when wine is your saviour

See, the thing is, I don't hate my roommates. They are perfectly nice people, people who would probably be decent customers, maybe they wouldn't tip very well, but they'd at least be decent enough to look you in the eye and maybe mean it when they told you to have a nice day.

I don't know if we'd ever meet if they didn't happen to be the roommates of my boyfriend. I'm sure there's lots of people he would never have gotten to know except through my arm-twisting. Just by looking at them, there's nothing super horrifying about them. They seem like perfectly nice and reasonable people.

Over the summer, my friend encouraged me to pilfer her dvd box sets of Buffy The Vampire Slayer while dog-sitting for her pooches. I figured she was just trying to goad me into sticking around the apartment so the dogs didn't feel lonely, so I zeroed in on Season 4, the year Buffy and crew attend Sunnydale's college (and by some random chance, held plenty of vamps and other baddies to keep the Scooby gang busy), and settled in for some catch-up.

I had watched plenty of Buffy in my tv heyday, but somehow, most of the college year (where some avid fans claim Buffy jumped the shark) I missed. Or maybe didn't want to watch, since college and going back to school was a sore subject with me. Now what most people pick up on pretty fast is the way Joss Whedon (creator, head writer, director) was able to take everyday horrors in a young woman's life and make them supernatural opponents for Buffy and her gang. Oftentimes, this results in some hilarious dialogue of the misunderstanding kind. And, it creates a universiality that touches the viewers.

One such episode could not have been more of a bulls-eye into what I had been going through.

First, the Backstory:

So after some debate and exploring our options via game theory (Eric's minor in college) I decided to move into Eric's apartment back in May. I had lived alone for two years. He had lived with this couple (a man and woman in a relationship) for nearly three years. I had met them, spent time with them, drank with them. I knew full well what I was in for.

Some part of me, the optimist in me, the romantic side of me, really believed and hoped that we would become the world's most amazing double date. The four of us would be in some blissful arm in arm romp through life and I would be happier than I have ever been. We would all be saving money, having fun, and happy.

Well, that didn't exactly happen.

Within a week, I was acting like an intolerable brat. I hadn't fully taken into account the fact that I had never really had roommates (what I then defined as people you live with but can't really tell them how you really feel about shit). I was busy with school and work and barely had enough time and energy to take off my shoes at the end of the day. I had boxes everywhere, and after a week, the girl roommate (a notoriously and self-professed anal geek for cleaning) put my books away for me on the bookshelf.

Well. I somehow overlooked the fact that she had done it to be nice and because I didn't have the time...and got really possesively angry. To make matters worse, I was too nice to say anything to her about it, but I did tell my boyfriend, and bitch about it to a friend who I happened to be on the phone with when I discovered this atrocity, and Eric went into the kitchen where the roommates where hanging out and talking. When she asked him if I was upset about the books, he said yes. He answered honestly. Well, I don't know if I was more mad about the books or the fact that Eric can't give me a straight answer if his life depended upon it. I stormed out of the house and walked around for a while, fuming.

That was just the first week.

Back to Buffy:

So I'm sitting back on my friend's comfy king sized bed with the dogs at my feet and watching Buffy in college and there's an episode in which Buffy is convinced her roommate is a soul sucking demon. She likes Celine Dion, which is for sure demonic! She's perky and stuff! She makes a lot of noise!

And I couldn't help seeing the parallel in my life. For sure, my roommate and I have very little in common. Mostly--annoyingly--we talk about Eric. Sometimes we talk about the weather. Sometimes even, we may jump into gossipy talk about the other friends they have. Hardly ever did I feel like this was someone I could call my friend.

As I watched Buffy, I saw the similarities with their group and ours. Of course, I'm the most like Buffy. Though sometimes I have a little Cordie and Willow mixed in. I think as the Buffy watching went on, I saw a lot of Anya's qualities that are similar to mine (I'm prone to saying truthful out of place nonsequitors and often feel like an outsider of the gang). Eric's like half Giles and half Zander. Same for the guy counterpart of our roommates. Smart, but ready to laugh and make a joke out of anything. The girl roommate is a lot like Willow. She's nice and flustered and smart and always has an answer for things. One of their friends is a dead ringer for Cordelia. She's beautiful and annoyed when everyone's not paying attention to her.

So I brought these dvd box sets home and we spent the summer watching them. We got through til Buffy suddenly has a little sister and then our collective interest waned (much as mine did when they were first aired). The girl roommate though, she was still interested in watching them til the bitter end, and part of me had to accept that maybe, just maybe she was desperately searching for things to have in common with me (and yes, maybe she just liked it and wanted to see it through to the end).

So as I've been on vacation and around the house more, her and I have spent a lot of time together. She's also on the last dwindling days before her month long vacation expires. We had been talking here and there...but in the last couple weeks, I really feel like there's less to make up about her that's proof of what an evil roommate she is...and more to explore about her. Maybe I am just tired of always resisting everything, always putting up defensive walls around myself.

Seven months in, a new year on the rise, and I can't help thinking well, it's about damn time you just admit it. You live here. This is your home. Act like it. Enjoy it. And quit questioning everything. You big jerk.

but dammit if a little wine doesn't make one feel merrier.

and, by the way, Buffy's roommate really was a soul sucking demon...but you know, I'm aware that was just television.

Everyday is Halloween...

My first day at Miska’s was on Halloween. I thought that was so cool. I mean, okay fine, in general, Goths do not get overjoyed about too much, especially Halloween. Like that famous and oft-quoted Ministry song goes, “Everyday is Halloween.”

I guess I’m like lucky to live in the twenty-first century, because I never feel bad for being goth. As my friend Leon says, mopey Goths are just in it to make us look bad honey, don’t let them take you down with them! I used to wear really elaborate costumes for Halloween, the best one was when I was eleven and I was a pink crayola. I still have the headpiece for that. It was hard to sit down in that costume. And go to the bathroom. My mom made it for me.

Anyway, I thought about not wearing a costume at all and just wearing kind of regular people clothes. You know, like some of my old Gap clothes that my mom refuses to throw away because she’s sure someday I’ll wear them again. Yeah right. But then, Halloween happened to be on a Wednesday this year, so I thought it might be fun if I wore a costume to work.

I found this really cool Super Seductive Spider Lady costume and the best thing about it was the outfit was just an allover body suit of thin black mesh that was supposed to look like spider webs, with carefully crafted denser parts over certain areas. I already had little plastic spiders in all sorts of colors, so I plucked out the purple and green ones (to go with my hair of course) and I glued them all over the suit with super glue.

I had so much fun just getting my costume together. Leon and Rachel came over and we all wore our costumes and took hits of LSD and somehow managed to glue our fingers together so that when we woke up the next morning, we tried everything we could think of for like an hour and then we got to the nail polish remover and that worked better than anything.

So anyway, I walked into Miska’s with my costume and of course, none of those losers were wearing a costume. I tried not to wear too much makeup, but the one special thing I did was paint the right side of my lips green and the left side purple. I spiked my hair up to show off the green and purple highlights, which were already beginning to fade, and I feel the spider suit start riding in my crotch and I wondered why I didn’t wear underwear until I remembered that the lines would have shown. So much contemplation involved in costuming. And Everyday is Halloween for a goth like me.

Cy just smiled at me and said “Good Evening.” If he was surprised by my costume, he didn’t show it. Larry, that fucker, said, “Well hello there!” and looked me up and down like I was some Lincoln Park slut who couldn’t wait to get a piece of him and said, “How can I help you?”

“Larry, it’s me,” I said. I cleared my nose and throat indignantly with a sniff of my nose. “Madeline.”

Larry is still smiling at me, ball cap rising from his eyebrows, plaid shirted shoulders drawn in, hands on the counter, and then his grin opened wider to reveal jagged nicotine stained teeth. His right hand rose up to cover these horrid teeth automatically. He finally said, in the sort of jovial voice a ringmaster at a circus might use, “Don’t you look nice today!”

“Thanks Larry,” I said, glad that he was at least trying to compliment me. “So where do you want me?”

He grinned again, his hand shot up, and he said, “Oh boy, it looks like we’re going to have fun tonight!”

Or, I’ll have to wonder if everything I say could be considered sexual innuendo. What a freak.

The whole time, Cy just stood behind me near the vodka aisle where he always stands, smiling perpetually like some sort of garden gnome.

“Well, little lady,” Larry began, and his teeth force his lips to meet after each syllable. “Come on behind here and get to know the register. Have you ever used a cash register before?”

I said, “Yeah, I’ve had lots of jobs like this.” That was totally a lie. I had only ever had jobs that were odd, like painting houses, walking dogs, pet-sitting, babysitting (until I got too Goth for the neighbors and they stopped calling). Sometimes my mom still gave me my allowance if I managed to toss out the trash or pick up my room. I told her it made me feel really vile to take money as an adult, but she didn’t seem to listen. She would just slide envelopes under my door when the music was too loud for me to hear her knocking.

So then Larry said to me, “Well, Cy, maybe I should show her around the store?” I turned around to look at Cy and there was that same wide smile. He sorta looked like a bald genie in a lamp.

“Well, obviously,” he began, stepping off the raised platform behind the register, “you’ve been in the store before, so you can see where things are.” He looked at me like he was afraid I might be dumb.

“Yeah,” and I pointed to each section as I named them, “Beer in the back, wines, whites chilled, bags of ice.” I stepped past Cy and smiled at him as I said, “Vodka, and other spirits, snacks, candy, cigarettes.”

When I was faced the register I looked at Larry, “Fifths, champagnes, and finally, beef jerky.” I picked up a package and held it between my hands like a whip.

“Well,” he said, his smile dimmed. “I can see you’re going to be very easy to train.” He walked down the aisle towards the back coolers. “Ever been behind these doors before?”

“No,” I said in a drawn out tease.

“Follow me," he said. "We better go now before things get too hectic in here.”

“Oh, hectic,” I said, feeling more and more comfortable. “We wouldn’t want that.”

The door to the coolers was kind of like a secret door in the wall in that it didn’t exactly look like there was a door there, but they put one in because they had too. A simple latch on the outside, the kind on a screen door would have, and the long metal part hung limply along the wall.

“We don’t latch this,” Larry said in a serious tone. “Might lock someone in the cooler. That’s no good. Sometimes customers close it and you won’t wonder about where Cy or José or Sayed have been until you haven’t seen them around for a while. Then you’ll find them in here, cursing you and yelling at you. Have you ever had a foreign man yell at you in their foreign language?”

I shook my head no.

He smiled again, and up close, his teeth actually smelled like nicotine. “You will.”

why weird music deserves listening

One of my Christmas presents was a very thoughtful gift from my boyfriend, a copy of a magazine called FILTER, simply because the singer from one of my favorite heart wrenching bands was on the cover, Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes.

Most people have never heard of Bright Eyes. Some people have and despise Conor's plaintive wails. And very few (you know, like 200,000 of billions) really really really like Bright Eyes.

I'm one of the special people that is able to look past the lock of hair perfectly coiffed over the eye (everyone needs a look), the reputation that Conor has made as a persnickity fucker backstage (I'll never meet him anyway), and the overbearing whine (haven't we all done it at some point?) to just plain and simple, the music and how it makes me feel.

Oddly enough, as I read that description, I think about another singer who has captured my heart, who also encompasses those traits. Ryan Adams (Heartbreaker) and previously, leader singer of Chicago favorite Whiskeytown. Maybe Conor is just my kind of guy. Maybe I've just got a thing for whiny male singers. Me and Winona Ryder.

Anyway, like nearly all of the music I know about and love, I discovered Bright Eyes second hand, from a boyfriend. His enthusiasm for the band alone might have been enough to lovingly memorize every note and word, but long after our relationship ended, I still adore Bright Eyes.

I guess you'd have to know a little bit about just how musically inept I was. You can pretty much gage how much I've evolved when you consider that at 13, I listened to B96 incessantly, and my favorite band was NKOTB. That I managed to develop any taste in music can be regarded dubiously because of that admission.

When I was about twenty and working across the street from Tower Records, I came across a promotional calendar Tower released for the coming year. It was poster sized, with all the months neatly assembled, a picture of a punked out girl resembling Madonna from the Papa Don't Preach days, and had the subtitle, "NO MUSIC NO LIFE."

I really took that admonishment seriously. At the time, I rarely listened to music. I was in that weird in between childhood and adulthood phase, and it was clear to me that I couldn't listen to the music that I had liked at 13, but I was lost as to what to listen to next. A coworker at a previous job piqued my musical tastes with Stereolab's Emperor Tomato Ketchup so I began to fervently collect their albums and cultivate my musical interests.

At that time, I was dating a man we all know and love, Vincent R. Francone. Most of the music he listened to back then was not as ecclectic, but also unpretentious, without fanfare, and very gritty. He definitely wouldn't have had a fondness for Bright Eyes, though I'll never know for sure, but I have a feeling he would concur with the rest of the people who've heard Bright Eyes, summed up by one coffeeshop listener who said, "Would someone please put that guy out of his misery already." But it's Vincent I have to thank for my encounters with Tom Waits, Mr. Bungle (and their various offshoots), and crazy Japanese girls. (As well as, of course, the literature of varying degrees I have loved because of Vinny.)

*

What Bright Eyes--or as most people know them as, Conor and whoever he happens to bring along to play that night--does best is capture the universal feeling of emptiness and loss and the search for belonging through lyrics that are far from cliched, but feel like the thoughts you never share, the feelings you keep secret from everyone and the stories of life, told in magical metaphors. For some people, this is the essence of what life is about. Someone else talking about the things you would never expose. Knowing you're not alone.

But then the singing, yes, it is anguished, full of suffering, but we are so used to glamour and glitz and perfection that a show of emotion is too much for people. It is overwhelming, overbearing, trite. I have said that Bright Eyes is the kind of music you can only listen to when you are alone or lonely.

Also what Bright Eyes does best is musically, there are no rules. Keys jangle, instruments blare, a cacophony of sounds explode, and then, there is quiet. Balance, order, structure are not missing, but not needed. You get the sense (especially after listening to the cd's over and over again) that these people are actually having fun playing just for the fact that they're playing. It is jubilant, it is surprising, it is most of all refreshing.

The magazine FILTER is one of those new hipper than thou magazines that is sold at Urban Outfitters and I was all ready to write it off as such until I opened it and actually read the three part cover story on Conor Oberst. The latter is an interview with Conor that is four pages long, meandering into territory that covers the battle between Corporate Radio and little labels that could to Conor's writing process. And then, there is the stuff of life:

"That's it. You better fucking make a move while you got a chance. Because it's not going to wait around for you to get comfortable with the idea of your mortality. You better just bust out the machete and start chopping through this shit and heading in some direction."

One night, at Raven's, I gave up defending Bright Eyes. The guy we were with was a heavy metal dude and there was no way I was going to make him see my side of things, especially since he personally knew people who had run-in's with Conor backstage ("The guy's an asshole, I don't care about his music!"). But it made me realize that oftentimes, people get so caught up in all the things that just aren't important about music, how it looks, how it lands, how it's labeled. Do you think heavy metal dude so much as listened to one Bright Eyes song on his little Apple IPod? No way. But he can safely say the music sucks because some people told him that Conor was a jerk.

So I will do what most musicians do, let the music testify for itself. I am not preaching the good word about Bright Eyes. If you're in one of the three categories I'm not, then fine, your life isn't going to be any better or worse off for not liking or listening to Bright Eyes.

My favorite song (whose name I had to learn before I went to see Bright Eyes play at the Metro so I could chant my request for it) is "Something Vague."

It starts out ordinarily enough like this..."Now and again, it seems worse than it is, but mostly the view is accurate. You see your breath in the air as you climb up the stairs to that coffin you call your apartment. Then you sit in a chair, brush the snow from your hair, and drink the cold away. And you're not really sure what you're doing this for, but you need something to fill up the days. A few more hours..."

My favorite line of that song comes later during a dream, "And then the bridge disappears and I’m standing on air with nothing holding me. And I hang like a star, fucking glow in the dark, for all those starving eyes to see, like the ones we’ve wished on."

So the FILTER predicts that Conor's new solo album might not only be the album that makes him a household name, but possibly the best folk album ever made. I'll make ya'll a deal. I'll buy it and burn you copies and you can listen for yourself.

hambug-bah-a

I don't want anyone to know it, but I'm totally not interested in Christmas this year. Pardon me, I'm totally not interested in the holidays this year.

Maybe it has something to do with being totally broke, maybe it has something to do with working in a new environment (where people could care less if I show up for work, not to mention how I spend my joyous holidays), or maybe it has something to do with working right off of Michigan Avenue and seeing the commercial district at its busiest time of the season.

It's not just the shops. They can't help being obnoxious, touting and flaunting their wares for the passerby. They can't help it that they are corporate bozos who are slowly declining. They can't help it that they are so huge and so closely resemble the dinosaurs they will become. Again, they can't help it. They're just doing what they came there to do.

And maybe those annoying people who lesuirely stroll along the sidewalk can't help themselves either, gawking open mouthed at the sights of the windows, lights and big tall buildings. They are also doing exactly what they came there to do.

I guess its just like anything else, once everyone does it, it doesn't hold the same appeal for me anymore.

It used to be special to get a gift. Now, I feel like I'm part of someone's stress. I feel like I'm part of the list of things that have to get done. How do I know? Because everyone on my list and all the things I haven't done yet are stressing me out. For what? So they can feel loved and thought of by me? So I should go to the Gap and buy them a thoughtful gift card?

The only thing on Michigan and Chicago that has made me break out into a huge grin, a wide mouthed gape was the sight and sounds of a man whose sign said it all:

GRAD STUDENT DOES DISCO FOR DOLLARS

For the last two Saturdays, I have bore witness to a man dancing to the greatest disco hits like "Car Wash" and "Get Down Tonight" not just to entertain or amuse, but to make money for himself.

Disco for Dollars.

It has a nice ring to it.

as the sbux turns...

Well they aren't making me work on Christmas. That's a good thing. The store is open, but I don't have to be there. Instead, I get to spend time with my family. And work on Wednesday instead of Saturday. But whatever.

Last week, in an effort to be efficient and prepared, I poured a half a pound of ground coffee into a floppy white paper filter, tucked it into the metal basket and inserted it into the coffee machine, and just like a automaton, hit "BREW."

It was the sort of moment that just keeps giving.

I didn't realize I had done such a thing and the coffee pot was already pretty full...

So it began seething out of the pot.

A customer noticed and pointed it out to me.

I reached for a cup to pour out the overfilling pot.

The spill was incredible. It happened so silently, so quietly, and it covered the counter.

I mopped it up with rags and felt embarrassed.

An hour later, two maintenance men came up to tell me that the Pharmacy downstairs reported a leak in their ceiling. The men didn't even know the sbux was still open. The liquid was brown. Yes, I said, there was an accident.

Another hour later, when we pulled out the bins under the coffee pots to check if they needed refilling, a murky liquid was pooled beneath them. We cleaned out the cabinet thoroughly.

This typifies the sort of goings on at my new job. I try really hard to show what a good worker I am and it goes horribly wrong and makes me look like a clumsy fool.

The other odd thing about my new job is the established protocol in the manuals that some person spent their time and resources on trying to come up with universal language for all things Starbuckian is constantly and pervasively ignored.

Yesterday when I arrived at work, the whiteboard in the back area had been filled with a list written in the manager's loopy script titled, "The Five Reasons For Firing"

No:

Thank you with eye contact.

Clean Apron.

Suggestive Sales.

[The other two were things I had never heard of before and can't remember.]

Then, next to that list, there were additions that someone else wrote, but instead of using the same format, they just listed bad things worth firing for (which are pretty much bad things to do no matter where you work) like being late, unavailable to work, lacking cohesiveness (though I have problems with that one).

When I asked someone about it, she was like oh, don't worry about that, you're fine. She said that it was written for two people who have worked there for a long time and it was like a warning to them. I thought it was a rather passive aggressive warning, to say the least, and that if they were that stupid in the first place then they probably wouldn't pay any heed to some scribblings on a whiteboard, but hey, what do I know?

The other fascinating thing about working at the sbux is the gossip. We had it at Siena, but it was mostly about the customers. Also, we (the staff) generally all liked each other and got along pretty well. At sbux, there's some new topic of gossip every day, and it's mostly about the other people we work with.

Yesterday I found out that one of the people who has worked for sbux a long time is pulling shifts at the Au Bon Pain that is right inside the hospital, just up the escalators on the second floor.

When I told the focused and determined young lady who I enjoy closing shifts with, she didn't go for the scandal, she went for the manual and said, "Isn't that a conflict of interest?"

I said I wasn't sure but Au Bon Pain and the guy who's working there and here didn't seem to think so.

cue evil villain riff.

I've already been working there for a month, and it has gone by quickly due to my shifts always falling on weekends. I feel like I haven't been trained much at all and very often, when things are slow and I am alone, I look at myself and the place and feel like I am dreaming.

At least I don’t have to work on Christmas.

the throng of page count

You'd think as a writer, I would hear the page count (the mininum number of pages required to pass the class) on the first day of my writing classes and brush it away, as if it were a unnecessary concern, as if there was no challenge in mustering sixty pages in fourteen weeks. Sixty. 60. That's nothing, some might say. Most students probably turn in double that over the course of the semester.

Not me. Not even close.

In fact, I have never reached page count for any class until at least the very end of class, but usually in the weeks after, when grades are being tabulated and recorded, when teachers are tired of paper and just want to go home, and I have been given a grace period in which to turn things in.

Today in class, we received our folders, manila file folders containing our work that has been turned in over the last twelve weeks. It was almost like being in the locker room after gym class. Mine was painfully and I felt, obviously thin, and I worried that everyone was comparing theirs to mine.

22 and 1/4 pgs.

We have a two week break, then we're back for two weeks, and this class is done. And starkly, like that, the facts are that I am only a third through page count, but nearly done with class.

After tirading rants rang out between my ears, I stared at a wall for ten minutes, filled with fliers, advertisements and blank spots of paint. Staring at this particular wall, as I have done in the past, I ate a soggy sandwich that I saved from being thrown away at work, and ruminated on my life. I will spare you all the abstract fervent thoughts that rattled through my brain.

Two years ago, when I was in Fiction II, I lamented my lack of quantity, that in all my efforts, I could barely make page count. I countered that I had always been a quality versus quantity writer.

Now that I am older and less confused by life, I realize that was simply a flimsy cover-up for the real problem, which I have lately discovered (yet I know it has always left its mark on everything I do) is that I have a terrible time finishing things. I can't end a story to save my life. I start something with absolute zeal, infectious passionate innovation and than find myself unsure of how to maintain it. I can't let go of the good times at the beginning. I am enamored by the inspiration in life, but terrified to be left with the responsibility of keeping it up. (Many of you horoscopically minded are screaming, yes, for you are an Aries!)

Today in class, when zeroed in on by my teacher for my ideas on my yet to be written first draft of my creative essay which was due two weeks ago, I said what may have been the wisest thing to come out of my forsaken mouth, "I think I just need to sit down and start writing."

But oh! After Thursday, I will have two weeks free in which to frolic and meander and witness the slow and subtle changes in the winter weather, from the shaking of the stubborn leaves still fashioned to their branches, to the wispy snowflakes that are so ferocious they sting the eyes in a horizontal wind, right down to the ground and the snow covering the bleary grey squares.

And yes, a lot of homework too.

cell phone interference

You should all know that the hypocritical side of me absolutely adores my cell phone. There has been maybe two other decisions I've made that were more important than the one to obtain the palm sized mixture of plastic, metal, wires, and battery that make up the device that has made a huge impact on the way I live my life. Life altering impact. Surely. How many of you can testify to at least more contact (if not by leaps and bounds, but surely more than ever) from yours truly, the sort that email just cannot be substituted for?

Yep. That's impact.

Well the day I was terrified would arrive, the one that often accompanied sinewy dreams in which I search and search and cannot find the thing I am looking for, a day I knew was crawling alongside me like a squished and regenerating worm, slowly waiting for the day it would overtake me, it has come, just two days ago, on the briskly chilly morning of Tuesday.

Why now, why today have I begun to write about that day?

It is not the hindsight I have gained, no, it is the sheer frustration and panic borne of that day that builds with each day, hour, and minute in which I cannot make a phone call on my cell phone.

We've all had a watch adorn our wrists for months, weeks, or days, only to lose it to some defect or lack of self-discipline, and still continue to glance at the naked wrist, over and over until the knowledge finally sinks in and begins to break the habit.

Today, I have been broken.

Maybe there was a part of me that was sort of defiant. Like, ha, so what, I can't use my cell phone. I don't need it anyway, I shrugged. I don't use it that much, I boasted. I don't care, I lambasted to the automated voice that intercepted my call to my voicemail.

So what, I can't call my friends and family. They know where to find me. (As proof, I got a phone call from my best friend Deanna just last night at home on the telephone...) And I'll get paid soon and it'll get turned back on and just be a brief break from the whimsical and capricious world of the cell phone. Maybe I would bother Eric less, rather than call him the second something crossed my mind. A relief, perhaps it was, to me and others, to interfere in my cell phone service.

And then, as I aggressively stomped between the white lines of a crosswalk, my step faltered and I remembered that the application I'd handed in for the Columbia Chronicle had my cell phone all over it, and that they were supposed to call me this week and hadn't called before The Day of Interference.

But then again, part of the reason for my lack of fundage to pay cell phone bills is largely due to my participation in the great land of matriculation and anyone hoping to take on a rogue bill payer as a student writer for the school newspaper would be remorseful in overlooking me for this reason alone...

eep.

And so, the cell phone that I haughtily declared was needless reminds me again of its inclusion in my life, the thing that I had heedlessly embraced is gone, and its effects are not inconsequential.

I promise to call next week.

Madeline The Sniffer

The first time I ever went to Miska’s Liqours on Clark, I already had a belly full of booze and it wasn’t even midnight yet. To tell you the truth, I had some time to waste, and maybe a little bit of money, so I wandered in there, decked out in all my goth glory; hair spiked up, my body laced with chains over a slinky bodysuit, and patent leather boots about three inches off the ground. The only color in all the black was my white makeup and the sheeny peacock blue on my lips that I had made from this horrid drugstore eyeshadow and lipgloss. I looked good. I was way early to meet Leon and Rachel at one a.m. across the street for goth night at Club Neo.

The guys behind the counter didn’t ignore me like most normals do. The little fat friar man, aka Cy, stands near the vodka aisle and smiles at me, nodding and waving hello with his fingers perched on his pert, but portly belly. What a freak. The dude behind the counter has an even bigger grin on his face, maybe because the poor sap’s name is Larry. With a ballcap, flannel and grimy jeans, it’s hard to believe he has nothing better to do on a Friday night.

Lucky for them, I’m a perkygoth. I smile and say hello. No one else is in the store, which seems odd, but then I remember where I am. Lincoln Park, one of the richest neighborhoods in Chicago. The blond-haired blue-eyed workaday types are either sleeping in their beds like good little boys and girls, or they’re out at one of the many garish bars trying to get some and spending wads of cash. I hate those people. I guess the guys who work at Miska’s are used to seeing goth types like me heading to Neo.

It’s like a parade or some sort of migration, or like we’re all hooked up to a homing device and told to come back there. You see goths getting out of cabs, circling for parking, walking from all directions, standing outside the entrance, which is hidden in the crevasses of a long, dark alley and marked by the painted black legs of a mannequin that stand watch every day. You see a stream of colored lights emerge from the open door, pulsating out in the night. The latest mural on the side of the building is an abstract school of square fish, that surge toward the door. Neo is one of the oldest and best clubs around.

A horrid noise rings out when the door opens. It’s just a chime, but the decibel of it is shrieking loud, probably to keep the guy in the ballcap from falling asleep. I turned around from my aimless scrutiny of wine bottles to see a decently cute goth boy slinking along the counter to buy cigarettes. He is lean, lanky and eyes me with a fierce look. I grab a bottle of wine and pretend not to notice him. I don’t know him, but I’ve seen him around.

Once, at Belmont and Clark, he asked me for a cigarette. I pulled out my pack and offered it to him. He pulled out a cigarette, propped it between his lips and looked at me. I just stood there, looking back at him. This was when I was first getting into goth, which was like almost two years ago. I wondered if I was supposed to say something cool, or if he was going to ask me out, and I got really nervous until he said, “If I needed a cig, don’tcha think I needed a light too?” I was super embarassed.

Whatever. What am I supposed to do? Be able to read minds?

At the counter he gave the ballcap guy some shit by asking for one brand and then having a second thought. This would be fine under normal circumstances, but he did it like four times. What a jerk-off. Didn’t he know these guys were cool? Just because they wait on yuppie assholes all day doesn’t mean it’s alright to fuck with them. I mean, they’re working class, blue collar, so why make them the enemy? As my friend Leon would say, it’s just the way some goths are honey. While I waited for him to leave, I wandered around the store.

The cooler was in the back and the racks held six packs. Then a door and another set of coolers on the same wall as the counter, filled with chilled white wines, ice, and mixers for cocktails. They had lots of wine, some cheap, some expensive. Some of the wine was displayed in the boxes they came in, which I thought was cool.

Up front were shelves filled with spirits, a short aisle of vodka, gin, whisky and whiskeys, with just enough variety to keep the small space from feeling too crowded and keep people happy. Along the windows that looked out onto Clark st., chips, bottles of juice, tonic water, and soda bathed in rays from the throng of neon signs advertising labels and logos. Underneath the neon like an abandoned child, sat an out of place copy machine. I guess you never know when you’ll need to make copies, even if it’s at one in the morning. On one side of the counter sat a lotto machine, while underneath the register lay a bevy of candy treats.

Crappy junk food and soul sucking government games aside, this place seemed pretty cool. All it took to get a job there, I learned, was to sidle up to the register and start talking. I met Larry and Cy that night, and was told to come back to meet the boss later in the week. Sayed, they told me, was a fair boss and was looking for someone new. I could make tips on deliveries. I could work for cash under the table and screw taxes. I could get a job.

How could I refuse?

all together now

It's funny how couples are. We don't forget anything, but we try not to hold grudges. We want to love each other, but we're so very often at odds with the other person. We only want the best for each other, but we seldom can look past ourselves to give it.

In my last naval gazing journal (bugsinamber.diaryland.com) I spent a good deal of the time examining the lint of my relationship with Eric. Lint is funny stuff. The sort of stubborn fluff that is billowy and floaty, stuff that amounts to nothing, and yet, no matter how you shake it, it just won't come off...especially on black.

I actually have made a concious effort not to do that so much here, mostly because my writing style is here is meant to be totally different. The former was much more stream of conciousness, much more breathy abstractions, much more philosophical meanderings.

But allow me, those of you who tire easily of love talk or relationship digressions to venture into that territory.

I have never known another man like Eric. His keen intelligence, his quiet creativity, his bold conversational approach (that can sometimes feel abrasive), his "heart of gold" (as one of his friend confided to me, that is what he admires most of Eric), he has been a force in my life, a challenging force, one that at times, has been both gracious and swift, bold and gentle, full of love and anger. He is a contradiction and a pure example of ambivalence, struggling to find his way in the world.

(I somehow feel the same.)

Yesterday, we celebrated our two year anniversary with the sort of appreciation and genuineness we have missed in the other, bogged down by work and busyness, time and space caused this magnificent relationship we had never known before to become mundane and rote.

Yet, we remained, holding hands, softer, eroded, lighter, grains of sand clung to our skin, together.

I, for one, would rather spend a lifetime chasing my love than a lifetime without knowing him.

stressed out

Ever have the feeling that if you just make it past tomorrow things will be alright? If only whatever you had to do was over and life could just go on the way it's supposed to?

Well, I'm staying up late to give the finger to tomorrow. I'm staying up late to write. I'm staying up late to work on an oral report I'm supposed to give in class tomorrow.

And if I can make it through tomorrow, with all my eggs balanced on my spoons and no mud in my nose, then I'll be just fine.

Until the next thing.

Internet's been down all week at the house. My landlord doesn't really like the orange. Eric's been weird all week. I put school on pause during the week of Thanksgiving. Ate too much. Worked, didn't work. Laundry pile got sorted and abandoned. Watched way too much Buffy the Vampire Slayer (season five). Haven't been writing much, school or otherwise. Trying to keep it all together. Working on the juggle. There's about ten things I'm dealing with at any given moment and at least five more standing by, clamoring for my attention.

So when my roommate started in on a coaxing and supportive speech about how stressed out I've been lately...well, all I could do was laugh. Yes, this is how absolutely absurd my life has become, because now, painfully aware of my every action, I have an audience.

And they care.

And they want to help.

It's sweet and a little ridiculous, but short of wearing masks and emulating me so that they can stand in for me when I'm otherwise occupied, there's nothing they or anyone else can do, but apparently, sit by and watch the diaster waiting to happen.

Get your popcorn and soda, because I'm on a collision course with life.

See, it's not that I'm stressed. I have time management issues. I have a hard time saying no to things I enthusiastically say yes to. I want everything. I want it all.

Delirious? Maybe. Derisive? Perhaps. Deluded? No.

I can have it all. I do have it all. It's just that my life is like a roulette wheel, and I'm like the little ball whirling around it and whatever I land on is where I am for that moment, and there are some slots that are there, but often vacant, yet vital, I mean without the black nine, where would the other slots go? but I don't land on them as much or as frequently as say other slots in which I gleefully chase and leap into.

ah, metaphors.

But I know some of you that are already nodding, very very keen on what I mean.

I just can't be in thirty two places at once, no matter how much I want to.

So anyway. cheers.