in the greek theatre and it falls over.

ben waves us over to the building; i give him my full cup and take his now mostly empty one. ben yanks hard on one of the front doors and it opens. there's someone practicing in one of the music rooms upstairs. we walk to room 150, which is a small theatre. ben flips on the house lights. we find the switch and the plug for the stage lights, and we turn off the house lights, and we sit on the stage and tell suicide stories, because it seems appropriate. i'm getting to the end of my drink, and ben gets up and gives me some of his. i am getting drunk. cameron tells us about his new year's eve in new orleans--a story which involves a crack whorehouse, a car theft, the kaiser, a gay couple, an indian man, and two gutterpunks.

ben decides he wants to move to the shaver theatre. but the doors are locked and we can't get in. we poke around and we wind up downstairs--i think we were underneath the stage. there's this door up on some steps, and we climb up and it's like this crawl space underneath a wooden platform. i think it was the platform that replaces the orchestra pit. anyway, there was a lamp down there, and we sat and talked and drank some more. cameron found a black plastic cowboy hat. ben got up to pee. he leaves me and cameron under the orchestra pit. cameron says something about how this will probably be the last time he'll see me (he's going on a road trip this summer and back to australia in august). and he says something about how it's been great, and he leans in and kisses me on the cheek and stays there for a long time. and finally he sits back and ben returns from the bathroom and we move again.

i find another staircase, leading down, and we wind up in some kind of crazy boiler room. there are all kinds of pipes and loud humming machines and cobwebs everywhere. ben finds a ladder up to this platform thing, and we go up there and it's prop storage. stacked furniture and piles of framed pictures. my drink is gone. there's a box fan running and japanese lanterns strung up. and there's a dorm-sized microwave on the ground, and a dorm-sized fridge next to it. ben opens the fridge. there are four cold abita ambers inside. they are our destiny; we take them. ben needs to pee again. he wants to pee off the roof but settles for peeing off the prop storage platform into a drain on the boiler room floor. beer in hand, we move again.

cameron wanders off; ben and i end up making out in the green room for a few minutes before we decide we should probably go find him. ben goes upstairs, i go downstairs. i find cameron under the orchestra pit and lead him upstairs. ben finds a locker with costumes in it and hands them out: a blue floor-length cotton skirt for cameron; a lavender granny nightgown for ben; a men's blazer for me. ben gives me his button-down shirt to wear underneath. we move to the third floor. i duck into a practice room and start playing piano. ben and cameron are at the end of the hall--they've opened a window and ben is trying to get onto the roof. he ends up breaking one of his yellow flipflops. he is devastated. but he already has a new pair, and it was time to retire the yellow ones anyway, and what a way to go. the boys come sit with me in the practice room. ben climbs over the piano and sits on the window ledge. cameron stands next to me. i tell them i'm taking requests. cameron says, "can you play something jealous?" which i didn't understand until later.

we move again. we're in the second-floor hallway and ben has to pee, again. i am sobering up; ben is drunk; cameron is piss-drunk. ben leaves for the bathroom. i lean against the wall and close my eyes. suddenly cameron is nosing up to me. he goes to kiss me on the mouth and i turn my head. cameron backs up and says, sort of horrified, "oh, i'm really bad." he looks like he's about to panic; i grab him and pull him to the wall in a one-armed hug and rub his back and he says "thanks." the bathroom door opens; ben comes out; cameron jumps about a mile and tries to back away from me, but i hold him next to me because i don't want it to look worse than it is. i say that i want a cheeseburger from louie's and we go. cameron and i split a burger; ben is falling asleep at the counter, which cameron drunkenly and guiltily interprets as suspicion and anger. he keeps saying, nervously, "is he alright?" and i'm like, jesus christ, could you be any more obvious, "yeah he's just tired." we finish the burger and cameron pays. the guy at the register asks, "hey man, are you alright?" and cameron goes into the bathroom, presumably to puke. ben and i sit in the car and i'm like "jesus" and he's like "what?" and i say "i'll tell you when we get home."

so we take cameron home. he lives on west garfield, and i'm taking us this sort of ass-backwards way--we're not going down nicholson or highland but some random street in the middle. and we pass west roosevelt and west mckinley and ben's like "i think we've gone too far" but we haven't seen west garfield so we keep driving. polk, buchanan, taylor, tyler, and we are in the fucking ghetto and i'm like "okay, we've gone too far" and cameron's like "i think it's just ahead" but i turn the car around anyway, or try to, and we're on some dead end street with ramshackle houses and ben is laughing and i'm like "okay, we're going to die. we're going to get shot." and ben says, "ann, i don't think they just randomly kill people." i'm turning the car around and he is saying "i don't think they just randomly kill people" and we both look up to see this fake skeleton in an orange t-shirt in the front yard of this broken-down house. and ben freaks out, and i am laughing my ass off, and i get us to highland and we head back towards campus. i turn onto west garfield, and we're driving, and cameron's like "this isn't my street" and i'm like "you're drunk, yes it is." and we get to the end of the street, and his house isn't on it. i know what his house looks like, and it's not there, and we get to the end of the street, and ben's like "what the fuck." and cameron's like "told you so." and we take a left and a right and we find the other half of west garfield, and we find his house, and we say goodnight.

i drive us back to ben's house, and we go inside and i tell him about cameron, and he laughs and says, "well, you knew he'd been wanting you for months." and i'm like "what the hell, you were the one who told me maybe he just wanted to be friends." and he shrugged. as if he were unfazed, which i didn't really buy. i kept bringing it up--that night and the next morning--because it had been such a strange evening, and i was weirded out by it, and i guess i wanted to hear that he had been, too--but he just kind of shrugged it off.

the next night i met him at louie's, and we were sitting at the counter, and all of a sudden he said, "man. cameron." and i said "what about him?" and he looked at me incredulously and said "it was fucking weird." and i said, "did you know what was going on?" and he said, "yeah, of course" and i said "why the hell did you keep leaving, then?" and he said, "well, i mean, i had to pee. and i figured you'd either kiss him or you wouldn't. and there wasn't much i could do about it. and i figured you could stand up for yourself." and he said that when he'd come back the first time, when we were still under the pit, and cameron had kissed me on the cheek--when he'd come back, he said cameron had sort of leered at him. which i totally missed. and he said that he didn't want me to think that he didn't care at all--which he knew was how he'd acted the night before--and he said that he also didn't want to act like a jealous maniac.

it was kind of a relief to hear that. it was also a relief to hear that he'd known what was going on. he'd acted like he was pretty clueless about it, which was kind of a surprise, because ben doesn't miss much. actually, ben doesn't miss anything. and it had been pretty obvious.

we went home and went to bed and we're lying there and i tell him that i would have been really sad if he hadn't cared at all, and that i'm glad he cares, and that i'm also glad he isn't a jealous maniac. and i tell him that by the end of the night, when he kept leaving to go to the bathroom, i was starting to think that he was trying to test me. and he looked at me like i was crazy. and i said, "well, i guess that would be a psycho thing for you to do." and he nodded. and i said, "but you know, by that point, it seemed like anything was possible." 

it was a strange night. and it was, i think, the only way to end this fucking apocalyptic semester.

it's time i had some time alone (and i feel fine)

i'm in natchitoches, gearing up for the third and final week of ADVANCE. i am tired out of my mind. my kids are great. the creative writing class is going well. ben is coming up tomorrow and staying through tuesday night, and that is exciting and a little bit nerve-wracking, but we shall see.

last night was the second dance. the first dance is always a lot of fun; the second dance is usually a little bit weird, and this year was no exception. it was particularly weird for me because i'd been feeling sick all day--so i wasn't in the mood to rock out--or, rather, i was in the mood to rock out but my body was refusing to cooperate. also, jesse and clint came up to visit. they came and pounded on our bedroom door (breton and i are rooming together up here) and breton opens it and is like, "hey guys," and i was late to meet some staffers downstairs for dinner--so i just told the guys hey and booked it--and when i got back from dinner, adam asked me where i'd been--he asked me if i'd been "hiding"--because breton had told him that when i saw jesse i "ran away"--and i was like, "jesus, i'm sure that's what he'd like to think"--as if it bothered me so much to see him that i'd put forth the energy it would take to run away. give me a break.

i mean, i won't lie, it was sort of awkward. but i don't suppose that can be helped. i wish this break-up hadn't been so complicated. i wish that it didn't involve all of my fucking friends. because frankly, i don't want any part of it. i did, once, but i'm so tired of all the drama. so much drama, and so much damage. i wish it would all just go away.

so i went back and reread an old email he'd sent after we broke up. it was the end of a poem--a poem he'd started before we started dating--the end to which he apparently found after we'd stopped.

the context: our first date--unofficial, as i was dating matt at the time--was the honors college winter formal. matt refused to go, claiming that it would be "gay." it was not "gay"; it was a lot of fun. i dressed like a saloon whore, jesse dressed like a cowboy, everyone else was wearing fucking prom dresses. since that dance, it has become a tradition in the honors college to go to the formals in costume. yes, i know, we rock. anyway, it was the most fun i'd ever had on a date--i was with a bunch of la school kids, i knew the DJs because they were also la school kids, and i got them to play fun stuff--love shack and blister in the sun and tainted love and bohemian rhapsody--everyone on the dance floor was freaking out. it was awesome. and we were rocking out. and matt was always so reserved, and he didn't like it when i acted retarded--he would get really embarrassed--but he wasn't there, and so i acted retarded, and jesse wasn't fazed--in fact, he was right there along with me, acting equally retarded--so we danced like crazy and had a lot of fun. a lot of fun. i realized that night that i couldn't have had that kind of fun with matt. he would have been too uncomfortable. so that was sort of a turning point in my relationship with him.

but anyway, jesse sort of fell for me that night--even though he was still dating rachel at the time--and he wrote a poem about it, about us dancing, and the skirt i was wearing--a square-dancing skirt i got from goodwill--red with white polka-dots and white bows along the hem, and it twirled out when i spun.

so the end of the poem:

O AnnMaria: Endnotes

o AnnMaria spinning brightly blazing
in red skirts of passion and dancing
twirling twirling twirling away and away
until nothing is left in my arms
except the space You once filled

You used to dance for me.

but i refused to let our dance fall into insignificance
and so did You, then
and together we were rebels

now here i am stuck
somewhere between laughter and forgetting
while You dance for someone new

and somehow i feel like i’m back at the start ...

the thing is--

i never danced for him. i never. we were at that dance and it was actually a little bit weird, because we were both dating other people--we slow-danced about a foot apart--and all the while i was thinking, "geez, i haven't danced with anyone other than matt in over a year." and if i hadn't had my la school kids with me, i probably would have felt incredibly awkward all night. but because i was with friends, i felt comfortable enough to let go. the incredible thing about that night was not that i danced like a lunatic for him--but that i danced like a lunatic, and he didn't care, and in fact he matched my lunatic behavior with his own. that was what was so cool about him. that he let me be.

i dance for myself. this is significant. i just want to make it absolutely clear. i'm not saying it out of spite, to be contrary, or anything like that. i say it because i've noticed it more and more--when i'm at '80s night, and i'll be dancing with one of the guys--or even one of the girls--it doesn't take long before i'm wishing i could be dancing like a spaz on my own instead of fake-humping someone's leg. i mean, i love dancing on my friends, too. i just like to vary it up. i'm sure as hell not dancing "for" any of them. i wasn't dancing "for" ben that night. it's the same thing when i go to shows. if i go to see a band i've never heard before, i like to go with friends and enjoy the shared experience of finding something new. but if it's, say, one of my favorite bands, and i know all the words by heart, i'd rather be by myself, up against the stage, going batshit and not caring who's watching.

it's between the music and me, motherfuckers. and don't you forget it.

it feels good, the sweat and release of it. and the way you sink into yourself. the first-year staffers commented after the first dance how different it is here--how the dances are so fun because, as bodie pointed out, "no one's trying to fuck anyone"--though that's debatable, i guess, but her point is, everyone is dancing like crazy and dancing for themselves. because it's been a long week, and we've worked hard, and studied hard, and played hard, and now we're going to dance hard, and jump around, and laugh a lot, because we look ridiculous. but we don't care. we know all the words to istanbul/hey ya/salt shaker. and we feel fine.

so excuse us. we'd like to stay and chat. but we have some serious frolicking to do.

that and the impending apocalypse.

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

8:09pm / July 17, 2004 / Globe bookstore

i'm in such a crabby mood. went on a field trip today (bone cathedral, several castles, czech countryside, etc) but i didn't realize how intrusive the tour guide would be. i was screaming things in my head and it was getting to the point where i wondered what would happen if i just let it all out.

it's funny, last summer in London i stuck really close to the group--there were only about 35 of us--and we did a lot of stuff all together--this summer i've been sticking mostly with rikki, and we've been figuring out the city on our own. so now i find that i grow impatient with large groups--and furious with the tour guide--i'd much rather wander alone.

all my pictures are of buildings.

last summer i was frustrated because i felt like i knew the program group better than the city; this summer i'm frustrated because i know the city better than the group. although, honestly, which will last longer? the friendships formed at programs like this tend only to make sense in that specific context, whereas Prague will be around till, you know, the end of time. or whatever.

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

i've decided.

people get in the way of relationships.

think about it.

you make a connection--the connection doesn't change--it's the person, or what you know about the person--what you learn to hate about the person--that becomes the deciding factor. the connection is still there. it's just clouded over by the people stuff. insecurities and vices and emotional baggage.

i suppose it's a paradox. because, on the other hand, you can't have relationships without people.

maybe this is the motivation for one-night stands.

working on my sunburn.

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and unabridged)

Monday / July 26, 2004 / an email to Ben:

so what's funny about this is

i went to vyšehrad yesterday with rikki. after the laundry. we had to lug our laundry many blocks. rikki didn't have a bag to lug so she took her suitcase. the big one. many blocks we lugged. and did our laundry. and lugged home. and then we went to vyšehrad. it's a castle thing. according to my guidebook, vyšehrad is considered the birthplace of prague:

"According to legend, the wise chieftain Krok built a castle here in the 7th century. Libuše, the cleverest of his three daughters, prophesied that a great city would rise here. Taking as her king a ploughman named Přemysl, she founded Praha and the Přemyslid dynasty."

i love that. the wise chieftain Krok.

anyway, it's got a castle thing and a church thing and a rotunda chapel thing and a cemetery thing and a fort thing. and i was in a pissy mood when we got back from doing laundry, and all i wanted to do was lie down and read forever. but rikki's been wanting to go to vyšehrad so we went. and we had to walk a lot. it's kind of like central park in nyc except cobblestoney and with really really old buildings. but similar in that if you're looking for one particular section of the park, you have to follow signs that don't really help you find what you're looking for, and you walk and wander for ages, and it's tiring. anyway so i'm tired and we're walking and we find the church, the rotunda, the cemetery, not the castle, but the fort, and we go up to the fort wall--of course this is all built on a hill, they always build them on hills, you know--and holy fuck, i said. and put down my bookbag.

see, i haven't taken that many pictures since i've been here. it's because of the buildings. the buildings are amazing. i want to take pictures of the buildings. all of them. so i start snapping away at the buildings, but then i get self-conscious about it--because all my pictures are of buildings, and who wants to see that--but the thing is, that's prague to me. on the other hand, it's overwhelming, because all of the buildings are incredible, and the experience of being here and being surrounded by it--you can't capture that in a picture. because you're limited by the borders of the shot. it can't recreate the experience of standing in the middle of the square and spinning 360 on your heel and seeing it all around you.

at the same time i'm getting a little bit numb to it, because i've seen