The Best Halloween Ever

Today I had my students write journal entries about their best Halloweens ever. I listened to each of my three classes tell me their best stories. A lot of the stories involved shooting people with BB guns or stealing things or scaring little children. I thought, "Hmm. I don't have any good stories like those ones."

Tonight, though, I topped them all. I got my own Best Halloween Ever story.

Tonight I stole a pumpkin. Tonight I drove a getaway car. Tonight I went after Abe Lincoln.



That is the threatening note we wrote to Ex-Keith, the thief of Amy's Abe Lincoln bust. We went through a draft or two before we settled on this text, which we forced Hot Rob to write because he has I'm a Mudering Pedophile penmanship. We adressed the letter to the Abe-holes, and that cracked us up for a good ten minutes. We also found one lonely feather from Abe Lincoln's Mardis Gras Halloween mask, and we taped it to the letter in warning.




Then we got in the car. We'd done our detective work earlier in the day and found the address for Ex-Keith's house. It wasn't a simple task. I have no idea what Big Head's last name is, which makes it impossible to find her in the phone book, and Keith refuses to just tell me their address. We had to rely on other sources. Sneaky sources. Sources that may or may not have gotten married in the last year and have current addresses for each member of their wedding party. She may have ferrets, but Amanda saved the day today.

Armed with the proper address, we drove off to their neighborhood. But we needed to make a stop first. We need a pumpkin on which to skewer our angry note.

"We could go buy one," I suggested.

"Sure," Amy said. "They're probably cheap tonight."

"Or we could steal one," I said.

"I can't be convicted of anything. They won't let me teach ever again," Amy said.

"Me neither," I said.

"I can get convicted," Becky said. "I just make it a rule not to. Let's make Rob."

So we made Rob. We found a discarded-seeming patch of misfit pumpkins near the light pole of a closed business. The next day those pumpkins were going to be thrown out, so we figured we were doing the business a service. Now they would have one less to pick up and loft into a garbage can.

I pulled up to the pumpkins and Rob leaned out, snaked his long arms around one, and pulled it back into the car. "Go! Go! Go!" he yelled.

I was laughing so hard I could barely steer.




There was a terrific wet twhock as Rob thrust the knife we'd brought along into the pumpkin's side.

And then we were pulling into Ex-Keith and Big Head's neighborhood. We had to case the joint—a task that involved us looping several circles around their house and considering where to put the pumpkin as well as who would be in charge of its drop-off.

So there we were: three girls and one boy dressed in all-black, blaring Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" for inspiration, and hoping and praying that this would be a necessary first step in negotiating the return of the cherished bust of Abe Lincoln.

We nominated Becky to be the drop-off girl. She pulled her hood up over her face and tipped the pumpkin into her chest so that the knife would be hidden from the neighbors walking the sidewalk with their children in wagons behind them. I shut off my lights. We all leaned forward. We watched as Becky snuck off toward their house, crept past their shrubs, and lifted the pumpkin up onto the front stoop. Then she came jogging back toward us. Mission complete.




I could continue this story and stretch it on into many more paragraphs—paragraphs that deal with the fact that Keith found the pumpkin almost immediately (as we watched from a concealed drive-by location) then called me and I, because I'm a bit of a giggler and really bad at lying to boys I've seen vomit their body weight in rum and tacos into my apartment's toilet, I sort of caved almost immediately when he grilled me as to the nature of the pumpkin's arrival on his doorstep.

I could continue this story and stretch it on into many more paragraphs—paragraphs that deal with the fact that for the the next hour, we—the people in our camp, and the people in Keith's camp, which I'm assuming to be Keith and Keith alone—took threatening photos with Jason masks or witches hats or Abe Lincoln's bust with ketchup smeared across his snowy white neck and sent them to each other along with text that demanded a neutral rendezvous point for Abe's return.

I could talk about all those things, but it's a long story—possibly the funniest Halloween story I've ever had—and I can't spend too much time here. There are two red suitcases yawned open on my bed, and I'm packing things for my trip to the land of lefse and tater tots.

Updates soon—from or after Minnesota.

Missing Person Report #452966

He's gone. Abe's gone.



On Saturday night while I was desperately trying to place the face of the man who was sitting across from me and yelling about his pregnant wife and New Kids on the Block, a man who turned out to be my next-door neighbor from college and, coincidentally, the brother of my ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend, that's when Ex-Keith was hatching his plan to abduct Amy's creepy bust of Abe Lincoln.

It strikes me as odd that Keith was able to hatch and execute this plan without getting caught. I am especially impressed by this because Keith was quite drunk on Saturday night—drunk enough to yell, "TAKE OFF YOUR PANTIES!" to me while sitting no less than four inches from his girlfriend. The fact that he was, after the panties debacle, able to go on and have tact and sleuth is admirable.

Keith has hatched many a plan in his life, and many of those plans have gone horribly, horribly wrong. For instance, there was the time Keith's mother went out of town and I came over to spend the night. He'd planned the whole thing. I was to arrive after she left. We would order pizza and watch movies. I would lie to my parents and tell them I was at Amy's when I was really spending one of my first nights with a boy in a place where there was no parental supervision.

When I got to his house, we rolled a mattress into the middle of the living room and slept right there, five feet from the front door. In his planning, Keith never stopped to consider that his mother would change her mind about how long she was going to be away that next day. He never stopped to consider she would pass over a meat raffle in favor of heading home to spend an afternoon reading magazines and watching Walker, Texas Ranger. We woke in the morning to the sound of her rattling her keys against the front door.

Keith said, "Oh my God—my mother's home! Run!"

And I, fearing that his mother would think I was some sort of loose girl with sketchy morals, launched out of bed and dashed into his bedroom, where I pretended to have been sleeping all night, very far away from her son.

She must've thought we were morons.

But the plan Keith hatched on Saturday night was far more intricate than the mattress in the living room plan.

For most of the night, Abe—whose bust was ready for Halloween and wearing a purple feathered Mardis Gras mask—sat next to me at the table. He sat through round after roud after round of Asshole. He watched my lips turn redder and redder from the Hurricanes. He survived several almost-drops from my old college neighbor. At one point, Keith stripped him of his mask and started wearing it on his own face, but Abe sat by like the mild and compassionate soul he is.

We never even noticed when Keith stuffed him into the empty beer case and escorted him out to the car. We didn't notice this because, well, we were doing the Electric Slide in the living room. We were also wearing boas. We are not to blame.

Anyway, the next morning my phone rang, and it was Keith.

"Missing anything?" he asked.

I was wasting a considerable amount of time ridding my mouth of the red Hurricane stains, but I couldn't so much identify that I was missing anything, so I said so. "No," I said. "WHAT DID YOU DO?"

"Where's Abe?" he asked.

It turns out that Abe, after being shoved into the empty beer box and run down to the car, found a new home atop Ex-Keith and Big Head's mantel.

"He looks pretty good there," Keith said. "Pretty comfortable."

Well played, Ex-Keith. Well played. And to think, there used to be a time when you loved and worshipped me instead of stole creepy busts of ex-presidents that belong to my best friend. That time looked like this:



We want our Lincoln back, you crazy New Englander.

The Question of Karma

The last year of my undergraduate career two boys moved into the apartment next to us. Both of them were named Kevin. One was cute and one was, well, a little heavy. I had names for them. Together, they were the Kevin & Kevin Show. Individually, they were known as Cute Kevin and Fat Kevin.

The Kevins liked to come home from whatever bar or party they'd attended—and they attended a lot—and play "Like a Rolling Stone" at four in the morning. There were countless nights I blinked awake to the opening notes of that song and the sound of the Kevins yowling the lyrics in their beer-slow voices.

The Kevin whose bedroom shared a wall with mine was in charge of the music. He was also in charge of waking me up in other ways. The Kevin whose bedroom shared a wall with mine had loud, loud sex with his girlfriend many, many times a week. A Tuesday at one AM, a Thursday at six AM, a Saturday at three PM. I heard it all. I woke to the heavy clang of headboard on concrete wall, to the girlfriend's breathy panting, to the sounds of them flipping and changing positions. And then I'd have to lie there and try to block it out so I could go back to sleep, which was a nearly impossible task. Those sounds are not easy to ignore.

Those are the memories of my last year in that apartment. The Kevin & Kevin show consumed me. There were nights when I'd get so angry at the Dylan-blaring and the sex-having that I'd rip all my blankets off the bed and go sleep on the futon in our living room. Ex-Keith and I spent a few nights out there, too. It's unsettling to wake up in the middle of the night next to your boyfriend and listen to strangers have very expressive sex.

Now, when I'm lonesome for college and old times, I will put on my Bob Dylan, and I'll sing along in a voice as loud and off-key as the Kevins' voices were, and I'll miss Fredonia very much, even the strange Kevins and the cloud of pot smoke that always cloaked their front door.

Last night, though, I didn't so much have to miss Fredonia or the Dylan or the Kevins. That's because when I opened the door to Amy's apartment at 12:30 AM, Fat Kevin was standing outside it. What's even stranger: he was standing there with Ex-Keith and Ex-Keith's girlfriend, Big Head. [Note: I am committed to using this nickname less, but for identification purposes, and because I refuse to use the BH's real name, it's imperative that I utilize the nickname for this post. It should also be noted that I think the BH is a pretty girl, and I have some guilt about calling her Big Head.]

A few hours before opening the door to the apartment, Amy, Rob, and I had been out at a sports bar that was lousy with people who wanted to watch the Sabres game. We spent the first two periods hovering near one of the flat screen TVs and nursing our drinks until we were finally awarded for our patience with a table and a waitress and an order for a large chicken finger pizza. After the game was over, and after we'd demolished our pizza, I got a message from Keith. He said he and BH were coming over to see us.

The five of us stayed at that sports bar for as long as we possibly could, and it was a chore. Not only was it playing host to a giant crowd for the Sabres game, but it was also having some sort of Halloween costume contest and, later, a really awful band played. They were celebrating their first anniversary together and subsequently rolled out two awful Power Point presentations set to Motley Cru songs before playing for their groupies. The groupies were over forty, sausaged into school girl uniforms, Cruella Deville outfits, and angel costumes. They writhed on each other. They showed off for men with thick mustaches. They humped in front of the guitar players.

"I can't do this anymore," Ex-Keith said. He tipped his beer up and drank until it was gone. "We've got to go," he said.

Earlier that day I'd had a marathon shopping session where I'd picked up a small gift for Amy—this amazing Hurricane mix we drank in college. We had plans to finish our drinks at the sports bar and head home for late-night Hurricanes and some dancing in the living room. We were perfectly happy with calling it a night.

And so we left. We walked to our respective cars and got ready to leave the parking lot. That's when Ex-Keith was pulled his car around behind mine, then came over and knocked on my window. He asked what we were doing, where we were going, and if it was okay if he and BH came over. "She just doesn't want to go home right now," he said.

We said sure it was okay, because what else can you say? It seemed unnecessary and redundant to stop and explain that it seemed weird to have my ex-boyfriend and his current girlfriend come over to my best friend's apartment late on a Saturday night.

"Good," Ex-Keith said when we said sure, sure, come on over. "We could play cards. We'll stop for beer."

And so we went home to wait for them to show up with beer and an eagerness to play Asshole—a game I learned to play the first night Keith told me he loved me. I couldn't stop thinking about that, and I couldn't stop thinking that this all was a little too strange, even for me.

But then it got stranger. My phone rang. It was Ex-Keith. "We're bringing BH's brother," he said. "Is that okay?"

Ten minutes later, I was opening the door for them, and there he stood in all his post-college, post-Dylan, post-pot smoking, post-sex having glory: Fat Kevin. Still, I didn't know it was one of the Kevins just yet. I stood there looking at him and trying to shake the nagging feeling that I knew him from somewhere.

"This is my brother," BH said. "His wife is pregnant, and he's been drinking beer in the basement for hours."

After we set them up with drinks, fridge space for their beer, and a table where they could shuffle the cards, Amy dragged me into her bedroom. "We need to have a conference," she said as she shut the door behind me. "We know that guy. He must've gone to Fredonia. We know him, Jess."

I went back into the kitchen and cornered Ex-Keith. "Hey," I whispered. "Listen, did Kevin go to Fredonia? We think we know him from somewhere."

"Yes," Ex-Keith said. "Oh,God. Did someone sleep with him?"

The mystery went unsolved all night. It went unsolved as I played several stunning hands of Asshole, where I was president or vice president more times than I've ever been. I tried not to get angry when Ex-Keith announced that there were new rules and that this was how they played now, like the old way hadn't been good enough, like it was somehow inferior and they'd had to make up new things to make the game better. It went unsolved through a pitcher of Hurricanes that stained my mouth, lips, and tongue red. It went unsolved while BH, her bother, and Ex-Keith cheered Hot Rob on to jumping to touch the highest part of the ceiling. It went unsolved as we broke out the bust of Abe Lincoln, a Mardi Gras mask, and a feather boa. It went unsolved as we did the Electric Slide in the living room.

It was finally solved this morning when I woke up, tangled and disoriented from the time change. I sat up straight in bed. I thought, My God... that was Fat Kevin. My ex-boyfriend was dating Fat Kevin's sister. It was very possible that Fat Kevin knew things about me and Keith and our relationship, and it was definite that I knew things about him and his woman, who was now pregnant with what he kept calling his human baby. The swirling implications of all that made my head spin. There has to be fate or karma or something wrapped up in all of that. I tried to wrap my thoughts around it, so I could understand it, but I just couldn't. I don't understand what it all means, but I feel like it means something. Something that's maybe important. Something that could teach me about myself. I just wish I knew what that something was.

Home Brewed

It was 7:58 AM when I woke up at my mother's house. At first, I didn't know why I was awake. It was dark in the room. Dark and quiet.

I rolled over. That's when I smelled it. Coffee.

I thought, Mom must be up. That coffee-smell, though—it was awful strong. It was black and heavy. I thought, Mom must really need some caffeine this morning.

That's when I head the rolling gurgle of percolation. I opened my eyes, and there it was again—the sound of water being warmed and sucked through a filter. I didn't understand what was going on. I'd spent many a night on my mother's couch, and I'd never been startled awake by her coffee maker. It's quiet. It's unassuming. If I hadn't had a problem with it when I was in the living room, which is right next to the kitchen, then why would I be having a problem with it now, when I was asleep on the top bunk of the bed in my brother's room? The new coffee maker sound was loud and obtrusive. It smelled like it was right under my nose.

I moved my body to the edge of the bed, which was framed off by wooden slats like the old bunk bed we had in our camper. I peered through the frame. The door was shut. There was absolutely no reason I should have been smelling or hearing coffee from the kitchen.

That's when I saw it. It was my brother's hand, and it was extending from the bottom bunk. He was fumbling for something, reaching for something. The thing he was reaching for was a coffee maker. It was sitting on his bedside table, right next to his alarm clock. The green light was on. The carafe was filling with black liquid. My brother was brewing coffee in his bedroom.

It hadn't been my idea to spend the night in Adam's room. When I decided to spend the night at my mother's, I asked her to haul out the inflatable mattress. She frowned when I made that request. "It gets awful cold out here at night," she said of the living room. "Don't you want to spend the night in your brother's room?"

I asked her if my brother was going to be home because if he was, the answer was no, no, I did not, thanks anyway.

"Come on," she said. "You can sleep on the top bunk. It's so warm in there. It's like a sauna."

I said okay. I said fine. I said sure. I'd slept without incident in that top bunk once before. I felt more comfortable there than I did whenever I was asked to sleep in my brother's bedroom at my mother's old apartment. I'd always requested that she change the sheets before I came over. She would roll her eyes, but I told her that he was a teenage boy and he had blown up a magazine picture of Britney Spears to a size so big that it covered the entire ceiling above his bed—God only knows what he did under those sheets. I wasn't about to sleep under them.

The bed in the second bedroom of my mother's new place—a trailer she bought with her boyfriend—belongs not only to my brother, but also to my mother's boyfriend's son. He's a black belt. He's eleven years old. He's chubby and rolly-polly. Once, when my mother and I were in her bedroom painting our toenails matching shades of Burgundy Bounce, he had skipped across the threshold and collapsed next to us. He wanted to chat. He wanted to gossip. He wanted to know what color we had chosen to paint our nails. After he left I looked over at my mother and raised my eyebrows. "Hmmm," I said.

She shrugged. "He's just eleven," she said.

"And gay," I said. "I'm pretty sure that child is gay."

I feel that many things offer proof to my assumption, but the best is the top bunk. Before the boyfriend's son moved in (for three nights a week), my brother had pictures of Hooters girls on his wall. He had a bulletin board decorated in Beatles memorabilia. He had a picture of a legs-spread Jenna Jameson on the back of his door. Those things went away when the eleven year old moved in. After that, the room was filled with stuffed animals. The top bunk especially. There is a giant and droopy dog in the lower corner, five teddy bears at the head. Lining the wooden slats of its edge are no less than twelve Beanie Babies. It's the Beanie Babies that get me every single time.

They're delicate things, these Beanies. They are extra-fuzzy and tiny and sweet. There are bears with angel wings, bears holding hearts. There are bunnies with carrots, bunnies with eggs. They are things that little girls would collect.

When I brought this up, my mother told me I was being crazy. She said, "Oh, Jess. They're just stuffed animals! Your brother had stuffed animals!"

Yes, but they were different. Adam's stuffed animals were dinosaurs or menacing-looking dogs. He had stuffed animals that growled and huffed. His non-plush toys were things like dump trucks and tractors he liked to fill with popcorn that needed transporting from his bedroom to the living room. He liked mud and Power Wheels.

My mother, though, went on to defend the boyfriend's son. "But he likes those trading cards," she said. "You know—those cartoon ones."

Which means he's five short years away from morphing into a full-fledged D&D nerd (sorry, Matty Clay).

But it doesn't matter if he's gay or if he isn't, or if people are in denial about it or not—what really matters is it was his bed that I spent the night in last night. I was one with the animals. I woke up several times during the night with a Beanie Baby clenched in my fist or a teddy bear leaning against my forehead. There were times I thought I was hallucinating or that I'd somehow ended up in a bad dream where I was being crushed to death by fuzzy plush things.

But I wasn't. I was just wedged in a bed beside twenty-five stuffed animals that belonged to a eleven year old totally-not-gay black belt. And then it was 7:58 AM and my brother was waking up to brew coffee in his bedside coffee machine like that was totally normal. I wanted to close my eyes and go back to sleep and forget that I was on a top bunk in my brother's room, not so far from the see-through container where he stores his condoms (light blue, maybe Trojans). I wanted it to be a normal time to wake up so I could go take a shower and get ready for the day of shopping my mother and I had ahead of us. I couldn't fall back asleep, though. I waited through my brother's rolling out of bed and pouring himself a mug of the coffee. I waited through his digging through his drawers to find clothes for the day. But nothing. No sleep. And I kept bumping into the giant drooping dog at the foot of the bed.

I got out of bed and walked into the kitchen, where my brother was standing over a bowl of cereal. He had his MP3 player stuck into his ears, and he was nodding to an invisible beat.

"GOOD MORNING," he shouted over the music only he could hear.

"Yeah," I said. "Morning."

"I HAVE TO TAKE A CRAP," he said. "AND THEN I AM GETTING INTO THE SHOWER. DO YOU NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM BEFORE I DO ANY OF THAT?"

And that, all of that—the mountain of plush bedmates, the giant and looming stuffed dog, the bedroom-brewed coffee at 7:58 AM—was the start of my weekend. It made me all the more grateful that in a few, few days I will be landing in Minneapolis and getting all geared up for a big weekend back home.

All This Plus an Amish Buggy

Here's the thing about roadtrips: they're only fun if you have good directions. Proper directions. Accurate directions. Without them, the potential for developing a psychotic break increases. So does brownie intake. But I suppose I'm getting ahead of myself. I should probably start at the beginning:

Friday

1:00 PM

We—that's me, Becky, Hot Rob, and Amy—load up Becky's car. We make sure the brownies I've spent the morning baking are within easy reach. We stock up on CDs. We are off.


2:45 PM

We have a ten minute discussion about the word poop.


3:30 PM

We pass into Mansfield, New York.

"Mansfield," Becky says. "Where they grow a year's supply of men in a field. You can go in and pick your own. We can stop and get you a man, Jess."

"It's kind of late in the season," I say. "They're probably picked over by now. The only ones left are short or fat."

"Or moldy," Amy says from the backseat.

We decide to stop for lunch in Mansfield. Between the exit and the Taco Bell, some sort of roadtrip hysteria hits. We can't stop laughing or shrieking. This has a lot to do with the Butters Car Wash of Mansfield, New York. We can't stop saying butter! We are losing our minds. We eat tacos.


5:30 PM

I am seized by a shooting pain in my abdomen. Because of the shooting pain, I am unable to be a good navigator. We have to turn around after we miss a giant blinking sign alerting us to a detour for the road we're supposed to be on.

We pass a church with a scary (and giant) stained glass Jesus. We pass a thousand roadside motels with names like White Deer Inn or King's Motel. We pass the Little League Hall of Fame.

"I have a glove in there," Rob says.


7:20 PM

We are on a stretch of road that has an Adult World or an Adult Depot or a Misty's Fine Gentleman's Club every mile.

"There aren't ever any windows," Amy says. "Gross."


8:00 PM

We are supposed to be getting off of Route 83 at exit 16A. We see exit 16A.

"I think we're close," I announce. "There's only two more steps in the directions. The hotel should be right around here."

The hotel is, in fact, not right around there.


8:15 PM

"It would've been helpful if they gave us rough time frames," Becky says. "I don't know how long we should keep looking for this hotel."

She says this because we are starting to leave civilization. We are heading into rural Pennsylvania. There are farms and signs alerting us to be on the lookout for Amish buggies.


8:30 PM

"Okay," I announce. "We are not supposed to be here. There won't be a Red Roof Inn in the middle of nowhere."


8:35 PM

There is a blinking red light up ahead. When we get closer, we see it is an Amish buggy.

"That's it!" I say. "We're lost!"

"We're passing a BUGGY!" Becky yells. "A BUGGY! These directions are wrong!"

We get fired up. We get angry. We call my father and ask him to mapquest us out of Amish country and into Maryland. He tells us we're still about an hour away. He gives us new directions.


8:55 PM

We drive through more countryside. Then more. And more. We finally start to see civilization. We make up a chant about the person who gave us the directions. It rhymes with her name and involves the word poo.


9:00 PM

We get the direction-giver, who is also the bride, on the phone. We tell her what happened.

"Oh," she says. "We meant 16A in Maryland, not Pennsylvania."

Becky grips the steering wheel so tight her knuckles turn red, then white. "That would've been HELPFUL TO KNOW!" she yells.


9:30 PM

We finally get to the hotel. After getting lost and adding several hours to our travel time, we are all expecting a certain something from our hotel. Cleanliness, for one. Indoor entrances, for another. We get neither. Our toilet is stained. The side is caked with dirt. The room smells funny.

Amy makes Rob pick up each bed and look underneath.

"I watched a bad segment on 20/20," she says. "I don't want anything strange living under our bed."


9:40 PM

Our high school friend Missy, who's also coming into Maryland for the wedding, arrives with her boyfriend. She left three hours after we did and has arrived ten minutes after us. She gets a nice second-floor room with a fridge and microwave. We have none of those things. We do have that strange stain on our toilet, though.

Becky announces that she wants to kill someone. We all have a lie-down on our beds to compose ourselves. Then we decide we're all going out and getting drunk.


10:30 PM

We make Rob go find a map of the area. We make him ask when the bars close in Maryland. The news is not good. They close at 1:30.


11:00 PM

We drive around. We try to find a restaurant, a pub, an anything. We find a sushi bar. We find several closed steak restaurants. Then we find a giant sign that features a dancing shark. We are pleased. We know this is exactly where we need to be.


11:15 PM

There is vodka. A lot of vodka.

Missy asks if we want shots. We so want shots. We have them. Amy, who once had a tragic incident involving the cinnamon-flavored Schnapps Hot Damn!, tries not to gag as our spiky-haired bartender pours out Becky's shot of Goldschlager.

We are sitting in one of three bars that is located in the dancing shark establishment. In the next room they are playing music. There are flashing lights. There is hubbub and commotion. I don't feel quite up for hubbub and commotion. But Becky and Amy are unable to resist when they hear the first few licks of Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer." They dash into the next room.


11:20 PM

The DJ plays Def Leppard. I turn to Missy. "They're never coming back now," I say.


11:25 PM

I get a text message from Becky. It says BOYS. COME NOW.


11:30 PM

Amy and Becky dash back into the quiet side of the bar to tell us that the other side of the bar is way better. "We've made friends!" they say. "There's a cute boy in a hat!" they say.


11:35 PM

We dance. We dance and dance and dance. We make asses of ourselves. We giggle and scream and become a spectacle. We are just so happy we are no longer lost and no longer in a car.



The boy in the hat is over in the corner with his friends. Because I have had much to drink in a short period of time, I revert back to my Queen of Bold status. I smile at him. I motion for him to come to me.

He comes to me.

12:00 AM

It turns out the cute boy in the hat is less cute and more smooshed of face.

"I still like his hat," Becky says.

He tells me about his friends, his school, his job. I forget it all as soon as I hear it. I also can no longer see right.



12:45 AM

A boy named Ian comes up to me. He has been trying to hit on another girl for the last hour.

"Hi," Ian says.

"Hi," I say.

"How are you?" he says.

"Great," I say.

"Where are you from?" he asks.

"Why don't you go after your girlfriend?" I ask. I point to the girl he's been hitting on. She's now hitting on a hulking man who looks very much not interested in her.

"Because I like you better," he says.

"Go try her again," I say. "Be assertive. Don't take no for an answer. She'll give in."

He listens to me. We go through that same cycle at least three more times.

Smooshed-face hat boy comes back when we're up dancing on the stage. We talk a little more. I spill part of my drink on myself. He leaves.


1:30 AM

It is last call. Ian's friend buys me a beer, and I drink it even though I hate beer.

Ian comes back to me. "She doesn't want me," he says. He frowns.

"Better luck next time," I say.

Amy and Rob are making out in the corner.




1:45 AM

We leave. We laugh and sing all the way home. After we get back to the hotel, I find an empty roll of toilet paper on the floor by a pair of our boots. I can't control myself. I laugh hysterically. I take pictures of it.

I need to go to bed.


2:15 AM

We go to bed.


4:00 AM

I wake up knowing I'm in bed with someone. I want to put my arm around that someone, because there is a two-second period where I think it's some boy I love or like a lot, but then I remember it's just Becky.

I consider putting my arm around her anyway. After all, who doesn't like to cuddle?


Saturday

8:45 AM

I get up to drink a gallon of water. The faucet hisses loudly. I hear a voice from the next bed over. "Are you making bacon?" Rob asks.

We spend the next half an hour talking about how much we want bacon. We also talk about the spooky things that happened in the middle of the night: the radio suddenly hissing static and not stopping until Amy unplugged it, the door opening by itself (or by a sleepwalker?) and staying that way until Rob realized it was open and got up to close it.


9:45 AM

We get up, put on clothes, stumble out into daylight. We drive around until we find a diner. I get pancakes and a side of bacon. In Maryland "a side of bacon" equals eight slices. I decide I love Maryland. I eat each slice. I could have eaten more.


11:00 AM

We decide to ditch our original plan (stay in bed all day until it was necessary to get up and get dressed for Julie's wedding party) in favor of plan #2 (shower and go to Baltimore).


2:30 PM

We get to Baltimore. We walk around the Inner Harbor. We tour a giant Navy relic. We stand on its deck and watch the Flutag. We laugh when we go to lower decks and Rob can't stand up straight.






4:00 PM

We are back in the parking ramp. We realize we needed to pay on the lower level before trying to leave. We make Rob walk down the seven flights we just walked up so he can pay for our parking.


4:45 PM

We get back to the hotel to pick up Missy and her boyfriend. They are going to follow us to the party.

5:10 PM

We are lost again. We've followed the direction to the T, but it turns out we were supposed to take 83S instead of 83N. For the second time in twenty-four hours, our directions are wrong. People get cranky. There is some swearing. We are really hungry.

5:50 PM

We finally arrive at the party. There are tents in the backyard. We look at each other. We are going to freeze, we just know it.

6:00 PM-party's end

We drink wine to stay warm. We eat our weight in nachos and quiche and chocolate fondue. I sample every cracker topping, rich with mascerated olives or marinated peppers, and go back for seconds. We eat enchiladas and beans. We smash hollowed-out eggs filled with confetti over the newlyweds' heads.

We toast them. We drink champagne.

We talk to old high school friends. We marvel that one of them has a child—a little blond haired, blue-eyed child. We make friends with the groom's brother/cousin/some sort of relative from Texas. We watch game one of the World Series. We eat cake. We realize we are really tired. We decide to head back to the hotel, but only after one more picture:

And then Sunday, of course, was the day of driving back to New York. And I think it's important to point out that we didn't get lost even once.

Now that I'm back from mini-vacation #1, I am counting the days to mini-vacation #2: Minnesota, Minnesota, oh, Minnesota.

Many Things Matrimonial

This is where I'm going to be over the weekend:



I am going to Maryland because one of our high school friends is getting married. When I learned that she was getting married I had a minor freak-out because this was the girl I edited the newspaper and yearbook with, and just who the hell said she could go off and get married before I did?

All through middle and high school this friend and I wrote center-justified poems about love and hearts and angels and midnight skies and golden forevers.

We were pretty similar: we were among the first girls to get freakishly tall, we both lusted after older boys who didn't know our names, we were both convinced that My So-Called Life was the best television show of all time, and, for our very first writing assignment in AP English, we both turned in pieces titled "The Eternal Night." Well, except mine was titled in French, because I thought I was clever.

The friend was the second person I told after I lost my virginity. She had the best note-folding technique of all time. She was a fine gossiper. She was one of the first of us to get a car, which she called The Vibe. If you took it over fifty-five miles per hour, the entire dashboard rumbled as if it were about to crack clean off. I was in that car the day she hit the curb at the East Aurora Pizza Hut.

I guess I never thought this friend would be one of the first to get married. Somehow, she seemed above all that. She seemed too artsy, too focused, too anti-normalcy for the institution. I guess I always thought I'd go first.

I've been unable to keep myself from thinking about love and marriage and weddings for the last few days. There's the upcoming trip to Maryland, and there's also this: I just spent three hours mixing a CD of possible first-dance songs for Becky's summer wedding. I've been listening to the best love songs I could dig up. I've been doing some thinking and daydreaming.

The last time I did this much thinking and daydreaming about weddings was on the drive to New York after I packed up and left Minnesota. I'd done that drive four times already in two months. I was bored with it. I had time to kill. So I allowed myself some wandering thoughts.

I planned my wedding. Actually, I planned a lot of weddings. There was a full-fledged wedding scenario to go along with every man I've loved or liked an awful lot.

I had the music, the decor, the location, the bridesmaid dresses, the flowers, the wedding party, the church readings, the toasts, the dances, and even my dress picked out for each wedding. And they were all different. Seriously, I had a lot of time to kill. And it didn't seem fair to dream up Generic Wedding when things would be so, so different if I married this beloved boy instead of that beloved boy.

One of the scenarios featured a big Catholic church, a chocolate truffle hors d'oeuvres hour, champagne, groomsmen who spent their pre-wedding hours eating Funyuns and discussing that time they locked one of the younger ones in the closet when he was wearing one sparkly glove. My husband and I would have danced our first dance to his favorite song—"When You Say Nothing At All" by Alison Krause and Union Station—or "Feels Like Home" by Chantal Kreviazuk.

Another scenario would have featured a lot of choreographed Michael Jackson dance routines from the groom and his groomsmen. Amy would've toasted and thanked the groom for doing her hair that one time.

Yet another scenario would've featured a reading from Professor Girl. I'd ask her to read a poem or say some beautiful things. She would get real drunk at the reception and she would do the hair-spin dance to some ABBA or Bruce Springsteen song we'd play for her. Things would probably be lit on fire. By the groom.

Another scenario would've had Katy banned from speech-making of any kind, lest she bring up that time she pinched the groom's nipple. This one would be expensive, and I would have the dress to end all dresses. Everything would be shiny. There would be a lot of crystal, a lot of silver, a lot of hot boys for my friends to hit on. Oh, and the cake.

I could go on forever. During a ride that turns out to be nineteen hours long, a girl has a lot of time to plan her wedding. She has a lot of time to consider her grooms, her choices, her wants, the way she hopes things to be.

But this weekend isn't about me or my fantasy wedding. It's about the next high school friend who is growing up, going off, stepping into her new life. It's about me spending the five hour trip to Maryland eating brownies and wondering where the time has gone. Where has it gone?

Questioning the Fine Line Between Eccentric and Crazy

I'm not here to make any judgments. I'm just here to observe. That's a writer's job. I'm supposed to open my eyes in the morning and assess the world with a knowing and clinical gaze. I'm supposed to be able to decode and deconstruct. I'm supposed to reassemble and make sense of things.

I make note of this because I need to explain something. I need to explain what I had to deconstruct and reassemble on Sunday night at 7:20 PM:

I was sitting at a table with my mother, her boyfriend, my grandfather, his girlfriend, one neighbor, the relatives of my uncle's second wife, my uncle, and my uncle's second wife. That was Table #1. Table #2 was in a separate room and was home to my cousin David, my brother, my uncle's second wife's six foot seven inch son, the neighbor kids, and my mother's boyfriend's eleven year old black belt son who has a fondness for Anime and stuffed animals.

The logistics of all that was boggling enough, but the reason for the gathering topped even the guest list: it was a Halloween party. A very premature Halloween party.

Apparently, my uncle's second wife—a woman he met after he'd moved his family to Tennessee, a woman who has already left him once only to move back to western New York after a good coaxing—loves Halloween more than anything in the world. The love borders on obsession. The obsession borders on histrionics. There's a part of me that is certain that if I looked hard enough in the DSM—the psychology community's compilation of all known disorders—I would be able to find some sort of obscure disorder that explains her obsession. I'm fairly certain it would have something to do with a childhood trauma involving clowns.

The decorating was actually lovely. My uncle's wife is a clever girl, skilled in all manners of interior design. She collects ceramic chickens and manages to make them look interesting. She also likes thimbles, old books, antique food canisters, farm implements, and Victorian hats. And she takes her holiday decorating as seriously as she does her daily decorating. Walking into their house on Sunday night was like walking into a montage of every creepy horror movie ever made. Fake spider webs dripped from every ceiling. Snakes slithered around furniture legs. The lights were turned low. The place was stocked with Three Musketeers and Smarties in every available nook and cranny.

Of course, not every decoration was of the spooky variety. There were happy ghosts and grinning pumpkins and curling black cats. There were even a few live cats that kept snaking their bodies around our legs. My uncle's cats are bizarre. The big one—Roscoe, who has a bobcat's square jaw and giant eyes—regularly beats on the young girl cat. He also brings up clean laundry from the basement. He snatches a panty here, a sock there, and clenches them in his teeth so they will survive the long climb to the main floor, where they are then neatly piled for discovery. While we were there, he brought up wrapping paper for our consideration.

Also situating itself in the non-spooky ranks was the motion-detecting witch figurine that burst into spasms and gruff laughter anytime someone would clap his hands or yell in a particularly loud voice. After they figured this out, my mother's boyfriend's black belt son and one of the non-relative's sons stood underneath the witch, clapping and shrieking like mad.

You're going to marry Jimmy! the black belt would scream at the witch.

You're going to marry Teddy! the non-relative would scream at the witch.

And the witch would bend and twitch and cackle, cackle, cackle.

This was during that dicey pre-dinner hour, where guests were checking their watches and swallowing around hard lumps of hunger. After the thirtieth time of hearing the witch's routine, I looked desperately at my cousin.

"Listen," I said. "You've got to help me. You've got to find me some alcohol."

He shrugged. He didn't think there was any alcohol. He said he could get me some ice and maybe a glass of orange pop.

"I saw a half-empty bottle of wine in the back room," my brother said.

We were deciding whether or not to go foraging when the black belt and the non-relative sent the witch into fits again.

"That's it," my brother said. He stood, stretched, and stepped down into the living room. He walked calmly over to the two little boys. He reached up over their heads and tipped the witch upside down. Her skirt went flying over her head. "Where's the damn off switch?" he asked.

My uncle's wife, busy shuttling serving trays between the two rooms and the two tables, came in and watched as Adam tipped and turned her cackling witch. "What's wrong?" she asked. "Don't you like my laughing witch?"

We sat down to dinner a few minutes later. I was sandwiched in between my mother and my grandfather. My grandfather chose to open the meal with a ten minute discussion on how all this fuss about lead being bad for you was just a bunch of hooey because his toothpaste had come packaged in lead containers when he was a boy, and he smeared that stuff all over his teeth and gums and he had turned out just fine, thank you very much.

After he was finished my mother unfolded a napkin onto her lap. "Oh," she said. "Well then."

I would have given a few toes for a glass of wine, but by that point the food was circulating. It smelled great. In addition to being a skilled decorator, my uncle's wife is an excellent cook. So is my uncle. They'd pulled out all the stops and laid out an entire turkey dinner. There was extra stuffing. There was extra gravy. There was cranberry sauce. Mashed potatoes. Dark and white meat. Green bean casserole. Corn. Ambrosia. Cupcakes with royal icing. Cheesecake. Chocolate pie. Apple pie.

There were also spiders, maggots, snakes, worms, and rats.

My uncle's wife had spent the minutes before dinner mixing fake flies into the corn. She threaded bait shop worms into the stuffing. She had sunk twitchy rubber spiders into the gravy. She had broken holes in the pie and stuck rats inside it.

I spent a considerable amount of plating time worrying the potatoes to get around worms. I had to pick snakes out of my cranberries. I had to re-dunk the gravy ladle to dislodge a spider. I had to look very, very carefully at each bite of my Ambrosia because the maggots were camouflaged perfectly by the marshmallow and coconut and cherries. My mother had to spit out a maggot when she took a much too zealous forkful of the salad.

The only thing unspoiled was the apple cider. I had two large glasses of it, and after I finished them and worked my way across the dessert table while avoiding any and all rodents, I smiled and said thank yous and let my brother take a picture of me with his cell phone so he could send it to Wisconsin Boy and say See what you're missing?

I had nearly missed it myself. I had a stack of composition essays on my table and they were in need of grading. On Saturday I told my mother there was a chance I wouldn't be able to make it, or that I wouldn't be able to stay for very long. Her voice became clipped and she put the infuriating ten second pauses she does so well in between her sentences. This was her way of letting me know that she was angry, that she was pissed, and that there was no way in hell I was leaving her alone with the boyfriend, his black blet son, the non-relatives, the neighbors, the Southern girl who had a fondness for ceramic poultry, her grumbly father, her son who spent most of his time text messaging a cute coworker, her father's girlfriend who spent most of her time taking photos of the decorations, and her brother who, after dinner, went and stretched out, moaning and writhing, across the living room carpet because his back hurt.

But she wasn't alone. I went. I went and tucked every little thing, every little scrap of that night into the dark folds of my brain so I could get at it someday when I needed it the most. My family, after all, is a walking gold mine of strange.

As I Write This, Bing Crosby's Version of "It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas" Swells in the Background

That's right, I'm listening to Christmas music.

It seems right. The lake effect snow band that fell on Buffalo and the southtowns on Thursday while I was up there teaching has now shifted, and it's falling over ski country. This snow is different than Thursday's snow, though. It's not that heavy wet snow. It's fluffy, delicate, beautiful snow. Snow that puts you in the mood for the holidays, for Christmas, for sledding, for drinking mugs of hot chocolate.

Yesterday I woke up and the ground was bare. The snow was still beating on Buffalo. But then my phone was ringing. It was Amy. "If it's alright, we're coming to your house," she said. She and Becky had been without power since 11:00 PM. They were freezing. When they woke up that morning—cold and annoyed—they began fantasizing about my house. They thought it would be warm. They thought it would smell good. So they came over.

We spent the day in front of the wood stove. We spent the day watching season two of Lost. We brought out old notes we'd written each other in middle and high school. Later, my dad made hamburgers on the grill. We corked a few bottles of wine and watched the Sabres beat the Red Wings. Greg called. "Just wanted to call and wish you a merry Christmas," he said. "I hope you're outside making snow angels."

This was before we had snow.

But we're getting it now.

Here's what my back porch looks like today, October 14th, 2006:



It's starting.

Here's a view from the front:



This is nothing, of course. Nothing compared to Buffalo, which is in a state of emergency. Out here we've got our power and our heat. Now over 300,000 Buffalo residents don't have power. And the companies are saying they won't have it until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.

Oh, the hilarity.

At the university where I teach, students are huddled in the student union with their blankets and pillows. There are movies playing. Burgers and chicken fingers are being turned-out around the clock. No one knows what's going on or when it's going to get better.

Amy and Becky just left a few minutes ago. They're making the trek back to their apartment to see about the food that's sitting in their fridge. They're going to see what can be saved. Amy's going to attempt a drive into the city to rescue Hot Rob.

Me? I'm turning up the Christmas music, grading a stack of personal narratives, and thinking how strange this all is. I mean, look at this view from my bedroom:



Those poor apples.

In This Scene, Jess's Welcome Home Committee Chairperson Will Be Played By a Lake Effect Snow Storm

At 7:45 AM this morning I was sitting on my bed. I was eating a bowl of Life cereal. I was watching the news. The weather was on, and I was marveling at how strange the new weather mapping systems are here in Buffalo. The meteorologists have 3D maps, advanced tracking systems, special sensors, special imaging.

At 7:45 AM this morning the Buffalo meteorologists were on the television saying, "Well, this is what we can expect today, folks: rain. Rain, rain, rain, and lots of it. You see this yellow band pushing across the lake? That has the potential to bring with it some thunderstorms."

I chewed my Life cereal. I nodded at the TV screen. Rain. More rain. Thunder. Got it. I'd need the umbrella.

The meteorologists were saying, "Let's take a look at the afternoon map. See this break in the clouds right here? Well, there might be some pockets of afternoon sun!"

I turned off the TV. I knew all I needed to know. There would be rain and some afternoon sun. The sun would do me no good, because I would be right in the middle of an afternoon of nonstop teaching.

And so I put on my new dress coat. I tied my hair back. I slipped into my shoes. And off I went to school.

My office hours and first class passed uneventfully. By the time twelve-thirty rolled around, I was in with my second class of the day, and we were in the middle of discussing our process analysis essays when one of my favorite students—snarky and known to make comments at slightly inappropriate times due to what I assume is a raging case of ADHD—exclaimed, "Holy shit!"

I turned around, ready to tell him that it was most certainly bad form to yell "Holy shit!" in the middle of my lecture on process analysis, but he was pointing. He was pointing toward the window. And there, in between the blind slats, we could all see what was worthy of the holy shit. It was snowing. It was snowing a lot.

The snow was wet, sticky, and, well, sticking.

It is October 12th. October 12th!

The snow continued to fall all afternoon. It fell during my third class of the day. It fell during my office hours. It was still falling when I put on my coat, picked up my umbrella, and shouldered outside.

People were standing in the parking lot and looking at their cars. Just looking at them. It was hard to process, really. All that snow. I mean, a slick little coating I could've processed just fine, but the entire world was white, white, white, and my car needed to be brushed from top to bottom.

I didn't have a brush.

I threw my brush out on the move back to New York. It had survived three Minnesota winters and was pretty much dead. So I threw it out. Of course, I wasn't the only one who hadn't been prepared for the snow. Several cars down from me a girl was whacking her car with her umbrella. I popped my trunk, praying I had something in there that would do better than my umbrella or my hand. What I found was a miniature ice scraper Rachel had once given to me in the parking lot of the Coffee Klatsch after we had come off a marathon grading session. Whenever I use that scraper I think, Ohhh, Rachel. Today I put it in my hand and thought, Ohhh, Rachel. I also thought, What the fuck?

The snow was so wet and heavy that I had to use the scraper as a scoop to loft it off my car. Then I got inside. I was soaking wet and annoyed.



But at least I had good earrings. Still, that picture is what I looked like at 4:00 PM today, October 12th, 2006.

Cops were out directing traffic on the outskirts of the campus because the lights were out. Traffic on the major routes--of which I have to take three to get home--was bad. Visibility, at times, was nil.

The girl on the radio was talking to a meteorologist. "It's pretty bad out there," she said. "Didn't see that one coming, huh?"

"Not really," the meteorologist said.

"I think it's my fault," she said. "I just moved here. The lake effect wanted to show off."

"Yes," the meteorologist said. "I think it's safe to blame you."

But I knew better than that. I knew who to blame. Me. Blame me. Lake Erie has been cooking this one up since it heard I was moving home. It said, "Good to see you, Jess. It's been a long time. Welcome to October in western New York. Have a nice afternoon."



Six inches have fallen so far, and they say there's plenty more coming. They're also saying it's the earliest (and most intense) snowstorm we've had since 1873. One hundred thousand people are without power because the snow is just so wet it's taken down trees and power lines across the county. Eighty percent of the city streets are impassable. There's a travel ban. All Buffalo schools are closed tomorrow.

Out here in ski country, we're okay so far. The wind hasn't blown in our direction yet. But it's not that I don't think it will. It's possible, even though the map isn't showing that right now. After all, this morning we all thought it was going to be an afternoon of thunderstorms and downpours.

But out here in ski country we've got it covered. One of the best parts about moving home is this: the wood stove. Right now we have a bright blaze crackling behind the glass plate of the stove, and there's cherry wood burning inside. It's sending its fragrant smoke into the night sky. It smells and feels like Christmas vacation. There's a part of me that thinks I am going to wake up tomorrow morning and look out to see a world of white, and then I'm going to go straight into the kitchen, make myself a big mug of hot chocolate, and sit in front of the stove for a long, long, long time. Even if it is only October 13th.

D + J 4-Ever

Last night I saw David Sedaris read at my school. I couldn't get anyone else to go with me. Not Amy, not Pedro, not my mother. So I went by myself. Seeing David Sedaris is worth sitting by yourself a few rows down from your students, who are no doubt thinking, "Oh, that's so sad. My English teacher is sitting by herself." when they could, and should, be thinking, "Oh, look! There's my English teacher. She's the one with that ridiculously attractive man!"

So, I sat by myself as they herded stragglers in through the balcony doors. The reading would start fifteen minutes late because there were so many people there, and getting them in their proper seats was a nightmare for the ushers.

I was sitting next to the best smelling gay couple in the world. They wore crisp shirts and wire-frame glasses. They filled the extra fifteen minutes of wait-time by mocking people. Mainly lesbians.

The one sitting next to me raised his already high voice to octaves unknown. He said, "Ooooh, I'm a lesbian! Ooooh, I'm so cool because I'm a lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian! Lesbian!" and the other one would laugh and laugh and laugh.

I wanted to laugh too, but I was busy pretending not to listen to their conversations while simultaneously assessing the boy one of my students was sitting with. He was a little goth and a little dirty. He looked bored. I wondered if they were dating, and I was still wondering this when the lights dimmed and Sedaris came out.

People freaked. They woo-woo'ed. They whistled. They stomped their feet.

He opened his mouth, thanked us for coming, and started reading. I wanted to slump over in my seat and cry because I was so in love with him and this was so wonderful and I wanted him to somehow see me out in the crowd and invite me back to his hotel room so we could talk about good literature over a bottle of champagne.

This would not be the last time my mind was consumed by fantasies that involved some sort of beverage.

The inside of that giant auditorium was stifling. The gay couple next to me was roasting in their crisp shirts, and they kept fanning themselves with programs. I was in a better position because I was in a skirt which gave me some air circulation around the legs, but my throat was parched. Very parched. When Sedaris started reading an essay about the things he would do to flush the toilet when the water got turned off at his place in France—things like filling the tank with milk or orange juice—my brain was filled with a vision of me standing in David Sedaris's bathroom, lifting the back of his toilet, sinking a straw deep in the reservoir of OJ, and drinking.

But even though I was mildly hallucinatory due to dehyrdration, I still spent every moment of the reading wanting to eat Sedaris's perfect words. I wanted to stuff them in my mouth and make a delicious literary meal of them. I wanted to rush the stage, throw myself at his feet and say, "Take me with you! Take me with you!"

I don't know where I thought he was going, but, boy, did I want to go.

He did a book signing afterward. A book signing that took him forever. I don't know how long he signed after I left, but I know I was in the middle of the line and I waited an hour and a half to get up to him. It was 11:30 when he took up a pen and started working on my book. When I craned around to look behind me, I saw that the line stretched back to the other entrance of the auditorium. To get to all of those people he would've had to sign until 2:00 AM. I don't know if he did, but I can't imagine those people were sent home unfulfilled after standing in line for that long.

Anyway, here's where I confess to one of my neuroses. I have mini panic attacks anytime I meet an author I love. If I'm getting my book signed, I will stand in line and spend dozens of minutes trying to work out what I'm going to say. I'll obsess. Do I sound stupid? Does that make me sound like a groupie? Is this author going to go home, call their loved ones, and tell them about this weirdo he/she met at the reading?

My hands sweat. I fidget. I try to improve my posture so I can at least look graceful before I blow it all out of the water with whatever stupidity comes out of my mouth.

Well, I had a long wait before I could get even remotely close to Sedaris, so I didn't spend a lot of that time stressing. I figured I'd come up with something eventually. I stood patiently in line—even during the time where he had to dash outside for a quick cigarette break—and fantasized about liquids. I had none. Everyone around me had some. I couldn't even get out of line, because this was a serious line and you could tell people were very serious about budgers, and I was alone, so there was no one to hold my place. I began to theorize that there should be a separate line for people who were there by themselves, so they could be taken care of first. After all, they had no one to talk to, and they were really fucking thirsty and couldn't even dash over to the drinking fountain.

In the worst moments—moments past the hour-long wait mark—I began to sway on my feet. I wondered if I was going to faint. I wondered if I was going to slump over on the people in front of me—a hairdresser and her best gay friend. If I did that, I wouldn't get to see Sedaris. I wouldn't get to talk to him or say thank you or get him to sign my book. So I just thought very hard about the half-full bottle of water that was sitting in a cupholder in my car.

And then, after all that dreaming about the sweet wet that would soon be on my tongue, I was five people away from meeting David Sedaris. I entered panic mode. I shifted my weight and ran things through my head. What could I say? Something about my students, how we read several of his essays in class and they loved them? I figured it would be uncouth to ask if he was really sure he liked guys because, well, if he didn't, he and I could be a great team, and we could go run off and get married and live in France.

I decided to say the thing about my students loving him and appreciating him and how they said reading his personal essays had helped them with their personal essays. I practiced a few sentences in my head. I reordered words. I thought about the pitch of my voice. I prayed he wouldn't notice how badly my eyebrows are in need of a wax.

And then there he was. In front of me. Smiling and saying hello.

I handed him my book. I asked him how he was doing. I told him about my students. And he proceeded to talk to me for a few minutes. We talked about students, about teaching. He told me a story about a textbook publisher that had included "Let it Snow"—one of the pieces I'd had my students read—in a composition text. The publisher sent him a review copy. He checked it out, looked over the story, then read the questions at the end. This particular textbook author had written a question that asked What did you feel when you read Sedaris's story about his mother's bad parenting skills? Do you have any experience with alcoholics? What are they?

Then he talked about how people are always sending him writing because their friends have said they sound just like him. He always reads those things and sends the author a small note, saying that it was a pleasure to read their work. He talked about how he doesn't want to say much more because he doesn't know the person and how they can take criticism or a review of their work. He talked about how he doesn't want to get in the way of them eventually finding their own voice.

I wanted to tell him about how I, for a part of my graduate career, was busy trying to be Lorrie Moore with a touch of Aimee Bender. I wanted to tell him that one day I woke up and wrote a story that sounded like neither of them. It just sounded like me. I wanted to tell him those things, but we'd already been talking for a little while, and I could sense the line behind me shifting on their weight and panicking about the things they were going to say to him. He would take the time to talk to each of them the way he had talked to me, and they too would be charmed, so I didn't want to take up anymore of their time. I thanked him, told him to have a lovely night, and then walked out to my car, where I sucked down the entire bottle of water in one giant gulp.

I felt light-headed from all that literary goodness, from the slight dehyrdation, from the sweet message David Sedaris had written in my copy of Barrel Fever.

I felt good. When I announced I was getting tickets to go see Sedaris, Pedro had cautioned me. "I saw him the last time he was here," he said. "I didn't like his attitude." I was scared that I might feel the same when I went to see him, but I was pleasantly surprised. He read for a long time, was charming, was kind, and took the time to chat with each person who handed him a book. I almost called Pedro to tell him he was wrong, that David Sedaris's attitude was everything I wanted it to be, and that he had been wearing the most smashing thin-striped shirt and skinny burgundy tie, and that he was so cute I wanted to go with him wherever he went, so I could spend the rest of my days writing in a room next to the room where he was writing.

Body

I have been battling on E-Bay for the last three weeks. All I want is an unopened bottle of my perfume and a reasonable shipping cost.

The reason I have spent three weeks bidding and bidding and bidding on E-Bay is because I cannot afford my perfume at its regular costs. Forty-eight dollars is a lot of money to me, and I'd rather use those dollars for things like mojitos and chicken wings.

Finally, finally, finally, I was able to get a bottle of my perfume. It arrived the other day, and I immediately sprayed it in the middle of the kitchen. The next morning when I woke up and shuffled out to grade papers I was hit with its smell, and it smelled good.

I wear Body by Victoria, and how I got hooked on it was sort of an accident. When I moved to Minnesota my perfume was a dark, woodsy smelling bottle that sold for $12 at drugstores. I wore it all through my first semester. I wore it over exam week, over Christmas break, and that was it. When I came back to Minnesota for my second semester, my old perfume and I parted ways.

The Wily Republican and I had started something—although I couldn't really define what it was—right before I left for New York, and when I came back we picked up where we'd left off. Suddenly I was kicking through snowdrifts to get to his apartment at night. I was wearing pajamas and praying that none of my students, who likely lived in the same apartment complex, would look out their windows and see their composition instructor smoothing the snowflakes out of her hair before she knocked on their neighbor's door. I was watching him write biology papers, history papers, and English papers while I graded my own stacks of papers. Sometimes he would ask me a question—something like, "Does it sound right for me to say this?" and—I can't help it—I found that to be so charming and sexy that I'd moon about it for the next four days. After all, I was eating snacks and grading papers in the same room with a really cute, really tall boy who stopped every now and again to ask my opinion on the structure of his sentences. It was everything I hoped I'd have when I moved to Minnesota for graduate school. Well, it was a lot of the things I hoped I'd have when I moved to Minnesota for graduate school. I didn't bank on some of the WR's more wily points, but I took them anyway. I took them like he took mine.

Before I could go over to his house at night, though, there was a routine. My roommate Megan would stand in the archway to my room and watch as I paraded several different pajama choices in front of her. Then she would sit on my bed as I fixed my makeup, my hair, the dark circles under my eyes that were there because—let's face it—I wasn't getting a lot of regular sleep that semester.

One night while I fussed over my lip gloss, Megan showed up in my room with a black velvet box from Victoria's Secret. In it was a trial version of each of their Angel perfumes and several others. She told me I should try one, test it out, see what brought me good luck. I sniffed my way through the Angel vials but thought they smelled suspiciously like something my grandmother and her pinochle-playing friends might wear. The last bottle in the box was simple frosted glass. I uncapped it and inhaled. There it was: everything I wanted to smell like.

Victoria's Secret says Body is supposed to have freesia and vanilla undertones, but I think a better description of it is this: it smells like spring. It smells like transitional spring-snow—gray and rocky—that has melted away and left a silt through which crocuses and tulips and daffodils are ready to unfurl. It smells like warm sun and fresh-cut grass. It smells fresh and good and new. Which is exactly how I wanted to smell, because I was convinced that the Wily Republican should think I was fresh and good and new.

Megan watched as I sprayed Body on my neck and wrists. She smiled and told me I looked great, smelled perfect. She told me it was all going to be exactly the way I wanted it to be and that I was going to get everything I wanted.

Five minutes later, when I walked into the Wily Republican's room, he looked up and smelled the air. I sat down on his bed. I sat next to him. He picked up my wrist, held it between his nose and mouth. He inhaled deeply, and then there was a noise in the back of his throat, and then he was kissing my wrist, his lips on that warm spot where veins were jumping with blood.

It did good things for me that night, it went on to do more good things for me with the Wily Republican, and it went on to do good things for me with other boys. They love it. They love it. They can't get enough of it.

Katy likes it, too, although she tells me I smell like a stripper when I wear it. She tells me that must be why men have such a visceral reaction to it. They recognize that smell, and it's all tied up in their heads with sex and nakedness. I don't think that's true, though. I don't think Katy has proper perspective. After all, this is the girl who, after getting a dance from one swingy small-town Midwestern strippers, told her she smelled so, so good. She asked what she wore, and the stripper told her. Now she owns that perfume. Hers is darker. Hers smells like fire and the color maroon. Mine is decidedly cheerier. More wholesome. I think that's why boys like my perfume. I think it's the perfume a good girl wears, and I'd like to think that, really, deep-down, that's what they all want, even if they do choose to go after girls who play with their hearts, stomp their dreams, and play them until they're all played out.

Regardless, I love my perfume. I am hooked. I have a certain always-there panic that it's going to be discontinued, that Victoria's Secret is going to shrug off the scent in favor of the more matronly Angel lines. Sometimes I go into Victoria's Secret just to make sure that Body is still there. Just to make sure it's still getting a top billing. I like to uncap it and smell its superiority to all the other VS scents—but sometimes it just doesn't smell right. It doesn't smell as crisp and lush and fluid. This might be because hundreds of noses have pressed against this bottle in order to test its fragrance, but, really, I like to believe it's something more that's skewing the smell. I like to think that it has something to do with me—that the perfume smells better on me, mixed with my hormones and heat, than it does in the tester bottle or on anyone else. I like to think that when the boys are smelling my wrist or my neck, or when they are putting their hands in my hair and whispering You smell so good it has less to do with the perfume on its own and more with the way that we work together, the way that we match, the way that it makes me feel prettier than I actually am.

I Was a High School Musical Junkie

Last night my father took his best girls--that's me and his girlfriend who has the ridiculously attractive son--to the theatre. We went out for a steak dinner and then to a performance of Mama Mia. It was a late celebration of my birthday.

I got more than I bargained for.

The moment the pit band struck the first notes of those glitzy-golden ABBA songs, I was riveted. Not because of the ABBA—although I do appreciate any musical based on ABBA songs—but because of the whole musical thing and this:

I walked out of basketball tryouts my freshman year in high school. I walked out because that morning Tammy and I had The Fight. The Fight that stopped our friendship. I couldn't stop thinking about it—about how I was so right and she was so wrong—and because of that, I screwed up every layup and then, discouraged and suddenly wanting to cry, I faked an ankle sprain and walked into the locker room. I never went back.

Instead of spending my time playing basketball, I decided I'd try my hand at doing something I'd never done before, something I was nervous about, something I was half afraid to do. I tried out for our high school's musical. I tried out because I loved the idea of it. It promised to be so glitzy, what with its tense tryouts, its costumes, and its makeup. Also, because I am me and we all know it's very rare that I don't find some sort of inspiration in boys, I felt that maybe there was a chance that if I joined the musical one of the cute musically-inclined seniors I had a crush on would notice me, fall in love with me, and ask me to marry him.

That didn't happen.

But I did make it through tryouts. I even got called back. After my second reading, the director took me aside. "You're quite the little actress," she told me. I wasn't, really. I'd learn that later. But I think the director was shocked by me. She was also our choir director, and since the school year had begun I am sure she had found me wholly unimpressive. Sometimes I got in trouble for talking to Amy or Patty or Steph or Anne or Becky or Missy or Michelle. Sometimes she would spontaneously call out the names of four people—one alto, one soprano, one tenor, one bass—and only those people would sing. That was a test, and it scared me more than anything. "Jessica!" she would say when she called me to be in one of those groups. "Jessica! I need more alto! Where's my alto?"

The thing with me was and is this: I can't sing. Well, I can't sing alone. When I was standing next to the older girls who were good singers, girls who knew their parts and had no problem when called on to sing in those exclusive test groups, I could listen to them and match my voice to theirs. But finding a note on my own proved difficult. Our director would play a chord and ask why I couldn't hear my starting note. I couldn't find my starting note because she was playing all the starting notes, and I couldn't hear the difference. I heard them as one thing. A block. A graceful peel of music, but not as individual things.

So I don't think our director thought very much of me until I got up on that stage and read for the part of Aunt Em in The Wizard of Oz. I called for my niece. I screamed Dorothy! at the top of my lungs. I stomped my feet. I put on a convincing show. I surprised even myself. After all, I was just coming off The Fight with Tammy, and I was still sorting myself out. The new post-Tammy me was an entirely different creature, and at first I'd had trouble walking the halls. I felt like a ghost-girl, an almost-thing. I was afraid people wouldn't be able to see me now that I was Tammy-less, because when they saw me back then what they were really seeing was me with her.

But when I screamed and stomped and put on the show, I thought, Hmm. Maybe I am my own person after all. Maybe I can do some things without Tammy.

I was cast as one of the Oz girls. I had lines. Some of my friends weren't as lucky as I was. They were shuffled into the munchkin choir or into the group of girls who groomed the weary travelers after they came to Oz. Some of my friends were much luckier than I was. Becky, for instance, was cast as one of the wicked witch sisters. That's because Becky can sing. And she looked real good in a pointy hat.

Anyway, I went on to realize I wasn't as good an actor as I or the director had hoped. My tiny role required that I make a splashy entrance. I chased the Cowardly Lion into the auditorium from a back entrance. I had to scream. I had to shriek. I had to beat him with an umbrella. I could do all those things, and I could do them just fine, but the director wanted some more. She wanted me to go into the audience, to implore them to help me, help me, HELP ME!

I was too embarrassed. I was too much of a pussy. I just kept on doing what I had done—screaming, shrieking, beating—and never did what she asked. I just couldn't. I couldn't stop thinking about what would happen if people laughed for the wrong reasons.

Still, I did what I could, and sometimes I like to break out the VCR and show off the copy of that play where all of a sudden I am bursting into the auditorium and the audience is laughing at all the right places and I deliver my lines—my favorite being, "Isn't anyone going to do anything about this terrible beast?", which referred to the Cowardly Lion, the only musically-inclined boy who had a crush on me, and he was short, overweight, and once almost drove us into a mailbox on the way home from a cast party.

After The Wizard of Oz, I was hooked. I went on to do Peter Pan, which was my favorite because I had a good role as Wendy Grown-Up. Bye-Bye Birdie was the musical my junior year, and Cinderella was the musical in my senior year.

I loved musical season. I especially loved dress rehearsal week. We stayed after school and rehearsed from 3:30-9:00 at night. We tried out costumes and lighting and sound. For those five nights, mothers would volunteer their services and cook us giant themed meals that we breaked for after our first run-through. During Wizard of Oz I was obsessed with Italian night, because I was obsessed with all things Italian. It was because of a boy. His name was Jon Camardo, and he played the trumpet. He had ruddy skin but brilliant floppy hair that shined underneath lights. He was a member of pit band, and I was a fan of watching him take his trumpet out and watching him put his trumpet away.

I hoped and hoped and hoped that he would notice me during those communal nights when we sat at long tables and ate together, but it was only his best friend—the Cowardly Lion—who ever expressed any interest in me. Still, it didn't matter. The whole thing was lovely enough to distract me from the pain of being unnoticed by Jon Camardo. The dinners, the singing, the quick costume changes, the careful plotting of stage directions, the swell of the overture. I loved it all. I love it still.

And I was remembering that last night. Those first few notes sounded, that curtain went up, and I was sucked into it all over again. I had to bite the inside of my cheek because all of a sudden I had the strange urge to cry. I wanted to cry because I was so far away from those days that seemed like they happened yesterday, when really they happened eleven years ago. I wanted to cry because I'd never have that type of fun again, and because I'd never again get the chance to perform like that. The actors on the stage at Shea's were stepping and dancing where I'd stepped and danced twice before, when our high school was invited to participate in the Kenny Awards, which was western New York's version of the Tony Awards. There they were, where I'd once been, and there I was wishing I could—for just a second, just one second—be where they were. It was a strange feeling to be having when Dancing Queen was playing, but I seem to be having more and more of those moments lately. I blame it on being home after a long absence. I blame it on revisiting old haunts and having to, for the first time in a long time, face memories I might've pushed to the side.

The Hair Confessions

When I was twelve years old there was nothing I liked to do more than sit on the steps that led up to my best friend's bathroom and watch her do her hair.

My best friend--this is the girl we're calling Tammy--had great hair. Amazing hair. She had a bathroom separate from her parents' bathroom, and that was pretty amazing, too. In it she stored all sorts of velcro rollers, hot rollers, curling irons, crimpers, hair spray, and gel.

When I was twelve years old there wasn't much you had to do to my hair. There still isn't. My hair has always been low-key hair--hair that I worship and give thanks for, mainly because my best friends have been telling me all our lives that they would kill someone or something for my hair, that they would actually crack skulls or spill blood to trade their hair in for mine.

It can sit straight and still--it's normal position--or it can do big, big curl if I put gel in it and attach a diffuser to my hairdryer. It goes up and stays. It obeys. It likes to show off.

When I went to get my hair done for my thesis reading the up-do specialist sucked in her breath the minute she put her hands in my hair. "Your hair is brilliant," she said. "It's not going anywhere. It's the perfect hair."

I did my own hair for prom and saved myself forty bucks and the embarrassment of showing up with fake daisies or glitter stuck in my curls.

Even though I love it now and find no fault with its easy-going, eager-to-please attitude, I wasn't its biggest fan in my adolescence. For one thing, I was born in the 80s and when I went to school I worshipped the high school girls who rode my bus. They breezed on in the mornings with sky-high hair and spandex. They smelled of Aqua-Net and Charlie perfume. They had bubble-pink nails and bubble-pink lips. They carried combs and picks in their purses. And I wanted that. I wanted it bad.

So I went off and had my head wrapped up in chemical twists every six months so I could go to school the next day with a hip new perm, so I could pretend I was those pinked and casual girls who were always talking about boys and that beer they snuck out of Tina's fridge.



The picture is bad, yes, but there I am in the upper right corner. I remember this night like it was yesterday. Yesterday! I must be around ten or eleven years old, but, interestingly enough, four of the six people in this picture are members of the Pink Torpedoes--the group of us from Holland Central that are still, still, still obsessed with each other. Amy and Steph are sitting on the top row with me, and Anne is the one looking bored in the lower left.

Anyway, that night was one of Jane's famous sleepovers. She always had the best Dorrito selection and bowls full of those short-lived pizza-flavored chips. We had fashion shows in our pajamas (I never won) and worked on elaborate dance routines to Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted Snake."

This particular Friday had been a dual-event Friday. First there had been some event at school--a talent competition? a play? a circus?--and we'd all gone together before going back to Jane's. While out at school, I caught a glimpse of the love of my life. Ryan McLean stood against a wall with his Holland Raiders jacket and spiked hair. The mere sight of him made me delusional. I swooned. I fanned myself. I recovered, and then I did a strut. I thought I looked so good. My mother had let me select my outfit--which is why I'm wearing a paint-splattered shirt and acid wash jeans--and she let me do my hair, too. I wasn't allowed to look like that when I went to school. During the day I had to look combed and respectable. My mother didn't think that paint-splattered shirt really said serious student, so it was banned from the daytime.

When we went back to Jane's that night I told everyone about what happened. I talked fast. I couldn't stop myself. I told them that I'd seen Ryan and it was so clear that he saw me and the outfit I was wearing and boy was he impressed. I told them I even thought I saw his eyes widen when he got a glimpse of me. I thought that finally! finally! when I went into school on Monday morning Ryan would come up to me and admit he was wrong to never pay attention to me.

That didn't happen.

That never happened.

Probably because I went on to look like this:



and this:



and this:



But the year I turned twelve it didn't really matter anymore. Things started changing that year. Tammy and I were new best friends, and I was always spending the night at her house. Saturday nights were the best nights to stay, because that meant we would spend two hours getting ready for the racetrack. There were so many boys at the racetrack, and her father knew many of them. We were thirteen years old and hanging on the notion that someday, somehow, one of those young boys whose daddies had bought them busted-up Challengers would notice us, chuck us under the chin and say, "Just you wait one more year, baby-girl, then you'll be old enough, and we'll finally be able to be together."

I was never chucked by one of those racers. Tammy married one of them. Possibly because this is how different we looked:



Her skin! Her hair! Her bangs! Her giant hoop earrings! Everything about her was perfect. She had the perfect stand, the perfect wait, the perfect lean, the perfect smile. I, on the other hand, had braces and bangs that looked like they were cut by a rusty lawnmower. Nothing about me was perfect. I was nervous and itchy and strange. So I watched Tammy like a hawk. Anything she did--the lean, the stand, the smile--I memorized. I hoped her grace would somehow become my grace through osmosis or some other miracle.

But for Tammy to come out looking so good required a lot of prep time. She fussed over her bangs especially. And I loved to watch this. It made me feel accepted and in and like I was part of some female cult that only she and I understood. I thought someday I might have nice hair, and, thanks to Tammy, I would know how to take care of it.

Of course, all of that was hard, too. Because I watched her so carefully, I was intimate with the knowledge that in our friendship Tammy's function was beauty. I was the tag-along. I was her best friend, and because of it I got to sit next to cute boys who were actually clustering around her, trying to get her attention, and only speaking to me to say things like, Hey, Jess, did you see that?! or Pass the pizza. She got whispers and flirts and touches. She got the tall, sandy-haired, beautiful-eyed boys. I got her sweet but overweight cousin.

People were always stopping to look at Tammy. No one stopped to look at me. Or, if they did, it was to notice that I was with her. I was just That Girl Who's Always With Tammy.

Still, those were some of the best years of my life, and to this day I think Tammy taught me some of the most important lessons a girl needs to learn during those formative of years--the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth years--and I wouldn't be the girl I am today without those lessons. She taught me about losing friends, certainly, and about jealousy and hope, but she also taught me a lot about grace, about confidence, about how to be the girl who walks into a room and says with her face, her body, even her hair--Hello. I'm here. Take note, and take it now.

I Am The Erotic Betty Crocker

The 1950 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook says that it's easy to catch a proper man by impressing him with your cooking skills. If you turn out dozens of cookies that remind him of his mother's, he's yours.

The 1950 edition of the Betty Crocker cookbook is the first cookbook I ever cooked from. It was passed down from my great grandmother to my grandmother to my mother. She--my mother--brings it out for her pie crusts, her roasts, her cookies, and her frostings. The pages are thick and waxy. There are flaky crumbs caught in the binding. And when I was a little girl, I used to sit over it and read each passage over and over and over, hoping and praying that I'd someday be a fine enough cook to present a tray of cookies to a man who would take one bite, savor, and announce that the cookie was perfect--just like me--and if he didn't marry me right away he'd be a fool.

As it turns out, I have loved many a fool.

Tonight my father came into my room to tell me that my brother and his friend Wisconsin Boy were coming over for dinner. There was a pork roast in the crock pot and there were plans for squash, corn, and baked potatoes. When I heard Wisconsin Boy was coming that changed everything.

First, it changed the fact that I needed to re-dress. I'd come home from my weekend at Amy and Becky's early in the afternoon. I'd showered and changed into Sunday afternoon clothes: sweatpants and a sweatshirt. My hair was up, my makeup was off. In short, I was a walking antonym for the word ravishing. Since I had been wearing Power Puff girl slipper socks the first time I met Wisconsin Boy, I figured I had a lot of work to do to reverse whatever first impressions he had formed, so I did my hair and makeup, put on jeans, selected earrings.

Second, it changed what I was going to be doing with my afternoon. Now with the prospect of a cute boy sitting down to dinner at my table, I had to do some baking. At first I thought cookies. I remembered the lessons Betty Crocker taught me when I was little. I thought warm snickerdoodles or double-chocolate chunk cookies. But then I thought No! Not impressive enough! So I rolled out the big guns: individual molten chocolate cakes.

This is just what I do. We all know my social skills--especially in those tenuous first interactions--are completely sub-par (see also: any story about the first time I meet a man), so I tend to try to impress in other ways. Some girls use their breasts. Others use their butts. I use my oven.

I charmed Keith with giant breakfasts in bed. The Wily Republican got meatloaves and cookies delivered to him before big tests or papers. New Boy's going away gift was opening the door to my apartment and seeing me standing in the kitchen wearing only my underwear, while taking a freshly-baked pan of triple chocolate brownies out of the oven.

What's with these boys? If it were 1954 one of them would've come to their senses and put down some money for an engagement ring already. But they all just smile and accept their foodstuffs. They put their foreheads on mine and say, "This is amazing. This is so good. You are great." And then they run off to other zip codes or after girls who have stupid names and attend cosmetology school. Sure those girls might be able to tame their eyebrows, but they're just going to bring home a roast chicken from Boston Market at the end of the day, and who prefers to that to real food?

But despite my failing record--even after I bring out the food--I keep on trying. Even with boys who are my brother's friends--boys who are much too young for me, but who are, despite that, built really, really well and impossible to ignore when they're standing in your kitchen and flashing you smiles.

Tonight Wisconsin Boy didn't end up coming to dinner. He came later. He came after the dramatic presentation of the individual molten chocolate cakes. He came after calling my brother 8,000 times.

One of those times my brother handed the phone to me.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Wisconsin Boy," he said. "He wants to talk to you."

"Adam," I hissed. "What have you been telling him? Did you ask him to do this?"

"He wants to talk to you," Adam said. "His idea."

I put the phone to my ear. I said, "Hello? Wisconsin Boy? Is that you?"

"Hey!" Wisconsin Boy said. "Are you coming back to the cabin with us? Come to the cabin."

I told Wisconsin Boy that I was pretty sure my brother would rather die a horrible, ugly, flaming death than be subjected to having his sister go back to the cabin with him and his friends.

"Bullshit!" Wisconsin Boy said. "That's just bullshit! Come back with us. We'll all have fun."

"You'll need to take that up with him," I said. "But anyway, I made you chocolate cake."

Wisconsin Boy's voice dropped lower. He sounded intrigued. "Chocolate cake, huh?" he asked.

And then I handed the phone back to my brother so I could drink more wine and drown in my own embarrassment. After all, I had almost certainly just been privately mocked by my brother and his irritatingly cute friend and I'd just flirted with a much-too-young boy. A boy who cannot legally buy beer unless he's in Canada.

Adam hung up the phone a minute later. "Just so you know," he said, "I don't ever want to be back at the cabin and look over to see you there doing things with Wisconsin Boy."

"Like making out with him?" I asked. "Because I'd almost certainly make out with him. Just so you know."

My brother made a face. He looked queasy. "Yeah," he said. "Like that."

Twenty minutes later, Wisconsin Boy was stepping into my house. My brother said, "My sister's in the kitchen."

Wisconsin Boy came straight to me. He walked over. He asked how I'd been.

"You look a lot different than last time," he said. "You know, you're not wearing pajamas or anything."

"Stop flirting with my sister," Adam said.

Later, when Adam wanted to go into the basement to find ping pong balls for the game of beer pong they'd be setting up at the cabin, he gave Wisconsin Boy a very serious look. "Are you going to come with me?" he asked. "Or are you just going to stand here in the kitchen with my sister?"

Wisconsin Boy wanted to know where the cake was. I started telling him how his was still in the fridge--you can't cook molten chocolate cakes until right before they're about to be eaten--but Adam was getting impatient.

"Come on," he said. "We've got to get going."

Wisconsin Boy shrugged, gave me a bright-eyed smile. "Goodbye," he said. "It was good to see you."

"You have a girlfriend," my brother said as he herded him out the front door.

After they left my father and I sat in silence for awhile. We drank wine and watched Iron Chef. Then my father reached over to pat my hand. "Don't you need to go call Amy?" he asked. "You know, to tell her about Wisconsin Boy?"

After I filled her in, Amy laughed and said, "Jess, you're the Erotic Betty Crocker. I think you need to spend less time baking boys cookies and more time baking me cookies." And the truth is that's probably a better use of my time. I guarantee I'm more likely to end up marrying Amy (and thus proving my grandmother's suspicions correct) than I am marrying any of the men I try so hard to impress with things like ganache and fudge and scalloped potatoes.

But it's still fun to try. It's still fun to break out the best recipes I've got--the famous almond butter cookies, my meatloaf, my Buffalo chicken bites--and set them in front of a boy and wait for that soft look of happiness to cross his face. It might not have won me a husband or even a boyfriend, but it has given me some pleasant alternatives. And it's nice to know that it might have caused my brother some pain--even if it was minor--when he had to ask Wisconsin Boy if he was going to stand in our kitchen all night and talk about chocolate cake with his sister. I don't even care if they spent the rest of their night drinking beer and laughing at how nice it was of Wisconsin Boy to give me a little attention, to humor me, to make me feel like my pouring chocolate batter into tiny ramekins was not, in fact, in vain.