You're Heavy in My Mouth

I'm gonna start opening my blog with scenes from the movie version of my blog, like they're doing on The L Word with Jenny's movie. JK, this is a blog, not a teevee show. Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids. I find the pressure of an opening paragraph simply too much to bear. Still with me? OK so, someone suggested "Top Ten Things Riese likes to Put in her Mouth" (re: "Top Ten: You Tell Me") or something to that effect. I believe this stemmed from the initial suggestion for "10 Ways to Eat a Reeses," which was an amusing convo I enjoyed watching from my emo cave (also, I provided the answer to this in the comments, should anyone be interested). One week at band camp/boarding school we were plagued with a series of random, lengthy power outages, during which we could perform small bursts of anarchic behavior in the safety of temporary pitch-black-night. Somehow biting and sucking on each other's fingers became one of our favorite past-times. Like many of the witty anecdotes I share here, that looks a lot weirder on the page than it seemed at the time. Anyhow,that'll be number 10.

9. Ice Cream and French Fries...

Are my favorite foods. This seems to surprise people, 'cause unless you're my mother, Ingrid, or it's Summer '07 and your name is Carly, you've probs not seen me eat a lot of french fries or ice cream. That's because I don't want to be happy. In fact, I don't talk much about food on here --probs 'cause: 1. I did once and Hav didn't read my blog that day, 2. My Mom was a nutritionist and taught "food, facts & fun" at the Y and used my bro & I as taste-testers and class-testers, thus the topic is old news to me, 3. 'cause I'm about as qualified to discuss food as I am to muse on Russian literature ... clearly my Lean Pockets & Peanut-Butter-Crackers consumption rate suggests I've got no taste when it comes to food. HA! no TASTE! Get it?!

But since I'm talking about things I wanna put in my mouth, I'm gonna really open up. Let you see the Real Riese. Here's my opinion, in great detail, regarding ice cream & french fries ...

8a. Ben & Jerry's ice cream is the best ice cream ever. E.g., Phish Food, Everything But The ..., Chubby Hubby, Half Baked, Coffee Heath Bar Crunch, Cherry Garcia, Peanut Butter Cup, Mint Chocolate Cookie, Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

8b. Obvs hands down totes Arby's, re: french fries, but there's some noble efforts that challenge the Arby's lockdown (it's the curly fries, specifically). These include Grandma's Kitchen @Interlochen, Red Hot Lovers @Ann Arbor, Applebees, Zen Palate's yam fries, In 'n Out, and the kind made from real potatoes that you get at foodstands like at fairs and stuff.

8c. Also, I like Haagen Dazs Dulce de Leche, cheap Neapolitan ice cream from the deli, Edy's whole fruit bars, those ice cream bars you can buy in Vending Machines or at the case right by the cashier a the corner deli -- Strawberry Shortcake is the best flavor, you know what I'm talking about?, also; Breyer's Cookies & Cream, also ... when eating soft serve: the first bite that is both cone & soft serve is the best, Butter Pecan, my Dad's sundaes = hot fudge & mixed nuts & Breyer's Vanilla, push pops named for cartoon characters, the time I chased the ice cream truck five blocks in my socks 'cause my parents said I could have some if I caught the truck and they figured I wouldn't but I wanted to be Maniac Magee and I did, creamsicles, Friendly's (their sundaes are out of this world, the one with reeses pieces and stuff? OMG so good), walking to Stucchi's in the summertime for the Raspberry Cheesecake Ribbon, Vanilla Almond Fudge Toffuti, Colliders, Dairy Queen Blizzards, dilly bars, the magic shell butterscotch and chocolate when we first discovered it, the final reward of the sundae area at cheap buffet restaurants I loved as a kid, like Ponderosa and OCB, when we went to London for three weeks and all my brother ate was chocolate ice cream, Superman flavored sherbert at Washtenaw Dairy, ice cream with my grandpa at United Dairy Farmers the summer I stopped eating and all the bicycling we did right after because I had to compensate and because that's what he'd been doing, that summer, to compensate for his loss, was fix antique bikes and then we'd ride them. It was a perfect afternoon -- the weather-- Ohio, oh, Ohio. And also; green tea ice cream and mocchi balls -- the gelly outside, the ice cream inside, omg --

We'd bike to Baskin Robbins too, in the summer, Kristyna and I, we felt like adults but also in an Audrey Hepburn movie, and we'd eat our cones outside on the barely stable plastic picnic tables and watch our bikes and look at people and cars. We'd go across the street to Panorama and rent a movie like "The Craft" and ride home and watch it, our legs pulsing like hot ice.

8. Cigarettes
I don't smoke, really, I totally don't smoke. I don't smoke because if I did smoke, it wouldn't be so unbearably delicious when I do smoke -- I wouldn't get lightheaded and dizzy, I wouldn't feel like I was having Grown-Up Candy instead of a pump of an addictive substance.

7. My Fingers
The real reason I get regular manicures is 'cause when I don't, I have a bad habit of eating my fingers. Like, the sides? And biting my nails, obviously, which's why I get black nail polish. Also because I'm cool and I want to be like Linsday Lohan. Was. In 2005. Or whenever. The years just bleed together, when it comes to famous people and wtf they are doing with their super-important lives.

6. Pens & Pencils
Apparently? I don't recall eating my pens, but there's some telling bite marks.

5. I can't talk about because there are children reading this (also, just to be perfectly clear, it does not rhyme with "dock")

4. Milky Way
I used to be the straight-edged innocent, so I'm still surprised every time I find myself in the position of the corrupter rather than the one being corrupted. It's the "me"/"not me" thing -- it's always the "not me" who inspires other people to do "bad things." Like, for example, psychedelic mushrooms. (I am hereby sacrificing my ability to be employed by anyone besides my present employer). But [redacted] months ago, I told a curious friend that when I'd done shrooms before, it was totally mild and not weird, and therefore she should be enthusiastic about giving it a go. I figured since it was a drug that affected psychological capacities, it was best that the psychology be optimistic and determined regarding the next few hours of its function. Howevs, I was totally lying! When I'd done them before ... it was soooo weird! I'm actually totally unexperienced in most areas of druggery, despite my rugged and street-wise exterior. Thus, my one prior shrooming experience was the weirdest I'd ever felt in my life (this second & more recent time -- where I was the one suggesting it, instead of the one it'd been suggested to-- was not weird at all, perhaps you saw the video), fo' sure, like I was making love to a Milky Way bar with my mouth and throat.

Spring Break, March '03: my U-Mich friends were mostly abroad, I was in New York, staying with my ex Mike (all names have been changed) in Astoria. I'd just purchased a coat that was hybrid Bob Dylan/Jordan Catalano (brown, wool lining, sheep whatevs, vintage) and I was wearing it with overpriced jeans and a green Hollister hoodie. My hair was platinum blonde. My mood that (near) spring was a kind of bursting optimism & fluttering excitement because I'd just left a dull domestic relationship and was working on my senior thesis -- as a creative writing student, my thesis was a short story collection, a culmination of everything I'd done thus far in life. I felt very much on the verge, etc. I'd doubled my eyeliner application.

I had a small dinner & several drinks at The Yaffa Cafe in Soho with an Interlochen bestie while texting Blake, my new paramour back in Michigan. After dinner I went to the Olive Garden to meet up with Mike -- I'd met Mike there in '00, we'd worked together as servers and he was a bartender now -- I had a few more free drinks while everyone finished their tables. Blake called: he was drunk, he missed me ... he told me he was falling in love with me. I said something that meant "I've had a great deal of free drinks and I feel like a shooting star" but sounded like "Me too." I was also falling in love with me, too, though (not Blake yet, but I would eventually), and I was falling in love with falling, and so, when Mike asked if I wanted to do shrooms, I said okay. A group of OG employees -- friends & strangers -- returned to Mike & Brian's apartment in Astoria.

And so we did said drugs. There was lots of Hospitaliano. The ceiling was moving like a tricky Magic Eye cartoon. Things were carved in the ceiling -- animals, maybe, or just a design, maybe the animals were in my mind. I opened and closed my eyes, but saw the ceiling just the same. I opened my eyes and was faced with Mike's eyes and he told me to open my mouth and I did, and he put a half a tab of ecstasy inside my mouth (which I'd never done before, either), and when it was in my veins he told me what he'd done.

Brian played Dave Matthews on his guitar, and Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley. Mike's ex-whatever came over and lounged on his couch like a siren in an old movie and rolled a joint with a joint-rolling contraption she told me Mike'd bought her in Amsterdam. Her hair was beautiful, dark red.

I went to Mike's room and lay on the bed and next to his bed there was a bag of miniature Milky Way bars and I realised I was starving, and so I started eating these Milky Way bars and it was like the candy was making love to the inside of my cheeks, like the caramel was a sleek sexy fish on my tongue, like the entire Milky Way galaxy had been crammed into my mouth by an ambitious cosmonaut and was now exploding inside my cheeks like cotton-coated pop-rocks. Brian came into the room and lay on my back while I ate Milky War bars. The inside of my eyeballs danced. He put his hands on the backs of my arms, and then on the backs of my legs, but he wasn't touching me, he was just feeling around, like you might touch a wall in the dark on your way to your room. Then he got up and said "I'm sorry," and dashed out of the room. A chocolate-caramel-nougat angel climbed inside my mouth and curled up and slept there, and then I did too.

This is what I said about it, when endorsing it to aforementioned coruptee: "All I remember from doing it before was that I had these Milky Way bars and they were really good, and I don't even like Milky Way bars."

3. Push-Pops, Caramel Apple Pops, Ring Pops, Blow Pops, Dum-Dums
I used to keep a push pop in my bag like it was chapstick -- wholly necessary, better be prepared, you never know when I'd want a suck. I've been accused of an oral fixation, but I think that's lame, like something girls used to say they had to let boys know they were easy. Do you know what I mean? We all have oral fixations. We have teeth, they want to bite/chew, we have lips, they have very little purpose except the obvious.

I go through serious long addictions to these things. Like, I used to have a giant three-tiered push pop that took me about a week to finish, I'm basically seven years old.

2. My Toothbrush and Toothpaste
I get scolded at the dentist 'cause apparently I brush so often that I'm brushing away my gums. I don't care, I want minty fresh breath, obvs. I go through a toothbrush a week, about, and keep extras almost everywhere I've ever worked or played. Ingrid and I used to like to get in each other's faces and brush our teeth for no reason. Again: boarding school. We do these things, I don't know why, but we do.

1. Other Mouths
When it all comes down to it, there's really nothing else on earth as wonderful as kissing.

I love how lipstick can suggest
a grammar, and how, in sleep,
the mouth gives up its posture
like something defeated.
Isn't a morning kiss, then,
a kind of restoration, a love test
for the one who wakes first?
I love what we must forgive.
So good to find them, the people
who've discovered fraudulence
in their lives, who've cast off, say,
a twenty-year lie.
I love how they listen to poems
as if words were necessary
daggers or balm, their faces proof
that the soul feeds on wild riffs,
every sort of truth-scrap, the blues.
I love that the normal condition
of the soul is to be starved.

-from "loves" by stephen dunn

Sunday Top Ten: Twenty Six Years of Auto-Mechanics/Living

"Do you actually want to do nothing for your birthday, or do you just think that's clever?"
-Carly, re: my birthday wishes

Apparently, I turn 26 today. Perhaps Facebook, MySpace or Haviland told you about this. I'm being a weirdo about it this year; it's highly uncharacteristic. I mean, I write a blog, so clearly I enjoy heaps of unjustified attention lavished upon me at all times, and consequently I've always enjoyed birthday parties — though, falling as they do in mid-September [prime-time for "life-changing events" such as starting new schools, living situations, jobs, various phases of self-destructive behavior], my birthday celebrations often attract a haphazard assortment of celebrants AND I'm often blessed by having my birthday coincide with Yom Kippur. In the past, when I was a better Jew, this meant I spent the day in temple starving and atoning for my sins when I should've been eating ice cream cake.

I've always been that girl who writes her birthday in your planner in marker with circles and stars. But this year ... it just seems kinda overwhelming — I mean, it's awesome for people to call me and mail/send me things, OBVS . But the idea of having some sort of live in-person celebration is too much for me to handle ... feels inappropriate, feels like a lie ...

I've become a hermit, or the Bell Jar. Maybe it's just a phase. My therapist has suggested that I'm becoming agoraphobic like Emily Dickinson, my hero. I just wanna be alone. Like, maybe go somewhere and write my book or something.

See the thing is I'm supposed to be writing this book. And I've sort of let it fall to the wayside because it became a relatively significant aspect of my relationship and I needed to step back from it right afterwards, and now "right afterwards" is over, and I still haven't opened a single doc in the "Some of my Parts" folder (h/t Jenny Schecter) since June. And my agent is going to slaughter me with a machete.

So, are you ready for my thesis statement? Yeah you are! "This post attempts to do two things; one, reignite the author's interest in her own boring life and consequently fuel the fire of her "book," two, explore the 26 birthdays before this birthday in an effort to understand how we got here. Three, provide an easy reference point/timeline for readers to understand the ridiculous tangents that the author tends to go off on, often."

That's a trick thesis statement, because just "exploring" something doesn't count as an actual thesis. I need a point and then I need to prove it.

But luckily this is my blog so I can do whatever I want. Even rehash my entire life via birthday celebrations, much to your total amusement I'm sure. I actually have my entire life journaled, which is useful for the book. But I can't find all the journals right now and I think some of them are still in Michigan. So I'm working with limited tools here.

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Birth: 1981. Fetus, Illinois- I think I spent the day crying, probs. Good start.

One: Baybay, Illinois- Again, no memory of this. Probs: cried, ate something pureed like smashed up apricots or applesauce, was likely dressed up in a wig and/or ridiculous party hat by my father and then subjected to multiple photographs.

Two: Baybay, Michigan-I'd imagine somewhat similar to "one," but perhaps by then we had acquired Wig #2, The Blonde Wig, to compliment Wig #1, the black-curly-haired wig, offering additional sources of baby dress-up amusement.

Three: Baby, Michigan- By this point, I was eating solid foods, right? I don't even know what three-year-olds look like. I hope when I have my own kids, they can give me a heads-up about these things so I don't have to look it up myself. "Mom, I'm ready for solid food now!"

Four: Toddler, Michigan- Definitely eating solid foods and reading. My brother would've been alive by this point, keeping the smushed-up foods economy thriving in our home.

Five: Eberwhite School, Michigan- I turned five in kindergarten 'cause I started kindergarten when I was four. So I could read pretty much anything. That's all I got. Perhaps I received some books. To read.

Six: Eberwhite School, Michigan

I GOT THIS ONE. I had a party, wore a cute Margot Tennenbaum dress I'd definitely wear right now if I still owned it, had a similar haircut to my present haircut, and participated in activities including bobbing for apples, making Mr. Potato Heads, and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. At some point I acquired a necklace made out of organic Froot Loops. Looks like a hot party, honestly. Now that I know my Mom was stoned for most of my childhood, I can see these memories in an even brighter and more beautiful light, like she was probs like "Oh man ... lets have the kids BOB for APPLES!" and my Dad was like "DUDEEEE."

Seven: Eberwhite School, Michigan-Urm. I think this may've been when I got the Bangles cassette, 'Walk like an Egyptian'? Went to Bill Knapps maybe?

Eight: Emerson School, Michigan- THIS IS THE YEAR I GOT THE SAMANTHA DOLL!!!!!

Nine: Thoreau School, Concord, Massachusetts- Probs went to Walden Pond or something. I got Paula Abdul's "Shut Up and Dance" cassette, that was exciting. I didn't have very many friends yet.

Ten: Emerson School, Michigan- We went to Flint for the weekend... like, Roger & Me Flint. My three best friends and I. We stayed in a hotel and went to a restaurant with a big buffet, because I fucking LOVE BUFFETS, and then we went to museums the next day because I LOVE MUSEUMS and we got astronaut ice cream. It melted in our mouths.

Eleven: Emerson School, Michigan

Activities cited in my diary as occurring for birthday-related festivities include: Champion House ("It's a Japanese steakhouse, they cook the food right in front of you. I got shrimp."), a scavenger hunt, a round or two of Tabloid Teasers, and pizza. Gifts received include "letter-writing stuff" and trolls.

Twelve: Emerson School, Michigan

My Dad had just moved out, so we were doing that thing where we pretend like things are still normal. I remember a sleepover, and that we cried all night; my friends and I. That was the beginning of our sick habit — other girls were cutting or drinking, we were crying. It was a relief, I guess. It was something. You know. Kurt Cobain, etc.

Thirteen: Emerson School, Michigan

I'd just had my Bat Mitzvah so the b-day party itself was low-key since there was so much put into my Bat Mitzvah. In the photos I'm wearing overalls from The Gap, we're eating chocolate cake with our hands and there's green frosting. I feel like we went to Major Magics. God, I fucking LOVED THOSE OVERALLS.

Fourteen: Pioneer High School, MI- I was so sad this year, I hated my new school and my face and body and didn't have any friends. I invited five friends from middle school for a party my Dad was organizing but he wouldn't tell me what it was going to entail. I couldn't guess and it was driving me crazy. He knew I was sad at my new school and was trying really hard to help me be happy.

Before the advent of competition-style product tie-in reality television programs, it was still possible for someone to totally rock your socks simply by having a limousine parked outside your house on your birthday. Now we know that scene ("Oh my God! A PRIUS!"), but then it was perfect, and lovely. I was 14. He'd arranged an extravagant scavenger hunt and printed out instructions for us. We felt like little tiny queens.

My diary: "Daddy gave me the best birthday party ever. He rented a limousine and me and my friends rode around for a while and went on a scavenger hunt. Everyone wanted to get in."

He took photos. But when he died about seven weeks later they hadn't been developed yet, and we never figured out what happened to that film, like so many things we never found after that.

Fifteen: Community High School, MI

We went to Cedar Point, ROLLER COASTER CAPITAL of the Midwest. This was the age where having a party wasn't cool anymore if there were no drugs or liquor at it, so if your parents didn't allow that, you'd have a small thing like this thing.

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Sixteen: Interlochen/boarding school- Diary, 9/23/97:

"Today was my b-day. At first it was kinda sad, but things picked up. Ryan switched into 8th hour, which rocks. Then, when I got back to my dorm, I had all these packages, including one from Magali and Becky. I got so much FOOD yum! Then me and this girl Carly went and filmed stuff, that was kewl. She just got a new camera. Then I got to talk to my friends on the phone. Ryan is having an emotional crisis."

*

Seventeen: Interlochen/boarding school- Ryan was my gay best friend — my "soulmate" — my everything. He'd just started college, I was starting my senior year at Interlochen. On the 22nd, I told Ryan about John and then Ryan yelled at me. I cried. He said scathing fatal things to me, stuff I never expected, but I guess I didn't really understand, yet, what he was going through.

The next day — my birthday — I couldn't make it out of bed or to class and my friends took turns visiting me on their off-hours. "There's no way Ryan can live without you," Krista assured me. No one believed that Ryan was honestly going to cut me out, but he did, for six weeks. It was like having my heart removed.

My friends dragged me to the cafeteria that night — the tables were covered in construction paper, a gigantic birthday card for me, and they blared Puff Daddy on Sheetal's boom box and sang to me until the boob box was confiscated. Everyone was so sweet and so patient. The next day John asked me to be his girlfriend. I had to say yes — I'd just lost Ryan over him, after all — and I did. We were together all year.


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Eighteen: Sarah Lawrence & NYC/living in Bronxville a house-dorm-thing, they're hippies, whatever

Everyone gave me cookies and cakes. Girls I'd just met made me sweet cards.

I wrote in my diary: "I can't believe they love me so much. Why?"

Ryan showered me with gifts, as was his way, including the stuffed dog named after him that I still sleep with, and he took me to Chez Es Saada in the East Village; it's underground, the descending stairwell's littered with rose petals, like a movie about a dangerous man and a sweet birthday. Afterwards, we met up with Meg at Madame X for drinks, and got served.

Then that weekend I hosted an 18th Birthday Cocktail Party. I needed all my high school friends in the same room. We missed each other so much and none of us liked college as much as we missed each other. We mailed invitations -- remember that? When you actually had to MAIL invitations? Formal dress required. Since all of us, including our bartender, were underage and living in dorms, I got a hotel suite on the Upper West for the night using my savings from working at GapKids that summer. Everyone came. It was perfect, except for when we went to McDonalds for McFlurries at 1am and they'd already turned off the machine, like nobody cared it was my 18th birthday!

Nineteen: U of Michigan/living in the dorms

I had a group dinner at Seva — vegetarian place — my typical mishmash assortment of residential college kids, future sorority girls, and hall-mates. September birthdays are a good test at a new school of who's interested in your life, as in; being a part of it. And later: how lucky that Becky, who I barely knew then but ended up becoming my best friend, had come along that night. Samara got me a Super-Soaker 3000. Later, in the dorms, Jessie and I tried to open a cheap bottle of red wine without a corkscrew and it exploded everywhere, crazy big eruption like champagne; Chianti all over her fresh white walls, like someone'd been killed and it'd been violent. She didn't wash it off for weeks.

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Twenty: U of Michigan/living with friends — Fancy-pants brunch with my Mom and brother, Colliders [frozen yogurt & candy smash up delight] w/my boys. Mejiers [it's like Wal Mart] with Natalie: we stole handfuls of bulk candy and I listened to voice mails and waited for this boy to call. Eventually, he did, and we went out. I can't tell you what we did, it's too embarrassing.

Diary, 9.24.01:
a) My life is fun and games.
b) My life is in shambles.
Reading tonight, gym tonight, birthday, homework, sex blah blah blah. Meanwhile, America is declaring war and people are buried in rubble in New York. Fuckin' A. I do no work. I sicken myself.

*

Twenty-One: U of Michigan/living with boyfriend off-campus- I'll tell you how it ended; dark blue-ish light, Chris and I's bedroom. Screaming, crying. I told him, "I'm leaving!" I wasn't nearly drunk enough for my 21st, but my mind was everywhere and therefore crazy — it was with Another Boy I'd Just Met, it was with my friends who loved me, it was with my mother, it was with myself, and I'd lost myself by this point, so that was a really far-away place for my mind to be.

My Mom wanted to buy me my first drink [ha!], so I met her at The Earle. In the dark reddish light, she told me more about her divorce than I'd ever been privy to before ... how there comes a time ... and Chris, as if on cue, called cranky for directions to the restaurant we were meeting up w/my friends at.

I gave him just-barely-incorrect directions to Champion House; he used this as an excuse to show up in a rotten mood, pout all through dinner and refuse to speak to my friends: Natalie, Becky, Jessie, Bobby, Lauren. Also he'd done bad on a test or something, I don't remember. He clearly wasn't good at sucking it up.

We tried to let conversation fly around him. He responded to my friends' inquires about his state of being with "I've been better." His justification, later, for sulking through my entire birthday dinner: "You know not getting directions right is my pet peeve." Which isn't even the correct usage of "pet peeve" and literally I was one block off, he coulda seen the place from where I'd accidentally led him. It's not like, the Labyrinth. It's Ann Arbor. I was a quick phone call away, and I answered.

On our way to the car after dinner, he started in bitching about how he couldn't talk to my friends because they went to Michigan and he went to Eastern, he was poor and they were rich. I didn't understand this claim in all its complexities at the time. I did know that if he'd talked to my friends instead of ignoring them, he would've found out that not all of them were rich at all, and that even the ones better off than him had been through shit he could relate to. I wondered how he could know anything about them when he never listened to me talk, and, after nearly a year of us dating, still hadn't read a single piece of my writing.

We went to his frat house and once we got there, I ditched him to hang out with boys who were nice to me, and the Other Boy, who read poetry and wanted to be an actor. Then we got home and yelled at each other and I told him I would leave him. I told him I couldn't keep living with someone who expected me to cook him dinner every night and yelled at me for every misstep and, you know, like I said, hadn't read a single word I'd ever written. He said I was too drunk to drive.

He said we're so different, my friends and him.

I said, How's this for different? Let's sleep in different beds. Live in different apartments. Let me leave. Let me leave you. But he wouldn't let me leave. And we went on. I wanted to love him, was used to him — was dying, was dead. Four months later, I ran after my life.

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Twenty-Two: U of Michigan/living with friends including Natalie

The night before, S begged to see me though I'd refused: "I don't want you to ruin my birthday."

He promised he wouldn't ruin my birthday, he just needed to deliver a letter. He asked me to meet him in the Law Quad. He gave me the letter. It was incredible, honestly, the letter. It was everything I'd ever wanted him to say to me.

But I confused him sharing his feelings with him sharing feelings he actually wanted to do something about. I was hopeful.

The next morning, I wrote in my diary: "There's this dream I keep having about SD where he comes to me and tells me everything -- how much he loves me, how much I mean to him, that he knows that he did an undefendable thing and that he's sorry and he knows he doesn't deserve my apology." [NAME THAT TELEVISION SHOW REFERENCE!!]

My Mom came over in the afternoon with presents, told me, about SD, "Marie, sometimes you've gotta just know when to cut your losses." I had dinner @ The Macaroni Grill (my place of employment) with my friends. They'd ripped out the USA Today Crossword puzzle and put it on my chair, and we all got drunk and ate heaping plates of gooey pasta. I felt very blessed to have all these wonderful people in my life when I felt I'd neglected them so recently to chase this true mean love.

Speakerboxx / The Love Below came out that day too, I remember that.

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Twenty-Three: New York City/living with Krista in Sparlem- JH told me he was Really Good at Birthdays. I obvs did not believe him, but he was right. He took me, Krista and Ingrid to dinner at Atlantic Grill, got me a Tiffany's bracelet 'cause I'd joked to him that a Tiffany's bracelet is "Every Jewish girl's dream." "Rent" tickets, books — dreamboat. Obvs on his birthday I had to do even better: a weekend in D.C., tickets to see Steve Nash play there, a hotel. That weekend was almost foiled when they refused to rent me a car because of my "moving violations" and him "not having a drivers license" but then we found a FLIGHT that was super-cheap and fast, and that's when JH said one of my most favorite things he ever said:

I'd dropped a "fuck" in my language and he goes: "Marie, do not use foul language in the Reagan International Airport." Like how some people would shush you in church? Because Reagan was his favorite president!! Can you believe it?

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Twenty-Four: New York City/living with Krista in Sparlem- The end of the summer of my sweet romance with drugs and general trashwhoriness. Everything felt unstable then, everything, except the brief momentary but overwhelming sensation of that particular inhalation, that particular hand darting into the darkness and underneath. Of girls, and what I took to handle that. Ryan emailed me that day after months of non-communication. I worked; I believe there was a cake and some ceremony of sorts at the lit agency. Krista and I went to Cafe Mozart and shared everything, ate sweet food and talked about Who I Was Before Ryan, and who I Was With Ryan — how crazy it is, how far we'd come since then, how long since I last saw him. For a moment the room was blurry as I almost cried, stabbed my salad. How far we'd come since then?

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Twenty-Five: New York City/living on 106th

To: All my friends
From: Haviland Stillwell

Subject: And at the end of the day she'll be another day older ....

And that hot barely-there shirt on her back won't be keepin' out the HEAT...(10 points to whoever gets that reference)

SATURDAY IS THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BIRTH OF MARIE (AKA RIESE) LYN BERNARD!!!

which means.....

we are going to a girl on girl establishment and riese has one task and one task only!! --

******TO KISS 25 GIRLS ON HER 25TH BDAY BEFORE THE NIGHT IS OVER******

Of course, I'll be piggy backing off of the cause, when I feel it's warranted...

If you are available and up to having mind blowing amounts of ass-kicking fun, email me back and i'll coordinate the details.

I won't subject you to another recap. But if you so desire, I obvs blogged about it.

*

So — the theme of this — no matter who I am or where I am or what's going on or how I feel I've failed or exceeded expectations, I've been consistently blessed with generous and kind friends who always rally together to celebrate that somehow I've managed to defy death for one additional year.

I can tell you about the birthday parties of all my friends from those missing years but not my own. Because I suppose it was theirs I really anticipated, because it was a chance to direct my focus onto someone other than myself, because "myself" didn't seem to be a very productive place to focus.

One day, I will grow old. Until then, there are stars to ride, invitations to consider. Today, I guess, I'm 26. That's how old my Mom was at my 2nd birthday. Crazy, right? Crazy.

Tomorrow I'm going to go for some long strategic walks. I have a lot of thinking to do.

Peace.

When I feel like this/When I get so into myself
And lose track of where I'm going
and then lose track of how to get going again
feel myself slowing down/feel myself turning round
is this taken/when I feel like this
I get so sick/Tell myself, where are you going now
-Tegan and Sara

On the topic of having short hair that I play with all the time now--

Carly: You're like, worse than me.
Me: Hey what if I did like, 26 hairstyles for my 26th birthday? For my blog?
Carly: That would be AMAZING.

Right now I'm eating Chocolate Covered bananas from an Edible Creations Bouquet -o- Birthday Magic, so I can't really complain.

Sunday Top Ten: TAGGED

It'd be way cooler if we had to physically tag people for these 8-facts-memes (I don't know what that word means, actually, I just know people toss it around the webbernet like it's candy from babies or whatever). It'd be way way cooler if it was like Flag Football, where you had to wear the little tags on some velcro hooha around your waist and the other kids'd try to yank your pants off? Luckily, I wore long winter underwear (in the winter) and boxer shorts (year round), so no one, unfortunately for them, ever caught a glimpse of my ass via surprise "flooring."

Carlytron obvs tagged me for this 8-random-facts thing. These are the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

This seemed like it'd be super easy, but um, I've already published about 8 million words describing random facts about myself in the most long winded way possible, though usually I try to sugar-coat my self-centered ramblings with "themes" or "universal truths," but this's just like, supposed to be straight up hard core ME.

OK, I just stared at the screen for like, ten minutes. How am I supposed to just write random stuff about myself? I need a theme. "Random" is not a theme. Random is the anti-theme. Seriously, I keep fighting thematic urges. Is "Things I haven't already mentioned 10,000 times" a theme? "Deep dark secrets?" Yeah, As if.

Sunday Top Ten:
Eight Totally Random Facts About Myself! TOTES RANDOM!
and Two Totally Expected Not-Random Facts!

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10-8. "You're the worst kind. You think you're low maintenance, but you're actually high maintenance."

I don't really look like I put much effort into my appearance. In fact, it may appear as though I wear the same thing every day and've had essentially the same haircut for ten years.

I get weekly manicures, but I get my nails painted black, and I wouldn't need manicures if I didn't bite off the sides of my fingers like a little rabbit except with fingers instead of carrots. My hair's dyed/highlighted ... but I go way too long between appointments and usually sport ridic roots ...

and I've never had hair longer than shoulder-length. Ever.

9. I don't have my ears pierced ... but I have my bellybutton pierced, and a tattoo on my thigh.

8. All I know about makeup application is how to put on eyeliner so it looks like you just emerged from a beamy sweaty all night rave, but I hate going anywhere w/o eyeliner, even to bed.

My daily wardrobe is really boring, but I really hate going out if I'm not in SERIOUS COSTUME.

Etc.

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7. The Loner's Manifesto

My Mom enforced "Night-Light Time" for me from 8:30-9:30 every weekday evening when I was a kid. This was important time for me to write my girls' sports team novels. She wanted me to learn how to have alone time, but by then I think I was already craving it and needing it regularly, always escaping from crowds to hide in corners, under tables, in bathrooms, on the floor behind potted plants.

Or maybe it's 'cause I don't like other people that much, or I find myself so annoying I'd rather not subject anyone else to my thorough investigation of every item for sale at Forever 21, four-hour missives at Barnes & Noble, sociopathic train habits (book/ipod/etc), lame "work-outs" or whatever.

I used to go see lesbian movies alone, like I was some stealth dyke in a dark veil in the 50's, like Boys Don't Cry, Lost and Delirious, Girl Interrupted (not a lesbian movie, but come on, seriously), but really, I've seen probs 50 movies alone, usually documentaries or indie movies -- my favorite going-alone theatres are Two Boots and the Angelika and I won't do it in the suburbs, only in the city, and I don't like going alone to big-ass theatres with stadium seating and loud noises.

I want to make a joke about that footsteps in the sand poster about walking with G-d, but I won't. But isn't that poster funny? It makes Jesus sound like a stalker.

Um, ha. Ha.aha.as.hahhahaha. Ha.

---

6. I Believe!

Speaking of footprints in the sand or whatevs, I believe in G-d. I just do. I had my Bat Mitzvah, even though they put me in Badass Hebrew Class for all the misfits, where we'd go through a new earnest teacher at a rate of about one per month. Back then, Hebrew School was just a place to get sent to the office and get bad grades, but I took Hebrew again in college 'cause I genuinely wanted to know. So, about four years ago, I was almost fluent in Conversational Hebrew. Now I'm like "Yofi."

I add this as a "random fact" 'cause no one ever expects that I do. After all, I'm cynical and doubting and half-gay, and I curse all the time, and I make jokes about Jesus and I KNOW Evangelical Christianity is the downfall of American society. But I've never ever not believed in G-d. It's just something I've always known and never doubted.

Just to be is a blessing, just to live is holy.
(Abraham Heschel)

For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins,
and incontinences,
and disgraceful passions,
and fleeting pleasures,
which (men) embrace until they become sober
and go up to their resting place.
(Thunder, Perfect Mind )

---

5. And Also, I Want to Have Babies.

Never doubted that either. Yesterday, Heart the Dog was all like "Yelp yelp Yelp!" and all up on our shit [Haviland/Carlytron/Riese World Revolution Meeting] and I looked at her and said, deadpan: "Heart. Seriously?" and just gave Heart the stare-down and Heart totally sat down and stopped being a hyperactive urination-station for a minute. Haviland was like: "I can totally see you in the future talking to your kids like that. They'll be like WAAAAA and you'll just look at 'em like 'Seriously? Right now? You're really doing this?' And they'll shut up. You should name your daughter 'Papi' so that you can just be like "Really Papi? Really?" all the time."

That's true. I've never ever not wanted to have babies. It's just something I've always known and never doubted.

I'm pretty sure I wanna be preggers too, though obvs not fat. I'm gonna be doing Yoga with all the lunatics from the Upper East Side. For a while I wanted to adopt, after constructing a huge senior project about orphan crisis resulting from China's One-Child Rule, and maybe I'll do that too.

But um, right now I am still a baby, and clearly cannot conceive of caring for another human 'til I figure out how to care for myself. I'd also like her to emerge fully functional like Dakota Fanning in Uptown Girls or Stewie.

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4. Rebel, Rebel

When I remember high school, I remember myself as a well-behaved kid: I got good grades, my teachers usually liked me, I in the smart-kids classes and college-tracked, top o' the class, etc. Howevs , when I really think about it ... maybe I just think I was well behaved 'cause I felt like I knew so many people who were worse. 'Cause the thing is? I was, from time to time, a total bad-ass. I got caught skipping class in public school so I just started going to the nurses's office, having a fake phone convo with the operator/"My Mom," and then walking home. Because public school was boring and kind of the seventh circle of hell, socially, especially coming there straight outta nerd school.

It's way easier to get in trouble at Interlochen/boarding school, 'cause you live there. Thus, all the rules typically enforced by parents are enforced by staff and teachers, who're essentially required to act like the strictest possible parents at all times. So: sneaking boys into my room, sneaking off campus, canoodling with my boyfriend in the woods, snorting Vivran, drinking, smoking, and doing drugs were all breaking serious school rules, not just "laws" and "parental preferences."

By some bizarre unrepeated miracle, the first few weekends of my senior year, my roommate Ashley's Dad came to Traverse City, rented some motel rooms, and invite us all off campus for weekend-long revelries. I've got no clue how we all obtained permission to go--they had insane rules about those things, which's why we had to sneak off campus so often, obvs.

And I needed those weekends, too. It was right before college applications and everything started it's irreversible attack on our sanities, and I missed Ryan (my best friend) like crazy, and so I needed it. I needed dark smoky nights and I needed endless fall mornings with Krista, reading John Kennedy O'Toole out loud to each other, stuffing ourselves with fudge, smoking cigarettes and dissecting our overwhelming angsts over long Bob Evans breakfast feasts. Also, we may or may not've spent a lotta time playing guitar and singing Janis Joplin on the roof.

By the end of the year, every single one of my friends besides Ingrid and I had been suspended, expelled or at least forced to watch the "no smoking" video. How'd we escape punishment? Dumb luck, really. I think I performed an expellation-worthy act at least once a week.

The following video is a taste of our bad-assery (not really, but I only got so much time). In it, you can see Ashley & I on codeine in our dorm room (those're the scenes where I'm in pajama pants and whispering -- RETAINER FULLY ON -- about how if our room were to catch on fire, we'd be "in no capacity to deal with it"), Ingrid (my best friend, we had a very special friendship) and I planning an "alternative" campus tour on the porch of the boy's dorm, me drunk at a motel where Ashley's Dad took us all for the weekend (and my boyfriend making fun of me for being drunk), Krista in the motel, etc. ...

Little Eadie/Ree-Ree: "I'm wearing a lot of clothing because our room is so cold. I'm wearing two pairs of pajama pants. I'm wearing underwear too, of course."

Boarding School Undercover 1998

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3. Rebel, Rebel: First Amendment Activist '99

I did not have any three minute stories. I'm sure that surprises the hell out of you, because this blog is alway so brief 'n snappy. But so, to fill the three minute spot we each got at the Senior Reading, the teachers said: "Read a poem," and I was like "Um, I'd rather play Dolphin Noises on a boom box, naked." So then I wrote a flash-fiction story about this couple waiting in line for a roller coaster, and the girl's pregnant, and he's trying to talk her into riding anyhow:

“They’re not gonna let me on this thing,” she says to him.

He looks at her stomach. “They’ll probably just think you’re really fat. Don’t worry about it.”

She frowns at him. Sweat trickles down along the sides of his red freckled cheeks and then his neck, and she takes a napkin from underneath her left armpit and wipes it along his face, letting the sweat seep through the paper and onto her fingers, and she feels very close to him. She wishes that she weren ’t pregnant so they could still cuddle, wrapped up late at night on his couch, playing Sega. Now, she’s just a fat pregnant girl, ready to give birth to this monster like a Cabbage Patch Kid that'll change their lives completely, forever. She hates it. Her new idea is to pass it off to someone else as soon as it comes out, like a football.

And I read it for the Senior Reading, and it went really well. The last week, "Festival," is readings and performances for all the families/alum/recruiters/etc., including Senior Reading Redux.

I was called into the office by a woman I'll call Twatitude (clearly not one of the two male teachers who loved me. She never loved me enough.), and told my story, which she thought was a really fantastic story, honestly, was inappropriate for the Festival reading. Apparently, it "implied abortion," and they didn't want to deal with "phone calls."

In the following passage, the most offensive passage is highlighted:

“Isn’t it bad for the baby to take it on a rollercoaster? Don’t they have rules like this for a reason?” she asks.

“Nah,” he nods his head. “Nuh-uh. Rules are for pussies. My Mom has all kinds of heart and back problems, and she always takes these things real good.”

“What if this thing kills it?” she says, staring up at the ride, at the screaming kids with their legs dangling. “What if we get flipped upside down, the little cord thing snaps and it falls out and its head rams up against the inside of my stomach, what if that happens?”

So, because I am a Professional Person, I cried my eyes out. It was like everything came to head that day: all my panic at the grown-up post-high-school life I was about to start, about leaving the woods, about the fact I'd chosen to stave off adulthood by drastically reducing my food intake. About my fear of leaving the only place in my whole life I'd ever been really happy, purely happy, for a moment or two, the place where I'd met my best friend Ryan who'd saved me from the near-suicidal pit I'd been wallowing in since my Dad died, about leaving my boyfriend John, leaving my best friend Ingrid, leaving Krista, Meg, Sheetal, Delp , everything, everything, everything I'd come to associate with the word "love," and though I was sick of the rules and the insanity I was also scared shitless.

I was happy enough with things that I'd even let myself be happy and I can't say if I've done that before or since: let myself enjoy something without anticipating it's inevitable terrible demise. But Interlochen was safe like that because it had to end, because high school ends, unless you're really dumb, and then you have to go back obvs.

And so that all came to a head when I was told I had to change my story. All the fear/sadness I'd been holding in. Twatitude suggested: "Read an excerpt of a longer piece," and I wailed; "Oh God, excerpts are so fucking lame and you know it," and finally I agreed to read a censored version of the story, which I created and she approved. I missed class that day 'cause I was too upset to go. It was the only time I ever fully skipped class, sans doctor's note, at Interlochen.

But before I left her office when I brought the censored story, I was composed, and reconciled, and I said: "Thank you. I was upset to leave this place, but you've just made me fucking happy to get the hell out of here. I don't want to be here, if this is who we are and what we stand for, or, rather, don't."

But the day of the reading I started freaking out again. I hated the censored story. It was bad. I liked the old one and so did everyone else. I went there not knowing what i was gonna do.

And I didn't know until I got up there and opened my mouth what I'd follow through on--I'd brought the uncensored copy with me too, just in case--that it'd be the "bad" version.

When the story ended, I walked by Twatitude and she wouldn't look me in the eye. She looked away, I dashed past, never to see her again. My favorite teacher hugged me and said "Nice work."

Then I got hands-down totes WASTED and ran into the night.

I graduated. John and I stayed in my Mom's hotel room at the Econo Lodge in Traverse City. We ate donuts and drank milk from the carton in the dark. We knew we were going to break up, because our relationship'd never worked incredibly well anyhow, there was no point in dragging it out long-distance (that was a bad formative breakup experience for me, obvs , as I thought it was possible to break up amicably, to leave no broken hearts). But we did care for each other, and love each other, though we also hated each other, and so he cried and got in his car and left the next morning, and I didn't cry and I got in mine. Then I got home, and I cried.

I hope she got like, ten million phone calls.

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NOW, TO COMPLETE THE SUNDAY TOP TEN ... TWO FACTS THAT ARE NOT AT ALL "RANDOM."

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2. Other People's Words

I'm obsessed with quotes. I'm fairly convinced someone's already said whatever I'm thinking better than I have, and so I collect and hoard and compile and list and archive and broadcast and memorize. I've memorized a lot of Stephen Dunn. I've catalogued online three seasons of The L Word, every season of Six Feet Under, Ani DiFranco organised by topic and album, movies including Grey Gardens, Six Degrees of Separation, Pump up the Volume, Pretty Persuasion, Fight Club, About a Boy, When Harry Met Sally .. the list goes on. And on. And on.

I underline the fuck out of everything I've ever read -- underlined-to-the-point-of-destruction books include Prep (Curtis Sittinfeld), Wasted (Marya Hornbacher), The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion), Bright Lights Big City (Jay McInerney), Birds in America (Lorrie Moore), Don Quixote (Cervantes), Appetites (Carolyn Knapp) and Demian (Herman Hesse).

I've got stickies all over my desktop just for quotes, currently featuring Michael Cunningham, The Buddha, High Art, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Tegan & Sara, the Bible, Abraham Heschel, Jack Spicer, Kathy Acker, Adrienne Rich and Chris Pureka. I just can't get enough, no, I just can't get enough.

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1. BTW, there's this sitcom?

So, Carly and I wrote this sitcom. If you know anyone who is:

1. Rich and wants to fund the filming of our pilot (we have a crew),
2. In development or production, preferably at HBO, FX or Showtime
3. Is a producer who wants to produce it w/your production company or whatever,

Please let us know. Our meeting yesterday w/Haviland was totes exciting, though, and we seriously have a lot of stuff in the works related to this project and others that's gonna be good for all of us. So like, stay tuned, or whatever.

---

And finally. Now I need to tag some people. I'm trying not to tag people that I think have already been tagged, and kindly resisting tagging a few people that I know Crystal would like me to save for her, because I'm a really, really good friend.

1. Word Verification
2. A Stranger Among Her Own ...
3. SlogreenX
4. Memoirs of the Mundane
5. Tongue-Tied
6. Surplus
7. Why Don't We Get Drunk and Blog?
8. B.S.: Not Just My Initials

Get on it, kids.

Sunday Top 10, Part Two: Demented and Sad, but Social...Right?

This is Part Two of this week's Sunday Top Ten, "Clubs Which I Do Care to Belong To," which's really a Top 15. For the explanation behind this theme, please see "Part One." I could go on about it here, but let's face it: I probably will go on. And on. For hundreds and hundreds of words.

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SUNDAY TOP FIFTEEN, INSTALLMENT TWO, 7-1:
CLUBS WHICH I DO CARE TO BELONG TO

7. Duane Reade Dollar-Savers Club, Food Emporium Gold Card Club, Subway Sub Club, et al.

File Under: "Examples of Riese's Questionable Money Management Skills."

I grew up clipping coupons and donning hand-me-downs/TJ Maxx-pilfered "trend items," so you think I'd be better at things like "Buy nine subs, get one free!" Not so. This's one of many of my endearing incongruous personality quirks.

I visit Duane Reade almost every day, yet I lived in NYC for two years before joining their club, a choice which's likely cost me hundreds of dollars. What's wrong with me? Nothing, obvs, my fate's repeatedly sealed by Duane Reade's sub par line-waiting experience.

The Scene: Two employees idly re-stock Massengill, one totally-over-it cashier stares wistfully at the tiny sparkles on her acrylics. A line of impatient bitches mutates into a store aisle. The customers in line are suspicious of all customers not in line; their eyes dart dangerously at every passing patron because now that the line's spiraled out of control, someone could possibly CUT in line, unjustly, then act all innocent about it, Really? The line ends HERE?, yes, someone could misinterpret the line's evolution, someone could start a new line, a shorter line, over in Photo, where a half-brain-dead employee is possibly opening a register [or doing nothing at all, probs], and I start wondering if it'd take less time to get sick, go to the doctor, get a prescription, take it to the back register, get it filled and pay for my other items as I pay for my [by this point, necessary] Xanax.

By the time I've actually paid for my items, I'm certain I can't spend one more moment of my life on this particular errand, and thus, I repeatedly forewent filling out the membership club forms.

Similarly, back in Michigan when I was living off lunch shift tips [total=$30-$35/day] and dining at Subway daily, why didn't I just ask for a Sub-Club stamp? I don't recall ever earning a free sub. Haviland's always amazed that I've foregone the Tasti-D card as well.

However, I was always a member of the Delia*s Discount Domain. For those of you unfamiliar with this particular club: sorz. I'm not gonna footnote it, because it's better for my reputation as Super-Cool that you stay in the dark. For those of you who know what I'm referring to: yeah, totes.

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6. The Wingnuts

Wingnut:
1. "A nut with wing-like projections for thumb and forefinger leverage in turning."
2. "What Delp dubbed us."

Ingrid¹ reminded me in the last post's comments of one high school club I proudly belonged to: The Wingnuts. Our writing teacher, Delp, at boarding school² [cited in last post for the "this school's a country club" doctrine] referred to us [us=Ingrid, Sheetal³, Meg⁴ and me] as "Wingnuts," because we were very bright children with excellent thumb-forefingering skills. From what I saw on television and read in YA novels, the cool kids at other schools had more prodigious monikers, like 'The Heathers" or "The Queen Bees" or "The Plastics." That's the difference between High School and Weirdo High School. I've illustrated this difference below, employing photos from Beverly Hills 90210 and Sweet Valley High.

Club activities included: riding in Delp's car/istening to Bob Dylan, driving to the 7-11 for Frozen Cokes, lounging in the Traverse City Borders Bookstore, eating lunch and talking about poetry, being reminded of our status as Grasshoppers. When you're stuck on a tiny little campus, "driving to the 7-11 for Frozen Cokes" is like "train-hopping to Chicago" for other kids. It was AWESOME. [Seriously.]

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5.The Mickey Mouse Club

I watched The MMC every day. Granted, it was on a short list of shows I was permitted to watch [including Fraggle Rock, 3-2-1 Contact, Square One and Kids Incorporated], but my love for this variety program was pretty tried/true. I wanted to be in it, too, and fantasized about traveling to Orlando and being [discovered] in the studio audience [read: fully sent out for pamphlet, begged parents, etc.] Mostly, this was related to my dreams of becoming a fab singer/dancer, like my hero Shirley Temple. Unfortunately, my dreams were thwarted because I cannot sing or dance. Instead of being on the MMC, I performed Send in the Clowns on my futon for my parents. A lot of kids from that show got famous and some are in rehab, so in retrospect, good thing I wasn't on it. Instead, I'm living proof that not all drug addicts need rehab. [JK, everyone! I'm unemployed because I want to be, not because I'm a drug addict! I can't afford DRUGS!]

My Dad used to tell me how in the 50s, the show was semi-decent and Anette Funnicello brought all the boys to the yard. Personally, I liked Tiffany, who joined MMC-spinoff band THE PARTY. I bought all their albums, and danced alone in my room to them, like a totes weirdo loser:

Tiffany's the girl with the curly hair. I love Chase and Damon's matching haircuts, and that I still remember their name, and probably all the track listings. My fave song was "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." I performed that a lot too, sometimes for my grandparents, those lucky ducks.

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4. Vodka/Club Soda and a Club Sandwich

Though clearly this category, included here on Lozo's suggestion, is enabled by it's play on words, it ALSO enables me to discuss the essence of Groucho's statement [which, P.S., I realized yesterday was quoted in Annie Hall, which is probs where I know it from]. I'm not sure what's in a club sandwich, but I think it involves a lot of meat and possibly bacon. The consumption of club sandwiches is one of many things that separates me from other Americans, along with watching American Idol, knowing the rules of the game "football," and enjoying pork products and outdoor BBQs.

I don't like sandwiches. Here's why:
1. I don't like lunch meat, except low-fat beef bologna.
2. I don't like biting into things.
3. I don't like things that other people like.
3a. Unless that thing is Freedom.
3b. Or vodka.

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3. Fruit of the Month Club

I need some vitamins like whoa. Monkeys eat more fresh fruit than I do, by like, 400%. Harry & David used to just sell fruit and chocolate, but now they probably sell like, Sushi. If someone got me a FOTMC membership for a major or minor holiday [Purim, Bloomsday and Belated Memorial Day totes counts], I'd give this person something special. I can't promise marraige, because back in December I promised to marry whomever purchased me The Paris Review Interviews, and said "I am a decent cook, and I promise to always keep my svelte figure," and TB bought it for me. So I have to give away something else. Okay, my first born.

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2. The Bloomsbury Group

I suspect the Bloomsbury folks--Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, E.M Forster, Clive Bell, et al--purposely shunned the word "club," but I'm going to include them anyway because it's my blog and I make the rules. I sometimes wonder if the internet's prevented the emergence of true artist/writer groups like they had in the old days, or at least in the old days of my imagination. Which's why TB and I are opening a bed & breakfast and it'll be special for artists and writers and such, especially homos. Once, Ryan-C and I accidentally went to a gay bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere, upstate New York. Luckily, Ryan was gay, and both of us liked eating banana bread and reading all day while the lesbians went a-hikin'. I was sick then and was limited in what I could do, physically, so I was jealous of the hikers, but also happy to read. Ibsen, Nadine Gordimer and Homer. The owner hated us, we ate all his banana bread. At our place, you can eat all my banana bread, cause I made it for you, weirdo.

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1.The Special Secret Lesbian Club

On Episode 408 of the Showtime Hit Series [and by "hit" I mean "listening to TLW dialogue often feels like being HIT over the head with a dead lesbian horse, except that lesbians don't like horses, they like monkeys, I learned that on The L Word"] The L Word, Tina confesses to her ex, Bette, that now that she's gone to the dark side [a.k.a. dudes]: "I miss the way we communicated subtly, I miss the way that we worked together to make everything around us so beautiful. I miss being surrounded by women, and I miss being part of something so secret and special."

Then this conversation, which I've cut-and-pasted from my L Word Online Recap Blog, Auto-Straddle, happened in my living room following Tina's statement, which was found dubious by my friends and "popular opinion."

Haviland: Did she say secret?
Me: Yeah, like you know--it's not a secret but [I understand what Tina is saying and I like it, but everyone is talking over me, so I retreat to my cave of ignorance/bisexuality.]
Meg: Yeah, she misses the secret code and the secret handshake--
Haviland: What did you say?
Yana: What, you don't know the handshake?
Haviland: [totally in "Maude" voice, all gravely and been-around-the-block-and-had-a-ciggie-after]
Honey.
[beat]
I've been a lesbian for a looooong time.....

That being said: I've been an Undercover Outsider in the In Crowd most of my life, finding corners in the middle of crowded rooms, but [forgive me, ye womyn's music Haters, in advance, for what I'm about to say], even as a kid, I'd feel a particular peace when my Mom'd tote me to lezzie folk music concerts--though I had no conscious forbearance of personal queer-dom, I've been breathing easier in the queer world far before I came to identify as such. It's outsider culture, and it is, still, to me, a little secret and special; at least it's somewhere that lacks the presupposition that I'm anything like anyone else.

*

My book, when I get back to it, is not so much about bisexuality as it is about being "bi-everything." About the 10,000 clubs to which I've pretended/genuinely deserved to be a member, about masks and trying to be happy/sad with such paltry, ridiculous truths, about feeling always like at least half a fraud, like I couldn't stop being undercover. Like I needed to hold something back--at least fifty percent--or else lose everything. Like not giving everything's the same thing as lying. Who's the "real you," yeah? Generation ME? Is there a "real you," and why's the default "reality" always whatever's being pulled off in the present tense?

*
Dr. W: Why's it so black and white? Why're you a fraud or always telling the "whole" truth? Is there anywhere in between?

Me: No, there is no coexistence, [dramatic flourish of legs over armrest], I'm a FRAUD!
*

No one ever guessed anything about me just from looking: no one'd guess that I'm queer, or a writer or a or even smart. "I would never guess that _______" I can be anybody, I can be anything, tell me what to do, you say jump I say I'm already jumping, look--

For every apparent revelation: a million secrets, stories denied and squelched by each reincarnation. A love/hate relationship with everything I've stood behind. Gay/straight, Jewish/Quaker, Genuis/Airhead, Sane/Insane, Artist/Robot, Social/Recluse ... It's like I've been everything and it's opposite, and've gathered enough narratives to hold my own amongst any of them, now. Though I refrain from anything of import following "I am." Maybe here's a place where I can be all of those things at once and be validated instantly simply by the very fact that I'm writing it and I have a sitemeter.

In fact, this particular truth feels indulgent, why should anyone care, that even acting as though I think you should care is breaking into another character, which's the only one I've yet to actually play: confidence.

Sometimes it's nice, after all that, to retreat into a club which you find you're already a member: someplace special and secret but already understood, maybe with only one other person, or two other people--maybe with virtual people that you don't even know--maybe with hundreds, where you've got nothing to prove, you're assured you can handle at least what this situation demands, because but what more assurance can I have you have not told me, that I will be there, I and the canyons of my heart, its vast and vacant majesties...

*

Dear Mr. Vernon,

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us. In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out that each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club

*
I am
a brain, an athlete,
a basketcase
a princesss
and a criminal.
Does that answer your question?

*

Join the Club.

Let's rock.

Hands-down-totes-Auto-Straddle.

*
Some remaining clubs I hadn't the time to cover: Friendship Club [Degrassi: The Next Generation], I Hate Rachel Green Club [Friends], Hunt Club, Cat Scratch Club, Buena Vista Social Club, Culture Club, Equinox Fitness Club, Drama Club, Yale Club, Harvard Club.

---

¹Ingrid: Ingrid and Krista were my suitemates my first year (11th grade) at boarding school. Then we became BFFs and, the subsequent year, became Wingnuts. Ing lived in NYC, twenty blocks south of Krista and I's Sparlem place, following her graduation from University of Wisconsin. Now she's in Chicago getting another degree in Art History, which's a very useful topic.
²boarding school: Interlochen Arts Academy.
³Meg: Is Meg. Northern Michigan reared. I'd crash at her NYU dorm almost every weekend when I was at Sarah Lawrence. Now she's in Michigan, I think. We met in my first writing workshop--which's also where I met...
⁴Sheetal: Raised in India, then Laguna Beach, then Interlochen. Then Johns Hopkins. Then NYC. Once convinced me, based on her evident germ-a-phobia, that she and her boyfriend had never even made out. I believed her because she wouldn't let me drink her PowerAde.

Tuesday Top Ten: Not the Sunday Top Ten

Potential Reactions to Losing One's Sunday Top Ten
OR
"We were sickened by the old lemon."

Sometimes, life gives you lemons, and sometimes those lemons are disguised as user-friendly web applications like "Zoho Writer." [You can find this app, and then reject it, at Zoho.com]. I can't make lemonade 'cause I'm allergic to citric acid, but, as Jack Spicer wrote: The lemon tree/Could branch off into real magic. Each flower in place. We/Were sickened by the old lemon. Get it? Out with the old lemon, in with the magic, baby.

Magic=getting comments from readers who've never commented before. It makes me feel warm inside, like sticky date pudding, which I ate every day the last time I was in Australia [holla, 3.1% of Auto-Win readers!]. Your comments totally compensated for my pain. Thank you. All of you. The giddiness I experienced upon receiving each new comment is far higher than you'd expect from someone as Cool as me. You can still comment, too. I mean, whatevs. Even you, Haviland.

But first.....a CRAZY LONG TANGENT.

**

TANGENT BEGINS HERE:

As I buckle down to bust out this masterpiece, I realize that the ratio of Sunshine to Near-Mental-Breakdown on this blog has been skewed lately ... I'm like Billy Corgan, like I'll tear my heart out before I get out, and I don't wanna be just another whiny New York Hipster. I wanna be the BEST WHINER EVER. No, actually though: why is this? Obvs I love self-deprecation more than any other reflexive activities, but I think it's the combination of these two circumstances:

1. A number of stressful events, e.g., moving, being unemployed. And some other things. Buy The Book, all will be revealed.

2. Overcompensation for That Love Thing. To explain this in the most roundabout way possible, many Gawker-Sycophants may be familiar with This is What We Do Now, a seminal voice of the NYC-blogger movement [which means he's already made all the jokes you want to make about the subway, and he did it in like, '04] and a consistent source for Out-Loud Laughter. TIWWDN's post-frequency began declining last autumn, however, and it's author explained it like this:

"No, I'm not dead. Yes, I've been shitty about posting consistently. I know I've been making excuse after excuse, but the fact of the matter is, I simply haven't had the time. Blogging is great when you have (a) time, (b) a lot of time, and (c) a fairly jaded and self-centered world view, which enables relatively minor events to explode into 1,000-word diatribes about how much everyone else besides you sucks. I hate using cliches like "I've changed" or "I've grown up," but the fact of the matter is, I have grown up a lot over the last few months. I haven't lost my sense of humor, but much of my 20-something bitterness has certainly receded to the point where I simply haven't found myself all that irritated about a lot of the minutiae I tended to write about. Even the subway's been (mostly) keeping up its end of the bargain.......TIWDDN may be undergoing some changes, but what can I say? It's pretty fucking hard being jaded and bitter when after 25 years you finally fall absolutely head over heels in love with the most beautiful girl in the entire world."

I remember reading that and thinking: "Wow, what happens if, after 25 years, I fall head over heels in love with the most beautiful girl in the world? Will I still be jaded and bitter and witty? I mean, most of the bloggers I read are single and when I'm single, I don't wanna hear about other's happy-love nests. I'd get jealous/wistful listening to K.C and Elka laugh together on The Planet Cast, you know? Hmmm...I think Carrie Bradshaw once grappled with similar issues...."

And so, perhaps in an edge-keeping effort, I've over-compensated my love-drops by becoming Uber-Bitter/Jaded: musing over apartments I'll never live in, employment I don't deserve, places I've considered escaping to and Sunday Top Tens lost to technology or privacy.

Why? 'Cause it's not cool to be in love anymore, is it? We've gotta rationalize dedication, carefully balance love/life to make it appear effortless, ensure no-one suspects we've "changed"... all results of an actual relationship must be hidden/downplayed ... and I've been on both sides of this coin ... but the truth is: we fall. We love, change, move, evolve, attach, love, love, love.

[Side note: I'm 100% guilty of hypocrisy right now, as my single-behavior towards coupled-friends was consistently less-than-stellar/"decent."]

Okay, I'm gonna stop before I gross people out, myself included. After the OurChart blog, TB and I mutually decided to stop writing happy-love-crap, lest we gross ourselves out. Then she deleted her entire blog, re-started it, and deleted it again. That's un-related to us being in love, but that's a good segue to the Top-Ten topic, as it was one of my instincts when this recent post disappeared. I was like "I'm gonna fake-delete my blog," but that wouldn't really be punishing the people at fault, would it? If I knew for a fact that Ahmad from Zoho.com read my blog, I might've really done it.

So, anyhow, before I start the trek down the Trail of Tears, I'd like to acknowledge that I have: a lovely new apartment, fantastic friends, a girlfriend I'm in love with, X-ray vision, all of my limbs, and about thirty-six dollars. UPDATE: Totes just found a crisp $20 in my jeans pocket! Make that FIFTY-six dollars.

TANGENT OVER. Back to how bitter and pissed I am.

---

"Even though a speech be composed of a thousand words, but words without sense, one word of sense is better, which if a man hears he becomes quiet."
(The Dhammapada)

"Waaaaaa."
(me)

"Waaaaa x 1,0000."
(me, again)

---

TUESDAY TOP TEN: POTENTIAL REACTIONS TO THE LOSS OF ONE'S SUNDAY TOP TEN, DUE TO THE RELENTLESS FALLIBILITY OF "TECHNOLOGY."

*
10. Crying:

This can be done sitting up at the desk [feeling faint, shaky, and disbelieving while frantically scrolling through entire Internet history in the hopes that life isn't really like this, right? RIGHT?!!!] or prone on the bed. I'd recommend listening to Reibert de Leeuw's recording of Satie's Gnossiennes & Gymnopedies as you cry. It amps up the drama and transforms your pain from "indulgent and absurd" to "profound and important." Or, as blox-tox did when her 35-page paper vanished from her USB drive, you could "stare at [your] monitor and let the tears stream down [your] face." After, of course, she resisted the urge to "abuse" her PC. Just like I'm resisting the urge to rip on PCs. That's how empathetic I am!

*
9. Call Significant Other, Moan:

Along with "stroking your back tenderly and offering bread of affliction and water after you've spent the night retching up your large intestine," the "listening to you whine about ridiculously petty crisises" is a Totes Benefit to a Relationship. TB copy-edited an early draft of the blog, thus increasing her stake in the matter, so I called immediately, obvs. She shared a story of her own computer crash; she lost a really good short story and was forced to re-write. The re-write turned into the best story she's ever written, EVER. Is that happening right now? With this Sunday Top Ten? Kinda? Best Ever?

Side note: TB's got the best memory ever. As in; she remembers everything I've ever said or written, and can recite poems she memorized years ago. She's memorized entire books. She could probably re-write her blog word-for-word from memory. Which is why I love her, envy her, and must always be careful with my words, as I'm certain I'll be reading them again one day, and cringing in pain.

*
8. Pick Up a Destructive and All-Consuming Habit:

e.g., cocaine, cigarettes, heroin, sandwich cookies, hookers, television. All of those things involve money, A/V cords or phone calls--three things that are more petrifying than, say, the appeal of a fatal drug addiction. Instead I've chosen string cheese and sweatpants.

*
7. Re-Write...BUT BETTER THIS TIME

If I'd lost a paper for class or something, I'd obvs immediately begin the re-write; like Natalie did when her computer crashed at 4 A.M. the night before a paper was due and she was forced to re-write as we waited in line at Spirit Airlines. [She likes to live on the edge.] But, cause this's for my own self-imposed deadline, it's hard to select the next logical step. Like, what if I was just like: "fuck it"? I mean, I could do that, right? JK, kids, I'd never do that. I don't know if it can be better this time. I'd probably know if I accepted that it's never coming home and I need to start over.

*
6. Get A Little Perspective

The tornadoed residents of Greenburg, Kansas, can't recover because all the equipment they need to do so is in Iraq. Speaking of Iraq, that's not working out and G.W won't pull out. A 19-year-old college student at Fresno State killed a man in A DISPUTE OVER A VIDEO GAME CONSOLE. Doctors have been prescribing anemia drugs at unsafe dosages to millions of patients in exchange for kickbacks from the sketchy pharm companies. ET CETERA.

Also, as Ingrid points out: "I would guess that being an African woman forced to strip down naked for photographs to be published in 19th century Anthro-porno-gynecological medical books, books that would be perused (and probably jerked off to) by Picasso as source material for paintings that have come to symbolize modernity would have been worse than software breakdowns." She also notes: "This isn't meant to take away from your pain; it's all relative! Love you!" Aw, love you too!!

Free Tibet!

*
5. Call the Zoho Writer People...

...who apparently are never in their actual "office." I was informed, in a language that slightly resembles "English," to call back between 9 and 10 A.M.. I suspect they might run more efficient applications if they worked more often. That's a really small window during which I'll likely be asleep because I'm awake right now, writing this. I left a number and Ahmed, the Zoho man, called me back at FOUR IN THE MORNING and left a message that was completely indecipherable. He called again at three in the afternoon and left a similar hodgepodge of gibberish. I listened three times and couldn't make out a single word, let alone the words "We have restored your blog, thank you." Also his caller ID had only 5 numbers? Where is that? Krypton? Outsourcia?

*
4. Then Attack their "Bug" Forums and All Other Possible Avenues For Help...

On the Forums, I found that others had suffered similar document-death experiences on Zoho, which pretty much seals the fate of all Zoho employees [I'll give you a hint: it ain't heaven.] Other options for divine assistance: consult the Oracle of Delphi, try Eternal Sunshine memory-erasing drug, try building a time machine [though if I did that, Top Ten Best Things About Having a Time Machine would be the obvious blog-entry topic, like "Got to see Little House on Actual Prairie" or "Hung out with Socrates, Theadore Logan and Bill S. Preston Esq."]

*
3. Comfort Oneself With The Electronic Tragedies of Others:

-Crystal was tour-managing a band about to start a big USA Stadium tour when her computer, holding "every single lighting/sound FX" for 28 concerts, "itinerary, budget" and "everything else [she needs] in life," fell down five flights of stairs at the concert venue in L.A.. Just thinking about that makes me want to cry and do cocaine.

[Speaking of dropping computers, once I gave my old Mac Powerbook to my then-boyfriend for free, 'cause I loved him, and then a few months later I took it to install more memory for him, which I obvs was gonna pay for, and when I turned it on there was this folder labeled with a girl's name, and it turned out he'd let his Secret Other-Girlfriend use the computer to write him declarations of love. So then, instead of getting it upgraded, I drove to his house and threw it at him. It landed on the sidewalk. And survived. Just like we did, for some time. Hmm. MACS CAN SURVIVE ANYTHING, EVEN LYING AND CHEATING!! Dear MacBook, I love you and don't think this is your fault. It's not.]

-Natalie, in a story unrelated to the one related in "7," lost her master's thesis via faulty USB drive. The moral of this story is don't go to graduate school.

-Laura went out for a drink and when she got back her dissertation was gone. That happened to me once with my wife.

-Katie's senior design paper was on the school network when it crashed, and once she spent all afternoon watching free fetish porn and forgot to erase her internet history. I made up that last part, but it's based on implied truth.

-Razia took a class called "Accounting, Reports and Decisions," though, as I immediately thought and she immediately noted: "I should've killed myself when I read the unit title," and she screwed up this huge assignment because dates were switched up 'cause it was an American computer program and she lives in Australia. Which goes to show that America has ruined everything, e.g., Iraq, Accounting, computers. [side note: not that Iraq was exactly boomin' with joy before, but whatevs...what is "before," you know? I mean...]

-Moonkiller's PC got burnt in a fire. I can't really make any jokes about that, since it's my greatest fear. Seriously, I've written really bad poetry about it, that's how much I'm scared of my laptop catching on fire.

-AK's "laptop is so hot right now that [she's] propping it up on an ice pack, so it doesn't burn a hole in my desk. And [she's] going to have to take it in because if [she] presses too hard on the left side of the keyboard it will go into sleep mode." That comment made me LOL . And also, worry! Make sure that ice doesn't leak!!! Water will ruin everything, I did that once, spilled water over my brand-new laptop [the old one'd just crashed], and it cost $600 to fix. At least it got fixed. That's one of 10,000 reasons that Visa loves me.

-Laia, who was lonely and sad in a new city, dropped a latte on the keyboard of her laptop. She totally summoned 1984 by noting that this happened on "a cold morning of December." She then vowed never to have a liquid near her computer again. I did that too. Obvs I've got three liquids within arm's reach right now.

-Peter's laptop is a piece of shit and he misses Natalie's MacBook. I hate it when you've grown dependent on someone else's computer. Happened to me, obvs.

-Lynn's printer only communicates with her in Spanish. Mine only prints three pages at a time, then I have to turn it off and back on again and re-start the printing process. It's really weird, and somehow embarrassing if other people witness our routine. By "our" I mean myself and the printer.

*
2. Comfort Oneself with The General Tragedies of Others:

-Jessica is involved in some scholarly activities related to "patent prosecution" and "constitutional law." All I have to say is, I wish Site-Meter tracked not only location of readers, but grad school enrollment. Seriously, y'all students are totes bored. You should drop out and work at Duane Reade, today they only had one register open and I was trying to buy cigarettes for my girlfriend. And Junior Mints. Yummy.

-The Spaz's girlfriend dumped her yesterday to re-unite with her ex-boyfriend. That blows. I mean: A LOT. I'm sorry. You should throw a laptop at her. That's what I'd do. Keep the toaster. Toast your ex's heart.

-A lot of y'all have papers to write and you're reading this instead. You should stop writing your paper because it'll probably get erased anyhow. Just read my blog, then give me the money you woulda spent on school.

-Viennagirl doesn't think she's ever gonna be a rockstar, which's a hard realization....but to that I say: Don't stop believin', little wing! Don't give up the dream! Not now, not ever! Once Ingrid sent me a birthday card that said "Hello, my favorite next top model!" and I bet she'd send you one just like that if she knew you, and then you'd be Our Top Model.

-Most amazing story EVER, from "Anon": "i've actually had several proper mental breakdowns in the past year. more fun than sars and aids combined. like you wouldn't believe. i was having a pretty damn good sleep this morning too and the jerk-off neighbours always fuck that up for me. it's always something, because they're renovating. today it's dragging their one million tonne shipping container (i know, wtf) onto the back of a fucking truck, and yelling about it the whole time. not just 'yeah, good mate' but 'YEAH THAT SHOULD BE RIGHT MATE YEAH ORRIGHT GOOD ON YA YEAH SWEET'. I'm from Australia, obviously. It's 7 in the morning. I WANT AT LEAST ONE MORE FUCKING HOUR. I'm drinking decaf coffee because I'm such a neurotic that I can't drink proper stuff."

-And another amazing story, from pike-a-dilly, who claims he's never had computer problems with his PC...: "When i was a lil kid learnin to ride a ike, i didt have a bike to be learnin' on. So i was-a-learnin' how to ride on some other kids bike i knew. His bike was pretty beat up and the handle bar was pushing out through the handle-grip. The handle bars are basicaly fucking steel pipes with sharp round edges. while learning, the handle bars turned on me, and i fell onto the exposed one and basically was impaled. It went into my side making a nice round gaping cut."

-Cameron, who I've always credited with consuming more food than any other woman I've known, just learned she's got a thyroid disease and "the doctors say I will steadily gain weight until September, when I have to wear a tight white dress and get married."

-Rachel reports that someone's been stealing her hair products, and someone stole Angelo's $260 cutting shears. So whoever stole 'em, please return them to Rachel in Alaska at Trend Setters.

P.S. This made me laugh...

"Like right now, the word verification thing won't let me upload the comment...i better copy it." -::S

...because I do that, too. I open the "text-edit" app just to retain the pasted comments that I feel have run on long enough that they could be erased at any moment.

1. This?

In conclusion, I'm curious about this dead-dog-in-a-duffel-bag-story, relayed by M--and, to M, I'd like to say, in the words of Huey Lewis and the News: I'm Happy to be stuck with you, do doo doo.

I started reading the dead-dog story to TB over the phone, but she said she'd heard this story before. Then, Laurrita noted in the comments that she intended to relay the same hilarious saga but saw it'd already been told. I find this very mysterious. Someone get to the bottom of this. Is it a popular story? And if so, are you, M, friends with the source material, and therefore practically a famous person? Anyone? Bueller?