When You Know You've Had Too Much

Last night I was sitting in the restaurant where I used to work. I was with Josh and his friends. Josh was inhaling popcorn as fast as he could get it into his small napkin-lined basket. He was also trying to get a stranger he kept calling Vanessa (actual name: Jessica) to eat some popcorn out of his basket. "Please, for the love of God, just eat one piece!" he said, jiggling the basket in her general direction.

I was sitting between him and a waitress I used to work with. We were watching karaoke, which is apparently now a Friday night tradition at the restaurant. A man was belting out the words to Enrique Iglesias's "Hero."

But as entertaining as it was to listen to a middle-aged balding man cough out the lyrics to one of the schmaltziest songs of all time, his show would, in a matter of seconds, pale in comparison to the show put on by a chubby girl in a yellow hooded sweatshirt.

During the last song break I had noticed the girl in the yellow sweatshirt at the back of the bar. She was standing with an unattractive, grouchy-looking boy--but standing isn't the right word. Nothing about her was solid or stable. Her limbs flailed gummily through the air. Her legs trembled and gave out every few seconds, causing her to stumble into the grouchy-looking boy. I watched as she tripped and fell into the counter that holds the popcorn maker. She hit hard, went down, thumped on the floor. The boy knelt to help her up, but he didn't look happy about it.

Ten minutes later I was watching the Iglesias-wannabe abandon the microphone in favor of two young guys who started up a duet. Behind them I could see the girl wearing the yellow sweatshirt. She was wobbling across the floor. Then I watched as she stopped moving, stood deathly still, then went down as suddenly as she'd stopped moving. It was like watching those awful clips of football injuries--when a player gets hit in just the right spot with just the right force and goes down clean and cold. The stillness that comes after that is a scary stillness. Deathly stillness.

This girl was that still. And the noise her head had made when it made contact with the floor was shocking. It was like a small bomb had gone off near the salad bar, like she had gotten so fed up with that floating island in the middle of the restaurant that she wanted to smash it to pieces.

But the only thing in pieces was her. The grouchy-looking boy took one look at her passed out there on the floor and then he turned and left. He just left. He left her there in a lump on the floor, maybe breathing, maybe not.

No one did anything for at least thirty seconds. We all just stared. The karaoke boys were still singing. People at the bar were laughing. But that girl was not moving, not at all.

"I don't know if this is good," a girl sitting close to us said. "The way she hit her head--I don't know. Someone should do something."

This girl's friends--but not the boy--finally came up and crossed the floor to where she was sprawled. They tried poking her, shaking her, calling to her. And the karaoke boys sang, sang, sang.

Nothing. She wouldn't wake up. She was bleeding. And then it happened: a dark wet spot began to spread out from her crotch.

"Awww, Christ," the bartender said. "She's pissing herself."

The grouchy-looking boy was nowhere to be seen.

"If I ever pee my pants in a bar, just kill me, " the girl I used to waitress with said.

That wasn't what I was concerned with, though. I was more concerned with the boy who just left her there, with the friends who only came after her a few choruses after she'd fallen. She stayed on the floor by herself for a long time. I'd like to think that if I fell down and hit my head hard enough to make me go unconscious, which led to me peeing my pants, my friends would be there immediately to get me some new pants, a rag for the blood pouring from my head, and something to lean on.

After awhile, one of her friends decided they needed to call an ambulance because the yellow sweatshirted girl was not waking up. They called 911 and asked them to come. It took them twenty minutes to get there. In that time, the girl woke up and started gagging. The waitress I used to work with dashed across the restaurant and tugged the drainage bucket out from underneath the salad bar and slid it to the girl's friends who then tipped the bucket under her chin.

It was only then that the grouchy-looking boy came back. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest and watched as she threw up into the bucket and clutched a bar rag to her head to stop the bleeding. He watched as she passed out again, as the paramedics tried to yell her name and ask her how old she was and where she lived. He watched her get strapped onto the gurney. He watched as they wheeled her away.

I had never wanted to punch someone in the face as much as I did while I watched him trail after the paramedics, his arms still crossed, his eyes as bored and unconcerned as if he were watching someone needlepoint, as if he were listening to a five hour opera about love--which was something he clearly didn't understand, not even a little bit.

A Christmas Collage

Here's what Christmas looked like this year:



There were shots with everyone's favorite broad-shouldered Navy boy at Amy and Becky's annual Christmas party. I got so drunk I forgot to take pictures. I got so drunk Becky pointed at me in the middle of the party and screamed, "YOU'RE DRUNK!" and I told her I wanted to tape her saying that because Katy is always saying she can never tell when I'm drunk.




People kissed Santa Abe under the mistletoe. This was pre my eighteenth drink, after which I cornered some of Amy's work friends and started talking to them about the genius of The Handmaid's Tale.




At my mother's Christmas party, we mixed egg nog, vanilla ice cream, and amaretto. I drank so much it made my stomach hurt.




We took the standard Christmas photos in front of the tree. My brother refused to wear anything but his Sabres shirt. What says Christmas more than Ryan Miller's name and number on your back?




I received an injury when I accidentally ran into my brother while trying to execute the "be cute and kiss your brother like you mean it" pose. Mom caught my pain on film.




We made Adam pose with all the smelly things he got for Christmas: air fresheners, cologne, body wash, deodorant. "I think people are trying to tell you something," I said. Note my freakish man hand in that photo.




My father finally got the thing he's been coveting (in addition to the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Shower Cleaner) for a whole year: Sirius Satellite Radio. He spent the morning in his car, hooking it up and listening to his 125 new stations. When I went out to visit him, we tried to tune in the Playboy channel. UPGRADED SUBSCRIPTION NECESSARY, the screen blinked. "Bummer," my father said.




At the annual Pink Torpedo Party we were one member short, but that didn't diminish the number of martinis we drank, nor did it stop the good time gift giving. Here is Anne posing with a spork she got from Steph.




Here are two saucy girls--Amy and Anne--showing off this year's signature drinks: Ruby Red martinis and lime vodka martinis.




Steph also bought us Jell-O shots called Suck-n-Blows, where one person blows into one end of the tube and the other person sucks the Jell-O out. They tasted foul. They tasted like red wine that's been left out in eighty degree summer heat for two months.




Amy may or may not have drank some of my saliva along with the Jell-O.




And here we are, the Pink Torpedoes (minus Becky) in our annual in-front-of-the-tree photo.

Classiest Christmas Conversations

#1

My Grandfather sits down for dinner. He folds a napkin on his lap and pats his stomach, which is covered in a shirt that's made out of a cotton printed with antique tractors.

Grandpa: This is my favorite tractor shirt.

Apparently he has more than one.


#2:

Mom: Is Marge coming, Dad?
Grandpa: No. Right now she's only breathing really hard.


#3:

Mom: Okay, I'm going to tell a joke. Ready?

Everyone Else: Yes.

Mom: Why do lesbians like Gander Mountain so much?

Everyone Else: Why?

Mom: Because they hate Dick's.


#4:

My Brother: Mom screams in the middle of the night when she's having nightmares. I've heard it before.

My Aunt: And did it sound like, "Oh, Jeff! Oh, Jeff!!"? Because that's not really a nightmare, Adam.

My Brother: Oh my God, I am going to throw up.


#5:

My Uncle: Alright, let's go. We need to go. I'm dying to show you what I got you for Christmas.

My Aunt: Oh yeah?

My Uncle: Yeah. Santa knows how much you like [devilish grin] roosters.

Merry Christmas from My Family to Yours

The other day my brother came and stood in my mother's kitchen with me. He looked proud and excited. He was holding a stack of books.

"What's going on here?" I asked.

"I just bought these today," he said. He spread the books out so I could see their covers. They were bartending books. He flipped one of them open to a page that showed a picture of a Fuzzy Navel. "I love these," he said. "It's all I drink now."

"Wow," I said, "that's pretty girly."

He frowned. "Whatever," he grumbled. "It doesn't matter. I just like them, okay?"

"Okay."

He tapped the ingredients list. "Anyway, I'm going to bring this book into the bar with me the next time we go. The bartenders in that bar we like in Canada don't make them right, so I'm going to show them how to do it right."

I blinked at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Adam!" I said. "Adam, you can't walk up to a bartender and tell him he is making your drink wrong and then whip out a book and say, 'See? This is how it's really done!'"

He seemed insulted. "Why not?" he asked. "What's wrong with that?"

There were so many things wrong with that I had trouble deciding which to lead with. "First," I said, "the bartender will never, ever, ever serve you again. Or he'll water down your drinks. Maybe spit in them. You can't tell a bartender he doesn't know how to make one of the simplest drinks out there. You will be laughed out of the bar."

My brother made a noise with his mouth, a noise like psssh, like I was wrong and stupid and clearly out of touch with reality. "Whatever," he said.

"Adam!" I said. "I am completely right about this!"

"Whatever," he said. "Okay? Just whatever."

There are times--times like that one--when I am convinced Adam is some sort of adopted orphan, some alien baby, something that showed up under the cloak of darkness one night and looked cute enough while he drooled on himself, while his head lolled about, and so my parents decided to keep him.

I'm now stuck in close confines with this almost-human, this strange boy, for the next forty-eight hours. I'm sure there will be stories. Until then, have a merry, merry Christmas.

The Dishwashers

Some girls like doctors. Some like cops. Some like lawyers. Some like football players. Some like guitar players. Me? I seem to have a fondness for Republicans, for all types of conservatives who hate everything I stand for, but beyond that I don't have a "thing." I don't have an all-encompassing crush on guys who do a certain thing, who look a certain way, or have a certain job.

Except for dishwashers. I am a girl who has a crush-history that is littered with dishwashers. Not the Maytag variety but the boy variety, the ones who work at small country cafes or the ones who take too-frequent breaks to go outside and stand behind the dumpsters to sneak a beer with the cooks.

I started waitressing when I was sixteen years old. I got a job at one of those small country cafes where the parking lot was gravel and the menu included things like ham steak, breaded veal cutlet, meatloaf, and the popular four-piece fried chicken dinner. There was a salad bar that had on it potato and macaroni salad and ambrosia, all homemade. We had an entire cooler devoted to desserts--pies and puddings the owner and her daughters brought in from their own kitchens. That's where I spent most of my daily meal allowance. On pie.

It was in this pie-filled place that I developed my first dishwasher crush. His name was Matt, and he was the type of boy I loved when I was sixteen years old: tall, thin, blond, blue eyes. He was quiet, which made me want to make him talk to me. He would spray down ketchup-crusted dishes while I went on and on and on, asking questions--How many people are in your graduating class? Do you like your school? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you like this job? What's your favorite pie?--because that's what I do. I ask questions. I am a question-asker. A professional one. I can think of enough questions to keep a person answering all night long.

One night Matt and I were both standing at the dishwashing sink and he was showing me a dish that was covered with dried-up old gravy. "How am I going to get this off?" he asked. He looked lost. He sounded hopeless. "I think I'm just going to throw it out."

Why do people insist on hiring fifteen year old boys to wash dishes? That's exactly their attitude: if the machine can't get it off, they might as well throw it out and start over. They don't believe in things like soaking or scrubbing.

Matt extended his arm, and the pan hung from his hand, hovering over the garbage can.

"Oh give me a break," I said, taking the pan from him. "Just soak it. That's why these two giant sinks are here." I ran some hot water in it. I soaped it up. "There," I said. "Just let it sit for awhile."

And then he smiled and turned the hose on me. He sprayed me from head to toe. I shrieked and shrieked, but I didn't run far away because, really, that was what I wanted. That was exactly what I had been after--the kind of flirting that only boys are capable of: spraying a girl down with a hose.

When I was eighteen years old and home from college between freshman and sophomore year I was hired on at the restaurant where I would spend three summers and Christmases waiting tables and working banquets. It was also where I would meet Josh, but he comes later.

First there was Robbie. He came during my first summer there, when I was still trying to find my place in the restaurant staff's strange social circles. It took me a few weeks to figure out who hated each other, who had slept together, which cook would do you favors, which bartender you could charm.

But in the meantime there was Robbie in his white apron. He was tall and skinny. He had brown hair and big brown eyes. He was really, really nice to me, which I appreciated. It can be hard to find your footing at a new job, and until I figured everything out, I could at least look forward to working with him. We had a running joke about leaving everything--my tables, his dishes--and going into the cooler to make out.

The next summer I came back and he was gone. But Josh was there in his place. I didn't decide I had a crush on Josh (seen here at, like, seventeen years old and standing with another dishwasher he wasn't crazy about--isn't he doing a great job hiding it?) until halfway through the summer. He and another dishwasher were best friends, and they had already been there for a few months while I was away at school. They had inside jokes with the waitresses. They had inside jokes with the cooks. They had inside jokes with the bartenders. They had no inside jokes with me.

I actually thought Josh and his best friend hated me. So when I first came back to work, I decided my summer crush would be on yet another dishwasher who had been around the year before. He was snarky and had a good jaw. But he was short, and my crush ended shortly after I realized for us to kiss comfortably there would have to be some sort of strange positioning. I didn't want to have to position myself to get kissed. I just wanted to be kissed. Easily and often.

On a night they were off, Josh and his best friend came in to eat at the restaurant. They wanted pie. This restaurant, like the one I worked at before, had good pie. The peanut butter was my favorite, and I ate an awful lot of it while I worked there. The boys knew about the good pie, too, and they wanted me to bring it to them. They sat at a booth like regular customers. I didn't know exactly what to do--was I supposed to give them a bill? Would they expect to get the pie free because they worked there and knew me? Did they want me to use my peppy waitress voice on them? What, oh what, did they want?

I felt like my waiting on them that night was pivotal. It was a pivotal moment. It could determine whether or not they accepted me into their fold. These two had a complex system of labeling the waitresses, and they discussed it openly when we were all there on Friday night. It was like a badge of honor to be named a favorite.

The favorite waitresses tipped the boys well when they bussed on Friday nights. They pre-bussed the tables as much as they could for the boys. They didn't stick drinks with the straws still in them into the buss bins, because that meant extra work for the dishboys and they would want to know why we couldn't just take the extra two seconds to take the straws out. The favorite waitressed didn't yell and didn't swear at the boys when they didn't clear the tables fast enough.

One Friday night I had heard Josh and his best friend discussing their current favorites while they poured themselves giant glasses of Coke from the pop station. I agreed with one of the waitresses they named, but when they spoke the second one I almost dropped the stack of dishes I was carrying. The waitress they'd just named was a fakey fake, a bitch, a girl who would stab you in the back just as soon as you'd turned around.

Surely they should love me more than they loved her. I was nice. I didn't yell or swear at them. I took the straws out of the glasses. I tipped them after they bussed for me.

So the night they came in wanting pie I thought this could be it: a chance to dazzle them, to make them my own. I wanted to be a favorite. I wanted to be their girl, their go-to waitress, the one they secretly hoped to be scheduled with.

I did up their pie extra special: I twirled caramel and chocolate on the bottom of the chilled plates. I shook powdered sugar on the bottom. I cut extra-big slices. I gave them lots of whipped cream. After they went away I hoped I'd done a good job and that I'd impressed them.

I think I might have. After all, I soon made it onto the favorites list, and Josh started greeting me like this: "Hi, Jess. I love you."

I think I did a very good job.

But since then there has only been one dishwasher for me: my Joshua, who stayed at the restaurant the next two summers I worked there. In late July of 2003 I moved to Minnesota for graduate school and Josh stopped working at the restaurant shortly thereafter. I'd like to think it was because I wasn't there anymore and that the fun was gone, that it just wasn't the same to go to work and not be asked to make out in the cooler, downstairs, or out in the gazebo.

Sometimes I miss those days very, very much. I liked the simplicity of those summers: going to work, shuffling through the All-You-Can-Eat pasta, steak, rib, and crab leg nights, sweeping the floor, washing down the waitress stand, hugging those boys--always damp, always humid--just behind the swinging door that led to the kitchen. Those boys were the types boy I loved back then, and my summers were filled to the brim with them.

And tonight I went back to the restaurant where I used to work, and I stood in the kitchen and let the cooks make fun of me and say filthy things to me. They said, "See? Nothing has changed. Not one bit."

And I said, "You want me back? Do you want me to come back?"

And they said, "Yes, come back. We need you back."

And I stood there and missed it and those summers and those boys and the way I used to feel back then very, very much.

The Best Kind of Mail

Today I opened the mailbox to find a package from the Louisville Review waiting for me, and there it was on the back—my name—under the column for fiction contributors.



TLR took and published "The Republican," one of the stories from my thesis collection. The Wily Republican was the inspiration for this story, but not in the way people might automatically assume. I set out to write a story that flipped our relationship, that made him the one who thought it could work, the one who thought we could put differences aside and just be together.

Not everything was flipped, though. Some really lovely images that actually existed in the Wily's world—a cardboard cut-out of George W. Bush, for example—made it into the story. Who wouldn't want a copy of that?

Miss 104

When we were in fourth grade, our physical stats (height, weight, general flexibility) were recorded in gym class. These stats were logged into a tiny book filled with graph paper, so we could easily be compared to each other, to ourselves in past (and future) years, and to other kids across the nation.

Fine. That was fine. I was tall, I was chubby, and I wasn't very flexible. That was common knowledge. You could tell all those things just by looking at me. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was that our gym teacher measured and recorded these statistics in front of the boys.

In our school district, there is a collapsible wall that separates the girl side of the gym from the boy side of the gym. We have separate locker rooms, separate bleachers, separate basketball courts and play areas. There is a shared equipment room and a tiny door in the collapsible wall that allowed anyone who needed to pass between sides to get there without walking around.

On the day they recorded our stats in fourth grade, the gym teachers kept this door open. The boys stayed on their side, neatly lined up next to their padded wall, and us girls stayed on our side, neatly lined up next to our padded wall. The gym teachers wheeled out two monstrous scales—the kind with that claw that lifts out to press down on the crown of your head and measure your height—and put them next to the padded walls.

The gym teachers elected helpers who would stand next to them and write down the measurements in the appropriate space each time a girl or boy came up to be assessed. The teachers handed these helpers the graph paper books and a pencil. Then they called up the first student.

They should have shut the door. They should have known better.

After the girls were done getting measured, they sat quietly in their small friend groups. They talked about boys they liked, about their least favorite teacher, about what they were going to have for lunch. After the boys were done getting measured, they horsed around, ran races to see who could get to the bleachers first, and play fought each other. They also left the safety of the padded wall. They threw jabs at each other near the center line that separated the girl side from the boy side of the gym. They were close to us.

And because I was near the end of the alphabet, many of the boys were already done with their measurements when it was time for me to go up for mine. The boys were still hanging around the middle of the gym when I stepped up onto the clanking scales. The gym teacher reached up and adjusted the weight. Still not right. More adjustment. Still not right. More adjustment. Finally, she got it right.

"One hundred and four pounds!" she called to her helper, who dutifully scribbled that information in under the appropriate column.

"WOAH!" someone yelled.

I looked over my shoulder to see a group of boys staring at me. They'd noticed the difference, obviously. For most of the period there had been the low drone of our gym teacher calling out the fourth grade girl weights. Ninety. Eighty-five. Ninety-two. Eighty-seven. Ninety-four. Nothing that crested over that one hundred pound mark. Until me.

One boy stepped out of the group. This boy's name was Joey. He was one of my arch nemeses. He pulled my hair and stole my erasers and called me names. He did this all the time. The name calling and hair pulling I could take, but the eraser-stealing I could not. I loved my erasers. I had erasers cut in the shape of rainbows and unicorns and moons. I absolutely could not handle having them stolen. Repeatedly.

"One hundred and four pounds?!" Joey called. "Nice going, Miss 104!"

My gym teacher whirled around and pointed her crooked, knobby finger at Joey. "Go back to your side," she yelled, and he went. Of course he went. What else did he need? Now he had ammunition—new ammunition he could use to torment me, something that would supplement his stealing of my erasers and the pulling of my hair.

Later, after the bell rang and we—now changed back into our normal clothes—shuffled out of the gym and into the halls, heading toward our next class, Joey came up behind me. "104!" he chanted. "104! 104! 104!"

I glared at him. "Shut up," I said.

He kept chanting.

"I'm tall!" I said. "It's not that big of a deal!"

He kept chanting, chanting, chanting. He chanted until I stepped into the English classroom. He picked the chanting back up after English. He chanted for days. And when he tired of chanting, he just referred to me as Miss 104.

"Hi there, Miss 104," he would say anytime we passed each other in the hall. "How's it going Miss 104?"

I hated Joey. I hated him for stealing my erasers, and now I hated him for this. I carried that hatred with me for a long time. I carried it with me until he moved away to a neighboring school district so he could play football. After that, I only saw Joey once more when he attended the homecoming dance during our sophomore year of high school. We ran into each other in the cafeteria, where the school had set up a cookie and punch station.

I was having some punch and standing in a circle with my best friends. I was wearing a slinky, stretchy, Spandexy blue dress whose fabric glittered in the light. My hair was long and curled. I looked very different from my Miss 104 days. I was still a little chubby and I still had linebacker arms, but I'd managed to come out of my most awkward phase—the years of middle school—looking like a human girl.

When my group turned to leave the punch and cookies behind because we heard AC/DC's "Shook You All Night Long" blare over the speakers in the gym and we wanted to dance, that's when Joey came through the cafeteria doors. He was with a group of friends, all these big and tough-looking boys, and every one of them breezed right by me and my group of friends. Well,
every one but Joey. He stopped for a second. A millisecond.

"Jess," he said as I passed. "Woah. Huh."

Even now I have no idea what that meant. Was he woahing a transformation he saw in me? Was he woahing the lack of change? Was he woahing the way I'd filled into myself? Or was the woah for the sheer spandexy glory of that dress, all the big glitz and glitter I was walking around in? I just didn't know, and I didn't stick around to find out. AC/DC was thumping in the gym and my friends were calling for me to hurry up.

I hadn't thought about any of that—about gym class in fourth grade or about that night in the cafeteria—for awhile. Until Saturday night. Until I walked into the restaurant where I used to work, looking for Josh. Until I looked across the bar and saw Joey leaning against a pretty blond, smiling at her, laughing at what she said.

"That," I told Josh, "is the boy who tormented me in middle school. He stole all my best erasers."

Josh, who was drunk, didn't fully appreciate the situation. He might not have even heard me. He seemed wholly unconcerned that I was staring across the bar at a boy who had fed off my worst insecurities for years.

Later, when I stepped down to the lower level of the bar to get myself some vodka, I saw Joey lean into the girl one more time then push off the bar, round its corner, and head my way. I focused my attention on the bottles of liquor behind the bar. There was a part of me that wondered if he was coming over to talk to me. That seemed highly unlikely. That seemed impossible. How would Joey remember me after ten years?

That's when I heard my first and last name being exclaimed. I turned. It was Joey.

"I've been standing over there and saying, 'I think I know that girl. I think that's Jess!'" he said.

"I thought that was you, too," I said. "My God, how are you?"

We exchanged stories. He told me where he'd been and where he was going. I couldn't believe I was talking to him, that he'd identified and remembered me. I wanted to ask if he remembered stealing my erasers and telling everyone that I weighed over one hundred pounds. I wanted to ask if he remembered sitting next to me in fifth grade, if he remembered how he used to paw through the things in my desk when I got up for a drink of water.

I didn't, of course. There are just some things that need to be left unsaid. There are just some things that need to be left in the past. But still, there are some days when I wake up in this house, in this town, shocked at how much hasn't changed, at how things can keep going, going, going forever.

And I guess I can't forget to mention that after we both expressed how happy we were that the other was doing good things, I drank a big drink of my vodka and went to the bathroom so I could lean in to the mirror and wonder what Joey saw when he looked at me. Did he think, She's come a long way or did he think She's still so much the same? Then I wondered what it mattered. Outside the door there was a whole new world, a world I'd made for myself long after the days when Joey stole my erasers and called me name, and I knew that was what was important, even if I did smile at my reflection and think, Just look at how I have changed.

Don't Be Afraid of the Floor

It is 2:00 AM. I am at the restaurant where I used to work. It's a Saturday night, and that means it has transformed into a dance club for the residents of my hometown who are too lazy or too drunk to drive to Buffalo to "real" bars.

I am here because earlier Josh got home from Quebec. He called and said, "I'm here. I'm home. I'm at our old place of employment. What are you doing?"

I went, met up with his friends, drank a beer from a stash one of the waitresses had hidden under a booth in the back.

Now, though, I am on the dance floor. One of Josh's friend's girlfriends—who is wearing a tight tank top that shows off her breasts (giant) and stomach (flat)—is grinding against me. She has gotten me on the dance floor because I was just sitting at a table, talking to Josh and the other boys, and she didn't think that was right. She thought I needed to be dancing.

"Don't be afraid of the floor!" she says and her knees drop out from under her. Suddenly she is writhing near my ankles. Her hands are on my legs.

I'm uncomfortable. For several reasons. First, I don't even know this girl's name. Second, I'm seeing more of her breasts than is necessary. Third, she's humping my leg. Fourth, there is a Napoleon Dynamite-looking man sneaking up behind us, trying to hump on me, too. Fifth, I don't like dancing with people I don't know. Sixth, I don't like to dance "seriously" in front of people from my hometown.

This girl is throwing down some moves. She has no problem dancing in front of these people. She wants to be queen of the dance floor. She wants all the boys to look at her.

If my friends were there, I would certainly dance with them, but in a not-serious way. We wouldn't roll up our tank tops so more of our stomach showed. We wouldn't grind up and down on each other and hope all the boys are watching. What we would do is laugh and giggle and twirl around like girls who don't so much care what people think of them because they're only dancing for themselves.

This girl wasn't dancing for herself. She was dancing for the DJ, for her boyfriend, for the men who were drinking Coors Light and standing on the edge of the dance floor. She was dancing for the short men, the men with tattoos on their necks, the men without teeth, the sixty year old farmers, the underagers who scammed their way inside.

I don't want to dance for any of them, so I'm not. This girl is disappointed in my effort.

"Don't be afraid of the floor!" she says again. Emphatically. She slaps the floor with one hand.

There is no way I am going on the floor.

She springs up again. She is like a pretty Gumby doll. "Come on," she says. She puts her hands on my hips. "Move for me. It's all in the knees."

"Uhm," I say. "No."

"Watch me!" she says, then she stomps one foot on the ground, turns herself in a half-circle, repeats. "See?" she says. "It's easy."

"I don't think I can do that," I say. That's a lie. Of course I can do that. I just don't want to do that. First of all, I think the foot-stomp/twirl thing looks a little horsey. It looks like something a girl who is trying too hard would do. I'm not a girl who is trying hard.

She stops dancing. "You need to learn to use your body for pleasure," she says.

I want to laugh. I really, really, really want to laugh. I'm pretty sure I've figured out how to use my body for pleasure. I think I've studied up on the subject, gotten some practice, enjoyed it. I think our definitions of pleasure must be different because mine does not include dancing to impress that toothless man in the corner, the one whose mouth is hanging open just enough to make you wonder if he's actually going to drool on the floor. If she was dancing for herself, for the sheer pleasure of dancing, then I would've understood. But this was a girl who was clearly out to prove she was the prettiest girl there. Look at me! her moves said. Look at me! Are you looking at me now? Don't stop!

I tell the girl thanks, thanks a lot, but I'm going to get a drink now. She frowns at me. "Alright," she says, and shrugs.

I go back to Josh. I tell him he shouldn't let that happen again. I just want to stay with him and the boys. That's fine with me. That's perfect. I don't need anything else, and when I turn around to watch the girlfriend in the yellow shirt drink suggestively from her beer bottle then run her hands up her thighs, I am ridiculously thankful that I don't need anything else, anything like that, to make me feel good and right and wanted.

This Is Why I Have Trouble Sleeping

Sometimes I can't shut off my brain. I can't shut it off, and I can't shut it up. It just goes and goes and goes, especially when I pull the covers up to my chin and turn out the light for the night.

Last night I just wanted to go to bed and have dreams that were better than the dreams from the night before, where I was sitting at a board room table and two of my grad school peers were pointing fingers at me, yelling, "Liar! Liar! Liar!" for reasons that are still unclear to me. But to get to better dreams, I would first have to fall asleep. And I couldn't.

All I could think about was the day after I'd told my best friend that I'd lost my virginity. She was very angry with me. She thought I was a slut and that I was going to hell. She cried in front of the whole AP English class. All of that—the anger and the crying—happened on the day I told her. The next day, though, we started practicing the graceful art of High School Avoidance, which was difficult, since we had all the same friends and the same schedule.

That next day we had gym together, ninth period. We all dressed together in the same corner, which meant I'd have to stand close to her, my ex-best friend, the girl who thought I was on an express train, hell-bound. When I walked into the room and rounded the corner to where our group of friends did their changing, I noticed that everyone was a little wide-eyed and skittish. I figured maybe she'd said something mean, something like, "If that little slut even tries to come near me, I'm going to snap her in half."

I would've stayed away from her if I could, but here's the thing about best friends: they like to share lockers. And she and I shared one. My shorts, shirt, and shoes were in her locker, safely barricaded behind the padlock she bought with her own money.

Just as I rounded the corner, my best friend breezed past me and knocked our shoulders together, giving me a real jolt. I said nothing. I continued on. I figured she would've locked me out of the locker and that I'd have to explain that to our gym teacher who, ever since she'd gotten remarried, had lost all her humor, maybe because now her last name sounded like it could be a sexually transmitted disease or some sort of deep sea animal.

But I didn't have to worry about that. She'd left our locker open. Wide open. And it was empty.

I looked at my friends. My friends looked at me.

"Where are my clothes?" I asked.

They stretched out their arms, pointed down, way down, to the end of the locker room, to the row where the smelly girls who liked to drink pickle juice like it was shots of whiskey did their changing. I walked down there. I found one of my shoes on top of the lockers. The other was in the shower. My shirt was under a bench. My shorts had fallen on one of the smelly girls' backpacks.

"Excuse me," I said. I picked up my things like it was no big deal, like this sort of thing happened all the time, like best friends routinely lost their minds and threw fits over lost virginities.

And that's what I was thinking about last night before I fell asleep. That happened eight years ago, but last night it was the only thing in my head, and I couldn't stop thinking about how angry I was when I saw my shoe on top of the lockers. I couldn't stop thinking about how humiliating it was to pick up my clothes and retreat back to my corner just so I could change and go out and play Speed Ball with boys who liked to whip the ball at any girl just to hear her scream.

I wanted to pick the phone up, call information, find my ex-best friend's phone number, call her up, and tell her, "Thanks. Thanks a lot. For everything."

Things My Father Doesn't Want to Hear

Last night I was on the phone with Professor Girl. We were discussing what we usually discuss: people we don't so much like, people we love, the weird things we've been up to, food, my other former professors, and the most important thing in the entire world: boys.

Of course, after we start talking about boys it's only a matter of time before we slip into the next logical topic: sex. And I find it troubling that I can no longer talk about sex at a normal volume. It's one of the non-perks of having failed at getting a full-time teaching job and then moving back home to save rent because you won't be able to have an apartment and pay all your bills on a part-time instructor's salary.

If ever I want to talk about anything even remotely scandalous, I have to drop my voice, hide under a pillow, or, if the thing I'm talking about is particularly naughty, then I have to leave the main part of the house altogether. The living room and my bedroom are not that far from my father's own bedroom, and even if he's sleeping the last thing he needs to wake up to is me giggling and saying,"Something something something CONDOM!"

In this lifetime, my father has already caught me doing many stupid things, and I don't need to add "talking about boys and sex with Professor Girl" to that list. So last night there came a point where I had to say, "PG, hang on. Hang on for just a second, okay? I'm going to tell you a story, but I have to go outside."

And I gathered my cell phone charger, my slippers, and I tromped out into the garage, past the woodpile, past the stack of winter boots, past the bag of pop and beer cans we're saving for refund, and into the tiny room that juts off the garage. We call it the office, but it's not an office. No one works out there. There are some filing cabinets, sure, but it's mostly filled with boxes of my things, old clothes, wrapping paper, and board games.

I felt like I was fourteen years old again. I sat on the floor and folded my legs underneath me. I told the story of that one time—oh, that one time—and I gave her all the details, and I was able to do that in a normal voice, because I was now separated from my father by three doors, a woodpile, and a very long hallway.

It reminded me of how things used to be when I was in high school. I wasn't a very advanced girl—in fact, I didn't get my first kiss until I was sixteen years old. I'd lied about that, of course. I had friends who all got their first kisses and moved swiftly on to other things that kids were trying out in middle and high school, so I, under the pressure of their constant questions "Who do you think it's going to be?" and "Don't you want to hurry up and get it over with," caved. I caved. I told people I had been kissed. I told people it was a boy from my church. He was in the Sunday school class that met in the next room over.

The boy was real, the kissing was not. The boy did go to my church, and I had a giant crush on him. His name was Marc. He worse a varsity jacket from the next school district over, which made him a perfect candidate because no one would ever be able to check up on my story. How would they get information about him if he didn't even go to our school? So I spent most of the time in my Sunday school classes planning my next lie. I planned our dates (we went to watch baseball games at the town park) and I planned our kisses (which often took place on hills while the sun was setting) and I did this in a church. I planned elaborate lies in church. This is how real the pressure of the first kiss and being "normal" was.

By the time I got around to being in a place where it was feasible that I would get my first real kiss, stuff got turned around, things went backward. The boy who was my first kiss just assumed that by the time a girl is a junior in high school she would have already been kissed. Maybe I seemed worldly, with it, normal, and charming enough to have been kissed millions of times. I hadn't, of course, but that didn't matter. I was going to be now. But the thing is, other firsts—small milestones—happened before I ever got my first kiss. That's just the way it happened.

And after those other firsts happened, I had to try to tell my best friend. There was no way we could talk about it over the phone, because there was the chance that one of our parents was listening, would pick up the phone, or would walk into the room at the wrong time. So we had to do it face to face, to eliminate distance and the possibility of interference.

I remember one of those nights like it was yesterday. I had things to tell Amy. Many, many things. We went into her basement to get as far away from her parents as possible, and we sat on teetering high stools in front of the computer they kept down there.

I couldn't look at her. I couldn't. To properly tell the story I had to describe things. I had to say words that I wasn't comfortable saying out loud when sitting in the corner of Amy's basement. So I relied mostly on hand motions and the phrase, You know...

When my voice would raise because I got nervous or wrapped up in the storytelling, Amy would have to shush me. Her father was upstairs. We didn't want him to hear. We didn't want that at all. So I kept telling my story, kept trying to tell her how the night had gone, how dark and mysterious everything seemed and how I wanted it to keep going forever, and then there came a noise.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

It was Amy's father. He could hear us. We had woken him up. He was thumping on the floor to tell us to be quiet.

I was mortified.

As you can see, I have been scarred. I don't want more fathers to hear things I have to say about boys and what happens when a girl is alone with a boy she likes. And so I'm back in this house, taking precautions against such a thing, and I'm walking out to the office to sit in the cold, to plug my phone in and talk about things that can't—and shouldn't—be said in the main part of my house, near the cozy fire, near blankets, near the new couch that has a heat coil in one of the recliners. I'm wrapping my arms around my knees to keep myself warm, and I'm realizing I'm not so very far from where I've come. I'm not so very far from that sixteen year-old version of myself. I'm really, really not.

Studded

Friday afternoon, Becky and I went to see the new James Bond movie. When we came out and checked our cell phones to see if we had missed anything important, I saw that I'd missed three calls. One was from Ex-Keith. Two were from my brother. Two.

I was shocked. My brother would rather do many unpleasant things than be forced to talk to me. He'd rather have teeth extracted, be forced to watch girly movies, work a double shift, get his hand caught in his car door. But on Friday afternoon, he called me twice. And he left a message.

"It's your dear brother," he said. "I need to ask your opinion about something. Call me back as soon as you get this."

My opinion?

"This can't be right," I said to both Becky and Amy after we'd gotten back to their apartment. "He doesn't care what I think about anything."

I called him back. I asked him what had come over him. I asked him what the hell his problem was. I asked him if he'd had any head trauma as of late.

"You and I had a conversation once," he said, "and you said you liked eyebrow rings."

If that was true—which I highly doubted—it had to have been ages ago, like when I was an undergraduate at Fredonia, when I had a thing for a boy in my first creative writing class. It was the first semester of sophomore year and I was still shaken because Keith had cut me loose after cheating on me with a girl he would later refer to as "Psycho." I was looking for a boy to save me from my misery. I was looking for a boy who would read my writing and think I was brilliant. Keith had never read my writing—always said he would, never did, never has—and I wanted someone who was his exact opposite. I wanted a liberal boy who liked to read.

Enter Chris from Intro to Creative Writing. He sat in the back, wore backward hats, and he wrote really awful poetry. I decided I'd ignore the bad poetry. I decided I'd take it, because it was sure better than loving a boy who refused to read anything except the sports page of the newspaper. Chris, at least, was trying.

He also had a piercing in that divot between his lips and chin. More than anything, I wanted to know what that piercing would feel like when he pressed close to me, when he kissed me. I was in love with that piercing more than I was in love with Chris's whole package. It seemed rebellious and badass. I pictured running into Keith when I was holding Chris's hand. I pictured Keith turning red with rage because there I was—his good, sweet, innocent ex-girlfriend—hanging out with a boy who had an attitude and a piercing, a boy who would rub that piercing over my lips before catching them in his own.

To catch Chris and make him my own, I did what I was capable of. I leveled what I assumed to be sultry looks in his direction during class. I said witty things . I tried to distract him from the very beautiful girl who sat by the windows—the one with the best curly blond hair I'd ever seen, the one who wore low-cut jeans that exposed the tattoo of a fairy cresting above her butt. On the last day of class I dressed up in clothes I thought a punk boy would approve of. I plaited my hair in tight braids against my head. I wore chunky shoes. I put on extra mascara. After we were dismissed, I sat and waited and prayed that after he gathered his things he would come over and ask me out. I waited, waited, waited. Chris picked up his jacket, yanked his backpack up off the floor, and walked out.

I hated that I'd never said anything directly to him. I wanted to know so badly how that piercing would have felt. Amy can certainly verify that. I used to spend thirty, forty minutes sitting in her dorm room, discussing that piercing and how I had to have it, and the boy it was attached to, for my own.

After that, though, I could have cared less about piercings, so Adam must have remembered me talking about Chris from Creative Writing and the silver stud in his face.

I told him this. "That conversation must have been forever ago," I said. I almost told him that right now if I met a cute boy who was my age and had a strange piercing I'd tell him to grow up and take the thing out of his chin, his eyebrow, his nose. I almost told him that, but I had a bad feeling, so I shut up and let him reveal why he was asking.

"Well," he said, "my friend Megan told me I'd look good with an eyebrow piercing, and I remembered what you said, and some of my other friends said it would look good on me, too, so I went and got it done this afternoon."

If I hadn't been in the movie, if I hadn't been busy coming 180 degrees on my perception of the new James Bond and his sexiness that I hadn't understood until I saw the movie, then I could've answered the phone and talked my brother out of it. But that chance was gone forever, so I did the only thing I could do. I raised my voice several octaves and tried to sound excited.

"Well, that's nice," I said. "Does it look good?"

He said it did and that his friends really liked it.

After we hung up, I told Amy and Becky what had been done. They were appalled, just like I was. Then we tried to examine why we were appalled. Hadn't we all at one point had a thing for a boy who had a non-ear piercing? Yes. Hadn't we all at one point looked at boys who sat in class with us, boys who had piercings, and thought nothing of it? Yes. Then what was our problem? Were piercings over, or was it just that we weren't nineteen years old anymore? We finally agreed it was the latter, that there is a short period of time where piercings are seen as badass and hot and cool, and then girls grow up and want a boy who has left his piercing days behind, a boy who can do his own laundry, a boy who has stopped throwing up in the bushes behind the fraternity house.

Adam's friends—girls with names like Kaylyn and Emily, names I associate with pretty blond girls who want to grow up and go to cosmetology school—are still in their piercing phase. They're a couple years out from wanting the boy who can separate his own laundry into piles according to shade and fabric. And so they talked him into it.

Last night Adam came out for our bi-weekly Family Dinner Night. It was the first time my father and I got to see the piercing. Adam walked in, looked at us, and said, "What? What? You guys are looking at me funny."

"I'm doing no such thing," my father said. He stirred his beef stroganoff. "I think someone's got a guilty conscience."

"Jesus Christ," my brother said. "Everyone hates it! This has been the week from hell! I'm sick of everyone looking at me like that!"

Apparently my mother hadn't been too fond of the piercing. Apparently her boyfriend had made fun of Adam and told him it was a stupid decision.

"I think it's fine," I said. "I think you can do whatever you want. You're twenty years old. If you like it, then that's all that matters."

And the thing was, I didn't hate it. I actually thought it was pretty cute. I looked at him and thought, Yeah. He looks alright. Of course his little girl followers would like it.



So I guess I don't really care about his piercing. I won't say anything about it, and I won't make fun of him for it. It's fine. I don't care. He can do what he wants. But I do care that the other day he said to me, "I don't have thirty dollars to split that part of Dad's Christmas present with you," to which I replied, "Alright, fine. How about you just give me what you can and I'll pay the rest?"

Two days later he went out and did this. Merry Christmas to him. That kid owes me money.

Officially Festive

Today I finished putting up the tree. There was an incident the other day--an incident involving the running out of hooks--and I had to make a trip to Target before the decorating could be finished. But now the tree is up in all its glory.



It's displaying the best of the best: Baby's First Christmas ornaments, ornaments my brother and I made in Girl and Boy Scouts, ornaments made out of clothespins, Hallmark Keepsakes that we get every year from our mother, snowflake ornaments with our school pictures inside, penguin ornaments, disco ball ornaments, best friend ornaments with names carved on them(Jess & Tammy, 1994), lighthouse ornaments, pickle ornaments, ornaments made out of nuts and pinecones. We are nothing if not an eclectic tree decorating family.

Examples:



You can't beat a fat TV-watching penguin.



And who doesn't like a zebra?



And there he is--my brother--many years before Hooters ever entered his vocabulary.

Writing The Family

"Do you ever worry that your family is going to get mad when they find out you're writing about them?" my friend Pedro asks.

The reason he asks is because he's worried. He thinks someday his mother or his father or his grandfather or one of his obscure cousins is going to find something he wrote--a poem about how strange his family is--and they're going to be very, very displeased.

I've already been through this once with a family member. My mother, in fact. It turns out my mother wasn't exactly wild about a story in my thesis collection, a story that's titled "Good Mother," a story that's loosely based on my relationship with my mother post-divorce and on the ugly side of my relationship with the Wily Republican.

"Well," she said after she came to that story in my thesis. "I never knew you hated your mother, but it's so clear now."

She was half joking, half not. She didn't like the way I painted her, and she certainly didn't like the way I described her "new" life: living with her boyfriend in a trailer, consumed with packing her things away because she didn't have room for all her "nice" things anymore.

I wrote the story shortly after she broke the news about the trailer to me. I was appalled. My mother is not a woman who lives in a trailer, no matter what the circumstances are.

"It'll only be for two years," she promised. "Three tops."

As soon as she said that I knew it would be longer than that. I think she knew, too. If our lives were being played out on the big screen, that's when the music would crescendo over her last words--Three, tops--and the director would cue the passing-of-seasons-montage. We'd see the trailer in three icy winters, three muddy springs, three crisp falls, and then there'd be a dramatic pause--pause!--and then another icy winter, another muddy spring, another crisp fall.

I saw all that in my head. I saw it and I felt the need to explore my feelings about it in story form.

My mother was not pleased. Not pleased at all.

It could have been worse though. She only moped for about two weeks. Every time I saw her, she mentioned that I was a girl who hated her mother (Example: "Adam, your sister and I are making a pie tonight. Did you know she hates me?") and she would pout and let out extravagant sighs. Then, thankfully, she picked my thesis back up and moved on to other stories that didn't have anything to do with her. In fact, they didn't have anything to do with anyone she knew, except that maybe they had a little bit to do with me, but she didn't really think about that.

Basically because I handed my thesis over to her on this condition: she was not to automatically assume that every narrator, every I, every girl character was based on me. "Especially the sexy parts," I told her, hugging the book to my chest. "Do not picture your daughter engaged in the sexy parts. That's just wrong."

And none of the sexy parts or the stories that were so obviously based on things that have happened to me bothered her. It was just the one story, the story based loosely on her, on me, on the post-divorce happenings, that made her sulk for two weeks.

It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, so I'm pretty confident I can make it through anything else now. So I tell Pedro that.

"Well," I say, "they already know I'm writing about them. And so far it's been okay. Well, my brother doesn't know about his story, but my brother doesn't care about things if they aren't Hooters or beer, so I don't really anticipate a problem there."

It's true. My brother has a story. I'm working on it. I'm amused by it. It came about because it seems like the only thing I want to write about since I've moved home is my family. I blame the new proximity, the family functions, and being thrust into their strange social circles again after three years of distance.

I'm writing a lot of family stories that are based on hypothetical questions.

My brother's story started when I asked myself this question: "What if a person like me was forced to move in with a person like my brother after he dropped out of college?"

(The answer is in the very first line: At this point in her life, Jayne O’Neil is sharing an apartment with her brother. This is what she thinks of that: It’s awful. It sucks. It’s ruining her life.)

I've recently started another family story based on a hypothetical situation: a family Christmas party gone horribly wrong. This one revolves around three girl cousins--two artists, one doctor--who are trying to understand where they fit in the world and in their own family. I can't even tell you how much fun I'm having with it. It started out loosely based on my family and my two close-in-age cousins on my father's side (not to mention my grandmother), but it's quickly progressed into a story not at all about us, but more about one very spoiled and bitchy granddaughter, another granddaughter who thinks she's the favorite, and one calm, cool, collected granddaughter who is the actual favorite.

Pedro knows I'm writing that one, too. I think he's worried that my cousins will be in an uproar after they read it, that they will no longer want to speak to me, but that story has unraveled so far past the truth of our family dynamics that no one would ever recognize the people the characters were originally slated to be. And I'd hope they think it's funny.

So do I worry? No. Not right now. And besides, even though they might have originally thought my little "writing thing" was going to be a quaint on-the-side hobby and have since been proven wrong, my family has known for years that anything they do or say in front of me is considered possible material. And if they didn't want to become shadowy versions of themselves in a piece of fiction, then, for God's sake, they shouldn't have been so bizarre.

Last Day Sweetness

Halleluiah, the semester is over.

All the portfolios are in, all the papers are graded, and all the excuses are done (I know I haven't handed in a research paper, even though it was due last Tuesday, but, uhm, I'm pledging this fraternity... and, uhm, well, they don't let us do homework).

All I have left to do is pour myself a glass of wine, crank up Cat Stevens, and tabulate some grades. This is a fine day. A fine day that was made even finer by the following sweet student moments:

(1)

One of my students helped me carry the thick stack of in-class journals and final portfolios up to my office. Then he sat with me for forty-five minutes, just talking until I had to go to my last class of the day and he had to go take his World Civilization final.

"Shouldn't you be studying?" I asked him. Downstairs, half of his class was still in our classroom. After I forced them to do class evaluations and eat cookies I'd baked, they'd formed a circle and started quizzing each other on ancient civilizations. "Don't you want to be in on that study group down there?" I asked.

My student--sweet, sweet boy that he is--shrugged. "Nah," he said. "I think I'll just stay here." Then he paused. "Did I ever tell you that I showed my mom the first paper I wrote for you? She cried she liked it so much."

That hurt my heart it was so sweet.

(2)

During my last class, I was sitting out in the hall while my students worked through evaluations. A few minutes later I looked up and saw one of my students standing in front of me.

"Hi, Jess," she said.

"Hi," I said.

"I just wanted to come over and tell you thank you," she said. "So, thank you for this semester. I was really angry coming into your class because the college wouldn't accept my high school AP credit and I had to take this all over again, but then you made the semester so great I'm glad it happened that way."

I stopped breathing for a few minutes because that was one of the loveliest things anyone has ever said to me.

Heaven! Heaven! Heaven!

Seventy-five research papers corrected in five days.

Seventy-five research papers handed back today.

To celebrate my accomplishment (and my return, which will happen tomorrow, to the world of humans and polite society), I will now post one of my favorite pictures ever--not so much for my outfit choice (khaki shorts and an old sweatshirt borrowed from Katy), but for the fact that it was one of my last days in Minnesota and we chose to spend it at the porn store.

This photo once again proves that I am Sexy Fun.

Too Much Cuteness

World, meet Zoe:



Zoe is my mother's cat. For awhile, Zoe was my mother's substitute for a man. She arrived at my mother's house because one morning my mother woke up and decided she needed something besides empty in her apartment. So we drove to the SPCA. My mother said, "No kittens. I want a grown cat. No one ever wants the grown cats."

But when we went into the cat room, there they were: a cage full of squirming kittens. We bent close to the cage. We cooed. We wiggled our fingers at their pink noses, at their unsteady paws. That's when Zoe trotted to the front of the cage. She looked at us. We looked at her. That's when she decided to go to the bathroom. Right there. Right there as we watched. And she covered her business when she was done.

"Well," I said, "that's something, huh? She's considerate."

"No kittens," my mother said. Still, she didn't move from the front of the cage. She smiled and smiled and smiled. The SPCA lady told her she could take one of the kittens out and play with it in the playroom for a bit, to see if it was a good fit.

Still, my mother made a big show of looking at all the other cats. "This one is pretty," she said of an older tabby. "And look at this one's face--so much personality!"

But she wasn't fooling anyone. After she made her rounds, she had the SPCA lady bring Zoe out of her cage. The three of us sat in the playroom for five minutes. My mother and I watched as Zoe climbed unsteadily on the scaffolding of a scratching post. We watched as she fell. We watched as she hid.

"She's pretty cute," I said.

Ten minutes later, Zoe was wearing a pink collar and being transported from the SPCA to my mother's apartment in a cardboard carrying case.

Zoe is a good cat. She has a cranky meow and a fascination with anything minty (toothpaste, Chapstick, or Altoids). Her ears are too big for her body. Her tail and paws are, too. She likes to sleep on my brother's bed, but only when he's not home. She likes boxes and wet towels. She likes to knock over water glasses just to watch them fall. She fetches (rubberbands or napkins) just like a dog. She likes to crawl inside backpacks, briefcases, and totes. She doesn't like ham or pork. She doesn't like my mother's boyfriend's possibly gay black belt son.

Zoe understands me perfectly. Or at least she did this week. She was with me all Friday as I sat in the silence of my mother's house and graded the seventy-five research papers I need to have done by Tuesday. She climbed up on my lap and put her face in my face and looked at me with her big green eyes. She purred. She smelled the uncapped red pen that was clenched in my hand. She huffed out her displeasure. The pen did not smell good. And when I set it down so I could take a break from writing comments about proper MLA citation and vague pronouns, when I took a break so I could put my forehead on her warm forehead, that's when Zoe reached her big Bobcat paw up to the red pen, hooked it under the pads of her feet, and dragged it off the table. The red pen clattered to the floor and made a surprising amount of noise in the silent kitchen. Zoe looked pretty happy with that result. She tipped her head up at me. She twitched her whiskers.

"Yes, good girl," I said, and I petted her. "Good, good, smart girl."



I have four more papers to go.

Measuring Their Love

If I could, I would continuously poll my students throughout the semester. I would poll them about all sorts of stuff, like what they thought about that time I wore jeans to class, or how much they liked my new haircut, or how charming they thought I was during my lecture on paraphrasing.

But the most important question I could ever ask is this one: Do you love me?

I want my students to love me. I think my obsession with winning and keeping their affection goes back to the first semester I ever taught. There were fourteen of us TAs in one office that semester, and people were constantly comparing their classes. Two of the girls would consistently slink back from teaching looking like they'd just come back from war. "My students hate me," they would moan. "It's just so clear--they loathe me."

That's when I would smile and shrug and tell them it would get better eventually.

"Do your students like you?" they asked.

"My students love me," I chirped. I was very, very annoying. And I was very, very annoying because I was trying to prove myself to everyone around me. After all, I came in at twenty-one years old, and I spent a lot of time before my first day worrying my students would sense my young-ness, my inexperience, my fear, and there would be a bloody coup, and they would hang me upside-down from the chalkboard. When none of that happened, I was so happy and so relieved that I couldn't stop talking about how they loved me. They loved me. Some loved me too much.

But ever since then, I've wanted every single class to love me the same way. I want my students to look forward to coming to my class because--let's face it--when they are happy with the course and the teacher they are more attentive and less likely to fall asleep in a puddle of their own drool. They might actually learn something.

Sometimes it's hard to measure a class's love. Sometimes you wonder if there's a thin line between loving a professor and wanting them to explode in a firey ball of death as they're talking about the proper use of apostrophes. Sometimes you look into your students' eyes and think, They're totally fantasizing about killing me right now. Of course, there are other times when you look into your students' eyes and think, They're totally fantasizing about me right now. Sometimes it's hard to tell which of those options is the better one.

Still, there are other times when you know exactly what a class feels. This week was one of those times. The class schedule for next semester is out, and students are registering. This means I can now pop open a tentative class list and see who is enrolled in my courses. I did that the other day, excited to see the photo list of my new students. As the pictures loaded, familiar faces began to pop up. Not one familiar face, not two familiar faces, not three familiar faces. At least ten. Ten familiar faces in one class. I went to my next course. Same thing. Many, many familiar faces popped up. I had repeat students. Tons of them.

The next day I showed up to class and one of my students--a boy who never fails to sit in the front row, a boy who refers to me as Miss Jess, a boy who surely must have a raging (albeit charming) case of ADHD--cleared his throat.

"Miss Jess?" he said. "Miss Jess, I really want to be in your class next semester, but that means I'd have to move my chemistry lab section, and the only other one available meets at 7 AM."

"That sucks," I said. I figured this was his apology to me, that he was trying to explain why I wasn't going to see him in next semester's class.

"But I think I'm going to do it," he said. "It's going to be hell, but I think I'm going to do it."

That is pretty much the biggest declaration of love you can get from a student, and I spent the rest of the day wallowing in that flattery.

The Worst Type of Rejection

On Saturday night I was supposed to meet one of Hot Rob's friends. It was a real informal thing, no big deal, nothing to obsess about. This friend was just one of the guys from the rugby team, and the first time I saw him he was wearing grey sweatpants. I thought he had good hair. I thought he seemed fun. I told Hot Rob that out of all the men on the rugby team, the grey sweatpant-wearing boy was the one I'd most like to make out with, if ever given the chance.

Hot Rob said no. He said no way. When I asked why not, Rob just shrugged and said, "Well, he's picky."

I took that to mean I wasn't pretty enough. "Is it the teeth?" I asked. I pulled my top lip down over the gap in my smile. "Am I not cute?"

Hot Rob said no, that wasn't exactly it. "He doesn't want a girlfriend," he explained.

That's when Amy jumped in on my behalf. "She doesn't want to marry him," she told her boyfriend. "She just wants to kiss him."

Hot Rob just shrugged and I figured that was it. I figured the subject was dead, and that was okay with me.

Weeks and weeks passed after that original conversation. Then, last week, Rob told me he'd been talking to the grey sweatpant-wearing boy on my behalf. He'd told him that I worked at one of the area colleges and the sweatpant-wearing boy really, really liked the idea of meeting someone who taught college-level English. Hot Rob said, "Well, he's looking forward to meeting you. He'll be out this weekend after the disco."

And he was. When we met up with Hot Rob after we'd changed from our disco clothes into normal human being clothes, Rob needled me in the ribs. "He's ouuuut," he sang. "He's been asking about you. He kept saying, 'Where's the professor, Rob? Bring me the professor!'"

So we walked across the street to the bar where Rob's friend was drinking. This bar is the worst type of bar. It's a nothing bar. It's a giant garage with a bar plunked into the middle. There are no seats, no stools, no aesthetics, no dance floor. It's a giant space and people just do their thing, and the top three things to do in this bar are dance, make out, and fight.

There were two poles extending up from the middle of the bar and a group of girls climbed up on top of the counter and started writhing against the bars and against each other. Another group of girls tried to balance in their high-heeled boots on top of giant speakers. They writhed, too. They ran their hands up and down their body. They pointed to boys on the floor. They crooked their fingers and beckoned them.

I felt very old. I felt a little nauseous. I recalled the very short period of time in my life where I thought to get a boy's attention it was necessary to dance on a bar or writhe against a mirrored wall. I thought about one of the Mardi Gras parties Barker Brew had when I was an undergraduate at Fredonia. I thought about the boy I loved from my creative writing class--a scruffy, thick-sweater-wearing boy named Andrew--and how he showed up that night. He sat in a corner booth with his friends. I stood by the bar with mine. I drank Hurricane after Hurricane out of pitchers accessorized with giant straws. Then, several pitchers later, I got up on a corner table--the table behind his booth--and started dancing with my friend Amanda.

I thought surely he would say something to me. He would come over. He would smile. He would buy me a drink. He would be impressed by me. He would love this other side of me--this non-creative writing side, this side that got up on tables and danced to AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long."

The next morning I woke up hating myself because of course he didn't come over and of course he wasn't impressed be me or my non-creative writing side or the way I had rubbed up against Amanda while the rest of the bar watched.

So watching these girls do the same thing--albeit with more success than I had, mainly because they were aiming to impress a markedly different type of boy than scruffy Andrew--made me tired, made me feel old, made me feel a little like I wanted to throw up.

It was only going to get worse.

By this point, Rob had found his friend. He brought him over to me. He turned me around and started to introduce us.

"This," he said, "is Je..."

But before Rob could even finish saying my name, his friend, who had started to shake my hand, blinked hard at me then quickly let go of my hand as if it were gangrenous or covered in pus and he wanted nothing to do with it. Then he turned on his heel and left.

I have never been rejected that quickly or efficiently. I have never been destroyed before I even said a single word to a boy. It was stunning and almost comical, except that it wasn't comical at all. I wanted to hit that boy across the back of his head and tell him he was a moron, that he had no idea what he was missing out on, that he could go on and try to hook up with that girl who was thrusting her crotch against the pole if he wanted to.

Amy was appalled. She yelled at Hot Rob. She told him he was in trouble, that his friend was ridiculous, that he was going to pay for that. "Stupid twenty year old boy," she huffed. "Just who does he think he is?"

I told her it was okay, it was fine, it was no big deal, it was nothing to obsess over, but of course it was, and of course I spent the rest of the night wondering which part of me had caused that strong of a reaction.

I was self-conscious. I silently hated men. I tried not to feel sad and alone and slightly desperate. I tried not to think about Amy telling me all she wishes she could do is meet some nice boy can introduce me to so I can stop feeling so sad and alone and slightly desperate.

I don't know what my problem has been lately, but I've been real sick with missing the way it used to feel when I had a boyfriend. It's been years and years since I've had a boy who called me his girlfriend, and I keep wishing something big would happen. I keep wishing for some big romantic gesture, for something amazing to happen, for a boy to admit he likes me without reservation. I just want someone I can go to sleep with, someone I can cook dinner for, someone I can go to a movie with. I just want to feel less alone.

And I realize I'm not going to find satisfaction in a twenty year old sweatpant-wearing rugby player, and I realize I want no part of a man who would be that rude, but it's still the worst type of rejection and it's never good to have a memory like that crouched in the dark corners of your brain, ready to talk louder than any of the million good memories--ones that validate me, ones that remind me that I'm nice and sweet and a good girl to have around. The bad memories are easier to hear. They go on chattering, chattering, chattering. They ask me why I think anyone would ever want to be with me, a girl with bad teeth, a girl who grows hair too fast, a girl who's probably not even that good of a kisser. They say, Don't try. Don't try. Why would you even bother?

World's Best Excuse to Dress Like a Pimp or Prostitute

As soon as I got my tickets for the World's Largest Disco I called my mother with a very important question. I wanted to see if she still had a pile of clothes leftover from the 70's—something she'd squirreled away, kept out of some strange love or obsession.

"Are you kidding me?" my mother said. "Gross. Why would I have any clothes left over from the 70's?"

Then I asked about my grandmother's three closets worth of clothes—the ones my mother had to comb through after her death. Surely there had to be something left from the 70's, something my grandmother found too precious or sweet or nice to get rid of. After all, my grandmother was The All Time Greatest Saver of Trivial and Strange Things, a skill she passed down to my mother, a skill that then got plugged into my DNA, a skill that explains why I still have the posterboard from a book report presentation Amy and I did in sixth grade.

But my mother had already donated anything that could've been useful to me. She'd taken bags and bags of my grandmother's old clothes to the Salvation Army. I was on my own with the outfit, but I figured my mother could still be some sort of help.

"What would you have worn to a disco?" I asked. "You know, back then? What kind of outfit would've been your first choice?"

That's when my mother rolled her eyes. "Jessica," she said, "I didn't disco. Disco was lame."

I beg to differ.

The five of us girls—my best girls Amy, Becky, and Steph, and Steph's college roommate Michelle—rented a hotel room for the night and arrived early so we could drink, eat pizza from Buffalo's best pizzeria, and get ready at our leisure:



That's Amy and Becky pre-getting ready. Shortly after this picture was taken there was a flurry of curling irons, aerosol hairspray, and blue eye shadow. We came out looking a little like so:



This is me and my naughty 70's girl pose. Not only am I channeling Jackie from That 70's Show, but I'm also channeling Farrah.



In the middle of doing her own version of 70's hair, Becky had to break it down for us.



A few minutes later, she came out looking like that. So Mary Tyler Moore!



And here's Michelle and Steph, who look so, so cool and aloof.



Becky and Amy did a little pre-disco posing.



Here's the whole group: Amy, me, Becky, Michelle, and Steph. I've come to this conclusion about high-waisted pleated pants: they aren't all that slimming.



The disco was held in the convention center, which was a quick walk down the street from our hotel. This was the same hotel that the Jacksonville Jaguars were staying in since they're in town to play the Bills today. We saw many—and one especially cute one—in the lobby.



We looked as good going as we did coming.



Once we got inside we drank wine from a box, saw some of the best costumes in the entire universe, and stumbled into pimps and sluts and go-go honeys and drunk 70's prom queens and guys who looked like they could've been the groomsmen at my father's wedding—frilly tuxedo shirts and all.



I don't know who this guy is, but he gave me a high five. He also spilled quite a bit of his drink on himself.



After the disco ended, we ran back to the hotel for a quick change so we could continue drinking and dancing downtown. Hot Rob graced us with some of his best white-boy moves.



Becky showed us her stuff, too.

So, really, I can't wait to call my mother and tell her how wrong she was and that discos are many things—including an excuse for every woman in Buffalo to put on dresses that barely cover the crests of their butts—but they are never, ever, ever lame.

That 70's Girl

Today is the big day, the day my girls and I have been waiting and scheming for. Today is one of Buffalo's finest days. Today the city hosts the annual World's Largest Disco.

And I'm going to be there. I'll be channeling Jackie from That 70's Show. She's the one on the right.




The makeup, the hair, the clothes. Just you wait. It's going to be amazing.

I have a pantsuit. And it's teal.

It's the Big 2-0.

Today when my students asked (repeatedly) what the date was and I (repeatedly) said, Today is the twenty-first, I also said, And it's my brother's birthday.

My students asked me what I got my brother. They wanted to see how awesome of a sister I am. I told them I gave him a crisp $10 bill and some expensive beer. I thought the beer was necessary because lately my brother has been drinking beer he describes as "Not that bad for $12 a case." I felt I could improve his quality of life by giving him good beer, beer that was imported, beer that was Irish.

"You are a very, very good sister," my students said.

Yes, yes, I am. I even made a cake. The worst cake of all time. It was a cake for an eleven year old girl. An eleven year old girl who has a really bad cake-baking sister.



I had many things working against me:

1. My brother requested a cake mix. He wanted Rainbow Chip with fake Rainbow Chip frosting. I don't work well with fake frosting. I think fake frosting is grouchy and stupid and it doesn't spread nice, no matter how much you fluff it.

2. I couldn't find my father's round cake pans and was forced to make an ugly square.

3. The frosting pulled a section of the cake apart, and I tried to repair the broken parts with more frosting and cinnamon candies made to look like flowers. Flowers for a twenty year old boy. I'm a genius.

Anyway, I tried. I really, really did. But I did give the beer, not to mention the $10 he can blow at the Canadian Ballet, so that's got to count for something.

Nice Rack

At 4:30 AM my brother stumbles out of the cabin and into the crisp thirty-degree morning. Today is the opener for deer season, and he's taken off work just for this occasion. He will be spending the next three days back at the cabin with his closest friends. They will grill chicken and eat venison jerky that was made from a deer one of his friends found on the side of the road.

My brother waits and waits and waits. He doesn't see any deer. Near lunch time, he thinks he hears a deer snort but he doesn't have a clear visual, so he doesn't shoot. My brother waits and waits and waits some more. Finally, at At 4:30 PM, he drives up to our house and comes in to stand in the doorway to my room. He sniffs his armpits.

"I need a shower," he says. "I can't stand myself."

"Knock yourself out," I say.

After he comes out of the shower he is crisp and clean. He no longer smells like gangrene. He is wearing jeans and a t-shirt that has a giant picture of a buck on it. Underneath the buck is the phrase NICE RACK.

"That's pretty classy," I say.

"I thought it was appropriate for today," he says.

"Are you going out wearing that?" I ask.

He nods. "A couple of girls are coming over, yeah."

That's when he bends over and farts--extravagantly and loudly. He straightens back up and stretches.

"Don't do that in front of the girls," I say. "Girls don't like that kind of behavior."

He shrugs his shoulders. "Ah, I do it all the time," he says. "It gets them hot."

The Job of An Ex-Boyfriend

Tonight on the phone Ex-Keith informs me that he doesn't want to sleep with me anymore.

"Uhm, that's wrong," I tell him. "You absolutely still want to sleep with me."

"No," he says—so casual! so nonchalant!—"I don't really think I do."

Ex-Keith is a moron. It's not that I want him to sit around all day and think about what it would be like to sleep with me again, but I do want him to man up and admit that if he got the chance** and if he wouldn't hurt anyone in the process, he so totally would.

This is a dangerous game to play with an ex-boyfriend, and I'm the girl who plays it willingly. It's one of my Big Neuroses. I want my ex-boyfriends, even after we are no longer together, to have moments—not every day, not every week, but every once in awhile—where they sigh, look off in the distance and think, Jess. Gosh, what a great girl.

I think Ex-Keith owes me at least that. After all, on one May night he drove one of his co-workers home. She was drunk. They were both a little drunk. And they sat in his truck and kissed and kissed and kissed. The next day I came over to his house and he sat me down on the loveseat and told me that we weren't going to be together anymore. There was another girl and her name was Shelley.

I didn't get out of bed for a long time.

So, frankly, Ex-Keith owes me for that. He also owes me for the three years that followed. He owes me for my sophomore year of college because I spent the whole thing crying over him and lusting after completely inappropriate men who would save me—men who had strange piercings and thought they were poets (they were not). He owes me for the two years after that—my junior and senior years—because even though we were together again, he refused to call me his girlfriend because he felt it was too "stifling." When I got accepted to Minnesota and went out there to find an apartment, that's when he suddenly came around. "I support you," he said. "I support you 100%. And I'm ready to be your boyfriend now." I wanted to put my fist through his face.

So, I think the least Ex-Keith could do is admit that he would still sleep with me.

"Excuse me," I tell him tonight, "but that's just false. I mean, explain yourself. Am I not pretty anymore or something?"

"I didn't say that," he says. "I'm just not interested anymore."

This rankles me. After all, I've been doing some nice thinking about him lately. For instance, last Saturday Amy and Becky and I went to a ridiculously tiny, very intimate acoustic concert where the lead singer of Lowest of the Low stood on the stage of St. Francis High School and sang some of the best songs ever written. Songs that make me think about Keith.

He was my gateway to Lowest of the Low, after all. It was at his sister's house that I first heard them play. It was in his truck that we used to blare their CDs after we rolled down the windows and let the crisp summer air inside. We listened to them poolside. We listened to them while we parked on deserted streets in the town of Hamburg. He would sing me my favorite lyrics in his off-kilter, out-of-tune voice. He would sing, Just remember when your resistance is low that I know who's your favorite poet... and then he would yell the name of some poet I'd been talking about lately.

Those were nice days, and I sometimes miss them an awful lot. Things were just so simple back then. Keith was my boy and he loved me and I was his best girl. He was my best boy. We drove around and sang songs and grilled corn and steaks. We played Asshole and locked his neighbor in the pantry. We looked up at stars. We were always looking up at the stars.

I feel like he should remember that as fondly as I do. And I feel like he should pine for me in some dark forgotten corner of his heart. Does that make sense? I don't want to be with him, but I want him to want—sometimes, only sometimes—to wonder if he made the biggest mistake of his life. And, I suppose, I want him to tell me that he did.

I try another tactic with him. "You know," I say, "I was good back then, but I'm way better now. I've got new moves."

Ex-Keith laughs. "I'm sure you do," he says. "I just don't want to see them."

"You're giving me a complex," I say.

But suddenly there's this: "I want Abe Lincoln back," Keith says.

"Keith!" I say. "Is this all about ABE LINCOLN?"

"Give me Able Lincoln and then I'll tell you the truth about things," Keith says.

Here's the thing about Abe: while I was in Minnesota, Amy and Becky staged a magnificent coup at a pre-Bills game tailgate party. They found Keith's party, found him drunk and peeing, and they stole Abe Lincoln—which Keith had, in a magical stroke of fate, brought with him to the game for photographic evidence he was planning on taking and leaving in Amy and Becky's mailbox to illustrate Abe's grand adventures since he had been in Keith's control. Basically, Amy and Becky showed him up. In a big way.

"This is all about ABE?" I ask. "You're just trying to piss me off so I give you back a bust of Abe Lincoln that wasn't yours to begin with?"

"Bring me Abe," he says.

"HE IS NOT YOURS," I say. "YOU WILL NEVER HAVE HIM BACK."

"Fine. By the way, I would never sleep with you again," Keith says.

"This isn't your job, you know," I tell him. "You're an ex-boyfriend. You're still my friend. You're supposed to be supportive. You're supposed to say things like You're real sweet, Jess. You're pretty great. You'll get a good man soon. Someone who will love you right. Someone who will be better to you than I was. You're supposed to say those things, not give me new complexes, Keith."

"That's not my job," Keith informs me.

"Then what is your job?" I ask.

He pauses. He lets the silence foam into a thick lather. Then he sighs, suddenly content. "To make your life a living hell," he says. "Okay, I'm going to eat dinner now. Bye."

"You want me," I say. "Goodbye."

~~~
** And he won't, Amy and Becky. So you can stop shrieking You want him! now.