Real

"I feel

like all my insecurities

and mistakes

have been to make me

the person

you love."

South Carolina 2013.

Some Thoughts on Dating (Part III)

Recently realized a sexist thing I think. We all know ladies who date guys and then are hyper aware of their critical opinions. I'm not that way, but even I understand. Like when Kay and I took Poetry I together our sophomore years of college, and I valued his opinion more than anyone else's--despite him being in the bottom half of knowledgable (in terms of that class).

I was thinking about a friend of mine who is very talented, but the guy she's into has a completely different style than she does. Thus, he doesn't appreciate her work. Thus, she doesn't appreciate her work. Super annoying.

Then, I wondered if I knew guys like that, and I realized I have, but in my eyes they've always been victims of pushy and over-bearing girlfriends of doom. Uh oh. I subconsciously always blame the girl! Never fear, I  have been shocked out of my own backwards thinking, and I will go forward with more understanding that sometimes girls who conform have been manipulated and sometimes boys who have been manipulated need to grow more spine spindles.

Bug and Kale at improv rehearsal last Sunday. I took a picture because she looked like she stepped right out of an episode of Dawson's Creek on her way to Lillith Fair. But the ladies of my improv troupe accepted her ANYWAY.

I don't wanna wait for our lives to be over.

I wanna know right now what will it be?

Some Dating Thoughts (Part II)

Magazines are deceptive impish devices. I've talked about this before. I used to love them, but oh man, do they wreck you. After a ten minute browse of Cosmo, I need a new wardrobe and body and boyfriend AND OMG 60 DOLLAR MASCARA I NEED IT.

But.

At some point in my life, probably around ten years ago, after I had exhausted every ounce of copy in a CosmoTeen, I read the Editor's note. And I never forgot it.

In summation: The editor displayed two pictures of herself--a headshot from her 20s (skimpy dress, pouty face) and a school photo from middle school (mini-fro/perm, corduroy pants with zipper undone).  She talked about how she was so much happier in the former. Who friggin cares how she looked? Pretty big idea for an impressionable teen. Then, she went on to discuss how around the time of the sultry pic, she went to a party and saw a super perfect guy there. She approached him as perfect as she could be, and he totally bit the bait. They started dating, and she never actually liked it because she was being what she thought he wanted. She broke up with him, and he was semi-devistated. Of course he was! He had no clue where that came from. She explained subjectivity in success in terms of dating. Whoa. Blew my brace-face brain wide open.

Anyway, those were some pretty rad lessons to learn at that age. And I got them from a semi-vapid place. Thank you, you CosmoTeen editor, wherever you are...

Some Dating Thoughts (Part I)

Kale's boyfriend is a weirdo. Weird-o. Doesn't help one of the first times I met him he was high off Pepto Bismol running around our sketch rehearsal and screaming the N word.

When they started dating, it was like, "Wait. Wut." And then I went away for summer, and in that time they fell in love. When I came back, it didn't take very long at all to see that they are great together. A clear case of a romantic relationship pulling both parties up toward betterment.

Because of Kale, the bf seems more tender. Like, he's still a nutjob, but now, he's like...a nutjob that someone loves. And that someone will take care of him and his nuttiness. We don't have to worry about it. When he starts screaming about harvesting babies (or whatever) in my improv class, no one is worried, "Oh no. This kid is too strange." We look over at Kale, laughing to herself, and believe there's a sweetness to his extremity.

Here dey is at Shells' birthday dinner. April 2012.

I don't think people need to be in relationships. I don't think we're here to become part of a whole. But much to my chagrin, there is a validity involved. I must admit.

The Ataris: March 16, 2012

Yucca Tap Room is a d-i-v-e. I arrived alone--the curse of liking a crappy at best pop-punk band that hit its stride in 2003. I scooted right up to the front and planted myself by the mic.

Kris didn't start setting up until midnight. It was hot. I stood with my arms crossed, but I was inadvertently in the middle of a group of friends. Two super husky girls and two nice guys. One nice guy chatted with me. I was uninterested in making friends, but I couldn't walk away since I had to save my spot. This guy ended up asking me out and gave me his number. This doesn't really happen anymore, and I complain about it: "Remember when guys used to just ask you out at random?!" But, I will not call him. "He doesn't know anything about me. It's too random." Cake--eating it too--something something something.

The Ataris opened with "In This Diary"--highly surprising. And then BOOM EXPLOSION OF CRAZY. I had been to bonkers punk shows in high school, but I always stood far far away. The other times I've seen The Ataris, there was bopping, but not bop-ping. This time? I was shoved, beat, knocked--all before the first chorus. The crowd was insane and moshing like mad. The husky girls were being shoved against the speakers. I understood their husk. Survival!


Kris.

Things that happened:

-As I got ping-ponged around, I noticed a solid hand on my back. I followed it back to a large Mexican woman who looked at me with maternal love. "That's me!" she yelled. "I'm okay!" I yelled as the crowd jostled me. She shook her head. Her arm served as a wall around the hooligans for the first three songs. I was willing to get swept away, but she pulled me close. Said "NO!" to a scrappy little kid with gauges trying to worm his way front.
-When the major crowd-surfing started during "Your Boyfriend Sucks," I got knocked into the middle of the pit and almost fell backwards, but I grabbed the hand of some guy, and he covered me in a bear hug and pulled me sideways. I felt like he had dove from a lifeguard stand to pull me out of the undertow. All these people, holding each other, but then pushing. Like some real drama, but it was self-created. Is that how all problems are. We must rely on one another to save us from the catastrophes we've made for ourselves.
-I felt safe on the side by "Takeoffs and Landings," but, no. Out of nowhere, some guy shoved me right into a moving crowd and I fell the ground. I was about to be tramped when three guys rushed to pick me up. The Mustafa wildebeest scene, people. It occurs to me how absolutely lucky I am to be a girl. People will save me. I did not have to worry about saving anyone else. Unfair, but true.
-It was an all-star setlist, which was kind of a bummer. i wanted some older weird stuff, but the crowd was happy. By the end, I was safely in the very back patch of folks who weren't even singing along. I jumped up and down to "San Dimas." It was over.
-In the bathroom, I checked-in. I was covered in sweat, an earring had been ripped out, my headband long gone, hair everywhere.
-I left and breathed deep in the fresh air. I biked the three miles home unable to hear a darn thing.

Stay who you are. Stay who you are.

LDCAT

Golden Hearts. Germany. June 2011.

Saturday night is Trivia Night apparently. There's a standing date for people in the MFA program to go to this local bar/grill and kick butt at the weekly trivia contest. I decided to go this past weekend. We got second place! But that's not the point of this blog entry. The point:

Festivities start around 8:30, so at 8:15 I was pedaling down a commercial street just off the main hub of weekend nightlife. I was passing closed cleaners and dark bike shops, and then, I passed a Wendy's. It was empty besides a couple sitting in the big glass window. The guy had his arm around the gal, and they were laughing laughs I could not hear. A large yellow Frosty cup sat in front of them. Two spoons sticking out.

THIS IS TRUE LOVE, PEOPLE!

Please note, MY IDEA OF A PERFECT SATURDAY NIGHT IS A MILKSHAKE. If you look up "cheap date" in the dictionary, you find my picture. A picture of me going on my honeymoon to Baskin Robbins.

Think you gotta keep me iced, you don't.
Think I'm gonna spend your cash, I won't.
Even if you were broke, my love don't cost a thing.

Sunny Side Up

Part One

As soon as I saw it, I felt like the entire building was filled with gray clay. Thick, sad bubbles of muck. Two nights ago, somebody egged the beautiful and valuable painting that hangs in the campus concourse.

It made me sadder than if the eggs had been thrown at my own car, home, face. I understand aimed hatred. I don't like it, but I understand it. In fact, in a week in which our entire country felt it necessary to celebrate a murder, I don't blame someone for letting his rage get the best of him...but this? This was just senseless. Really senseless. All that happens: the Student Activities Fund is drained, everyone is sad, no one gets it.

To everyone passing the cherry picker of women scrubbing the yolk off, all we could ask was WHY? WHY? WHY? But, the truth is the answer could be, "Uh...I dunno."

Senselessness is big. It's poofs out sideways and slops over its waistline. We must live with complete alertness because these things MATTER. Yes, I'm a broken record, but choosing NOT to order the Meat Luvers Deluxe pizza is SENSE. Putting your gum in the trash is SENSE. Choosing to refrain from the mean gossip is SENSE.

It's little to us, but it explodes in pig guts, on someone's shoe, in someone's diary as she cries. Having a couple extra eggs and absentmindedly playing darts with a painted angel's wings is SENSELESS.

Part Two

I never look at the painting. But a FIRE within me sprang up yesterday. I noticed it. I pondered the rightness and wrongness of life, of crime and punishment, because of it. Probably given the option, the artist would have preferred her work be defaced in the name of rallying around Right instead of hanging stiffly for decades.

Like the tornado that wiped out the community theatre in one town over from my dad's--it reenergized the town into believing We Fight for Arts Here. And I was there last Saturday when on a new stage, the community players say "Let the Sunshine In."


The egged painting getting touched up today.

They caught the kid who did the egging. Don't know anything else.

Two castmates have just started dating. It's secret, I think. It's sly. I don't know when it happened. I want to think it was when he and I were talking when she walked by. I said, "She's so great at that part." And he said, "Yeah." He beamed like lilac soap and sunny side up in the pan.

Who died? Who made you king of anything?