the microphones, "the moon" (slow version)

i wanted to see if i could remember what it felt like so i played the song. this is how it goes:
it starts of in the fetal position. it starts off all alone. it starts off scared and separated,
and then it starts hurting. it reaches in and holds the part that youre missing, the part he took away from you, the part he still has with him, where ever he is, if he ever existed, if he was ever alive,
and then it takes you back. it reminds you that he was alive, and you were once too. it takes you to coit tower. it takes you to sets of stairs and to cafe trieste at 2 am, when it was just you and him and the slinky shadows the moon made on his face as you lay in his lap, looking up.
and then the song grabs hold of that loose thread that no one can see, that is never bothered because its invisible to everyone else. it grabs it in its claws and it starts tugging at it. it starts dancing around, the song does, holding the end of the thread, like youre the pole and the song, the truth, is the tether ball. you cant go anywhere, the only thing that really ever happens to you is the ball being wound around you, flying away from you, destined to come back with an increasing momentum.
and then you let it. and then you sink. you go back with it, you stay still for it, you do whatever it wants you to do because youre so tired, youre so tired of trying to figure out what its going to do next and swallowing it whole, choking all the while but letting everyone else think its digesting like normal.
theres a moment in the song thats the equivalent of crying so hard there is no movement, no noise, no breath, no tears.
and then it leaves you, without warning, without tapering off. it just stops and youre left there, with everything you were hiding laying in front of you, heaving with the pent up energy that exists whenever an essence is disguised as periphery.
this is why you only listen to this song alone, and all the way through. this is why you only listen to it on headphones, so that it can stay just yours. this is why you listen to it in bed at night, so that your dreams can absorb what your reality simply cannot.
the song isnt whats inside. its just the key, the only copy of the key.

off a ducks back

there was a canal that i walked beside to get there everyday. it wasnt pretty, but there was something i loved about it, something still about it, something that made me feel like i really was away from home. it was one of those things that when you look at it, you see it through a lens of other people watching you look at it, like youre both the audience and the movie. there were ducks in that canal sometimes. and people fishing. i had always thought of canals as man made things, and because i cant imagine a man transplanting ducks and fish into a body of water from another, more natural, body of water, i just assumed nothing grew in it. or maybe i knew that things eventually grew, like algae, but i couldnt believe that from algae a fish would just come into being. there was this metal bridge, which was another incongruity, and it was so low that even when a canoe needed to pass they would have to get out and raise the bridge with a knob. or a lever or whatever the fuck those things are. the ones that you turn around in a circle.

i liked thinking about these things when i walked, because i walked with headphones on and i had never done that at home. the whole experience felt very foreign and comfortable. safe, like i had dreamt it or these had been the pictures i saw before i came here. of a girl with her hands in her pockets and headphones on with one leg permanently suspended in front of the other and her head turned to the canal, with the bridge's mouth opened to the sky.

sometimes bikers would pass, or joggers, or just people walking like me. sometimes i liked this and sometimes i didnt. sometimes it made me nervous, because i would still be debating whether or not to make eye contact when they were already upon me, and i had to do an awkward combination of both making eye contact and not making eye contact. but sometimes i wouldnt notice them until there they were, either running (huff huff) or walking or biking right in front of my face, sometimes making eye contact and sometimes not.

once, on my way back, i saw these two ducks in the distance. it looked like one big deformed duck until i started getting closer, and realized they were either fighting viciously or making love. there was a woman on a bike who had stopped, one leg on the ground, to watch.

it was a curious thing- one was obviously pissed off, the aggressor, and he kept chasing this other one back and forth the width of the canal. the one who was being chased would go under and disappear and the angry one didnt know what happened, but he knew she would come back. and see thats whats funny- i just assumed that the mad one was a man and the one who was trying so desparately to get away was a woman. sometimes the man would catch the woman and jump on her back and they would bob up and down, and thats why i thought it could have been making love. they looked like lions on the national geographic specials. but they would only bob up and down for a minute, until the one underneath would escape somehow and piss the one on top off even more. and they were making the most horrible noises.

the bike woman and i stood there and stared. we didnt talk to each other; we both appreciated that.

then the girl duck dove under and reemerged almost right under our feet, grappling frantically to get onto the sidewalk. she did and waddled hurredly into the bushes. they shook when she went in and it was one of the strangest things i have ever seen. the guy duck swam around in circles, not sure of where she went but seemingly positive she would return.

and she did, after about a minute of being in the bush, our bodies following the action. she dove back in and tried to swim downstream, but he was fast and he caught up quickly and jumped on top of her again. this time, she let him. she just floated along as he pumped her up and down, her beak splashing in the water with each pump.

i said, still looking at the ducks, "i wonder if she's getting beaten up or fucked."
and the bike woman said "its impossible to tell"

you remember; you were there

do you remember wrapping up in blankets on the back porch and not smoking cigarettes and watching the sun disappear into the burps of cars and the giant ugly sigh of the city? do you remember making sandwiches and squishing the avocados with our fingertips? do you remember playing sardines in the dark (beasley, who we once knew as someone altogether different, called it sardines in the can) and hiding in my closet, seeing his shoes beneath the feathers of my floor length gown and feeling that warm thing happening in my stomach, that butterfly osmosis that floats down from what you know to what you want? do you remember putting on my neon golashes and all of my scarves and the david bowie wig and dancing around to blonde redhead as the rest of them looked on in confused glee, dancing until we were desparate for air, dancing until we fell down, dancing until wine scented sweat tickled the backs of our necks and knees?

you remember; you were there. you were the bloodshot in my eyes when i walked up to him, like i was a hand and he was all those silver needles and we made this fleeting impact, this imprint that only lasted until we wiped it clean and made another one. you were the beer bottle that dropped, that slid out of my hands, that crashed brilliantly all over the floor. you were there, i felt it!

remember closing your eyes, remember everyone walking by, remember being silent and still for so long you thought maybe you were somewhere else altogether? and we said that if you could be there then, physically, but not really there at all, then you can be far away, physically, and here in every skipping song we play on that shitty stereo in the kitchen, you can be the crud on every dirty plate, you can be the wax in every mutilated candle, you can be the purple sequined cowboy hat, you can be all of us hiding in the loft, or the movie that never gets watched. you can be and you are.

we were right. we were right all along.

the summer she stopped waiting

it started with caldwell. he was older than the rest of them and a complete insomniac so he would drive over to her house in the middle of the night and throw rocks at her window. she had these pink curtains that her mom had made for her in an uncharacteristic moment of domesticity, and when her bedside lamp was on they glowed like a present does when you know whats inside and it couldnt be better. she was almost totally nocturnal as well, so he wasnt scared of making her mad, though she feigned anger only for the moment when she pulled back the curtain, knowing full well it was him. she came downstairs in her pajamas and they sat on the marble steps of her front porch, petting her hugely fat cat and swatting at mosquitoes. he made her laugh harder than anyone else.

then ryne became friends with caldwell through her, because they both made music and they were both older and bored and disappointed with the way things were going. and so ryne would come over with caldwell, and then sometimes by himself, and they would toss rocks up at her window which once could be opened with a knob but now was paned over and made into a storm window. she was up there and awake, they knew. she would be cleaning her room, her room that never got clean, or writing or reading or watching tv or making some elaborate picture frame or collage. it was the summer before her junior year of high school but both of them had graduated.

it was the summer she stopped waiting on marcel. she used to be unable to go to sleep without pulling back her curtain to check if he was outside, across the street, underneath this huge branchless tree. there would be no logical reason for him to be there, he had graduated from her highschool three years ago and they had barely had a friendship while he was there, though he teased her in study hall and latin class. and she had liked other guys, she had kissed some of them and some of them had snuck into her house and laid on her bed, pushing aside her bear and talking in whispers. but no one had made her sad like marcel. no one had made her feel alone and separate, no one had given her looks that haunted her, no one had convinced her by his mere existence that there was more than what was said. she forgot when it started, the compulsive urge to make sure he wasnt waiting outside, but it became such a real superstition, she believed in it so truly, that she couldnt fall asleep until she did it.

but then caldwell started coming, and she never had to wait on him because he let her know when he was there. and she wasnt in love with him, and it didnt hurt to think about the shape of his fingernails. but it was good to sit there and listen to the crickets, it was good to talk about the people they had grown up with, and the people they had grown away from.

pretty soon she stopped opening her curtains at all. she still did even when caldwell started coming over, but she soon realized it was more to see if he was parking his car outside than to see if marcel, who she doubt even knew where she lived, was standing outside, waiting like she had been all these years. she figured if he ever did come he would knock, or he would play some song in the rain like in "the wonder years" to get her to come out, or he would drive up and see her and caldwell and ryne making fortresses out of sticks in the potted plants on her porch and he would either love her for it or he wouldnt. but he wouldnt wait, she told herself. theres too much else going on to just wait.

the temptations

it was warren who told me that OJ simpson was driving a white bronco, being followed by all of america.
"who's OJ simspon?" i asked him. i was in love with warren. he was my boyfriend's best friend. my boyfriend who was already in college, who was on a week long summer trip to build houses in central america.

"some football player" warren was eternally interesting. he was the closest thing to a hippie i had ever been able to touch. he was one fourth japanese and had long hair, he squeezed his cigarettes so hard that the butts were as flat as coins.

"whatd he do?" we had kissed the day before, in my living room, as janet and sig were laying on my bed, before sig came out and explained lots of things. we sat, awkwardly, half turned towards each other, in the stuffiest room of my house, with nothing to distract us but my father's collection of kalidescopes placed in a specific arrangement on the coffee table in front of the asian inspired couch we were sitting on.

"killed someone, they think" i might have asked him what are you thinking, or something equally as obvious, and he probably said something like "that i want to do something im not supposed to do" and i said with as much coy-ness as my sixteen year old self could muster "what is that?" and he took a deep breath through closed lips and kissed me. as with the rest of these kind of situations throughout my life, as soon as it was over i had forgotten the specifics. like who said what when or what he tasted like.

"oh" we were at city stages, the most consequential weekend of the summer. all of downtown birmingham was roped off and the streets were turned into a giant festival of funnel cakes and dippin dots and the miller lite stage would always play the big attractions, like the beach boys. i would have rather missed prom, if my school had had one, than city stages. we were sitting at the base of the penis, a phallic sculpture in the middle of lynn park and the only reasonable meeting point.

"i guess everyone knows he did it" we werent waiting on anyone, just tired of walking, navigating the crowds, sick of feeling other people's beer spilled on our flipflopped feet.

"how?" janet didnt think it was wrong- what sig and i were doing behind marks back. she said she knew he was the love of my life and think of how i would regret it if i didnt. but mark was so transparently good, so honestly pure, so trusting, so delicate. everytime we would start to kiss in his green mazda i would start thinking of reasons i had to go. in my mind then, that was better than telling him the truth- that just looking at a piece of warren was infinitely more exciting than having mark unhook my bra.

"how what?" later that night, the saturday night of city stages when the temptations were playing on the coca-cola stage, we would drive back to his house in mountain brook and i would tell mom that i was at janets and we would stand in his room and listen to the rod mckuen record he had, the record of rod mckuen reading what would become my favorite poem, and we would stand so close that the dunes of our body would line up, and we wouldnt move our hands and we would keep our eyes closed until all of "stanyon street" had been read aloud, and i would let him reach around and untie my kerchief top with one hand.

"how do they know that he did it? that hes guilty?" when mark came back i told him. and he said that if warren and i are together he will never speak to warren again, and his heart would be broken for the rest of his life. warren told me that one night in sabaros at brookwood mall, as they were mopping the floor. i put my head on the freshly wiped plastic table top and cried so hard that no noise came out. i dont think warren knew what to do. at that moment or at any.

"they dont know for sure but i guess its just a feeling people have" i drove over to warrens house in mountain brook sometimes, even after mark forbode it, and we watched the rocky horror picture show and made out on his scratchy carpet. and then i started feeling dirty about doing that, about how he never came over to my house, about how much i had stolen from mark. about how it could never be undone. they stopped being friends after a few months, and mark soon met his wife, a woman who is 13 years older than him, who drives a real VW bug and who works with mentally impaired people.

I watched OJ simpson get aquitted in mr. porters biology class. i knew what would happen-- we all did. we all knew he did it and we all knew he would get off.

it was just a feeling we had.

only dogs get mad.

tonight for a second i am angry. youre talking like im not there, like i never was, and instead of being sad about it like i used to be when i was yours, i am mad. my latin teacher used to say that ladies never got mad they got angry. only dogs got mad. but now i can never remember which is which, if angry was for ladies or dogs.
but tonight i am both. it doesnt last long enough though, becuase pretty soon i am crossing and re-crossing my legs, wondering when you will ever realize that i am there, that i have been there for years upon years, that we used to sleep in the same bed, that i used to swallow everything you created without the slightest cringe.
and i am sad again, but knowing i dont deserve to be, getting frustrated with myself for even wanting you to finally notice.
you go on and on. i know what you will say when, i know your ideas before you can verbalize them. i know how you will move your limbs, i know how everyone standing around you will react. i know, like ive always known, how to remain as invisible as you think i am, so that it can all go on undisturbed. i do it because sometimes youll say something small and it will hurt me more than ive ever been hurt by you, and ill want so desparately to go back to when i was suffering it all, suffering it for the both of us, and you were oblivious and content.
but tonight i am trapped. by the brick wall and the cigarette smoke, by your incessant speech and your lack of understanding. i am trapped by other peoples nods, by how invisible i am to the rest of them as soon as you start to speak. it traps the whole of me into this tiny smoky sad corner and the more i try to get out of it the more pathetic i seem to you, to all of you, and i am left wishing i had just taken up less space.
it makes me so sad that i want to tell you all of it- how i lived a lie for years so that i wouldnt ever have to see your chin quiver, so that i wouldnt have to wake up in the morning to the memory of your hands holding each other, saying you are lost without me. i opened my arms and bent down and took it all in and promised myself i would bear the brunt of it, because i knew i was stronger than you and i knew that it would eventually trickle out of me and i would be freer than your weightless self would ever know.
what makes me angry tonight, and then so sad that i cant even speak, i cant speak to anyone, is that i wish i hadnt. i wish i had, from that summer and that night (a psychic vortex on grant and vallejo) told you the truth. i wish i had been honest with myself and brave enough to let you be lost out there, wise enough to know that it had nothing to do with me. i wish i hadnt staved off everything precious just so your ideas about what existed wouldnt be wounded. i wish i had told you, from the moment it all started happening, the truth- that the bigger you got the smaller i became. and that there was no part of me that needed to feel that way, there was no part of me that believed that was true, that the only reason i acted like i did was because you were so fragile and i so heavy that i knew what i could do to you.
i wish tonight when you were talking and trying to dissolve me, trying to do that thing where you look at an object and everything around it disentegrates, i had said "its just you." you are the sadness, you are the leech. when you arent around, my being starts to materialize and re-form, inch by inch, cell by cell, word by word. and i thought then, that no matter what i write about you, using your name or not, whether its published in the new yorker or it stays within the sacred confines of my journal, you will never find out.
i dont think you know that i write.
i dont think you know that i think.
i dont think that even if i gave you the site, you would ever actually look it up.
i dont think that even if someone else told you, you would take enough time to listen or believe them.

oh jessica, when has he ever understood you?
never, lauren. never.

there you are!

she was walking back from the co-op. she bought the same things every time, a half loaf of white bread, slices of mature white british cheddar, cookie crisp cereal and a thing of milk. the place intimidated her, because it was so foreign and uncategorizable. it wasnt a 7-11 exactly, it wasnt quite a grocery store, and it certainly wasnt a drug store. no places in england except for the actual pharmacy had any sort of medicine. she always felt like she was being watched by the security guard that paced the isles, or that she was standing too close to some precious thing that would be tragic if stolen. still,though she had been there for months, everytime someone opened their mouths and let their british accents loose she felt stung by it. the way peoples voices are different, but the same within a region, astounded her. how rachel meadows' parents had that thick british accent but rachel, since she was raised in alabama, has no trace of one. how voices, considering how different each one is (like farmyard animal laughter), could be grouped at all. how its unchangable and innate. how its totally changable and based on the simple truth of where you are.

where you are. she remembered that shirt her mom used to wear, the one that said "No matter where you go...there you are!" When she was little, though it made no sense, she thought it was about hide and seek. when she asked her mom, she told her that it was.

she always worried about the bag breaking on the walk home. like if the bag broke then it would be ok to give up. to fall on top of the scattered groceries and just stay there, face down, until someone who knew which notes to play in her to make a song would come along. she walked fast, heel to toe, staring at the bag. what a terrifying release it would be.

she got to the gate and juggled her purse and the bag to get out her card and swipe the magnetic strip. as she was turning to open it she saw two people walking down the sidewalk- one guy in his twenties and one boy, probably about 12. they were laughing and nodding and the boy was sort of skipping he was so into the conversation. but she had no idea what they were saying because it was all in sign language. she stood there, propping the gate open with her free hand and holding her bags in the other one, staring. she could not stop staring. their hands were like those little books that you flip through fast and can see the animated scene. if you look at one of the pages alone it was just a half-drawn cartoon character.

they passed by her, unaware. she hadnt felt so jealous in such a long time. she wished she was those words being formed by fingers, passed between those two people like offerings back and forth.

the buzzer on the gate started to sound. it startled her terribly, partly because she was surprised to hear only silence as the two of them passed. she stepped inside enough to let the gate close but her neck was still straining to see them continue down the sidewalk, turned towards each other, interrupting and getting it.

the thick wrought iron gate whined its way towards her. she peeked out one last time, and as she did, one of the rungs slammed against her browbone. it hurt like nothing she had felt since david mckee knocked the wind out of her with the soccer ball in 9th grade, when they werent speaking and everyone crowded around her to see what dramatic reaction she would feed to them like hungry dogs.

she stood there for a minute without moving. she brought her free hand up to her head and touched it gingerly, like it was someone else's wound. how beautiful and real, she thought. how nice to have something that bruises on the outside.

is this college?

on the balcony:
"wait, you go to usc?"
"yeah. do you?"
"i mean, i dont know"
"well, do you go there?"
"sometimes"
"when you go there do you take classes?"
"yeah, i suppose"
"?"
...
"he's just mentally checked out"
(god i love it when things i never knew that i knew are verbalized with such precision and simplicity)

in the kitchen:
"SHE USES VA-AH-AH-SALINE"
(laughing so hard the dirt spots on the floor begin to take the form of the notes of the Flaming Lips song as he sung it, one foot on my body like i was a speaker)

on the stairs:
she looked tiny and familiar, like she was jennifer my fragile cold-cream-skinned babysitter, like she should be able to take care of me.
"i dont know what to say"
...
"i dont either."


outside ryans room:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
hehehehehehehe
HAWAHARAHAWHAR
huhuhuhuhuhuhu
coming from the balcony above, a farmyard collection of laughs, all different and hysterical as separate entities.

my room:
its 4 am. i let them see the part of my plate that i hide from myself. it was jagged and unpretty, and they stood there and ate it and they didnt tell me it was uncooked, or overcooked, or not to their taste, or that they were already full. it was one of the first times since lauren that someone has let it actually nourish them. how could it have gotten better? with ryan dropping crumbs on the floor, with nick leaving the chandalier lights in my room on that eerie low hum and ryan running back to turn on the spotlight lights. with laughing so hard that it puts the tears back inside of you

so you can be ready again.

its been such a long day.

i want to watch roseanne when its raining and eat christmas colored mini-oreos and talk to hoodie on the phone. i want to sit in the backseat of ryans car with lauren after matt turned 21 and puked all over the burgandy room bar and listen to that one justin timberlake song that makes the car go faster. i want to see the ADAMS BLVD exit framed between her head and the back of the front seat, like a giant banner that says welcome home in handpainted letters. i want five minutes from one of those times that exists now only in the ways i make myself remember it. i want five minutes from afternoon rehersal of the fall play junior year, i want five minutes of the 3 hours hoodie and i walked into the worst part of chicago, watching the sun set and wondering why we werent seeing the big buildings yet. i want five minutes of going to the varsity with dad. i want five minutes from the blizzard of 93, when mom and i walked to Western and bought lunchables and saw the obscence snow-woman. i want five minutes of dancing at the bonsallo family christmas party, i want five minutes of the last night i was in LA before london, when we ended up doing handstands in bonsallo's living room and taking shots of brandy. i want five minutes from when ryne was here and all five of us slept like a pile of bunny rabbits on my bed, exhausted from the realization that we had all found each other. i want five minutes from sunday fucking night, from every sunday fucking night, i want the five minutes that end up floating around my head for the rest of the week like unhinged balloons, eventually escaping into this black hole that ill try for years to get back into. i want to hear him say, well what do we do know. i want to turn up that tori amos song until glass breaks all around me and the ocean and the sky collides at the me-axis and i cant hear the disaster because all i can hear is those words that dont even have to mean anything. i want the cafe trieste and the only Him thats never left, i want it so badly that ive forgotten what its like to cry about it, or miss him or need him or remember waking up with our bodies stuck together. i want to thaw out enough for me to tell you where it hurts. i want it to stop hurting everything.

do your ears pop when we go this high?
only when we go deep.
if you close your eyes would you know the difference?

the magic eye

we sat on the couch up on the third level and we looked at the magic eye book; james told me i could see it if i just let my eyes cross and focus on the image. it worked twice- once it was the world and once a little dog.

the five of us sat on the balcony and talked about It. they let me. i thought they were thinking i was hysterical and james said, with so much honesty it still gnaws at me, "no,we understand exactly where youre coming from" and that simple little sentence meant more to me than if he had drawn a diagram of my emotions that night, like pad did with my short story last year in forman's class. i wanted to hug him, or bring him to a place in my existance that only i understood. he got it and i wanted to thank him. they all did- nodding and smoking and getting it over and over and YES! this is why It happened- so people like you will nod and smoke and get it and ryan will see a shooting star and i will feel less dirty and brandon will tell me that every choice is for a reason, propelling us deeper and further into a future that i wont let myself understand
if you just try, you cant see the thing. if you dont try nothing at all will happen. if you try so hard that you actually stop trying, your eyes crossed and delusional, youll see it. youll see it emerge from nonsense, from nothing. itll come into being like the 5 of us on the balcony, me going on and on and ryan seeing a star's trajectory across the sky. itll come into being like me realizing that nothing is sweeter than owning what i know-- that nothing is realer than believing in how i feel. itll come into being like denise saying we were all like "the anniversary party," that she was so glad she came because nothing in LA can rival this. i remember her laying on my floor in the midst of it, listening to the cds she had just complimented, her hands folded on her chest, her eyes closed and her face calm and understanding. maybe its easier for other people to understand it, because its really simple, its really just bones. but to think what it must have felt like for her- being literally thrown into omlette making with zel and alice serving nutella pancakes, the broken beer bottle and the 5 of us on my bed, elizabeth giving me CPR on the floor, the cloraseptic and ryan and cameron downstairs,alone, listening to music.
i want to know who is directing this. it couldnt get stranger; its neverending. there have been so many climaxes and deneumontes that its like we are back where we started, or we're on the mirror side of a one way window, a class of students on the other side, studying us and taking notes, speculating about how it ever got to this point and when it will all fall, finally and gracefully, to pieces.

we thought we could see the change

we buried a time capsule behind the tennis courts in the woods that led to the JCC, in the woods that we wished we could get lost in, in the woods that gathered our voices like a boomerang and shot them back to us, realer and rawer than they had left our mouths. it was full of the things that our lives were full of- an indiglo timex watch, our locker combinations, a saucony shoe, an advertisement for romeo and juliet, tiny clips of all our hair tangled together in a ziploc baggy, a cadbury creme egg. we got down on our hands and knees and found the piece of earth with the most give. we dug our fingers into it half hoping to stumble across a time capsule from the Brook Hill School days, a cinematic connection to something that has lingered namelessly and intangibly in our memories, in our collective unconsciouses, something we thought we should wish for. instead, a terrified worm and more and more dirt. our hands, filthy with the need to become immortal, groping and grasping onto the dirt as we threw it behind us. it all happened in the three-o-clock hour, the time the world seemed the fullest, right after the last bell rung and we were able, finally and freely, to talk about what had happened, and how nothing ever happens.
we would record the now and in a few years we would dig it up, maybe on graduation day, and it would seem so foreign, so timeless, so surprising. we would be reminded of ourselves. we thought that those little things, those prepackaged things that we wore or watched, would be, in a mere matter of years, the real essence of us.
the first weeks after we buried the time capsule were torture. it was like waiting on an infinite christmas. was it time yet? were we old enough yet? had there been enough space between the days ago that we buried it and now, our obviously altered selves, that the findings in the capsule would shock us?
soon though we stopped going behind the tennis courts to check on the site, marked by a terribly heavy rock with our initials in sharpie marker written in the curlicue, ancient looking script. soon it was homecoming and david mckee, cigarettes smoked out of bathroom windows and the boiler room episode of My So Called Life. soon it was the backs of movie theaters and eyeliner. soon it was lean cuisines and algebra. soon it was sitting on the bench at soccer games and rationalizing justin breaking up with me. soon it was reading poetry in jims backyard, diving into his pool with no clothes on, coming up for air and realizing that no one there except for hoodie could look at me and find the parts that were sacred enough to go in a box and be buried under the earth.
we did go back there, senior year, to open the box and see what was inside. we all remembered but we acted like we didnt, because even more familiar than the cadbury creme eggs was the need to be shocked, years later. we actually found the spot. our names, written on the underbelly of the giant rock, were still there in sharpie, and after we pushed the rock aside and sunk our fingers into the cool damp dirt, we were devastated to find the box still there, still looking new, still with our things in it, undecayed. some part of us had hoped that time would have eroded it, that the years in between then and now would be un-understandable, obscuring what once was in exchange for these new, different selves. sixth grade to senior year and all that had changed were the colors of our hair.
we looked at the parts of the box for a minute, quietly. the woods hadnt shrunk, we had grown bigger and the thrill of getting lost in them had become a silly impossibilty. it was nothing more than our school's backyard.
i asked what we should do now. we decided to re-bury it, deeper this time. there was no talk of coming back in 10 years, once we were all married and surely had forgotten the days of indiglo watches and walking to excerds to buy the cadbury creme eggs, watching romeo and juliet and feeling for the first time connected to a world that, before each other, had seemed to exist in the same way that the idea of the Brooke Hill School had.
there was no talk of it because something deeper had been buried with the box- the day in sixth grade and the second time, senior year. it had something to do with change, and how the only time that things are really different, unrecognizably different, is when nothing happens.
the things that last dont have to be buried. the things that last dont belong in a box. we dont have to meet 10 years later, when the world has folded in on itself, to realize that boy!have we changed but then again, chuckle chuckle, everythings just the same!
we needed eternity. we needed something beneath the dirt. we needed some hand to reach out from the earth and pull us to it, tell us that we belonged there too, that our faces were the same as the Brook Hill girls' black and white pictures of them with solid hair and unblemished faces.
we opened the box six years later, recognized all the things, and acted like that meant nothing had changed.

stagnant like home

we will heap ourselves on top of each other on a bed with sheets that dont stay put and we will go through my books and read parts our loud. sometimes we will listen to music and not say a word. we will pass out for a few minutes to the sound of ryan reading out facts about hurricanes and minimum wage and wake up with a start. for a second we wont remember where we are and then it will come back to us like a memory does when you hear the first notes of a song, and it will feel familiar and right that we have been here all day, surviving off the meal we had hours ago, the only time we left the house, and the half empty box of reduced fat wheat thins that we passed around to unidentifiable hands, all of us heavy with the weight of the day dying. the only time we would leave was to smoke a cigarette on the balcony, the brief interludes that punctuated an otherwise stagnant day. it was stagnant the way cartoons and the smell of bacon are. like home is a necessarily stagnant place. like the way everytime i left the room for a second and came back in it smelled like the combinations of all of our smells, all of us marinating in each other. hours and hours will pass, we will laugh about how i thought thursday was friday, and didnt know until today that i was terribly wrong and today is only saturday, we will talk about peppercinis and london, the gallup pole and how i cried when schwartzenegger was elected, as if it was all on the same plane of importance, as if kerry being 11 points behind bush is the same as wondering what would happen if one of them took my birth control. we will lay there and sink into ourselves and each others faces and soon it will feel like we are all just more framed posters on my walls, more clutter on the floor, more bunched up dirty blankets on my unmade bed.

weee weee weee all the way home

eddie the fat pincher fired me today. well, he did admit that it was his fault, for continuing to screw up the times and because for some mysterious reason my phone never rings when he calls and never receives the messages about his not being able to come today. he told me that it wasnt meant to be but that he would find another trainer for me to finish my 10 sessions with.
before i left today he gave me The Menu, the computer's decisions about what i should eat and what i should not eat, based on this questionaire that listed a bunch of foods and made me pick one to get rid of and one to replace it with. when i showed it to nick he said, so you have to dislike something to like something? i left the section called "starches" blank and eddie was confused. i told him i liked all of them. if i hadnt done that, maybe it would have been meant to be.

one of the suggested meals is this: 1 cup Soy Milk-Vitasoy Natural Light Oatmeal and 1 scoop Apex Fit Soy Drink Mix Vanilla
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
what is natural about VITASOY???? arent things that grow natural??? arent things that were once alive natural?? and am i supposed to just eat the Soy Drink Mix (vanilla) dry? snort it? this is a meal?
i love that it says "2 cups pasta noodles-spaghetti- cooked." like i would shove the dry uncooked noodles into my fat piggy mouth. like having it cooked is such a treat.
every day for meal three its crucial that i have 1 each Apex Lean Fat Burn (with Lipotropics). lipotropics. liposuction and tropical islands. ooooohhh doesnt that sound nice! yum yum, almost as good as the .75 cup asparagus (raw) and 1.5 each peach-medium-peeled. how do you peel a peach? why for fucks sake would you ever want to?
oh eddie, it wasnt meant to be. i will never be one of those girls with the matching Nike Goddess aerobic sweatsuits who says "hiiiii eddddiiiieee." i will never be your client of the month. in a week, in two, i will still have the same chunk of thigh fat for you to pinch.
i will still not bruise.

it was the answer that stumped you

i asked you once if you had ever run for your life. i used to keep you up at night asking questions like that, questions phrased specifically to make you wonder about the meaning of it before you wonder about the answer.
i used to press my bare back against the shiny cool wall, what must have been tile underneath the slick paint. it was so hot in that room but we couldnt leave the windows open because the pigeons would come in and whisper to us at dawn.
we slept on two twin beds pushed together on the floor. my side had pink sheets and yours had white ones. we jumped on them once when the carpenters came on, and sang so loudly that the neighbors banged on the wall and said WHAT THE FUCK!
one night, because i wasnt tired and because i felt all empty and rootless inside and needed to remind myself of what i already knew, i asked you what your best memory was. you told me about the trip to south america, and when you had been kayaking for a month and finally, when you turned the corner and the sun was setting and you realized that you had done this impossible thing, you wanted to cry. maybe you did cry. it was the best moment of your life.
you talked about it for a long time. i worried about the sun coming up. i hated it when the sun would come up and we would still be awake because the thought of not going to sleep at all depressed me more than the thought of sleeping all day, which was a horrible thought.
you were quiet for a minute and then you asked me the same question. i hadnt thought about what i was going to say but when you asked me i remembered it perfectly, like i was driving past it as it happened.
i told you that i must have been around 5 years old. my mom was still in her business clothes but she had taken off her contacts and put her glasses on. we went to pizza hut and i got a personal pan pizza to go. we went to brother bryan park and i ate it on the bench in front of the swings as the sun went down in a monochromatic autumn sky. after i finished it we swung until it was totally dark.
you thought i was lying. you said what are you not telling me. you sort of snorted air out your nose and in the dark i felt your eyes rolling. you turned over and curled up, and i lay on my back and dared the sun to show through your cheap blinds. you were angry that you shared so much and got nothing back. i shrugged my shoulders and told you that i didnt know what to tell you.
it was so sad and strange that that was the thing you thought i was lying about.

the eye of the storm

they used to get ready for hurricanes together. carl would make giant tape X's on the windows, margie would fill up the bathtub with water so the toilet would flush. they would go, at the very onset of the warnings, to the Wal-Mart super center and buy an economy box of Winston's and 2 jugs of buttermilk. these are the things they needed to live.

they would sit on the back porch, the screened in one that she added when she moved in, amongst the chicken flower pots and coke bottle windchimes. they would smoke and rock, smoke and rock, and wait for the storm to come around the corner. they only went inside when the stinging bites of rain could reach them at the back of the porch. they would lock the doors and smoke and rock, inside amongst the ancient bottle of tequila with the fat worm at the bottom and the painting of the shore that margie's daughter did 30 years ago. they listened to old big band records and pretened not to remember the times when he would come over and margie would be drunk, almost cross eyed and drippily happy. instead they talked about doing the jitterbug and when catherine, margie's daughter's daughter, would dance all around the house wearing Margies's old hand-sewn apron and Margie's mothers giant, lopsided bonnet.

they wouldnt talk in the worst of it. sometimes windows would break and they would smoke through it. the wind would whine so loud the sounds of the record player wouldnt bother to compete. nothing made them flinch. there was no basement to hide in, like they both knew Margie's daughter and Catherine were doing their house upstate. to be worried made no difference. it was a waste of energy and if there was one thing they felt they had nothing left to give it was that.

they used to get ready for hurricanes together. carl wouldnt bother calling before leaving his trailer to head to Margies. he knew that she knew- like the feeling in your bones when the air is fertile for storms. she knew when to expect him.

he died from cancer before they ever got swept away by a storm. they tried to smoke and rock through it, they tried to listen to big band and avoid painful memories. they tried to, but on the days before he coughed up blood and she had no one to call to come help, all they talked about was the trip they took to Dauphin Island with Margie's daughter and Catherine, when Catherine was a toddler and it started to rain so hard on the drive home that they couldnt help but laugh at the weight of it, when they pulled over to the shoulder and waited beneath wavering trees and a bottomless sky that made the earth think it would never be thirsty again. it was the memory that kept coming up in conversation, the thing that made them want to laugh through tears, an emotion neither one of them had felt in years.

those last days before the blood margie prayed for a hurricane, even though it was the middle of summer and she knew it was futile; she prayed for one to come and eat them both alive, to wipe out the fact that they ever existed, to suck them into that enormous menacing sky. sickness was worse than those storms because sickness singles you out, it leaves people behind who are still well, who dont know what its like to look into the eye of the thing and just give up.

she gets ready for hurricanes alone now. she does it all, like he was there with her. the smoking, the rocking, the big band, the bathtub full of water.

except now, her's are the only memories shes avoiding.

this is a memory.

they woke me up that morning because they were only going to be here for another day, and there were things that still had to be checked off the list. i, heavy with wine from the night before, filthy footed and achy all over, drug myself out of my bed, stepping over little makeshift palates on the floor. the days after these nights our house looks so quiet, like every corner and every square are still-lifes from the night before- Beer Bottle with a Half-eaten Block of Pepperjack Cheese, Puddle of Wine with Cigarette Butt, Splotch of White Wax with Singed Polly-Pocket Figurine. The door to the balcony is always open and it always smells the same- stale and complicated.
I drove the four of us to Malibu, because none of them had ever seen the Pacific Ocean. I dreaded it the entire trafficy way there- with the air conditioning not working, us with no supplies that make going to the beach more pleasant, like a blanket or a swimsuit. We waited to turn into the parking lot for half an hour, paid ten dollars and then there we were, me trying to wiggle out of staying there for too long.

I only knew Thad well out of the three of them- we went to Brazil together from Alabama six years ago for a volunteer trip. the main thing i remember was these 2 kids playing where their yard met the street, playing with a giant dead crow. they were both pulling his wings in opposite directions and spinning it around like the may pole i had to weave a ribbon around in 6th grade. my biggest fear that day, the one that paralyzed me, blushed me from the inside out, was that my fucking flower wreath would fall off. or that someone would notice the fact that i was wearing one at all, which no one else was.
we skinny dipped in a river in Brazil and ran through the halls of the hotel in sao paulo half naked and proud that we now had something to say we had done in "never have i ever." it was never awkward with him. i was never afraid of that one moment when our eyes catching would mean that we had to kiss, or say something about kissing, or I had to feel guilty about not wanting to kiss him. we stayed in touch but last christmas, when i met up with him at the IHOP in birmingham, his face upon seeing me for the first time in 2 years was panicked, confused. i knew he would think i had changed, maybe i even made it worse by wearing an outfit i knew would shock him. but it wasnt as funny as i thought it was- it was sad to see him look like that, like the little bird in that childrens book that asks everyone "are you my mother?" are you my friend? the one i used to recognize?

we walked towards the sea, the labor day crowds lingering at the ocean's lip. apparently everyone decided to go to the beach that day- the day before labor day, when there wasnt a cloud in the sky, when there was no smog obscuring the horizon and nothing to do but scoot your bum down in the lawn chair, cross your arms and smile at all the kids squealing at the waves. we took our shoes off and put them in this sad little pile that paled in comparison to all the stacks of beach towels and coolers and boards. we stood there, me, thad and his two friends looking at this infinite thing that they had only imagined. i decided to let them decide what to do as i went to the bathroom.
on the way back they had taken their shirts off and brett and drew were talking to each other, arms folded over their chests. thad stood, arms gangly dangling beside his lanky body, just looking out at the ocean. my feet were burning on the sand. my dress was sticking to my body in all the wrong places, wine from the night before still sloshing around in my veins.
considering all the people out there it looked so stable. for all the splashing (eyes closed as the wave licks you) and yelling to the shore, it looked like one giant motion, like heat coming off the concrete on an august afternoon in alabama.
i had to start running the sand was so hot. i ran from the bathroom that overlooked it all, to our skimpy pile, to where thad and brett and drew were standing. i took thad's hand and i only had to give him the tinest yank until he came without me needing to say it. we were part of it- first our ankles and then all the way under until we were swallowed by it, still holding hands.
we came up for air after being trampled by a wave, by the biggest wave that has ever been, by this monster of a wave that took us under and wouldnt let us come up depite all the struggling, and our limbs were all tied up in each other and i wasnt sure where i ended and where the water began, and when it finally did spit us out all i could see beneath the mass of my wet hair was thad's glasses, hanging lopsided from one ear, his face shocked and hysterical.

they

they met. they looked they talked they listened. she left. she dreamt. she waited. she didnt wait. he waited. he didnt wait.

they met. they looked they talked they listened. they cried. she yelled. it echoed.
they sat. they sat they sat they sat. they held. she wondered. he asked. she answered.

they slept. she woke. she woke. she woke. she wondered. she left. she returned.
he didnt wait.

what happens when these things happen

there wasnt enough blood
for how much glass
(like a water balloon against a door
a childish prayer for someone to come out)
splattered and splayed
still and staying
put.

the sounds of dogs barking woke me up. an angry un-understandable language, layers of it, building and building upon each other until this scarily silent breaking point. i sat on the stairs and wasnt tired. i watched the sun come up and i remembered how the sound of his voice made the car tremble.
something about pushing so far that the pain of it becomes a relief. something about remembering what we already know, about being forced to remember it in a way we havent ever before. something about laughing in the thick of it, when i thought we might as well crash into a concrete wall (theres no need to be afraid of him grabbing the wheel and hurdling us into our untimely deaths. he already was).

the light came through my curtains and i lulled myself to sleep with the sound of their "s"s echoing in the kitchen.
i realized that sometimes you cant see the blood until the sun comes up the next day, when the bits of glass drown in the puddle of it.

Girl C

A lush red curtain parts. On the stage, there are many boys and girls. Some are standing, some are sitting. The ones standing are holding a stumpy glass in one hand, the opposite hip cocked to the side. The ones sitting are turned in towards someone. It's outside, under a canopy of trees and white christmas tree lights.

A light falls upon Boy A and Girl A. Boy A is sitting on the edge of a long couch. Girl A is sitting on a chair, facing him, at the end of the couch. They look alike- blond hair, invisible, unblemished skin, their frames so hollow that their backs curve in on themselves. They are talking and looking at each other and have been for a long time.

The light on them dims and another one reveals Boy B and Girl B, a few spaces down on the couch. Boy B is slouched over, legs spread apart, facing forwards. His face is familiar and sweet, his features round, all of his edges slightly blurred. Girl B is facing him, tiny legs crossed like an arrow pointing towards him, one arm resting on top of the couch, behind Boy B. They are talking less than Girl and Boy A, more nodding and glances at each other. Less hand movement, less directed conversation.

Girl C and Boy C are standing by the bar, both leaning on it with their forearms. They are both tall; Boy C has brown hair and an evenly tanned face. It is the face of advertisements and posters. The girl leans toward him and says something right on top of his lips. He kisses her.

The lights dim and little helpers all dressed in black come change the set. Lights come up and the stage is split into 4 different scenarios. The first one is illuminated: Girl A and Boy B in a bathroom, hands flying over the other one's body with no want of detail, texture. Clothes are off, the shower is on.

Lights reveal the next sliver of the stage while the other 3 are in darkness. Boy A and Girl C are on a bed eating wheat thins out of a box. They are in pajamas though its mid-afternoon; Girl C has head thrown back laughing. A third person, a boy, walks in and laughs at the sight of them. He gets on the bed and eats some wheat thins.

That section disappears into darkness as the next set is lit up. It shows Girl C and Boy B, at a candlelit table in a restaurant. She has her hands folded in her lap, she looks disatisfied. His elbows are on the table. They are clearly not on a first date.

The last part of the stage comes into sight, revealing Boy A and Girl A. They are cooking in a kitchen, wearing aprons and looking purposefully ill-suited in them. The Beta Band is playing; they are happy.

Another set change, back to the original outdoor bar. Boy A walks up to Girl C and she nods, gathering her things. Boy B and Girl B are already up, ready to leave. The six of them fall into a single file line as they weave their way outside, crisscrossing the invisible paths of countless others.

baby fat

today a man named eddie used this little scale/pincher to grab my fat and measure it. he squeezed my oprah (the fat behind my tricep), my love handle, and then he had to really dig up a good amount of that tough non- doughy fat on my thigh. he said it would hurt. he asked if i bruise easily. it did, and i dont. it was somewhere between the second time he had to take my measurements (because the body fat percentage seemed too high, {hes been doing this for years, he knows what that much looks like} even for me!) and the PULL UPs he made me do (which i cant, clearly, do even one of, which made people in gym actually laugh as i hung there, dead weighted), that i asked myself what made me get a personal trainer to begin with. and then i remembered the day i joined this gym, the first day i had ever met the fat pincher, how sticky and damp my skin was under my overalls as Jorge the membership counselor got a good chunk, the way he assured me that it may be a rude awakening but it was a necessary one. i remembered the little number appearing as the tongs chomped down on the part of my arm that wigglees separately when i wave goodbye. Why did i get a personal trainer? Jorge made me do it. And the fact that that day, I hated my body.

But not today. Which is why i wasn't quite as motivated to do a "circuit" of sqauts and side lunge things with a thick rubber band around my ankles begging my legs to meet. Maybe it was the fact that last night, i washed my feet in my tub after jared's party and just sat there, for what felt like 30 or 40 minutes, loving the way the hot water felt against my tired toes and the way my feet looked, all relieved and smiley because they werent in those heels anymore. but i think it started before that-- the it-all-being-ok-ness, the not being willing to do so many reps that i feel like my muscles are going to rip my skin off. it started after ryan and i arrived at jared's, my first time at a usc party, with all those usc people, in 10 months. it started when i saw gary and for the first time got him. and then i saw alex and for the first time i got him. and maybe i got jared for the first time too, though i think he's served me the plate more over the years than the rest of them.

but it was strange, all of us talking, since really the only way i had known gary or alex was class, and i hadnt ever entertained the thought that being in class was being in a zoo- its constantly being watched and studied, youre always on. last night they weren't, and when alex said "yeah i just dont really like to talk in class" i got it! oh, its not that youre quiet! i thought i understood you! how stupid jessica- that would be like saying you understood polar bear's habits by watching them in the greenish dry igloo at the birmingham zoo- it would be like saying all polar bears pace around in circles, all polar bears have splotchy patches of hair, all polar bears have forgotten that you are the enemy.

gary made me laugh in a way that i havent in a long time. not only with the realization that he was so infinitely more than what he had ever let me see before (or what i had ever known to want to see) but with his refreshing unselfconsciousness. lil' val kilmer. man, it was nice to be tickled pink by someone other than someone who knows how specifically to tickle you. to be accidentally delighted by someone.

ryan and i realized that we are the brother and sister that we have never had. being only children and living together now and being the way we are, both so fucking similar and both so fucking stubborn that we have to argue about it. when im bored i pick a fight with him. when i know he's right i still argue until he puts his head in his hands and says "well i want to die." but after every time, no matter how irritating or how relationship-alteringly huge the arugement was, we have no choice but to make it OK again. we're family. we're part of a family that we are unwilling to see fall apart. we're doing what we couldnt with our biological families. we're patching things up, we're a set of lungs constantly re-healing after every drag of a cigarette. and realizing it, though i guess ive always known it, makes every interaction with him so much easier. it erases the conversation we had in the kitchen the other day- "why do we fight so much ryan?"... "i dont know. " it makes it easier to breathe.

i called lauren last night before i washed my feet (we used to wash our feet in that giant tub, in that white beachy bathroom, because there is something about the floor in this house that makes your feet BLACK by the end of night, caked in it, a visible reminder that the night actually happened, that if all that dirt stuck then maybe something else did too) and left a long long message on her phone. her phone which is now is new jersey. with her. which is a far away place from here. which makes me sad, until i realize that she is like the paper- she is encompassing and forgiving and enveloping. she doesnt spit it back at you, she doesnt tell you that its anything but OK. she is the one right now who is whispering "still give your plate- someone will like whats on it! someone will be perfectly satisfied with the meal youve offered them." and that isnt sad.

it isnt sad at all!
its all OK!
(even the baby fat??)
YES!
(even the tears?)
YES! That too!

what do we do now? now that nothing is pushing us to change?

slotted spoon

i keep finding her bobby pins all over my house