traveling swallowing dramamine

aw.

02/23/2004 05:28 AM EST

I just (4:28am) found an interesting writing about coffee on the web.

When a person works all day to make a living, the time for free roaming thought is rare.

Perhaps an insomniatic reaction to medication can sometimes be a good thing.

Love,
Dadeo

he was referring to my away message on AIM, which said “i really need to not drink coffee” and then had this link: coffee

prior email exchange occurred in which we tried to meet up while i was in town but missed each other; he told me he’d been home sick with the flu since friday and that his medicine was keeping him up (hence the “insomniatic reaction to medication” line).   

anyway, i think that was a pretty adorable email from my dad. it made me really happy. he even signed it “love.” that’s a big deal. my dad and i generally don’t do the whole “i love you” thing, and it really bothers me. but lately he’s been signing his emails with love, and so have i, and....i don’t know. i try not to get too excited, because our relationship is pretty schizo. i try not to have any false confidence about it. my relationship with my dad has taught me the art of keeping my expectations low to save myself from the inevitable disappointment.

but it’s hard for me not to get my hopes up with him, because...i guess because i want a dad, and when i have one in my life, it makes me feel...i’d say “complete,” but that smacks of Jerry Maguire and it’s not entirely true. i never feel incomplete, but when my dad and i are doing well, it makes me feel like all along this part of me was missing or shut down or shoved aside, without me ever being conscious of it, and it’s a good feeling, to have that part of me back.   

* thanks to jesse for sending me the brautigan poem in the first place.

sweet jesus!

all i want to do is go to bed. i have so much reading to do tonight. i'm behind in my joyce class, i'm behind in faulkner, i'm behind in kierkegaard, i need to post on the discussion boards for my classes--i feel like i'm drowning.

last week i got an email from a former ballet teacher/piano teacher of mine, who had attended and eventually taught at my grammar school, st. catherine of siena. the email was a forward of an SCS parish announcement that sr. imelda--the principal of SCS--was retiring, after thirty years of service to the school.

sr. imelda is a crazy, vigorous, wonderful irish nun. in my time at SCS, she was generally attired in garish tropical-printed dress shirts, bright skirts, and Nikes. always Nikes. she would always come on the intercom to make some announcement and inevitably she'd get all confused--we'd hear her say to the secretary, "is this on? is this...what? what what? sweet jesus!"

or if it were drizzling at recess, she'd come on and tell us that we could go to recess, but under no circumstances were we to walk around the schoolyard with our mouths open and our tongues hanging out trying to catch the rain. that was simply unacceptable.

sweet jesus!

i remember--one time in fourth grade--msgr. barrett, the pastor of the parish,  had had cancer, and he had just died that morning. i got to homeroom and sister came on the intercom to make the announcement, and she choked up--they had been really close. and the school had just added a new building for the pre-K and kindergarten classes--and they had named it after msgr. barrett--and sister got on the intercom and said "thank god we named that building after him." with her voice all teary. i guess that's kind of a funny thing to say. and a funny thing to remember. i don't know, sister was very--my mom described her as "abrasive"--and she was--she was pretty terrifying. you did not want to mess with sister. to hear her that morning, on the verge of tears--it was strange.

the best thing about sister was that she somehow knew the names of everyone at that school. there were 1200 kids. she was pushing 60--maybe even 70 (it was hard to tell; i was so young). but she knew everyone. i don't know. i'm really sad that she's retiring. i mean, the girl who lived across the street from me when i was growing up--she used to babysit me and michael--and she got married to this guy who had gone to st. catherine's when he was a kid--and sr. imelda had been his principal.

it's like...the end of an era. or something.

in other news, i got lei'd last night by a waiter at Sun Ray who looked like a cross between ralph macchio and chachi from happy days. and i got a free coke last week from one of the guys who manages the McDonald's on campus--he's probably, like, thirty or something. but he's apparently my new friend. basically i eat there too much, so he's started to recognize me--which is pathetic. but at least i'm getting the hook-up. he gave me an apple pie a couple weeks ago, which was very exciting.

also, i had a semi-normal conversation with cameron on friday, which was nice. we did the obligatory music talk, which is hard for me to have, because i listen to all kinds of stuff, and it's all really out-dated. i'm so tired of my CDs. i think i'm going to put out a general request: if you have any free time, and you want to make me a mix CD of music you think i should listen to, you should do so. i would be eternally grateful.

i went home this weekend. saturday night i was sitting on the sofa in the living room, trying to read faulkner, and i picked up this old old old hardcover copy of The Little Prince--which i had never read--though i did remember the animated version that came on nickelodean--boy, was that show lame. anyway, i read The Little Prince. and cried. twice. i had PMS like crazy, which probably explains the crying, but still. it was really good.

also this weekend i hung out with my dad, and it was probably the worst conversation we've had in a long time. my mom thinks maybe he was just in a bad mood--but starting with the ride over to the restaurant, i was on eggshells, and stayed there the rest of the evening. it dawned on me after i went home that my dad is the reason i am so insanely careful with the way i phrase things. breton tells me that i sugar-coat everything--because i'm so afraid of offending people--and i've often wondered where i got that habit from. after this weekend i can say with some certainty that it's from being around my dad.

it's not that he ever gets really angry or anything--he just gets...well, he was a lawyer for a long time. so it's like...one wrong move on my part, and he goes on the defensive--but for a laywer, that means he goes on the offensive--and then you can't say anything without him tearing you down. you cannot win with him. even when he's obviously wrong, and obviously is making no sense, and obviously is full of shit--you still can't win--because he is fairly incapable of thinking that he could be wrong. so even when you know that he's wrong, it doesn't matter, because he doesn't know it, and will never know it.

maybe that doesn't sound like such a bad thing--and it's not, if you're arguing over something like the death penalty.

but when it's something personal--like, the way that he treats you, or the things he expects from you--and he will never, never, never even consider the fact that he might have fucked up--never never never. it's a bit tedious. well, tedious isn't quite the right word. basically it makes you think: maybe it's not him, maybe it's you, maybe you're just fucking insane.

frankly, it's not a great feeling.

this weekend it started with him bitching at me because it came up in conversation that i have consumed alchohol. "you drink?" he asked incredulously.

uhhh...yeah. i'm in college. at LSU. and considering the fact that i didn't even start drinking until i was a sophomore--in college--i think i'm doing better than most.

"shame on you," he said. "i gave up drinking. eight months ago. kills brain cells. it really does."

this from the man who went to USL--the official state party school of the '70s. you think he didn't drink? and excessively? i suspect that the only reason he gave up drinking eight months ago anyway was because he's on atkins, so he can't drink beer.

then it devolved into the usual "what are you going to do with your life?"--like i fucking know. i'm twenty, for god's sake. i don't even know how i'm going to get through the week with my sanity intact, much less how i'm going to support myself for the rest of my life.

we have this conversation almost every time i see him, but it was worse this time--he told me he was "worried" about me--i think he was sincere, too. he's sincerely worried. i think he's sincerely worried that i'm going to be a bum. god, it's so frustrating. "you know, ann, people ask me, 'so how's ann doing, what's she studying' and i tell them 'english,' and then they say, 'oh. what's she gonna do with it'--and i just don't know what to tell them..."

"teach and write," i said.

"well, how much do teachers make? can you survive on a teacher's income?"

well, apparently so, since there are teachers, and they are surviving....

finally i told him, brightly, "listen, dad, i'll just marry well!"

he shook his head. "that's a terrible plan."

i guess now that he's divorced he thinks it's a terrible plan--i seem to recall him espousing this particular plan when i was younger, though. i then reminded him of the time he told me that i didn't need to learn how to drive, because my husband could drive me around. he denied having ever said that. but he did say it. i remember it distinctly. i was in high school. we were in the office depot parking lot.

anyway, he's going on and on about how the world revolves around money (which is true), and that i have to plan my education around a career that will make money. which is what he did, right...he got a BA in economics, realized that he couldn't do anything with a BA in economics unless he got a PhD, ended up going to law school (lawyers make money!), hated being a lawyer, divorced my mom, moved to mississippi, and became an insurance agent. struggled through the early years post-divorce, but is now making a pile of money.

he can afford to eat out every night.

but is he happy?

barring the question of whether my dad is even capable of being really, truly happy--barring that--is he happy?

i now refer you to a previous post. "when a person works all day for a living, the time for free roaming thought is rare." my dad found my link to this random prose poem by richard brautigan, and it was the bright spot in his otherwise mind-numbing day. his mind-numbing paper-pushing pile-of-money-making day. i know that my dad is not inspired by his job. and that's ok. not many people are inspired by their jobs. they're just making a living. they find inspiration in other places.

and goddammit, that's what i want my job to be. that's my answer. what do i want to do with a degree in english? i want to be the one who writes the random prose poem that my dad reads in the middle of the night. the poem in which he finds solace from the mind-numbing tedium of his work day.

from now on, when people ask me, "so...what are you gonna do with a degree in creative writing?" i'm gonna say, "i will be madly, passionately, brilliantly happy."

so fuck off.  

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.

dobre den or something like that anyway

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

July 3, 2004 / 10:34am Prague - 3:34am NOLA

i would kill for a glass of water. not carbonated, this time.

slept so hard that i'm sort of exhausted. feel puffy. want water and to get my transit pass from Goddess Hana Z (who booked our room a day early for us) and find Bohemia Bagel to email everyone i've ever met.

must. take. shower.

had these totally bizarre and really aggressive dreams. one about mom--i don't remember why i was mad--but we were screaming, she had done something illegal--something with breast implants--the police had "vaporized" my car--she had not had implants, though--she was wearing a wig but had the same hair underneath--

i remember at some point getting a long, gangly, stuffed toy monkey and it was covered in blood and i thrust it under her skirt and then pulled it out and shook it at her face, as if saying, "remember, you gave birth to me"--or something, i'm not really sure what point i was trying to make. there was a lot of anger and bitter screaming. and i felt sort of orphaned.

ADVANCE was tied up in this too. oh holy shit i dreamt about dr. b___. i need to email her. she was so scary in my dream. she had legs made almost of metal--she was so skinny from being sick that she was literally skin and bone--her legs were skeleton legs but with skin. and then somehow i discovered that she had been walking around with platform shoes on--but, like, a foot high--because she was even shorter than she seemed--i was so scared of her, and she kept turning up.

the talent show--i was doing an act--a reading--with shan and wu--"sure thing," the scene i read with breton--and i was going to wear the tie again--but i couldn't find it--then i remembered i had borrowed it from maria--so i was gonna borrow one from brian s__ (my roommate in the dream)--then i got to the talent show and realized i didn't want to read the scene anyway because shan wasn't a good reader--had to run off copies of the scene--but they had copies already--but all the copies were different--finally watched the act before us go, and they were doing our scene, but not the way you're supposed to do it it--they had set it to music, like a show tune, and it was really bad.

ok. jeez. anyway. shower.

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

from an email to ben:

holy shit.

that is what i said when i just got off the metro with rikki.

last night we wandered around the dorm neighborhood to find a place to eat. the buildings look sort of old-school communism but with cuter roofs. we saw a coke sign on this building while we were on the bus back from the airport and rikki and i turned to each other and she said "goodbye lenin" and i was like "yeah." you should tell robbie that. and you should see Goodbye Lenin so you know what i'm talking about.

anyway, so the neighborhood by the dorm is pretty quiet--i mean, it looks like london or paris or any big european city but not very...i don't know, distinctive. big streets but not very crowded, couldn't find a whole lot of restaurants (but this was just a little walk)--anyway we ended up finding a pizza place, more on that later, but today i decided we would go on an adventure to find an internet cafe--it involved taking the metro three stops and walking through the old town square and possibly getting really lost. i wanted us to get out into the sunlight, because it's supposed to help jet-lag, and i wanted to get on the metro and walk around and just, you know, jump right in or whatever. i was feeling pretty confident (cocky, actually) about taking the metro since after nyc, london, and paris it's pretty old-hat by now. but i speak english, and i took six years of french, so subway signs in the other cities were not that hard to figure out. but i don't speak a fucking word of czech. and it's not like, you know, a romance language or anything, so it's not like i can find a familiar rootword. so we had a panicky moment, and then we weren't sure if we had to get our transit passes punched--and if so, how--once we got on the metro we were so golden.

we got off at the right stop, and we came out of the station, and i said "oh, holy shit" because ben. it's fucking incredible. we were right at the old town square--it's like you come up out of the street and there are these old fucking churches that look like castles and the buildings, just the storefronts, it's like--all i can think is it doesn't look real. it looks like a movie. or disney world, but all the shops don't sell the same mickey mouse keychain over and over and over again. i had written down the directions to the internet cafe (bohemia bagel) and we found it on the first try, because we're fucking ninjas. and we had a meal, a nice meal, i had sun-dried tomato and melted mozarella with pesto on a sunflower bagel--100 crowns (a little under four dollars). and now i'm on the internet. which is costing me more than i anticipated, i hope i can find a cheaper place to do this, because in the guide book it said it would be 1 crown per minute but it's actually 1.80. and yeah. god there's so much to tell you but it's like i don't know where to start...

...we took the bus from the airport--rikki's idea--i wanted to take a cab so we wouldn't have to deal with the luggage--but the cab fare would have been about 500 crowns (20 bucks), assuming we got an honest cab driver with whom we could communicate well enough to figure all that shit out--and the bus fare was 12 crowns (like, fifty cents)--and then a "five-minute" walk to the dorm--so we're debating, and i'm like, alright, let's do the bus, i'll feel like less of a pussy. so we manage to get bus tickets, and get on the bus with our shit--i was standing on the bus, staring desperately down at my suitcase, trying to figure out how the hell to get it on the bus, and this nice guy at the bus stop grabs the suitcase, sets it on the bus, and then hops off right as the doors close. my fucking hero. so then i'm remembering that you have to do something to the bus ticket, punch it or show it to the driver or something, as soon as you get on the bus, or they yell at you or fine you or something. and i'm like "rikki, what do we do?" and she's like "i don't know" so we're trying to figure it out, and the bus is going, and i'm feeling like an idiot, and finally this czech woman comes up to me and takes my ticket and pantomimes putting it in the yellow timestamper thingy. sort of rolling her eyes. i might be paranoid, but the people who have helped us out so far--the random locals who've dealt with our incompetence and inability to speak anything other than english--they've been really helpful but i keep feeling like they're rolling their eyes at me. it's either my usual paranoia or we really are stupid americans. i feel like a stupid american, anyway. they offer a "survival czech" language course as part of the program here, and i'm totally signing up. it's really frustrating not being able to say a damn thing. and people talk at you and all you can do is shake your head because it's totally unrecognizable.

anyway we get to our stop--which i figured out on my own, but the woman who helped us stamp our ticket told us as much, which was nice of her. and we manage to get off the bus with all of our shit--i somehow managed to throw my gigantic suitcase off of the bus. and then we walked to the dorm. which was really not far at all. it was a much shorter walk than i expected. and checked in, and our rooms are adorable, and we have a great fucking view. well, it's the fourth floor anyway, and we can see the street and the buildings across the way, and there are trees. the day is warmish and sunnyish and i'm wearing a cardigan. it was damn chilly last night. i figured out how to open the window--harder than it looks. the dorm is about five hundred times nicer than caddo. no top sheet on the bed--which made me think of you, isn't that silly--just a down comforter with a really ugly pink and purple pastel eighties-fied cover. it's three rooms to a suite, with a suite bathroom and a "kitchenette"--stove top and small fridge and cabinets and a table i think. after much fussing i got the adapter to work--and it works--we have music, which is fucking awesome.

i don't know. it's going really well. i took a shower. and brushed my teeth. and i've eaten twice. i feel like a human. after all that airplane bullshit. airplanes are so uncivilized. it's like you regress into childhood. they feed you prepackaged food and offer you "sweets" and you're strapped into a big chair and you can't move around. you sleep fitfully. i slept so hard last night in my bed that i'm sort of worn out. i had really aggressive dreams about my parents. one about my mom and one about my dad, which i'll tell you later if you're interested and i remember. i wrote them down. this email is getting ridiculously long and it's totally fragmented, i'm sorry, i'm sort of rushing.

is that it? no, but that's all for now i guess.

on fear

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

July 10, 2004 / The Globe bookstore / 4pm

-- went to Kafka's grave today--at least, we tried to--but apparently he's buried in a Jewish cemetery--and it's the Sabbath--so it was closed. gates locked.

we took the tram all the way across town to get there--mostly kids from rikki's fiction workshop--there's this older woman named joyce, probably in her 50s--apparently she's afraid of everything--travelling and cities and foreign lands--god only knows why she came on this trip--she was complaining on the tram that she'd forgotten to take her Dramamine and it became this crisis--is joyce gonna make it--"only five more stops, joyce"--and all i can think is that i'm so glad i'm here and young and getting over it now--because i am afraid of everything--and if i don't push myself now--i'll end up crazy and neurotic and panic-stricken--paralyzed at fifty, and that would be sad.

-- which is why i came to Prague in the first place--it's been baby steps for me. NYC: big city, public transportation, total freedom/total responsibility, all alone. then London: abroad but not really, same basic cultural background, same language. France for three days: a culture that jealously guards its own. in London, there was literally a Starbucks on every corner. in Paris, there was none.

and i know my culture. i want someone else's. after London i wanted to spend time in a place that was completely foreign to me. the idea of it both attracts and repels me. i want to go to Budapest. but i'm afraid. i don't know the language, i won't know my way around--i know nothing about Hungary--but then, those are the very reasons i came here, to Prague--

but even here in Prague--it's a newly popular European tourist destination--and deservedly so--but i've been getting by with English and every place i've found in my Lonely Planet travel guide is decidedly Westernized--even "Americanized"--like right now. the Globe is a bookshop/bar/cafe. for ex-pats. it's an English language bookshop, and ok, what use would i have for a Czech bookstore--

but i've been on the hunt for a nice local coffee shop hang-out--a cozy one--which is proving hard to find. they're all new-looking and brightly lit, hard wooden chairs. this place is ideal: little round tables to write at in the bookshop section, a small loft space for used books, a smattering of cushy chairs covered in some plush maroon fabric--there's the cafe in back, noisier, music playing, more tables. but the cashier takes pounds and dollars along with crowns, and all the newspapers are in English. which is not what i was going for.

-- in our language class, the teacher--young, vibrant, enthusiastic--frequently has us close our workbooks and simply repeat after her. i find myself panicking in these moments, as she utters an unfamiliar word and we as a class are left to imitate the sounds--i know it's not exactly right, what i'm saying--maybe it's a "v," not a "b"--and what does it mean--and how is it spelled--what does it look like--i surreptitiously crack open my book and she scolds us for peeking. my heart has seized up in my chest. my stomach is in knots. i must look. i have to see.

i remember hearing when i was in grammar school about "visual learners," and it's only now occurring to me that i fall into that category. i've never considered myself a particularly "visual" person. but i have hazy memories of hating the listening sections on those standardized tests; my recall when i took exams was always related to the way my notes looked on the page. now, when people give me driving directions, i have to write it down. it's not that i necessarily have to refer to my notes when i'm driving. it's because, unless i write it, and see it written, it doesn't stick in my head. i worry that i don't deal well with "abstract" concepts--i hated biology on the cellular level--unless i can relate it to something concrete--

i don't know, maybe it has nothing to do with being a visual learner. i can remember conversations almost verbatim. and maybe i'm not part of some special category; maybe everyone is like me. but rikki laughed at me when i had that meltdown moment in the language class. and she tried to read her latest story to me last night, and i immediately groaned and grabbed it from her to read it for myself, thinking "i'm way too tired to try to listen to it"--it really takes a lot of effort for me.

-- so i was talking to this guy kelly while we were waiting for the tram to the graveyard--about MFA programs and whether or not to wait, life experience, etc--

and i'm starting to realize that i can go one of two ways. i can go straight to grad school, straight to teaching, teach and write for the rest of my life--

or i can graduate from LSU, try to find a job doing something--maybe an internship with a video production company since i have editing experience--or a theatre company--hell, like laura said, i could join the fucking circus--i'd probably have to wait tables or bartend to pay the bills--take odd jobs--get experience--

because what else do i have to write about? it's not that i "don't think i have anything interesting to say" or that "nothing ever happens to me"--the writer's gift is that she takes the common experience and elevates it with her unique style of wordplay--her own voice, her own take on things. so to write i have to live. in the world. to be a part of the "common experience."

and if i go straight through school, and straight into academia, i won't be living in the world. i'll be cloistered. i'll be hiding. i've been having this sense that i want to go straight into grad school because i don't know what else i'd do. and for that to be my immediate reason--that's chickenshit.

so we're back to fear, again. which is how i live my life. out of fear. where did this come from? my mother's pragmatic paranoia, my father's racism--they cultivated it carefully in me: the oldest, the only girl, over-disciplined, over-sensitive, over-achiever. my directors in high school--dance and theatre--told me that i was playing it too safe--that i had to "find the fire within"--i hated it, and hated realizing that they were right--how strictly i operate within my comfort zone--where i feel safe--it's hard for me to give up control, my careful plans. it frightens me.

but i'm starting to think that it may be the only way.

strictly metro

THE TRAVEL LOG
(transposed and abridged)

July 11, 2004 / 12:16pm

stosh just called--he and ian are down in the lobby and they want to get lunch--they're leaving on the midnight train. (to Budapest, not to Georgia.) (sorry.)

had a ton of weird dreams--i don't ever remember my dreams back home but here they've been so vivid--there was something about how i had a loose tooth--really loose--hanging by a thread, the way i'd let it get when i was a kid--and i kept pushing it with my tongue--i was freaked out by it, though--ben reassured me that he still lost his baby teeth--but i didn't have a permanent tooth behind this one--just a big gaping hole.

i dreamt a lot about ben--scary sad dreams--if he doesn't email me soon, man--this sucks. it's bad enough i can't afford to call him--

also dreamt about mom and dad--mom was mad at me because she felt like i was ignoring her--which i thought was unfair--someone had been driving a car through my house, through my bedroom, to get to the fridge, drinks in the fridge--they drove up on my bed and out the door--michael said they'd been doing it for ten years--dad offered to take me to Bud's and i told him i wasn't hungry but tomorrow? and he hesitated, we were in a parking lot, night, and there were other people pulling up, his friends, and he was like "i gotta go" and he thrust the contents of his wallet at me--credit cards, membership cards, coffee shop credits, gift certificates--and told me to buy some for myself and bring him back a napkin--and i wondered if he wanted the napkin as proof i'd gone to Bud's instead of using the money for something else.

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

10:40pm

we went to that pizza place for lunch--came back, balanced checkbook, made out budget. have determined that for time reasons (and, to a lesser degree, money concerns) a trip to Budapest is impractical--it's a seven- or eight-hour train ride and we only have weekends. and next saturday we have a day trip to the bone cathedral.

so then we left stosh and ian on the metro--tried to tram it to this coffee shop rikki picked out of my Lonely Planet guide--tried to take the green line one stop to Hradčanská, then #18 to Národní Divadlo, but when we got off the metro it was pouring rain--crazy wind and freezing nastiness--i discovered that #18 no longer stopped at Hradčanská--that's been the difficulty with the tram system--first off, it's hard to tell on the map where the hell the stops are--and then, when you think you've got it figured out, you discover that the routes have all changed. so basically you wait and hop on and pray. it's very hit-or-miss.

so we took the metro two more stops, to Staromětská, and took #18 to Národní Divadlo, and walked in the nastiness down cobblestone alleys--found the address for the coffee shop--but the doors were locked, and there was no sign for a coffee shop--finally we just turned the corner, kept walking--found another coffee shop within the block, which fit the description, minus the name and address, of the shop we originally sought. the guy behind the counter was really funny and nice. and we stayed for a good four or five hours, reading, writing, talking--the place got pretty busy, although when we first got there we were the only ones--

anyway, it was exactly what i'd wanted in a coffee shop--cozy, funky, friendly guy behind the counter, and frequented by not-just-Americans-and-other-tourists. i was happy. it's pretty close to the school building, too.

so we were gonna try to catch the tram back to Hradčanská, thinking maybe we were at the wrong spot the first time. we got as far as Malostranská, and then the driver got up, briefly adjusted something in the back--i thought maybe we'd gotten to the end of the line, but no one got off--then, sure enough, the fucking tram turned around. we got off at Staromětská and took the metro back to Malostranská, hoping to eat dinner at this mediterranean cafe called Posha--but the prices were insane (seventeen bucks for an entrée--a pricey entrée here is about seven dollars). so we ended up going back to the dorm (strictly metro this time) and eating at the restaurant by the dorm--the titty bar--which is great but the service is even slower there than usual in Czech-land--like, it takes at least a half-hour to get your food--closer to forty-five minutes, sometimes--and rikki and i hadn't eaten since 1:30ish--it was 10 before we got our dinner--

we went to the convenience store next door afterwards, for a bottle of wine, which we purchased amid much hysterical laughter, because we couldn't read the labels--our purchase was based upon our mutual agreement that, as far as prices go, 60 crowns was a nice round number. but the store didn't sell cups or a corkscrew--we have a mug here, and i figured we could at least pass the bottle--and that the front desk of the dorm would have a corkscrew--which they did. the guy handed it to us, and we sort of tried to open the bottle and gave up, laughing, and the guy, also laughing, came out from the office and tried to open it, but it turns out the corkscrew was missing the, uh, screw part. so. no wine tonight. tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

got back to the room and put on PJs and dry socks. i'd had wet feet for eight hours. they went sorta numb at some point. it was really cold and blustery today.

while we were waiting for the tram (the one that would ultimately turn around on us), an elderly couple approached our bench. i stood up to let them sit, because that's a big deal here. the woman scooted over and patted the seat on her right and told the man to sit down--and then patted the seat to her left and gestured for me to smush in. so i sat, and their dog came sniffing up to me, and rikki and i started petting it and telling it how cute it was--which it was--and the woman pointed to the dog, and told me something in Czech--finally i figured out that she wanted me to shake hands with the dog--it raised a paw and we shook. it was the best thing ever.

turn, turn, turn.

so i'm bored and experimenting. approve or disapprove?

also. the second essay. sort-of essay.

----------

Your dad has his home office in the large corner room. At night he sits at the big oak desk and you lie face-down on the brown shag carpet, breathing in. The carpet smells musty and sweet. The desk is the same color as the carpet but a little less gold and a little more red. On the desk are: a mail holder that commands, in fake-gold letters, DO IT NOW. Business cards that say Steven G_____ and Guste Barnett & Shushan and One Shell Square. A paperclip container made of dark smoky plastic. The top of the container is black plastic with a hole in the middle lined with magnets. You like to dump out all the paperclips, silvery and small, onto the gold-brown shag carpet, then try to slip the paperclips back into the container, one by one, without letting them get sucked onto the magnetic sides. Sometimes your dad sits you on his lap and lets you write stories on his electric typewriter. The typewriter is black and the keys feel solid underneath your fingertips. You write the stories and he reads them back to you:

Once upon a time I went to Grandmotherdear’s house. We played pick-up sticks and solitaire and concentration. Lulu and Nutmeg ran around outside and made gold dollars.

You stop him and request that he read what it really says. He reads: “akdjaklaj fijoa kjf f 9 8akldjfkladj jdfOIUW#Oru9u oshf adfiojaweoiur 3w.”

You laugh until you are breathless.

When your brother is born, the big oak desk moves to the living room. Every room in the house has either tile floors or that brown shag carpet, except for the living room, which has blue carpet and blue curtains and is therefore known as the blue room. The big oak desk sidles up against the floor-length curtains adorning the French door, which is not a door at all but a window that doesn’t even open. The desk is broad, with its desktop surface extending two feet beyond its sides, like wings. Underneath where the edge of the desktop meets the blue-curtained French door, you find a space enclosed on two sides, with a roof. The desk is high enough, and you are small enough, so that you can sit comfortably without bumping your head on the underside. You get nice light from the door-window. You can hide things behind the curtains. This is your fortress. This is your office. You move in.

Your Archie comic books are safe here, tucked away from the grubby grasp of your brother. You spend hours sketching in the gauzy filtered light: pointe shoes, ballgowns, a dancer poised in perfect arabesque. You write a novel detailing the misadventures of you and your friends, who have started a club of superhero ballerinas called the Nature Fairies. When your cousin spends the night, you sit together in your office, whispering secrets back and forth till midnight. She sleeps under one side of the desk, you sleep under the other. It is dark and the wood is silent.

When your parents divorce, the desk moves to Mississippi. So does the kitchen table. There’s an extra table in the blue room, but it’s too bulky for the kitchen. (You’d tried sitting under the blue room table once, just to see, but it wasn’t as good.) You get a new-old kitchen table from your aunt. It seats four, but it is round instead of rectangular, and it looks wrong in your kitchen. One day you come home from school to find that your mom has folded down one of the leaves of the table and pushed it up against the wall. Three chairs. You turn on her. “Do you have to rub it in?” you ask.

“You’ll get used to it,” she says mildly, as if it doesn’t hurt her as much as it hurts you. As if she did it for your own good. But you know she did it for herself. This is a reality and an absence unrecognizable in the abstract. One must rely on one’s furniture to provide the concrete terms.

sherbert.

i haven't posted in almost two weeks. partly because i hated that blue/gray design, it made me not want to look at the site. and partly because i've been really content, for the first time since i've been back from prague. for the past two months i'd been writing compulsively as a way of coping. so now that the need to cope has been alleviated, i need to find some other feeling to write out of.

also, i had a short story due, so that was taking up a lot of time.

anyway.

i love my house. i love, love my roommates. i love being at home. it's kind of bad, actually. i fear that it will be detrimental to my social life. er, "social life."

we seek out the cat from the dark underbelly of the bed, from his lazy sprawl on the ottoman, from atop the washer. we seek him out and we lift him up and we present him to each other. look, here's the cat. he is my gift to you. he's the best kind of gift. warm and furry and recyclable. i am reading on the uncomfortable sofa in the back room, the "parlour," with the piano and the cool lamp from my dead grandmother. i am curled up with a book and reid comes in beaming, brandishing the cat. "fre-ed," he sings out, depositing the cat at my feet. then he leaves, and so does fred, because, well, he's a cat and cats do that sometimes. but it's the thought that counts.

my dad emailed me this afternoon to ask what my BR address and phone number was. then he called at nine-ish and told me he was in town and that he had chinese food for me. he hadn't seen the house yet, so i ran around like an idiot pretending to clean up. the house wasn't really messy. it was a matter of principle.

i gave him the grand tour and introduced him to rikki (reid disappeared into his room, presumably to take a shower, though maybe he was hiding, who knows). and then we sat down in the back room and my dad and i played piano and sang. and rikki giggled. she said when he left that he was cute and had a good sense of humor. and that i must have gotten my "charm" from him. the thought of my dad being "charming" is strange. i suppose he must be, on some level, since he's doing very well with his insurance agency. but. you know. he's my dad. the one with whom i have the schizophrenic relationship. and anyway my mom is the vivacious one.

speaking of which, i met fran. i had to. he evacuated with my mother and michael when ivan was gunning for new orleans. my mom told me that my family was going to abbeville, then she asked if she and michael could sleep here, then she called back to say that fran needed a place to go. and i said fine, and then i called back and said that i didn't want him in my house, because in the almost two years they've been together, or pseudo-together, i'd only met the man once, for five seconds, in my driveway when he came to pick her up. and it's one thing for him to sort of invade my family life as i'm being very intentionally kept out of the loop. but for him to invade my home, which is, at this point, the only place where i feel safe. i thought that was a bit much. and i knew that he would end up here regardless, but i wanted my mom to know that i wasn't happy about it. so we ended up crying on the phone for an hour. we'd needed to have the conversation anyway. and as it turns out, fran is allergic to cats. thanks, fred. i owe you one.

actually fran was okay. he's a decent guy. very, very decent. friendly and outgoing and decent. kind of a putz, though. and my mom needs more than decent. she needs something closer to brilliant. and besides that, he's not in love with her. it's painful hearing her talk about how they're just good friends because really the infatuation period was short-lived and now he works for her office anyway and really, truly, they're just friends. when it's glaringly obvious that she wants it to be something more. i'm past the point of seeing my parents as superhuman; i know my mother is flawed and merely mortal. but it's still strange and awful to see her in this vulnerable position. it's a little bit pathetic; it makes me embarrassed for her. she's so logical and straightforward and strong. and she's my mother. she's the one who tells me when the guys i'm seeing are full of shit. she's the one who points out the red flags. for me to be the one to tell her, repeatedly, that he is totally mind-fucking her--it's a weird reversal.

i don't much like it.

i got my second graded problem set back from my linguistics teacher today. i fucked up an entire section of it, but i still got a 96. my teacher wrote across the top: What are you doing in creative writing?!? mcgee used to write that sort of shit on my papers for his class. it always makes me feel really good.

except after linguistics i went in for my creative non-fiction independent study with jim. and we went over my essays and revisions. and i left wondering the same thing. what am i doing in creative writing?

nothing i write fits where it's supposed to fit. my fiction is too essayistic. my essays are too narrative. my plays are non-existent. i have no sense of structure. i feel so mediocre.

and i'm graduating in may and rather than make plans for it, i'm just sort of pretending it's not going to happen.

this is frustrating.

but. becca came over the other night bearing ice cream: Bluebell's raspberry sherbet-and-vanilla swirl. i didn't think they still made that stuff. remember the night when i was dying of a sinus infection, 103-degree fever and i'd just broken up with jesse, and becca and breton got me ice cream? they looked all over for the raspberry-vanilla, but they couldn't find it, so they got sherbet and vanilla separately and mixed it by hand. talk about love.

talk about. i mean. really.

happy father's day

i'm out of the habit.

not that i haven't been thinking of things to write about.

and there are many things to say that i can't.

here's something: i rented a movie thursday night. The Piano Teacher. that's the name of the movie. set in vienna, french with subtitles. it's possibly the most fucked-up movie i've ever seen in my life. it makes Secretary look like a cartoon. it's like Secretary but kubrick. i don't know. i was going "oh my god" the whole time.

i watched it alone, in reid's bedroom, eating snowcaps.

i'm looking at the candy box right now. apparently they're sno-caps. and the official movie-watching snack of my childhood. every time my dad and i watched a movie--and we watched a lot of movies--we always got sno-caps. we did lots of things always a certain way and i'm so weird about routines now.

like i always get dr. pepper at taco bell, which isn't so weird because the other taco bell drinks are gross (stupid pepsi)--but i also always get dr. pepper at bud's broiler, and they have regular coke too. i only just realized that they had coke a few months ago. and usually i drink coke if i have the option. but at bud's i get dr. pepper because i always got dr. pepper with my dad. because he ordered everything for me. i didn't realize taco bell served food other than bean burritos until i was twelve. late night, i could never sleep and we'd sit up in his garage while he worked on his R/C planes, and he'd say you can stay up but you have to read this book--and he'd hand me a thick paperback copy of isaac asimov's I, Robot--i'm like seven or eight years old, slogging through "Bicentennial Man"--it was way above my reading level but i really didn't want to go to bed. and on the good nights he'd take me to taco bell. small dr. pepper and a bean burrito with extra onions. not because i liked onions, but because he did. i still order it that way. and when i go to bud's it's always a #4, sauce not chili, extra onions, and cut in half. because that's how it was. (what it is, what it was, what it shall be. right, michael?) i've never even tasted anything else from bud's. besides the french fries, of course, which i dump a load of pepper on, because that's how he fixed them.

so i'm in blockbuster renting the movie, which i know i will watch alone. and i pick up the box of sno-caps. i can't remember the last time i had sno-caps. and i think oh god what if i'm turning into my father.

my father.

whom i remembered to invite to my graduation two days before. because i figured he needed a formal invitation, what with all the michael/lsmsa stuff going on, and after what happened the last time i graduated from an academic institution. i called him wednesday and said "oh by the way, apparently i'm graduating on friday, and you're invited, you're welcome to come"

and he laughed and said "are you going to the ceremony, because when i graduated from UL i didn't go"

and i laughed and said "yes well, my parents would kill me if i didn't go to the ceremony"

and he laughed and said "trust me, your parents don't care."

and i said "well. my mother would be upset."

and he said "oh i didn't mean i didn't care"

and then he said that thursday night at zephyr's field they were having a promotion thing for his insurance agency, he'd bought twenty seats and they were putting the name of his agency up on the scoreboard for like five seconds during half-time (or whatever, it's baseball). and so how many seats should he save for me?

not "can you make it" or "do you want to come" or "i'd like for you to come" or "i want to introduce you to my clients."

"how many seats should i save for you?"

i told him i was coming in town to shop for a graduation dress but i had to get back to BR that night--but maybe i could go to the game for a little while.

then i called my mom. she said, all urgently, "have you spoken to your father." yes, mom. "have you invited him to your graduation." yes, mom.

she said, "i talked to him earlier and he was upset that you hadn't invited him"--

i told michael: "he gets mad because he thinks he's not invited, and then when i invite him he acts like he doesn't want to come--"

and michael said: "you do realize that it's two separate things for him. if you don't invite him to the graduation, that's one thing, and that's offensive to him. and if he actually has to go to the graduation, that's something else, which is also offensive, because it's inconvenient. two separate things, both of which are offensive to him."

and he's right, of course. and it sucks.

thursday i visited becca at cafe rani and traipsed around the quarter and magazine street. it was hot and i was wearing a camisole and torn jeans and flipflops.

i called my dad to see what the plan was for the baseball game. i told him i could go, but just for a little while. and he said "great, that's fine. i can show you off. you can be my trophy daughter."

you can be my trophy daughter.

i paused. and said, "you know, dad, i'm looking pretty sloppy today--you might not want to show me off--you might want to hide me in a corner or something--"

and he laughed.

he said "listen, how important is it that i come to graduation?"

i said it was important. and that i would like for him to be there. and that i was getting special recognition, not just graduating summa cum laude but also with college honors, because i did a thesis project.

and he said okay. he asked me what time the ceremony was for, and i told him the main commencement thingy was for 8:30 and the diploma thingy was for 12:30.

he said "pm?"

i said "well yeah. noon-thirty."

he said "so wait, the first ceremony is in the morning?"

yeah.

he paused. "i'm sorry, ann, i thought it was at night. i can't go. my secretary is quitting and she's training the new girl and she's not going to be in the office on friday."

oh.

"what a bummer," he said. he sounded disappointed. he said, "get someone to tape it."

i told him it's going to be boring anyway, i don't even want to go, no one will ever want to see a tape of it.

and he said "no, it's not boring" and i said "it's not a big deal, don't worry about it" and he said "it is a big deal." like he really did feel bad about it. and he said to be at his house for 6:30 to go to the baseball game and to pick up my graduation present.

at 6:30 michael and i are sitting in his driveway. it is my fault that my dad isn't coming to my graduation. like if i had told him earlier. but maybe it wouldn't have mattered. i told him a week in advance about my dance concert, and he called me that morning to say he couldn't make it. he didn't give a reason. when i went to louisiana school, he said he would never come see me perform because natchitoches was too far away and inconvenient. then he refused to sign the financial aid forms for my out-of-state colleges because he thought it was a "bad idea" for me to go to school far away. as a result i couldn't afford to go to school anywhere but LSU. but when i perform at the LSU union theater, he doesn't show up.

i cut the engine and turn to michael and make a crack about being the "trophy daughter," how i'm sure dad would like to hide me in a corner.

we knock on the front door. i tug self-consciously at my tank top, which is not particularly hoochie, but then this is the man who once forbade my mother from removing her shawl at a gala, lest she reveal too much skin in her off-the-shoulder ballgown.

my dad answers the door, takes a look at what i'm wearing, and his face drops. "oh ann," he says.

"what?" i say, defensive. i'm still pulling at the top of my shirt. 

"you don't have anything else you can change into?"

no, dad. i told you i was messy.

"are you sure?"

i told you. i didn't realize it was going to be a dressy thing.

"it's not--" (it's a fucking baseball game.) "--but sixteen of my colleagues are going to be there."

well i'm sorry. i was outside all day, it was hot.

"you don't have anything else you can wear?"

no, dad.

he shoots another disapproving look at my camisole, and says, "well. come get your graduation present."

it's a stack of 100 one dollar bills, and an envelope with a card. the card has a mouse on the cover, pushing an elephant up a hill. the inside of the card shows the mouse with the elephant successfully wrangled up the hill--and five more elephants waiting at the bottom. signed "love, dadeo."

"wow, dad," i say. "this is a depressing card." awkwardly i hug him and thank him for the money.

"you really don't have anything else at home you can put on?"

"look," i tell him, fucking furious. "if you don't want me to go to the game, just say so. i have plenty of other stuff to do."

he pauses. "your feelings won't be hurt?"

"yes, my feelings will be hurt. but i'll suck it up." 

"well," he says. "have a safe trip back to baton rouge."

stunned, i drive home.

he didn't call me on friday to say congratulations.

i didn't talk to him for two weeks.

michael said dad felt bad about the whole thing. over lunch, my dad told him that he didn't know how to handle it. he asked michael: do you think she'd be offended if i offered her money to buy new clothes?

finally he called me. he said, "i haven't heard from you in a while."

no fucking shit.

there was no mention of graduation or the baseball game. we like to pretend that things don't happen. we imagine that everyone forgets.

water under the bridge. love does not keep score.

my dad is full of these catch phrases. he always talked about how impressionable our minds were, and how we should be careful of what we expose ourselves to--garbage in, garbage out--which was why i wasn't allowed to set my clock radio to B97, because howard stern was what woke me up for school in the morning. he made us watch zig ziglar tapes about positive thinking. i don't even remember what was on those tapes--probably because i've blocked it--but i think zig ziglar was where he got the phrase "garbage in, garbage out." the incessant positive thinking/brainwashing lecture pissed me off as a kid, but as i've gotten older i've realized that there's really something to it. especially the part about how we can passively absorb information and it'll stick. like the way we can all sing along with the winterfresh gum commercial but we've (hopefully) never actively tried to learn the words. or whenever i pull into a parking lot, how i hear echoes of my dad asking, rhetorically, "who gets the best parking spot?" you gotta believe!

water under the bridge. love does not keep score. the truth will set you free.

i called him saturday when i was in town. we went to this hole-in-the-wall metairie restaurant for dinner. all three of us ordered steak. as michael applied his utensils to the meat, he said how he always remembers to "let the knife do the cutting," like my dad used to say.    

and for every scrap of food i've cut in the past two days, it echoes in my head. all these patterns and sayings we're destined or doomed to remember. and repeat.

we're home. ambrosia. what's the magic word, ann, say the magic word, what's the i didn't hear you what did you say? 

and the ones we're not aware of. the things we absorb without knowing.

gungagalungaporfavorpleasestop.

what we pass on or inflict, the whimsical and the damaging.

what it is, what it was, what it shall be.

the thing is, a burger from bud's doesn't taste right without a dr. pepper.

i'll meet you here tomorrow

thoughts gathered while listening to the click and shudder of the A/C unit cycling: off and on as i lie awake, sober:

:

i love you in the battery of ways it is possible for me to love you, none of which is the way i'd like to: simply: you, me, verb, without context.

:

you told me once that i was just like my father. you said it because you knew it was the worst thing you could say, and it remains the single cruelest thing anyone has ever said to me. it didn't hurt, because there was no way for you to know whether or not it was true. but you said it anyway, and i have never quite forgiven you for that.

:

that school ruined my relationship with my daughter
how was your relationship before
it was fine she was happy she did plays
did you go see her performances
of course
can you name one play she was in
well no but there was i remember a lot of singing and dancing

:

smell of curry i used to be afraid that my house smelled (to other people, who didn't live there: my guests, my friends) like something identifiable the way maria's house smelled like all hispanic people's houses smelled at the time i associated it with poverty and plastic-guarded furniture but now i think it must be one of the spices she cooked with because i come home from work every day smelling like (i say enchiladas but really) maria's house. this is irony.

:

once i came home and i hadn't been home in a long time and my house smelled like mimi's. i thought: maybe house smells are genetic.

:

i have kept my guard up for so long that i think i've forgotten how to drop it. settle into myself and bitch about being single but really i don't know what i'd do with another person to fit around. this is what i've come to: no one is worth trusting. i don't think it's true but i do think it. why waste my energy when i'm going to be betrayed eventually. betrayed is a strong word, and too direct, but that's what it feels like when someone decides you're not enough.

:

i can't even tell anymore. introverted extroverted open shut. other people seem to find me emotionally available and reckless ("willing to make yourself known" ross said once) but it doesn't cost me anything. i don't give away anything that costs. my stories, the sad ones, have been told so many times they are little more than a well-rehearsed performance.

:

my girlfriends tell me about being In A Relationship and always it is the Ideal Relationship and always they are self-deprecating stories about how they (my girlfriends) are crazy and annoying and difficult. it makes my stomach hurt. the last time i almost started to let go was the time he (again) ran away and i became one of those nagging but it was because i was afraid. so i pull. or cling. and how can that be our fault if we cling when you're pushing us away.

:

and how do you keep from being spiteful. how do you just say okay, and let go.

:

i want to hurt you as much as you hurt me.

writing you (

mom told me yesterday that my dad might buy an airplane.
then maybe he'll fly to natchitoches to visit michael.

i've been thinking about what i want.

i want to feel taken care of.

not that i can't take care of myself, and i can, and i do. but it's exhausting sometimes, and it would be nice to have someone else around to help out. and i could do the same for them. it could be a mutual exchange of taking care. i'd like that.

my favorite sound is the sound of someone closing the door very softly because they think you're asleep. but you're not asleep. you're pretending to sleep, listening to them trying not to make a sound.

it's sad whatever scrap i'll take this is a craving i have had for a long time.

the whole relationship-of-convenience thing: i've already met my quota: of one. your bellyache will always take top priority. even more than i hate being wrong i hate proving you right. i'm stubborn and you're inconsistently selfish.

at least be fucking consistent.

)off

yes it could be worse

and that doesn't really make this any better.

friday catherine came in town. i met her after work at the mellow mushroom; the mixed nuts were playing 80s covers. it was a bunch of drunk mount carmel girls smoking cigarettes and i felt uncomfortable, like always, i guess. cat watched me tired, held my hand and bought me a jack and coke. then i took her to louie's and it was like taking another version of myself around baton rouge. the me who stayed. except i'm not catherine, and i was never on student council like the rest of them. i was a theatre kid.

she slept next to me and we had our real conversation in the morning, in bed. she's supposed to be going to england on the 1st. i don't know where she's flying out of.

then saturday ross's niece was born, and her name is katherine with a k i think.

then there was this hurricane.

i called my mom saturday afternoon to see what she was going to do. becca was already headed to lafayette. my mom is the first to evacuate, always. we always evacuate together. "i don't know yet" she told me. mimi and grandpa were already in baton rouge. i said what do you mean, you don't know. she said "they don't know which way the storm is going, and besides the traffic is so bad right now."

finally i said "well what is fran going to do" and she said carefully "oh he might go visit his family in boston. and if not, he'll be with me. and you have cats, don't you" (because he's allergic)

so when she woke me up sunday morning, shouting into the phone that it took her an hour to get from our house behind dorignac's to clearview and she's not going to make it to baton rouge, she'll have to go north-- i told her well no one is surprised.

then she called me three hours later, i was at work and she said "now you're the closest one to the storm, maybe you should leave baton rouge, maybe just get into your car and drive to natchitoches, stay in the girls' dorm" and i said no. i said "is fran with you" and she said oh well no he's up ahead a little ways. they were "tentatively" planning to meet up.

ie she waited to evacuate because she wanted to see what he was doing. which is why she didn't make it to baton rouge. and now i haven't heard from her in three days. the phones don't work. i think she's in mississippi somewhere. i was so mad at her that when i was calling my relatives frantically all day monday i didn't even try to call her. i called my dad and michael and aunt pattie but not my mom. not that it mattered, because i couldn't get through to anyone. but i felt like--she picked fran over me, and now she can't get in touch with any of her family, and i'm sure she's frantic and i feel like she deserves it. this, i know, is ridiculous.

except that yesterday i finally got in touch with my aunt pattie. they're staying at a hotel off siegen. she came to visit me at work, along with aunt ellen uncle tim cullen aunt shannon leigh kurt mimi and grandpa--and i kept watching the door for them--and kept waiting for my mom to walk in. i wanted her to. i wanted her but she never did. then my family was at the door and i ran across the restaurant and tackled my uncle. aunt shannon cried when she saw me. i don't know why.

they'd let me use the office phone to call the hotel. when i got my aunt pattie on the phone--this was at about 6pm tuesday night; the last relative i'd spoken to was my brother at around 10pm sunday--she signed off our phone conversation saying okay i'll see you, i'm so glad you called, mimi and grandpa are coming, i'll call the restaurant if something changes but i'll see you in a little bit--

then she paused and said, you know everything's gone, right?

i didn't see the news till monday night. i knew st. bernard (where my family lives) would be underwater. i was sitting with abby, barrett, jacob and his cousin and brother--we're from metairie, the west bank, destrehan. we're watching CNN at barrett's house (barrett said why is this crap still on and jacob's cousin said 'she hasn't seen it yet'--my house didn't have power, still doesn't) and we're identifying neighborhoods, or trying to, from the helicopter shots--but it all looks like houses and water, houses and water, and that same pan across the clearview mall parking lot, target and zia's with the roof torn off. i'm learning the geography of the city from this aerial view. i didn't realize the 17th street canal was the one right by my house, at the end of vets, separating jefferson and orleans parish. all i knew about the 17th street canal was that it was between "eight-by-yo-mama's" and "six-pack-a-dixie" in the Yat Days of Christmas song. we're watching CNN and they're talking about the breach in the 17th street canal and i sang, "17th street canal" and abby paused and sang, "dix pack of sixie" and i was glad to be with a bunch of motherfucking new orleans refugees right then.

all day yesterday i was so glib because none of it is real. i had a hair appointment on magazine street at 1pm today. it wasn't until i was reading the WWL tv forum and watching the live feed online--it wasn't until i saw blanco crying and landrieu saying, with great force, "you should get down on your knees"--that's when i lost it. i was alone at rikki's house doubled over. then i went to work.

i cried over cheese and onion enchiladas (the lady said she didn't want the onions) and people were tipping like crazy. like crazy. you could tell the new orleans tables, they were the families with little kids and the parents slamming back beer and margaritas. the husband at 53 said he wanted chicken quesadillas, 86 peppers and onions, and i asked the wife if she wanted the peppers and onions on her quesadillas. she looked at me blurrily and said "you know, at this point i really don't care" and i said "what part of new orleans are you from." they were from kenner. i told her i was from metairie and hadn't been able to get in touch with my mom, dad, or brother since sunday; she looked at me like a horrified sympathetic mother. the table behind them was from covington and then the shackletons sat down at 81 when my aunts and uncles left. i wouldn't have known it was them except the dad was wearing a white polo with St. Catherine of Siena Men's Club embroidered on it. i touched his shirt and said "i graduated from there" and as it turns out, sydney and adam are sitting right there, unrecognizable now to me, but i was on quiz bowl with adam when i was an 8th grade girl and he was a 7th grade boy, and sydney was in michael's class. this is what happens when new orleans comes to baton rouge.

i walked out of work with 120 dollars on a tuesday night and went to chelsea's, where shuchin bought me a lemon drop, and pj's friend serendipitously brought out a bourbon and coke that he didn't want, and then he bought me a tequila shot because i'd never done one and he's from new orleans and so is pj and everyone at chelsea's was a refugee and we toasted to that. i was too drunk to drive home so anson brought me to barrett's, where i showered and slept.

today i got voicemail messages for the first time since sunday. my phone hasn't rung in three days. my dad says: i am safe, please get in touch. my brother says: have you been able to get in touch with mom, because the first extended is this weekend and uh i don't know i'm doing.

i told barrett: i've got to figure out a way to get michael home.

he said: what home?

mallory

katie r. had a slumber party for her birthday when we were in second grade. and her mom told me, laughing, "your legs look like toothpicks!" and i cried.

in my head i'm still stick-limbed and small.

i didn't develop, in the judy blume sense of the word, until the end of my junior year of high school. i continued to make flat-chested jokes for a long time afterwards, out of habit, and people would look at me strange.

it's the same way that i'm startled when i'm around girls who are shorter than me. i was always the shortest. now i'm just slightly below average. the average american woman is five-foot-four. i'm five-foot-two. but there i go again. i'm not really five-foot-two, i'm actually more like five-foot-two-and-three-quarters. practically an inch taller than i claim. but i've been 5'2" in my head for so long that i can't reconcile the extra three-quarters of an inch.

similarly, it's hard for me to reconcile the shape of my body now--the curvy parts--with the skinny kid i used to be, and still am in my head. it's like the platonic idea of myself. not perfect, but habitual. it's like the way my aunt meg kept talking about her jet-black hair--she and her sisters all have jet-black hair--and finally one of them, aunt kay maybe, gently informed her that her hair was, and had always been, brown. not black. aunt meg alone of the five girls had brown hair. she was shocked to discover this.

i mean i don't think i'm fat or anything

(but)

and my mom, she has food issues. like i think she was anorexic for a while. she denies this still. she gained weight after michael, and then she got mugged when i was in fifth grade, and it was sometime around the mugging and before my parents got divorced, i don't remember, but she lost a lot of weight. she bought a scale like they have at the doctor's office, and she used to weigh herself every morning, and i remember going into her bedroom and the scale was on 115. my mom is about 5'8". and i guess we were in sixth grade, at gulf shores with all my aunts and uncles and cousins, and ben or meghan or someone told me your mom is anorexic and i went to her crying. she said, what are you talking about, you saw me eat dinner, i ate a big bowl of red beans and rice. and don't listen to them. they don't know what they're talking about.

she says that now, furiously, when i bring it up. which is very rarely. it's one of those things we don't talk about. remember when you were really skinny.

she eats cardboard food like protein bars, and she works out every day. but she's fifty now and it's not working like it used to. her body is spreading past the boundaries she's set.

they say that eating disorders are about control. i always thought of anorexics as people with an abnormal need for control. but i think people feel betrayed by their bodies on lots of different levels--weight gain, pregnancy scare, acne--how many different ways are there to get rid of body hair--we all fight to get our bodies under control. some semblance of it.

and what does it mean to resign yourself to the inevitable. because ultimately it's a fight we're going to lose. for the most part i think we're vain until we're pretty much dead. i tell myself every summer that even though i feel self-conscious in a two-piece bathing suit, i might as well wear one now. because eventually i'll be too old to pull it off. enjoy it while it lasts. i wish i could enjoy it. i think about how i'm going to look back in twenty years--i'll be wearing a matronly one-piece--and i'll see pictures of me from this summer and i'll think how great i looked. and if only i could have realized it when i was twenty-one and stupid.

i think my mom has given up on being a size four. she used to say that she couldn't afford to gain weight, literally, as in she couldn't afford to buy new clothes to fit her. but i think she bought some new jeans. they're cute. i can't help but notice that her ass is bigger. it upsets me that i notice. but it's also payback. for all those times my mom has told me "you look good, you look like you lost weight." beginning my junior year in high school, when i went away. why would you say that to a sixteen-year-old girl.

and the time i actually did gain about ten pounds, between eight and ten, which on me is a lot. my jeans were starting not to fit. and my mom set me up: a book with calorie counts for every food imaginable, a membership card to curitan's, and a lecture on how to do the math. it was the summer between my junior and senior year; i'd hurt my back dancing and had to take a break from ballet. i didn't have normal work-out clothes. i was the one on the treadmill wearing a thrift-store shirt, jazz pants, and blue converse. easy mac has 250 calories. but an apple only has 70. so. i was reading cookbooks for fun. i was hungry all the time. i've never been so obsessed with food in my life. i didn't even lose weight until i went back to school and started dancing again.

never again, never never.

but i can tell you that a double-stuf oreo has 70 calories. a regular oreo has 50.

you've lost weight.

this is a compliment.

janey saw me at the end of the summer and told me, you've lost a ton of weight.

even if she doesn't mean it as a compliment, i take it that way.

breton told me when she came back from france. you've lost weight. but when she says it, she means: what the fuck is wrong with you?

here: i've been waiting tables thirty-five hours a week since june. i haven't bought groceries in four months. i eat whatever i scavenge at work. a piece of quesadilla will keep me going for a few hours. maybe one full meal a day. and i'm on my feet, running my ass off, serving queso-covered fried stuffed jalapeños to a woman who orders a salad on the side, and a diet coke to drink. my idea of a joke.

and even though i look like shit. look at my facebook picture, i'm gray in it, and that was partially because of the hurricane but i don't think i looked all that healthy beforehand. even though i look like shit, and breton is saying "you're too skinny, eat this," i still take it as some fucked-up validation.

it's like when girls say oh i haven't eaten all day. oh god i'm getting so skinny. how unhealthy of me. when they're secretly proud. it's like when breton, even breton, says "i always get skinny waiting tables." and it's not skinny in a good way, but it's still skinny like a fuck-you merit badge.

i weighed myself a few weeks ago. my roommate has a digital scale in the bathroom. 100.5 pounds. that's the lowest my weight has been in a really long time. i can't manage to weigh myself again, though. i'm sure it will be higher, as it should be, but i'd rather not know.

my mom was taking ephedra back when it was trendy. she knows better. she's a registered nurse. i couldn't convince her to lay off. she finally did, i don't know what prompted it, but then she moved on to some other "supplement" that was supposed to kick up her metabolism. or suppress her appetite. she said it made her "pretty spunky." like aggressive.

i don't want to become this. i want to tell her to be a healthy example.

in ballet class i stare at the other girls' stomachs. mine isn't flat. some of the girls have flat stomachs but occasionally i catch them in an unguarded moment, relaxed instead of pulled-up, and their bellies curve out. these are fourteen-year-olds that i'm comparing myself to. these are prepubescent girls. i am almost twenty-two.

there's one girl, mallory, who's been gone about six months. she's the reason i wrote this post. mallory is about sixteen, i think. she was a strong dancer, muscular. you know how some people say muscular when they mean chunky. i don't mean like that. i mean she had great muscle tone. swimmer body. then early last spring, she started looking like she was about twelve years old. she dropped all this weight. she didn't have any excess weight to begin with. she got so small, bony arms, pink tights sagging at her ankles. she was obviously going through some shit, obviously had an eating disorder, but still coming to class. week after week. it kept getting worse. finally i asked another little girl if she knew what the story was. she told me mallory swore she wasn't anorexic but her mom was making her drink ensure.

finally mallory stopped coming to class.

i saw her back for the first time on thursday. she looks about the same as when she left. but she's out now, she's got an acknowledged eating disorder. she wants to be in nutcracker but she had to gain half a pound by auditions on saturday. i kept staring at her during class. the bones of her, childlike, the dark sunken cavities in her face and the lines carved around her eyes. childlike but scary old at the same time. fuck-you skinny. i went to get water between combinations and there's a picture of the 2004 senior company on the wall. there's mallory grinning up at the camera, full face, broad smile. i wanted, a little bit, to cry.

but at the same time, inexplicably, i was angry all class. i wondered how she looked at the rest of us, what she thought. did we disgust her. i looked at the other girls and for the first time i didn't see stomachs and thighs. instead it was all this flesh, muscle, it seemed so extravagant and beautiful. and we fight it every fucking day. hours in front of the mirror in a leotard and tights. no one likes it. so what the fuck is wrong with you. that you would do this to yourself. we're all in it but we cope. we're in it together, except for you, off in the corner, fighting your body for your life.

this is going to get so much better.

i just moved into a one-bedroom apartment.
i have been four days without electricity.
by the time i get off work, it's dark outside.
so i bought a bag of votive candles.
on every ledge there are piles of dead matches.
my mom came up to help me today.
she is always busy so it was a big deal.
we had four hours.
our first priority, she said, is getting some window coverings.
i have four giant windows facing my living room and bedroom.
there is one mini-blind.
i get dressed laying flat on the bed.
i guess i could go into the bathroom to change.
anyway.
we went to siegen and back.
the electricity was supposed to be turned on but they said tomorrow.
mom forgot the drill bits at home.
i got some from ben b.'s friend down the street.
but you can't use a power drill without electricity.
and the curtain rod was too fat at the end.
so we went to siegen and back again.
then she had to leave.
i only wanted to get one thing done and it didn't get done.
and today was my last day off until sunday.
and i don't own any tools.
and i'm too short to install the curtain rod.
so i cried a little because i was frustrated.
then i unpacked my bookshelf.
arranging my bookshelf is like meditation for me.
i arranged my bookshelf for three hours.
now i feel much better.

drawing blood from a rock

my aunt pattie drove me up to natchitoches at the beginning of my senior year in high school. my mom was out of town for work, so she couldn't take me; my dad, as one of the conditions for signing the permission form for me to go to lsmsa, had said he would not, under any circumstances, drive to natchitoches.

so aunt pattie, my godmother, my mom's eldest sibling, loaded up mimi and grandpa's car and made the five-hour drive. we talked the whole time. my mom says aunt pattie is like a dog with a bone. she's relentless. sometimes she's right. often she is inappropriate. my family thinks she's insane. she is a little insane. she always means well.

when i was in fifth grade, aunt pattie came over to our house to borrow something from my mom, it was something makeup-related, and my mom wasn't home but i showed her where mom kept her makeup stuff in the bathroom. when i opened the makeup drawer, aunt pattie gave a little gasp and started laughing. i asked her what she was laughing at. she pointed to a tube of something and explained that it was for a diaphragm. i didn't know what a diaphragm was. she explained that, too. my mother hadn't told me she used a diaphragm. she'd told me that they used the rhythm method. i felt like she'd lied to me. it turned into this whole ordeal where i confronted her about her 'lie,' very uncomfortably, and we had this awkward conversation about birth control. this is the kind of trouble we get into because of aunt pattie, who doesn't give a shit about anyone else's boundaries.

it's not so much that she's brutally honest as she is tactless and compulsive. on the drive up to natchitoches she told me a lot of stories about our family, things you could file under 'family secrets you never wanted to know.' some of it still sickens me to think about. nothing particularly illegal or immoral. just hard to hear.

there was this one story, though, about my uncle steve. he's the second-born, right between aunt pattie and my mom. there are eight kids total, and my grandparents were militantly strict. all of the kids felt compelled to sneak out of the house at some point or another to have a little bit of unsupervised fun. if they were caught and questioned, they lied their asses off. except for uncle steve. he stood straight up and told the truth, every time, and every time he got a beating for it. the other kids cringed to hear it and waited for him to learn his lesson. not the one about sneaking out. the other one, about lying when you get caught. but he never did. he just kept taking the beating.

aunt pattie said, "i guess it was noble, or something. mostly i thought stephen was stupid."

---

i, unlike my uncle steve, will lie to get myself out of trouble. i forgive myself for this by saying that sometimes the trouble you would get into by telling the truth is disproportionate to the delinquent act you performed. it is an excuse. i do not have the courage of uncle steve, who fucked around and accepted the consequences. also i am a terrible liar, and plagued by a pervasive sense of guilt even under normal circumstances. thus, as a cowardly, incompetent, guilt-stricken liar, i try to avoid any situation that might get me into trouble. i am, for the most part, a pathogical rule-follower. there is nothing noble about this, because it is entirely motivated by fear.

---

my car got totalled a few weeks ago and i bought a '99 corolla to replace it. it is my first car, the first car that is mine. the other one was in my dad's name. my dad had been making noise for a while about how run down the old corolla was. i thought maybe he would help me buy a new car. my mom isn't in a position financially to help me out at all. my dad, on the other hand, just bought an airplane.

so it's the day after christmas. michael and i are on our way to dad's house to open presents. at this point i'm not sure if i'm going to repair the old corolla or buy a new one. either way it's going to cost money, which my mom doesn't have. also, the night before, on the drive to new orleans, an eighteen-wheeler passed me on the interstate and threw a rock, which hit the windshield of the rental car. i heard the rock hit, and looked for a mark in the glass, but didn't see anything--but now, in the daylight--on the way to my dad's house--a crack about twelve inches across and curving downwards. i hadn't taken out the rental car insurance, because i'm cheap.

i walk into my dad's house and tell him about the windshield and he says, did you take out the insurance? and i say no. and he says, you just bought yourself a windshield.

he and michael babble on about how it's about time that i got a new car, the only thing dad liked about the old corolla was that it was so ugly he never worried about me getting carjacked.

and none of my christmas presents are car keys.

i realize that whatever happens with this car business, it is coming out of my pocket, and mine alone.

i cry for an hour. then i realize that i now have total control over what happens to my car. i cry for four more hours, but also tell my mother to stop talking at me about the car stuff, because it doesn't matter, because she's not going to pay for it, because she can't, and dad's not going to pay for it, because he won't. so i'll pay for it, so it's my decision. so just stop. and let me cry.

she says, i don't know, it sounds like dad might help.

and i said, no, he won't.

and he doesn't buy me a car.

instead, he is on the phone. he is offering advice. it's not the usual advice i get from him, like "garbage in garbage out" or "choose to be happy" or "the truth will set you free" or "you are emotionally scarring your brother for life." instead it's how to buy a used car, which is all i can reasonably afford. and it's not even 'how i think you should buy a car' but objective information on the process. what to say on the phone when you're cold-calling someone about an ad in the paper, questions to ask, what to look for, what to believe, what to avoid. the third time i called him, i asked him, "are you sick of me yet?" and he said, "no."

so he is on call, always picking up the phone on the first or second ring, always willing, always patient. when it comes time to ask this guy from the houston craigslist about coming to look at his car, my dad says to haggle with him over the price. i don't want to. he says, "it's your money, and your decision. if it were me, and a thousand dollars out of my pocket, i'd try to haggle. the worst he can say is no."

i tell him, "i don't know what to say. i'm scared." and he says, "let's practice."

we rehearse the conversation, and i feel sick, and i say, "i might cry."

he says, "and then--what would happen?"

i'm tearing up already. i don't know, what.

"your face would be wet. that's what would happen."

and he told me, you're doing the best you can do, or anyone else, you're doing a good job. if you keep on just like you've been, you'll be doing very, very well.

and i already knew that i didn't want him to do it for me. but i hadn't realized, until he said it, that i wanted reassurance. and coming from him.

at some point in the middle of everything i think i am grateful that i am being forced to buy this car myself. that this is part of being a grown-up and my dad is doing me a favor. it's good that i have to pay a $250 deductible towards a new windshield for the stupid fucking rental car. i have all sorts of backwards gratitude like this towards my parents. i'm grateful to my mom for being a working mom while all my friends' moms stayed at home and baked cookies. even though she was always too busy. i'm grateful to my parents for hiring a housekeeper from nicaragua, who kept me in her house like i was her own kid. who else gets that kind of opportunity to live between class and cultural boundaries. even though i hated it at the time. and in college i paid my own rent and my own bills. and hired my own moving trucks. other kids' parents pay their rent. other kids' parents help them move. but i do it myself.

other kids' parents buy them cars as graduation presents.

my dad gave me a hundred dollars cash for graduation. in one dollar bills. and that card about the mouse pushing elephants up a hill. that was for college. he left my high school graduation early. and then we didn't talk for four months.

i am grateful and angry.

mostly grateful.

or, i shove the angry part down and live with it.

finally i found my car, the '99 corolla. i bought it from this guy out in prairieville who had just gotten a new truck for his family. it was $5250, which put it within my 'comfortably affordable' price range, with low mileage, and a CD player. it hadn't been flooded in the hurricane, unlike the 2003 mazda protege they tried to sell me at lakeside toyota. it hadn't been bought at an auction by an auto broker. it had never been a rental car.

really my criteria was: an affordable, not-old corolla, with a CD player.

the guy i bought it from is a state farm agent named david. he is buddies with my uncle mike. uncle mike is my insurance agent, also with state farm. he and david are state farm best friends. uncle mike stayed at david's house for the hurricane.

but i didn't know any of this. i found the guy's ad in the sunday advocate, new year's day, and called him up.

when i went to david's house to sign the bill of sale, he told me he'd left the purchase amount blank. he explained that a lot of people claim on their bill of sale that they paid much less for their used car than they actually did. this saves them money on taxes for the car. i knew it already, the houston craigslist guy had told me, but i thought it was kind of sketchy so i didn't tell my dad about it.

david says, it's totally up to you. pretty much everyone does it. but if you tell me to write $5250, i'll write it.

and i hesitated. and i explained to him about being a pathological rule-follower. or, as my mom likes to say--although i really hate it--a weenie.

he said it was fine, and he wrote in the full amount.

so i called my dad afterwards and told him all about it and told him that david had offered to write in less but because i am pathetic i said to write the full amount.

and my dad was quiet for a minute.

and he said, "you told the truth. there's nothing pathetic about that. how much money would you have saved if you had written in '$1' for your car? maybe you would have saved five hundred dollars in taxes. but is your conscience worth five hundred dollars?"

he said, "i'd been wondering what you were going to do when that situation came up. you told the truth. you did the right thing. i'm proud of you."

i can't remember the last time my dad was proud of me.

how it always ends

okay, since people are evidently confused by this post: what follows did not actually happen, except in my head while i was sleeping.

mom and i have been fighting again.

she and michael are sitting on the sofa in the den--the sofas we don't use anymore. maybe she had given me the gift first, and then michael came in and sat down.

the gift is an apology. we have been fighting again.

the gift is a series of of wooden frames. they are large, rectangular wood frames the color of unfinished pine. each frame is actually a set of two parallel frames about two inches apart. threaded between the two frames is a mass of colored string--it's almost like a loom.

the knots in the string tell the story.

the knots take on shapes like faces and actions an