First Day (Plus: The View from My Place)

Today I didn't walk into Armstrong Hall. Today I didn't walk down familiar halls and talk with familiar friends. Today I didn't see my favorite professors. Today I didn't look out at the mall and see the fountain and the rest of MSU in all its strange glory.

Today I saw this:



and this



And when I got to my office, I saw this:



and this:



Okay, sure some organizing needs to be done, but I'm a Virgo! That's what Virgos do. After all, I am the girl who has color-coded folders that match notebooks that match even (yes, yes, this is true) the background colors of each class's Blackboard site.

But the color coding is good. Everything is good. The whole day went well.

And I'm thankful, because last night I went to bed feeling calm, feeling cool, feeling confident. Then I had five hours of terrifying teaching nightmares.

I dreamt I woke up the next morning and had the sudden whimsical urge to fly off to Florida. "This is a great day!" I said. "Look, here are some airline tickets! I'm going to go to Fort Lauderdale!"

And so I went to Fort Lauderdale. I was sipping on my first pina colada when a weird feeling came over me. I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere. I looked down at my watch and realized I had class in an hour and surely they were going to fire me if I didn't make it back from Fort Lauderdale in time to hand out the syllabi.

The rest of the dream involved me running into massive problems as I tried to get back to New York in time for at least one of my classes. Flight delays. Snotty customer service agents. Evil taxi drivers.

When I woke up it was 5 AM. It was pouring outside. I promptly fell back asleep, but then dreamed I was without umbrella and that my hair had exploded into some soft ball of fuzz on my head and that's how I had to go teach my classes.

In reality, I had an umbrella and quelled any urge I might have had to fly off to Fort Lauderdale. In reality, I had a fine day where I smiled and charmed and met all three of my classes. I joked about Minnesota and the temperature and the hotdish and the bland food. I made a reference to Coach, which only one person got, and that made me feel sort of old.

Still, it was a fine day, and I'm looking forward to getting into the groove of teaching three classes back to back to back without break for food or sanity. It's going to be fun. On Thursday we are kicking off our personal narrative units. We're going to start brainstorming and talking about great storytelling.

And we all know that's something I will never ever get bored of talking about.

Monday Notes

:(1.) Josh is gone.

This morning Josh left for Canada. This means I will no longer have a straight man at my immediate disposal, unless you count Hot Rob, and Hot Rob, what with being Amy's boyfriend and all, is banned from amusing me in ways that Josh could. I could swoon when Josh played soccer. I could slow dance with Josh in the middle of The Hearth. I could drink watermelon Smirnoffs and stand next to the cut-out of Dough Flutie in his apartment. Those were Josh things. Now there are no more Josh things to be had until Christmas.

This is what Josh looked the year after I met him:



In that picture, the boy is 17 years old. He is making a collage for his then-girlfriend. The picture was taken in one of the wings of our restaurant that wasn't used unless it was really busy. This particular day was a slow Sunday, and I was just about to get off of work. Josh said he wanted to do something nice for his girlfriend for their anniversary, but he had limited funds and limited knowledge of what his girlfriend would want. So I said, "Do something crafty. Make her a collage. Put the words to your song in it. Does she have a favorite poem?"

That last part was a test. If he was dating a girl who didn't have a favorite poem I was going to tell him he wanted no part of her and that he should get rid of her in favor of, say, me. This was the summer I would follow Josh around and say, "Josh? When are you going to dump your girlfriend and make out with me in the parking lot?" and he would say, "Why? Jess, I look like I'm twelve years old."

It was the hair. That summer I was such a sucker for his hair. And the fact that he would spend several hours cutting stuff out of old Bon Appetits we found in a closet downstairs, then gluing them to a cardboard circle we filched from a lettuce box. I was a sucker for all of that.

So, anyway, he's gone now. And the number of boys I have available to come over and suggest we play board games or take a midnight stroll back to the Cabin of Porn has dropped to zero. But now I have another reason to road-trip up into Canada, which means I can eat as many Coffee Crisp bars as I want, and I approve of that.

(2.) School Starts Tomorrow

And don't worry: I found my giant bag.

I've been searching for an appropriate bag in which to tote my teacher things back and forth between here at campus. I'm not a grad student anymore, so I shouldn't have a messenger bag or anything like that. I wanted something chic. Something sleek.

I searched for three days. I found a bag in green croc. It is a perfect, beautiful, sexy bag.

I have my outfit. I have my three syllabi. I have my first-day writing samples. I have my notecards. I have my shoes. I even have plans to meet with Jeff, one of my old-time friends from Fredonia, a boy I met in my very first creative writing class when he came up to me after workshop and said, "You know, I loved that story you just submitted. You remind me of Margaret Atwood." and I told him I loved him. He's TAing at the SUNY school where I'm teaching. I predict a fall full of trips to the campus Starbucks, the library, and the lake.

So here's to the start of the fall semester, to my new start at a new school and in a new department. It all starts tomorrow, and I couldn't be more excited.

A Whole Big Sack of Class

My Saturday Night:

9:30 PM: I am at a party thrown by 21 year olds. The party is at a farm in the middle of nowhere. I stand outside with Amy and her cousins. There are bats. Amy shrieks when they swoop low. For as long as I have known her, Amy has had an unreasonable fear that a bat is going to get caught in her hair and we will have to attack her with a broom to get it out.

I am drinking Coors Light.

11:00 PM: We leave the party in a caravan. The cousin's follow Amy's lead. She leans into the windshield to see. Since her rear-ending a bus incident her headlights have slanted down and don't shine anywhere they need to, which is everywhere when you're in the inky darkness of the middle of nowhere.

"Watch for deer," she tells me.

"There aren't any street lights," she tells me.

There aren't any anythings. There are just fields and corn and trees. And bats.

11:10 PM: We pull off the side of the road. We are in front of Josh's house. He's having a going-away party. His family is out back throwing horseshoes. He sees me walking up and he comes at me. He has a Busch Light in his hand. "For you," he says.

His gay cop aunt sees me and knocks my shoulder in greeting. "Hey, you," she says.

I finally meet the girl who will probably become his girlfriend. She is wearing cute glasses and her hair is in a long braid tossed over her shoulder. She speaks with an accent. She looks like a very naughty foreign librarian. Who can compete with a very naughty foreign librarian-type?

Josh tells me he wants me to drink the entire Busch Light while he walks me back out to the car, where Amy and her cousins are waiting. We have an agenda. We have a destination. I open the back of my throat and manage to drink most the beer. I say goodbye to Josh. I wish him well in Canada. I tell him to learn some good French so he can come back and impress me with it. I make him hug me no less than eight times.

12:00 AM: We are at my ex-place of employment. It has been transformed into it's nasty Saturday night creepiness. It's Club Hearth. The crowd this night seems a little less skeevy than the last time I was there, but that could also be because I can't see all that well.

I hug up on everyone I know. I lean across the bar and ask for a vodka. A guy comes up from behind. "Hi," he says as he slides in next to me.

"Hi," I say back.

"I think you were just about to buy me a drink," he says.

"Nope," I reply, "I definitely wasn't."

In the time it takes me to order my drink and then get it, the cousins and Amy decide that, dear God, they've had enough, it's too scary, it's too redneck, it's too creepy, and that they've got to get out of there.

I say okay. I drink up my vodka and leave without paying for it.

On the way home I am in Brenda's car. "This is weird," she says. "But it's not weird at all. I feel like no time has passed. I feel like we're back at college."

And I try to reflect on that. I'm back. And she's right--sometimes it doesn't feel like I ever left, and that can be scary. It's almost like the last three years didn't count for anything. But that feeling doesn't last for long and I snap back into it, remembering where I came from, remembering what I've done. And last night everything was good and okay and so very western New Yorky.

Finally I nod. I say yes, it's good, it feels just like college. Then I say I should've gone into the cooler and gotten us some cheese for the road.

She Might Suspect I'm a Lesbian, But At Least She Bakes Me Blackberry Buckle

We went blackberrying with my grandmother the other day. She and my father sat up front in the truck while I sat in back with a giant tank that sloshed with diesel fuel. Which I guess was lucky, since sometimes it's filled with liquid manure.

We drove back into the woods owned by my grandmother's husband--a man who talks in decibels eighty times too loud--and we stepped into the brambles. We waded through shoulder-high weeds and leaned past spider webs to get at the plumpest, the sweetest, the juiciest berries in the woods.



My grandmother told me a story about how once when I was a little, little girl I'd been so excited about getting the best berries that I'd plowed into the thickest, most gnarled nests of blackberry bushes and started filling my bucket. Plink. Plink. Plink. She could hear me somewhere in the heart of that blackberry patch. She could hear me for awhile. Then it was quiet. No more plinks. Then she could hear me crying for her because in my zeal to fill my pail I'd gotten in so deep that I'd turned myself around and gotten lost in the thorny branches.

Sounds about right. Sounds like what I've gotten myself into right now. Everything's a little too prickly, a little too over my head for my liking. I'm kind of blinking and turning circles and wondering how exactly I got myself in this spot.

Later, we went back to my grandmother's for lunch. She made blueberry buckle and made sure I ate two full pieces. When one of her friends stopped by and was joking with me about romance woes, my grandmother chuckled. "Oh, the boys just won't stop giving her the run-around," she told her friend, and I was secretly pleased because this was a whole different attitude than the infamous "Do you have boyfriends or girlfriends?" comment she made a couple years ago.

But then I had to wonder if maybe she was just saying this out loud to her friend because she hoped it was true and she didn't want him to think her granddaughter of marrying age was consorting with anything other than attractive and viable young men.

But then I decided I didn't care if she really believed I like boys or not (and, oh, do I ever), because she was passing me another plate of blackberry buckle and I was steadying my fork and getting ready to shove a heap of brown sugary goodness into my mouth.

And, oh, how sweet it was.

Wet Hooker Wanted. Apply Within.

I woke up this morning in a fantastic mood. I was headed down to Fredonia with Amy, and we were going to spend the day kicking around our alma mater and reminiscing.

Actually, we were going to spend the afternoon die-cutting things for her brand new classroom, and then we were going to go drink some wine at Merritt Winery. Tell me that's not the perfect day.

I've said it before. I've always harbored a little jealousy for my friends who were education majors in college. They hunted bargains for school supplies (markers, crayons, glitter, paste, construction paper, googly eyes). They got to use fancy scissors that carved patterns into paper. They made cookies and had parties.

But yesterday I got to stand in Fredonia's Media Center and pretend like I was an education major, like I needed the alphabet cut out in both 2 inch and 4 inch construction paper blocks. We cut out Amy's name, headings for bulletin boards, and shapes like pumpkins, birthday cakes, and the United States.



Then there was the laminating. Let's put that on the list of things I'm secretly obsessed with. My father worked in print and design for over twenty-five years, and because of it I love anything having to do with laminating, binding, printing, or shrink wrapping. And yesterday we got to laminate. We laminated a lot.



The whole day was excellent. I'd been looking for an excuse to go wander around campus. It was so, so surreal to pull into the parking lot where I used to park every single day. It was surreal to walk into the building where I had all my psychology and history classes. It was surreal to drive around and see all the changes and how beautiful campus looks and how there's now a Starbucks in what used to be the dining hall we hated most.

As we waited for Passion and Green tea iced tea lemonades in the new Starbucks we couldn't stop ourselves from thinking how much we wanted to pack up all our stuff and move back down to Fredonia, park ourselves in an apartment on Temple, toe through wet leaves on the way to our old favorite bars. I couldn't stop thinking things like Oh, there's where Keith and I had that big fight, or there's where I kissed that blond-haired boy Moe's ex-boyfriend was friends with, or there's where we had our annual Fred Fest barbecue, or there's where I used to get my chai every morning, or there's where I would cut into the library for work.

It's a miracle I got back in the car. I wanted to be there. For real. For four more years. I told Amy I was going to re-apply, get another degree, spend another couple years eating Chinese food at the Holy Wong.

I'd like to think I loved college when I was there and that I appreciated it in all the ways you're supposed to, but I still don't think it was enough (is it ever?) and I want to go back. Send me back. Take me back. I want to go back.

I'm sure a lot of this has to do with the fact that this is the first year of my life I am not gearing up to go back to school. Well, in a sense I am, because now I'm teaching it, but it's not the same. I'm not flipping through new textbooks and opening fresh white notebooks. I'm not rearranging my bedroom or cooking dinner for the girls in our old Brigham Road apartments.

But what I am doing is spending quality time die-cutting and laminating. Quality time where I get to sit on the floor with Amy and Becky and cut everything out of slick, shining sheets of lamination and rearrange letters on the carpet. I think it was therapeutic to spell out words or phrases that would never, ever, ever make it onto any of Miss Amy's bulletin boards. Wet Hooker. No, Wet Hooker. No Wet Hooker. No Bed, Wet Hooker!

If I can't go back in time or go back to school, I suppose all of this is a close second. A very wet, very hookerish second.

When Keith Met Jessica

When Keith met Jessica, she was sitting on her best friend's staircase. She was drinking a rum and coke. She was thinking two things: 1. how gross it had been to clean up the puke of her best friend's sister's boyfriend after he threw up penne and sauce into the kitchen sink before the party even began; 2. she missed her Cousin's Boyfriend, the boy she loved like no other, so much that she would never, ever, ever move from her best friend's staircase. This was it for the rest of her life. This staircase, these dustbunnies, the smell of Curve for women hanging like smog in the air.

When Keith met Jessica, she was thinking she never wanted to kiss another boy again.

When Keith met Jessica, she was thinking she might get a chance at one of her childhood dreams--the one where she became a nun and watched over a greenhouse filled with poinsettias.

But as these stories go, the staircase wasn't it for our heroine. There was more to her life than dust and heavy perfume and rum and cokes. For the next two years there would be a boy named Keith, and he would be her boyfriend.

Oh, that old story. The story of my first real boyfriend. And, listen, let me tell you this: that boy is an Ass Head. I feel safe telling you that because I've known him for eight years now, and I've witnessed him being an Ass Head many, many times, the last being the week before I left Minnesota. He called when I was having a mini-breakdown, so I cried on the phone to him and he told me he didn't feel sorry for me because nothing was really wrong with my life and anything that was wrong (i.e.- the Wily Republican) was my fault anyway. So I told him he was being a jackass, told him I had to go, then I didn't speak to him for a week. But after a week it was okay again. That's what happens with him. That's what happens with best friends.

And it's nice to still be friends with him. Even after our breakup, even after I came home on winter breaks from Minnesota and he was dating other girls, we still had our Days-o-Fun. We would organize days of complete nonsense. If we wanted to go to the butterfly conservatory in Niagara Falls and then go for margaritas at Cozumel in downtown Buffalo and then go shopping for new shoes on the boulevard, we would do it. If we wanted to go to Tops and buy stuff to make chocolate cake and stuffing, we would do that too. It was Day-o-Fun, and Days-o-Fun have no rules.

Now, though, I'm beginning to get the impression that there will be no more Days-o-Fun. He and his girlfriend, the Big Head, live together. They've lived together for awhile, and now she's talking about marriage and babies. And apparently she's getting testy about me.

Yesterday I asked Keith for his new address so I could send him a birthday card. He's going to be twenty-nine in a few days, and I feel that occasion calls for a funny card and some sort of weird drawing I would make for him--a drawing where he's holding his friend's wife he doesn't so much like by her ankles and roasting her over a tailgate fire at the Bills game. What says Happy Birthday!!! more than that?

But Keith said he wasn't going to give me his address. "She won't like it," he said.

"It's a BIRTHDAY CARD," I said. "You'll be getting at least 1,000 of them. I can use a fake name, if you want."

"You don't understand," he told me. "You don't live with someone. It will cause strife. I don't want strife."

I tried to reason with him. "Keith," I said. "I am not going to write in it, Let's get back together and have babies. I'm going to write, Happy Birthday, Ass Head. What's the big deal?"

Keith told me no matter what, it didn't change the fact that I couldn't have his address because the Big Head would not approve. Keith tipped his voice into a high octave. "She'll say Ooooooh, did you get a birthday card from your giiirlfriend?"

I did not like the sound of that. That seemed pretty unreasonable. Mocking Keith because he got a card from his ex-girlfriend, an ex-girlfriend he's remained friends with many years past their breakup? What gives her the right to think it's wrong of me to remember his birthday and wish him a happy one?

"She'd really say that?" I asked. "Because if so, that's just crazy."

"She already does. Sometimes she'll ask, Talk to your girlfriiiiiend today, Keith?"

I was appalled. So when I got off the phone with him I called Amy immediately. "I'd decided to give Big Head the benefit of the doubt," I told her. "He's happy, so I'd just decided I was going to get over the fact he's not with the cute blond one I really liked anymore, but now Big Head is being kind of bitchy. Do you think that's bitchy?"

She did. And then I asked if she thought that men and women could be friends, even if they'd dated at one point. She did. Which reassured me. It made me feel better.

But later on that evening Katy called, and I asked her the same question. I said, "Do you think men and women can be friends?"

"No," she said. "Not at all. And eventually Big Head is going to say to Keith, You have to choose between me and Jess, and he's going to choose her."

Oh, that made me want to gnash my teeth. Of course he's going to choose her--fine, fine, she's the one making him dinner and letting him have some ass on occasion, I understand that--but why should he have to choose in the first place? We don't ever see each other. We talk a few times a week. God forbid I try to send him a birthday card. Where's the harm in any of that?

So I told Katy I thought it was ridiculous. I told her I didn't see anything wrong with men and women being friends. She asked me if I wanted to maybe re-watch When Harry Met Sally and see how I felt about it after that. "Do we have to reenact that movie for you?" she asked. "The orgasm scene, maybe?"

When I got off the phone with Katy, I felt bad about the whole situation again. She'd said that if she were Big Head she wouldn't allow me to be mucking around with her boyfriend either. But there's absolutely no mucking around going on. We haven't had a Day-o-Fun in a year. We don't sneak away to have secret phone calls with each other. He's not buying me sexy gifts and sending them to my house. I'm not writing love letters and sending them to his work address. What I am doing is talking to an old friend, someone who knows everything about me, a boy who was with me during some of the most potentially scarring moments of my life, like the time I walked into my parents' bedroom and saw dozens of lit candles and a giant bottle of baby oil next to the bed. I don't want to have a life where I can't talk to the boy who was sitting in the living room when I came back down the hallway, blinking and shaking off the sight of my parents looking guilty with the blankets yanked up to their chins. If I can't call someone up and say, "You know how bad this day is? This day is as bad as the Baby Oil incident" and have that someone understand exactly what that means, then, really, what kind of fun would that be?

Strangest Conversations of the Last 48 Hours

Conversation #1: The New York Institute of Massage

The phone rings. I answer it.

Woman: Hello, this is the Lou at the New York Institute of Massage. I'm looking for Adam. He was interested in our programs, and I just wanted to call to follow up with him.

Me: I'm sorry, he's not here.

Woman: Well, do you know if he's still interested in the program?

--Important Side Note: since my brother failed out of his auto-tech program at a state school, he has been working a string of strange jobs, the latest of which is at a tool company where he is an assistant manager/cashier, and it's sort of hard to tell exactly what, besides Hooters waitresses, he really IS interested in. Who goes from auto-tech to massage therapy? No one. No one except my brother.--

Me: Uhm, I really couldn't say.

Woman: Well, what about you, sweetie? Do you want to come to school here?

Me: I have a masters degree. I think I'm pretty much set for now. But thanks anyway.


Conversation # 2: My Brother, Parts 1 & 2

Part One

Adam: So, I'm headed out to the house. Me and the guys are gonna spend the night in the cabin.

Me: Oooooh.

Mom: Oooooh.

Adam: What?

Me: Are there gonna be any giiiiirls there?

Adam: No. NO! NOT AT ALL!

Mom: Sure there aren't.

Adam: Mo-om! There will be NO GIRLS THERE, OKAY? NONE. ZERO. WHY ARE YOU FLIPPING OUT LIKE THIS?


Part Two

The next day. Adam popped into the house after his night in the cabin.

Adam: Listen, I need to tell you something. You can't say stuff like in front of Mom, okay? She doesn't want or need to know about what I'm doing back at the cabin.

Me: Adam, you're a moron. If you're going to lie, at least learn to do it well. The way you went insane, we totally knew what you were up to.

Adam: It's not a big deal, okay? I've known her since high school. She's of age. We're just friends with benefits.

Me: Oh my God, I think I'm going to throw up.


Conversation # 3: Josh's Mother, Step-Father, and Gay Cop Aunt

Last night I went to pick Josh up at his house. He and his whole family had just come home from a wedding reception down the street. All involved were completely drunk. I'm not kidding about any of this part, which is excerpted from my 10 minute stay.

Step-Father: Where did you come from?

Me: Uhm, Minnesota?

Step-Father: You just came in from Minnesota?

Me: Oh, right now? Hamburg. I was at a movie.

Step-Father: And how old are you? And where were you born? Where did you grow up? You and Josh are watching movies tonight? What kind of movies do you like?

Me: Wow. Well...

Gay Cop Aunt: You know what movie I like a lot? Sahara. Have you seen Sahara?

Me: Sort of. I fell asleep during it.

Gay Cop Aunt: Matthew McConaughey is in that movie. I would have sex with him.

Josh: But you're gay.

Gay Cop Aunt: So?

Me: He does have nice abs.

--Josh opens a beer.--

Mother: Josh, you don't need any more to drink.

Josh: Neither do you, Mother. Hey, Jess. I climbed a pole tonight. Without using my legs.

Step-Father: Do you like action movies, Jess? Dramas?

Gay Cop Aunt: Sahara's a great movie. So is Syriana. Have you seen that?

Me: Yes.

Step-Father: What street do you live on?

Gay Cop Aunt: What's your license plate? We'll run it after you leave.

Josh: She's kidding.

Mother: So what are you guys going to do?

Me: Watch movies.

Gay Cop Aunt: You know what movie I just thought of? A Time to Kill. Matthew McConaughey was so sweaty in that movie. And his ass in those pants? Amazing.

Josh: You're GAY. Your girlfriend is downstairs sleeping.

Step-Father: You grew up around here?

Me: Yeah, I did.

Josh: She went to Holland.

Step-Father: It's a way better school than yours, Josh.

Josh: It is not.

Step-Father: Yes it is. How did you two meet?

Josh: We worked together at the Hearth.

--Josh's mother drops a tortilla chip on the floor. Josh's Gay Cop Aunt reaches down to pick it up, but Josh's mother grinds it under her foot before she can get it.--

Mother: I think I need some water. You know, Josh talks about you all the time.

Step-Father: I think we've met before.

Josh: Jess, you should've seen this pole I climbed. It was amazing. And this old guy was climbing it, too. Want to go?

Me: Sure.

Gay Cop Aunt: Jess, I just want to tell you this: Click it, or ticket. Cops are cracking down everywhere.

Josh: Do you think I'd be a good cop?

Gay Cop Aunt: You're very sensitive. You'd be good at the counseling part of it.

Josh: I'm tough.

Step-Father: It's foggy out. Be careful. Watch for deer.

Me: Okay. It was nice to meet you all. Have a good night.

Everyone: Bye!

--Josh and I get in the car. We get ready to leave.--

Josh: That was my gay aunt. Isn't she cool?

On Horses and Fairs

A horse. That's all I wanted when I was a girl.

My mother had a horse when she was young, so I thought it was only fair I should have one too. I talked about it a lot. I was going to save my allowance (back then $4 a week) and I was going to get a tall black horse with a white star on his head. I made plans and adventures for my horse. We would gallop across our alfalfa fields. We would explore the acres of woods behind our house. We would pack picnics and stop for lunch by quick-moving streams.

None of that ever happened, but I never quit dreaming that it someday would. I think it's all tied up in the romance of where my house is. Middle of nowhere, lots of land, woods, creeks, places to run. I always wanted to be more outdoorsy than I was. When I would mow the lawn on the weekends I would make up elaborate alternative lives in my head, where I was the favorite daughter of a wealthy ranch owner. My father employed tall cowboy-types who were a few years older than me, and they would wait for me to finish my chores so we could go riding together. One of these cowboys was in love with my cousin, who my wealthy ranching father had adopted after her parents died in a car crash. One of these cowboys was in love with me, but I always bucked his advances. I was afraid, of course, of the strong feelings I had for him. When he would kiss me under the canopy of trees heavy with ripening apples I would push away, say no, no, we can't, we can't!, then we would kiss some more.

It was a fine alternative universe.

Last night I was thinking of that world I made for myself. I was thinking of it because I herded everyone into the horse barns at the Erie County Fair. Besides the food, seeing the horses and letting them rub their velvet noses on my palms is my favorite part of any fair. I like to put my hand on their foreheads--where the white star would've been on the horse I dreamed about--and think what my life could've been like if I had been a farm girl, if I had even a fraction of the life I worked up for myself while I cut the back lawn.

I guess I've always been imaginative like that. And I guess that a lot of my fantasies involve horses. When I was small, I thought I was an Indian princess. I loved to wear my mother's old riding outfits: leather skirt, leather vest, both fringed. They smelled of summer sun and green grass. They smelled of wind and rain. I would put them on, stick a feather in my hair, and run around the yard whooping. If I'd had the horse I was seeing in my head, we would've been able to rush down past the big apple tree and into the creek, where cold splashes of water would fly up from his hooves. We would've kept going past the grapes and blueberries, past the other apple trees, out into the field, back into the woods. And then we would lose ourselves in the dark cover of forest, and I would whoop and whoop and whoop and no one would tell me to stop it already because it was giving them a headache.

Last night I wanted nothing more than to have one of the owners of the horses, who had names like Tequila and Tidy and Beaner, to say, "Hey, you. Want to take one out for a ride?"

I would've taken them up on that in a hot second. And then I would've immediately looked like a giant ass, because I can't ride horses for anything. A few years ago, my mother and I went out to a place near where I went to college and we went on a trail ride with a bunch of other people who wanted to spend the afternoon pretending they were Indian Princesses or daughters of wealthy ranchers. I could walk the horse fine. But when it came to going faster than that, I bounced up and down like I was on a carousel.

"Don't lock your legs like that," our guide said.

"Let the horse move for you," my mother said.

None of that advice helped. I walked funny the rest of the day.

My mother was sad that they hadn't let us get the horses up any faster than a lope. "I just wanted to take off," she said. She looked dreamy and half-sad. "I just wanted to tear off past everybody."

I understood the sentiment. Boy, did I ever. All I wanted was my tall black horse with the star on his forehead. I wanted to know how to ride him without bruising my inner thighs. I wanted to have a boy in a cowboy hat watch me finish mowing the lawn, then hand me the reigns to my horse so we could go, go, go, far away from everyone else, and we would kiss and not kiss, then kiss some more.

But that's never happened, and it never will. So last night I just let the horses nuzzle my hands, my shirt, my hair, looking for apples or other treats. I let them nudge me with their soft noses. I let them switch their tails in anticipation. I let them look at me with those dewy eyes that looked like they were saying, Let's go. Let's go, go, go.

And then we left the horse barn and stepped back into a world without Indian Princesses and cowboys. And there was the Erie County fair in all its glory. Demolition derbies, gyros, fresh-pulled taffy, warm fudge, hard-shelled candy apples, bustling I Got Its, sizzling funnel cake, men (and the unfortunate baby) with mullets, triplets performing magic tricks with poodles, Chiavetta's chicken BBQ, hot tubs for sale, the Polish gifts table, the amazing (alive! real!) Snake Lady, the World's Smallest Horse (only 50 cents!), and the golden, whirling midway.







And, of course, the 25 cent refresh! rejuvenate! relax! your feet center.

This Is a Good Day

World, meet Amy, my best friend.



Here is a list of things Amy likes:

1. pigs
2. chocolate milkshakes
3. tank tops
4. boys who play rugby
5. margaritas
6. being offered a full-time teaching job at a small school in western New York

This is a good day.

It's actually been a good month for the 1999 graduates of Holland High School. Go, Dutchmen.

Just the other day our childhood friend Missy got offered a full-time job teaching English at our old high school. She will be teaching alongside the man I credit as the man who made me think, Hey now, maybe I should do something with this writing thing. He is also the man I periodically have dreams about, and in these dreams I am hiding under a dresser in his living room and spilling wine on his carpet.

Today pig-loving, sparkle-adoring Amy got a job offer, too. Full-time. Social studies and English for sixth, for seventh, and for eighth grade.

It's all about karma. On the way to her interview for this job, she rearended a bus. A school bus. It was her second car accident in the last three months. And like any girl in her right mind, Amy cried. She wanted to know why, why, why things like that kept happening to her.

"Just wait," I said. "You're getting all the bad out of your system, and then something amazing is going to happen."

Something amazing happened.

And then there's me, I guess. Unlike those other girls, and unlike all my friends in college, I didn't go to school for an education degree. Not Elementary, not Secondary, not anything. I wanted to study literature and I wanted to write. The other girls spent their homeworking time with lesson plans. They laminated things. They rubber stamped things. They made cookies. Well, they asked me to come watch them make cookies so they didn't screw them up. I was always a little jealous of the colorful things they would be loading into their cars to take to school and show off to their teachers. There were lessons about teeth brushing and lessons about counting. Vegetables, the Civil War, and body parts. It all had an air of glamour to it.

I didn't ever expect to become a teacher, but that's where my life has led me. And when I moved back here, back home, and faced the prospect of not being able to teach--of instead having to wait tables or work at a collection agency--I felt panicked and desperate. Not teach? Not teach? Unfathomable. It's all I want to do.

But things have a way of going the way they need to go. Last week I got the news that I'll be teaching writing at the largest SUNY school in the state. I'm a SUNY graduate, so it's sort of like a homecoming, even if I'm not a graduate from the school where I'll be teaching. I get another SUNY card, and it's going to look so much different than my old SUNY card from Fredonia, the one I unearthed when moving back home. In it, I am seventeen years old. My hair is short. I am wearing a striped t-shirt. In my eyes is a certain sort of satisfaction, a certain sort of self-confidence. I am excited to come to college, and I can't wait to have a room of my own where I will be able to have my boyfriend spend the night. Who knows what'll show in the new one.

The classes I've been assigned are for students who scored in a slightly above average bracket on the SAT's verbal section. It'll be interesting to see if these students will be different than the writing students I had in regular composition, or if they will be different from Midwestern students, those sweet, lovable, corn-fed kids.

But all I know right now is that I won't be waiting tables or working at a collection agency. I'll be doing what I love most, and I'm thankful for it. And around me all my friends are doing well and getting jobs they want, and we're all going to be grading papers and comparing notes. It's going to be a good fall for us girl. It's going to be exactly what we needed.

You Can Give Me a Man in Soccer Socks Any Day

If you would've known me in high school, you would have known that there was one thing I wanted above all else, and that thing was a boyfriend who played a sport. It could've been soccer, it could've been baseball, it could've been hockey. There was just something in me that wanted to be the girl who sat faithfully on the sidelines with her blanket and her steaming thermos of cocoa and her snacks. I would've been the girl with the good snacks, and I would've been cheering loudly whenever my boyfriend did something particularly god-like.

I never got that, though. I didn't get a boyfriend until my senior year, and by then he was long out of high school (where he'd been a swimmer) and college (where he'd been a professional drinker and an official drop-out with a 1.97 GPA).

College didn't get me any closer. Grad school eeked me nearish, but not much. The Wily Republican had hockey in his past and broomball when he knew me. And while I wished and wished and wished that somehow the WR would magically appear on a hockey team that I could go watch, that didn't happen. So I resigned myself to the occasional broomball game.

I went twice. Those two times were the only times his team lost. Ever. I never witnessed a triumphant moment of victory. I only got to see him slink sweatily back to the bench and take off his pads.

I've always suspected I'm a bad luck charm. I've always suspected that if I had somehow snagged a sporty boyfriend in high school or college he would've eventually told me to please, for the love of God, stop coming to his games because I carried a black cloud of sports doom over my head. I suspect this black cloud of sports doom is related to my black cloud of prize-winning doom or my black cloud of finding clearance shoes in my size at Target doom.

Today I went to watch Josh's final soccer game of the summer season. I sat on the sidelines and watched girls come and go with their sequined tank tops, their giant sunglasses, their gaucho pants. I watched them toss their curly hair when their boyfriends did something good.

They were happy. Their smiles were white and glinting. They were the girls I wanted to be in high school, in college, and--let's be honest--still today. But even if I wasn't a girlfriend, at least I was there and I was crossing my fingers and I was letting out little puffs of excited air whenever Josh's team would score. I was thinking, Hey, maybe this will end the cloud of doom. I was also thinking that I have a fondness for men who wear soccer socks.



How can you not? Those socks are ridiculous in length and stripe-age, but any boy who plays soccer manages to pull those off in some sort of strong and manly way.

Just as I was recognizing my love of the soccer socks and then remembering the time Josh and I went for ice cream after one of his games and he showed up wearing pink soccer socks (now that takes a strong man), that's when the other team scored. And scored again. And then, in the closing seconds, scored one last time to surmount the tie that had been holding out for an overtime.

Black cloud of sports doom. It follows me. It trails after me like some stray puppy, and it won't be satisfied until it ruins all potential for me to see my boys celebrate in a sloppy, cute, boyish moment of victory.

Even though they lost, it was good to watch. I like soccer. I really do. And then it gives me an excuse to do this to a picture of Josh:



Coincidentally, that picture was taken by the girl who will probably end up being Josh's girlfriend--a girl who is cute and has excellent hair and who is definitely not me. I'm sure she will shortly join the ranks of girls with snacks and thermoses of cocoa (or, in the summer, lemonade), and maybe on that day she will wave to me from her prime position on the sidelines. And I'll be in my far off place down the way, standing with the rest of the girls who just know of, are neighbors to, or used to work with someone on the team.

But maybe this is all wrapped up in karma. Maybe the next year will find me meeting, falling in love with, and cheering for some rugby or football player. And if that happens, you can be absolutely certain that I will be the one on the sidelines with the best, best, best snacks.

It Involves Feces, So I Know Katy Will Be Charmed by This Story

Yesterday Josh and I walked back to my family's cabin in the woods. The door was swinging open when we got there. Whoever was the last person in the cabin hadn't properly latched the door. I blame my brother. He and his friends go back there a few times a month and get trashed on cheap beer.

Josh and I went inside. I wanted to see what other small things had been left wrong with the cabin (open windows, messy kitchen). Josh was impressed with the whole place. He loved the ratty old couch, the mismatched curtains, the mismatched carpet, the deer bones mounted on the wall.

"This place is amazing," he said. "I want to live here."

I told him the place gets better, but we had to go upstairs to see why.

We climbed the stairs. I was a little nervous about going upstairs and finding something I didn't want to find. Maybe there would be tied-up Hooters waitresses. Who knows what kind of mischief my brother and his friends get into in the cabin.

I know what kind of mischief I used to get into at the cabin.

It's not my fault, though. I blame my grandfather, my uncle, maybe even my father. The cabin was predominantly theirs--they built it with their own hands, and they were the ones who used it faithfully in the wintertime. My mother, grandmother, and I would bake them pies and brownies and cookies and load those things in a giant picnic basket for them to take back to the cabin, where they would spend the next few days drinking, telling stories, and hunting deer.

What else did they do when they were back in the cabin? They looked at porn. A lot of porn. Strange porn. And they weren't very sneaky about it.

When I was a little girl--I'd guess eleven years old--I was back at the cabin for a family picnic. There'd been an awful lot of hot dogs and potato salad and cheesecake and S'Mores, and I ate so much that I felt sick. I went inside to have a lie-down on the couch for a few minutes, and when I stretched out and made myself comfortable, that's when I saw them. The porn magazines. They were not-so-cleverly hidden underneath a stack of National Geographics that were shoved underneath the coffee table.

I didn't really believe it. I know guys are stupid, but were they really THIS stupid? Would my male relatives think it was perfectly okay to store their porn on the living room coffee table?

The answer to that is simple. The answer to that is yes.

It was the first time I saw porn. I slipped one of the magazines out from under a National Geographic with a giraffe on front. The magazine advertised HORNY COWGIRLS!

Horny cowgirls? Okay. I had to see what the fuss was about. I had to see what was worth buying this magazine. After all, how could they be sure that the cowgirls were really horny? What in the photo proved that?

It turns out I didn't really want to know.

I opened to a random two-page spread. What I saw there had me fling the magazine back on the ground like I would've had I found a colony of spiders setting up shop in its creases. Then I picked it back up to make sure that what I thought I saw was actually what I saw.

It was.

There on the two-page spread were two drunk-looking girls (one blond, one brunette) wearing cowgirl hats. They were naked. They were sitting down at a dinner table. In front of them was a giant platter of, well, human excrement, and they were holding forks and knives over it. They were about to cut into it.

I choose to think this is the kind of porn my grandfather's into. Girls being forced to pose pretending to eat poop seems like his kind of thing. He's not entirely fond of women and their sass and their ideas and their whatnot, so maybe thus the appeal?

Anyway, after I'd found that stash I kept coming back to monitor it each time we were back in the cabin. Especially when I brought friends. When I was thirteen my best friend and I took a walk back to the cabin and spent two hours looking through the stash.

"Does this scare you at all?" I asked, holding up a page where two men were servicing one bored-looking woman.

"A little," she said. "It looks really painful."

Yesterday I was ready to show off the impressive stash of pornography one more time. I knew it would be upstairs, because that's where it migrated to once my younger cousins got old enough to walk and talk. Or maybe my grandfather and uncle wised up and tried to hide it from me. Regardless, they put it in a giant paper bag and "hid" it in the corner of my grandparents' room. The paper bag was stuffed. There had to be at least 70 magazines in there. The boys had quite the collection.

And it wasn't mainstream, either. There was no Playboy, no Hustler. There were magazines called International Mystique and Adam and Babes. Most of them were from the 1970s and featured girls with stick-straight hair and white go-go boots.

But when I threw myself on my grandfather's bed to reach the other side, where I knew the magazines would be stored, I felt for the bag and found it there, greatly depleted. Ransacked. I opened it. There were a few loose sheets of newspaper and two pornos.

I blame my brother. I blame his friends. I can just see them now--carting off my family's pornographic stash and taking it back to their homes for private use, because, really, what's my grandfather going to say? It's not like he can accuse them. It's not like he can say, "Oh, Adam, did you happen to take my massive collection of groddy 1970s porn out of the cabin?"

I was disappointed. I'd built the surprise up so much, only to find the once-towering and impressive bag deflated and mildewy. "I'm sorry, Josh," I said. I handed him one of the leftover magazines. It was an International Mystique.

"It's okay," he said. "I still want to live back here."

"Yeah," I said. I could see the appeal. It was quite the bachelor pad, what with the old cans of Sanka and the gun racks, the crusty dishes and wood stove. I could just see Josh puttering around the cabin in a plaid robe and thick socks. I could see him pouring himself a coffee and stepping out on the front porch to commune with nature. "But," I said, "...and this is for certain...you would've loved it even more if there was a giant stack of porn at your disposal."

But what's a girl to do? There's no way I can get that porn back. There's no way I will ever be able to find the magazine with the horny cowgirls and their crooked hats and their giant plate of feces. There's no way I'm ever going to be able to point to that and say, "This was one of the first pornographic images I ever saw. Analyze that. Analyze me. Someone get Freud on the line."

I am going after my brother, though. That boy's about to be forced to account for the whereabouts of my family's porn collection. And I'm going to tell him to stop buying that gross, cheap beer.

I Am Welcomed Home And Then Wander Around Pants-less

That's what I saw when I rolled into my driveway at 2:20 AM on August 4th. Welcome home indeed. I was exhausted. The trip from Minnesota to New York that usually takes around 15 hours took me nearly 20 this last time. I blame Illinois, I blame Chicago, I blame the fact that both the 294 and the 90 are under major construction.

But my father had made a poster and posted it in the garage. He'd put roses on my dresser. He'd printed off a sheet of inspirational quotes--the type that have to do with perseverance and patience and life's little obstacles. My father is a good father.

That night was the first night of my being back home. Back home for more than Christmas or spring break, for more than graduation parties or weddings. I'm back home for at least a year.

That's right. All those hours I logged at my tiny office in Armstrong Hall, all those hours I spent carefully assembling packets filled with my curriculum vitae, my cover letter, my transcripts, my writing--all those hours counted for approximately squat.

I hadn't gotten a job. Academia had snubbed me. Academia had said, "Ha ha, little girl! Go home! Live with your father! Endure another Buffalo winter! Wait tables, for all I care!"

Academia is a poor sport.

Seventy rejections. Seventy. Out of that I got one interview, did a bang up job with my teaching demonstration, then didn't get the position which would've paid near $40,000. You know how a girl copes with that? She eats a lot of cookies.

So after I packed the contents of my apartment into my little silver car, and after I spent a few days at casa de Clay, where I slept on an air mattress with a dog with really bad breath, that's when I headed home.

The day after the drive I woke up in the afternoon and stared at my ceiling. I had a day full of unpacking in front of me. That didn't thrill me. Although I am very good at it, I hate to pack and unpack. I'd rather live out of boxes until infinity.

So I got up. I gathered garbage bags because there were going to be many, many things I wanted to get rid of. Like my mother and grandmother before me, I am a squirreler. I like to hide random things in drawers because someday, someday, oh someday I might need or want them. And so I started sorting through things. But something was wrong. Something was off.

I was pants-less. In fact, I didn't put pants on for the whole day. I waited until right before my father came home from work. He was taking me to a fish fry, and I didn't think it was proper fish fry etiquette to arrive sans pants.

And the next day I didn't put on pants either. I was the worst sort of beaten down. I was so dreading things to come--the unpacking, trying to find a job, waiting tables, the inevitable doom--that I didn't even want to exert effort. Any effort. After all, this was my fate. Living in my father's house and hanging my masters degree on my bedroom wall. Worrying about pants just seemed silly.

My mother called. Since she's currently out of work since the closing of her store, she sounded as beat down as I did.

"I'm not wearing pants," I told her. "This is our life now, you know? Unemployed, pants-less, and watching daytime television."

Still, I was going to a concert that night. Lowest of the Low was playing on the banks of the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda, and a girl who loves Lowest of the Low as much as I do couldn't miss out on that, even if it meant she had to put on some pants.

And so my official welcoming home kicked off. I was herded into a car with my girls and we headed for the north towns. We had dinner across from the Niagara River at one of the delicious hot dog stands that dot the shore. Like reasonable people, we all had hot dogs. All of us except for Steph.


That might look like a hot dog, but it's not. It's a Bunny Dog. A marinated and grilled carrot. I took the less healthy route and got a Philly-style dog. It came smothered in cheese and caramelized onions. It was beautiful.

After dinner we went to the concert. We drank Canadian beer and walked the canal promenade while we waited for Lowest of the Low to come on. And when they finally did, you could've tried to move me from where I was standing, but you would've seen that I was rooted to the spot.


Oh, Lowest of the Low. If only I could somehow get you to live in my room and wake me up every morning by singing "Letter from Bilbao." That would be the life.

Anyway, they played for hours, then did two encores, and you could tell people--especially the tall, muscly guy who stood next to us and pumped his fist in the air at the lyrics about being drunk and wanting to get into fights--wanted them to do two, three, four more. Predictably, I wanted to make out with them. And so did Amy.

Becky just got violent with some of the beach balls that were tossed in the crowd for our amusement. The first fifty times they hit us in the head, it was funny. After that, Becky went at them.


But always with that winning smile.

The next day I was forced to put pants on again, since I had to go to my family reunion. But I put those pants on very happily, and do you want to know why? Because it was my distinct pleasure to be the judge of the family's Brownie Bake-Off.


That's right. I ate each one of those. And they were all delicious. My cousin Jeff and I found it difficult to make our choices for the #1, 2, and 3 spots, but in the end I deferred to him because you can't really tell a man he's wrong about the brownies he says are #1. I was just pumped that I got to eat them all.


Really pumped.

And that was my first weekend in town. The rest of the next week was spent with more unpacking, less pants-less-ness, and things like this:


A Pink Torpedo dinner party at Steph's, where we did the necessary In Front of the Hutch photo. I think it looks sort of like Anne really doesn't want to be touching me.


We also went to Shakespeare in the Park, where the actors put on Twelfth Night. We drank wine and ate some of the world's finest cuisine...


... really big sandwiches.

It's been a good welcoming home. And the reasons to put pants on in the morning are starting to stack up on each other, but those are stories for the next time.

The User's Guide

This is what you need to know:

Who: Me, just a girl who's a recent graduate of an MFA in creative writing program. Me, just a girl who writes fiction. Me, just a girl who sent out 70+ applications for full-time (or sometime not so full-time) higher education teaching positions but was rejected on each account. Me, just a girl who has spent the last three years of her life living in southern Minnesota and teaching composition and creative writing at a state university. Me, just a girl with big eyes and even bigger feet (size elevens).

What: This blog. There's My Sponge Candy is a direct descendant of the Where's My Sponge Candy blog, which was started in July 2003 with hope that it would track my three years of graduate school and the strange life that would come along with it. And it did. Oh, did it ever.

Where: Where's My Sponge Candy started in the final days before my move to southern Minnesota. This new blog started the first few days of my move home to western New York. Why back to western New York? Several reasons: (1) good food; (2) no more subtracting the hour to determine when programs air in Central Standard Time; (3) New York touches an ocean and is therefore not as land-locked and stir-crazy as the Midwest; (4) my dad doesn't charge rent.

When a girl has a masters and can't get a job and is facing the fact that she might be going back to waiting tables and dealing with men who discuss the state of her nipples while she is delivering their Bloody Marys, she will do crazy, desperate things. Including moving back in with her father.

When: Starting now. Starting fresh. Back in my old haunts. We'll see where life takes me next.

Why: I blog because I try to write at least 800 words per day, even if those words have to do with how displeased I am with, say, the male population or the lack of brownies in my kitchen. I blog because I want my friends to always know what's going on, even if they're far, far away (on a work trip to China, Becky; or being an evil chemist in California, Anne; or being the Elite Employee of the Month at Midwest Wireless, Katy, etc.)

How: Stay tuned. Updates frequently. I'm obsessive.

~~~

(More About Me)

Here's a List of Things I Like

1. Sponge Candy: it's a western New York delicacy. I missed this the most when I moved away from the area. But now I'm back, and I'm eating my way through samples from all the chocolate companies in the city.

2. Boys: I will talk about boys a lot. If you don't want to read about a girl who talks about boys, how boys never like her, how she never gets the boy she longs for, how she's longing for a boy as she types this, how she's thinking that it would be pretty nice to be making out with a boy right now, and oh, why can't boys like her?, well, this blog isn't for you. However, I usually make a fool of myself in front of boys, and that can sometimes be funny. At least stay for that.

3. Feather boas

4. Purple

5. Badtz-Maru: Hello Kitty's badass penguin friend has been my personal mascot for years.

6. Penguins of the non-cartoon sort: if I could, I would keep some in my tub.

7. Office supplies, especially tubs of multi-colored paperclips

8. Garlic

9. Loud music

10. My So-Called Life: it's my favorite TV show ever. Yes, I have the series on DVD. Yes, I can recite long stretches of dialogue. Yes, I know which episode featured Brian Krakow talking about his mother's vibrator. Yes, I've envisioned what my wedding would look like if I married Jared Leto.

11. Jared Leto: see above.

12. Thigh-high boots: especially the red variety.

13. Chicken wings

14. Chicken finger pizza

15. Bleu cheese

16. My students: past, present, future.

17. Van Morrison

18. Boys who play guitars

19. Anything that has the word CAKE in its title: white cake, chocolate cake, cupcakes, cheesecake, etc.

20. The TV show M*A*S*H

21. Ingrown hairs

22. Men with accents: particularly Irish, British, or Australian.


A List of Things I Don't Like

1. Spiders

2. Flossing

3. The way my brother likes to flick my arm fat

4. Men who wear work boots with their tucked-in Iron Maiden t-shirts

5. The word vulva

6. Houses that are decorated with sea-shells

7. The semicolon

8. Leggings, skinny jeans, bodysuits, or any other unreasonable 80s fashion that is currently making a comeback

9. Slow drivers who insist on driving in the left hand and force me to pass them on the right

10. Minnesota bouncers who insist that my NY driver's license is fake and call the police over to check, and continue on insisting it is fake even after the police tell him it's not

11. Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas

12. Chunky heels

13. Black licorice

14. Unclean kitchens: and can I just tell you what a relief it is to no longer be living with my last roommate, who thought it was completely acceptable to let a can of opened spaghetti sauce sit on the counter and rot for, well, a week.

15. Bridezillas

16. Lutefisk, the Scandinavian brainchild: cod soaked in lye? No thank you, you crazy bastards.

17. Baseball on TV: although I can handle and enjoy it in person (I blame the Mankato Moondogs for that).

18. Sports I'm not good at: it has been consistently proven over the course of a decade that I should never, ever, ever try to play volleyball, speedball, handball, or--if we want to call it a sport, which I think we do--gymnastics. However, don't come around if I'm playing basketball, Ultime Frisbee, floor hockey, or badminton. Especially badminton. I'm a champ.

19. The fact that my brother has slept with more people than I have: probably because the kid is 5 years younger than I am, and also because some of his girls were probably Hooters waitresses. Out of their gourds Hooters waitresses, but Hooters waitresses nonetheless.

20. Macaroni salad that has tuna in it

21. Dial-up internet: which, because my father lives in the middle of nowhere, I am currently using.

22. Mullets

~~~

The Cast of Characters

There's a wild, strange bunch of people who have shaped me over the years, and they are as follows:

Family

My parents are divorced. My mother abandoned her cute apartment in a Buffalo suburb and bought a trailer with her boyfriend. I make a lot of fun of it and her, even though you will hear me admit right here and right now that her trailer is nice and so is the entire park, which is filled with senior citizens who get nervous if children ride around on those motorized tractors or cars.

My father, quite simply, is a pimp. He's had a string of girlfriends since the divorce, and has no trouble charming all of womankind. In high school, my best friend's mother and her best friend would sit on the deck and wait for my father to come dashing up to it when he picked me up. Then they would giggle and bat their eyes and fake-swoon. My friend Katy thinks my father has a nice ass. Other friends have written limericks about his man-parts, much to my dismay. I like his latest girlfriend, and her son is super tall and super hot.

I have a younger brother. He has just recently gone through some sort of transformation that has made him look and smell more like a human boy than ever before. As mentioned above, he's getting some ass, which dismays me. He has a strange obsession with beverages, and fancies himself a connoisseur of pop and bottled iced teas. He asserts that my head is perfectly square. He likes to flick my arm fat. He asks me why I always have to play music, all the time, every day, and why can't I just sit in silence, for God's sake? He's started drinking my favorite drink of all time: the cranberry-vodka.

My mother's father is a racist who doesn't so much like me. My father's mother once had this conversation with me:

Grandma: So, who drove you to the airport?

Me: Oh, just one of my friends.

Grandma: [beat of silence] Uh-huh. And, uhm, Jessie? Well, do you have girlfriends or boyfriends?

Sigh.

Friends

The one constant I've always had in my life is my core group of friends, and I am so lucky to have them.

I'm still close to a bunch of girls I went to elementary, middle, and high school with. We call ourselves the Pink Torpedos, and we get together as much as we can when we're all in the same area code. We like to gossip and drink martinis, because, really, what's better than that?

Graduate school gave me a whole new pack of friends, some of who have gone away now, but it was fun while it lasted. I've kissed my fair share of them.

Boys

I apparently have a thing for Republicans and gay men.

When I was sixteen years old, I was in love with the same boy my cousin was in love with. He lied a lot and told me he'd broken up with her (he hadn't) and that she was crazy (she wasn't) and that she was stalking him (she's too cute to stalk) and that now we could be together (we couldn't). He may or may not like boys (uh, yes).

I have an ex that I still talk to--Keith, the first Republican--and he lives with his girlfriend, Big Head. Big Head is actually a tall, slim, pretty girl, who seems perfectly nice, and I recognize I'm not being very nice by noting that she has a slightly above average head size, but I liked the last girlfriend--perky, cute, sweet--much more. I wish he'd stayed with her.

There is also the pretty-eyed Wily Republican, who pretty much ruled my life the entire time I was in Minnesota up until the very end when my professor requested I have a fling with her neighbor, New Boy, who has the most stunning eyelashes I've ever seen.

Someday I might end up marrying Josh, the dishwasher/busboy extraordinaire from my days waitressing at a restaurant in my hometown. He plays soccer. That's sexy.

~~~

The Future

I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen to me in the next year, but I am going to be throwing another job hunt into full swing in a few months. Hopefully twelve months from now I will be putting the finishing touches on the syllabi for my comfortable load of English classes at a folksy New England university. We'll see. We'll see.