People I'm Related To (or Might Be Someday)

At the beginning of this month, my family got together for a belated holiday party. Really, it was just an excuse to eat food (homemade pizzas, brownies, plates of fancy cheese) and, for some, an excuse to drink an awful lot of wine. Somewhere around his sixth glass, my cousin wobbled his glass in my direction. "Will you get me some more?" he asked. "I don't want my mom to yell at me."

And I got him some more, because I'm just that kind of girl.

My brother brought a girl to that party. I'd met this girl before, briefly, at the place that employs the both of them--a tool store that gave my brother a badge which identifies him as ADAM, ASSIS. HEAD CASHIER.

I like to put my thumb over the extra -is in ASSIS. "Ha," I will say, "ADAM, ASS HEAD CASHIER."

That seems better to me. More true to life.

This girl my brother brought to the party is another ASSIS. HEAD CASHIER. She is tall and thin and normal looking. Pretty, even. She is nice and smiley and passes all the right tests, especially the most important one: humoring my father. When he swooped into the kitchen to take party pictures of us kids, she smiled and posed.



She passed my tests, too. When I was posing for a random picture by holding a pair of tongs, she slid her way into the picture and held up the first thing she could get her hands on: a measuring cup. And there was the picture.



Huh, I thought to myself. I like this girl. She's sassy.

The other day my brother came home from work. I was at my mother's house and sitting on the couch--the couch that had yet to be implicated in my brother's pleasuring of himself--watching television. He came and stood in front of the screen.

"Well," he said, "Megan and I decided we are going to start dating on July 15th, 2010."

I blinked. "Okay," I said. "Great." Then, after realizing he wasn't going to move and was thus keeping me away from watching an old episode of the X-Files, I realized this was one of those rare moments when he wanted me to play the role of Sister. I needed to ask questions and act concerned. "What happened to that other girl?" I asked.

He'd been driving out to the country to visit another girl--a small brunette--at the greasy spoon where she waited tables. He'd called her a friend with benefits. He waggled his eyebrows when he said with benefits, then said, "YOU KNOW..." As far as I knew, the waitress was the girl he was after and Megan was just a friend.

"Don't even say it! Don't even say her name!" my brother said. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Alright. So now you're going to date Megan? In three years?"

"On the anniversary of the day we met," he said.

"You remember the exact date the two of you met?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"And you're choosing not to date her now why?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said. "It wasn't my idea. She was the one who brought up the dating."

When my brother told me that, I realized I completely understood this girl. I had a sudden vision of me with any number of the boys I have loved over my lifetime. There I was, twisting the phone cord around my toe and talking to the first boy, telling him how wonderful of a girlfriend I would be. I saw myself with the Wily Republican saying, "Who's the best girl you know, Wily?" and waiting for him to say Besides my mother, it's you and then waiting for him to connect the dots in his head--if I was his best girl, why wasn't he dating me? But he never connected those dots. His dots remained scattered like a spray of birdshot because he didn't want to date me. But my brother seems to have some errant dots of his own--dots that aren't being connected just because he's lacking certain social skills.

For instance, the skill to understand when a girl is giving him the green light to date her. Girls would never put the idea of dating into the head of a man they are repulsed by, a boy they have no interest in seeing naked, a boy they would never, ever date.

So I told my brother that. "I think she's trying to tell you to ask her out," I said. "And I know because this is the same sort of stunt I would pull. But with me it would completely backfire."

My brother seemed cheered by this. He seemed a little more confident. Maybe over the next few days he will take Megan out to dinner, chat her up real good, charm her, then ask her to be his girlfriend, his one and only, the one he dreams about, the girl he totes to all our family parties.

I hope this is true, because she's the type of girl I wouldn't mind having as a sister-in-law, a co-conspirator, someone who will help me mock my brother. And this week when our family repeated the good times we had earlier this month by having a party--this time at our house--Megan's absence was noticeable. The aunts and uncles asked after her. So did the cousins. Adam told us she wanted to come, she did, but she had to work. And so we all sat around thinking about how nice it would be if she was there. He better bring her around again. He just better not let it backfire. We'll all be pissed.

A Conversation with My Brother

Adam: Get out of here already. Aren't you leaving? When are you leaving?

Me: I'm going, I'm going.

Adam: Good. Also, I just want you to know that the couch you were sitting on two seconds ago is where I like to pleasure myself.

We Should Call Him Drunk-O

After I turned twenty-one and would come home occasionally for a weekend away from college, this is how my brother would welcome me home:

"Hi, drunk," he'd say. "Been on any benders lately?"

When my father or mother offered me a drink with dinner or after, my brother would spike his eyebrows toward the ceiling. "Are you an alcoholic?" he asked after I accepted.

He told his friends his sister drank a lot, that she owned a book on how to make cocktails, that she had sticky bottles of vodka and blue curaco (everything necessary to make the Blue Lagoon) on top of her fridge, that there was sometimes beer in her fridge, and that she had a favorite bar for every geographic area in which she existed. She had a favorite college bar. A favorite bar in Buffalo. A favorite Canadian bar. My brother told his friends he was worried that his sister was going to become some sort of famous souse: stumbling, bumbling, drooling, a girl who wore tight-fitting clothes and draped herself across pool tables, flinging her legs and arms in the air to heavy metal music.

But I just wasn't that kind of girl. I'd watched other girls become that type of drunk, sure. One of my college friends--a church girl, an ex-Baptist, a girl who once admitted she thought the rest of us were going to hell because we weren't saved by her church--shake a bottle of Labatt and spray it all over her chest when Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me" blasted out the speakers of our favorite college bar. She writhed. She tossed her hair around. She rubbed the sudsy liquid into her tank top. Where was I during all this? Standing behind her, calmly sipping my vodka-cranberry and thinking, Wow. I bet God just loves this.

I wasn't what my brother thought I was, but he kept on believing and he kept on asking how my liver was doing, if I thought maybe it was time to enroll in AA, if I was sure I wanted to have that glass of wine with our pasta.

Last week when he and I met our father out for dinner, my brother started in on his new favorite topic: drinking. He'd just gotten two new bar books, he told our father. He liked the Long Island Iced Teas made at a certain bar in Canada. He liked to sit at bars in restaurants so he could stare longingly at their collections of liquor. He'd just recently asked the bartender at Famous Dave's about her favorite brand of Vodka, and she named something other than Grey Goose, and my brother was scandalized. "It was something I'd never heard of before," he said. "Have either of you ever heard of it?" We hadn't. "I want to try it," he said.

He went on. He was accumulating lumber so he could build a bar--no bigger than the table we were currently sitting at, he told us--for the cabin. He said he was steadily accumulating barware: tumblers, shot glasses, one of those straw holders that splays the straws out in a prickly explosion when you lift the lid. "I'm not going to keep the straws that came in it," he assured us. "That's gross. I don't know who's put their hands all over them."

Finally, my father sighed and put down his fork. "Adam," he said, "you aren't even twenty-one. This is ridiculous. When your sister turned twenty-one you spent every waking minute asking her if she was an alcoholic if she even dared to have a drink in front of you. And now look at you."

My brother narrowed his eyes. "So?" he asked.

My father went on to explain it was sort of hypocritical, sort of bad, sort of scary that he was so obsessed with all things alcohol. He told my brother it made him uncomfortable. He didn't want to talk about it anymore.

"Jeees-sus Christ!" my brother huffed. "I can't believe this! Here we are trying to have a nice dinner and nice conversation, and you go and say something like that!"

My father reiterated: Adam wasn't yet twenty-one and he was sitting at bars and staring at liquor, he was buying book after book on how to make drinks, he was buying things to stock a bar, he was going back to the cabin to get drunk more weekends than not. My father said it just wasn't right. My father said Adam needed a new hobby.

I didn't say anything. I don't think my brother is out of control. I think he is acting like a normal twenty year old boy, and since my brother dropped out of college before he had the chance to go on those typical college-boy-benders, I think he needs to get it out of his system somehow. If he wants to ride across the border with his friends and go to Canadian strip clubs and bars, that's fine. If he wants to go back to the cabin and drink cheap beer and pee outside into the snow banks, that's fine, too. I just wish he'd stop talking about it, because it's getting pretty boring. Each time he starts in on it, I have the itching urge to ask him, "Adam? Are you an alcoholic? Is your liver okay? Do you really want that drink with dinner? Should I get you the number of the local AA?"

But I know if I did that my brother would level me with one of those looks he has--evil, biting, the perfect Little Brother Look. He would cross his arms, glare, and tell me to shut up because I don't know anything about anything. Not at all.

Notes on Hickeys

This afternoon when I was doing my hair I burned myself with the curling iron. There is now a bright red square singed into the skin of my neck. I tried to cover it with carefully placed curls, but then realized that if someone looked quickly they'd think I was taking pains to hide a hickey.
When I was younger I was obsessed with hickeys--or, more precisely, the idea of hickeys, since I was in no position to be getting any of my own. At twelve, I was still caged with braces and hidden under a crackly lump of permed hair. This meant none of the boys were paying attention to me, and I was just a spectator of the popular kids' lives. I watched all their strange drama play out in homeroom and lunch and gym and on the bus ride home. I listened to the gossip and took as many notes as I could, confident that someday soon I would need to know the valuable information they were getting from first-hand experience.

Like information on hickeys. In eighth grade, girls my age started talking about, obsessing over, and getting hickeys. These purple-yellow marks materialized mostly during middle school dances--dances that took place in the sock-smelling gymnasium or, like one Valentine's Day dance, the elementary school cafeteria, which was decorated with rope lights twisted into hearts that looked like they were slowly melting down the wall and ready to ooze onto the floor.

If someone had plans on giving a hickey, if someone had gotten a hickey, or if a hickey was currently in progress, everyone knew about it. The news was passed through a sophisticated chain of gossiping twelve and thirteen year olds.

Did you hear? Carl is giving Megan a hickey. They're over there by the bleachers.

Did you see that mark on Michelle's neck? How is she going to hide that from her mother?

Well, that was the question on everyone's mind. How did you hide these things? I remember one dance in particular where my best friend Tammy's neck bloomed purple and green and yellow after her boyfriend had danced her around during "Stairway to Heaven." He'd been insistent. He'd been thorough. He'd been territorial. He'd left his mark from her collarbone all the way up the right side of her neck.

When he went off to the bathroom she dashed over to me. She tossed her hair over her shoulder and revealed the bruise. It looked almost like a flower. Like a tattoo of a something from a spring garden.

"Just what do I do with this?" she hissed.

Like I knew. The only man I would let anywhere near my neck to do such a thing was Ryan McLean, and the our social interaction was limited to conversation in Home Economics. He liked to call me a whore in Spanish. He liked to ask me to help him sew his sweatshirt. That's it. He would never have kissed me on the lips, neck, or anywhere else.

I shrugged. "Wear a turtleneck?" I asked. It seemed like a safe thing. It was winter, after all. Turtlenecks seemed reasonable. But how many days could a girl get away with wearing a turtleneck before she stirred her parents' suspicion?

But Tammy was panicked. She was spending the night at my house and she hadn't packed a turtleneck. How was she going to sneak in past her mother the next day? How was she going to get rid of it before we had to go back to school on Monday?

Later that night when my mother picked us up from the dance, I slid into the backseat of the station wagon first so I could monitor the way Tammy's hair moved, so I could rearrange her long curls in a way that left the bruised skin buried under layers of perm.

Before we'd left the dance, girls who'd had hickeys before had come up to Tammy and dispensed advice. A comb. Green eyeshadow. Sleeping on flannel. Aloe. I tucked all these things into the back of my head, in case I'd ever need them.

It would be years. Years.

The hickeys I've gotten have been mistakes. Accidental hickeys, not purposeful, not the kind middle schoolers are intent on giving when they're hiding from the chaperones in the dark corners at a dance.

I'm a bruiser. I can brush against something and get a welt. It doesn't take much. And it must not have taken much the summer before I moved to Minnesota. This was the first mark that ever got me in trouble, and I didn't even know it was there. I was waiting tables during a Saturday lunch shift. My first customers of the day were two roadies--rough and dirty truckers--who were rolling through town towing equipment for a circus. Their manners were few, and their approach was less than subtle. They whistled when I walked away. They called me cutie and sweetie and sugar-pie. They said, "Want to come with us? Want to ride to the next town with us?"

I smiled and poured them some more water. They'd wanted Bloody Marys, but it was before noon and we couldn't serve alcohol before noon. "As much as I'd love that, I just can't," I said.

"Why not?" one asked.

"I'm just not the type of girl who unties her apron and follows strange men out to their trucks so she can ride to the next small town with them," I said. "You have to be a certain kind of girl to do that."

"Yeah?" the other asked. "And what type is that?"

"A little wild," I said. "I'm just not."

"Well," one of the truckers said, sipping his water, "that hickey on your neck begs to differ."

I thought he was joking. I thought he was teasing. I laughed. "Right," I said. "That hickey."

"Oh no," the trucker said. "I think someone needs to go to the bathroom and have a look."

I shrugged it off, grinned, and turned to leave. I told them to enjoy their meals and to let me know if they needed anything. But on my walk back to the kitchen I thought back to the night before, to the sweltering heat and the upstairs bedroom and the boy whose bed was just a mattress on the floor. I thought back to the candles and the piles of clothes on his bedroom floor. I thought about the music playing in the background. I thought about the snake he owned and kept in a giant Tupperware container on his dresser. I thought about the wooden floor creaking when I left at three AM.

It was possible there was something there. It was possible I didn't see it when I came back home for a few hours of sleep before work. It was possible I didn't see it as I squinted my way through getting ready in the morning. And when I got into the restaurant's kitchen and reached for the small compact one of the older waitresses kept under a stack of miniature doilies, I saw that it was more than just possible. It was true. It wasn't much of a hickey, but it was something. A little ring of yellow bruise, a few small pinpricks of broken blood vessels. I wondered if my father had seen it that morning. The thought made me want to die.

After the truckers paid their bill and left a ten dollar tip, I went to the bathroom and shook my hair out of its ponytail. I let it fall down to my shoulders so it could cover the small mark. I prayed the rest of my customers wouldn't catch a glimpse of it, frown into their French onion soups, think their waitresses was loose and wild. No one except roadies towing carnival equipment rewarded a waitress with a hickey.

But that was one of the last times a hickey was a problem for me, until recently. I thought I was past the age where hickeys would be a problem. I thought I was immune to them.

I thought wrong.

It was November. I was in Minnesota. I was visiting all my favorite people, and I was staying at Katy and Matt's, in their spare bedroom. I had an air mattress and a big mess of blankets, and one night that air mattress and that big mess of blankets went unused because I spent the night at New Boy's house. The next morning I woke up and rolled over and said good morning to New Boy. He sort of just stared at me.

"What's wrong?" I asked, because he looked vaguely terrified.

"You're going to hate me," he said.

When I went into the bathroom and leaned in close to the mirror I saw what he was talking about. A hickey. A surprisingly large hickey that stretched across the right side of my neck.

"Oh my God," I said to the mirror. This was it. This was real. This was something I had to worry about. I pictured my father picking me up from the airport, seeing the mark and frowning, giving me a lecture about morals and standards and about being a good girl. I pictured my students catching the slightest glimpse and gossiping about it. Our English teacher is quite the ho, the girls would say. Their eyebrows would raise. Yeah, the boys would agree, and they'd elbow each other in the ribs. She sure is.

For the rest of the afternoon--including lunch at Chipotle--I zipped myself into my coat and flipped the neck up, even though it was too warm for such measures. When we got back to Katy and Matt's, they handed me a laptop and told me to start googling hickey remedies.

What I found was a goldmine of information spread across the web. Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen year old girls (and some boys, too) had built giant discussion boards on the subject. There were millions upon millions of posts. People wrote mini-essays on the proper application of treatments. They wrote humorous paragraphs about fooling their parents. They wrote about remedies that hadn't worked, that had made their hickeys worse.

I decided the best course of action would be intense. I needed to layer treatments. I needed to try everything I could. After all, in less than forty-eight hours I would be back in New York, and I would be conferencing with students and teaching them about all things English.

First, I combed the hickey. Then I rolled a frozen spoon over the mark. Over and over and over. Then I combed again. Then I did what one girl who signed her post as sugarnspice16 suggested: I lathered the hickey with deodorant. She didn't supply a medical reasoning behind the remedy, but I didn't care. I was willing to do anything.

The next morning I woke up and the hickey was almost completely gone. It was a miracle. It was amazing. I wished I could go back in time to that one Valentine's Day dance where my best friend got her giant hickey and tell her it was okay, that we'd take care of it, that I knew exactly what to do. But I couldn't do that, of course. I gathered that knowledge over ten years too late to help her, but at least I could help myself. And at least I was spared embarrassment (except for that which I suffered at the hands of Katy and Matt and Rachel and Dan and Megan and Diana, who all saw me in the hours after it happened). I still think it was one of the funniest things that ever happened to me--I never would've thought to account for that as I was packing my suitcase for the trip to Minnesota--and even though I had to worry about it eons later than everyone else, I'm glad it happened. Maybe someday I'll have a daughter who comes home from a dance with her head hanging at an odd angle, with her hair arranged just so. Maybe I'll put my arm around her shoulders and take her into the bathroom. I will draw back her hair and see the raw flush of blood and bite that's been etched into her neck, and I will know what to do. It's okay, I'll say as I stroke her forehead and reach for the comb, for the deodorant. Let's take care of this before your father sees.

Yesterday

Yesterday was the first day of the spring semester. I met all three of my new advanced writing classes, one of which is loaded down with students from last semester's all-engineer composition class. They're all boys--darling, darling boys who constantly grumbled about writing but liked me and the way I organized class enough to come back for more torture.

When I stepped off the elevator yesterday they were lounging in the lobby area, spreading themselves over couches and chairs.

It was wonderful to see them. I felt like it was one of those important dramatic moments in a musical--a moment when music would swell up from the pit, heavy on the trumpets and tubas.

"Helloooo, boys," I said.

They all broke into smile. Big goofy boy smiles. "Helloooo, Jess," they said. Then they all started talking at once. They talked about their other classes and teachers, about the hot girl they were going to miss from last year's class, about their girlfriends, about how they hate World Civ and Chemistry and Calculus.

I wanted to put them in my pocket and carry them around for the rest of the day, so I could pull them out at random and make them amuse me. They made me feel like this is going to be a pretty badass semester. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Things from Better Times

Right now I have a pair of earrings sitting on my dresser. These are not my earrings, nor are they the earrings of anyone close to me. These are earrings that belong to a girl I've never met, a girl who is now spoken of only in whispers, a girl who inspires a very violent reaction in my cousin if ever her name makes it above a whisper.

These earrings belong to my cousin's ex-girlfriend. Belonged. Now they belong to me.

They belong to me because at our family party my cousin drank an awful lot of wine and then shuffled into his room. A minute later he was back at the table and opening his fist to reveal a tangle of jewelry. There were necklaces. There were bracelets. There were earrings.

"What's your birthstone?" he asked me.

"Sapphire," I said.

He plucked the bracelet off of his palm and draped it across my wrist. It was sapphire. It had three tiny diamonds.

"No, no," I said. "I can't."

"You have to," he insisted. "I gave them to she-who-cannot-be-mentioned. After she broke my heart she mailed them back to me."

I told my cousin he should pawn them, get whatever money he could for them.

"I'd rather you have it," he said. "I wouldn't get very much money for any of this."

I told him I couldn't accept the bracelet. I just couldn't. That's when his sister frowned and reached over to take it from me. "I can," she said. "I like it."

"How about the earrings?" my cousin asked. "You like earrings. Take the earrings!"

The earrings were silver and delicate. They had jade insets. He jingled them in front of my face. "Take them, please," he said. "I don't want to look at them anymore."

He was red-faced, looking a little like he'd been brined. He'd had an awful lot to drink, and it was bringing out a certain kind of desperation I was familiar with.

After Ex-Keith took an axe to my heart and told me we were through, I went through my room with a giant box clamped under my arm. I swept things into that box: his t-shirts, pictures, gifts, dried flowers, his hat, notes, CDs, anything that reminded me of him. I thought that would make the process easier. I thought the things no longer being there would somehow make me forget him faster. It didn't. Now there were blank spaces on my walls, in my drawers, on my shelves, and I could still remember what had been there.

I found this box when I moved back to New York this summer. It was out in the office, stacked against the wall, stacked with other boxes of mine: college work, old CDs, stuffed animals. Those other boxes were appropriately labeled. The college work box said Jess's College Work. The old CD box said Jess's CDs and the stuffed animals were labeled Jess's Stuffed Animals. The one box that stood out--Keith's box--was labeled Items Belonging to a Pathological Liar.

The box was lighter now. I'd never unpacked it completely, but I had gradually removed things from it when I felt better. I removed even more things when Keith and I started speaking again, then even more when we started dating again.

The box has a new life now. I packed it full of Minnesota stuff, stuff that will need to follow me wherever I go next. I didn't bother to cross off its label--probably because it made me laugh so hard when I found it--but that makes me feel good. It's nice to be able to laugh at something that was so deathly serious, something that felt like it was piercing your lungs, something that felt like it was going to kill you if you let it. I didn't let it.

And I know my cousin won't let this kill him, either. And I will take the earrings (but not the necklace--it had butterflies on it, and I don't do butterflies) so that my cousin can get those things out of his sight. So he can start getting used to the new emptiness that exists where they used to. So he can move on to the next phase of pushing all the little memories away. In a few years I'm sure we'll have some more wine and I'll remind him of those earrings. He will laugh as he remembers how he felt like he needed those things out of his sight that second. He will tell me how funny and strange it all is, all the heartbreak and the healing, all the things he thought were going to put him under but never did.

The Christian Singles Are After Me

The word dating scares me.

This is probably because I've never been very good at it. I'm a little too spastic and nervous to be a good dater, a confident dater, a girl who is able to go on many dates with many boys. My roommate Megan is the exact opposite. She is addicted to dating. She will go on a date with anyone, even boys she's not exactly attracted to. She has a good attitude about it. She thinks everyone deserves at least one chance. Actually, they deserve more than that. If Megan has a bad first date with someone, she will still say yes to a second date because she's as big a believer of second chances as she is of first chances.

I wish I could be like that. I think it requires a certain strength that I don't have.

The notion of dating is everywhere lately. It bombards me on the TV, in my e-mail, even when I go out to dinner with my girlfriends. Everybody's dating or talking about dating.

Twice this month I've received an e-mail with this subject line: THOUSANDS OF CHRISTIAN SINGLES ARE WAITING FOR YOU!

Why I got on the list for this particular brand of spam is beyond me. It's not like I'm cruising Christian singles sites. It's not like I'm mooning around and telling people I want some nice Christian fellow to come woo me with sweet talk about Jesus. I don't think Jesus is appropriate first date talk. Of course, what do I know? It's not like I've been going out on a lot of first dates. If we don't count that dinner with one of the nine fingered groomsmen from Katy and Matt's wedding--because he said he wanted us to double for a nice steak dinner, and I'm a girl who likes a fine steak, even if it means informing Katy I have no interest in this groomsman, even though he's a very nice boy and she better not tell him there's going to be some kissing at the end of the night--if we don't count that night, then I went on approximately two first dates while I was in Minnesota.

I'm not a dater. The boys I've known and loved have sort of just fallen into my lap. But I'm wondering if that needs to change. I'm not getting any younger, after all, and my friends are slowly but surely moving in with significant others, getting engaged, and getting married. This makes me nervous.

A few nights ago I was sitting in front of the television and the new commercial Match.com is running flashed on. It's a slick commercial. Clever. The whole thing is shown in black and other very dark, very stealthy colors. The voice-over is calming, whisperish. It's okay to just look, it says.

Oh, I hate myself for admitting this, but I looked. Later that night I logged on to Match.com to see what kind of Buffalo men were advertising themselves as single and ready to date. The results weren't amazing, but I did find one man whose profile showcased wit and impeccable grammar. That made me feel a little better.

But it's not like I'm willing or ready to throw myself into the dating ring. I guess I'm still being a silly girl and hoping for some grand, beautiful gesture that will just come around on its own. Without any work on my part. I just want to stand here and have the right man fall down next to me. Maybe when I look down I'll be surprised to see he's someone I already know. Maybe he will be a complete stranger. I just want it to happen naturally and easily. I don't want to have to worry about first dates, first impressions, good outfits, the right hairdo, appropriate conversation topics, that dreaded uncomfortable first-date silence.

I just want a boy to be with, and I just want him now.

The Same Difference

When I was in grad school, the creative writing program often set up mini-conferences for its students when visiting writers swung into town for Good Thunder readings. I landed myself in a couple of these mini-conferences over the three years I was there, but there is only one that I will remember so clearly for the rest of my days. I won't name the author--that would just be catty and rude--but I will tell you the author was a he, a he who was full of swagger and bravado, so much so that being in his presence made me feel inferior because I am not a man, nor full of any swagger or bravado of my own.

Before the conference, I submitted one of my newest stories for this visiting author to read. At the time I was pretty proud of this story, which was about a girl who had a bad case of pica--a condition where a person eats dirt, stones, hair--anything considered nonnutritive. The girl enrolled in group therapy and met Adam, who was in for Depersonalization Disorder. He felt phantom limbs and was significantly detached from reality. I made the two of them fall in love and move in together, against doctor's orders.

I liked the two of them. They were quirky and weird. But that was also a problem. I was too wrapped up in quirky and weird to make them real. I realize that now, but back then I was still developing my sense of story. This was the last thing I wrote before I went through my big change, on the other side of which I was writing stories like mad, and all of them made it into my thesis. The story I submitted for this conference didn't make it anywhere near my thesis.

Still, it's not horrible. And the visiting author didn't think so either.

"You're going to be published soon," he told me after I settled into a chair opposite him.

I couldn't help myself--I beamed. That was good news, and I didn't mind hearing it out loud. But then I looked closely at the visiting author. He seemed to be frowning. He didn't seem particularly happy about what he'd just said.

"There's a market for writers like you," he said. He told me I was wrapped up in my pretty words and sentence structure. "This is poetic," he said, but when he said poetic his nose wrinkled.

I flipped open a notebook and started recording his criticisms. He didn't like the way my characters talked. He thought it was too clever. He got worked up about my writing T-shirt as t-shirt. "It's called a T-shirt because the shirt actually looks like an uppercase T," he said. He flapped his arms in the air, illustrating. "See? Not a lowercase t."

I opened my eyes wide and nodded, like I was amazed, like I'd never considered that before. "I see," I said.

"Where are you from?" he asked.

"New York," I said. That's a knee-jerk response. New York is a big state, and you'd think people wouldn't automatically assume you mean the city when you say New York, but they do.

"Yeah," he said. "That makes sense. You know what's irritating about writers like you?"

My gulp was probably audible. "What?" I asked.

"You have no sense of place. Your stories always default to New York City. You just assume that your readers have been there, know what it's like, and will automatically get that this story is taking place in the big city," he said.

"This story doesn't take place in New York," I said. In fact, half of it took place in the tropics, after the couple went on vacation. The rest of the story took place in the girl's house, which featured a giant deck and lawn. I haven't seen too many full size houses with decks and lawns in Manhattan. "Also, I'm from Buffalo. Not the city."

But the visiting author didn't seem too concerned with the giant difference between Buffalo and New York City. He waved his hand in the air and continued to page through my story. "Same difference," he said.

I stopped writing things down after that.

Still, every time I start a new story I can hear him in the back of my head. Place! he says. Place! But that's not me. Some authors are authors of place. I'm not. I like to think of myself as a writer of characters, someone who thinks the people she's writing about are the most important part of a story, not the population or demographics of where they're living. That's not to say there aren't times when the place becomes a character in a story, times when it plays a giant part in forming the characters of the story, but that rarely happens in my writing.

Of course, me thinking that doesn't always silence the visiting author's voice that squawks The trouble with writers like you is... during the writing or editing process. Still, I'm pretty good at flipping a switch and filtering all that stuff out. If I didn't, I feel like I'd be regressing in my writing style, and my stories would all begin the way they did when I was eleven years old:

Sandy and Ricky are best friends. Sandy lives in a white house with blue shutters. She has long brown hair. She is tall. Ricky lives in an old apartment with green wallpaper. He is short. They like to play Twister. Ricky likes Twinkies. Sandy likes grapes. They are ten years old. They go to school at Franklin McLean Middle School.

And who could read more than a paragraph of that?

The First of the Firsts

Usually monumental changes don't come announced. Often they aren't realized until they've passed and a person has had enough time and distance to look back and say, "That day. Oh, yes. That was the day I learned the value of such-and-such."

But when I was seventeen years old I had a moment that didn't want to be one of those quiet, subversive moments. It wanted to make itself known. It was the first time I ever looked at a boy and he looked at me and in that second I knew that if he leaned in and kissed me, if he took me up in his arms and said Come with me, I would have gone, and I would have slept with him.

It was a startling feeling. I'd thought about sex before, of course. When I was sixteen I had my first big love, and there was a day when I thought it might happen. There was a window of opportunity. The boy had a few hours where he could slip away before he had to be to work, and he called to ask if I was interested.

"Do you want me to come over?" he asked. I was sitting on my parents' bed. I had the phone cord wrapped around my ankle. When he asked me that question, I pulled that cord tight. It was so tight I thought it might break and his question would go spinning off into obscurity, like it'd never come through the wire. He might think we got cut off before I heard the question. I almost wanted him to think that. I wanted to get cut off and I wanted him to go to work, to not call back. That was easier than answering the question. The answer, of course, was complicated and murky. The answer was yes, I wanted him to come over. The answer was also no, no, no I did not want him to come over.

I'd thought and talked about a lot of hypothetical sex, but in that second I had to open my mouth and offer a real-life answer to a real-life question. I tried to think about what would happen if I said yes. He would come over. I would make him park his car in the garage so my grandparents wouldn't drive by, worry, stop in, or--worse--make a call to my parents. And then what? Where would we go? My room? My parents' room? How would it start? I imagined fumblings, some breathy kisses. But what was I supposed to do with my socks? Nothing I'd ever seen on TV or in the movies explained what to do with socks. I couldn't think of a graceful way to get rid of them, but I couldn't imagine standing there completely naked with a boy for the first time, save for a pair of white ankle socks.

And what's a girl supposed to do with those questions? I told this boy no, I didn't want him to come over. I told him to go to work. I told him the timing wasn't right and there would be too much stress. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't be around in a few months, that I wouldn't get a second chance. But he wasn't around, and I didn't get my second chance. And I found it hard to get out of bed and go on with my life after he was gone from it.

But I had to get out of bed. I had to go to work at my very first job. I was waitressing at one of the several cozy country cafes my hometown boasted. This place had a driving range, a putt-putt, and it hosted a yearly tractor pull in its backyard. The interior was decorated entirely with strawberries. Strawberry wallpaper. Strawberry paintings. Strawberry-shaped napkin holders. Strawberry flour canisters. Strawberry knickknacks. On Sunday mornings the kitchen staff loaded one whole side of a warmer with corned beef hash. The pies were homemade. I had to buss my own tables and make sundaes and milkshakes, and it seemed that the only time all these things needed doing at once was when it was impossibly busy. There were only ever two waitresses on a dinner shift, so sometimes things got so hard I wanted to take a few minutes to go have a cry in the bathroom.

But I loved working there, and I loved waitressing. I especially loved my Sunday shifts, when I started at one and worked until close. Sundays were usually long, leisurely days with less tip potential but a lot of regular customers. Sundays were also the days I worked with my favorite waitress--a thirtysomething with long blond hair. She was the type who'd been around the block more than once, who smoked, who said wise things when we sat sharing a slice of caramel-apple pie. She thought I was cute. I thought she was funny.

I also loved the Sunday-shift cooks, girls my age who attended the school district that was next to mine. They had short boy haircuts and they swore a lot. They knew the boy I had loved--the boy I'd turned down--and they said mean things about him, which pleased me to no end. I wanted to hate him, and they were helping me do it. At night, after we flipped the sign to CLOSED, we would switch off the country radio station and slide in a CD we could dance and sing to. I ran the vacuum, flipped the salad bar, wiped down the tables, and restocked the bathrooms while the girls scoured the grill and washed the floors. We all sang and sang and sang.

The Sunday-shift cooks were good for more than just singing, for more than making me a veal cutlet whenever I wanted one. They were also good because they were friends with two very beautiful boys. These boys were older boys, and they were very tall. They ducked whenever they entered the restaurant or whenever they shuffled between the smoking and non-smoking sections.

It was a snowy Sunday the first time I ever saw them. They rode up to the restaurant on their snowmobiles, which they parked in the parking lot like they were Buicks instead of Ski-Doos. The cooks, who had squealed and crowded around the window to watch the arrival after they heard the first rev of the motors coming our way, patted at their hair and wiped the crumbs from their jeans. And then the side door swung open and in walked the boys, looking like they'd just stepped out of a glossy outdoor living magazine, like they'd taken a break from shooting a spread about winter recreation. One was blond, one was dark-haired. The dark-haired one was taller and skinnier, and I loved him from the first second he turned his eyes on me. His name was Mike, and he stood there looking at me with his pink-cheeks and his toothy grin. The cooks introduced us, but then I quickly went on my way. I didn't want to step on any toes, after all. It was extremely clear that the girls liked Mike and his friend, and who was I to sit down at the counter with them and try to flash a smile or bat my eyelashes to get a little attention?

But then their Sunday visits started to become a habit, and if ever there was a Sunday when they didn't come by on their snowmobiles to drink hot chocolate and order hamburgers--medium-well, no onion, American cheese--I would sulk as I flipped over the CLOSED sign. I started spending my Sundays turning an ear toward the doors, hoping to hear the far-off rumble of two sleds flying over the snowy driving range.

Mike and his friend showed up one Sunday night shortly after we'd gotten slammed. There wasn't an empty table in the entire restaurant, and people were sitting at the counter waiting to be seated. The peppy thirtysomething and I were doing the best we could, but we were falling behind. We were dying. I was fantasizing about running into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me, and sitting on top of the toilet to have my cry.

I didn't even have time to appreciate the boys' entrance, which was always spectacular: the tamping-off of snow, the harsh metallic hiss of unzipping, the tousling of the matted-down hair. Instead, I dashed from table to table, delivering meatloaf and ruebens and hot turkey sandwiches. The boys waited their turn at the counter, and when they finally got seated I ended up as their waitress. They sat at a two-top next to the swinging door that separated smoking from non-smoking. Mike wanted a burger. He also wanted a chocolate milkshake. I looked around the restaurant--at the other two tables that had just gotten seated, at the two that I hadn't yet been to--and I wanted to kill him. A chocolate milkshake? Now? Was he kidding me?

The ice cream was too hard. I had to put it in the microwave to even be able to work a scoop through it. I spilled milk. I spilled chocolate syrup. I worried I'd filled the metal canister too full and that it would explode everywhere. The peppy thirtysomething had already accidentally sent the coffee maker into a double-brew, which caused an entire pot's worth of decaf to cascade over the counter and onto the floor. There was a small non-caffeinated pond we tracked through for hours, until we were finally able to stop running and clean it.

But the milkshake maker whirred on normally, and I yanked the finished shake off the beater and ran it back to their table in record time. But I was disappointed and sad. I wasn't able to linger at their table like usual. I wasn't able to breeze by and wag the ties of my apron at them. I wasn't able to put my hand on Mike's shoulder and say, "How does it taste, Mike? Is it delicious?"

But even after I brought the boys their check, dumped it on their table, and ran off after the old lady who was complaining that there was no more ranch dressing on the salad bar, those boys stayed. They cleared their own dishes. They wadded up their napkins and placemats. They went behind the counter and filled a bucket with soapy water. They found two rags and a buss bin, and they started going around the restaurant, clearing dirty tables, washing them down, and setting them with silverware.

It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. I thought it was perfect. I thought it was love. I thought it was romantic.

I still do.

An hour and a half later the restaurant had calmed down. I had two tables left, and they were taking their time over cheesecake and coffee. The rest of the place was clean and orderly, thanks to the boys. They were now sitting at the counter with their own cups of coffee. I went and sat next to Mike. I put my head on his shoulder.

"It's okay," he said. "Everything worked out."

They stayed. They stayed and stayed and stayed. All the tables finally left, and we flipped the sign to CLOSED. I dragged out the vacuum cleaner and started working on my closing duties. The boys talked to the cooks and ate a couple baskets of french fries.

A few minutes later, one of the cooks asked me if I'd fill the giant yellow janitorial bucket with sanitizer and water for her so they could start scrubbing the grease off the floor. I said I would, so I swung my way through the non-smoking door and headed to the tiny space that was concealed behind the salad bar, in a tiny room that jutted off parallel to the bathrooms. When you were in that tiny room you were completely blocked off from the entire restaurant. You could hide there. You could cry there. You could take your first deep breath of the night there.

And I did. I wheeled the bucket over to the spout, poured the bleach powder into it, ran the hot water. As it filled, I leaned back against the wall and closed my eyes. The next thing I knew Mike was putting his arms around me and picking me straight up off my feet. I hovered a few inches from the ground, suspended in his arms.

I thought, Oh my God. He's going to kiss me. He's going to kiss me.

I had never wanted something more, not even the last boy I loved.

The water was running. Steam was rising up from the stomach of the yellow bucket. The whole world smelled like deep fryer and bleach.

"Hi," Mike said.

"Hi," I said.

He put me down. He let me go. He took a step away from me, but only for a second, only long enough for him to snake his arm around the corner and grab a chunk of ice from the bottom of the salad bar. Then he came back to me. He backed me against the wall, which was tinny and hollow-sounding. He placed the ice on the tender spot where my jawbone joined my neck. It immediately started melting, and a thin river of water ran down my neck and under the collar of my shirt.

"Does that feel good?" he asked.

I couldn't breathe or talk, so I nodded.

"Do you like it?" he asked.

This time I managed speech. "Yes," I said.

The steam was all around us. The water was going to overflow, but I didn't care. I closed my eyes. I waited. He moved the ice downward, following the path that had first been cut by the melted water. When I opened my eyes and looked at him there was an entirely new feeling inside me. It was something definable and tangible. I swore I could reach into my stomach and pluck this feeling out as if it were solid. It was hot and heavy. It was part understanding and part wanting. I didn't care about socks or what I would do with them at that second. I didn't care about how clumsy things would be. I didn't care about anything except the way his body was pressing against mine and how it could go on like this forever and I would be happy.

If he asked me, I would go. If he kissed me, I would let him lift me up and take me out of that place.

But none of that happened. Instead, one of the cooks called for him, told him to hurry up and come help her, and he sighed a sigh that I could feel in my own chest. He let go of the ice and it slid along under my shirt, into my bra. I left it there to melt as I watched him smile apologetically and back out of the tiny room. I wanted to stand for a minute and think about what had just happened. I wanted to memorize that feeling in case I would never feel it again. I wanted to remember that moment just the way it was, because nothing would ever be the same ever again, and I knew it.

But I couldn't just stand. I had to save the bucket from overflowing. I had to push it out to the kitchen, where Mike would take it from me and start working on the coffee and chocolate stains that dotted the floor.

I have never felt anything as simple and authentic as that first moment where I understood what my body wanted, and I have never loved anyone the way I loved that boy that night. It was a pure love, one that never had the occasion to be messed up by real life. It was just a few seconds of recognition and wanting. It was the first time I ever said yes inside my head.

Nothing ever came of it. The boys still came by on most Sundays, but this was after I learned that one of the cooks was in love with Mike--and it was a hard, hard love, a love that I could identify with--and I knew that I could never again let him back me into a corner and put his hands on me as if they belonged there, no matter how much they did.

I met Keith not too long after that busy Sunday night, and I stopped working at the restaurant so I could go off to college. I haven't seen Mike in eight years, but every once in awhile I can reach back into my memory and bring up that night, and I can lean back and close my eyes and breathe in and feel the press of his body against mine. I live in there, right there in that tiny room, for just a second and then I can open my eyes and face the world again, knowing that there's so much more to come. So much more.

Found

In the last few hours I have found the following things:

#1: Student evaluations scored and delivered to my inbox. Two of my favorite responses include:

Very good Professor. Deffiently knows what she is doing.

(Maybe I need to start teaching spelling.)

oh my god jess is soooooooooo sweet and easy going... probably the best english teacher i ahve ever had!!!!

(Boy or girl? Boy or girl? I wonder who wrote that...)


#2: A note to myself that I wrote between the hours of 10:00 PM and 3:00 AM on New Year's. It says:

Amy wants her gravestone to read: She liked cheese.

Good News for Virgos

In June I'm going to criticize a girlfriend's too-tight pants. On August 11th men won't be able to take their eyes off me. On the 28th of October I am supposed to have an alfresco quickie (suggested location: a golf course after dark).

This information is courtesy of the 2007 edition of Cosmo's Bedside Astrologer, a pull-out from their magazine that predicts the luck in lust and love that will be granted to the astrological signs in each of the twelve coming months.

I love the Bedside Astrologer and all its trashiness. My first year in Minnesota I snipped a copy of the Bedside Astrologer and brought it into the office. I felt the need to share the intimate secrets I was learning about the year ahead, and so I went around the room and asked everyone their sign. Then I read their predictions, their types, their personality profiles.

The Bedside Astrologer told Greg that it was okay to admit he longed to be swept off his feet. It told Katy that she craved a man who could coax out her raunchy side. It told Ryan he was a fiery-type, one who longed to go on adventurous dates like surfing.

This year, the Bedside Astrologer is telling me my best day for love will by July 17th. My best day for sex will be August 14th. Apparently I'm going to have a good summer.

But what I find most interesting--more interesting, in fact, than the month-by-month run-down of my year--is the sections that are devoted to analyzing the men of each astrological sign and the section that compares the signs to see who would be the best lovers and the best significant others.

Awhile back, I confessed to not having a type (except for my obsession with dishwashers and Republicans), but I guess that's not really the whole truth. I have a thing for Virgos. Both Ex-Keith and the Wily Republican--as well as some lesser men--have been Virgos, and those two were my Big Loves. Since I'm a Virgo, I understand Virgos. And because I think I understand them I fool myself into thinking I could predict things about them, that I could understand what they were thinking about me. That, of course, wasn't ever really the case.

But the Bedside Astrologer says that a Virgo-Virgo love connection is good. It can be stable and warm and loving. But that's not really who the Bedside Astrologer thinks I should be with. Virgos, they're okay, but I need someone with a little more pep, a little less anal retentiveness. The Bedside Astrologer has some suggestions. It thinks I should be with a Taurus or, even better, a Scorpio.

The Bedside Astrologer says Taurus boys are the types who would rescue stray dogs. They would be the type to put me on a pedestal. They would also give me something described as "tender nooky."

Scorpios, though, they're the best bet says the Bedside Astrologer. They suggest Virgos marry Scorpios when at all possible because they would have "head-spinning sex." A Scorpio would make a Virgo-girl feel safe.

Important things to note. It's good to enter the new year armed with this type of knowledge. And the Bedside Astrologer doesn't stop there--in fact, it goes as far to tell its readers the special sex trick each astrological sign craves. Pleasing a Taurus man involves light nuzzling and kissing from behind his ear to the hollow of his throat. Pleasing a Scorpio man is all in the build-up. Talking dirty and expressing what you're going to do is the key to making him happy.

And I know these things must be true, must be considered gospel, because when I flipped to the Leo section--just to see if I'd done right by an ex of mine, who happens to be a Leo--I saw that you're supposed to appeal to a Leo's competitive side. The Bedside Astrologer suggested strip poker. And that made me think of that one summer a few years ago when I ended up sitting in a musty kitchen, balancing on a rickety chair that was meant to be porch furniture, and looking across the table at boys who were losing clothes fast as a mean tournament of Euchre raged on. And outside, the frogs were singing and a warm summer rain was beating on the roof of my car. You could hear it through the screen door. You could hear it like it was music, like it was the best thing you ever heard.

The later-on-part of that night didn't turn out so bad, so maybe the Bedside Astrologer is on to something. Maybe it's time I tucked those suggestions away and waited for my Taurus or Scorpio to come find me. Maybe this will be a good year. Maybe things will finally feel right.

Happy New Year!

The day before New Year's I read that certain Latin cultures believe that by wearing red underwear on New Year's Eve you secure good luck in love for yourself in the coming year. Want to guess what color underwear I was wearing last night?

Here are the night's highlights:



We went to Cole's, where we ate plenty of free chicken wings and drank plenty of double vodkas. All night we were in close proximity to our favorite bartender of all time: Harry. His real name is Marty, but he'll always be Harry to me.



Boys + Beer= This Photo.




Look at that pink wristband on Amy's wrist. It gave us access to the upstairs party room--because we're so VIPs--and all the cubed cheese platters.




The upstairs party room had stained glass windows that showcased the retro Sabres logo.




The upstairs party room also had giant wreaths, bags of balloons suspended in wait on the ceiling, and lots of stacked chairs. Did I mention the cubed cheese?




We didn't spend all the time upstairs, though. We floated downstairs to love up on some other people. Like...




... these boys.




I think this is a picture of Steph saying, "Yeah? Yeah? Let me see what you've got 2007! Bring it on! Want some of my vodka?"