Kavanaugh Hearings

I am so full of emotions I don't even know where to begin. I am grateful I work in a mostly female office and we could watch and yell at the TV. I felt truly scared by Lindsey Graham. This is who we have governing us? This angry, powerful toddler? How dare you ask if the probably assaulter has gone through hell. His life is not ruined. At the end of this he will be in charge of my life or be filthy rich and underemployed. I do not feel sorry for you.

My brain does not compute this level of lying. He must have forgotten? There is an alternate reality? I believe Dr. Ford. Why would she lie? Have I lied before? Have I been confused before? He is so sure. I was raised to think people are good, so when people lie so confidently I start to believe them too. A girl I went to summer camp with was a kleptomaniac. There was proof on proof of everything she stole. Our counselors had us sit in a circle with her. I still don't know why--hoping for confession? Hoping for forgiveness? She lied and lied and cried and lied and I said, "Okay, I believe you. I am sorry. I believe you." There's no way she didn't do it. I just didn't understand how she could be so strongly dishonest. I could never. I don't understand.

I don't care you got into Yale and have good grades. I don't care you have friends who are girls. You'll notice your victim didn't need to spend an hour reading letter from people saying she is honest. Because that's nuts. She is honest because it didn't occur to her she wasn't. I hope your lies eat you from the inside like mold. You couldn't stop yourself from lying even to admit you watched Ford's testimony. It came so easy to you. You want to control my body. You lifted weights and had difficult football camps. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.

I asked my co-worker, "What would you do if you were him and it was true?" She said kill herself. I say I'd step down. If it weren't true, if it might be true, if I don't remember I'd step down. This is bigger than you. The country doesn't revolve around you. You are lucky to have been considered now can we please have someone Good? It's not fair. You would know that if you hadn't been given every privilege in the book. Sometimes you don't get the job for a reason you can't control. Sometimes you don't get the job for the best reason there has ever been.

I try to organize my new bookshelf but I lay down and read all the women coming forward with their stories. It is disgusting we have to band together to share our traumas to make some people believe there was a possibility Ford experienced hers. A writer shares her rape on Instagram in the morning and smiles coming in an hour later. It's our job to make you know we are okay. I don't want to be seen as overdramatic or too gloomy. I cry on the bed and when I finally come up for air I say, "I'd be down for a Purge."

So Long Sweet Summer

It's Dashboard Confessional. I am not embarrassed. I wish it had never been laughable--the boys screaming their feelings. The popularity of emo could have been an antidote to toxic masculinity.

For every bright notebook aisle at Target, there's a new orange leaf. The darker sky. Six years ago I started grad school in Arizona. I spent most afternoons by the pool with my Theatre Histories textbook and a highlighter. Today I went to the gym's rooftop pool and read Chapter Three in my teacher's edition Theatre History textbook. It was windy, and I could only bear the chill an hour. I call the Senate Committee and my House Rep to say I support the DREAMers.

I've officially lived in Chicago longer than I was in grad school. This saddens me. It's not a surprise. I've been here, you know, watching the planner pages turn, establishing myself, signing leases. But still it happened so fast. I steadied myself on the last thing I had done. I had just moved from the desert. The other people I meet here--some spent one, two, five years in their cities, but it gets washed away in the machine of big shoulders. I join the slop.

From the moment I stepped off the plane in high school, it was my spot. It's my laptop backdrop. My blue and purple scooter plate hangs over my window. Yesterday Puhg and I went on a Labor Day run. We stopped halfway through just to sit and watch the lake. A baby regatta of boats, a seagull, a plastic bag splat into the water. He says the way I feel about our old place is how he feels about his new place.

Some days I feel it too. The neighborhood abuzz with teeny shops and how I can get from my couch to the A____ for a lime & seltzer with Flood in less than ten minutes. People feel overwhelmed by the city, but when I was in Maine I felt so weird not being able to, at any time, walk to a Walgreens. I do not think about trotting four blocks, taking the train, going down Michigan Avenue, spending thirty minutes in an interview, reversing the whole thing. It's so easy I barely pay attention. I jot lesson plans and ding my Ventra card. I'm at the library now and then I will go back across the street to my apartment, eat Cinnamon Toast Crunch, watch Friday Night Lights, and go do a show at i_.