New Home

Find me now at Vacationland.

Onward, Upward

Things have gotten better. Considerably better. I haven't had any more days where I've just wanted to stay in bed listening to The Band, armed only with a carton of ice cream and a bucket of vodka. My real life has started. School is in session. I have people to talk to. I have work to do. I have things that tell me this will all start to feel normal very, very shortly.

There are moments when I catch myself thinking that all of this--the move, the new job, the whole idea of getting what I want--seems strange but wonderful. There were times over the past year where I thought this life was impossible, that I was doomed to live in my bedroom in my father's house for the rest of my life. There were times I was terrified that I wouldn't be able to heave myself out of the adjunct world, that my friends would all go on to bigger and better things without me, that I would be left behind as the one who didn't do so well for herself.

But it's okay now. And even though I might have held on to a secret terror that I might be living in my father's house for a few more years, I know now (just as I knew then, but was in too cranky a state most of the time to admit out loud) that the last year was very important for me. Not only did it knock me down a couple of pegs from my grad school high, but it also grounded me, reminded me what was important, put me back in my family circle.

Last year was like a free pass. I had no rent, very few bills, and the ability to run around with my oldest friends, with my family. It was time for me to take stock, to remember what is most important in life. It was like a spa visit: I rested, I rejuvenated, I filled myself with all the best that Buffalo has to offer.

I think I was given last year just so I will never forget where I come from and how important the place and people were (and are) to making me who I am.

My year at home gave me a new kind of steadiness. When I came back to New York in August of '06, nothing about my insides was solid. I was a wobbling mess of emotions. I didn't know where I was going, how I was going to get there, and what I was going to do without all the people I left behind in the Midwest. But I learned. I had time to come down, to take several deep breaths, to realize it's all going to be okay.

I understand now. I understand why that year was important, and I am here to admit once and for all that, even though I complained and whined and moaned, living in my old room for a year wasn't that bad. At times it was even fun. Being in the house in the middle of the country, where the crickets and frogs sang their songs at midnight, was the best little vacation I could've asked for. There isn't any other place that smells as green and lush and beautiful as my home, and I often caught myself standing out on the porch as the sun set and breathing deep, deep, deeper than I ever had before.

But it's time for my new life now, and I'm ready. I'm in the place I've been dreaming about for years. And because I'm in a new place, and because I've got a new home, I've made a new blog so this one can stand on its own, so I can page through it remember the year that set my head on straight, that got me ready for everything that's coming next.

From now on, you can find me here, at Vacationland.

Today Is a Tough Day

Today is not a good day. Today is a tough day. Today is the type of day where I find it incredibly difficult to remain upright and out of bed. Today is the type of day where all I want to do is draw the curtains, put in a CD by The Band, and drink Absolut Peach from the bottle with a long straw.

Did I have these kinds of days when I moved to Minnesota? It's tough to say. A move is so busy, and down-time that isn't devoted to cleaning or rearranging or unpacking is hard to come by, so my diary from the time after my move to the Midwest is kind of sketchy. Most of it revolves around me thinking one of the older TAs was cute, cute, oh so cute. There are a few days when I wrote a snippet about it being hard, about it being a little tough, and about being worried I might not make friends, but those kinds of entries weren't around for long.

This time I feel sort of wrecked. I feel exhausted and wrung-out, like there's very little left to me that hasn't evaporated into the coastal air. I miss my family, I miss my friends, and I miss my boyfriend, who was good enough to come spend the first week in Maine with me. That might have made it harder, watching him go, watching him get on an airplane, then having to turn around and drive back to the new place alone. For real this time.

Everything here is beautiful. The weather, the flowers, the sky. I recognize that, but all I want is a dark room and my not-yet-hooked-up-to-cable TV showing fuzzy network channels and their midday soap operas.

Moving is an awful, awful thing.

But school starts soon. Tomorrow we start department meetings, so I'll have people to talk to then. I'll have social interaction and sound. I've been missing sound. It's been so quiet here in between phone calls. But there will be sound again soon, and this weekend my father rolls into town with his fiancee and a load of things that didn't fit in my car. There will be lobster then, I hope, and a trip to the coast where I will stand on some craggy rocks and breathe in the salt and wind and remember one of the reasons I wanted this so badly in the first place.

No Moose Yet...

But I have seen these things:

Ready to See Some Moose

Well, this is it. I have packed, I have loaded the car, I have bruised myself in every way possible while packing and loading. I guess that means I'm ready to go.

Today will be a whirlwind. I'm going to bake some cupcakes, attend a family reunion, go to a soccer game, say goodbye to the girls and Josh, and then I'm going to take some Tylenol PM and attempt to fall asleep early because the Boy From Work and I have to be on the road by 4:30 AM just so we get into town tomorrow in time to sign my lease and get my key.

The next week will be filled with furniture-shopping and apartment-decorating. There will be updates, of course, and there is a new blog on the horizon. I just think this blog and my year back in Buffalo should stand on its own, should remain in its own place, just like the original Where's My Sponge Candy blog that recorded my three years of graduate school. I'd like this year and all its ups and downs to stay right here, right in its own nook, looping like it was some song about drinking and hockey and love gone wrong written by The Lowest of the Low.

And for now, here I go.

Foul Boy, Bad Liar

Last night was another going away party for me, this one hosted by my mother. She had pizza and spinach bread and a bucket of fifty wings. She had my aunt and uncle and grandfather and his girlfriend and some cousins and my friends and the BFW and, and, and, of course, my brother.

Adam left the party early. He had an agenda. He had a party. He had to get there fast.

Still, as my party was breaking up, my brother strolled back in the door. We were all standing in a group near the door, so when he walked in we asked him what he was doing home when there he could be drinking, snacking, and making out with vaguely skanky underage girls.

"Well," he said, brushing past us, "I forgot something."

"What did you forget?" I asked. It would have to be something really important to make him leave a party where there was free beer.

My mother's boyfriend mumbled something under his breath. "Condoms," he coughed out. "Condoms!"

That started a chain reaction of exclamations: Eeew! Gross! Foul! Blecch! that only stopped when my brother reappeared in the room.

"So," we asked again, "what DID you forget?"

My brother raised his left hand. In it was clutched the belt clip for his phone. "My cell phone holster," he said. He kind of just stood there. We stared at him. "Well," he said, "I guess I should go."

When the door swung shut, the guys started laughing. "Cell phone holster," they said. "Yeah, sure. Right, kid."

I had to admit--the boy hadn't planned that excuse very well. He hadn't given the lie enough thought, enough time to breathe and seem realistic. To come home from a party with thumping music and hoochies and bottles of cheap tequila just waiting to be guzzled--to come home from that for a cell phone holster seemed not only improbable but really, really stupid. But, of course, forgetting to take condoms to a situation like that was also really, really stupid. Not running to the corner gas station for a three-pack and instead opting to come home where you knew your annoying relatives would be clustered nearby, just ready to grill you about your suspicious arrival home was also really, really stupid. But that's my brother.

We walked people out to their cars then, and that's when we found out my brother hadn't yet left. His car was up a ways, obscured by a pine tree, but we could hear him talking. We thought he was on the phone. We thought maybe he was orchestrating some general sluttiness, a hookup with a girl, the getting-it-on with some little blond whippet.

We ignored Adam and said our goodbyes. Some of the family started packing up the trucks and Becky went off to her car, which was parked up somewhere near Adam's, and we thought that was it for the night.

Oh, but it wasn't. When I got back inside, I realized my phone was ringing. It was Becky.

I answered. "What's up?" I asked.

"Just so you know," she said, "your brother isn't alone in that car. He's got a girl in there."

"Oh my God," I said. "I may vomit."

Of course I got off the phone right then and there and told the rest of my family that not only had he sneaked back home to get his condoms so he would be prepared for whatever the night would bring, but he also brought the girl along with him. If I were that girl, I'd be wondering why he was driving all the way home to get his condoms and why he wasn't just popping into the closest Kwik Fill, why he was dragging me along and telling me please, for the love of God, just stay in the car so I wouldn't run into any of the people who were at the house at that moment. If I were that girl, I probably would've handed him a ten dollar bill and told him to go to the Rite Aid and stop being a big lame cheapo.

The Words "Grandma" and "Twat" Should Never Go Together

Last night my father had a going-away party for me. There was pot roast and corn, several bottles of wine from my favorite winery. My father's fiancee came over, and so did her extremely hot son and his very skinny, very tan, very perky girlfriend. My grandmother came, and her husband--the farmer she married after my grandfather died--came late because he'd been delivering bales of hay all day.

We ate, we passed out dessert and coffee, we chatted. Then my grandmother announced she wanted a copy of my book about Russia. I went to dig one up in my room, which, because of my scattered way of packing, looks like a tornado or some other weather disaster whipped through it. I found a copy, but when I brought it out, my father was showing off his copy and--to my dismay--a literary magazine that one of my stories recently appeared in. The story in this particular literary magazine is one of the Wily Republican stories. It's the one that features the cardboard cut-out of the George W. Bush that lived in the Wily's room. It's the one that required me to use one of my least favorite words--twat (eew)--in a list two of the characters were making. There's two sex scenes in the story, there's all sorts of swearing, there's all sorts of stuff that a grandmother does not need to read.

Not too long ago I wrote a post in which I appeared all brave and ready for my family members to read my work. My logic was if I could survive my mother's reading of my thesis--including a story which was loosely based on our relationship post-my parents' divorce--then I could survive anything. Back when I wrote that post I was working on a story that was inspired by Christmas parties at my grandmother's house, and I said I wouldn't even mind if she read it. I was ready. Bring it on! I thought. I was sure I could handle it.

I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am a pussy.

If I cringed when my father forked over a story that used the word twat and had sex scenes that featured the ever-popular hoist method, I'm pretty sure that means I won't be ready for grandma to read a story that features a grandmother and three close-in-age granddaughters who might resemble my own grandmother and her three close-in-age granddaughters.

I don't know what happened to me in that moment when my father slid the magazine toward my grandmother. I lost it. I froze. My entire insides turned cold. In my head, I saw the word TWAT!!! in giant letters on the page. I couldn't get over the fact that my grandmother was sitting across from me and undergoing a revelation that I am a foul, sicko pervert who cusses like a sailor. Then I remembered the rest of the story: the sex, the expletives, the blatant mocking of a political party that my grandmother and her husband no doubt associate with.

I glared at my father. I tried to send him a Look. I tried to say, Rip that from her hands! I tried to say, Are you crazy? I tried to say, Do you want to be written out of the will because the fruit of your loins writes pornography?

He finally got the hint. "I think," he said, "Jess might be nervous about what you're reading."

Yeah, that helped.

I stood up. "I'm going to go into my room for a second and try not to throw up," I said.

My father followed me into my bedroom. "What?" he said. "Come on. Who are you kidding? Your grandmother loves this."

I wanted to tell him no, my grandmother wouldn't love that. I'd put money on the fact that she'd love me to write little stories that could someday be made into Hallmark Channel movies. I'd bet a lot of my savings that she wouldn't be psyched that her granddaughter was writing lines about it feeling pretty good to be slammed up against a wall during sex. I was pretty sure my father wouldn't like it either, but he hasn't really finished anything I've written. He tries hard, sure, but he is easily distracted and often has to put the book down before he's made it to the real offensive stuff. He's been trying to read the Wily-based story since last August when I came home.

"Dad!" I said. "I use the word twat in that story! TWAT! And there's sex in it!"

"Your grandmother is a woman," he said, as if that made it somehow okay.

"She's seventy-eight!" I said. In my experience, seventy-eight year olds are fans of the Chicken Soup books or Anne Geddes, not the f-bomb and out-of-wedlock lovemaking.

Eventually I went back out to the kitchen, and my grandmother was still there, busily reading my story. She was even laughing. I wasn't exactly sure what she might be laughing at, so I wracked my brain to think if there were non-disgusting funny parts in that story. But I didn't have to think about it long because my grandmother explained what she was laughing at.

"This is funny," she said. She giggled. "She puts her bra on the cardboard cut-out of the president. Ha!"

"Oh," I said, "yeah. The main character certainly does do that, doesn't she?"

Well, really, the main character puts her underthings on the cardboard George W. whenever she is having sex with her boyfriend--she doesn't like the way George's eyes follow her if left uncovered.

And my grandmother read that. It made me want to poke my eyes out with a stick. Of course, she thought it was funny, and funny enough to mention out loud, and funny enough to make her giggle as she was sitting next to her almost-deaf, hay-baling husband who would punctuate the silence every few minutes by talking about corn, manure, or the air conditioning unit in his tractor.

So maybe it wasn't quite the disaster it could have been, and maybe I was being overly sensitive while I worried over my grandmother's reading of that story, but I think I've learned a very important lesson: I'm not exactly ready for some stories to make the family rounds. A nonfiction book about Russia is one thing. I'll gladly autograph it, and I'll gladly discuss reading and sifting through the research so I could write that book, but I don't think I'm quite ready to sit in front of my family members as they leaf through my collection of stories and come across dirty words and dirty scenes. I'll get on a stage and read those things out loud to strangers--hey, that's no problem--but I don't want to sit in a very small kitchen and watch my grandmother's eyes scan the page, drinking it all in. There wasn't enough wine in the room to prepare me for that. Not even close.

Here's What I'll Remember About My Last Day: That Table of Seventeen and the Pea-Hating Lady with the Mustache

Last night was my last night at the restaurant. The Boy From Work had scheduled me to work my last day with my favorite people: my favorite waitress, my favorite dish people, my favorite ice cream people. The only person missing was my favorite cook, the girl who was good spirited enough to host a going away party for one of the ice cream boys, a party where the departing ice cream boy vomited everywhere and the boys had to tie plastic bags on their feet just to get into the bathroom and try to get him in the shower so he could puke into the current of moving water. Later, my favorite cook would spend hours scouring the ice cream boy's puke out of her carpet and off her toilet. Later, she would be the one to get the ice cream boy in the shower. She would stay up with him all night, and she would take care of him the next morning. If that's not a good hostess, then I don't know what is.

Anyway, last night was my last night. At first it seemed like it was going to be just another Wednesday night at the restaurant, but things took a turn around six o'clock. I already had some decent tips in my pocket, and I was feeling pretty good about my last day. I'd had a group of four sit at the counter and tell me I was a great little server, that the food and service was wonderful. They left me eight dollars on a bill that definitely did not call for an eight dollar tip. I thought, What a way to make an exit. It seemed the best kind of last night to have: a complimentary, well monied night.

But a little after six o'clock several cars pulled into the parking lot. The car doors swung open and out poured people, people, people. They walked the entire length of the restaurant's large front window. There was no end to them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven...

"Oh my God," my favorite waitress said. "This is yours. I want nothing to do with it."

The people kept coming. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen...

"Gee, they could have called ahead," she said, and then she disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me with the large table.

The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth person finally filtered into the restaurant, and we arranged the entire back section for them.

I've never been the type of waitress to delight in big tables. The girls at my last waitressing gig salivated and fought over big tables. I always bowed out. I just wasn't a fan. There's so much potential for disaster when waiting on a large group. So many things can go wrong. Drink orders can go awry, food can come out on the wrong plates, the people themselves can be snobby and rude. I prefer to deal with people in small doses. I like a table of two, three, four, five. I feel like I can give better service when I don't have to raise my voice to Teaching Composition octave just to announce that I'm taking only drink orders and that I'll come back for the food orders after the drinks have been filled.

But these people, my goodness, they were dolls.

The table was comprised mostly of kids and teens (and the gayest twelve year old boy I'd ever met), so I'd dreaded my first approach to the table. Kids can be awful, they can be pains, they can make you want to strangle them. But these kids were heaven-sent, polite, super sweet. They said please and thank you. They complimented the food and service. They joked around with me. They turned on the jukebox and danced. They made the other customers smile.

I loved them.

When they left, the table of seventeen left me a big, fat tip. At this point I was definitely thinking, Okay, alright, great. This is my kind of last night.

Then 8:20 rolled around. That's when a family of four sauntered through the door and sat themselves at the first booth. At first they--a father, a mother, two girls--seemed mostly normal. They were the usual clientele: worn-looking rural-types, the man with a gristly beard, the mother with her own budding mustache. The girls were little and cute, but you could tell a few years later, when they were in the big school district next door to the one I attended, they would become girls so similar to many of the girls I worked with: cute girls with horrific grammar, girls whose main passion it was to stir up drama, girls who thought nothing of sleeping with other girls' boyfriends and then laughing about it over a burger and a shake.

But for now those little girls were fine and sweet and nice. They wanted chicken fingers, and they wanted them hot and with extra bleu cheese. Their mother and father wanted the daily special--the chicken and biscuits, which I had been coveting all night. The mother requested that the mashed potatoes that came with the special also be covered with gravy, but that was as much direction as they gave me.

Well, it turned out that they should have given me a whole bunch of directions. For starters, someone should have directed me to the fact that the mother was unstable, weepy, and vaguely crazy.

After I'd delivered their food I gave them a few minutes before popping back in to see how they were doing. When I arrived at their table, the father and the girls were eating like normal humans. The mother, however, was not. She had her face cradled in her hands and she was sniffling. No one was paying her any mind.

I didn't know what to do. "Uhm, how is everything over here?" I asked.

One of the girls waved her fork at her mother. "Could you get that plate out of her way?" she asked. "She doesn't like peas."

The woman was crying because the chicken and biscuits came with vegetables in it--quite standard, actually--and the inclusion of peas had wracked her to the core.

I blinked and blinked but picked up the plate and whisked it away. As I walked away from the table I was bombarded with thoughts. First, was the woman not a grownup? Could she not handle asking me to take her food away like an adult? Did she really need her children--who couldn't be more than twelve years old--to translate her sobs for her?

Second, if someone doesn't like peas so much and would be reduced to tears at their mere presence in a dish at a restaurant, wouldn't you think it wise for that person to perhaps clue the waitress and cooks in on the aversion?

This whole mess reminded me of a memorable Monday night--all you can eat pasta night--I was waitressing at the old joint. A woman placed an order for the spaghetti with meatballs and never said a single word about having an allergy that might flare up depending on what was in the spaghetti or sauce. When I brought out her plate, which was garnished with Parmesan and parsley, she shrank back in her seat. She was appalled. "What is that?" she asked, wagging her finger at the Parmesan.

I told her it was Parmesan cheese, just a garnish.

"I," she said, her voice horrified, "am allergic to Parmesan cheese! You need to get it away from me!"

Yes, lady, right. Because you would never in a million years guess that Parmesan cheese might come with or on or even in the sauce of spaghetti.

The lady with the peas reminded me of that lady. Except as far as I could tell, she wasn't allergic to peas, just terribly disturbed by their presence.

But I went over to that table with a menu in my hand and gave the pea lady a few more minutes to dry her eyes, to dry the moisture that had accumulated in the prickly stubble of her upper lip, and then I took her order for the fried chicken dinner. I went over several more times after that to make sure that this time things were okay, that she was happy, that she was satisfied now that any and all peas had been taken from the proximity.

I wondered what was going to happen when the bill came. I wondered if they were going to be angry that I charged them for her dinner. I didn't feel as though it was right to take off the price of her dinner when we hadn't done anything wrong, when she had just neglected to tell me she had a serious problem with peas. I even wondered if maybe this were some sting operation, the kind of which I'd heard about before--a family going into a restaurant, one of them raising a fuss and claiming the food was bad or wrong, then trying to get worked into such a lather over it that the manager or person in charge was forced to placate them by making the check disappear.

These people were going to be the last people I waited on at the diner, and these were the people I was going to remember for a long time. I prepared for the worst--screaming, fit-pitching, more crying--but nothing happened. In fact, they even left me a good tip. And then they left and we were able to sweep the floors, mop the floors, put up the stools at the counter, roll the next day's silverware, put away the pitchers of iced tea and lemonade, wipe down the ice cream counters, and that was it, it, it. I walked out of that restaurant with a thick wad of money in my pocket and shoulders that felt lighter.

It's been an interesting summer. I went into the whole summer job thing, the whole return to waitressing, with a big swallow of dread caught in the back of my throat. I felt above it, like I shouldn't have to go back now that I'd gone through graduate school, now that I'd spent a few years teaching college level writing. I whined. I even cried. After I got the job at the diner, I drove home thinking oh God oh God oh God oh God. I didn't want to go. I didn't want to do it. I thought no one would like me, that I'd be too old, that they'd think I was no fun, that the whole experience would be awful.

All of that worrying was for nothing. The summer was fun, and I liked almost everyone I worked with, and I'm pretty sure they liked me back. (Some, of course, more than others.) It was a hectic time, and I wrote almost nothing, which completely violated all my summer goals, but now that I've had my last day I feel like my head's on straight again, that I'm not going to be so caught up in the drama of the place, that I'll finally be able to get some things done--things like gutting this room I've been living in for the last year, my old room, my room decorated with the suns and moons I was so crazy over in high school. I'm starting to pack today, starting to sift things into boxes, starting to put things in piles to be packed into cars for my big move that's going to happen in a week's time. I've got an awful lot of work ahead of me...

Crossing That One off My Life's To-Do List

This weekend I slept in my car. I slept in my car like a bum, a crazy person, an aspiring actress who packs her things and heads to Hollywood to get a job at In and Out Burger while praying that she'll make it big someday, oh, someday.

I didn't sleep in the car alone. I slept in the car with my mother. We were in Maine, in a parking lot of a hotel that attracts truckers, and we were there because of an online reservation that went awry.

We went to look at apartments this weekend. It was going to be an easy enough trip--start out on Friday, get there late, sleep, do a whirlwind apartment-viewing on Saturday and possibly Sunday morning, then drive home and be done with it. My mother made the hotel reservation because she lives in a place that has fast internet, unlike out here in the country where we connect to the internet at a maddening 24k.

When we arrived in our hotel in Maine the man behind the counter looked at us strangely. "I don't have any record of your reservation," he said.

My mother told me to go out to the car and get her receipt, which she'd printed off and brought with her.

And I did. On my way back inside, I unfolded the piece of paper and saw that my mother had accidentally made the reservation for next weekend, not this one.

It was 11:45 PM. We'd just spent the last ten hours driving, and two of those hours were marred by us screaming Pussies! Pussies! PUSSIES! at the people of Massachusetts who turned on their blinkers and would not go above 45 mph during a thunderstorm that was terrific, yes, but did not warrant that kind of emergency driving. That had made us tired. Reading that my mother had botched the reservations made me even more tired. And so I trudged back inside and handed over the piece of paper.

My mother was not pleased with herself, but, like a logical person, she figured everything would be okay. All we needed to do was make a reservation in the here and now, get ourselves a room, and pass out.

The man behind the counter informed us he had no rooms. In fact, no one in town had rooms. He'd called around and everything was booked. And not just for tonight. Tomorrow, too.

"Sorry," he said. He shrugged and went back to shuffling papers so he could avoid a potential scene.

However, my mother and I are not scene makers. We merely went back outside and sat in the car. On my way out, I'd nabbed a few maps, and I started calling 411 for hotel information in cities that were close. Everything was booked, though, and one of the girls I got on the phone told me the unfortunate news: everything-everything was booked.

"I've been on the phone trying to find people rooms all night," she said. "There's nothing out there. All the hotels in the state are full. Actually, everything from Portsmouth, New Hampshire up to Bangor is full. I'm so sorry. There's nothing we can do."

Apparently we had picked a very popular weekend to come to Maine. Apparently half of America had decided to plop itself on the coast for those two days I needed to find an apartment.

"What are we going to do?" my mother asked. She's not one for these types of gray areas. She gets nerved up about traveling, about having things go wrong.

I didn't know what we were going to do. What was there to do? I had a sudden vision of my mother and I sitting at a corner booth in Denny's until 9 AM when we were meeting the real estate girl. We would drink an awful lot of coffee. We would eat an awful lot of pie. We would show up for our appointment looking grizzled and smelling of late-night fried food.

I didn't know what we were going to do about sleep that night, but I did know that we needed something for the next night. I pulled out of the hotel parking lot and drove to another hotel parking lot, one that was likely to have some kind of wireless internet I could filch.

And that's exactly what I did. I stole some WiFi and hooked up to Orbitz, found that there were only two available rooms left in the entire town, and those were at the EconoLodge, which my mother and I scoffed at when making our original reservations. But now it was a different story. I wanted to kiss the owners of the EconoLodge for somehow having a room that I could reserve for the next night so I wouldn't have to spend two nights without a bed.

But after we made that reservation it became very clear that we had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and absolutely no options.

"We're going to have to sleep in the car," my mother said. "We're vagrants!"

And that's exactly what we did, and that's exactly what we were.

I pulled into another hotel parking lot, one that was home to several big rigs that had parked for the night. We drove around several times, trying to find a spot that was nearish the lights (to discourage any and all shanking that might occur by crazed murderers who were roving the Maine streets at night) and simultaneously away from the lights (so we could attempt to sleep like normal people). After we found a spot, my mother and I rearranged the luggage so we could recline our seats all the way back (thank you for that small mercy, Honda Civic). I struggled into my pajama bottoms and wadded up a t-shirt for a pillow. I used a hoodie for a blanket. I stretched out as best I could but found that--because I am so tall--my feet dangled at an awkward position, and I could never get them comfortable. This would be what kept me up most of the night. My mother, however, had brought herself a sleeping pill because she knew that her drinking caffeine to stay awake for the drive would screw with her attempt to fall asleep after the drive was over. She took that sleeping pill and was down for the count within the first hour. It took me much, much longer.

The next morning we were faced with the biggest challenge: somehow making ourselves look presentable to the people who had the power to rent me an apartment, and do this despite having spent the night in the car and despite having not showered.

That was when we went to Denny's. We stuffed clothes and makeup and hair things into a bag and sneaked into the bathroom as quickly as we could. My mother had serious qualms about what the other Denny's customers would think about two ladies who went into the bathroom with a bag full of things and came out with new clothes on a few minutes later. "They're going to think we're homeless," she said.

"We're going to buy breakfast," I told her. "Homeless people can't afford to buy breakfast. No one will think anything of it."

I did, however, feel pretty skeevy and gross and guilty as I washed my face in the Denny's bathroom sink.

No one really noticed us, though, and we did get big breakfasts (with extra bacon for our troubles). And the rest of the time in Maine was pretty decent. I toured several apartments I liked but found one I fell in love with and got quite giddy over as soon as I stepped inside. We're just waiting for the credit and background checks to go through before I am approved and before I can load up some cars and make the big move.

And I feel a little less stressed now, a little less on edge now that things have been put in motion. And I'm starting to compile a list of things I really like about Maine, and that list makes me feel a little less stressed, too. On top of that list is, of course, the proximity to the ocean and the fact that grocery stores in Maine have full-blown liquor aisles and full-blown wine aisles. That's right--grocery stores in Maine sell bottles of Absolut Peach alongside produce, deli meats, and cheese. Thank you, Maine. Thank you.

A Conversation with the Boy From Work While He Sleepwalks, 12:30 AM

Because the Boy from Work is passed out on the very uncomfortable sectional couch in the living room, I shake him to see if he wants to go to sleep in my bed.

Me: Hey. Hey, do you want to go to bed?

Boy from Work: {Grumbling}

Me: Was that a yes?

BFW: {Grumbling}

Me: Don't you want to sleep somewhere more comfortable?

--At this point the BFW scissors up in a shockingly agile way. He stares at me.--

BFW: (angrily) Just do it like you always do it, okay?

Me: Huh?

BFW: Why can't you just do it like you always do it?

Me: I'm asking if you want to go to bed in my room and not out here in the living room, BFW. What are you talking about?

BFW: The taco shell! The taco shell! Just put it on top, upside-down, like you normally do. Okay? Geez.

Me: Oh my God. Are you sleep walking?!

--And then as fast as he was up, the BFW is down again, and he lands with his face planted in a pillow. I can't convince him to move for another half an hour. When he wakes up, he remembers talking to me about the taco shell, but he has no idea why. I think maybe the stress of owning a restaurant is catching up with him.--

Of All the Strange Birds, This One Is the Strangest (Part Two)

The Stoned Cowboy brought his family in last week. I was working a split shift where I was covering lunch and dinner. Since I was working the split shift, the other lunch girl had gone home and the other dinner girl hadn't gotten there yet. I was alone.

When the Stoned Cowboy's red van pulled in I groaned, but I immediately shoved my escalating annoyance away when I saw the doors swing open, when I saw a woman step down from the van, when I saw a child tumble out of the back.

"Stoned Cowboy, Stoned Cowboy, Stoned Cowboy!" I hissed into the kitchen. "And he's brought his family!"

The Stoned Cowboy pushed into the restaurant and stopped dead when he saw me standing behind the counter. "You!" he exclaimed. I froze. "I want you as my waitress!" he said.

"Well," I said, "you're lucky. I'm the only one here. Looks like you're stuck with me."

He turned to his wife. "This," he said, gesturing to me, "is Jessica." He nodded at his wife for my benefit. "This is my wife," he said. "Remember how I was telling you she was away? Well, she's back now."

I nodded and smiled brightly, even though the Stoned Cowboy had never told me his wife was away. I reached for some menus.

The Stoned Cowboy, his wife, and his son filed back to the rear of the restaurant and seated themselves at a booth. The Stoned Cowboy waved away the menu when I tried to set it in front of him. "You know what I want," he said.

A reuben. He wanted a reuben. It would be his fourth of the week, and those are just the ones I witnessed during my shifts. Reubens are wonderful sandwiches--one of my favorites, actually, delicious, gooey, tangy things that always hit the spot--but I wasn't exactly sure if it was a good idea for one person to eat that many reubens in a week's time. I could see all the Stoned Cowboy's veins flooding with Thousand Island dressing, his heart being tangled in sauerkraut.

Well, he wasn't the only one who wanted a reuben. His wife did too. "He can't stop talking about them!" she said.

The son didn't want a reuben. He wanted a Buffalo Chicken Wrap, without tomatoes.

I took down the information and went back to the kitchen. The Boy From Work was manning the grill again because the lunch shift cook was busy making pies in the back. I handed him the order. "Enjoy," I said.

When I took out their drinks, the Stoned Cowboy introduced me to his son. "Peter?" he said. "Peter, this is Jessica."

Peter stared at me. He looked about as excited as if it had just been announced he was going to have three teeth ripped from his head without Novocaine. He was a cute kid, really. He didn't look like either of his parents. He wasn't straggly and gangly like his father, nor was he plain but normal-looking like his mother. He had a wide face, but it was striking. He seemed like the type of kid who would grow up to be attractive. He had pretty, clear eyes, good skin, moppy hair. He was emitting an attitude of casual boredom, like he was thinking about being bored but it was just too much work, so he was only going to be half-bored.

"Say hello, Peter," the Stoned Cowboy said.

"Hi," Peter said.

"Hey, listen," the Stoned Cowboy said. "Tell me how you spell your name, okay?"

"Mine?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "How do you spell Jessica?"

I spelled it for him. He whipped open his cell phone and started pressing buttons. "There," he said. "J-E-S-S-I-C-A. You're in."

I was in? He would've had to hold me down and torture me with spiders and snakes and other foul slithery/crawly things for me to give up my phone number, so I wasn't exactly sure what he was up to.

"Well," he started, "this is for whenever I need to call here. I'll just call you! I'll call Jessica and order a reuben."

I walked back to the kitchen then. I needed to get away. I needed to be with reasonable people. People who were not at all eighteen different shades of strange.

"I think maybe I'll run away with the Stoned Cowboy," I told the BFW. "He's a big fan of mine. He wants me to wait on him all the time, and he just programmed my name into the phone so every time he needs to call here to get a reuben, he'll just scroll down to my name." I paused, raised my eyebrows. "Who does that? Seriously."

The BFW flipped the reuben and looked not at all concerned about my possible running away with the Stoned Cowboy. He did, however, tell me the man was nuts.

Later, after I had brought their meals to them, and after I had given them enough time to savor and check things out, I went back out to the table and asked how the food was. The Stoned Cowboy gave me a sad look.

"I'm not mad, okay?" he said. "Alright? I'm not mad, but this beef is a little bit tougher than it usually is. The beef is usually so tender. I tell everyone how tender it is. I tell the guys at the bank and the gas station that you have the tenderest beef, the best reubens. But this one is just a little bit tough, okay?"

I apologized the best I could, and he nodded along with my words.

"You should tell them that," he insisted. "Tell the cooks that the beef is just a little bit tougher than it usually is."

I said I would, I certainly would tell them that.

"I'm not mad, though," he said. "And definitely not at you. You can't control it. Just tell the cooks, okay?"

I said I would, I certainly would. Then I went back into the kitchen and poured myself a Pepsi. If this was the beginning of my day, I was going to need a few billion shots of caffeine.

A few days later, I arrived at work only to be cornered by one of the cooks. "You will never guess what happened the other day," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"The phone was ringing and no one was able to grab it, so I did," she said. "The guy on the other end said, 'Is this Jessica?'"

"Oh no," I said. Apparently the Stoned Cowboy thought I was always there, that I was a fixture at the diner, that I had a mattress in the back, that I rolled out in the morning, took a shower, donned my black pants and white shirt, and came out to waitress around the time he was getting a hankering for a reuben.

"I told him it wasn't. He wanted to know if you were there. I said you weren't."

"He ordered a reuben?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said. "He ordered a to-go reuben, and I made it for him immediately. He didn't show up for, like, an hour and a half."

So we stood there wondering what kind of world the Stoned Cowboy lived in, what kind of job he held. We figured it probably wasn't one that was interested in strict timetables, in sharp businessmen, in concrete goals. I could see the Stoned Cowboy living on a commune somewhere with his children--he and his wife have several more, together and from previous marriages--and I could see him tending crops, sitting in the middle of a field with a hoe across his knee, a cigarette in his mouth, old Tom Petty pouring from his headphones. I could see him putting a hand on his stomach, realizing it was time for lunch. I could see his mouth watering for a tender cut of beef between slices of grilled rye. I could see him picking up his phone and calling the diner, hearing a girl answer, and I could see him saying, "Hey, Jessica. It's me. I need a couple reubens for the road. Is the beef tender today?"

The Best News

Today I got the best news, the official word: I am going to be the newest full-time hire at a small community college in Maine. The next few weeks are going to be a flurry of packing, apartment-hunting, and furniture-buying.

But right now I have to pack my car and get on the road. There's a wedding in West Virginia, and I'm fixin' to park myself by the open bar and celebrate with all sorts of grad school friends.

Of All the Strange Birds, This One Is the Strangest (Part One)

I've waited on some strange people during my various stints as a waitress, but I have never met anyone like the man who came into the restaurant during my Friday double shift.

The man loitered near the front door. He looked confused, like maybe he was waiting for someone. He took a couple steps toward the pie case, bent, assessed the pie. Then he leaned over and started talking to another of the waitresses. It almost looked like he was trying to be sly about smelling her.

"Do you guys have reubens?" he asked.

"Yes, we sure do," the waitress said.

"Yeah," the guy said, "I know. I had one yesterday when I came in with my wife and kids."

The waitress looked confused. I widened my eyes at her.

"Well, you've had our reubens then," she said. "Did you enjoy?"

He said he did. He said he enjoyed them so much that he came in for another today. Then he sauntered off toward a booth. He walked with a sway, a sway that said I am not entirely sober right now.

"He's all yours," the waitress told me, and she passed me a menu.

The man was dressed in tattered jeans, boots, a worn plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat that was decorated with a crown of fresh flowers. His hair--ringlets tinged with gray--fell down past his shoulders and looked suspiciously like it hadn't been washed in several days.

"You can just put the order for the reuben in," he told me.

"Okay," I said. "And what can I get you to drink?"

"Water," he said. "I'm a water-man." Then he sang a little song about being a water man. Water, water, water-man.

I nodded slowly, in case he was having trouble seeing me--because by this point it was clear that he was stoned out of his mind--and I started walking back to the kitchen.

"Wait!" he said. I turned. "What kind of soup do you have?"

We had creamy kielbasa soup (winner in the Most Creative Way to Get Rid of the Leftover Kielbasa Casserole Special from Yesterday category) and our standard French onion, so I told him so.

"Can I have the menu?" he asked. He plucked it out of my hand and spread it out in front of him. He traced his fingers over the words HOMEMADE SOUP. "Can I keep this for a bit?" he asked. He kept tracing the words. He wouldn't stop.

"Sure," I said. "And can I get you any soup?"

He nodded, but he didn't stop tracing the words.

"Which kind?" I asked. "The kielbasa?"

"Blecch," he said.

"The French onion then?"

"Alright," he said. He proceeded to whip out a cell phone with all the bells and whistles and started typing a text message. He would continue typing through dinner.

And aside from him being a bit off, a bit odd, and aside from him looking and acting like a stoned cowboy who wandered in from the 1960's, I could've let it go. I could've let it slide. I could've let all the slurping of the soup and the texting and the mumbling during the texting and the slurping of the sauerkraut and the wandering around the restaurant like it was his own kitchen and it was the middle of the night and he was seriously jonesing for a late snack--well, I could've let all that go, but he came in the next day. And he proceeded to be even weirder.

The next day when I arrived for my dinner shift, one of the other waitresses announced that the Boy From Work (see also: this, part one of this, and our official gang photo) said I should get to take the table that had just walked in. When I peered around the corner to see who it was, there was the stoned cowboy again, wandering around the restaurant like it wasn't going to creep out the other customers.

I sighed. "Gee, thanks, BFW," I said. BFW was standing behind the grill, as he was cooking until the night cook got there. BFW had the makings of a reuben already geared up and ready to go.

"This makes three days in a row that this cat has been here," I said, and then I walked out to the table.

The stoned cowboy was once again stoned. His arm and leg movements were loose and random. He was bopping his head to something, and when I got closer I could see he had headphones stuck in his ears.

I smiled when I got to his table. He smiled back.

"Hello again," I said. "What can I get for you today?"

He gestured to the headphones, like, Duh, I can't hear you. "Music," he said, by way of explanation. Finally, he tugged them out of his ears. "What?"

I asked him again what he wanted. He said he wanted everything he had yesterday, just the way it was, just exactly, except he wanted fries instead of chips and he didn't want soup. "You guys makes the best reubens," he said.

I marched back into the kitchen and tore the slip of paper from my pad. I leaned over to scribble the BFW a note. It said, Reuben w/ fries. XOXO, Jess. P.S. This guy is cuh-razy. Thanks.

Then I went to deliver his drink. When I'd asked him what he wanted to drink, I braced myself for the water-man song, but I didn't get it. He just sighed and shrugged and said, "Oh, a water, I guess," in a dejected kind of way.

When I set the water down in front of him, the stoned cowboy again had his headphones in. And he wasn't satisfied with me just dropping the drink and retreating.

"Hey," he said as I started to back away. "Here. Come here."

He had pulled the headphones out and was holding one up like a peace offering. He gestured toward my ear.

I didn't know what else to do--after all, how do you politely tell someone you don't want to put something that was in their ear in your ear for fear of waxy particles, etc.--so I bent down and tried to stay as far away from the earpiece as possible.

He jabbed it closer. I could hear a familiar song, something I hadn't heard in years.

"How about that?" he asked.

The song sounded like exactly the right song the stoned cowboy should be walking around listening to. If they were making a movie about his life, that song would've been piped in under the opening shot of him ambling down the street.

"I remember that song," I said. I couldn't exactly place it, but I knew it involved a Beatle somehow.

"Who is it?" the stoned cowboy quizzed.

I shrugged. "I can't remember," I said.

He looked disappointed. "It's the Traveling Wilburys," he said. "They're a super-group. Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison were all in it."

"Oh," I said. "Cool. I like that song." I wasn't sure what to do then. He was looking at me so expectantly, like he was waiting for me to say something brilliant, something profound. I had nothing to say, so I just smiled and left.

Later, as I was delivering an order of food to another table, I had to walk past the stoned cowboy. I had my arms filled with chicken fingers and beef on wecks, but that didn't stop the stoned cowboy from trying to get my attention.

"HEY!" he said. He had his headphones in, so he was shouting. The customers looked alarmed. "HEY, my flowers died!" He held up his cowboy hat so I could see that the fresh flowers he had at one point stuck in the brim were now wilted and limp.

I stopped. I was balancing several plates. I was clearly in a hurry to get to another table. Yet this man thought it was completely fine, normal, and acceptable to kick up a conversation about his hat flowers when I had steaming food in my hands.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I need new ones," he said. "You think so, right? I need new ones?"

I nodded. "Yes, I do. Fresh flowers are very pretty."

"Okay," he said, then nodded. I was dismissed.

The afternoon was filled with more exchanges like that--mostly he wanted to talk about the tenderness of the beef and how he was going around town telling everyone that the diner had really tender beef, and he was even telling complete strangers about the tenderness--and then he was gone. He got back into his red minivan--yes, the stoned cowboy pilots a red minivan--and left the diner to go about his business, his strange, strange business of tooling around town and looking for fresh flowers for the brim of his hat.

He would be back for more in a few days. And he would bring his family...

On the Road

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, this is where I am headed:



Maine, Maine, Maine. There is a college there, a job interview, a search committee.

And here I go.

You Can Imagine The Eye Rolling That Went on Back in the Kitchen

Sometimes people who come into restaurants are pretty strange. Sometimes they don't quite think about what they are saying or doing (see also: part 1). Sometimes they drive you crazy. Sometimes they drive you to drink. Sometimes they make you wonder how anyone is passing elementary school these days.

Earlier this week I had a family that made me wonder that. It was the mother who concerned me most.

They sat themselves. I brought menus. I took down drink orders. I filled the drink orders. I asked what they'd like to eat.

"A hamburger with fries," the one boy said.

The mother pointed to the smaller boy. "And he'll have a cheeseburger with onion rings," she said. "I'll have the BLT."

I took down all the information, collected the menus, and returned to the kitchen to hang my order. A few minutes later, after the order had been cooked, I stacked the plates on my arms and delivered it. As I was setting the plates down in front of the three of them, the mother's face grew concerned.

"What's that?" she asked. She pointed to the onion rings on her son's plate. They were sitting in a neat pile next to the cheeseburger.

"Onion rings," I said. I wondered what the deal was. I wondered just who on earth couldn't identify a junk food staple like onion rings when they were placed in front of them.

"We didn't order onion rings," she said.

Even though I can occasionally get something about an order incorrect, I knew this was not one of those times. I'd written down everything they'd said just as they'd said it.

"You said your son wanted a cheeseburger with onion rings," I said.

She blinked at me. She looked confused. She pursed her lips and then her face lit up in the way faces have when something has dawned upon them. "Ohhhh," she said. "No!" She laughed, like I was silly, like I was just a big goofy girl who didn't know anything. "Onion rings! Onion rings! I wanted some rings of onion on his burger."

I stared at her. "You mean you wanted a slice of onion on his burger?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she said brightly. "Some onion rings on his burger!"

Bar Fight: Revisited

One of the cooks I liked has been fired. It's his own fault, I suppose. He was a bit of a drinker. He was quite a bit of a drinker. I sat with him in a bar one night and watched him drink down at least ten drinks in the span of forty-five minutes. He drank so much he couldn't get up in the morning, couldn't function, couldn't get to work on time.

The last time we were out he bought us shots and told us about what a tough guy he used to be, how he used to get in so much trouble when he drank. He told us about this one time he got into a fight and put a guy through a window.

"The first real bar fight I saw was actually in this town," I told him, "and a guy went through a window in that fight, too. It happened up the road. One of the guys crashed through the carpet store's front window."

The cook looked at me. I looked at him.

"Oh my God," I said. "Was that you?"

"I was the guy who put the other guy through the window," the cook said. He squinted at me, trying to see if he could imagine me being there, if he could somehow remember where I was standing. "You were really there? You really saw that?"

I told him yes, I was absolutely there. I was with Josh and one of his friends, and we were just coming back from a night of visiting as many of the small-town bars as we could. We stopped at that last bar--where the fight happened--on a whim, because Josh had a cousin who lived above the bar and he wanted to stand on the street and yell up to her. We were doing that when the action started.

I told the cook that not only was I there and not only did I watch him fight the loud mouth who was asking for it, I also went home and wrote about it.

"You wrote about it?" he asked.

I did. I went home and wrote a long blog about it. I wrote:

I am secretly thrilled. I've never seen anyone go through a window. It's
interesting to watch. Especially when Riverside, who is trying to salvage his
dignity, rises up from the ground and brushes off glass. Riverside's head, which
is bald, is now stained with small red rivers of blood that are trickling
everywhere. Into his eyes and mouth. Onto his shirt and pants.

"I'm okay," he says.

The cook couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. It seemed impossible that he and I had been sharing that air, with its crisp smell of blood and adrenaline, on the same corner in the same town over a year ago, when I wasn't even living in the state. Who knew that much later on I'd be standing in a cramped kitchen with him, listening to him explain that, earlier, he'd peed blood or that he was trying to find a date for a wedding he had to go to and did I know anybody who would want to go if he promised to not drink too much and get rowdy?

I didn't know anybody, and I don't know if I'll ever see the cook again. But I do know I'll miss him and the way that he was the only cook who warmed the dinner rolls for the customers, the way he assembled a seriously delicious almond cheesecake, the way he didn't mind so much pouring shot after shot after shot at the bar.

There have been things this summer that feel strange and a little like fate--like the universe is having a good laugh at how things fall into place and how we all relate to each other, how we are all running in circles that are smaller than we think, circles that are bound to intersect and overlap and get all tangled up together. This was one of them. One of many.

Decreased Whining Ahead

Yesterday the phone rang and, quite unexpectedly, the person on the other line was a woman--a writing program director--who wanted to give me a job. We were discussing the job, the teaching, the possibilities, when the director suddenly asked if I was married.

"You sound married," she said.

I wondered what part of my voice sounded married. What was it that somehow identified me as a girl who'd snagged herself a man? Was there a certain satisfaction in my voice, some kind of confident timbre, something settled and pointed?

"I'm not married," I said. "Not even close."

"Well," she said, "you sure sound like it."

I could have told her that maybe what she was hearing in my voice was along those lines, just not as drastic. I could have told her that for the first time in years I have a boyfriend, and that it was just recently settled that that's what we are--boyfriend and girlfriend--and I am still sort of surprised by it. It feels unnatural. It feels foreign. But maybe that's what she heard in my voice--some sort of half-surprised Hey, a boy likes me.

All of a sudden there's a quiet kindness in my life. It makes me feel foolish for wasting all those years and all that energy running after the Wily Republican, begging him to love me, love me, love me. It's a bit disconcerting to feel how simple a relationship with a boy can really be. I'd forgotten it's not supposed to be a fight every single day, that you're not supposed to wake up bristling and ready to take whatever small cruel thing--intended or not--that a boy sends your way.

It's also disconcerting to suddenly not be the single girl, that one friend who's always hopelessly bumbling through single life, who's always complaining that she doesn't have a man, that she can't find a man, that she'll never find a man, that she'll probably die sad and alone, save for the pack of cats she's named after famous literary figures.

I've been that girl for so long that not being her is going to take a little getting used to. I'll have to find new things to whine about. I'll have to find new ways to fill my time, now that I won't be busy being bitter or angry or frustrated at boys from my past.

I won't be the only one adjusting, of course. My friends--mainly Katy--will have to find new reasons to mock me. Now they won't be able to do 10 minute routines on the woeful state of my love life, on my choices in men, on how I am attracted to the suckiest guys of all time. Instead, they'll have to adjust their comedy routines to include the stupid things I did in grad school, any of the awful poetry I've tried to write over my lifetime, and how freakish I looked during middle school.

It's going to take some getting used to, especially for me, especially because I am very used to being single, to being the one who has adapted to stumbling alone through long stretches of life. But this newness--everything about it--is nice, and I'll take it. I'll definitely take it.

Strange Inspiration

Stories are strange, the way they come about. I've been inspired to write stories based on people I love, on diseases I've heard about, on scars, on titles that came first.

Just recently I had to put aside a story I've been fighting with for months--I've rewritten the opening pages at least five times--because something new came up. Something better. And this something better came from a strange, strange place.

A part of it came from a piece of graffiti I see every time I drive home from Buffalo. It's the word seven and a picture of a heart. Seven love. I don't know why I love the sound of that phrase so much, but I do.

But it's more than the phrase that gets me. There's something else going on at that certain stretch of highway. A little ways down the road from the exit sign that has been spray painted with seven love is a plastic flamingo--you know, the lawn decoration type. Well, it used to be a flamingo, singular, but now there is a growing flamingo family. The first one sat up there--high on the banking, nestled next to a tree--for months. It made me wonder if the person responsible for seven love was responsible for the flamingo, too, and all the other flamingos that came next. About a month after the first arrived, another lawn decoration surfaced on the hill. And then another. I'm sure it's only a matter of time until a fourth surfaces, expands the family.

But just who does that? Just who takes the time and makes the effort to sneak up the hill on the side of a highway to plant plastic flamingos there? What kind of motivation prompts that action? Thinking about these questions got me thinking about other questions: was anyone going to ever get rid of the graffiti, of the flamingo family? Whose job was that? Who was responsible for driving up and down the roads of western New York, taking stock of the things that weren't supposed to be there? I figured it was someone in the Department of Transportation, probably the same type of guy who was responsible for getting rid of the dead animals that get kicked to the side of the road.

I had all of that in my head for a few weeks, and then one night I was watching Dirty Jobs, because there's nothing I like more than Mike Rowe getting suckered into artificially inseminating horses or catching river snakes or rounding up ostriches or collecting owl poop. And on this particular night, there was Mike, standing on the side of the road with a big shovel, ready to heft a mangled deer into the back of a DOT pickup truck. After Mike and the DOT guy filled the truck with as many dead things they could find, they took those carcasses to a big mulch yard, where they buried them under tall hills of sawdust. They would break down under the sawdust. They would become mulch. They would become part of some unsuspecting gardener's daily routine.

And that was enough for me. It felt like divine intervention that I'd seen that particular segment, that I now knew a little bit more about that job and about the type of person who held it, and I wanted to write it. I wanted to write about a guy whose job it was to make things a little more beautiful, who had to clean up the things that reminded people things weren't always beautiful--graffiti, dead animals--and I wanted to have him taunted, tortured by whoever was being so insistent about leaving strange messages on the local exit signs. I wanted him to obsess over it while he was picking up dead deer, dead possums, dead raccoons, dead foxes. I wanted him to try to figure it out, try to imagine who would do such a thing. Really, I wanted him to do what I was doing every day I drove past those things. And I wanted him to figure it out, to get some answers. Because I know I never will.

Best Conversation of the Day

Katy: Matt's standing on a chair in the kitchen and reaching for some wine. He's completely naked.

Me: Sounds like the two of you have a good night ahead of you.

Katy: (pausing, giggling) I'm on the phone with you, and I'm touching my husband's wiener.

Reasons to Love Buffalo

Shortly after I moved back to New York, I was on the phone having a conversation with the Wily Republican. I was whining, actually. I was saying I missed Minnesota, everything about it, even those awful soybean processing plants that hung the smell of millions and millions of those starchy pods in the early morning air.

The WR took about as much of the whining as he possibly could before interrupting me. "Hang on a second," he said. "When you were here in Minnesota, you were always talking about how much you missed New York. Weren't you always wanting to move back?"

I told him no way, there were very few times I ever wanted to pack up my things and hightail it out of Minnesota, and even on days that I did feel that way, I could squelch the urge by drinking a bottle of champagne and eating brownie batter straight from the bowl. I loved Minnesota, I told the WR. There were just days when the people in it--in my grad program, for instance--drove me crazy and that's when I wanted out. The WR understood this, of course, since he was often taking me to lunch or dinner or making me margaritas in the mid-afternoon just so I could tell him stories of who was pissing me off and how.

I told the Wily Republican the biggest thing I missed about western New York, besides my friends and family, was the food. Sure, Minneapolis and St. Paul had good food, had lovely restaurants and the like, but the rest of the state was sometimes lacking in cuisine. The good people of Minnesota were fond of tater tots, fried everything, and ketchup. One of my favorite stories from Katy's brief waitressing stint at Buffalo Wild Wings--a chain establishment that pretends to sell authentic wings (don't get me started on how any place that makes you pay for a cup of bleu cheese to go with your wings cannot claim to be authentic)--was how one afternoon she waited on an old couple who ordered a plate of wings to split. When Katy asked them how they'd like them done--you know, what sauce they wanted them tossed in--the couple looked up at her with big, blinking eyes and told her they wanted them plain because they were just going to dunk them in ketchup.

I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that.

In grad school, I craved Buffalo food like nobody's business.

"But I don't understand," people would say. "Isn't it pretty much the same? I mean, we have Buffalo wings here."

First, I told the people there was more to Buffalo cuisine than the wing (beef on weck, sponge candy, Loganberry, and any Polish staple that can be bought at the Broadway Market). Second, I told people that it made me nervous any time I ordered wings in the Midwest. I don't like having to order something as "Buffalo-style." In the Midwest, you can get your wings either mild, medium, hot, or Buffalo. What, oh what, I asked the native Midwesterners, was "Buffalo" in that context?

"You know," they said, sounding vague, sounding as if they themselves weren't exactly sure, "sort of spicy."

I tried to tell them that in Buffalo, you didn't get your wings "Buffalo." You got them mild, medium, hot, or suicidal. Or, if you were at a particularly saucy place, you might get the choice to have your wings done on the grill and dipped in creative sauces like hot garlic or sesame habanero. And you absolutely did not send the bleu cheese back for ranch dressing or--worse--ketchup.

But that won't happen today. And I won't pine for good wings or bleu cheese or any other fine western New York delicacies, because today is the day of all days, the blessed event, the crown jewel of the summer season: Taste of Buffalo.

Today I will buy $30 worth of tickets and proceed to eat my way through the booths that are set up in downtown Buffalo until I have eaten so much I want to throw up. Then I will rest, refresh myself with a wine slushee, and I will soldier on and eat until I want to throw up again.

It's tradition. It's one of my favorite things. It's right up there on the list of What Makes Buffalo Pretty Fantastic, ranking high, along with sunsets over Lake Erie, lots of snow days in the winter, and, of course, the Buffalo Sabres (and, specifically, my future husband).

In a few short hours, I am going to be the fullest, happiest, most satisfied girl in the history of girls. Bring it on.

I Like to Meddle

On Monday morning my brother showed up unannounced at the house. He's been doing that a lot lately, which doesn't make me all that happy because there have been several times where he's almost caught me pantsless, shirtless, or any sort of half-naked. I can't even imagine what my brother would do if he ever saw me half-naked. Probably some variety of what I'd do if I ever saw him half-naked, and that would involve a blunt object and spooning my eyes out with it.

But on Monday my brother had made the trip out here for two very specific reasons. One involved an old van one of his friend's aunt's had used in her carpet-installation business, a van that she'd given to Adam's friend, a van that Adam and his friends were determined to dismantle and turn into a field car that would be able to transport them and large amounts of their friends back to the cabin.

The other reason involved him coming into the diner to eat so he could check out the waitress I am determined to set him up with.

I'd given her notice, and she came to work with her hair impeccably straight-ironed. She had on good jewelry. She was jittery and excited. She stood in the back and wiggled up and down with anticipation.

When my brother breezed into the diner with his friends in tow, the waitress turned and high-tailed it behind the two-way mirror so she could watch Adam and his friends seat themselves in the very last booth along the wall.

"Oh my God oh my God oh my God," she said. She was whipped into hysterics. "He is so hot, so hot, so hot!"

I made a face and went out with a stack of menus for my brother and his boys. My brother had chosen to sit on the side of the back booth that faced the wall. His entire view during dinner would be of the turquoise and hot pink wall that is decked out with pictures from the '50s.

"Hi boys," I said. I doled out the menus and then hit my brother on his fuzzy head. "Are you a moron?" I asked. "Don't you think you should be on the other side of the table, so she can see you and you can see her? Don't you want to get a look at her?"

His only look at her had occurred a few days earlier, when I'd sent a picture to his cell phone.

"Oh," my brother said, "yeah. I guess. Okay. Switch with me, Tim."

Tim switched. I took drink orders. I went back to the kitchen, where the waitress was leaning against the steel counter and looking like she'd gone into heat.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Fine," she said, fanning herself.

I told her I had a plan, and it was brilliant. I'd take the drinks to the boys, get their order, hang it, and then she could help me bring it out. That's when we'd do the official introduction. I'd make her take his food--a beef on weck, just like I'd predicted--and then they could lock eyes and touch fingers and feel the sizzle of something good starting.

She said okay, okay, that was good, that was great, that was wonderful. She said she was really nervous, though. She didn't know if she could do it.

I told her she could, that she was a pro, that it was going to be fine.

Then I went back and told my brother the plan. "I'm making her bring your food out," I said. "Okay? So she's going to hand you yours, and then I'm going to do the introduction. How do you feel about that?"

My brother told me that was good, that was great, that was wonderful. He said he was pretty nervous, though. He thought he might act like an ass.

I told him that it was entirely possible that he might, but he should try to keep it under control.

"Don't tell her I'm nervous, okay?" he asked.

"No, I totally won't," I said. Then I went back into the kitchen and told her he was really nervous.

"That's so cute," she said. "You didn't tell him I was nervous, did you?"

"No way," I said, and it went on like that for another half an hour. I ran small messages between them, and then, finally, the food came up.

"I don't think I can do this!" the waitress said as she balanced Adam's beef on weck in her palm.

"You can," I said. "You can."

And she did. She followed me out, placed his beef in front of him without incident, and then stood there as I introduced her and they said hey, hi, how are you.

After she disappeared to tend to her own tables, I turned back to my brother and raised my eyebrows. "Huh? Huh?" I asked. "She's cute, right?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "She's really cute," he said. "I like her hair. It's amazing. And her smile is possibly the best smile I've ever seen. But don't tell her that."

And that was one thing I didn't immediately go back and tell her--mainly because I figured that's something he can hang onto, something he can use to impress her later on down the line.

So, I think it went well. More than well. Later that night, we all somehow ended up standing in my driveway and letting Adam swing open the doors to the ex-carpet-hauling van that was now outfitted with several folding chairs ("Eventually," my brother said, "we want to have a couch in here."). The cute waitress looked wary, but she climbed up and into the van, she let my brother drive us over the bumpy path that leads to the cabin. She let him show her the warm beer, the outhouse, the inside of the cabin. I was the one who pointed out the cabin's finer points: the stacks of porn (which have doubled since I was last there), the rustic antler decorations, the moldy bearskin rug.

Much later, after we'd been sitting around the fire for a good long time, my cell phone blinked. I had a text message. I opened it and found a message from the waitress, who was sitting two chairs down from me.

The message said, I want to bone your brother.

And when I looked up from my phone and at the waitress, she was staring intently into the fire's flames, trying not to laugh. And I had to get up and pour myself another peach vodka-ginger ale to keep myself from throwing up right then and there.

If Only I Were a Chemical Engineer and Could Make My Own

In the last four days, I have seen three separate sets of fireworks, and it's still not enough.

Cat, Cupid

(1.)

Tonight after ordering drinks, a lady at one of my tables looked up at me and smiled. "I have sort of a silly question for you," she said. "Can I ask it?"

"Sure," I said. I thought it would be a silly question about the food, and I was prepared for whatever she was about to throw at me.

"Well," she said, "we're traveling. We've got this cat, and it's in the car. A kitten, really. It's in a carrier and all, but we hate to leave it out there. Do you think we could just bring the cat in the restaurant while we eat?"

I blinked. Then I blinked again. I was thinking, Oh. My. God. And then I had to take a minute out of my life to explain to these people why they couldn't bring their cat into a restaurant. I will never get that minute or those words back.


(2.)

One of the waitresses at work--this would be the one who likes to walk around the kitchen with her white shirt hitched up so the boys can see her boobs, the one who finds any excuse to use the word bone as a verb, to use the phrase ho-bag as a term of endearment--was discussing her man problems. Everyone at this place has man problems (or, if they are a dishwasher or a cook, girl problems), but this waitress's boy problems are impressive in their problematic-ness.

"I'm becoming a lesbian," she announced last week. "Seriously. That's it. I'm through. I'm a full-on lesbian now."

But this week she seems mellowed. She seems almost ready for another boy. So I announced that my brother was single. Then I said something that I never expected to come out of my mouth.

"And he's not bad looking," I said. Admitting that was torture.

"He's pretty nice," I continued. "He's sort of a royal cranky bitch when he's hungry, but if you keep him fed, he's a pretty okay kid. Also, he's building a bar for our cabin. Not bad, huh?"

The waitress wanted to see a picture. I said okay. I texted my brother and told him to send a picture of himself immediately, which he did. The picture he chose to send was a picture where he is making a funny face, a surprised face. It was a goofy picture, but it showed him for who he is. I flipped the phone in the direction of the waitress.

"There," I said.

"OH MY GOD!" the waitress squealed.

"Oh no," I said.

"OH MY GOD!"

"Oh no."

The waitress started jumping up and down. "Oh my God," she said. "I think I just wet my pants! He's hot!"

"Okay, no. Stop. That's gross."

She ran out of the room, and we could hear her squealing in the other room.

"Listen," I said to the cooks and dishwashers, "I know he's not unfortunate looking, but that's a lot of fuss."

"He's cute," one of the cooks said.

"Blecch," I said.

The waitress launched back into the room. "Send him a picture of me!" she said. "Here, I'll send you one."

We sent it. We waited. I walked out to my tables, checked things over, came back behind the line. We looked at my inbox, and there was a message from my brother. Oh, it said, she is real cute.

There was more squealing then, but for some reason I found myself supporting it. I found myself even picking up the phone and calling my brother to see if he wanted to come out to the diner to meet this girl.

"He's nice," I said. "He's a good guy. He's a good friend." Each admission made me want to vomit a little more in my mouth, but I somehow refrained, and I somehow managed to work it so that sometime next week my brother will breeze into the diner for a milkshake and the waitress will appear from the back with her not-usually-done hair actually done (You'll have to tell me exactly which day he's coming in, she said. I'll need to actually do my hair. Unlike today. Here, I'll take it out of the ponytail. It won't move. Ready? Watch. See? Awesome, huh?) and she and her straight hair will woo my brother and bring him chicken wings or a beef on weck and they will live happily ever after.

Or until they get in each other's pants.

Lechery

At the restaurant, it's not just that one male cook who's foul-mouthed and sex-obsessed. It's also one of the waitresses (who routinely flashes the cooks and finds more reasons to use the word bone than you'd think were possible in a diner). It's also one of the ice cream boys (who likes to discuss porn and all the sex he will get--you know, eventually, after he finds a girl to take his virginity).

But it's also more than just the employees who engage in habitual sexual harassment. It's the customers, too. Well, some of them. Not so much the church-going ladies or the over-taxed mothers who look like they're two seconds from snapping the heads of their children clean off. Mostly, it's the old men. And, last night, for me, it was two old men, two regulars who tromp into the diner at least once a day for coffee, toast, a bowl of soup, or a grilled cheese sandwich.

These men love me. They are my at-work boyfriends. They call me by name, tell me jokes, press filmy dollars into my hands, call me over to their table just to talk. I fill their coffee, smile, laugh when it's appropriate. They say, "Will you be here later when we come back?" They say, "I'm so glad you're here." They say, "You're a such a pretty girl."

Last night they took their chatter to another level, though. The compliments took a turn after I delivered their coffee and cream.

"Have you gentlemen figured out what you want tonight?" I asked. I meant food. They, however, were not thinking about food.

"How about you?" one of them asked.

"Well now," I said, "that's definitely not on the menu."

"It should be," the other one echoed.

I knew I had to get ahold of the situation ASAP, or else this was going to turn into something vaguely gross.

"Let me rephrase," I said. I tapped my pen on my waitress pad. "What would you gentlemen like to eat tonight?"

As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. Here I was dealing with two old men--who clearly still have the mind frame they had in high school--and I gave them that to work with.

"Well," the older-looking one said. He gestured toward my apron--slung low over my hips--and waggled his eyebrows. "You know," he said. He winked.

"FOOD," I said. "FOOD. Dinner? A sandwich? Some soup?"

They placed their orders then--and indeed it was a soup and sandwich kind of night--and I ran back to the kitchen to tell everyone what had happened.

"Well," one of the cooks said, "it looks like you're going to be getting a good tip tonight. And you won't even have to flash your customers like the other girls do."

The Two Words That Come to Mind are "Gulp" and "Vomit."

Last night the worst thing happened. It was bound to happen, I guess, so I shouldn't be so horrified, so surprised, so nauseous. But I am. Oh, am I ever.

Last night my father walked in on me as I was kissing a boy. I've never seen my father move so fast, especially at 3:30 AM, a time when sane 54 year-olds should be in bed, sleeping and dreaming dreams where their daughters are young and not yet kissing boys, or dreams where their daughters are living far away in other states, where the kissing and whatnot goes on in houses other than their own.

The fact that my father walked in on and then ran away from me kissing a boy makes me want to cut out my tongue and scoop out my eyes. I am mortified. If this were a perfect world, he and I would both stay out of each other's way for several days, weeks, months until I felt okay to face him again. But no. Tomorrow I have to attend a graduation party with him.

The boy I was kissing last night was a Boy From Work, and the kissing was just that: plain kissing, straight up kissing, kissing without other things going on. We were, however, under a blanket, which I am certain made the situation look a lot more scandalous than it actually was. All clothes were on and accounted for, except for my sweatshirt, which was pooled at the foot of the couch. I had another shirt on underneath, but I'm sure my father's worked what he saw over and over in his head until he's imagined something very R-rated.

My father isn't one who handles things like this very well. I am, after all, his little girl, and his little girl would never do such a thing with a boy. As he sees it, his little girl bakes cookies and teaches English and likes cats and is a virgin. And because he doesn't handle things like this very well, my father and I have had had our share of uncomfortable incidents. Once, my senior year of high school, after he found out that I'd been sneaking around with a boy he didn't very much care for, a boy I was definitely wasn't supposed to be sneaking around with, my father drove home from work early and sat at the kitchen table until I got home from school. When I walked in the door, my stomach almost fell out of my body. The look he was giving me was pure disaster. He made me sit down with him, made my brother leave the room, then made me answer a string of awful questions.

He said, Did you let this boy touch you, Jessica? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his hands? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. He said, Did you let him touch you with his mouth? and I had to say, Yes, Dad. I wanted to disintegrate, to spontaneously combust, to melt like the witch in The Wizard of Oz so I would no longer have to be sitting there answering those horrible questions.

I was barely seventeen years old, and what I'd let the boy do with his hands and mouth (no big deal, really--nothing scandalous, nothing advanced) were things that most girls in my grade had been letting boys do since they'd started high school. I was getting a late start, but at that moment, when I had to confess things that were really none of my father's business, I thought there was a good chance I was going to be so scarred by my father's interrogation that I would never let a boy touch me anywhere ever again.

Well, I was scarred by that day, but not scarred enough to stay away from boys forever. A few months later I had met and somehow charmed Keith into liking me. A few months into our relationship, Keith and I were sitting in my bedroom, on my bed, watching TV. My door was half-open, because I knew if I tried to close my door my father would have a royal conniption.

Whatever we were watching went to commercial, so I leaned over to lightly kiss my boyfriend. It wasn't a kiss that involved even the slightest bit of tongue--there were parents around, after all--but I was unlucky in that my father happened to be coming down the hall and--in fine Dad-Fashion--my father overreacted. He told me to meet him in the kitchen right now. He said he had to talk to me about something very important.

When I got out there, my father told me that there was no way his daughter was going to be lazing around on a bed and tongue-ing her boyfriend under his roof. I tried to tell my father that there certainly wasn't any tongue-ing going on, but this only made him angrier. He went on to say that there would be no more half-shut, three quarter-shut, or any kind of shut doors in his house while Keith was there. In fact, there wasn't really a reason for Keith to be in my bedroom anyway, so we might as well go watch TV in the living room, where there were no beds, only couches that were in plain view. My father, who was worked into a real frenzy now, went on to say that he also wasn't a fan of the fact that Keith had come over a few minutes prior to my parents' arrival home that night. He said there was a new rule, and that rule was that Keith could never ever ever ever be in the house if there wasn't at least one parent present. If Keith came over and my parents were running late after work, we had to stay out in the driveway and wait until they got home. He thought all these rules would somehow keep us from being consumed in a fiery swarm of sin.

Of course, my father's discomfort with my relationships with boyfriends didn't completely erase after I grew up, moved out, went to college and grad school. In fact, after my thesis reading last May, the Wily Republican and I were in a corner of the bar, half-hugging and half-dancing, when my father came over and put his hands on my shoulders and took me away from the WR for no good reason. I didn't think anything of it at the time, until I got back over to the table where my friends were gathered for the celebration, and one of them said, What was that all about? And I thought to myself, Yeah. Wait a minute. What WAS that all about?

This winter, when Josh came home from Quebec, he and I went out to our former place of employment on a Saturday night, when it was teeming with the trashiest of the local trash and the skeeviest of the local skeeve, and Josh had an awful lot to drink. There was no way he was driving home, so I drove him back to my house and put him up on my couch with a glass of water and a couple Tylenols. I put on some late night TV and we watched it for a bit before falling asleep. The next morning I woke up at 7:30 AM, and there was my father standing in the archway to the living room, surveying the damage. I was on one couch and Josh was on a separate couch on the opposite side of the room. We couldn't touch each other if we wanted to. But a few days later, while lunching with my cousin, she told me that her mother had come home from a family function and told her that my father had been talking about the horrors of waking up one morning and having a boy in his living room, a boy who had spent the night right there, right next to his daughter, mere feet--oh, those dangerously few feet!--away from her. I was twenty-five years old and on a separate couch from a boy, and yet this was quite the event for my father.

So I think it's easy to understand why this last incident is one that has my skin crawling, that has me wanting to bury my head in the sand, that has me wanting to spend several nights far away from here. There's just something about fathers and daughters--especially this daughter and her father--that takes embarrassment to another level. And if it weren't for this weekend's graduation party, you can bet I'd be long gone, that I'd be somewhere else, some other place that would keep me from running into my father and pretending nothing ever happened, pretending that he didn't demonstrate impressive agility and speed as he ran away from the living room and back to his bedroom, where he probably lay awake for long, long minutes, thinking he liked it so much better when I played in the sandbox and wore pink corduroy pants and called him Daddy.