Graveyard Shift

Dance The Ghost With Me

Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:13:23 GMT

I was watching CSI: Miami (Mmm...Horatio...mmm...Delko...mmm...Wolfe) and just hadn't gotten around to changing the channel before the news came on. I was going to change it (I like to obtain the news in ways that don't involve an assault on my senses; I feel more objective that way) and then I saw the top story.

So I get kicked out of grad school before I even get there. And now they find a body dumped somewhere, a girl who was studying for her masters in criminal justice at the school I was supposed to go to, studying what I was supposed to study. And I don't know anything about her, I don't know if she was a nice person or if she was smart or if we could have gone to the pub and had a couple of beers after class or anything like that. I don't know her at all. And they don't know who killed her.

It gave me a chill. I hope they catch the bastard.

And I don't usually say things like this, but God rest her soul.

Happy Birthday To Me

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 04:14:36 GMT

Every time this happens, I wake up shocked that I lived through another year!

XD

One Thing, Another

Mon, 30 Jan 2006 02:06:38 GMT

I hit traffic on the Cross Island Parkway and barely made it in time for my first tutorial class, even though I'd left an hour and fifteen minutes early. There was absolutely no parking around the building, and the meters were all one-hour. I found a space near a park next to a sign and dashed to the building. It turned out that was the wrong building. So was the next one I went to. I found the right building and went upstairs to the fourth floor.

The class itself was actually kind of interesting. It was like DCAS meets The Princeton Review. All that was fine.

When I got outside, I found my car had a lovely parking ticket on it. Turns out the sign I was near said "No Standing". I wasn't entirely in the no-standing zone, but enough to get a ticket. Great. A ninety-five dollar "free" class. Ninety-five bucks. Unbelievable.

I hit traffic on the Cross Bronx on the way home, which made me late for my chemical straightening appointment with my hairdresser. Luckily, my hairdresser was not only running late too, she is a very nice person and took me a little late. She did a fantastic job. I don't think my hair has ever looked this good.

So I was looking fabulous when all hell broke loose later.

I was checking my Firestar9mm DeviantArt page when my father asked me how it went. I told him what I just told you, and he rolled his eyes when I got to the part about the parking ticket.

This part was sort of my fault. I sort of lost it because I am simply so tired of getting picked on. So I called him a nasty name. He flew off the handle and started yelling at me, pointing his finger in my face and invading my personal space (GOD how I hate that) and my sister told me to just leave him alone, he'd had a bad day at the basketball game.

I told her I couldn’t possibly care less about his stupid game. I'd had a bad day too, and everyone was attacking me. He went into the I'm Your Father What I Say Is More Important speech (I hate that too) and told me to get out, because we were "done" and he was "sick of this". I started packing haphazardly; it had been a while since I'd had to and so I wasn't used to it anymore. I threw in my Tripp dress, a pair of jeans, some lingerie; I found myself grabbing random things--an x-acto knife, my colored pencils, my Danny Phantom figure. I was torn somehow when I couldn't decide which goth pet to take--Voodoo, Bones, or Melancholy Molly, my doll, and it crushed me that I could only fit one. Then I remembered Cosmo and Wanda and burst into tears, because there was no safe way to carry a fishbowl, and my father was still outside my room bellowing about why I couldn't seem to shut up, and how no one wanted to hear my voice, so I turned around and started shrieking, really shrieking, and my middle sister, doing possibly the most interesting thing she's ever done, purposely threw her bowl full of soup to the floor, where it shattered.

I admired her for that. It's something I might have done.

For some reason I couldn't stop screaming, and the youngest ran for me. I started to back into the living room, but it turned out she only wanted a hug. She kept saying "Calm down, calm down." My father was still screaming somewhere in the kitchen.

My stomach heaved and suddenly my sister was pushing me into the bathroom, where I collapsed to my knees and vomited, once. The middle one came in and gave me a washcloth, which was nice, but when I asked her to feed Cosmo and Wanda if I got kicked out she said, "Don't be stupid," so I had to scream at her that it was not stupid and then I kicked everyone out of the bathroom, turned the lights off, and sat in the dark until I stopped shaking.

When I got out, the hallway had been cleaned as much as possible. I still think throwing the bowl was cool.

What was very nice was that when I went upstairs to apologize to my sisters, they didn't brush me off the way they usually do. They both came over for a hug, which we haven't done since my mother used to make us do it, and the middle sister even brought it up and laughed about how much she used to hate it. I couldn't believe how nice they were being to me after I'd called them names and screamed at them.

It seemed I was no longer kicked out of the house. I put the Danny figure on my laptop for the rest of the day, comforted by his presence.

To top everything off, the battery light on my dashboard went on that day. Turns out the alternator is broken, even though I just replaced it last fall. If it isn't one thing, it's another. Or several at once, with Johnny 13's Bad Luck Shadow following just over my shoulder.

Have not yet paid the ticket. Hair still looks fabulous.

You Crush The Fire Red, Standing On My Head

Fri, 27 Jan 2006 06:26:50 GMT

I'm browning, I'm wrinkling
You don't see.
I shrivel more into colors you ignore as the earth swallows me
You crush the fire red, standing on my head
You crush the fire red, leaving me for dead

So I've been kicked out of grad school before I even got there. Is that a new record?

"I don't understand," I repeated into the phone for about the fiftieth time. "How could I have not paid my bill? I was never mailed a bill."

I had called to make sure missing my orientation date wouldn't compromise my admittance into the building when classes started next week. As it turned out, that was the least of my worries.

"The school doesn't mail its bills," the man on the other end of the line told me. "You were supposed to print it out from the web site and mail it in."

"Well, that's news to me," I said lightly, wondering how I was being so calm. My fingers played absently with the phone cord as I talked. "The web site did not make that clear."

"I know; you're not the first person to call about this," he said.

"Then I'm not the only one who misunderstood the procedure," I explained. "Isn't that indicative of a problem? Didn't you wonder?"

"Didn't you wonder?" he asked me. "Didn't it occur to you that you should have paid your bill?"

"Not really," I answered. He was circling my point, which irritated me. "I figured the bill would come in the mail. Such is the way of things."

"That's not the way it's done here," he informed me.

Well, excuse me.

"There are rules," he continued. "And you have to respect that."

I almost laughed. "I'm all for rules," I said. "I only have a problem with not knowing what they are and then being punished for breaking them."

Every time school officials treat me as a name in their grade book instead of someone with unique and delicate personal issues, the muscle beneath my left eye starts to twitch.

"With all due respect," he said, not very respectfully at all, "you should have paid better attention to this."

I pressed fingertips to the twitching eye. It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him if he could please transfer me to someone who worked in the office and wasn't still attending the undergraduate program, but I told myself it wouldn't help. Why are you lecturing me? would have been a more appropriate response, but still impolite. Much as I hated to do it, I would have to simper to this clown.

"All right," I said lightly. "What can I do to fix this?"

"Nothing," was the prompt answer.

Screw being polite. "What?"

"Well, you're too late. Your classes have been dropped."

"But--" Nothing intelligent would come out of my mouth.

"You could attend your class on Monday and explain your situation to the professor, then try to overtally on Tuesday," he offered. Too little, too late.

Go in there already on hands and knees, begging for a reprieve. Not exactly the way I had wanted to start my graduate program. Nuh-uh. Not doing it.

Already my brain was racing, wondering if I could delay my application, or possibly apply again, or if I was just going to spend the rest of my life being a day late and a dollar short.

"Thank you," I said, remembering that there was someone on the other end of the line. It's that part I hate the most. Someone spends fifteen minutes on the phone looking down their CUNY nose and belittling you, and you have to thank them for it at the end so you don't look like a schmuck.

Then I hung up. "God damn it," I said lightly, almost conversationally, to no one.

Unsure of what to do next, I swiped at my burning eyes with a tissue, then shredded it and called my father, who took the news far better than I'd anticipated.

Outside, I smoked two cigarettes fast, watching the ash scatter in the chill wind. And I waited for rage, waited for frustration, but all I could taste was nicotine and a sick sense of relief.

You crush the fire red, standing on my head
You crush the fire red, leaving me for dead
Splendid decay, spiraling down to my toes.

The ghost in my head was laughing.

This Year...

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 04:04:15 GMT

This year is gonna be incredible
This year is gonna be the one
All the planets are lining up for me
This year, I'm gonna have fun

My childhood best friend of seventeen years is going to El Salvador with the Peace Corps.

"I'm just so proud of you," I told her over the phone, and I meant that.

"For what?" she asked.

"For doing what you want!" I said. "For making a difference."

"You're so coming to visit," she told me. "They have resorts you can go to during the dry season, February to May..."

The idea sounded so possible. "Say the word," I said. "I'm there!"

New Year's I spent staying up for twenty-four hours--not drinking or crying or falling over or battling drama, but eating, laughing, trying to track down board-game murderers, trying to identify clips from Harry Potter films and singing karaoke into a video-game microphone at Shazz's with her, Catherine and Izzy. Hands down, easily, the best New Year's I've ever had.

Headachey and full of food and drink but in a good mood, I came home to shake a canister over a glass tank in which two brand-new goldfish swam.

"This Holiday Is Overrated. It Turns Out The Way I Expected."

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 07:01:08 GMT

"This holiday is one to forget. Another year, this time I'll regret that I spent too much time and money on you."

Couldn't find the last two gifts at the area malls, no matter where I looked. I must have been in fifty stores, and gave up rather dejectedly over nachos late in the afternoon. The cheese tasted like defeat. Went home, took a nap, made a phone call, then put an old David Caruso movie (Kiss of Death, to be precise) on the TV while I cleaned the room. The two things that kept circling in my head were the space on the dresser I was clearing for the fish and the bottle of raspberry ale in the basement I was saving to self-medicate on Christmas Eve.

The fish baffled me. I wasn't sure exactly when the idea to keep fish had come into my head, but once it got in there it wouldn't leave. The problem with the fish was that they were a mask for a different focus, and I kept trying to think of them as just fish, but of course they weren't just fish and I knew it.

The fish were a device for two reasons. I wanted fish to:

a) force me to clean my room enough to have a space to keep a fishbowl in

b) prove to myself (and anyone who happened to pass by and look through the glass) that I could be fond of something without killing it or driving it away.

But I had to think of them as just fish, or else I would become afraid and never accomplish either aim. They were just fish. I just...wanted to keep fish. That's what I kept thinking.

That, and raspberry ale.

"What is it?" my father asked when he found me in the hallway, with my old beige comforter folded over one arm and my brow furrowed in thought.

"It's a comforter," I said. "It doesn't match the room anymore, so I'm trying to think of where I can put it..."

He reached for it. "Give it to me," he said. "I'll wash it, fold it up, and we'll donate it."

Panic immediately sang through my veins. I snatched the comforter back, as if he'd tried to cut it up or something.

"No." I couldn't believe how I sounded. It was almost a growl.

He looked surprised.

"No. Not donating it. It doesn't leave the house."

"Why?" he asked.

"It doesn't leave the house." Dimly, I realized that this is what crazy people do.

To give my father credit, he was taking the episode in stride. "Okay. Can you tell me why?"

I tried to say it, but no sound came out. Instead I just shook my head, no.

Wonder of wonders, he hazarded a guess. He doesn't usually do that. "Is that when we set up the room for you?"

"We" was him and my mother; they'd set up the room for me as a surprise years ago when I'd been away on a camping trip. I'd shared a room with my sisters for years, and then out of nowhere I'd come home to a room of my very own. My mother had decorated it. This year, when I'd redone the room in black silk and fur and purple twink lights, I'd felt vaguely like a traitor. I still wonder sometimes what would be different about my life if I'd never gone on that camping trip.

There was no way to communicate all that effectively, and I didn't really want to try. Suddenly I was just crying into the comforter. My father left me alone. I wasn't sure if I wanted him to leave me alone or not.

Edit, Lestat on Vampirism: "You are like an adult who, looking back on his childhood, realizes that he never appreciated it. You cannot, as a man, go back to the nursery and play with your toys, asking for the love and care to be showered on you again simply because now you know their worth."

My father folded the comforter up in a plastic bag and took it away. On the screen, Nicholas Cage and his mobsters beat a thug to death, then loaded the body into a plastic bag and took it away.

I decided to take a break from thinking about the fish for a while, and thought of my favorite Christmas card instead, and a necklace that looked like the moon, and the new baby's very tiny fingers.

Christmas would be over soon, and then would come my birthday. It took a full minute's worth of concentrating to remember how old I was going to be by then.

"Taco Meets Nacho. I Call It the 'Naco'." "I Call It Gross Beyond Reason."

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 05:59:19 GMT

This was on the kitchen table...

Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted as a conditionally matriculated student for the Master of Art in Criminal Justice degree program at John Jay College for the SPRING 2006 semester...We look forward to having you with us in our graduate program. We hope you find the program challenging and rewarding.

So I treated myself to nachos.

I Can See The Headlights Coming

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 00:56:12 GMT

I was crossing the street across from my house when a car roared up to the stop sign, lights blinding. The overhead street lamp was out, which may have accounted for what happened next.

The car was taking the turn too tight. I tilted my head to the side, and the cliches were true--it seemed I had all the time in the world to see it coming at me. It was taking the turn too tight, and too fast. I looked down at my left thigh and knew that that was where it would hit me if I didn't move. Now.

I stepped forward. Again, it seemed that I had all the time in the world to do it, move aside like Neo in The Matrix. I had the sudden, dizzy feeling that I could suddenly perform impossible feats, vault over the hood of the vehicle like Kim Possible on a mission, simply go ghost and let it roar through me like Danny Phantom.

But I didn't do either of those things. I just stepped forward. Not fast enough, not quite.

I couldn't believe how close it had gotten to me without my doing anything. It burned my hip as it went past. I could feel the ghost of it on my thigh, and then the side view mirror caught my arm, spinning me around.

I don't know how I managed to keep my feet. It seemed the circles I turned were almost graceful, and I marveled that I hadn't fallen. I thought about screaming, but for some reason I couldn't think of what I wanted to say.

Pain. Stars blinked against my eyelids, another cliche proven true. God, did it hurt.

I'd turned two circles and ended facing towards my home. A laugh trickled out of my throat at how close it was. A chilly laugh, because I could easily have died within sight of my living room windows.

Another car had paused at the stop sign. The driver was watching me. I took two small steps towards my house. It was enough for the driver, apparently, because he stepped on the accelerator and drove off.

Pounding footsteps brought my attention back to the street. The car that had hit me was parked at a crazy angle, lights on, door gaping open. I couldn't tell if the mirror was still attached. No time, anyway--he'd caught up to me.

A kid--I almost smiled. A boy, younger than I was, baseball cap, big, scared dark eyes. He was out of breath.

"Are you all right?" I asked him, clutching my arm.

He looked at me as though I'd asked him why he didn't sleep with his head packed in ice. "Am I all right? I'm fine. Are you all right? I didn't even see you--it was pitch black! I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

I thought about my arm.

"I'm fine," I chirped, smiling up into his face. "Everything's fine."

He didn't look like he believed me. "Are you sure?"

"Uh huh," I said sweetly, swinging my arm. "See?"

"I'm so sorry," he said.

We stood there in silence for a moment.

"What should I do?" he asked.

I laughed. "Be a little more careful next time, that's all."

I thought about getting the license plate number, but decided against it. We stood there a little longer--me and my almost-killer.

"It's okay," I told him. "You can go."

He looked to his car, and then back at me before grabbing me in a sudden hug. I don't know if it was a thank-you-for-not-suing-me hug, or an I'm-so-glad-you're-not-dead hug, or something like that. "It's okay," I said again, and then he let me go and was running, sprinting away in the dark.

We both escaped--him to his car, and me to my home.

I didn't start laughing until I got inside. Another second, another mile over the speed limit, another step behind and I would have been splattered all over his windshield. Just like that.

My arm was swollen badly, the elbow scraped. It hurt to move it and was already promising to be bruised and stiff soon.

I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the side of the tub, just thinking. I heard a ghost-voice in my head that wasn't mine.

Scary, isn't it?

Yeah, I decided, getting an ice pack out of the fridge. Yes.

"And The Little Goth's Heart Shrank Three Sizes That Day..."

Sun, 11 Dec 2005 08:25:16 GMT

The Goth Girl Who Hated Christmas

The goth girl hates Christmas, as much as she can.
She's no fan of peace, nor of goodwill towards man.
She'd much rather spend her nights sleeping or eating,
Or maybe on fire, or possibly bleeding.

The goth girl hates Christmas, she hates it a lot.
To get through a gathering, she throws back a shot.
She'd rather stay in with a bottle of wine
Then throw garlands and tinsel on some murdered pine.

Even front steps were no hiding place.
The ghosts of the past saw it fit to give chase
And cornered our goth girl out on the walk,
Despite that she really did not want to talk.

"Begone, Spirits," said she, "haunt me no more."
She spun on her heel and went back through the door
And wondered if she should have just one more beer;
Then decided against liquid holiday cheer.

The goth girl hates Christmas, but where could she go?
Every house has a wreath; every door mistletoe.
There's really no place at all for her to hide
From that demon of demons, the vicious Yuletide.

The goth girl hates Christmas. She doesn't know why.
And she doesn't much care, either, so don't even try
To convince her that Christmas is worth much ado.
She'd much rather stay in her room till it's through.

And stay there she will, till she loses her mind,
Or her "lesson is learned", or she runs out of rhyme.
At least until darkness falls. Then she'll know when
It'll be safe to come outside again.

The Absence Of Proof

Fri, 09 Dec 2005 05:20:32 GMT

Edit, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem

Gödel's first incompleteness theorem is perhaps the most celebrated result in mathematical logic. It basically says that:

For any consistent formal theory including basic arithmetical truths, it is possible to construct an arithmetical statement that is true but not included in the theory. That is, any consistent theory of a certain expressive strength is incomplete.
Here, "theory" has the special sense of a set of statements closed under logical inference rules. (A theory is in general an infinitely large set.) A theory is "consistent" if it contains no contradictions. The meaning of "it is possible to construct" is that there is some mechanical procedure which when given the axioms of the theory, produces another statement. That this statement is not included in the theory means that it cannot be derived from statements of the theory using the standard rules of first-order logic. The statement produced by the procedure is often referred to as "the Gödel sentence" for that theory, though there are actually infinitely many statements that have the same property (of being true but not provable from the theory).

Therefore, the absence of proof can be proof.

Something's bothering me.

When I was in California, he got us lost in Beverly Hills. Somehow we couldn't make it back to Wilshire, but it didn't really matter; we were just catching up on things. Then he said, "So, she's doing all right."

I said, "I missed a whole middle part in there. What happened to her?"

He looked at me. "She's getting a divorce. Oh my god, I thought you knew."

"Di...divorce?" I hadn't known.

I remember the wedding. It was on a boat. The bride had dated the groom years ago, when I was sixteen; they broke up for years, then got back together, then got engaged. I was so excited to go to the wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, full of music and nice things and laughing.

"Are you thinking about your boyfriend?" someone asked me as we listened to the bride and groom take their vows. (I had had a boyfriend at the time.)

"I'm thinking about...hors d'ouerves," I said absently, thinking it over.

It was about then I realized I should probably break up with my boyfriend (which I subsequently did but has nothing to do with this story).

Anyway.

The whole point is, they were my happy ending.

Since then, I've been lied to and used and spoken harshly to and teased and tricked and had a pudding pie shoved into my face. That's all I know about love--pudding. Fucking pudding.

I'm just sad. Relationships don't seem to be anything but power struggles or public facades or what people do because they don't have anything better to do. Amor vincit what?

And now I can't write. I was writing in the middle of the day, and everything was going well, but then the characters got into a fight right under my keyboard, and I didn't know how to make them make up. Something was wrong, and it's still wrong. I can see them in my mind, wanting to run to each other, but I, the writer, am stuck, and it's me that's keeping them apart.

Because I don't believe.

God damn it. The Bride and Groom were my happy ending, and now they're getting a divorce. In desperation, I turned to television, but all I see is ambiguous romantic allusions that may or may not be true. There's nothing there to prove to me that things are going to turn out all right for fictional people, so what chance do real people have? Do these writers enjoy screwing around with the fragile psyche of a New York goth? Do they enjoy keeping her up at night on the black satin sheets that no one has ever seen ever?

It's just not fair. The absence of proof is not proof. It's just insomnia and stomachaches. It's that hissing sound in my blood that won't go away.

I keep wiping at my eyes, imagining there's still pudding in them. And now I'll go to bed, falling asleep to Kim Possible reruns, because at least Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable got together in the end. I'm selling my soul to Disney, Southeastern megolith of poor working conditions, fluffy enemy of all noble upstanding goths, because of a divorce, a pudding pie, and another casualty of the seduction of art.

Because I need something to put me to sleep until I wake up and believe again. I always end up believing again every time this happens, but I live in mortal fear of the day I stop for good without realizing it.

I just keep remembering that October, that wish on a star, and the chill that ran through me when I, for the first time, allowed for the possibility that some wishes just don't ever come true. I thought it was the October night that kept it riding with me in the white limousine, when everyone else was drinking and laughing and I was huddled in the leather seats waiting for the chill to pass.

And you know what? It never did pass, really.

Your Call Is Important To Us

Wed, 07 Dec 2005 05:43:57 GMT

On Calling Expedia.com

"Hi, and welcome to Expedia ~~(insert redneck guitar riff)~~. Please note that our options have changed ~~from bad to worse~~. To continue in English ~~and delay your suffering~~ please press one. To continue in Spanish, ~~please ignore that I'm switching languages in the middle of this automated menu~~ para el dos."

*1

"You have pressed ~~panic~~ one. To start, what's your ~~blood pressure rating~~ itinerary number? If you don't have one, say ~~a muttered curse~~ 'I don't have one'."

I don't have one.

"I'm sorry. What was that?"

I. Don't. Have. One.

"Okay. What are you calling about--hotels, cruises, flights, or ~~compucide~~ travel packages?"

Flights.

"I'm sorry. What was that?"

FLIGHTS, goddamnit.

"I'm sorry, I didn't quite get that. Did you say: hotels, cruises, fl--"

Flights. Flights. I'm two seconds from coming down to the Expedia office and throwing you through a wall, you addle-circuited piece of crap!

"Great! I'll put you through to a customer service representative ~~after a waiting period of fifteen to twenty minutes~~. Your call is ~~insignificant~~ important to us. All of our operatives are currently busy. Please hold ~~and listen to Canon in D over and over again until you feel like your ears are bleeding~~ and a representative will be with you ~~provided you don't get fed up and slam the phone down into the cradle, breaking it~~ shortly."

Insult to injury, they have the nerve to end every call with, "Thank you for calling Expedia.com!"

It took me about four or five phone calls after to figure out why my telephone receiver was no longer working. That last slam must have rattled something loose in there.

Sun, 04 Dec 2005 23:11:15 GMT

I never made it to my doctor's appointment today, which means I'll have to wear my lawyer glasses for an entire workday. Damn it.

I have this thing about doctor's orders. I don't follow them. She told me drinking wouldn't help the healing process, either.

That occurred to me belatedly when I was dancing on the bar at Hogs and Heifers around two in the morning. This is probably not going to help that...stippling...

Hogs and Heifers--better known as the "Coyote Ugly" bar--was the second bar we went to that night for Joanna's birthday. Before that, we'd been at Boss Tweed's. I'd gone with the black and purple corset (well, one of three black and purple corsets, black and purple being my favorite colors), because the gorgeous black and green one was a size too small, something that infuriated me. I had meant to return it today, but...maybe tomorrow.

We couldn't flag down a cab to get to Bar None after we left Hogs and Heifers, but a white limo pulled to a stop and said he'd charge forty dollars for a ride. We got in, which was pretty funny, but my friend got sick almost immediately (not funny). Poor thing. The limo driver had an overdramatic fit and hauled the mats out, and I was scrubbing the inside of the limo carpet with tissues. I didn't mind though.

By the time we got to Bar None, another of our group and I went into the bathroom, which wasn't big enough to hold more than three people. "Nice corset!" said the woman I'd accidentally hit with the door.

"Thank you!" I said gratefully, trying to look like I was just really happy and not completely wasted.

"We need a shot of tequila," Christine said.

"Okay," I said. Meanwhile my brain was sounding the not-a-good-idea alarm. Shut up, brain, I thought crossly. I'm out for the first time in three months. Take a break till tomorrow morning, will you? I sucked my lime. See, fine.

We left around 5:10 AM. We got me back to my car around 6 AM. I scraped the snow off and pulled out of the parking spot.

It was freezing, and my tires had no grip on the snow. I turned the radio up and sang aloud as loudly as I could, hearing how ruined my voice was from alcohol and exhaustion, forcing myself to stay awake long enough to get myself safely home.

I parked around 6:30 and sloshed through the snow to my door. I barely had enough strength to fall into bed and flip on my Criminal Intent DVDs, letting Detective Goren's interrogation voice soothe me into drunken unconsciousness.

When I woke up the next morning, I couldn't remember what year it was.

What's the bed doing here? I thought. The bed should be against that wall, not this one. I sat up slowly and my stomach heaved. What time is it? Do I have to work today? I glanced around the room for the scrubs I'd worn when I'd worked at the doctor's office, but only the black and purple corset was hanging on the doorknob, with the black ball gown on the other side of the door.

I glanced back at the still-playing television and the naked walls, and then I remembered that it wasn't 2002 and that I was remembering a different hangover instead of the one I was currently in.

I started to laugh at how ridiculous it was to go back in time like that, but the laughing brought on a wave of nausea and I suddenly found myself vomiting, worrying about how bad it would be for my poor eyes. I wiped at my eyes, which were tearing up, the kind of reflexive tears you cry when you are sick.

It wasn't 2002. I hadn't had a hangover in years. I smiled. Dancing on the bar had been fun, but I didn't miss this part, not at all.

And Your Eyes Too Bloody To See

Sat, 03 Dec 2005 03:19:30 GMT

I was resting my head on the eye doctor's machine when she said, "Stippling?!"

"Stippling" was not a good word to me. I associate words like "stippling" with phrases like "basophilic stippling" and "petechial hemhorrhaging".

"What??" I asked, trying not to start upwards and crack my head against the machine.

"I don't like the way your corneas look," she said, in the same voice someone might use to say, This milk is spoiled. "What have you been using in your eyes?"

"Eye drops," I said, handing her the bottle.

She looked almost comically horrified, glancing from the bottle to me and back again. "These aren't eye drops. They're neomycin."

neomycin
n : an antibiotic obtained from an actinomycete and used (as a sulphate under the trade name Neobiotic) as an intestinal antiseptic in surgery.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means that whatever's wrong with your eyes, you've been making it worse with these drops," she said.

"Great," I groaned.

She gave me eye drops. "Do you smoke?"

"Yes."

"Don't smoke this weekend. Don't wear those lenses."

"Not my glasses," I groaned. "I have lawyer glasses." I do. They look like A.D.A. Cabot's on Law & Order: SVU.

"Don't you want to look like a lawyer?" she laughed.

"Not at the bars in the meat-packing district tomorrow night," I said, and that was the truth. She should have seen the corset I'm planning to wear.

She tilted her head, considering me for a second. "I'll give you something to wear tomorrow night, but only tomorrow night, and only for a few hours. And no smoking."

It was on the tip of my coffee-burned tongue to say "Well, gee, Mom," but my eye doctor's actually very nice and I didn't want to be rude, so I just nodded at the last statement. "Smoking slows the healing process in bones, so it must be the same for everything else, too."

"Exactly right," she said, looking mildly impressed. I smiled absently, safe behind my Geek Love.

"It's too bad you have to put the bad lenses in to drive home," she said as I got up to leave.

"Well, I could," I said. "But the other motorists wouldn't like it."

And Now The Red Ones Make Me Fly And The Blue Ones Help Me Fall

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 03:37:09 GMT

and I think I'll blow my brains against the ceiling
and as the fragments of my skull begin to fall
fall on your tongue like pixie dust
just think happy thoughts and we'll fly home

I especially liked my best friend's Sword of Damocles metaphor. I should have listened to her, because I had a huge problem trying to mail a graduate application at the absolute last minute possible. It involved a lot of bilingual phone calls, about two hundred dollars, an express envelope, and almost jumping through a mail window to clip the guy on the other side with a right cross. As it was, their last pickup was at 5 PM, which wasn't too helpful for me at 6:30.

So I don't know where the envelope is right now, or if it made the final 8 PM pickup. As it is, I don't really want to think about it until tomorrow. I briefly assured myself that the worst that could happen was that I had to apply for the fall semester instead of the spring semester, but then I didn't allow myself to think about it any further and flipped the television gratefully to SciFi, which was showing some movie called The Beast that involved a giant squid (not sexy) and starred William Petersen (very sexy. mmm).

After retreating from the post office in a sort of horrified, frozen, slow-motion shock, I went over the bridge to my therapy appointment. "What happened?" my therapist asked as soon as she saw me. I must have looked pretty bad.

"Well..."

I sort of lost control of the part of my brain that censors what I say. I started talking about Christmas parties and New Year's parties, and how I don't really like the holiday season, and how people are phony, and how I don't think it's fair that some people have high-paying jobs and boyfriends and flawless complexions and balanced mental states when they don't deserve it, when I can't even manage to apply to grad school as a means to an end to become a cop and maybe fix a small part of the society I find so appalling.

"My sister's having sex and I'm not, I know three girl bullies with flawless complexions, my boss has a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side while other people are homeless in the South, and PETA gets to keep making comic books," I said absently. (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10265078) "There isn't a god."

My therapist said that my mind ran ahead of the rest of me. She said that was what made me funny and sharp and interesting, which was nice.

Then she said we needed to increase my sessions to once a week again, and that I should see that psychiatrist again and try to get another prescription. She said that maybe my problem was focusing--she said it seemed I had trouble following through with things, since I used to get in trouble when I was in school, and handed in assignments late, and couldn't seem to get my application together, and couldn't keep the clutter from building up in my bedroom. She said maybe the problem was attention-deficit disorder.

I was too tired to keep the shock off my face, and then I had a wild urge to laugh. "You think we can score me some Ritalin?" I asked, putting on my best Circus Gothica Ghoulish Smile.

She laughed. "It just may be."

I don't remember the drive home.

and we'll fly home
You and I
We'll fly home
Now honestly that's what I said to her, what I said to her

Jane Says "I'm Done With Sergio...He Treats Me Like a Rag Doll"

Wed, 30 Nov 2005 05:42:17 GMT

She hides the television, says "I don't owe him nothing."

The graduate application is next to me but I'm too tired to pick it up, open it and start filling it out.

Was the jury in Miracle on 34th St. sequestered? I would think so, given that it was such a media-heavy case. Could you imagine, twelve innocent people locked in a room forced to debate the finer tenets of a holiday whose traditions have been shrouded in the mists of conflicting antiquities for millennia?

(Edit: They Shoot Reindeer, Don't They?)

"Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen," the tall man said, almost to himself, fingers ticking against the table as he counted off.

Before the room had erupted into chaos, he'd been exchanging smiles with the brunette who was currently at the window, staring at the snow and trying to dispel her headache by sheer force of will. Coming from a family of cops had always saved her from jury duty before, but apparently not even a badge could protect you from Christmas.

"Is it still snowing?" the older blonde woman asked, walking up behind the brunette.

"Of course it's still snowing," the brunette snapped. "It's been snowing for days. Why should it stop now?"

"There's no need to shout," the blonde said, ruffled.

The brunette muttered something that sounded like "Yeah, right."

"I'm telling you it's true," the bespectacled man insisted to the muscular worker at the corner of the table. "Both the Christmas tree and the wreath are pagan traditions that have been carried into mainstream culture by...by Wal-Mart."

"Nah," the latter chuckled. "Wal-Mart is the Christmas Superstore!"

"I'll bet Santa doesn't give his elves health insurance, either," the skinny PETA activist interrupted. Frail and jittery as a parakeet, she'd been waiting for an opening to preach for about three hours. "And don't get me started on reindeer rights..."

"Kill me," the brunette muttered, pressing her forehead against the window.

"Comet, Cupid...here's the part where I always get stuck. Is it Donner?" The tall man turned in his chair to look at the brunette. "Hey Callie, is it Donner after Cupid?"

The brunette smiled down at the only friend she had in the room. "Don't ask me. If I ever saw flying reindeer, I'd get out my air gun for target practice."

This brought a strangled cry from the PETA rep on the other side of the table.

"What do you think happens to the reindeer when they get hurt?" The tall man rose from his chair to look past the brunette out the window.

"The elves get extra portions at dinner?" the brunette threw out.

"Yum," he laughed. "Speaking of, when's lunch...?"

"You two are disgusting," the blonde snorted.

"Tidings of comfort and joy to you, too," the brunette snapped, and then they continued counting on their fingers.

"Just send the application in," my father said. "If they kick it back and say you have to wait till fall, do that."

I'm supposed to go out not only this Saturday, but next. I can't force my mind to unscramble enough to decide what corset goes with what jeans, and whether or not black eyeliner is a daring statement or an immature shock tactic.

"Oh You've Been In The House Too Long" She Said, And I Naturally Fled

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 05:29:22 GMT

I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour, but heaven knows I'm miserable now
I was looking for a job and then I found a job
And heaven knows I'm miserable now
In my life, why do I waste valuable time on people who don't care if I live or die?

She Curls Up On Herself:

I was painfully overdressed at the graduate school open house.

Also painfully nauseous. Why are major life decisions always so nervewracking?

I couldn't believe I was sitting there in a suit planning to get a master's degree. What defines a "master"? I had to believe that this place could change the girl who shoved a letter from her therapist at her college professors and begged for a second chance into a "master".

It will work. It just has to.

It took me five whole minutes to find the classroom for the Criminal Justice applicants, which basically consisted of me following other equally confused potential students. Some detective.

When I got there, I realized the professor was the same man who'd blown me off and disregarded my questions in an email. I asked one question and received an answer followed by, "This lady's got it exactly right." I felt a little comforted by the fact that he didn't reconcile the smart, suited "lady" in front of him with the dumb kid who'd written the email. Then I spelled "Courses" wrong by accident while taking notes almost immediately and nearly passed out from horror.

My nerves stopped jangling by the time I escaped with an application, just in time for the headache to set in. I couldn't wait to get outside and find a quiet place to have a cigarette, then throw up. Maybe not in that order.

Now the days have gone by fast and faster, and the deadline is quickly approaching. In the interim period, I applied for the February NYPD exam. Just passing the ads in the subway for it causes my heart rate to climb and my blink rate to accelerate. In that approximate two-week span, three people have tried to talk me out of taking the exam. I won't be talked out of it, but it's exhausting anyway.

All this only makes me want to curl up on myself further, but instead I'm being encouraged to reconnect with the world I keep trying to escape. I pace up and down the floor nights, trying to plan the best course of action, then eventually giving up and sliding down to sit on the floor beneath my latest odd acquisition, an antique wall mirror.

Dancing Without a Partner:

I wondered today while looking at a fanart of two characters slow-dancing. I remembered, completely out of nowhere, how much I love to dance. I fought to remember the last time I danced with someone, but only bits and pieces got back to me--a retirement party I wasn't sure I should be at, a New Year's party nearly forgotten and a dance I closed my eyes during because I was afraid to believe in it.

I wonder if anyone will ever dance with me again.

Who Cares What I Wear On New Year's Eve:

New Year's--I'd nearly forgotten about New Year's in general. Everyone seems to get such a big kick out of New Year's, and normally I'd be kissing someone I'd immediately forget and getting someone else thrown out of a bar, but not this year. I'm scared of being nowhere on New Year's Eve, and I'm scared of being somewhere I'm not supposed to be.

These things circle in my mind as though my head is a fishbowl where demented thoughts swim.

And then I put all the pieces together--She Curls Up On Herself, Dancing Without a Partner, Who Cares What I Wear On New Year's Eve--all it adds up to is why I think I'll be such a good cop. A good anything. Because at three A.M., when the rest of the world is sleeping or drinking or making love or watching late-night television, I'll still be up doing my job because I won't have anyplace better to be.

Dear Scene, I Wish I Was Deaf

Sun, 25 Sep 2005 22:54:53 GMT

My youngest sister always glares pointedly at me when she announces she has to leave the Sunday dinner table to get ready for church. I always glare back and take a sip of something, because if I snap back at her, I inevitably end up on the receiving end of a lecture.

Tonight she had pamphlets denouncing The Da Vinci Code. I never read the book, but I sat down to read the pamphlet:

If we allow The Da Vinci Code to become a major Hollywood movie, people will see Catholic leaders as powermongers who betray Christ and hid his teachings for 2000 years.

People could see that every day, I thought. All they'd have to do was pick up a newspaper.

Before I could set the pamphlet on fire, my sister went off on her tangent. "They're not saying don't read, they just don't want it to become a movie."

"They're asking for a donation," I said in disbelief. "15, 25...50 dollars?"

"Of course they are," my father said.

"You're being brainwashed," I told my sister. "Don't mail this out from my house..." Between the puppies in the pet shop and this, I was more than offended enough for one weekend.

"Here. Eat some of this," my sister said, slamming a jar of applesauce in front of me. "There's no meat in it."

"That does it," I started.

"Don't attack her," my father said. It took me a few seconds to realize he was talking to me, not her!

"Please let me burn one of these," I pleaded, holding up a pamphlet.

"Put those back," my sister shrieked.

I put the pamphlet back on the counter. "I wish I could go to Kenya, like my uncle," I said as I loaded the dishwasher.

"To Kenya?" my father asked.

I corrected myself. "I wish I could go anywhere."

At the Roots Of The Bluebells Is Where He's Laid

Sun, 18 Sep 2005 21:25:37 GMT

The most beautiful day I'd seen this month, and I wasn't doing a damn thing in it.

Restlessness was making my blood hiss in my veins. I couldn't figure out what was bothering me. The admissions packet from John Jay was still sitting on the table, where it had been for two days. Still unopened. I couldn't bring myself to break the seal yet. I didn't know why. I passed it by every time I went into the kitchen to get a soda or eat a veggie burger, but something was making me want to wait. I wasn't ready yet. The good thing about envelopes that might contain your future is that they don't leak.

I missed my friend from California and my friend from Brooklyn. California is much further than Brooklyn, but I felt equidistant from each.

I tried to fill my brain with unicorns and ghosts, as if it wasn't full enough of the two already.

The night before, I'd heard from a childhood friend that someone we'd hung out with in high school was killed by a drunk driver. The moon was riding high over the train station as I went by her house to smoke.

"You remember her," my childhood friend said to her brother when he asked who I was. "We hung out in high school."

"I don't remember you hanging out with a goth," he said.

I raised an eyebrow at him and took a drag on my last Salem.

"Funny how tragedy brings people together," they kept saying.

That was my least favorite thing about death. It's probably not everyone's least favorite--people don't like many things about death--but it's definitely mine. I feel phony, standing on the street corner while everyone hugs.

But I was proud of my childhood friend--she kept talking about memories. She sat on the curb for forty minutes remembering things he'd done that made her laugh. It was the best way to honor him, I decided. If his ghost was hanging around, I'm sure he'd have wanted to hug her. I felt calmer.

Listening to them made me remember moments of my own I'd shared with him--the time he'd said I would get married in Edea's goth dress from Final Fantasy VIII, how we played video games, the time he'd knocked me unconscious by accident when we were pretending to grapple in the park.

But I felt wrong about it. I never know what to say about death--I always fear my welcoming attitude might only make people more upset. I thought I ought to cry, but the memories were so far back in time for me that I felt like I was watching a movie of someone else's life. Not for the first time.

That was last night.

After spending some TV time with my own favorite ghost, I went outside to enjoy the cool afternoon, armed with a pack of Parliaments. It was a perfect afternoon, and I wished the weather would continue through Halloween. I felt guilty for wasting the day, for being too restless to do anything at all. I felt sorry for everyone who hadn't been born yet, because they were missing such a pretty day. I felt guilty for sometimes hating a world that could have such pretty days; I wondered if everyone who'd gone before could go ghost and come back to enjoy the weather for a while.

And then I remembered riding on our departed friend's bike pegs as we went to the video store. I think I was sixteen. I wasn't good at riding pegs and naturally I was wearing a skirt, so I leaned into the wheels and tore my ankles to shreds. I remember bleeding, going back to his house and trying to clean the wounds.

Putting down my lighter, I took a look at my right leg, and there it was--the darkened scar of that long-ago cut.

A monarch butterfly fluttered across the blue sky in front of my house and into the sun until I couldn't see it anymore.

I looked at my ankle again. There it still was.

Pink Is The New...Goth?

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 07:01:57 GMT

And you know you're cute when you scream

Okay, so in the last few weeks I've cut my hair short again, worn black eyeliner and my collar and cuffs every day, become a vegetarian, started listening to punk music again, and resurrected my old goth outfits.

"Woah," Diana said when she saw me in my backyard Labor Day weekend. "Where are we going tonight?"

"Your hair looks cute," Regina said.

"It looks the way it always used to," Danielle said.

I wanted to pound my fists against the table and scream that that was the point, but I didn't. If I started screaming, I wouldn't be able to stop.

Haunted; the word finally made sense.

And no one understood. I was alone, and felt it rising around me like water as I got home every day.

"We ate without you," my father said. "Pepper jack chicken."

"Um, thanks. I can't eat chicken," I said, not sure of what to do with this information.

"What do you mean you can't eat chicken?" he demanded.

"I'm a vegetarian," I said. "Now. Remember?"

Naturally, he didn't. He frowned at me and left the kitchen. I poured a soda, suddenly not hungry.

Of course my dearest friend understood what I was trying to do, but she has the ghost sense--she can see things that most people can't see. Of course I was grateful for that, but I wanted a hug and the distance was laughing at me, the way it stretches not only south but west as well, to California where I can't shop with my best friend who moved away.

So no one was getting it, and I watched so many cartoons, feeling calmer when I sank into that world, being sort of a halfa myself, out of place here, there and everywhere.

I was making a conscious decision to regress, I warned myself. It would probably end in my becoming a recluse. People were going to get fed up with me, I warned myself. I had to make sure not to curl so far up on myself that I stopped being able to deal with things.

But everyone was regressing, I told myself. We were doing it all at once. Everyone thinks they're growing up, but they're really growing backward. I had to take control and choose the place I ended up in.

So where did I want to be?

I wanted to look like myself. I wanted my hair not to be long and blonde so that when I saw a group of people in the long window of a bar, I'd lose myself in the crowd for a second before finding my own reflection.

I wanted to dress like myself. There were over twenty-three plaid skirts in my closet that shouldn't go to waste. The ease of movement was familiar and welcoming; I'd forgotten how comfortable my old, battered combat boots were.

I wanted to sound like myself. There was no reason to be afraid of From Autumn to Ashes lyrics; I had no cure for a stab to the heart and shouldn't go crazy trying to find one. There was no reason not to listen to Senses Fail and Nightmare of You; I didn't have to talk about it with anyone if I didn't want to. I was itching to go to a show, when I'd avoided the scene for two years out of irrational fear of memories with teeth.

I wanted to think like myself. On Labor Day, I suddenly became a vegetarian. I bagged a ton of clothes from my closet and donated them to the Hurricane Katrina relief. I watched scary movies and wrote two chapters of a new fanfic for an entire weekend. I remembered that I do care about things like animal rights and health and believing in things and discipline and enlightenment and something other than myself.

Screw designer jeans.

Screw designer jeans, and WB dramas, and Long Island bars, and designated driving. Screw sleeping at night. Screw the radio, screw dry-cleaning and sample sales. Screw Cosmopolitan and slingbacks and MTV.

And then Shannon said on the phone when I told her, "It sounds like you look the way you did when I met you."

And I wished she was there on my stoop with me because I would have grabbed her in a huge hug and thanked her for getting it, but a very small part of me was glad she wasn't there, because I'm pretty sure I would have started crying and not been able to stop. That happens sometimes.

this time
I win
so here's
your kiss goodbye

Situational Awareness

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 21:50:13 GMT

While my left hand was slamming the car door, it suddenly occurred to me that I had forgotten to pop the gasoline cap. So I reached in with my other hand as the door slammed. Truly, my left hand didn't know what the right was doing.

That struck me as oddly funny, even though my hand was now caught in the door. The pain made my vision dim, but at least I knew my fingers were still attached. That was lucky.

"Oh my god," my childhood best friend breathed from the passenger seat.

"I know. Could you open the door please?" I said, in my calm, cream-soda CSI voice. Nothing to see here, folks.

"How are you not screaming?" she asked. We were all pretty disbelieving of the fact that I'd slammed my own hand in the door.

"I'm not really sure," I said. "It's okay. Can you open the door?"

She reached over and released the door, and I took my hand out, shaking it.

"Did that hurt?" she asked.

While I filled the gas tank with my left hand, I looked at my right pinky, which had a big scrape on it where the skin was missing. The ring finger had no visible damage, but both ached. "Yeah. It hurt a lot."

"How were you not screaming?" she asked again when I got back in the car.

It was still funny to me for some reason. "I have no idea," I said, putting the car in gear. "Isn't that weird?"

So where is my boy? Oh baby, your arms and your legs are shattered. Where is my boy?

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:30:19 GMT

The troubles of the day took my breath away, took my breath away. And I want you not; I need you not. I'm dying cause this is the saddest song I've got. The saddest song I've got...

For over a decade, my best friend has lived two blocks away from me, around the corner that faces the west. It's just always been that way. I was nine years old when he entered the fourth grade at the local grammar school. I had glasses and a big wavy mass of blonde hair.

Now my hair is stubbornly straight and is a few more colors--black dye still running underneath the blonde streaks I put in to temper the harsh shade, stripes of the true brunette showing through finally--and I don't wear glasses anymore, except when I have pinkeye or want to look smart. And my best friend won't be living around the west corner anymore.

Thirteen years was plenty of time for computers and video games and McDonald's and shopping and music and concerts and movies and parties. There was enough time to get through arguments and fights and relationships and hard days and schoolwork and the strain that comes with looking for a job. There was always another weekend coming after the last one, hours full of Buffy the Vampire Slayer reruns and trips to the zoo and museums because we had to write papers about them, long drives to the Smithhaven mall, late-night train rides to and from the city. Concerts we had seats to. Concerts we didn't have seats to. Dance clubs where the music was so loud it hurt the chest. Warm soda, Hershey's pie. My backyard, cold pool, warm sun on chaise lounges with the ghetto blaster playing a burned copy of something. Pizza and beer nights in his living room, Domino's half an hour late. My living room, the video game cords tangling on the rug. Hawaiian Punch in the fridge.
Now, no more weekends. No more time.

Come on in
In houses I live in
And changes you're making
To the state of affairs

Something that I've never understood about life is how I have so little control over the things I love. People leave, and they take not only themselves with them but places, days, routines that I might not yet be willing to give up. It sneaks up on me. It always sneaks up on me.

I'm always rather quietly in awe of people who follow through with things--they make decisions and instead of overanalyzing everything under a microscope, they just go ahead and do it. It takes a lot of guts to go after a dream, especially if failure means you were there and then had to leave again, knowing it didn't work out.

My best friend will no longer be living two blocks away. Like the inevitability of death, the possibility of loss of any kind is a thing that you can't unlearn once you learn it, so you ignore it on purpose instead. You can feel it at times like a moth fluttering around in the back of your skull, but you brush it aside.

So come all the way
Changing your number
Changing the house where you live
Change your lines

I've seen pictures of the new apartment and feel warm, happy jealousy, the kind when you're truly glad for someone and wish you had what they had, too, because it looks so cool in Polaroid. I wonder what it would be like to have all that space--to have any space. I think about visiting and smile at the idea of being shown around. I'm proud of him.

It's very warm in California, which makes me feel oddly relieved. My friend could never stand the cold.

I tell myself that this is normal--that people move and change and it's good. But it's an unconvincing argument because I am the only one not moving, not changing, and I might not be for a very long time. I feel like everyone's suddenly made a plan that I'm not in on, or gone in some bar where I can't go.

I said "where is my boy?"
Have you seen me before?
When I look in your eyes
Tell me "he had to go"

I feel sort of unprepared for this. It seems a momentous event to be unprepared for. What do you do? A hug, a muttered, "I love ya, kid." Cards, phone calls.

Unprepared, prepared, I'll have plenty of time to sort things out by myself afterwards.

I say "where was my head?
When I needed it most?"
Oh, I stayed here before
Yes, I stay in the place I know.

Freedom's forgotten her name. Nothing makes sense, you don't complain.

Mon, 23 May 2005 09:24:15 GMT

It had been a good day, I thought. I had finally relocated my sense of purpose and taken my ailing laptop to a computer store. The very nice man at the counter smiled at me from behind his glasses and told me they’d transfer all my hard drive data to DVDs for a hundred dollars. I left the laptop in their tender care and came back home. Since I was already on the roll, I decided to try my hand at something I’d never done before—-baking.

Half an hour later, I was smiling at a tray of little round cookies in the oven. This wasn’t so hard.

My best friend rang on the phone just as I had decided to put the cookies in for two more minutes. “Want to order Chinese and just stay in?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll order it and you just meet me here.”

Since my father was away for the weekend, I decided to ask my sisters if they wanted any food. The youngest was sitting in the living room watching television. I told her I was ordering out, asked her if she wanted anything. She didn’t answer, just stared stupidly at the TV.

“Hello…?” I said. I called up the stairs to the other one. No answer.

“All right,” I chuckled to my friend on the phone. “No one’s answering me, so I guess just screw ‘em, we’ll get our own food.”

My youngest sister chose this moment to become animated. She told me I was a bitch and never did anything nice for her.

“Never do anything nice for you?” I asked incredulously. “I just asked you if you wanted anything…”

She kept screaming at me, telling me that I was mean and awful. I rubbed at my eye. This kept happening more and more often and I was sick of it. “You can’t talk to me like this,” I said. “You can’t treat people—-“

She screamed that she didn’t have to do anything, that she was sixteen years old and more grown up than any other sixteen-year-old. It sounded like a bad Law and Order insanity defense. My patience ran out silently.

I told her quietly that there were a lot of other sixteen-year-olds who had it a lot worse than she did—-kids who had no parents, or parents who hit them, or boyfriends who raped them. I told her that she wasn’t special by any means just because she had it rough. Everyone has it rough at one time or another, and some have it rougher than others, but you lick your wounds and go on.

My other sister chose this time to get into the act. Now everyone was screaming at me. Whatever. I had had it; I threw them both out.

The youngest smiled assuredly at me. “I don’t get thrown out,” she said, very sure of herself. “Only you get thrown out.”

My blood was hissing in my veins. I told myself hitting her would not help. Remembering the cookies suddenly, I took them out of the oven, now slightly burnt. That made me angrier than anything—-that in the middle of yet another stupid fight, my perfect cookies were now singed.

The middle one was crying. “Get out,” I told them matter-of-factly. “Take her to get something to eat. But you can’t stay here.” I lit a cigarette.

“Would you take that outside, please?” the middle one screamed.

“No.” I took a drag and started to clean the living room. “Why are you still here? Get out.”

Now they were both crying. “Where are we supposed to go?”

“Where do I go when I get thrown out?” I shrugged. “Find a place.”

“You’re a horrible person,” the youngest howled. “You’re a horrible person and I hate living here because of you. You take your mental problems out on everyone else and I hate you.”

I took another drag. I was beyond caring by now. “Yup.”

The middle one turned to me. “Isn’t anything ever good enough for you?”

“I guess not.” I shrugged.

“You’ll never be satisfied in life,” she accused.

When did this become about life? All I had wanted to know was if they wanted any Chinese food.

I thought of Grissom and the butterflies and my film professor and music and my dearest friend's adventures and taking chances. “I’d rather not be satisfied in life,” I said. “If you are…there’s nothing left.”

“You’re going to die miserable,” the middle one howled.

I told her never to speak of my death again—that my death was none of her business. (Later my best friend said, “That entire sentence and that was the part that bothered you??”)

“Why are you still here?” I asked again.

She threw over a lamp and a potted plant, and then they both left. Finally.

I went back into the kitchen with the full intention of doing the dishes, but I wanted to open the window so that my cigarette wouldn’t set off the smoke alarm. But the window wouldn’t open, and my calm shattered.

I don’t know why I thought the window would stand up to my fist. I mean, it was old. Suddenly shards of glass were raining down over me and I felt something for the first time in hours—-fear.

The doorbell rang. Taking my wallet and cigarette to the door, I paid the delivery man and took the food into the kitchen.

My best friend found me outside in my forensics jacket, smoking. I waved a bloody hand at her and she stopped laughing. “I was just about to go inside,” she said. “What happened?”

“They gave us the wrong noodles,” I said. “Sorry.”

We went inside and I got plates and forks and napkins and poured soda. “Hey, cookies!” she said. “I can’t wait to eat these.”

We sat down, and she asked me, “What happened?”

I gave her the Reader’s Digest version, and she listened and agreed and mused and laughed at the appropriate parts. Then she talked for a while and I listened.

The girls came home with their friends as if nothing had happened. One of them had some beer. “We should play Kings,” she said.

“We are not playing,” my best friend said. “We were sitting here bonding.”

I felt dizzily grateful for that one sentence.

When she left, I gave her some cookies to take home to her mother, who likes them slightly burnt. Then I crawled into bed and slept; for the first time in days, I did not dream. That disappointed me deeply.

I woke up hours later than I thought, disoriented. I was still covered in my own blood, and realized for the first time how disgusting that was. I washed it off in the bathroom, scrubbing longer and harder than was necessary. There was also a red scratch on my arm where I’d been nicked by a shard. Hopefully it wouldn’t scar.

Clean and scrubbed finally, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I wasn’t hungry.

Remembering suddenly, I bagged the remainder of the cookies to keep them from getting stale in the shallow darkness of a 4 AM kitchen.

And When I See The Sign That Points One Way

Thu, 05 May 2005 04:40:07 GMT

When you feel you have no control over your life, you control what you can.

After the disaster with my hair, I paid a salon to bleach what color was left out. Now my black hair has blonde stripes, which was never the plan but doesn't actually look too bad. I sort of enjoy the contrast as I pass windows and mirrors, and get compliments on it from random people in my day.

I smoke a lot, and justify it with metaphors about how it's so nice to kiss something, anything, and know you'll get kissed back. Kisses are so hard to come by these days that I find it comforting to carry a pack of them around with me, buy one any time for seven-fifty on the street corner when I'm coming uptown. Tonight I bought a pack of vanilla Djarums, and it was like going to Las Vegas from San Francisco, just knowing somehow there was love there and it was waiting for you.

Driving out into the sunset, I stopped at a stop sign, and looked both ways. Seeing no one, I rolled through, probably a little slower than I should have. Suddenly a cadet blue minivan hurtled out of nowhere, flashing its high beams and honking at me. It didn't even get close to my car, probably just didn't like me being in its way. I kept driving, but the honking continued all the way down the block. The van was following me. I pulled into a parking place, reasoning that it would pass, but it didn't. She--it was a frizzy-haired, large-boned woman--pulled next to me and rolled down her window, waiting for me to roll down mine.

Well, now I was stuck. I hadn't planned on talking to her, but now it seemed to be the polite thing to do. I rolled down my window.

"What did you think you were doing?" she shrieked as soon as the window had cleared my ears.

I blinked at her. "What did you think you were doing, ma'am?" I asked in a nonthreatening, Calleigh Duquesne drawl. "You were going awfully fast."

She wasn't in the mood for Southern hospitality. "I had the right of way. You had a stop sign."

I switched from the drawl to a more clinical, first-officer-on-scene voice. "Well, ma'am, I was already in the intersection when you showed up...speeding."

She mustn't have been a CSI fan. "You had a stop sign," she repeated shrilly. "I had the right of--"

My patience ran out, not that there was ever much of it to begin with. I lowered my sunglasses and interrupted. "Are we both safe?"

"What?" she said, not getting the rhetoric.

"Are we both safe?" I repeated. I wanted her to go away and leave me alone.

She wasn't in the mood for rhetoric, either. Her face hardened and she snarled, "Yes, but you almost just killed me and my son."

I glanced at the tinted back windows--too dark for me to see if there were a child inside. As it was, I only had enough time to glimpse the windows as she slammed her foot on the gas pedal and drove away. I watched the minivan lurch and jag down the block and saw her life suddenly--big bones, frizzy hair, wide hips, a kid and a minivan. She thought she was protecting her child, but I knew better--knew that her life had grown small and sad and that the only thing she could do was try to make other people think that she was a force to be reckoned with.

I hated her suddenly. I resented her for accusing me of negligent manslaughter when she knew nothing about me. I hoped she had gotten a good look at me in the dying light. I hoped she had seen that I was pretty; I hoped that she thought I didn't give a damn.

Then I rested my head against the steering wheel and cried, softly. I would never hurt anyone.

But I know what it's like to want to.

Bachelorette, The Things You Do, Girls, To Your Bachelorettes

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:56:00 GMT

Saturday night was something the humans liked to call "Girls' Night Out", which meant that we sat around a kitchen table drinking mango lassis and exchanging sex stories.

I hate doing that.

I only realized belatedly (read: in the middle of the conversation) that it bothers me. I just don't like it when women discuss sex, because in the end it's always about power. Grissom tells us that Freud says that the only abnormal sexual behavior is to have none at all, and after that it's just a question of opportunity and preference.

There seemed no good way to explain Freud (or Grissom, for that matter) to a table full of nice and friendly girls I'd only just met. Especially when they've spent an hour exchanging tales of the strangest places they've ever had sex, or the oldest person they've ever slept with, or how many one-night stands they've had, while I became increasingly more silent, sipping on my drink.

"So what are you waiting for?" one asked me.

"I'm sorry, what was that?" I asked, looking up from the parasol in my drink.

"You know, why aren't you having sex with anyone?" she clarified.

All eyes turned to me. God damn it.

I shrugged, a simple roll of my shoulders. "Nothing. I mean, I've never been with anyone long enough for it to become an issue."

That answer really didn't seem to satisfy them. I so did not want to sit there and defend myself like I was on a really weird episode of Law and Order.

"You need to just have a one-night stand," another girl laughed.

"No one smells right," I said, thinking of my biology.

"What?"

"Nothing," I said, sipping my lassi. "I mean, it's just not an issue."

My best friend jumped in. "She's waiting for the right guy."

Everyone looked back to me. I thought about that for a second. She's waiting for the right guy. It sounded weak even to me. Love. Shit, was I waiting for love? Nah.

"I'm going out for a cigarette," I said. A lady outside of work had given the pack to me, saying she wanted to quit and would I please take them off her hands? I offered her money, but she said no, and I pocketed the unexpected gift not knowing how much I was going to need them. Now I was glad I had.

"You smoke?" one girl asked. I was the only one at the table who did.

I gave them my best teasing smile. "Hey, at least I'll be sucking on something."

They all cracked up. I went outside and smoked under the cone of light from a streetlamp, imagining I heard palm fronds blowing in the night wind.

An Ounce of Prevention, A Gallon of Cure

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 04:58:54 GMT

My father broke up with his girlfriend. Well, according to her they're "on a break". I took her out to dinner (which I'm beginning to think is what you do when you don't know what to do) and she told me she'd "done nothing but sob all week". I asked her how she was feeling.

She told me that my father had told her that when my mother's name finally got carved onto the stone, that he would take off his wedding ring.

In movies and books, people say they can't eat when they are unnerved by something. But I didn't have any problem with my supper. Actually, continuing to eat was good. It kept me from saying anything.

"He did take the ring off. Didn't you notice?"

I hadn't, and that bothered me. Some criminalist I am. I should have noticed that.

I asked him about it when I got home. "I have to take it off eventually," he told me. But he was wearing it. "I wore it yesterday for good luck. For my midterm."

But that was yesterday, I thought. He was still wearing it today.

I went to Target to look for shoes. I ended up with a pair of Isaac Mizrahi heels and a black blouse behind three chubby girls in line. I decided to play a game: I would look in their shopping cart and see what I could learn about them while I waited.

Inside the cart were bathing suit pieces, Pez, two boxes of condoms (the big boxes) and a home pregnancy test on its side.

An ounce of prevention is worth a gallon of cure, I thought, glancing at the condoms and the pregnancy test, but you seem to be a little too late.

The girls were laughing. They looked young. I decided they looked seventeen, but maybe a kind eighteen or nineteen. Maybe freshmen in college. One of them threw the Pez at another. "You didn't get a dispenser!"

"Why waste money on a dispenser?" the other asked.

Because they have heads shaped like Scooby-Doo, I thought, but didn't say anything.

The third picked up one of the boxes of condoms. "Why did you get this one?"

"I wanted to leave a box around for my dad to find," the other laughed. "We should get flavored ones."

You can't get flavored condoms in Target, I thought. You'd have better luck in a sex shop.

Which reminded me that I had an errand to run, but that's a much funnier story that no one will get to hear.

One of the girls looked at me, as if suddenly realizing they were in a public place. They kept laughing, but she stared at me out of the corner of her eye.

One picked up the pregnancy test, giggling. "Hide this. We don't want anyone to know."

Suddenly all three turned to look at me. Caught, I tried to give them my best disarming smile.

"Don't mind me. I once bought condoms for a gay man in here."

They all looked at me as though I had just told them the moon was in fact made of green cheese. Then they pushed their cart off the line and headed back into the store.

I put the heels and blouse on the conveyor belt.

When the newspapers ask why I went bad, tell them to shop in Target.