flash

"...and then something happened that she didnt take well, and it was pretty much over after that."

"what happened? i mean, if you dont mind me asking?"

"i think right now id rather not talk about it."

she was walking from school to her car. she had to park blocks away because of street cleanings on thursday, and she had to move the trashcans from the curb so she could squeeze her car in the tiny space. that day she hit the van's bumper behind her, but not even hard enough to look around in case anyone saw. it had been raining that week, she had spent the night with him the night before and listened to the sound of the rain as it mingled with his sleepy murmurs.

she was tired, she always was after school. her feet hurt and she felt fat. no matter how good she felt when she left the house as soon as she crossed the street to campus she began to notice her body pushing and inching in ways that other people's didnt seem to.

she got out her keys and turned the sparkly wand upside down, watching the little barge that said "gulf shores" float to the top. she hated stepping on cracks but was too deflated to care. in the mornings, she was diligent about it, never stepping on them but refusing to walk on the pavement to avoid them altogether. she was always awake and alive in the morning, even if she hadnt gone to sleep until the day was being born.

a man in a long grey coat emerged from an alley to her right. she wasnt scared of men, like her friends were. she always made eye contact, she didnt carry mace and she had never taken a self defense course. if something happened to her, if someone grabbed her or groped her or sexually assaulted her, no amount of training would help. she was wired with a certain capacity to fight back, she was sure of it, but knowing how to throw them on the ground never seemed practical.

he was one house length in front of her standing two cars down from hers. the day was dying, it was dull and tired like she was. she looked at him, he was looking straight ahead across the street but he wasnt going anywhere. her bag was digging into her shoulder. she was only a few steps away when he turned to her, purposefully. her heart bit the lining of her chest. she stopped walking.

he was old, probably over sixty, and he had a long, saggy face. he had a mass of brown hair and dirty, unwavering eyes. she had no idea what he wanted, or why he hadnt lunged at her yet. she wanted to say something but she wasnt sure what.
they looked at each other for a few seconds and his hands reached up to the lapels of his ankle length coat. it was incongruous with the rest of the the environment- the palm trees, the flowers. her brow furrowed. she wasnt scared, but her heart was beating.

right before it happened he closed his eyes, like he was falling into water backwards, or taking communion. and then, as his hands spread apart and his arms straightened and his naked body was exposed to her, his eyes opened and watched her watching.

she threw her arms down straight, letting her keys and her cumbersome heavy bag fall to the sidewalk, the one with the cracks that she was too tired to avoid. she screamed and when she did her own eyes closed, but the fleshy, hungry image of his naked body was still there, hanging behind her eyelids like a christmas tree ornament. she collapsed to her knees and he was gone. she wished he had took something tangible, or done something to her that she could quantify, something that she felt would ellict the sobs that were relentlessly diving out of her mouth. she rocked back and forth and eventually, she laid her head down in front of her bent knees and touched her nose to the pavement, screaming, sobbing. when the mother of three who lived in the house by the alley found her, she was asleep, her nose nestled in a crack, a drool stain by her face.

shalu thinks of america

shalu is a girl. she lives in india. shalu is beautiful. she is tall and skinny and has huge doe eyes. shalu is smart.

shalu's mother arranged a marriage for her. shalu got married. shalu's husband is in the army. they hardly ever see each other. shalu writes her husband letters. one weekend, shalu's husband came home. she had not seen him in three months. shalu could tell that he wanted her very badly. he told her about missing her, and about not seeing girls for months. shalu and her husband had sex.

shalu's husband left the next day and shalu was alone in her house. something felt different to shalu, something about the way the air moved for her when she walked through it. shalu felt sick. shalu often felt sick. shalu was too thin.

shalu waited for his letters but it was difficult for them to reach her because of the border police. shalu got sick every morning. shalu cried and held her stomach. she thought she was pregnant.

shalu did not know how to take care of a baby. she was the youngest in a family of 4 girls. her father drank himself to death for lack of sons. shalu did not want to raise a family alone, without a husband. she knew what it looked like there, and it was a desparate life. it was a hard life. shalu's life had already been too hard. shalu worried about her husband getting killed. one day, he called her. she said, "i am pregnant." he told her she was too sick and too thin. she cannot have a baby, he said.

she sat on the edge of her bed and smoothed her sari. it was red and ornate, it was custom to wear this for months after a marriage. she wondered what that meant- you cannot have a baby.

but i am, thought shalu. but i am.

shalu decided to go to delhi. it had been three months, she had no period and was throwing up every morning. she could feel the baby in her tiny concave stomach. she touched it and said she was sorry. she said she was so sorry, but nothing in her life had been less her fault. she touched the dune on her stomach and willed the baby to understand this.

shalu got on a train to go to delhi. she had an appointment, she would have an abortion. she wished she was in america. in america, she imagined, you dont have to take 12 hour train rides to have an abortion. shalu closed her eyes and thought of america. shalu folded her hands above her stomach and closed her eyes. she did not sleep.

shalu is a girl.

justin, part three

i didnt know that stagant florida night that one day over christmas break, years later after i had moved and he had gotten kicked out of college, justin would cry to me in will's driveway; i didnt know that he would look down at the pavement and say to me

why can i not stop thinking about it.

i didnt know that night as i held a beach towel together with one hand and a half drunk bottle of cheap red wine in the other, as i stood on the wooden stairs that led to the beach and listened to him break and crumble in front of all of us, that he would beg me for a kiss under the clear winter sky as i was leaving in hoodies car.

the air was suffocating, even at night. it was senior florida; our only chaperone was the manager at a restaurant judson worked at, a 30 year old named gray who insisted on showing us his penis piercing and offered us lines of coke from the top of his dresser. the night we graduated justin kissed kristas friend natalie. it hurt but it was satisfying too, because i had perfected the art of telling myself that i was better, that he would never find anyone like me, that he was lost and aching and i had made it feel better and that scared him away. that she was just some girl, and thats why he could do it- he knew he wouldnt ever have to think about it or her or who he was when he was with her, or without her, or who he was becoming in relation to who she was becoming.

i dont remember what set him off. i was walking down the stairs to the beach, i remember feeling drunk and happy, i remember the way that week felt like a dollhouse, like something eeriely real but too quaint and perfect to really exist. like something you can manipulate and rearrange, like something you can keep in a certain position for the rest of your life.

he came out of the sliding doors to the kitchen of the house we were renting. he had come along, of course, because he had been coming on these annual trips since before i or most of us even knew they happened. it was an underground operation, but established enough to have a name, "senior florida," and rules- there had to be some sort of chaperone, and the left over money from the senior t-shirt sales would go towards the cost of renting the house. the school knew it happened but, like so many things at altamont, was ignored because we had a reputation to uphold of being the liberal ones, the wild ones. even the headmaster loved the idea of it.

i was trying to steady myself on the way down when i heard him call my name. this was months after the domincan republic trip. my finger still had a bump on it but had stopped hurting me long before he had. there were people on the porch- judson and his girlfriend, molly and maybe a few others. i was on my way to find hoodie and ryne on the beach, to try and tell if there was a storm coming by the way the waves crashed against the shore.

"what the fuck is wrong with you?"

i turned around, carefully keeping the towel above my bathing suit. i didnt say anything, but i opened my mouth like i was going to.

"its over! it never really happened!"

my eyes widened as i tried to make room for the tears.

"i know...i mean, i didnt say it wasnt."

"i can kiss whoever i want to! i like natalie ok! i dont like you anymore!"

i started walking back down the stairs, trying to make them out underneath the tipsiness and the stinging gloss of tears.

"dont walk away- i want you to say something. just say yes or no- do you understand that its over?"

everyone on the porch was silent but no one was looking anywhere but straight ahead. i had stopped walking and was looking at him from between two wooden rungs on the porch.

"yes, justin. i understand."

"OK" he nodded violently as if to say, well then. thats all.

i gathered the towel up and started running for hoodie and ryne. i remember the pavement on the street between our house and the beach, and the noise my bare feet made with each slap. i found them huddled by a giant dune, counting the seconds between waves like it was thunder and lightening.

i didnt know that night that even after years of boyfriends, after relationships that burst into flames in front of my terrified eyes and relationships that disentegrated like candy in my mouth, no words from a boy i used to kiss, a boy whose ribs id counted with my lips in the dark, would stab me quite as hard.

justin, part two

the clouds were white against the navy sky. we were 5 nights into our trip. will grant had a house in the dominican republic complete with a maid and guards with guns that stood watch outside his one story villa, and he had invited 10 of us there for spring break. i had been dating justin for almost three months, consistently unsettled but saved by his sporadic bursts of sweetness, like the note he wrote me in mr. porter's class, or when he told reddiker to get out of the front seat so i could sit there. these moments were tiny, they should have been expected. but when someone is treating you with such a regular indifference those things become better, more satisfying than the nicest thing a nice person does.

we had been standing out on the golf course. i was upset with him for blatantly ignoring me at the bar, for talking to that girl while i had to sit, embarassed with mrs. grant and molly, pretending i didnt notice. i never got mad with him. i tried to be always stable, always understanding. i thought if i was those things he would concede, he would let me finally see what i knew was alive underneath the facade- the little bud pushing through the soil.

he acted exhausted and threw up his hands. he told me why didnt i just go kill myself. he would say things like that, sensational things i knew he didnt mean, just to get a rise out of me. just so i would get mad at him and scream and yell. i never did.

my mom's first husband used to tell her she had peasant ankles. from what i gather he was always saying things like that- things cloaked in carelessness but rooted in jealousy or spite. she never yelled at him, she never screamed until the blood rushed to her face, until the glass broke surrounding the anger she kept inside of her. and when she divorced him, and finally did scream, he said to her
if you had only done that while we were married.

but that night, night five of the trip, as everyone else was out in the back patio playing drinking games, trying to get greg so drunk he did that jabbering nonsense speak, he won. i gave in, i gave up. i still was warm and encompassing, i didnt let him see anything other than the hurt i hoped would hurt him. we went back outside and patrick looked at me. he had understood all along more than the rest of them. we had been friends before they were friends, he had more of an allegiance to me than justin.

i sat on the periphery of the game as justin lit a cigarette and opened a beer. patrick said he was out and he walked into the kitchen. i followed him and as soon as we were both safe within the confines of the faded floral wallpapered room, i started to cry. he hugged me and said,

"how could you do this to yourself. you of all people."

"i dont know, i dont know. i dont know what it is. i keep telling myself that its better to be this way with him, to take all his shit, than to be without him. to have to go back to school and see him and not be with him."

"how could you say that. how could you say that" he whispered.

"what do i do now? just tell me what to do, tell me how is all going to work itself out..."

"thats the thing thats so strange- you always know what to do. you always have. but with this...its just so scary to watch you disappear."

there was a simon and garfunkel song that i had been listening to the whole trip- slip slidin away. the line that made me close my eyes was "my love for yous so overpowerin im afraid that i will disappear." i knew this wasnt love. but patrick was right, i was dissolving into sand with everything he said or didnt say. i was letting myself.

that night i went into justins room and i said it isnt working out and he said no its not. and i left and didnt cry, i wasnt even sad i was just numb and sunburned and drunk and hungover and tired.

and he came into the room i was sleeping in with molly in the middle of the night and stood in the doorway and whispered my name. i awoke with a start and looked at him and i shook my head and he slid down the doorframe and sat there as i fell back asleep.

i spent the next day avoiding him, and by evening the three girls- molly, allen and i, were taking shots of rum and chasing it with peanut butter. they were proud of me, it was cause for celebration they said. i had bought this ring that day at the lip of a giant outdoor auditorium. i was there with tommy, it was right before sunset, and there was this little cart filled with turquoise jewlery. this ring was reversible- on one side there was a tiny turquoise stone, and when you separated the two silver bands and flipped it over, there was a tiny brown stone. the brown stone was ugly and sad, but i loved that i could wear it with the turquoise facing out and never let anyone know what was underneath it.

that night as we were piling into the two dae woos, drunk already, i hadnt said anything to justin since the night before. we were all working out who went in what car- justin said he called shot gun but i had already, and molly was in the front of will's car, so i, without looking at him, ran for the front seat of patricks car and opened the door. justin was right behind me and as i was trying to get in without letting him in, he slammed the door on my middle finger. i screamed, i screamed so loud.

his face turned white.

"oh shit oh god are you ok?"

my finger was immediately swollen. i sat in the passengers seat, squeezing it to make the pain stop. everyone from the other car was now standing around me, molly saying she would go get ice and patrick trying to see if it was broken.

fuck this hurts.

there was a huge goose egg between the top and middle knuckle. it was beginning to turn blue already, it was pulsing and the pain was threading its way down my hand. justin just stood there with his hands clasped behind his neck. molly came out with the ice and put it on my finger.

"say youre sorry, justin" she said. they were all waiting for it but i hadnt been- i had never expected that from him. it was quiet for a moment, the ten of us gathered around the car, dunked into sobriety. i looked up at justin. he had dark cirlces under his eyes, i wondered if he had stayed in my doorway for the entire night.

"im sorry. i really am. i really didnt mean to."

i couldnt say anything back. patrick took the ice off my finger, lifted it up into the light of the moon, and said

"its not broken."

justin, part one

justin could be nice to me- like the night i scored the goal at the soccer tournament and my face was sunburned and we lay in will's moms bed and he said he had never felt this way before. or when i walked into allen's house in the midst of them playing beer pong and he grabbed me around the waist in front of all of them, wade and michael and jimmy and theo, and kissed me loudly on the cheek. i wouldnt have started dating him if i didnt truly believe those moments had the potential to exist- but i also wouldnt have started dating him if i thought he was the kind of guy who was willing to be that way with everyone. he was indifferent and crass, he was cool and unattainable. he had never dated anyone at altamont. i was a year older than him but he was still more intimidating to pretty much everyone in my senior class than pretty much anyone else in the years before.

it started the night that we won against indian springs. the night that hoodie, erika and i held hands and stood in their bleachers, honestly vowing that if nicky just made that three pointer that would win the game for us, we would change everything bad about ourselves, we would become clean and pure again, if he could only just make that shot. and he did, and we all rushed the court and cried because they had beaten us in our schools gym just a month before, and now we were doing it to them. we were triumphant, entitled, proud. five of us piled into my car and drove to the party at naomi's house, singing to the counting crows and reliving, reliving, reliving. she was the one who always had parties for the special occasions- graduation and new years eve.i walked upstairs and he was leaning up against a pool table with his ankles crossed, consistent with his jordan catalono image, the one that made me swoon and feel small at once. he motioned me over to him, to give him a hug because that night was all about hugs and cheers and beer bongs and loud, red faced guys seeing who could chug it the fastest. all in the name of our victory.

he was obviously on drugs, and i had stopped caring about getting his attention freshman year, when i realized that it was just about everyone else's goal as well. i learned quickly with him, as it is with most men who arent anything but a gilded facade,that the more you arent impressed, the more they have to do to convince you otherwise.

he smelled like gasoline. sweeter than gasoline maybe, but still slightly jarring, slightly intoxicating. my hands were around his neck.

"that was exciting" he said into my hair.

"yep."

i pulled back but he kept his hands around my waist. we had been friends, or the closest thing a girl could be to justin's friend, for years. i was friends with the lesser intimidating guys in the group he hung out with. i watched wrestling and saturday night live with them at will's house, i went to the soccer games and had no curfew. he was looking me in my eyes.

"this feels really good."

i didnt want to ask what that meant. i just wanted it to be the last thing that was said, so that even if the moment dissipated into nothingness that sentence would still exist.

then he kissed me. in front of everyone, as he half sat on the pool table with me in between his legs. the webbing where his forefinger and thumb attach was right under my ear. he was the best kisser that ever was. we stopped and looked at each other. he was all different shades of brown- brown hair that dipped into his tan face, brown melty eyes framed by long brown eyelashes. to my right, on the couch by the door, krista sat. krista, who flirted with everyone, who had kissed him regularly for years; krista, who was supposedly one of my best friends but who i never fully believed. krista, with her bow legs and straight dirty blond hair, with her big boobs and flat stomach. krista, who we still dont think ever deserved the heartbreak she caused. she shook her head and mouthed the word "no." i looked back at him.

"want to go somewhere else?"

"yes."

the century club

we got the cheapest beer we could find. since the purpose of the night was for each of us to drink 100 shots in 100 minutes, we needed quantity, not quality. we drove down the two lane road to the tom thumb gas station, the one that sold those huge aligator floats with the black plastic handles, and ryan, the oldest out of the three of us, bought a 24pack of Natural Light. ross made him get a can of menthol dip, and i said siiick like i always did and they laughed and bought two.

the night was clear; there had been a storm the day before that brought in layers of seaweed, the rough, branchy kind that made swimming in the ocean unappealing. we were sunburnt, like we were every year by the second day of our trip, and my skin was sticky from the aloe. ryan always got burnt on his shoulders, but i never noticed unless he was sitting down shirtless, like he usually was at lunch, becuase he was so much taller than me. ross, tranlucent skinned ross, was sunburnt all over, the fresh pink color that looked raw and painful. his whitish blond buzz cut couldnt cover up his red scalp; no matter how much paulette, his mother who put 100 SPF on her skin underneath her shirt, underneath her hat that shaded everything around her, underneath the umbrella that she rarely ventured from, warned him, he always ended up fried. it was a seasonal thing, a yearly loosing of our virginity, something that we knew going in would hurt but something that we longed for in november, when we hadnt seen each other in months and our skin was cool and pale underneath sweatshirts. they were jealous of me; my sunburn always turned brown by the morning.

we had been doing this for fifteen years- the three of us and our three mothers going to the beach for 4 days every summer. it started when ross was 2, i was 3, and ryan was 8. ross used to bite me so hard i would bleed and paulette would threaten him with the wooden spoon that never got used in front of me. ryan would play video games those first few years as ross and i napped, before the three of us became friends, before we became family, before we became more than family. paulette and my mother were roommates at auburn, and delores, ryan's mother, was paulette's ex-husband's best friend's wife. it was meant to be, for the planes to intersect the way they did. thats the way it goes with families- if one person had been assigned a different dorm room, it wouldnt have ever come into being.

we got the beer and took it back to the house. we rented a different house every year at a beachside community called seaside, this magical snowglobe where all the houses have tin roofs and white picket fences, where all the roads are cobblestone and all the houses are pastel. every summer the three of us sit on the screened in porch (they all have them) after the moms have gone to bed and talk about sex. ryan was the one who got me used to the idea of sex- what i had to look forward to, worry about, be embarassed about. but that summer, by the time i was 18, i had stories of my own, stories i always dramatized because really, they werent that dramatic, that crazy, or even that sexual. we brought the entire case out and sat in rocking chairs, facing the still, salty night.

we started the drinking game. the century club. 100 shots in 100 minutes. by 20 i was drunk and chasing every shot with a bite of peg's, ross's grandmother who bought me stockings for christmas and hosted me and my mom for easter every year, pound cake, which was, other than paulettes sweet pickles, my mom's bloody marys and delores's rice krispie treats, the most highly anticipated food of the year. nothing tastes more like the beach, like sand sticking to skin, like huge damp towels, like that yearly trip, than peg's pound cake. we kept drinking, getting louder and lewder, more explicit with our descriptions of sexual encounters or drug experiences (another thing that ryan taught me about), still rocking and breathing in the heavy, humid florida air.

at some point, probably around 70, we decided to go to the beach, something we had never done before at night. we were barefoot and i was wrapped in a blanket from the couch, its softness somehow cooling. we ran the whole way, our beers splashing, wondering what was going on in all those other houses. if there were three other sibling/bestfriend/cousins getting drunk on one of those porches talking about blow jobs and big boobs and acid. we figured not, since no one like us, since nothing like this, had ever existed before. we were out of breath and yelling to each other, my feet stinging from slapping the red cobblestone and my blanket dragging like a train. it was laughable, as so many things with them were, just because it was them. just because we only saw each other that one time a year, and every single thing that someone said or did was so weighed by the potential of becoming memory, nostalgia, it was either laugh or tear inducing. the best ones were both.

we got to the pavilion and looked out at the ocean. you couldnt see the continents of seaweed, there were no children on floaties or fat fathers. there were no umbrellas or coolers or people reading books. the moon was almost full and reflected on the water like a tiny world, suspended and buoyant above so many other worlds, so many less neatly contained universes. we stopped when we got to the top of the wooden stairs that led down to the sand. it was the most vast thing i had seen- it had no seams, no end. it was perfectly calm, perfectly undisturbed, and yet wholly alive, violently throbbing, waiting to be discovered.

i dropped my blanket and started running down the long stairway with the shallow wide stairs. they followed me, the clumps of our bare feet echoing back to no one or nothing else but us.

we're running now, towards the water, giggling and drunk, unsteady but sure. we're unstoppable now, we're where we belonged all along, with no one else but us, in a place thats known us as boiled down, as condensed versions of ourselves. as the truth, though we have yet to understand.

we're in the water, floating. theyre near enough to me that i can sense them, but i wouldnt know who i was touching if i did. theres a thump, thump, thump sound underwater and i say

do you hear that?

ryan says, yeah what is it?

i listen again and it sounds like someone stomping. it sounds like a hearbeat.

its us, i think.

it would be impossible to explain where we came from, the three of us. it would be needless and un-understanable. we came from each other, we came from places that have never collided and never will. we came from the same heartbeat. and we didnt.

i imagined us like a giant, asymetrical starfish bobbing up and down in the center of the moon's reflection. it is impossible to know how we got there.

but with family, that question is futile.

red sox

there was something about that little boy in the stands with his hands covering his eyes. his dad was holding him up as the camera zoomed in on him and the announcers kept on talking. he didnt know he was being filmed. he was terrified, this kid was, but if you asked him why it would have seemed so general, so vague, so obvious. the good guys might lose. they need to win. why? because they havent in a long time. because they arent supposed to. because it would be historical, unforgettable, unmatched.
but still, in spite of or maybe because of all those exciting words just lingering in the air like ripe balloons, it was so scary. it was so scary he couldnt watch. but he was- he would crack open his fingers a little bit. he was telling himself that he wasnt watching, but he was. and he always had the option of just closing that gap and erasing it all. hiding from it all.
like he didnt trust his eyelids. he had to use his hands to cover it up because his eyes would have betrayed him. they would have opened as jeter got a home run, or as damon struck out. and it would have been ruined, tainted, real. but if he kept his hands over his eyes, letting enough light through so that he still knew it was happening, he could be his own filter.
i think though that that kid was shielding himself more from the faces around him than from what was happening on the field. because the only thing worse than seeing your favorite team get beaten in a monumental game, in a game that shouldnt even be happening, is seeing your dads face watching it all fall apart.
and the kid had no idea that his face was all over the TV. everyone felt the exact same way as this four year old, and he had no idea.
im looking through my hands. im letting the light seep past enough to know it still exists, but im holding my hands there just in case so i can shut it out. if i need to. if something goes terribly wrong, if the good guys start to slip. if what i know should be happening, for some reason, doesnt.
im trusting my hands to be there.

congratulations

i used to go to schools and tell them about safe sex, abstinence and condoms. about the cirle of sexuality and that you are sleeping not only with your partner, but with everyone they've ever slept with any everyone they've ever slept with. this used to hurt my head, but in front of high school classrooms i acted like i was very well informed, like i wasnt surprised but you should be. like i had the answers, like i was safe. i was the co-chair of birmingham AIDS outreach; i knew the 4 bodily fluids and how expensive meds were. i blew up condoms at concerts and threw them into the crowd so that people would get more comfortable with them.

when i dated justin senior year i wouldnt have sex with him. i was terrified of AIDS, i was sure he had it. and i asked him to get tested but i didnt really want him to, because then i would have to decide whether or not to sleep with him, and i knew i didnt want to and never would, so if he never got tested i could just write it off to that. he never got tested and i never slept with him. but ive been sure ive had it since then, its been gnawing at me, at the most silent sacred part of me, since then. and if i didnt get tested then i wouldnt have it. i read in a book that if you dont think you could cope with the answer then you shouldnt get tested.

hoodies in town, and my results came back today. andy and i went to out of the closet last week. its a thrift store on sunset that also has free HIV testing. i made friends with the guy who tested me, i tried on a pink pleather jumpsuit before we went into the tiny brick room and put the salty swab in our mouths. he asked me about past sexual experiences, if ive ever accepted money for sex, if anyone id ever slept with had been with a man. it wasnt scary because we were being responsible, we were doing it the right way for the first time. i was proud.

hoodie and i went there today to get them back. i remember one day this summer, before i went to my doctor and got STD tested, i cried myself to sleep for thinking about hearing those words. the ones about your results came back.

i wasnt wearing a bra. we shopped while we waited for my guy to come get me. hoodie picked up 3 video tapes and some shirts to buy. i wasnt nervous, i had just called my mom because she always knows the truth, she always promises things to me that end up making them true, even if they werent before she said them (you will be ok. you do not have AIDS). but when the guy came to get me his face flashed sadness for a minute, and my heart raced. he motioned me to come on back and i looked back at hoodie, i said goodbye to her with a tiny wave.

we go back into his little office and he asked me my birthday. i told him and he flipped over the page and said quickly, before i had time to pray to someone or to say goodbye to some understanding of myself or the world or my future or my life,

your results are negative.

he nodded as he said it, like duh. and i started crying and he said congratulations and i said but people are positive every day. and he said, you cant think about that. but i know, i know.

we're all suffering from it, he said.

i walked out and hoodie was standing, holding onto this railing with one hand, all of her loot in the other. my face was tear stained but i was smiling. her face was pale and terrified. i smiled but she shook her head a little bit. she still didnt get it.

"its fine! oh god you were worried!" she was worried all along, she had never let me know this.

she started to cry. her face dissolved a little bit. i hugged her in the middle of this thrift store and we cried together. im sure everyone standing around us thought the results were postive.

my hands smelled metallic from the hangers in the store. we went to baskin robbins and ordered the most ice cream we could possibly get. nothing was enough for us. i got a cone with one scoop of chocolate and peanut butter and one of this quarterback crunch stuff. she got this huge bowl with gummy bears and blueberry cheesecake ice cream and chocolate chip cookie dough. we laughed about this cheesy firefighter show with dennis leary and we both ate every bite.

its a relief. it is.

but we're all suffering from it, no matter what a stamp on a flimsy piece of paper says.

star shoes

there isnt much traffic on the way to pick her up, though its five o clock on friday. i make her come with me to get a burrito on the way home because everytime we talk on the phone i'm eating one, and it drives her crazy like i suppose it would. she refuses to get one and gets a small, gooey cheese enchilada. we eat them on my dining room table and pour ourselves glasses of wine.

we change clothes and spend about an hour bitching about our bodies- well, at least your arms arent so big that you cause a wind storm when you wave goodbye. well at least your ass isnt so huge that you have to buy 2 airplane seats. this feels good because its been so long, so long since ive seen her and so long since ive been able to do this. whenever me and zel start, he ends up forcing us to realize that we're beautiful and attractive. its satisfying though, especially with hoodie because she never relents- it could go on for hours and after awhile it just becomes a game, and youre laughing so hard that you forget how ugly you are and how hugely fat and how no ones ever going to love you. youre laughing so hard youre clutching your stomach, the one you just called caterpillar-esque because of all the rolls, and you feel more alive and real and connected than you did the other day when you were having a skinnyday. you feel three dimensional and unintimidatable. you feel like saying, to your body and to everything that made you feel small a few minutes ago, so there.

andy and zel come over, ryan comes upstairs all dressed up and we finish off the huge bottle of twist off top white wine. we go to andys because its near star shoes, which is where gordon and oli are waiting for us. i want hoodie to ride in andy's car with me so it wont be weird, like everyone piling in one car so andy and i can be alone, but she refuses because of all the times ive forced awkwardness on her. but as soon as we've left for hollywood she sends me a text message, and as we pass by ryan's car on sunset she puts her hands on the window, terrified, like we were back in 8th grade and im off with david mckee, leaving her alone with patrick frye in the back of a movie theater as david and i go off to make memories that will one day reek of embryonic sexuality but that will, at least that day at festival theater in birmingham alabama, be nothing but delicious and forbidden.

we go to andys house so he can change. ryan pounds beers which makes me laugh giddily, because ive never seen him do it before and its so funny the nights he decides to rage and the nights he stays sober, calm, unwavering. hoodie and i look at each other and dont have to say anything to communicate. sometimes words complicate things- we get it without having gotten it as separate beings yet. thats another thing ive missed since laurens been gone and ive had to place meaning into interactions just so i could remember what it feels like.

this was my adolescence, this was growing up- making sense of things, digesting them, alongside hoodie. nothing happened until we discussed it, or until she decided if i was making it up or not (is he flirting with her? i mean does he like HER more than ME? is this happening?-- no of course not, youre being delusional. just be distant to him and he'll get the point. i mean he doesnt like her but he still shouldnt be over there...)

we walk down whitley to hollywood, hoodie and i barefoot with our stilettos hooked around our thumbs. andy and i hold hands and read each one of the stars aloud, realizing that we only recognize about one out of ten of the names. in the bar hoodie and i drink red wine and sit in this chair where you pull a half dome over your head and these images are projected onto it- i'm loving it but soon hoodie is grabbing my hand and shaking it and i raise the hair dryer thing and shes like, jessica your face is being projected onto that screen. im embarassed but its still kind of exhilarating, all these strangers able to see your reaction when you think its totally private, when you think youre actually getting a reprieve from the chaos of being in a bar, a bar on hollywood blvd, but really youre still being watched and judged and youre background for other peoples drunken conversations.

gordons brother is coming in town and he's not 21 so we decide, after what seems like hours of logistical planning, to go to see team america at universal. andy and i finish off mine and hoodies wine, andy and ryan eat hot dogs wrapped in bacon and i have a bite because it reminds me of london and the wet biting nights and trying to find the N25 at 2 am. it reminds me of crowded, non-licesened taxis and belle and sebastian. it played constantly in my head, the boy with the arab strap- its the soundtrack of my months there. so its just me, hoodie and andy walking back down hollywood, back up whitley. hoodie says shes never been this drunk before, but she says that everytime we're together- i think its because in mississippi she drinks and smokes and sits around and here we're never still, here you can say jesus christ the air feels so good, jesus ive missed you, jesus i never want to leave, and no one will think its anything other than appropriate.

we're hurrying up the hill, the movie starts in less than half an hour, andy is ushering us, keeping us on track, reminding us of the time. he's a few steps in front of us when hoodie notices this apartment building to our right with this stream in front of it. its obviously manmade, with smooth rocks lining the bottom of it, all about the size of my palm. the water's moving, and its so strange to see it right in front of this concrete building. andy keeps walking so i run up to him and when i turn around, hoodies taken off her shoes and shes in the creek, walking in it like we were at lake martin and shes about to dive all the way in.

i'm hysterical. no hoodie no!
yes...jessica, yes!

and so my shoes are off and im in there with her, my fishnets somehow protecting me from the cold of the water, and its swooshing around us and andy is walking back towards us and hoodie is talking about wyoming and how this is it, this is wyoming, right here in the middle of hollywood, and we're telling andy he has to get in, he has to get in because i let him give me a piggy back ride even though i knew i would crush him, so he stands there and looks at us for a minute, sort of looking to either side, comparing the pros and cons, and he gives in and starts taking off his shoes and his socks and then hes rolling up his jeans and i cant stop laughing but hoodie is still walking back and forth, unable to believe it, telling us to just close our eyes. andy gets in and then gets out and im begging him to come back in because all i want to do is kiss him standing in this pond in the middle of hollywood. he comes back in halfway but im laughing too hard and its all just too much...
we end up going back to andy and gordons and 6 of us get into andys car and oli drives and i lay on andys lap even though i know im crushing him and we laugh and laugh

and its all ok, no matter what happens, no matter how much universal is like six flags in atlanta, no matter how much we feel like we are girls that hang out at the summitt off of 280 with orange fingernail paint and tube tops, no matter how lost we get, no matter hard we laugh, no matter how wrong things go

theres something about home, and how it lives in people, not in places. theres something about home, and how no matter how far away you go, no matter how far away it gets, you know exactly where to find it. and you know exactly how it feels when you do.

his sign said "moore lies"

we drank three pitchers of cheap watery beer in traditions and re-realized that there was this entire other culture that still existed around us, close to us, that we had forgotten about almost entirely. we saw it there, in the sticky tabled bar, with two groups of frat boys playing beer pong on either side of us and clusters of guys sitting facing the mirrored walls to watch the football game.
michael moore was coming, we wondered if anyone would be sober. we danced to some bad orange county emo pop rock and then everyone came down there and joined us and we walked to mccarthy quad together.
it was like a music festival- there were people on the parking decks, people with fifths of vodka, people with blankets, people with claims on their patch of grass. we got there before the sun set and speculated about the opposition- the bush/cheney folks, sequestered to the "free speech zone," an oxymoron we figured was wasted on them. ryan quinn hines had to keep going to the bathroom and andy i went with him, about half and hour before Moore was supposed to come on.

"lets walk by the repubs"

i was curious. i had seen them all before- that one time freshman year when i went to the row. i had seen the tanning bedded midsections and the bud light tummies. i had seen the alabama in them, and it wasnt sweet or nostalgic. it reminded me why i needed to get out of there in the first place- in alabama, unlike in LA last night as we gathered to see moore speak, i and the equivalent of my friends were the minority. we were the ones being pushed away, the quiet little voice of dissent behind the fence.

we stood for a minute and looked at them. all of the TV crews were right in front of their little pin, egging them on, shining the bright light in their faces. i never remember being interviewed at any protest i went to, or at any counter-movement to some republican speaker. why were they getting so much attention? we outnumbered them by the thousands, we were finally the majority. put that on the front page.

and there, right in front of me covered in bush/cheney stickers and holding up a giant sign, was the guy i had talked to on trousdale that day as i was handing out proposition information. he had been on a bike and told me that we wasnt voting. i said if you dont vote you have no voice. he said he had never needed one before, he said had never complained and he would never complain. i said i hope he always had all the health care he needed. i said i hope he never got his girlfriend pregnant and had to hold her hand as they walked into an alley where a coat hanger waited for her. he said, so if i dont vote i can never talk about abortion?

i said exactly. thats exactly what it means.

and there he was, yelling "its you! its you!"

i walked up to him, andy was behind me. "you lied to me. you fucking lied to me" and i pointed my finger in his face because i didnt know what else to do, and i didnt want to cry so i acted strong and mean and angry.

"hey dont use that language! put your finger away! you were wearing that kerry sticker! i knew we would argue about it-"

"but i said i would respect you more if you voted for bush than if you just didnt vote at all. you lied to me..."

and he started saying something but the whole thing looked so unreal. the lights, the people bobbing up and down "four more years!" like it was a cheerleaders chant,or the song that the sorority girls sing the doorways of their house when they are trying to recruit new pledges. i went to the bathroom and cried a little bit.

today in response to my critique of his story, a guy in my class wrote on his blog, "its written from a white heterosexual males perspective and thats the way its going to stay."

its hard for me to know what to say back. i already knew that (you know who you are). and it made me sad, and i wanted to let you know how i felt. you didnt need to tell me that it wasnt going to change. i couldve told you that.

anyone could tell you that. but if you keep on keeping on that way, you'll never be able to see what else is changing.

last night, a group of people started booing. they were right beside us, right beside the stage. and for a minute we all looked around at each other and the crowd deflated and sighed, and then someone started clapping. and we werent sure if it would work but before we knew it, everyone was clapping, everyone was standing up and by time our cheers subsided they had moved on.

for right now, thats enough for me.

kim, part three

years passed. we wrote each other letters, her handwriting blocky and calculated, like chinese characters or the handwriting of a elementary teacher on a peice of butcher paper. like "Goals For The Year!" she stopped swimming, she lost a lot of weight. she wrote me about getting drunk in the woods with timmy teck,her neighbor and a wresler who i would later develop a massive crush on and keep a picture of in my wallet, the plastic red hello kitty one, like i was waiting for him to come alive.
she started straightening her hair. i knew this because she sent me a school picture of her in her woodward uniform, smiling coyly at the camera, looking much older than me, much older than anyone i considered my friend. her tight blond ringlets were now brittle and motionless, the most obvious of all her changes. atlanta was just so big, it was just so huge, there wasnt much else for her to do.

sometimes in letters or on the phone she would say "remember when we used to say we weren't best friends, we were more-than-a-best-friend-best-friends?"

"duh."

"its still true, right? i mean it is for me, it would just be so sad if it werent for you."

kim had this thing about being lonely- it was the essence of sadness for her, and she had an uncanny and sometimes obsessive way of noticing it. like when she went to the bathroom, there had to be 2 sqaures of toilet paper before she flushed, so that the one who was about to be vanished into obscurity wouldnt be alone. anything was OK as long as you werent doing it by yourself.

ive inherited this from kim. sometimes, its satisfying. sometimes, it plagues me.

"of course kim. of course."

and it was true- even though seventh grade was turning out to be the apex of my popularity, no one else's friendship had ever come close to kim's. it made the weeks of not talking bearable, it made all the changes forgiveable. it was something we both understood, it was something we both needed so badly that it was ingrained in us- no matter what decisions we made or how far apart we got, it was inevitable that we were at each others core.

i went to visit her over christmas break of my seventh grade year. it had been almost a year since we had seen each other, and, like i when i came back to LA and matt told me lauren was nervous, there was soemthing unsettling and fractious about it. she and sandy picked me up from the airport, where i had taken a red van shuttle from birmingham. the trip was uneasy and awkward- being in such close proximity with strangers, in such total silence for over two hours, made me feel like i had forgotten myself, like i had left myself behind in birmingham on the concrete bench beside the pick up point. like i just wasnt there.

they drove up in sandy's green mazda that kim would wreck a few years later. the story of her getting the gas and the brake mixed up as she was reversing out of a babysitting job's driveway, and especially the way she told it, was one of the funniest things id ever heard. so typical of kim, to make a simple mistake and to destroy the one thing she was expected to keep safe, and then to drive away, leaving shards of glass in the driveway and a dented tree, feigning ignorance about the entire situation to this day. kim got out and gave me a rough hug. i always felt so fragile around her- we were both tall but she was always a little taller, and since we were children i had been softer somehow, more easily bruisable, easier to crumple up.

i sat in the backseat and we went to her house, the one in stoneybrook that we had thrown the clothes out of years before. nothing had changed on the inside, but her room was now littered with clothes and pictures, drawers opened and makeup containers dotting the carpet like a pattern. though it felt authentic to her, and homely in many ways, it was intimidating because it all looked so busy, so grown-up. like she was past the age of having her mom tell her to clean it up (though she wasnt, and sandy probably came in more than twice that first hour i was there to yell at her for the state of things- her counting device, which didnt work when we were five, had gotten even more embarassing and futile).

"so when i say 'i got this,' that means i stole it. if i did buy it, ill say i bought it. ok? even when moms not in the room."

"oh...ok. well like what did you steal?"

"you mean what did i get? like this shirt, these pants, a couple of these dresses. me and jenny do it all the time, she taught me how. ill get something for you tonight! its fun."

"where are we going?"

"well, we could just go over to brandon's house. lindsey and all them are going. but we should go to the store first, i bet you didnt bring any makeup."

we got her dad, harland, to take us to the excerds. harland is funny and unbothered, crass and loud. he was this father figure mold that i had never even seen before- he made us sugar french toast (as sandy nagged us in the background to eat three grapes, three grapes with every meal) and watched cartoons with us, sleeping so late on sunday mornings that we had to wake him up by walking into the room and just screaming. he got mad but it never lasted. he and kim had a great relationship, i was always a little jealous.

"ok you wait in the car dad. we'll be out in a minute."

we went to the makeup isle and kim got out a maybelline black eyeliner stick. its not that i was completley clueless about beauty, i was just still in the bonnie bell lipgloss and pinching my cheeks stage, which, according to the standards of the other girls at altamont, was exactly where i should have been. but see, thats the difference with atlanta.

"ok. put this in your pants." she whispered, handing it to me and looking around like a real pro. it was all very impressive.

"in my pants? what if it beeps when i leave?"

"it wont i promise."

she got a few tubes of lipstick and some of the pink bottled mascara and we start to walk out when harland, hands in his pockets whistling, crosses our path.

"hey we're ready to go."

i can barely stand it, the laughter is pushing out of my mouth. i have to turn my head. she catches a giggle as it squirts past her pursed lips. harland looks his usual confused self.

"well we came all this way for you to not get anything?"

"no dad. duh, we're getting this"

kim pulls a tube of lip gloss from behind her back. i hadnt even noticed it was there.

"now can we go puhleese?"

harland shakes his head with fatherly misunderstanding.

we walk out and get into the car, kim and i both in the backseat. i remember the one time we did this in the car with my father, after the olympic soccer game in birmingham, when he made kim stay in the car after we had gotten home to lecture me about how rude it was, how my mother and he didnt raise me to act this way. as soon as he opened the door for kim to get out she said, in one of her bravest moments, "you didnt raise her at all."

but this is before all of that. this is before deaths and sickness. this is before being hospitalized and missing months of school because of an eating disorder. this is before sex and cocaine and stealing hundreds of dollars worth of things from little boutiques in virgina highlands. this is before timmy teck decides to like me and we all get so stoned that i think he's the hulk, chasing after me. this is before dropping out of school, living at home again. this is before all of that, and we have no idea.

we have a few dollars worth of stolen makeup and our hearts are pounding. we are fresh, we are practically infants. we have no idea what most of those things even are, those things that are pulling us towards them with a reluctantly evil yank. we will put on the eyeliner that night and i will never use it again. it will still be in makeup bag when i graduate college. we will smoke a cigarette outside of her window, we will climb into bed together and eat capn crunch cereal straight out of the box. we will wake up to the sounds of sandy and harland yelling at each other and we will think, my oh my, how we have grown.

kim, part two

she moved to atlanta when we were in second grade. i remember where i was in my parents bedroom when she told me on the phone. i was looking at the white blinds that always got tangled up and made me and dad frustrated. mom was the only one who could raise and lower them with ease.

"dad got at job at a place in atlanta. at a college."

"i dont get it."

"we're moving there."

"but its like hours away."

"yeah. i know."

it was the end of the beginning, for kim and i as friends but especially for kim as a child. atlanta was bigger and meaner, it became a pressurized compartment that pushed and pulled her in ways that made her unrecognizable, both emotionally and physically, and made me feel like i was a speck on the ground and she was in an airplane- not that i was beneath her but that i was just so so far away, watching her trajectory like she would never be able to.

dad took a job in atlanta around this time, which was the beginning of the end for my parents relationship and our family as a nuclear unit. the first time i went to go visit kim, mom and i drove to atlanta from birmingham, passing by six flags and that random tiered office building that emerges out of hundreds of miles of bushes and trees and lets you know that there is a big city near by. mom dropped me off at kims new house, a giant, beige brick house that was one of three styles you could pick from in stoneybrook. as we pulled up mom said "jesus" and i knew what she meant- not that it was bigger than the house they lived in by the hospital in birmingham, not that it was nicer or more impressive or such a move up. what she meant when she said that was "how?" how could sandy have agreed to move her from that gorgeous old house in the middle of southside, where beau whatley lived a few doors down and the third banister up from the living room wasnt attached to anything, just precariously balanced, just waiting to be knocked down by someone who didnt know better. that house on 24th street was dark brown, the paint was chipping on the outside and there was a compost bin in her backyard- a novel concept for 1990 and the only visible testament to sandy's old hippie days in boston.

kim and i played in her carpeted basement, the one that looked less like a basement and more like something some suburban family would call a "rec room." we played with her barbies and her new hampster, and when we got bored with that we went upstairs to her bunk bedded room ("but why do you need two beds?") so she could show me her new clothes.

"do you like this one?"

it was a pink dress, a sundress, something kim never would have worn.

"yeah, i guess."

"this ones one of my favorites." she held up a cable knit sweater that looked north eastern, like it belonged on a prep school girl in maine. as though i knew what those people looked like.

"its nice."

she went through dozens more things- little shorts and shoes and dresses and tops. i guess sandy thought the way to make her feel less alienated by the pretentiousness of her new school was to make her look more pretentious.

she brought out a YMCA swim t-shirt that used to be the thing her mom threatened to throw away if she didnt start wearing something else.

"hey i remember that!" i said, my stomach flipping a little bit at the sight of something so familiar, so comforting.

kim walked over to her open window and tossed the YMCA shirt out of it, onto the perfectly manicured bushes.

"KIM!" she was laughing, holding her stomach laughing. she ran back into her closet and grabbed a handful of the clothes she had just shown me, walked to the window and threw them out into the clear blue day.

i scooted off the bed and ran into her closet, grabbing as much as my arms could hold, running back to the window and tripping over the ones that had fallen from our arms. i leaned my body out the window and opened my arms, letting them explode into the yard, letting them flutter like leaves and gather into a pile.

we kept going- back and forth from the window to the closet, not saying anything because we were laughing so hard, we were so swallowed by the deliciousness of the moment.

we could hear sandys voice from outside, ringing and laden with anger-- "what the hell!" and then her footsteps up the stairs. we froze for a moment, both of our frames dwarfed by the amount of clothes we were holding.

she stood in the doorway with her mouth slightly open, like she was listening or confused. we didnt drop the clothes, we didnt say anything at all.

"what are you doing?" she said earnestly.

we looked at each other. i said "i dont think we know."

and she said, in a tone that ive never heard her use since, "well, in that case, keep going."

kim, part one

theres a picture from that day- of kim and i in our red velvet dresses, the lopsided bows holding back only bits of our feathery hair, both the same shade of blonde. we're standing by a giant column in the civic center, waiting for the nutcracker to start. im hugging the column and smiling with my eyes closed and kim has one hand on it and the other one on her hip, scowling at the camera with a slicing bitterness. we were angry at our mothers for some reason-- maybe it was the bows that we, as five year olds, felt we were too old to be wearing, or maybe it was one of those times when sitting in the back seat became a conspiratorial game of us versus them, the weak versus the strong, the ones affected by the decisions versus the ones making them. kim was the one who brought these things to light; just like she was the one that led me over fences when we both knew i was physically incapably of climbing them. she was stronger and braver and wasnt afraid of earthworms or bruises or getting yelled at. she had warts on her hands, and years later she would tell me that the moment she felt most loved in her life was when i held her hand in kindergarden, finally accepting of the warts' harmlessness. in any case, we were indignant the whole day, which must have been terribly frustrating to my mother and sandy- after all, this was supposed to be a girly day, a mother-daughter bonding day, a memorable glittery day captured by a gilded frame worthy photo.

mom and i went to the nutcracker every year before that and every year since, and every time the snow queen comes out my legs and arms go numb, im so transfixed by the grace of it all, by the sheer sweet beauty of it, by my own jealously of the snow queen and her suspension from reality. shes dangling there in front of it, in front of us mortals who have never known the feeling of hypnotizing thousands of people at once. but kim wasnt buying it that day, and i had to act like i wasnt either or else she would roll her eyes and the fun would stop. there were many moments in our friendship when i tucked away what felt right and went with the alternative she offered, which was dangerous, trouble, or absolutely exhilarating. or, as it has turned out, usually all three. she was always implying this to me- that you cant grow much if you just do what feels inevitable.

we went to gorins after the show, an ice cream shop in five points, in the hip part of birmingham where, if you were lucky, you might see a kid dressed in all black or torn jeans or something equally as obscene and the sighting would be like that of a celebrity. the outside of it was painted green and it was right beside where my mom used to do step aerobics. obviously she wasnt too worried about the part of town-- she gave me money for gorins and let me sit on the benches outside of the windowed studio, chasing pigeons and avoiding eye contact with the regulars- the homeless people who lived there, who had made a community there which silently but polietly awknowlegded my presence. she would come out looking like a giant piece of pasta that had just been drained but was still damp and she would ask me what kind of ice cream i got (always the same- mint chocolate chip in a rainbow sprinkle cone).

it was nighttime when the four of us arrived at gorins that winter night. kim and i ran to the bathroom, our patent leather shoes tickling the lineoleum floor. we spent a long time in there giggling and looking in the mirror and probably throwing toilet paper around or counting our beauty marks, which would, in the months to come, be the reason for my first and last trip to the hospital.

when finally came out we were told to hurry up and order ice cream, and then took it outside where we ate a few bites then let the pigeons have it as we "rowed the rope," which was hanging onto the thick iron chain that bordered the courtyard and swinging back and forth on it, pretending like we were doing some sort of chore on a boat.

sandy walked up to us, harried and haggard, and told us that it was time to go. they had been keeping their distance, not wanting to aggravate our tempers, trying to maintan a sense of freedom for us, no matter how false. we begged for five more minutes and sandy said no. she said we're leaving now. we said, well, we arent. and then sandy said do i have to start counting. and as she started walking to the car that my mom was leaning against said five. kim and i looked at each other. sandy was notorious for doing this. my mom never did. it felt too classically conditioned for her- like at the sound of "one" we would start to salivate like pavlov's dogs, or the equivalent which would be doing what they were asking us to do in the first place. four. kim shrugged her shoulders which meant "carry on" and we kept rowing the rope. three. they wouldnt leave us. but the rowing got slower on my part as i glanced over to the car to see my mom getting in. two. kim said "hey" and shook the chain rope. "they wont leave! dont be a chicken, thats what they want." one. by the time she said it sandy was closing her door. we were still rowing but more out of nervousness then than anything else- it was like if we stopped to look it would become real, and it was way too exciting and terrifying to deal with. the engine started, kim told me to look at her, not at them. they wont drive off she said. watch, they wont drive off.

and then sandy was pulling out of the parking spot and driving off.

and we were alone, in front of gorins in five points at nine o clock at night on a friday in december, holding onto a chain rope that we could actually trick ourselves into believing was part of a ship, surrounded by kids in grungy clothes, homeless people settling down for the night, and a herd of pigeons feasting on our ice cream cones, which were now face down on the dirty concrete, being devoured like a dead animal by vultures.

it was time to start making our way back home. thats where youre supposed to go when you get separated from your grown ups in crowded places- home base. which was either the car in the parking lot of whatever event you were at, or the information booth. but that night it was my house, since mine was the least far away and the one we could remember how to get to on foot.

i wasnt scared for some reason. something about it felt perfectly natural, unlike the times kim had to hoist me up over the wire fence just so i could fall to my rocky demise on the other side. unlike smoking the cigarette out of her window in seventh grade, even though she said like i looked like a living virgina slim. unlike being indignant about the nutcracker. this was right, i wasnt having to convince myself of it. she wasnt having to convince me of it. we would just walk home, and they would be sorry but proud.

we held hands and walked up the street that was right next to gorins, the street sandy had just driven up. people were out, cars were passing, no one was really looking at us all that strangely. but when we got to highland avenue, and boy it had never looked bigger, we forgot which way to go to get to my street. we went into the western, the neighborhood grocery store that was open 24 hours, and asked the cashier. she squinted her eyes at us and said "you gurls allright?" and we looked at each other to make sure nothing looked the matter and nodded. yeah, we were doing good.

she pointed us in the right direction and we were off again, holding hands and looking left right left before crossing any street. when we had to cross highland to get to milner crescent there was a group of teenagers who were hanging out at John Carroll High School, at the foot of my road, who seemed worried. this one girl in a tshirt and shorts, who had a red plastic cup in one hand insisted on holding my hand as i held kims and crossing the street together. she kept asking us where we were going, why we were so dressed up, where were our parents, where did we live. we knew better than to tell strangers those things but i distinctly remember kim putting her hand on the girls arm and saying "we'll be juuuust fine" like a little old lady, or a wife to her husband when her and her girlfriends are about to go out. the girl looked at us as her friends were climbing the hill to the school and shouting at her to hurry up and she said, "just be ok. be ok." like she was willing it to happen, like she needed it for herself.

we were already on my street! we had done it, were going to show them! it probably took about an hour, but we had covered over a mile's distance. they thought they could leave us there? ha. little did they know.
as we were walking up the path to my house, as i was reaching under the welcome christmas mat to get the spare key, as we were preparing to go inside, turn off the christmas tree lights (kim said, dont you know thats dangerous?) and change clothes before walking the second mile to her house, sandys car pulled up.

ill never forget it- i could hear my mother crying through the windows of the car. she was leaning up, her head tiny and framed by sandys arms on the wheel. they stayed there like that for a second, sandys face steely and sharp, my mothers collapsed face contorted with tears. i was bent down by the mat, frozen by them. kim was silent, half turned towards them. the window rolled down and sandy said "kim get in the car."

my mom got out of sandys car and she passed kim on the walkway without saying anything. kim whispered "goodbye" and i shrugged my shoulders. mom didnt hug me or kiss me or say how in the world did you find your way home. she opened the door, i walked in behind her, she looked at me and said, "we thought you had died."
"but we didnt."

i might have,
but we didnt.

hotels and homes

i remember the first time they came: they stayed in that hotel in santa monica that reminded me of the place dad and faryl took me, michelle and sid, in monterey when i was about 11, the place where i slept on the window seat to the sound of the waves and seals. the first night they were here mom told me that OB had died, that he was put to sleep back in alabama where we left him with this woman who i actually believe is an angel. ive met two- her, and this woman who walked me down a bunny slope in north carolina when i was paralyzed with fear, when i was motionless with embarassment and the overwhelmingness of having equipment attached to your body that you were told youd get to. it was only a bunny slope, i felt sick with stupidity, but she says to me, "ive been skiing for years and i just stay on the bunny slopes-- they are plenty hard." and then once we got to the bottom, which seemed to take more than an hour, she skiied off without saying anything else. angels.
they stayed in that hotel in santa monica and i cried at dinner because i was trying so hard not to for the first months of college, because toben still wasnt sure and because sometimes i would say things to these new people and not know where the words came from in me- i felt so foreign to myself. i felt, even until october when they came, like every day was the first one at summer camp. that strange, malnourished sense of excitement and possibility mixed in with dread, with counting the number of meals until you get to be home again. i cried when they left and went running on the beach, wondering where all these faceless joggers lived, and if any of them had a family or a dead cat or a sort-of-boyfriend who still wasnt sure if you were good enough for him. those were the days when the sight of stationwagons made me sigh with relief and i would spent entire class periods imagining my professors houses, their kids, what theyll have for dinner and what time they have to set their alarm in order to be at school. the idea of home had become a foggy memory that seemed destinted to elude me for the rest of my life.
the second time they came they stayed in that self contained hotel with the stripes and we saw famous people at dinner. they met toben, who had, over the course of a year, decided i would do, and his family and that sunday night after they all had left toben and i went to the grinder on figueroa and sat on the same side of the booth and held back each others tears. he ate meat loaf and we tipped the waiter, the one who always remembered us, twice the amount of our meal.
the third time they came they stayed in the place kelsey's parents stayed freshman year, when she drug me to dinner with them so i could be the cushion between the sharp edges of her mother and her boyfriend, who called his car "miss pac man." this time, for the first time, we could talk about the times before, and we could track where we were then and where we are now. then, "now" was on its way to something even better, which we now realized, is now.

we lived!

if i could draw a diagram of tonight it would have been a giant smiley face. like on my birthday in san francisco, when andrew and eli and kneebone and yosh and my brother and everyone else came to that burrito place that i cant remember the name of and i looked at each one of them for a long time and memorized where they were all sitting and how settled it made me feel to realize that none of them realized i was looking at them- they were all talking to each other, they were all eating chips and ordering drinks in between laughing or nodding or saying "yeah yeah yeah!" my friends made my mom laugh so hard she wheezed, so hard that she did that thing where her mouth is trying to close and shes trying to come up for air but such an intense physical reaction is coming out that she gives up and closes her eyes and makes no noise at all until she inhales it and starts all over. howard drank wine with ryan, he always made sure his glass was full, and my mom and zel kept having the same thought at the same time. we drank and ate and had desert and coffee and my mom said oli looked like alfie and she hugged gordon when she saw him again. and andy sat next to me and touched my leg under the table and talked to howard about germany and brown bottles being brown. nick wore his nice shirt (they all did! all buttoned to the top and tucked in, all wearing shoes i never knew they had, shoes that werent missing laces or entire sections) and the waitress asked if it was a birthday and we were like, sure, yeah, its someones birthday im sure and we got loud, and talked about how we had all met and how ryan and i fight like twins and how i make things up to fight with him about just because im bored and i know no matter how far the rubber band is stretched it will never break. my mom cut up the appetizers and the desserts for everyone like she does with my pancakes and pushed food on them like a good mother and there were times when i would catch someones eyes as they were talking and there was this really full complex satisfaction, like a multicoursed meal or when you go sightseeing and you have a list of things you want to see and you actually end up seeing them all and by the end of the night your feet ache and all you want to do is eat chocolate and yogurt in your bed, watching TV in a language you dont even want to understand. ryan wants to cook breakfast for my parents, zel wore eyeliner especially for my mom, howard and mom oozed with compliments in the car, like "that (blank), wow, i really like him" or "isnt (name) so (complimentary adjective)"
and i was like, yeah, they are.
they really fucking are.

but it was true

i thought i saw seaweed encrusted treasure and a mermaid. i still can see it- algaed and melty, magical and encompassing. it was the fourth of july and i must have been about four. we were still cooking steaks on saturdays while "hee haw" played on the 6 inch screen of the TV on top of the refigerator. dad was still waking up at 5am to play raquetball at the YMCA before work; he was still coming home at 5:30, setting his briefcase down beside the table i got to decorate for chrismas (kitty, whose lake house we were at on that fourth of july when i was four gave me a porcelain christmas figurine every year, heavy and detailed) to bend down as he hugged me. he was still calling me itty and mom was still working from home in the backroom that got the most sun, the room off the deck that was all windows.

it took hours to drive to smyer lake. my mom's best friend kitty, the one she called sister, had a lake house there, a narrow musty one with the kitchen on the upstairs floor and rooms of bunkbeds downstairs. kitty wasnt married, but years later at her 40th birthday party my mom threw for her, she and her then boyfriend danced to paul simon's "diamonds on the soles of her shoes" all wrapped up in each other in our living room, my dad sneaking in to film them and then singing loudly along, all of them with eyes closed and heads thrown back. i stood, my seven year old body half covered by the polished wood door frame to the hallway, burning the image into my memory so that one day i could find the part of me that belonged inside of that moment.

fourth of julys are thick in alabama, thick like the lake, thick like the trees surrounding all of the houses. theyre dense and wonderful and end up laying in your lap, drifting to sleep with tiny murmurs.

kittys parents were there that time, i remember her father's huge bulbous rocky terrained nose and how desparately i wanted to squeeze it. her mother, the steely painted lady who never hugged me, sat at the dining room table with one hand on it and her legs crossed as my parents, kitty, and her father made hamburgers and potatoey things. i was crowding them in the kitchen and mom, her hands held up, greasy with hamburger, told me to go chat with mrs. rowell. i stood behind one of the chairs, timidly. grown ups were supposed to ask questions, i knew that. i knew it wasnt my job. i said tiny-ly, "hi." and she smiled with no teeth and said hi back, and i ran onto the deck through the sliding glass doors and down the stairs.

there were two lawn chairs in the dirty grass before the water. in a few years my mom would get stung by wasps and swell up so badly she had to be hosptialized, and dad would take a picture of her and i sitting in those chairs right before they decided to make the trek to the doctor, my mom's face exhausted and accomodating, like the ones of her holding me when i was a few minutes old.

the day was beginning to take a bow. i walked to the dock, the dock with the slippery, mossy stairs, and sat on the side. my legs couldnt reach the water but it felt so good to dangle them there, hovering above this whole cartoony world i imagined living beneath me.

i had been in water before, i swam and i was good at it. but the way i remember it, this was the first moment i realized that i could see my reflection in the water. at first it was just my feet and the tip of my head as i leaned over the wooden dock, but it was so wavering and glossy that i kept leaning more and more

and then it was the mermaid and the treasure boxes- endless blonde hair suspended all around me, the promise of an entirely different kind of magic than i had ever let myself think about. i remember sinking slowly but steadily, feeling as if there were no bottom, no floor holding me to any one sight. it was vast and deep and i was just starting to see what all was there- past the murky water there were fish, scales like sequins, and dolphins and rusty, huge keys. there were answers down there- answers to questions i hadnt yet thought to ask. and it was all mine, all mine

his splash was like a gun shot- alarming and dangerous. i remember his open eyes and huge terrified bubbles swimming out from beneath his mustache. i didnt look back at all of it, i just let him grab me and go. i didnt want to share it with anyone, what i had found...

it hurt being back on the dock. they were all sharp edges, all corners jutting into my face as i lay there, watterlogged and mesmerized.

mrs. rowell had followed me out to the deck. she had watched it and screamed. the hamburgers burned, my father cried, and the fireworks were underwhelming.

that year for christmas, kitty strayed from tradition for the first and last time- she gave me a small glass mermaid, reclining on a rock. on the card that i still have, that i didnt understand for years, she wrote, "we couldnt believe it. but it was true."

sugar in hot water

when she met him two things happened, both confused and indistinguishable from each other-- she felt terribly sorry for him, like there was something lurking inside of him that was so abnormal simple conversation must be terribly trying, and she fell in love with him. she knew she was in love with him because she couldnt remember his name. and even when she did get it right, it took many months for her to be able to say it without preparation.
she remembered being in the kitchen with her roommate, who was generally shirtless, washing a coffee mug when she realized that she was in love with him, and that nothing would feel right until they were together. someone had drunk wine out of the mug the night before and there was a red semicircle around the bottom that she couldnt get at with her sponge. she said, "i think im in love with that guy we met at the pool" and gave up on the stain. her roommate said, "oh. that guy was weird."
she invited him over one night and he liked her music. she said something about a cd and why it was important, something really personal about her family and he nodded and didnt say anything and she thought that meant he got it and he cared.
she knew that she wanted to have sex with him. there was this almost acidic way his room smelled and she loved it. they would lie together on his single bed and listen to sad songs sung by sad men and she thought, "this is love. this is my heart soaring."
she wrote him a poem but he didnt want to read it in front of her. she asked him later what he thought, because her giving that to him was, for her, a greater sacrifice than the actual words, but he said he wanted to think about it more and talk to her later. she remembered, two years later, about how he never did. and she smiled pleasantly because she had grown so much since that moment when she believed him so entirely, so rawly.
he didnt want to have sex with her. he said that having sex was being married, so he wasnt waiting to be married before he had sex, but when he did have sex, it would mean that that was it- he was in it for life. she respected it, she believed it was true and that it would last. and after awhile it became invisible. it was a seam running between the two of them, holding it all together but keeping them separate.

once her period was late. it didnt come at all one month, and then it didnt come at all the next. and she thought she would wait for the third month before she said anything, because, after all, the fear was an impossibility. but she kept thinking of the woman who was so fat her water broke and she had never noticed that she was pregant. and though she wasnt fat, she knew these things could happen. and she kept imaging what the child would look like, what stories he or she would go on to tell about this conception that seemed biologically impossible.
so she told him. in the middle of the night one wednesday they got in her car, her car that she let him use sometimes, and drove around to gas stations trying to find a pregnancy test. hardly anything was open and the ones that were barely had snickers, let alone EPTs. she would pull up and he would get out, sometimes opening the car door before she had fully stopped, walking up to the attendant with both hands in his pockets. she bent down and watched the exchange though she couldnt hear them talking, and she wondered about the people working there, and if they would think of the two kids in the tiny car, right after they pulled away or ever. sometimes she would try to catch the attendant's eye, for the same reason she would catch drivers eyes as she rode in the back of her dad's burgandy buick on highway 280 after a soccer game or a cocktail party that her parents friends wanted her to come to. so that there would be some thread connecting her to a pattern, so that there would be some web that existed other than the one in her mind. so that she could at least pretend that someone else was haunted by faces and embryonic stories that would never unfold, that would never be wide enough to be shared with her.
they finally found a rite aid that was open 24 hours. she asked him to go in and buy it, and he did, with her money, and she thought this is real. this is chivalry. ill remember this, this will be a prototype for the rest of my life. and again, two years later, she ached with growing pains when thinking of her thoughts.
they took the test in the white plastic sack back to his room. they sat on opposite arms of the couch in his living room before she went into the bathroom to pee on a stick. it was dramatic. so dramatic that she wanted to laugh, that it actually was fun. they talked about what would happen either way, but in loose baggy terms because they essentially completely disagreed about what they would do if she was. they talked a little bit about how beautiful their child would be, because thats one thing that made the whole situation feel cinematic and lasting- the romance of this immaculate conception. like their child would have to be as holy as the circumstances surrounding its birth.
she went into the bathroom and peed on the stick. there were two more tests in the packet and that was funny to her- if it came out negative would they really believe it? would they have to try it twice more before the strange idea of it disentegrated in front of them like sugar in hot water?
she waited by herself in the bathroom. she knew she wasnt pregnant. her bones knew that the fear of having a child growing inside of her, attached to her, felt different than this did. years later, when she had had sex and had had reason to be terrified, her bones knew the fear. but then, the brand of his face wash was interesting to her, so much so that she forgot about the two minutes. she looked down at the strip and it was one green line. she looked at the back of the box. one green line= not pregnant. two green lines= pregnant. well, she thought. thats that.
she walked into the living room, where he was still on the arm of the couch listening to sad songs sung by sad men. he was thinking then that he encompassed these sad men and their pathetic longing. he was drowning in the self-pity, in the art of the moment. he knew she wasnt pregnant. he just wanted to do this, as an excersize almost. he wanted to see what shape he would take if placed in this situation. he really liked what he found- he could see himself driving an old toyota truck across the country one day, a cigarette hanging out of the corner of his chapped mouth, thinking of the moment she emerged from the bathroom with an answer as the masculine american landscape framed his profile.

"i'm not pregnant. ok?"

"oh. ok."

"are you sad?"

"sad? yeah. a little. i dont know why."

"maybe its the music."

"the sadness came first."

she thought for a minute about how eerie that sounded.

"alot of things that should have come first havent."

he didnt say anything after that. they lied together in his bed and listened to music, the music of men who were sad.

party trick

"are you coming tonight?"

"the last time i was there you kissed me."

"oh. on the lips?"

"i was lying in your bed. you came in. you kissed me. i think you said 'thats all.' then you ran back out. i doubted youd remember though."

"do you kiss me back?"

"it made my night."

he stared up at the naked 100 watt light bulb. he had been laying there for a long time, his hands crossed over his chest, not saying anything, not getting up to look at whoever walked in and out, not raising his head to watch them dancing or singing or trying to find some party trick to entertain people in her room. it was the first time he had been out in awhile, since christian overdosed and the world turned into one sad watery color.

he came out to her best friends party and they sat out on the fire escape in tiny chairs and she propped her feet up in his lap. she let him touch her ankles.

christian didnt die. the day he did it travis got a call and drove to the hospital. he listened to pedro the lion and didnt hurry. he didnt speed through stop lights or smoke lots of cigarettes. he didnt cry or try to understand. he drove like he was going to a show or the gas station. his windows werent even rolled down.

he had met her the year before in german class. she was pretty and sweet and it reminded him how little of those things just floated into his life. she smiled at him because she smiled at everyone and once, at a party on campus, they talked and she threw her head back and laughed and touched his arm.
and she invited him to her house for a cinco de mayo party, because one of her favorite memories, she told him via a folded note in class, was when she and her two best friends from home drove around on may 5th and screamed happy cinco de mayo. they werent drunk, they had no idea that it would seem like they were. and they walked into a mexican restaurant and started screaming it until everyone else did too.
he brought christian. on the way to her house travis had said "im in love with her," and christian knew he was serious because in their years of friendship travis had never said that before. they were listening to neil young and the heat was on in christian's car.
something about it felt scary as soon as they pulled up. christian started walking into her house before travis had gotten out of the car, christian whose usual MO was nonchalance and apathy. especially lately- he told travis about all the sexual exploits that ended with him being unable to get hard, or even aroused, in the last few months. travis said it was the drugs. christian said the drugs were the only things that worked.
but that night christian was on.

im not yawning, im screaming

"that picture is pretty evocative"

"you just dont know"

"are you the baby?"

"two of the four people are dead."

"oh...wait..."

i couldnt possibily have remembered it being taken, but i think i do. i was probably two weeks old, yawning, in my grandmother's lap, who we called oma because it was german and reminded her of her dead husband, above her crossed ankles and hose, her open toed shoes that showed her big and middle toe, permanently on top of each other. shes wearing a pale silk suit, buttoned to the sinews of her neck, and the pure white french bun, the bun that hid her waist length hair. it would be nine years until i realized how long it was; unsolved mysteries would be on and gypsy, her dog with the white arrowhead on his nose, would be sitting patiently by the gate. she would take out the wide mouthed bobby pins one by one, and slowly i would forget that my mom was in the hospital and that i hated this woman as gorgeous white strands of her hair would jump down and kiss the small of her back. she kept the bobby pins in a porcelain floral jar. how perfect- her keeping the cheapest things in something beautiful, to mask how replacable they were.

shes looking down at me, shes looking down at my yawning face with the same one i saw dying 21 years later. she hadnt changed a bit since the day i was born, except she finally learned to cry, except she finally revealed all the self-pity she had been using as a sheathed weapon my whole life. except she had gotten strangely fat in the years before she died- bound to a wheelchair but unwilling to give up her penchant for whitmans chocolates.
shes sitting in the blue chair, the one with the tiny white squares and the regal arms, the ones that only got sat in on christmas eve, when mom would videotape dad reading me "the night before christmas" as i sat in his lap, even when i was so tall it was awkward and hurried. her face is a heart, like mine. her mouth looks like its about to open but it never does, not in the picture or in real life. it stays pursed like that, it stays perfectly symetrical with her champagne bottle nose and almond eyes. and the swoop that the french bun made right above her widows peak.
one hand is on my arm and one hand on my leg. i am the only lopsided thing on her- my body crooked and probably slipping off her slick suit. she takes up less than half the chair.

my brother's arm is hooked around the wing of the chair. he is my half brother and the only one in the picture besides me who hasnt died. he is from my dads first marriage and there is not, nor has there ever been, any one in that photograph that i feel more related to. he is wearing white knee socks, pulled all the way up, and no shoes. one of his feet is turned sideways, resting on the other one like i do when im nervous or feeling fat. like i kept doing during play practice during "lilliom" in 6th grade, when the director mary jean parsons who died of an aenurism a year after i stole the show screamed at me to stop, demanded to know why the hell i kept standing there so awkward and weak looking.
hes wearing these tiny white shorts, buttoned and pulled up over his belly button. a green polo shirt is tucked into them and the arm thats hooked over the chair is holding on to the other arm's wrist. he is wearing the kind of glasses you think of when you think "raquetball." and hes the only one smiling. there are little spaces between each of his front teeth. hes eleven years old and if you look close enough, you can see him crying almost twenty years later- crying at his wedding and at "the royal tennenbaums."

my father is standing behind oma. he is perfectly lined up with her, his dark brown hair skims the top of the photo. one hand is on the back of the chair, the other one is hanging behind my brother. he is thin, this is before all of it happened. he is wearing a burgandy polo shirt and this is before he shaved off the mustache and mom was surprised by him, in what felt like to me the first time ever. its a thick, brown mustache that goes from the bottom of his nose to his upper lip. he isnt smiling because this is him looking proud. my dad was good at that, sticking his chest out and practically sweating his favorite phrase "if you done it, it aint braggin." his other favorite phrase was "the fair comes to town once a year."

right beside my father is the stained glass lamp that is in my room in san francisco now. its heavy and even though it hides behind the chair, its the most obvious thing in the room.

im so little. im taking up practically no space. my mom must have been taking the picture but it looks like shes missing, theres this space on the opposite side of the chair from my brother. and i try to imagine her there but i cant, because there was no blood between her and any of them there- any of them but me. i wonder if there were other shots from that sitting, if there are missing pictures from those same moments stuck somewhere in a drawer with christmas cards and crayon drawings. i wonder how this picture ever got framed- i cant remember how i ended up with it, if i found it in dad's things or oma's. its in this tacky gold frame that makes the whole thing look even more evocative, i suppose, since that is what it is to people who dont know what it really is.

what it really is is a thing ive made up. its a fragile fairy tale that i use as an equation- when some other variable is introduced i plug it back into this image and it works, and i understand about crying to "the royal tennenbaums." sometimes disasters are bricks, sometimes the whole house would crumble without them.
or maybe thats not what it really is- maybe thats still part of the fairy tale, my honest to goodness belief that it is. maybe the reality of it is how lopsided i am on my grandmother's lap, about how i inherited awkwardness and tears from sid, about how i look at the man who gave me half of the numbers to plug into the equation and all i see is his sad, weary face singing along to simon and garfunkel the last day i ever saw him. now all i see there is the coat hangers he ripped apart, his chair in the living room that he didnt move from for a whole year. i see corine the car and the rolex watch that sid wears. i see pieces that beg me for a puzzle to be placed in. and im lost because i never had a puzzle to begin with, just an amalgous shape with unconnected words, untethered memories.

"yeah...its ok. its fine."

"we can talk about it if you want."

"oh, i know."

Vociferously

i cried a little, when the reporter woman stood up in front of the two hundred or so of us and asked, "did this debate change anyones mind?" and a few people raised their hands and this one girl said "yeah im just definitely voting for kerry now." and though im sure its impossible everything was still and frozen for a split second and then it sunk in through our pores, and everyone started cheering. and clapping. and ryan and i hugged, and gordon pulled me in towards him and oli gave me that blinking eye smile that actually means something. it did mean something- i dont care about the fucking 17%, i dont care about kerry speaking over people's heads, i dont care about anti-intellectualism. we won.
and so what do you do when you win? you drink margaritas, you talk about it, you watch so many hours of coverage that you drown in the catch phrases. and though its hard to believe, after about 2 hours of watching CNN, after the margaritas had worn off and the miller high lifes had started to kick in, we began to realize that apparently, not everyone else felt as confident as we did. which was strange, because it was so involuntary, our reaction. it was so obvious. there were no other alternatives- kerry was better, he was smarter, he was more together, he formed beautiful sentences and actually made some amazing comments ("you can be certain and be wrong"). so how could these people, these puppets, act so nonfuckingplussed and say they thought "the president" did a good job? no, i'm really asking. i want an answer. i want someone to tell me.
oh but there was terror in their beady little eyes. it doesnt matter anymore, about carl rove feeding them line after line, about damage control, about the fact that on CNN two kerry representatives were mysteriously suffering from "technical difficulties" and we had to listen to more bush speak. it doesnt matter.
we knew. when we erupted like mt. st helens, when our stomachs felt settled for a minute and we itched to celebrate. they cant take that away from us, or from kerry. the truth is the truth.
psorry assholes.