history lesson #2: letters to the editor

in a strange sort of way, being younger than everyone else in my grade shielded me from taunts and bullying. i'm not sure if it was pity, protectionism, or the fact that i didn't pick up on a lot of it, but my K-12 education was blissfully devoid of angst. i was happy. thrilled beyond belief. when i got to college, i was barely seventeen and totally unprepared for the idea that anyone would ever really think i was worthy of ridicule.

and then i found myself at a school where… well, to call the student body conservative is an insult to the term conservative. these kids and i did NOT see eye to eye on anything, except our deep, abiding love of alcohol, that is. but i was undeterred. every school needs a liberal op-ed columnist, right? well, i'll handle that. no biggie. i called my column blows against the empire, just like the true believer would. there's no fervor like that of a pure-hearted teenager, and i wrote beautiful tirades against the conventional wisdom of the school.

by the time spring semester rolled around, my reputation was known far and wide across the tiny mountain school. so when not one, but two, smarmy little right-wing jerks, thinking themselves the second coming of p.j. o'rourke or something, decided to unleash in the papers, i took my righteous fury and wrote letters. it was march, and i was heated. one of them made a "joke" about the openly gay student body president; i took him to task for it. the other said something jerky about women and subservience. he also felt my pen's wrath.

so when the april fool's day issue of the paper came out, there was a fake letter, with a bastardization of my name, chocked with all those trite "silly libs" jokes that fox news has since made household standards. if i saw that now, i'd probably roll my eyes and laugh. but at seventeen? i lost it. i was already on emotional tenterhooks in that place as it was. i was not academically successful relative to my peers, and i was about 70% of the way through my first real nervous breakdown (events alluded to here). so this was the final straw. i fled to the stairwell of the boyfriend's dorm and cried my eyes out.

from there, it was all downhill. some prick started prank-calling me in my dorm room, for god's sake. one night in early april, when the prankster called again, i screamed something incoherent into the phone and took off walking. i stalked, barefoot, up a hill, across the entire campus, to the decades-old ruins of the original building. we'd had orientation up there, and that's where i met the boy who would become the ex. somewhere along the way, the boyfriend caught up to me, shepherding me on my march. we laid down on the grass, covered in dew, and i turned to him and said:

i am not coming back here next year.

i finished the semester, transferred back home and moved on with my life. that ridicule wasn't what pushed me into my semester of darkness. honestly, i was already there. i was in way over my head. but it was, in a weird way, the final slap of self-preservation that sent me towards bigger and better things. somewhere deep down inside me, i knew i wasn't cut out for that place. no amount of sass and charm could change the fact that i had chosen just flat-out wrong.

so even though it hurt to be bullied like that, it ended up being a great gift. not in that cheesy christina aguilera "my enemies made me a fighter!" way, mind you. they weren't really enemies; i did not become a fighter. i already was a fighter. no, what i saw, for the first of many times in the intervening years, is that some battles are won only by living to fight another day. i learned to survive through retreat, and a stupid april fool's joke taught me that.

epistle #2: ophelia

[another letter i'll never send...]

dear ophelia:

it's not like i didn't try. i did, more than you could ever have known. i mean, i felt like i owed it to you not to give up. loyalty was something you prized above all else, and i understand that better than most. but at some point, it's just not worth it. there came a point when you were just not there anymore. and it's not like i begrudge you the stressors in your life. again, no one else understands what it's like to watch your mother slip away from you, while you stand powerless to do anything, like i do. but instead of accepting my hand, you slapped it away.

'course, the distance started long before this, i guess. you never really forgave me for getting out, for having the courage you never could have. you stuck it out, and on some levels it was easy for you. we suffered the same slings and arrows there, you and i. and at first, we managed it the same way - as destructively as possible. but i woke up. i smacked myself into a form of reality and got over the troubles. you, on the other hand, got addicted to the darkness. patton oswalt said, there's a chilly thrill in moving with the herd while quietly being tuned in to something dark, complicated and unknown. we both fell for the seduction of depression as glamour. but the difference between us is, i realized that it was a glamour, in the old witchcraft sense of the word. y'know, a swindle, a lie, a joke. there's nothing sexy or special about being miserable.

but i could even deal with that. i could understand that. it was the paranoid delusion that pushed me over the edge. you just flat-out lost touch with reality. every small slight became a gigantic cosmic sign that THEY were out to get you, eh? you just could not see what you'd become. i remember the last time i saw you, how happy i was and how… miserable, i guess, you were. it was so hard to watch. i tried to stay with you, be your friend. hell, you stood up for me when i married the ex. the three of us were so melded together. but you sliced us off like a moldy patch when you felt "betrayed" by us.

and what was our crime? to indicate to you that you lived in a world that did not exist. i think my final sin against you was to root for a different baseball team. it's like that old twilight zone where the embittered old movie star, once a young ingenue but now well past her prime, was so trapped in her reverie that she actually willed her delusion to exist. she literally ascended into the supposed heaven of her former glory, abandoning those "killjoys" who kept trying to tether her to the painful ways of the real world. if it were possible, you would do that in a heartbeat, i know.

but you've done the next best thing, haven't you? you just cast people aside, into perdition, when they violate your unspoken code. and if that's the way you want it, that's the way you'll get it. you kinda hurt me. but really, the reason i'm sad to see you fade into the mists of my past is that it didn't have to happen this way. you didn't have to wade into that water, letting the weight of your finery drag you into the depths. but you were too far gone, too deep into your own vision. so here i sit, waving my hands, watching you drown.

i tried to help. but i can't work miracles. goodbye, ophelia.

opposites attract

i am serious. i mean, i have a silly streak a mile wide. this isn't a deeply-guarded secret, especially to those who know me in the flesh. but i am, fundamentally, a rather serious person. i hear this a lot from certain people in my life, one in particular. you're very serious. you are a serious woman. you take things very seriously. ad infinitum, ad astram, forever and ever amen. he, on the other hand, is a comic of the highest caliber, able to take anything and craft a joke around it. if you ever need the perfect quote for a given situation, provided you don't mind the source being late-1980s through late-1990s popular culture, he's your man.

i plan. i keep a calendar in digital form and one in analog form. i like to know what's going to happen in the future, especially now that the future is all sparkly and full of promise, butterflies and cotton candy. i don't really do surprises, at least not on a grand scale. i was once given a surprise party, and while i could - and did - appreciate the sentiment, my first thought was, i'd have dressed better if i knew you were all going to be here. i like preparation, being ready for anything. you think i'm high-strung and neurotic, i say to him. not neurotic. just a little straitlaced. he continued, you think i'm cavalier to the point of being ridiculous. you're not ridiculous, love. but he is cavalier. he likes spur of the moment things. he gets a wild hair to go do something, just for the hell of it. there's a thrill in that, to be sure; i just can't do it every day.

for two people who should ostensibly know each other inside and out, we come up with these diametric oppositions sometimes. part of it is the fact that i have changed DRAMATICALLY over the past few years. i've gone from the nutty baby sister role to the calm, serious lawyer in the family dynamic that is my circle. and it's not like we're that different. we're liberals. we're atheists. we're SEC and saints fans. we have the same weird, twisted senses of humor, and we both get annoyed with the same dumb things. (and that's just the pack of similarities i can discuss in public; propriety, and the desire not to give you all sugar overload with the sweet stuff, limit the rest to my private mind.)

but i see threads in his tapestry that would never be a part of mine. he loves the fact that i'm willing to be the life of the party. i love the fact that he never, ever lets things get too far under his skin. he loves how i'm ready to handle any situation that comes along. i love how he can always help me see things through the right lens, and that it might not be that bad after all. so maybe it's not an opposition. maybe it's a complement to each other. apart, we're both pretty interesting people. together? we are unstoppable. the strengths in him balance the weaknesses in me, and vice versa.

now if i could just get him to commit to a vacation this summer... :)

shine on you crazy diamond

[buckle up. we're going fictional today.]

the way home never changes: on the train, thirty minutes. off the train, through the park, across the street and through the parking lot. seven minutes' walk, eight if you have to wait through the light. but on nights like this, when you're suddenly confronted with the destruction of the dreams of your past, it takes on a sinister cast. odd what triggers the bad humors, but such is life, you guess.

on the train at night, they're all paired up. friends leaving happy hour. couples, warm and happy in each other's arms. they're happy, redolent in the glow of comfort and joy. and it's not even that you don't have someone. you do. but you have a boyfriend, a term that rings with the casual immaturity of the looseness of the arrangement. a boyfriend is a recreation. hell, most men seem to love being someone's boyfriend. they love to fuck; they hate the work that goes with it. and what's the supposed work, that onerous test that prompts them to say man, women don't want you to have ANY fun without them? being there. just being around, being present. yeah. such a task.

the darkness feeds the annoyance, nurturing it, talking sweet to it. you can grow strong, turn into the seething storm of anger i always knew you could be. when he kisses her on the platform right in front of you, you have to swallow hard to choke back the sudden spike of rage and hurt. you're part of a pair, in a way, but not the way it used to be. in a way, that makes it worse. better partner; looser bond. it's a double cheat, like living down south was. you got all the problems of a small town and all the problems of a big city, with the charm of neither. same deal: you could call him, but you don't really have the right to do it.

so you get mad. you get mad at him for not being there. you get mad at yourself for getting mad at him. the spiral tightens and you seethe. a clutch of words from an old joni mitchell song, you love your lovin', but not like you love your freedom, drift through your head, and as your darkness attributes those lines to your man, you clench your fists. as he sits blissfully in his living room, watching baseball and laughing with his friends, you walk through the park in the dark alone and blame him for... what, exactly? you don't even know.

this inhuman place makes human monsters. great line from a great book. that creepy hotel and its ghosts dug into jack torrance's brain and warped him, twisted him, made him the specter that ruined him and nearly ruined his family. one of your favorite books, that one (we won't talk about the scenery-chewing monstrosity that is the jack nicholson movie of the same name). and somewhere in your heart, you feel a cold, creeping kinship with the tortured dry-drunk writer and his struggles.

yes, you've been known in your time to become a sort of monster yourself. but the inhuman place that makes you that way? it's nothing external. there's no gothic hotel, just the corners of your less than benevolent mind. there's no red death to hold sway over all. you don't wield a roque mallet against others; you wield your own thoughts against yourself. you are your mother's daughter, aren't you? the glittering brilliance of your good humor disguises dark, swirling currents, like sunshine sparkling on the surface of a roaring, rushing river. you injure when you plunge this low. unmask. unmask.

this too shall pass, you think, as you silently curse the man who loves you for failing to read your mind, to shine into you and save you from yourself. i just can't win. you and jack, siblings in arms, a couple of broken talents flailing to hang on to some scrap of reality when the ghosts close in. it's not murder - REDRUM - it's suicide. you could never do to others what the monster bids you to do to yourself. that's what makes you a socially acceptable monster. but you open the front door, move to your room, shower, change and lay down in your bed alone. the dam holds, and you sleep. tonight, anyway.

3AM

it's 3 AM, i'm awake and my heart's still dreamin'...

when you're an inveterate insomniac like i am, you're given to rumination while the rest of the world slumbers peacefully away. i think the fact that i spend so much time awake and contemplating my navel explains how i came to be a writer, and also how i developed my style. i write to y'all as if we're sitting at the coffee shop together, talking about things. i also write in my analog journal as if it's a friend. you won't believe what i've done now, journal. it's only crazy if you expect an answer. a lot of y'all are bloggers/writers/etc. yourselves. you understand this disease better than most, i think.

sometimes this is work
and don't you know sometimes this is play
sometimes you're listening to me
sometimes, you don't hear a damn word that i say

writing, for yourself or for others, is a different enterprise than talking to people in real life. that's why i often resort to writing out big important statements i have to make in my life and submitting them to their intended audience in writing. when i left the ex, i did so in a carefully crafted seven-page handwritten letter, one that took me three drafts and several hours to compose. but i made my case one hundred times more clearly than i could've if i'd had to contend with nerves, speaking to him in the face. some call it cowardice; i call it clarity. when you take a step that momentous, precision and accuracy are the most important possible things.

sometimes, writing something down is the only way to make damn sure someone gets the message. i can talk to someone about some subjects until i'm blue in the face, and the words just become a wall of noise that washes over him. he gets the idea, but he tunes me out. not out of malice; he just doesn't believe in words past a certain point. he's a man of action. i have grown to appreciate that about him, and to learn to look for what he's telling me in other ways. but asking me to stop using so many words would be tantamount to asking me to stop using so much oxygen.

but i'll keep chasing my dreams
and only you can make them real
i pour my heart out every night
but do you know the way that i feel?

so i write to him. sometimes i write to him directly; other times, i write to him here, knowing he won't really see it. (he only reads when i show him specific things.) in the rarest of times, i commit the words to my analog journal, in the age-old ritual of pen to paper. i feel, big and broad, all the time. writing gets it out, manages the feelings, turns the intangible into the tangible. i make damn sure i'm heard, even if it's just in the security of my notebooks. maybe it's a control thing, but i want it made crystal clear exactly how i feel. lucky for me, i've got the tools to make it happen.

history lesson #1: silent all these years

[i'm starting a new series, to go along with my letter series and the occasional throwback. i'm going to look back at trigger events, watersheds, and examine them for what they were to me. call them history lessons: the events that built me.]

'cause sometimes, i said sometimes, i hear my voice 
and it's been here silent all these years

the further away i get from the wilderness years, the more i marvel at how, frankly, i absolutely sold myself down the river. i really, truly did. i made some decision somewhere down the line that all the things that made me, well, me were no longer important. what was important? what other people wanted, what they needed. it wasn't a pressure thing, to my recollection. i don't remember anyone telling me bad things about the way i was or anything. i just cast in my lot with a lifestyle, an ethos, that had no relation to the way i'd lived for my entire life up to that moment.

years go by; will i still be waiting for somebody else to understand?

and then one day, i woke up and realized how far off the rails everything had spun. i was nearly thirty (though a lot further from it than i am today), and who the hell was i? i mean, really? i did not have an answer to that question that didn't involve my relation to someone else, something else. to think that a strong, brilliant girl had morphed into a young woman who wielded bravado to cover quavering insecurities… well, i could hardly bear it. and i felt alone, alone, alone. how could i have been so goddamned stupid?

i've been here, silent all these years
silent all these years
silent all these years…

i really thought the old me, the confident me, the self-assured me, was dead and buried forever. i thought i had no options other than to lose myself in the new identity i'd crafted, the epitome of the gilded cage.

and then came the hurricane.

gustav took a lot from a ton of people. but it gave me something. there's no grand irony in the storm itself (y'know, how the root word of katrina is cleansing or something like that). but what there was for me was the realization that many, many things were broken. it was time to start fixing things. and in the reclamation process, as i pulled tree limbs off the caved-in remnants of my free-girl heart, i saw that the shreds of that dream were far from dead. the pieces of my old spirit glinted out at me from the wreckage of the dream like long-lost friends. hey! it's you! man, have we missed you. just because i packed them in a box, high on a shelf in the back, so that i could… do whatever it is i did in my early and mid-twenties, did not mean they were dead. they were in there.

i was in there, silent all those years.

organic patriotism

[jessica, this one's for you.]

so apparently there's a soccer team in portland, oregon. i guess that makes sense. portland's a fun, chill, liberal town with athletic types in it, from what i've seen of it. now, i really could not give a damn about soccer. as much as i love sports of all kinds, i just can't get down with it. it bores the hell out of me. run, run, run, run, kick, run, fall down for some reason, run, maybe score, run, and then out of nowhere, there are between two and five mystery minutes added to each half for no apparent reason. it makes no damn sense.

but leaving that aside, the timbers did something cool to open their home season, something i'd never seen before. instead of trucking out some d-list celebrity, tweenage pageant queen or american idol castoff to butcher - er, honor america with the national anthem, they had the crowd sing it. 22,000 people in unison, enthusiastically and boisterously belting out our nation's theme song? man. i had chills watching it. usually, it's just a perfunctory thing when they sing the anthem in public, often augmented with totally unnecessary jingoistic macho. you don't really feel connected to it. but this? good grief. i loved every second of it. made me especially proud to be an american.

so you can imagine my SHOCK when veteran sportswriter bob ryan chose not to embrace this display when it came up on around the horn on friday. in fact, he lost his freaking mind. it's a joke. it's a civic joke. the people of portland PLANNED this. it wasn't patriotic. every other panelist loved it. even crazy woody paige said it was patriotic. tony reali, the host, is visibly shocked in the video when ryan snapped. basically, bob ryan accused the entire city of portland of mocking the national anthem, and by extension patriotism. look. crotchety old dudes will be crotchety old dudes. this is understood. but to accuse an entire city, especially one known for its pervasive liberalism, of being anti-patriotic, mocking america, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary? unacceptable. watch the video and see for yourself.

i can think of only one other instance in my life when the anthem hit me like this one did. y'all of course remember september 11, and undoubtedly remember the dull, numb shock that we were all wrapped in for days thereafter. i was twenty years old, a senior in undergrad. through the fog of the general tragedy, though, came the sharp, acute pain of losing a friend, a guy two years older than us who worked at cantor fitzgerald. everything shut down that weekend, including college and pro sports. however, our tiny little mountain school decided to go ahead with that saturday's game. normally, next to no one ever went to games; division III football is nothing to write home about. but the entire school dressed in its finest and filled that stadium that day. we all wore black ribbons in honor of our dead friend. i will never forget how, in the words of bruce springsteen, the sky was still that same unbelievable blue that it always is in the mountains of virginia in september. usually, at these games, the anthem was a canned marching band, fwonking away the notes of the song. meh. but that day, all 2,000 people in that crowd, arms wrapped around each other, tears streaking down our faces, belted every note as if it was the last thing we'd ever do. the roar that went up from that crowd echoed off of the blue ridge and reverberated through every inch of that town.

so to say that a crowd's boisterous enthusiasm is a civic joke rubs me 100% the wrong way. to read anything other than love and joy into that demonstration is to hold a view of the world that's dangerously cynical. or more insidiously, it's to assume that liberals can't be patriotic. ever. and that is WELL beyond the pale. bob ryan? you're a jerk. look at that video one last time and tell me that's not love. that crowd is the living embodiment of patriotism, organically grown.

21st century (digital boy)

[today's soundtrack - one of my all-time favorite songs.]

i can't really describe my reaction when i read this article. i started off chuckling, built up to laughter, and by the end of the article i was rolling around on the bed in hysterics. not because it's all that funny, really; it was the laughter of oh, my god, you just wrote my entire life in the space of a two-page online article. to say that i identify with the writer is to say that the grass is a little green or that donald trump's hair is a trifle artificial-looking.

see, here's a typical meal with the man and our friends. we go to the restaurant and order. we sit down. one of the boys pulls out his phone. within SECONDS, all the others follow suit. silence descends over the table, occasionally punctuated with a snicker, or maybe some comment (inevitably tech-related) spawned by something someone read that triggers a snarky conversation filled with acronyms. sometimes, i say, well, i'm gonna pull out my phone, too, just so i don't feel left out. that kind of subtlety, however, rarely gets the point across. there have been at least three meals in the last two weeks during which i haven't uttered a single word, because the conversation is so densely, impenetrably tech-related that i can't understand it, much less contribute (when there's talking at all, that is). i live my own personal south by southwest (and i love the phrase the annual campfire of the digitally interested more than words can express) every single day, except that i didn't choose it.

i take the man to functions with my law-school friends on a fairly regular basis. inevitably, we talk shop when we're together. we can't help it. law school is immersive, and now that we're all lawyers (some practicing, some still studying like me), it's only gonna get worse from here. but i am always cognizant of his inability to participate in these talks, and i do everything i can to steer the conversation back to something he can share with us. plus, let's be honest; law is more accessible to an intelligent person than tech is. it would be nice to get the same consideration from the tech boys every once in awhile.

but no, there's a defiance at work in their circle that's at equal turns shocking and disappointing. the counterpoint to the new york times piece, cited in the article, is a strident fuck off to those who go out with our friends to be with our friends. to the other tech kids, that whole the times they are a-changing trope sounds edgy and daring, i'm sure. it's another instance of that obnoxious thread that runs through tech culture: we are the only ones who control the paradigm of the new culture, and because of that, we will say what the new world will be. the rest of you? your ways are quaint, and we will crush you. this isn't progress; it's outright hostility to the rest of us. and i, for one, won't stand for it.

this is nothing more than, as the new york times article concluded, mutually assured distraction. and it's not being a luddite to expect your friends to be present with you when you go out with them. technology is righteously amazing. but as i mentioned a few weeks ago, without people, there is no technology. when you use this stuff to both assert your superiority and affect a form of digital isolation, you subvert the original purpose of all of this: to bring people together. it ends up creating a race of twenty-first century digital boys, who don't know how to live, but they've got a lot of toys. see how far that gets you in the flesh-and-blood world. you might be surprised.


hey. did you hear me? oh, guess not. you were playing angry birds again.

sorry seems to be the hardest word

[soundtrack]

ok, kobe. we get it. you really, really, REALLY don't want anyone to think you're a bad guy. but would it have killed you to just say, you know? i screwed up. i should never have said that, no matter how angry i was, and i'm sorry. now, there are two issues in "other-F-word-gate," as i've chosen to call it. the first is the word choice, which is the stuff of about nine million books. i'd like to see this word eradicated from the planet, but for once in my life, i am not going to address this one. another rant for another time. the other issue, the one that intrigues me more, is this: why in the name of all things sacred, can't the big tough man just say sorry?

i am a highly prideful woman. i love to be right; i hate to be told i'm wrong. i don't like to back down when challenged. but when i screw up, i own it. it's just in my nature. but more and more, there's this macho streak running down the back of the culture, in which high-profile folks just don't feel the need to ever straight-up apologize. i mean, jimmy swaggart was a sleazy cretinous bastard, and he got busted big-time on the whole sex-with-hookers thing. but when he did get busted, he went on TV, wept like a two-year-old and declared, i have sinned against you, my lord! you'd never catch a politician, celebrity, etc. EVER doing that sort of thing anymore. it's sad, so sad.

straight talk is something that american society just does not seem to practice anymore. you see it everywhere, from the budget foolishness, to the debacle that is "reality" television, to the conversation i saw on the train yesterday in which one girl hugged her friend goodbye as the friend got off the train, then turned to the other girl they had been with as the doors closed and said, good god, she's the biggest skank bitch on the planet. seriously. wouldn't this planet, this country and this life be one THOUSAND times better if we all remembered the prompt our parents gave us when we were little and screwed up? what do you say? (grumbled, arms folded, petulantly) i'm sorry.

but that's just too much to ask. it's a sad, sad situation, and it's getting more and more absurd. so we'll keep down this path of people doing biblically stupid and awful things, then turning around and telling us how much they regret that their actions have been misunderstood. don't condescend to me, don't blame the listener for your idiocy. american culture is chocked to the gills with this weird sort of hubris, and at the end of the day, sorry really does seem to be the hardest word.

deeper meaning

because i am southern, every so often i will engage in chitchat with strangers when the situation arises. people from other places just don't do this. some of my fellow southerners take this too far - i have a friend who is SHOCKED, just SHOCKED, that no one wants to have a conversation with him as he commutes into the city at 8:00 in the morning. i had to explain to him that, since you're not allowed to drink coffee on the metro, no one is in the mood to be friendly on the morning commute. this was unsettling and sad to him. say what you will about the south; we are some friendly freaking people, whether you're into that sort of thing or not.

but ANYWAY, today on the way into school, the train driver stopped particularly sharply at the station where i get out. he jostled me into the pole, which bugged me, but no biggie; he nearly sent the old man standing next to me flying across the car. well, that's one way to do it, he said sarcastically. i laughed and said, seriously. he smiled at me. i like your necklace. what is it? oh, it's a fleur-de-lis. what does it represent? i wear it to represent louisiana. no deeper meaning? he replied.

i was a little surprised by that question. my initial answer was no, as we parted ways and headed off to wherever our days took us. symbols are powerful things for humans, i suppose. the cross gives comfort and assurance to christians, i'm told. we wear the logos of our favorite sports teams to the ball park to show support and bond with our fellow fans (even when unfathomably stupid sports columnists tell us that doing so justifies us getting beaten nearly to death). we use symbols in so many ways, to mean so many things. it's our nature; we, as the ex liked to say, enjoy putting things in little boxes.

and lord knows the fleur-de-lis has a lot of meaning in my life. hell, not only do i wear one around my neck almost all the time, i have one tattooed on my body. i care enough about the pelican state to carry its quintessential symbol on my skin for the rest of my time on earth. so what's deeper than that? i mean, to say that it represents louisiana for me is obviously a surface description. it's more than that: it's the saints, new orleans, LSU, the cajun two-step, crawfish boils and drive-through daiquiris, the way the sun sparkles over the pontchartrain spillway, the amazing people i love so much... the list goes on and on.

so, nice old man on the metro, i guess there is some deeper meaning in my fleur-de-lis. and on a gorgeous day here in the district, your question has made me seriously nostalgic for a land and its people eleven hundred miles away...

ice cream

your love is better than ice cream
better than anything else that i've tried...

yesterday was ben and jerry's free cone day. i was insanely hungry when i left class, so i waited in the surprisingly fast and efficient line (given that it ran half the length of union station, i didn't have the highest of hopes), got my chocolate therapy scoop in a sugar cone (y'all, chocolate ice cream, chocolate cookies and chocolate PUDDING - gaaaah, how amazing), and wandered about the plaza eating and dodging the tourists who were foolhardy enough to try to sightsee at 5:45 in the evening on a tuesday. a nice little moment.

but i was cranky and prickly yesterday. everything set my teeth on edge. the semester is winding down and i am radically overwhelmed with what i have to do. my right leg has hurt for about a week now. i am still stuffy and coughing with the dregs of flu-pocalypse 2011. you ever see those cartoons where the character's walking around with the rain cloud over his head? that was totally me, to the point where the man came upstairs as i was gathering things to go back home (read: stomping around and swearing petulantly under my breath) and said flat-out, what's wrong, babe? he never straight-up asks like that, and i'm usually better at playing nice around others.

so he took me home, and he stayed with me last night. the petulance did not wane, as i was faced with internet failures, jackhammering at 8:45 in the freaking morning, and nearly incessant annoyances. by the time we all went to lunch, i was silent and stewing. i ignored everyone, watching no reservations on mute instead of talking to people. but then, as i got my ride to the train, the man said something really small and goofy. which metro stop do you want to go to? i mean, if you want your coffee, i'll take you to [this one], but if not, i'll take you to [this other one, closer into the city]. 

i hadn't mentioned coffee. hell, i hadn't mentioned anything. but he remembered that i like to start my days at school with a grande mocha from starbucks, and was willing to tailor the plan to make me happy. talk about a mood elevator. i might be up to my eyeballs in schoolwork, meaning that i'll be watching game 1 of the caps-rangers series from the comfort (?) of the law-school library, but i really can't in good faith be cranky anymore. it's those silly little gestures, those tiny, thoughtful things he does, that go so far to make me happy. he's a simple man. he shows his love in those sweet, simple little ways.

and that's better than ice cream. even when the ice cream's free.

federal plantation

[correction, 4/13: i said "montana" below when talking about states with lower populations than DC; i meant "wyoming." fixed now. thanks, jackass anonymous guy, for rudely pointing out my mistake.]

the mayor of DC went to jail last night. it seems like this last insult to the 600,000-plus people who live inside the borders of the district was the last straw. see, everyone's happy that the federal government didn't shut down this weekend. (the tea party nutballs notwithstanding, that is, but i don't consider them serious people.) but what boils my blood is that for some reason, the republicans in the house insisted on DC being forced to spend ITS OWN MONEY not according to the will of its citizens, but according to what john boehner thinks the people of DC should do.

folks, it is 2011. in 1789, when the founders wrote the constitution, the district of columbia barely existed. when they gave DC its special legal status, no one lived there. but lo and behold, things have changed. it is now time, more than ever, for DC to have home rule. real, honest home rule. that means congressional representation, control over its own budget and freedom from ideologically-based meddling from activist republicans who view this largely african-american city as their personal playground. and yes, it's republicans who are the most guilty here. it's been going on for years. DC approved medical marijuana; tom delay held back approval of the DC budget until they promised not to do it. nowadays, republicans strong-arm the city because they don't like DC's attitude on needle exchanges, school vouchers or reproductive rights.

this is not okay. DC has more people in it than wyoming, and no offense to any wyomingians (is that what you're called?) out there, but DC is WAY more vital to the national economy. there is no excuse for congressional republicans with a stark and clearly-defined social agenda to be able to strong-arm a group of people who do not share that agenda into being their puppets. it's ideological blackmail. and it's 100% unacceptable. i thought this was the party of states' rights, self-determination, small-government? yeah, not when it comes to DC. in fact, one of their own even said so the other day. they really view the lives and rights of 600,000 people as subordinate to their ability to play banana-republic-style dictator with the district.

the district of columbia is, for all intents and purposes, a plantation. the people who live here are subject to the whims and caprice of the house of representatives, who are essentially the masters. the DC government can try to govern according to the will of its people, a right that every other person in this country takes for granted, but it's all for naught. had the government shut down, DC would have shut down too, even though the budget here was passed a year ago. there is no acceptable justification for this. it needs to change. NOW.

dodged bullet

[in which i get a little bit PSA-ish. you can mentally tack on the "the more you know" thing on the end of today's post.]

i alluded to the spectacular drunk-fest that was my friday night. i don't care that i'm almost 30 years old; i like to throw down from time to time. in the words of the man, i'm not the type of person who's gonna have a beer every night, but once in awhile, i just want to get totally hammered. nothing wrong with that, i think. so we do just that from time to time. by the time i hit the cab after the party, it was abundantly clear that the little backstop moment i have was blatantly and fully ignored. i was... yeah.

so i went upstairs, got undressed and laid down in bed with the man. that's about the last thing i remember until i woke up saturday morning praying for death. i knew going into the party how friday night was going to end. (we're all adults here. i don't have to say it.) but when i was recovered enough on saturday evening, we were talking about the show that i had become. so imagine my surprise when he said to me, yeah, there was a point last night when i wondered, "is this still okay?" but then you answered me, and i decided it was. but still, i worried. you WERE okay with that, right?

something about that struck me. it struck me two ways. first, i have an incredibly respectful and conscientious boyfriend, since even after all this time, he still considered my wishes and needs in the face of previous conversations in which he's been granted blanket consent. but second, and way more important, i realized precisely how dangerous it can be to be a party girl. my history is that of a serial monogamist. i was never a hook-up kind of person; all through undergrad, i went home drunk with the same boy. not only that, the boy in question was a staunch defender of my honor. once that relationship became a marriage, obviously that deleted certain concerns.

but when i became unmarried again, i never had that period of sowing wild oats that many of us have in our twenties. i started down that road, but it was a cursory effort at best. i didn't want to date around; i wanted to date the man. so i was never going home with someone unfamiliar to me, someone new. the man taking me to bed knows me, respects me, cares about me. there will not be a situation where things go dark. but last night in particular jangled my nerves as to how fortunate, in a backwards sort of way, my relationship history has made me. i have never, in my entire sexual life, been in danger of date rape. that's a remarkable thing to say as a woman in 2011. and having been that drunk the other night, and in the hands of a man in a sexual situation, without a single negative repercussion even in the realm of possibility? good lord, i am lucky.

so for those of you out there who operate outside the bonds of monogamy, please, please promise me you'll be careful in your dealings. and i'd once again like to say to the universe: thank you for delivering the man to me, and for making him so safe, so generous of spirit, and so thoughtful of my safety. talk about dodging the bullet...

and no one denies this!

[if you're not a reader of the hilariously vulgar football blog kissing suzy kolber, well, you should be, because it's insanely funny and VERY inappropriate. that's a combo that i love. they have a character named tommy from quinzee, and the title of this post is his catch phrase. boston sports fans who read me? sorry. it's just too funny. don't feel bad; there are some mooky weirdo yankee fans in this world too.]

the prom went down. and now that the hangover has waned, all pieces of jewelry have been located and enough gatorade to float the freaking white house has been consumed, it's time for the postmortem. first, for those who asked for pictures, the sparkly dress...

nice, eh? it was dirt-cheap, too. the man and i both clean up pretty when we want to. and the party itself was...

ok, look. i'm just gonna come right out and say this. LSU parties are superior to my new school's party, and no one denies this. for starters, they had a gala event - $50 a ticket - for ADULTS, and there was NO LIQUOR. yeah, that's right, no liquor. beer and wine only. um, sorry. this isn't a wedding, where the guests show up and drink on your tab. i paid $100 for our admission to this party, and for that much money, i should be able to have a damn cocktail or six. that's what brought the hangover on, actually; i drank eight glasses of wine in a spiteful attempt to get my money's worth.

secondly, well, it was just so... tame. nothing scandalous happened. the kids showed up and dutifully danced to the party band (the man christened them "alternate universe gaslight anthem"), but nobody really cut loose. well, except for me on drink five or so. i took off the fancy earrings, slapped the hair back into a ponytail and did what you're supposed to do at a party: danced like a fiend, damn the consequences.

sadly, as i predicted, it was just a tight-assed little soiree, not the blowout bash it's supposed to be. that's just... in a way, it's what i expected all along, but it's still kinda heartbreaking to see people who are that out of touch with themselves. achievement doesn't have to turn you into a pod person. you're still allowed to breathe, smile, and - gasp! - get radically drunk while dancing provocatively with your boyfriend. the world will not end. you'll be happier for it.

and no one denies that.

prom night!

so i'll be 30 in two months, three weeks and and three days. i am a mature and reasonable adult who pays her bills and all that business. so that's precisely why the man and i are going to prom tonight.

no, we're not chaperoning a high-school dance. (yikes, torture. could you imagine?) part of the beauty of law school is the fact that there's a big shiny formal dance every year, even for us grown-up LL.M. people. the ones at LSU were fantastic. 'course, louisianians do nothing as well as they throw parties. we put on pretty dresses and nice suits, respectively, and went to hotel ballrooms to drink, dance and cut up. then we went to after-parties to continue drinking, dancing and cutting up. it was a beautiful thing, even when they didn't have malibu at the bar and i had to drink vodka and pineapple juice.

i love sparkly dresses. it's another one of the ways in which i am thoroughly, irretrievably, irrepressibly a CHICK. but i'll tell you, i'm a little nervous about this one tonight. i mean, there will be alcohol and snacks, and i will get to gallivant around on the arm of the man, who looks sexy as all hell in a suit. but let's face it; the kids at my marble-floored bastion of top-fourteen HIGHER LEGAL LEARNING aren't all that good at cutting loose and having fun. they are very serious people, and they think of very serious things all the serious time. it's a lot to take, even for someone who's as serious as i am.

so it'll be interesting to see how the high-rollin' popular kids throw down. i'm not entirely certain they'll know how to get it done. in order to have a successful party, you need to have the ability to stop fretting and let go for once in your life. that's one of the best skills i learned at LSU. we worked hard in my JD program, don't get it twisted. law school is never easy. but we also knew that all work and no play makes law students... something, something. (go crazy? don't mind if i do!) kids here don't seem to know that. they really do seem to think that if they let up for one second, someone's gonna overtake them! oh, my god! then they'll have to work at the #4 law firm in the country instead of the #3 one!

pardon the sarcasm, but come on. that's no way to live. so even though it's prom night, we'll see how much revelry there is to be had. i mean, by the others, that is. i plan to have one HELL of a time. there's gonna be free champagne. that's good enough for me!

mushball

in case it hasn't become thoroughly obvious, i am an unmitigated mushball deep in my core. oh, i'm plenty tough around the edges, but scratch me hard enough and you will find my soft candy center. it's made up of marshmallow fluff and that weird dyed-pink coconut that encases sno-balls. (you've never had a sno-ball? oh, you poor deprived soul, possessed of way more culinary responsibility than i'll ever have. your humble blog proprietor would spend many a friday afternoon after elementary school in the 1980s gnawing happily on one of these.) this is the curse i carry through this life. i am powerless over bulldogs, boston terriers, pudgy babies, and mites (little kids who play hockey - oh my god, y'all, you should've seen the little ones on ice last night at the caps game; you'd have DIED). i own it.

but what really dissolves me into a little pile of pink-coconut-flecked marshmallow goo is when someone is unexpectedly sweet to me. i'm a hardcore sucker for the tiny gesture, especially when given by someone who's not known for that sort of thing. i think you know where i'm going with this one. where do i always go? enter the man. my attempt to make him a hockey nut was... well, it was a dismal failure. he spent the entire third period watching a gamecast of the giants-padres game on his iphone, which didn't even have images, just a scrolling list of plays. he wouldn't even chant "let's go caps!" with me when the horn guy blew his horn. he. was. BORED.

needless to say, this made me feel bad. so i said, sorry to have dragged you to something at which you were clearly miserable. i wasn't miserable. you had fun. i'm glad you were so happy. so next time i should just bring my dad to the game? no. i like seeing you enjoy something like this. awwww. that made me smile. he's so freaking good at these little things. he's definitely mentioned in the past that he likes to make me happy. i just want you to be happy, in fact, is something he said to me a lot in the beginning. and not that other guys in my past haven't shared the same sentiment. it would be a stupid and/or evil man who didn't want the main woman in his life to be happy.

maybe it's because he knows me so incredibly well, better than anyone else on the planet, but he always knows precisely what it takes to melt me. this is, besides all the other reasons why i adore this relationship, my favorite thing about him. and i know i spend a lot of time gushing over him here. it's gotta get old at some point, i'm sure. but i want it made damn clear that i appreciate him, and his extreme skill at warming my heart. honestly, he's the central piece of the happiness in my life these days. the professional and academic achievements are awesome, and i am DAMN proud of them. but honestly, they wouldn't be anywhere near as fun if i couldn't turn to him and say, look what i just did, and hear back, i knew you would. i'm so proud of you.

mushy, yes. but it's so good.

72 degrees and sunny

i have been pent up inside for hours now, trying to be a good little scholar and finish that 10-page paper i alluded to last night. (some of you know what i've really been up to - damn you, facebook/twitter/etc.!) but it's all about to be okay. see, i am going to a hockey game tonight. god, i love hockey. and to get to my local hockey arena, i will head out of this library and take a nice, leisurely stroll in the sunshine.

yeah, sunshine. after the debacle that was yesterday's weather, and let's face it, the entirety of march in the nation's capital, it decided to be beautiful today. rock on. i've been staring enviously out the window all afternoon, watching tulip trees bloom and desperately wishing to be freaking done with school so i can go outside and loll about in the grass, reading trashy books and thinking about how i will never, ever have to go to school again.

the happiness has infected my soul today in a nearly-manic fashion. it's spring fever, i think. life is taking a turn for the smile-inducing on so many levels, and i'm actually able to get out of my own way and (gasp!) enjoy that. plus, i have the weirdest form of reverse seasonal affective disorder known to man, as i told y'all last year when this started happening. so in the face of the fresh hell that will be unleashed on the district (and the rest of the country, but acutely and especially the district) with the impending budget shutdown foolishness, i am happy. in the face of a lot of other not-so-nice things in the outside world, the inside world of your humble blog proprietor is 72 degrees and sunny.

productivity? nah, not so much. but happiness? all damn day. now it's time to wrap up the regular season for my boys in red and march strong to the playoffs. LET'S GO CAPS!

list of demands

as the song says, i've got a list of demands, written on the palm of my hands. well, written on the face of my blog. but still, it stands. here ya go:

1) i want someone else to write my seminar paper for this semester. oh, i'll give total credit; i don't steal other people's work. i'll cop 100% to the fact that someone else wrote it. but i do NOT want to write a 25-page paper this month. i also want someone else to write my other paper that's due in 13 days. this one is just toddler-level temper-fit petulance, because it's a 10-page maximum. i can do that in three hours, and will most likely knock that out tonight. it's a topic i know inside and out, and can probably conjure up an A-level work in no time. but i. don't. wanna.

2) speaking of tonight, when it gets to be mealtime, i want someone to bring me baked ziti, with extra mozzarella, a nice salad and some good, crusty bread. also, some tiramisu. hmm. not seeing this happening, though. it's looking like indian food from trader joe's for dinner.

3) i want the drive and determination to get into that freaking gym and bust tail. bathing suit season is coming down the pike, and i need some toning and shaping. (hmm. the song that inspires this list is kind of a run-through-a-brick-wall song. maybe that'll help.)

4) i want to meet butler blue II. i don't care if they got destroyed last night; this dog is the cutest freaking thing ever. the man has spent hours finding videos and pictures to show me, largely because he thinks it's the height of amusing to see, and i'm quoting, my bad-ass, tough girl reduced to a pile of mush, "oh, my god, how cuuuuute!" whatever. i own my mushiness. and if you don't think that picture is the cutest thing you've ever seen... well, i don't know what to tell you.

5) i want it to be tomorrow night. the man and i have hockey tickets. i love hockey; he thinks it's stupid. my daddy was once this way, too. then i took him to watch the caps beat the hell out of the st. louis blues one christmas, and it was all over. now daddy watches don cherry on the regular and can often be found yelling "hit somebody!" i foresee something similar happening with the man. well, maybe not. but it's still going to be fun. let's go caps!

6) i want to go on vacation with the man, somewhere warm and beachy. i want there to be a convertible involved, as well as a fun dive bar. i want to indulge in all my favorite vices - eating, drinking, swimming, sunning and, well, the man - for a few days, basically on demand. sound good? i think so. just help me remember my sunscreen.

so that's my list of demands on this freezing cold and rainy day. anyone else in the mood to be petulant and demanding? i hope it's not just me...

backstop

it's no secret that there have been some scary incidents in my life, points where the edge was suddenly under my toes and threatening to pass under me, dropping me fast and far to god only knows what. it's not a fun place to be. but i have been beyond fortunate in my life. i've been surrounded by people who love me, in both happy times and scary ones. i love them back, and i appreciate the support and the love they've shown me more than i could ever articulate. it's a rare privilege to have such a fantastic coterie of nearest and dearest.

but alongside the external support, i have always managed to have a backstop, somewhere deep down inside me, that's pulled me back from the brink. sometimes it manifests itself in times of fun, when i need to make that decision to either not take that last drink or risk the hangover from hell. (now, in that circumstance, i don't always listen to the backstop, but i am always granted, somehow, a five-minute or so window in every drunken bacchanalia that lets me say "when.") other times, though... well, this is the first time i've discussed any of this as publicly as this, but here we go.

there have been two times in my life when the darkness was most dangerous. once, i was very young, and facing failure on a grand scale for the very first time. it threatened to overwhelm me. i remember this night as being at equal turns hazy and very sharp. there were perilous circumstances all around me as i sat alone in my dorm room. rational thought? forget it. but suddenly, quite out of nowhere, i thought, i should call the boy. ("the boy" here is my ex.) so i dialed him up and said something to the effect of, you need to come over right now. he did. thankfully, i did not lock my door in that dorm if i wasn't leaving, so he came right in and stopped me from making a decision that, let's face it, wouldn't have ended well. that bolt out of the blue, that phone call, saved me from some really bad consequences. backstop.

the other time was very recently. i've sketched it out briefly here. that was a long, dark night alone in my bedroom, drinking wine and considering my options. but somehow, some way, i had the thought, i should text the man. i know i didn't make sense. he kept me on the line, so to speak. are you okay? what do you need? do you want me to come over? you're scaring me. i'm coming to get you. and he did. he drove over, in a blinding thunderstorm, took me home with him and held me through the night. he didn't stop all the damage, but he certainly capped what could've gone down. i don't have a lot of recall at all about that night. there's blurriness, haze, and disorientation everywhere. but i do remember, VERY clearly, one gap in the confusion. for some reason, this song was playing (some late-night talk show, i guess), and the thought to text him came then. backstop.

this all came to me because of some stresses in the lives of friends of mine. people have thrown up their hands and admitted to needing help, and in a couple of cases, the choice to get that help was not theirs alone. help is an amazing thing, especially when you're suffering. having it foisted on you is one thing. but being able to stop yourself before the edge upon which you're balanced slips past you? priceless. absolutely priceless. i don't know where i get this power, this ability, this backstop i have. but my god, there's nothing about myself that i love and value more. my impulse to self-preserve, somewhere under all of this, has been vital. here's hoping i never, ever lose it.

embolism

y'all remember a separate peace? i read it in tenth grade, and it was one of the few compulsory novels in high school that i truly loved. i assume that it's so ubiquitous at this point that i'm not even gonna say spoiler alert, but one of the main characters dies of an embolism during surgery to set a broken leg. a piece of marrow dislodges and stops his heart. that's a really apt analogy for the new grief process of the post-detente divorce. every time i turn around, a new piece of sadness breaks off and strikes me, rendering me completely defenseless. see also: this entire weekend.

see, last night, the man and i had an argument. nothing terrifically serious on its face - we were discussing the legitimacy of the NCAA. but this argument lasted the entire length of the uconn-kentucky game. no exaggeration; we didn't wrap it up and say sorry until the horn sounded and uconn advanced. it was a fun debate at first, but i found myself getting more and more worked up. there were a couple of things that struck me as hurtful. first, the man said at one point, tell me why i don't get it. tell me why i'm stupid. i lost my mind. hey, stop. i did NOT say you were stupid. i wouldn't ever say that. secondly, he said, that was a ridiculous, if not dumb, point. um, what?

so i called him on it. dumb? what the hell? he said, what? i say dumb things all the time. YOU'RE not dumb. you're brilliant. that's why it's so surprising that you'd say it that way. i guess that makes sense. not thrilled with the word choice, but okay. now let's move on to the whole tell me why i'm stupid thing. i did NOT call you stupid. of course you didn't. i know you don't think that. i was talking about myself. i felt stupid because i didn't understand. yeah, those are loaded words. i don't use them in situations like this. and as i said that to him, i felt my eyes welling up with tears. i stopped talking. you okay? no, not really. it hit me in that moment that, when these debates would happen in the old life, when the word dumb came out, he meant it. when the word bitch came out, same thing. the enormity of the brokenness of our interactions slapped me full across the face. to look the man in the eye, to see his concern, his sincerity, and to realize how scarred i was by the patterns of the past was a tough thing to face. he opened his arms to me, and as i laid my head against his chest and felt him kiss my forehead, i once again told myself that things were different, new, better.

then, a few minutes ago, actually, another sliver of grief came free. he went out tonight on a business dinner. cool; an evening in, painting my nails and watching baseball. all i need is some provision for my own dinner, and that's totally fine. (not like he keeps food in his home. not his style.) but a two-hour meeting that was well into hour four had my dander up, to say the least about it. my temper was getting piqued. hmph. bet he forgot. he'll be here eventually; it's his house. but looks like i got brushed off. 'course, that's exactly when he calls to ask what i want for dinner, and to tell me he'll be home soon. and it hit me like a ton of bricks. i am so used to the man in my life letting me down and disappointing me. it's almost what i've come to expect. y'all have read my hosannas to the heavens about the nice things he does for me. he's heard this too, and he always responds with the same thing: i do what i can. he almost seems surprised that i'm so grateful for him. well, i'm grateful because a) i don't expect reliability and b) i'm way more used to having to yell at someone than to thank someone.

this is a process, the man said as he wiped the tears away last night. but every day, it's going to get a little bit better. he's right. as i realize where i was hurt, what was broken, i can start to fix it. the pieces that break off won't kill me. they'll hurt as they come loose, but the more that come free, the closer i'll be to putting this whole, ugly mess 100% behind me. and believe me, that cannot happen fast enough.