Emo thought of the day :)

I wonder how many times you can give so much of yourself to someone before there's nothing left.

Because of Your Skin

Installation number 2 of the Erika saga.

So I come into class looking adorable (exhibit A: The myspace pic) I was a few minutes early and when I sit down, a girl to my left compliments my shirt. Before I can even say thank you, Erika says "and nice shirt too." I smile and say thank you and cite Forever 21 and H&M as the two stores who made this outfit possible. I settled in a little bit into my chair and Erika, from two rows of seats away slowly says, "Are you from... Greek descent?"

"No, Peruvian"

I get a look from Erika. You know how some people look like animals? Erika looks like a puffy faced fish, not a puffer fish, just a fish that might have gotten punched in the face a few too many times. Her blank stare is reminiscent of the glazed over eyes of a freshly iced trout.

In an effort not to lose myself in the black holes of her pupils, I said, "Sorry if that's disappointing...?"

"Oh no," Erika's had a cold since the beginning of school, her nasally voice is grating, "I just ask 'cause of your skin"

"Yeah, I'm kinda yellow..."

And that was it. She didn't elaborate at all. Didn't say, "oh no, that came out weird" or anything. I wasn't offended, I'm not an idiot. However, it does kind of piss me off that she thinks that's cool to say. I'm torn over whether it's because she's black, and minorities don't feel weird calling out other minorities (maybe?) or she's an idiot and didn't know any better. Either way, is that cool to say to people? "Oh, I'm asking because your skin is a strange color I'm not used to" is acceptable? I'd never think to say *just* that. I might say that and add something about someone's features or whatever.

Oh well, I kind of got complimented on having a tan, racism or not, that's pretty cool.

This girl in my film class is an idiot. Part 1

So there's this girl in my Film Studies class, we'll call her Erika, because that's her name. There has never been someone so undeserving of being in a high demand 400 level class than this girl. We did a little, "getting to know you" thing on the first day. At this point she wasn't officially in the class, she was trying to get into it and had come to the first day hoping that she would be able to get a spot. God knows why. The teacher, Professor Collier, (whom I absolutely love because he's passionate about what he teaches and teaches it well and in an interesting and engaging way) asked us to go around and say our name and the best and worst movie we saw over the summer.

The most popular answer for best movie was, predictably, Inception. Erika broke the cycle. It could be generally agreed that every movie that was suggested as the best of the summer, was "good." This is when Erika's turn finally came, she opened her mouth and my opinion of her was forever set.

"Awwwwm, I think my best movie would be Twilight Ellipse... I mean, like, Eclipse, and my worst movie is Dear John." Her reason for hating Dear John was because they fell in love "in like two weeks." Um, it was the whole summer, and how long did it take for Edward to fall in love with Bella you hypocritical moron? I'm not saying Dear John is amazing, but really? "Twilight: Ellipse"?

The next class we were talking about Alfred Hitchcock movies and Collier had a little spacey moment and was asking what the Norman Bates movie was. Obviously, we all said Psycho, but poor little Erika. She turned to me and said "Is he talking about just Psycho Psycho or American Psycho?" Well let's see Film Studies student, we're having an Alfred Hitchcock discussion and the clue was "Norman Bates." I swallowed back the creeping bile in my throat and politely said "Just Psycho."

Today she didn't know who Michael Cera was and when asked about the "mise en scene" of a still of the Buster Keaton movie we saw last week she said, "Well I see some oblique angles?" (there wasn't one) "And there's some vertical lines, and horizontal and then some diagonal... I saw a mixture of things." Wow. Never talk again.

She then granted me my wish, at least for that class period, and fell asleep.

Bitch.

Where can I buy motivation?

I'm going to start working out. I say this every summer before school starts. With the gyms that Ball State has I'll be able to get in the best shape of my life! I rarely make it a week before I quit.

I really want to do it this time. I'm not fat, I know, and I'm not trying to lose weight necessarily. I don't even have a scale in my house so I wouldn't know I had even if I did. I just want to be "tone" or "lean". There's a difference between being skinny and being in shape. I have fantastic genes. My hair almost always obeys me, except in unusual humidity. My nail beds are long and my nails are hard. I tan pretty well and my eyes have a good shape to them, even if they aren't the traditional shape of most white people and I have to put on my eye shadow a little bit differently. I eat whatever I want and my weight doesn't fluctuate. I'm spoiled. I know that I don't *need* to work out to look like I'm "supposed to look." I just want to be healthy. I want to get into the habit of working out so that when I get pregnant later on (very later on) in life, I won't have a hell of a time losing my baby weight. I want to work out so that when I get older and my metabolism slows down, I can still have pasta and rice pretty much every day. What's life without pasta? Nothing, that's what.

I want to keep on looking nice even after I have kids. I think it's a tragedy when women cut their hair super short and stop wearing makeup when they have kids. Ugh. I watched my cousin's 7 month old all day for two and a half weeks this summer. Yeah, I wasn't sure how to take a shower when no one else was home. What if she woke up from her nap while I was in the shower? Other than that I definitely had the ability to put some makeup on and brush my hair while she was up and about. Although my clothes had little spots of smashed green peas and I reeked of formula I still tried to look presentable. Maybe? Alright fine, I wore yoga pants pretty much everyday. I had no where to go! If I had errands to run or a husband, or any reason to look nice other than because I was watching music videos I would have. Really. I would have...

I'm also going to start working out. Yeah... It's totally going to happen this time. Totally.

Final Reading for my Creative Fiction Class. Dec '08

*The "I" in this story isn't me, I just wrote it in the first person because I liked how it felt that way. My friend in class an I had an idea that our final readings should be sort of deranged and should make the teacher want to recommend us to the counseling center. This is my attempt, and I'm pretty sure it worked.*

I had to go to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I had awoken before my alarm and lay staring at the clock until the red numbers exploded into noise. I can’t afford to keep my small apartment at a normal temperature. I sleep in sweats, a pair with a crotch that skims the knees. I shuffled to the shower that I’ve never had sex in and began my tired routine.
You know how sometimes you’ll be driving and you wonder what would happen if you twitched just enough to crash into oncoming traffic? The oncoming driver wouldn’t be wearing a seatbelt and would go through his windshield and land on mine, blood seeping in the splinters of safety glass. Our cars would collide and twist like metal fingers. Glass would shatter and fall like crystals, dancing on the asphalt as they searched for a resting place. My airbag would malfunction, my face crunching against the steering wheel, fracturing my skull and splitting the skin. A second car, trying to avoid the collision would hit the left side of my bumper, jerking my car and sending my temple into the driver’s side window knocking me unconscious and sending pulses of blood down my face. Maybe I’m the only one who thinks like that.
I stayed on my side of the road long enough to stop in at the only coffee shop on the way to the BMV. I was third in line. I handled all the merchandise and knick knacks on the way to the register. The barista’s expression when I ordered a plain black coffee made me contemplate whether I should fling it in his face when he handed it to me. Not everyone wants a half caf. Caramel latte with a mocha twist, Mr. Barista, so don’t look at me like I’m an idiot for liking my coffee to actually taste like fucking coffee. After taking my order he smiled and said he liked my shirt. I don’t know why, I was wearing an ugly grey sweater; I guess it’s a nice grey. I just looked at him and waited for my coffee as his smile slowly faded and he turned to the next customer. Some say my natural expression is off-putting. I grabbed my coffee from a peppy barista who’s too old to still be working at a coffee shop and much too old to wear her little hat backwards. It’s just pathetic really, people like that.
I finally made it to the BMV. The line ended at the door so I stood with my back to a draft. I didn’t bring a book, not that I would have read it standing up. I hate lines. It took twenty three minutes to get to the front of the line and explain the triviality that had brought me there. The woman who helped me was almost as bored as I was, monotone, she fit her situation, the weather, the time, everything except her clothes. She looked to be one of those people afraid to go from misses to women’s sizes. Her breasts shook while she wrote, her grubby fingers grasped the pen, dwarfing it. Her warbling double chin was covered in a soft down of hair. Answering her questions was made difficult by the disgust that was building up in the back of my throat. She asked if I was ok, I looked ill. I just took my papers and a pen and went to sit at the only empty seat at an available table.
I sat and breathed, trying to think of something else. The table was right below an analog clock with a loud second hand. I filled out my paper work and sat. There was a girl sitting to my right, reading a supermarket rag. She was chewing gum. Loudly. She was completely done up, big earrings, lots of makeup, lots of hairspray, lots of money. Three hookers had to die so she could look the way she did. I looked back to the metal table where I was sitting. I tried to find a pattern in the scratches on the stainless steel surface. That girl kept clicking her gum. I tried to read the magazine out of the corner of my eye. I could hear the spit swirl in her mouth as she chewed. I tried reading the only thing on the table, Chicken Soup for the Soul. Really? She blew a bubble. Can you ask a stranger to shut the fuck up with their gum? I just wanted to smash her face in. So I did.
I found myself with my hand tangled in her hair. My wrist rested in the hollow spot at the bottom of her head and my fingers wrapped around her skull like I was holding a basketball. She didn’t even have time to make a noise before I stood up a little and put every ounce of my strength and weight into slamming her face down into the table. I don’t even know what you’d call that noise. Like dropping a rotting melon onto a table. I breathed in deep, calming the surge of adrenaline I was enjoying. Her hands were clutching the magazine in her lap, her earrings were against the table, her hair splayed around my hand. Blood was beginning to pool. I pulled her head back. I looked closely, her nose had broken, it looked like a movie. It was flat, squashed, gone, she would never be on a coin. I broke one of her teeth, they were tilted in and twisted, one went through her lip, and there was a chip of one on the table, swimming in the beautiful crimson. Her eyes were partially open but were red; there was a stream of blood from her forehead dribbling into the corner of one of her baby blues; color contacts. It’s amazing how the life literally goes out of the eyes. A big strip of highlighted hair stuck to the blood when I had brought her head back up. I was still holding her skull. I used my other hand to put the hair back behind her ear. I didn’t know blood had a smell.
I’m glad I took everything in so fast. The few people who did look up at the noise immediately screamed, shrieked bloody murder actually. No one knew what to do. I didn’t look like a threat at the time, well besides holding a mutilated face over a pool of blood, I guess. I noticed I had indented the table a little bit. I didn’t think I was that strong. They had to remove my hand from her hair. The police took me and gave me my rights. The back seat of the squad car was more comfortable than I thought it would be. We passed by the coffee shop on our way to the station. I wondered if anyone else had gotten a plain black coffee since I had. I saw in my reflection in the window that I had some splattered blood on my face. Once we got to the police station they sat me in a chair next to two other people. I was in line again, for the third time that day. I was third in line for the second time that day. And so I waited again while the man next to me tapped his foot, for seventeen goddamn minutes.

Untitled and Possibly Unfinished Poem

I want to live in the space where our vapors coalesce.

I want to take your fingernails from their beds and sleep there

Until your hair licks the fleshy backs of your knees.

I want to gnarl my fingers through that hair;

Drag you through the mud and

Scrape your knees to the bone.

I want to pound every knot in your spine flat

With clenched fists, iron like the hammer.

I want to drown in the blacks of your eyes

And drink the red of your lips.

I want to plunge into your muscles

Until their fatigued spasms carry me through your body.

I want to set your marrow on fire

Just to watch you dance.

Your limbs too long

Skin too pink

Soul too gone

Slinking Sludge and the Sweet Salty Sea

I remember the smell of low tide. As we began to see marsh land covered in tall beach grass the odor would waft into the forest green caravan. It was the late 90s and we didn’t have air conditioning in our ’95 van. Instead we would open the windows and sit in the back seat in our bathing suits and shorts. My mom drove, her curly hair longer than she keeps it now, next to her in the passenger seat was Linda. Linda was one of my second moms, the wife of the pastor at our church; we grew up with her boys, Kip and Corey, who were on the trip with my sister and I along with their older sister Brooke, who had babysat us when we were younger. Derek came too, he and Corey were inseparable and Derek was the glue that bonded us all together. He was the endlessly positive friend, beginning to gain the heft that would plague his teenage years, but never without a joke followed by a laugh that was reminiscent of Woody the Woodpecker.

We were on our way to First Encounter Beach, on the tip of Cape Cod in my home state of Massachusetts. This was the beach my mother had spent her summers on growing up. Her grandmother used to have a house on the beach but sold it around the time my parents were married, forever depriving me of growing up a true Cape Cod ragamuffin. Instead we would make day trips. My mom packed sandwiches, chips, soda, water bottles, fruit and veggies into our blue cooler.

The cooler jumbled around in the trunk along with squeaky beach chairs, brightly colored buckets, plastic shovels and overused towels. We always snacked on the way; it seemed to take forever to get from where we lived on the other side of the Cape Cod Canal to Eastham. During the offseason Cranberry Highway, one of the main ways to get to “Cape Cod and the Islands,” was a five minute drive from my house and getting to anywhere of importance was maybe an additional five minutes, but the same trip could take double the time or more when the summer heat would bring the tourists in droves to my beloved hamlet. It’s not difficult to imagine the hell that was driving to the beach; your car slowly rolling towards your lifeblood, the sweet salty water that teased your nostrils as you hung your head out the window to see how far ahead the holdup was.

We would play games as we sat idly in traffic, looking down at the canal from high on the Bourne Bridge, picking out our favorite boats and seeing all the people cycling, fishing and walking beside the canal. Once we got farther and the traffic thinned out as cars went to different beaches, my mom would tell us stories of when she spent her summers here. We passed the windmill where she had dreamed of getting married, the Superette, or “Super Rat” as I thought it was called, a small convenience store her grandfather, Tramp, would take her. We always stopped there, even if we didn’t buy anything. She loved the smell of the miniature store, like that of an old book stored in the attic. It had been untouched since her childhood: comic books in the same place, tobacco behind the counter.

We would then finally arrive at the beach. From the parking lot it simply looked like dilapidated fences crookedly clinging to sandy mounds with some long grasses trying to gather together the entire beach in their roots, like thin wispy fists. We unloaded everything from the back of the van, our small bodies weighed down and struggling to walk through the loose, hot, dry sand. Slowly ascending the hill we would see the blue of the sky meet the copycat blue ocean, quickly receding from the beach, leaving behind sandbar islands. The kids, with the exception of the teenage Brooke, would dump all of our luggage on the shore where our mothers indicated, whip off our shorts, dig through the piles for some tools and run out to the sandbars.

Despite the offensive smell, low tide is the best time to be on the beach. I love the dense sludge smell slinking along under the cool breeze smelling of heat and salt. As you trek from small island to island the mud smell dissipates into the pure smell of water, clean and soft. We did not bring buckets and shovels to make sand castles. Our purpose was much more sinister, we were hunters at heart. Our prey of choice: the razor clam.

I remember the hopeful tension of hunting for razor clams. When the tide is out, razor clams dig into the sand and leave small holes; they’re unmistakable once you know what you’re looking for. Once the hole is seen, you need to take your bare foot and press down right next to the hole, making sure not to cover it with a stray toe. If below your toes a razor clam is anxiously hiding, a stream of water will spit out, an admirable twelve inches in the air. I remember the frenzied caution of digging quickly to catch the clam before it burrowed beyond my reach. I’d drop to my knees and dig with my hands like a frenzied badger. Razor clams are quick and fear death with an appropriate vigor. They are called razor clams because of their resemblance to a straight razor, long, thin and rectangular. I remember the triumphant feeling of wrapping my hand around the razor clam, my arm elbow deep in tight wet sand. I also remember the pain that came along with the poignant realization that they had earned their keen name. I can’t remember if I brought out the clam with my bloody finger or if the pain made me let go. I ran back to the beach, a considerable jog.

Once back on the beach, Linda saw my finger and wrapped it in paper towels and pressed down. Hard. So hard I think she squeezed all the flesh out of my finger, like toothpaste. When she left me to get a Band-Aid I took the paper towels off and dotted the white sand with my garnet blood. I grinned morbidly.

Years later I returned to my beach. I was eighteen. I had been living in Indiana for five years. I brought my boyfriend, my high school sweetheart, the boy I thought I’d marry. He had never seen the ocean. I thought we would have the same fun we did when I was small. I imagined getting a new scar to accentuate the small faded mark only I knew about that I had garnered years prior.

We had grown up. We went out on the sandbars for a while, everyone quickly grew tired and returned to the beach to snack and lay out. We could do this at the pool, I thought. We were on my beach, we were breathing in the sea air, being invigorated by its quick and lingering touches. Our feet were cradled in warm sand, being solicited to move toward the cool water. The gulls were calling us to shed our worries and run with wild abandon, free of form or pace.

But instead we clung to our towels, fruitlessly trying to lay flat on the sand. We futilely tried to keep the beach away, brushing the sand off our blankets, keeping our sweating drinks off the ground, putting out hair up to bar the wind from running it’s fingers along our scalps. We were at the beach but trying to remove ourselves with every action. We no longer tried to become the beach, we didn’t gather up crabs and make them fight to the death in makeshift sand coliseums. We didn’t take dead jellyfish and throw them all over each other. We didn’t want to get dirty.

We left. I felt cheated. Why is it that I couldn’t enjoy the beach as I had when I was smaller? Was it because of the people I went with? Was their hesitation to play along with me the cause of my lackluster trip? Or was it in fact that, though I tried to deny it, I had changed. The same things didn’t entertain me as they once had. I didn’t want to ruin my nails digging. I didn’t want to taste the burning shot of pain that another encounter with a razor clam may serve me. I didn’t want to suffer from unconventional tan lines. I wish I had simply let go and embraced my inner rascal, but I suppose I’ll have to try again. Perhaps I’ll bring my own children there and their excitement and whimsy will inspire me to return to that mindset. I’ll teach them how to spot the holes, how to step, how to dig, how to avoid being cut. I’ll teach them about the cycle of life, so that maybe when they eventually realize that things change even when they also stay so much the same, they’ll be a little more prepared.

On why I may not have been writing as much as originally promised...

I have unwittingly incurred the wrath of whatever writing gods may exist. It's not for lack of ideas that this anger has been brought down upon me, but instead a lack of motivation, a lack of any sort of stamina to my inspiration. An idea may come to me as I'm waiting for water to boil, staring vacantly at the never changing ESPN on my boyfriend's TV, or while unnervingly taking a shower home alone. If I'm particularly struck by the genius of my idea, I'll type it as a draft in my cell phone, to technologically decompose, leaving a guilty stench on my phone only I can smell. My school notebook suffers similarly, sprinkled with the bones of essays, sinew like free writes written in forced reflection time during class, fleshy little notes to myself. All the pieces to make a living breathing essay. An essay I could nurture from inception. I'd chose the right words, arrange everything just so, giving the words all the strength they'd need to stand alone. I'd proudly beam as my baby ran, hopped and skipped along the folds of my ready reader's brain and swam through their unsuspecting body, leaving them better than before they had sat down to casually read.

A major hindrance in this process is the uncertainty of having found that one special topic. That idea that I want to spend enough time with to develop a relationship truly worth something. The idea which I want to exhaustingly describe to the point of forsaking any semblance of plot simply to paint a scene in tribute to that which I am so passionate.

It is also to be noted that I feel as though everything I write has to be regulation essay length, when in fact, it does not. I'm writing on a blog at the moment, I'm not going to be graded on these words that I am now awkwardly typing on my laptop, but I will be judged. Eyes and minds more critical to structure and technique, or hearts more in tune to effort and personality, but judged in some way, regardless of criteria. And this, happy reader, is bothersome. I don't want something quickly thrown together to be atop my blog's queue. It would pain me to add anything that could be described as "boring," haphazard," or "uninspired" to my own personal growing canon. I struggle reviewing essays for class because oftentimes, I'm at a loss of anything really worthwhile to point out and encourage the writer to develop. My greatest fear is that when I swap papers, that is their own struggle.

And perhaps worst of all, in this writing drought, is my confusion as my essay comes to an end. Do I follow the tired, tried and true "tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them" mantra? No. That's for readers who need to be reminded of what they read because they drooled on the first few pages. No, an essay should evolve, but whom I to cut that growth short? Or do I even need to? Instead, I'm am going to end this little essay, whose voice has rebelliously changed due to being written in two separate sessions, with a promise that I will continue to evolve. I realize I need to write more, and I will. Seeing as I've been left to rot in Fort Wayne while my boyfriend and the entire populace has gone to get drunk and tan in Florida, I won't really have much else to do but write, now will I?

Oh, what a blessing in disguise.

I Remember...

I remember my dog Chico… I remember Maine… I remember how the water was so cold and so clear and so smooth and so clean… I remember the smell of the wooden house… I remember the way the light shone in over the lake… I remember the sound of my voice echoing back from the trees on the other side of the water…I remember how pleased Rolfe seemed with himself that he got me a fishing license… I remember being embarrassed of having to wear a life jacket… I remember how bored I was fishing…

I remember the smell of the umber room that was on the second floor of Camp Clear’s main house… I remember the feeling of the sand between my bare feet and the wooden floor… I remember how the screen door would creak every time you opened it… I remember the sound of the crash of wood on wood as it swung back with no resistance into the frame… I remember running through the prickly dried pine needles, gritting my teeth through the points pricking my bare soles… I remember being selfconscious of my lanky body in my lime green striped bikini… I remember the sensation of drowning if I were to breathe in the thick steam of the sauna… I remember bringing a cup of ice into the sauna to breathe into… I remember how I felt like I was so cool… I remember having row boat fights and races with my friends… I remember how much I hated Mike for deciding he was the only one who could paddle the paddle boat and that if you wanted a ride you had to go with him… I remember trying to sabotage him… I remember collecting all the frogs in a canoe… I remember throwing the tiny frogs back into the lake and seeing if they’d swim back… I remember the few who did…

I remember the smell of low tide… I remember the hopeful tension of hunting for razor clams… I remember the excitement of seeing a stream of water spit out from the small hole in the ground… I remember the frenzied caution of digging quickly to catch the clam before it burrowed beyond my reach… I remember the triumph of feeling it and wrapping my hand around the clam… I remember the pain as I realized why they are called razor clams… I remember the panic as I saw my middle finger bleeding… I remember how uncomfortable it is to have someone apply too much pressure to a wound… I remember how interesting it was that I could write my name in the sand as the blood from my hand fell in small spots… I remember picking the sand out of my cut a few days later…

The Girl Who Ocassionally Wore Pink

“What’re you a girl now?”
For some reason, when I wear pink I get this question. I don’t think I dress like a man, I don’t think I act too manly, but when I wear pink, those guys closest to me ask why. If I wear black, I’m not asked if I’m going to a funeral. I think it’s really unfortunate that some colors are pigeonholed into being one thing, typecast into that one role they only took because their agent thought it would be their breakthrough. Orange and Black had struggled with their boldness and finally found the part of a lifetime in Halloween, only to be abandoned the rest of the year, but that’s another issue entirely. The subject at hand is why (oh why!) am I not thought of as a girl by some of my guy friends.
I must admit first and foremost, that I do not help my valiant cause. I always push away from “girly things” but in truth, I can’t stand to not have my nails painted. Unfortunately, I work at Woodworth, the campus dining hall that insists that even though I’m wearing gloves, a tiny bit of my nail polish could chip off, work its way down my tight and sweaty plastic hand casing and fall into an innocent patron’s food and killing them in a dramatic show of anaphylactic shock. Hence, while I’m on Ball State’s campus, my nails are free of any of the beautiful colors and lacquered shine that make me smile. I also wear makeup regularly, blow dry and straighten my hair, and cook, all marks of a true woman. According to Wikipedia, a reputable source if I’ve ever heard of one, cleavage is seen to be a sign of femininity, and I certainly don’t shy away from that. As a 20 year old when else will my breasts be so damn perky?
From the outside, I am, if not the picture of femininity, a shining example of the average girl. Until I open my mouth, and words come spilling forth, free from any sort of filter or forethought. I’m the one who takes the perverted joke one step too far, to that awkward laugh-less no-man’s land where jokes go to die. I’m the one who not only makes the jokes that much more perverted, but in such a way that you need to visually map out the logistics and anatomy of such a scenario. It might be my negativity; I’m not the bubbling ray of sunshine that my sister’s sorority friends seem to expect. An even better explanation may be that I don’t really like girls, all my friends are guys, I have maybe a handful of good girlfriends, and one is my sister. I’m ok with that, but it is inconvenient.
I have to wonder, what exactly is the definition of femininity? Why are some girls considered feminine and others not? The majority of the definition in America is physical appearance. It’s not fair to those poor lazy girls who can’t drag themselves out of bed to straighten their hair and meticulously apply makeup. Girls who don’t wear makeup and do their hair in the morning are judged as being lazy, at least by me, honestly it’s not that hard, and it doesn’t take that long. My attitude makes me part of the problem, those that give in to the pressures of society just end up perpetuating them. I don’t really see this as a bad thing in moderation. It’s just a general respect for yourself and your self presentation to the world. Who doesn’t like beautiful people?
Girls are expected to be positive, smiling and happy, willing to brighten your day with some inspiration drivel about how it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. I, personally, enjoy the work out. Is anyone really impressed by those inspirational Facebook statuses? Did you know that great girls don’t have boyfriends because girls are like apples? Yes, apples. Apparently, all the rotten apples fall on the ground and the lazy boys pick them up because they’re easy. The beautiful, perfect apples on top feel like they’re not good enough but in reality, a wonderful boy hasn’t come and taken the effort to climb the tree and pick those perfect apples. I don’t get it either, don’t worry. I’d rather be a juicy juicy mango, or grapes, who doesn’t like grapes?
It just seems as though girls play into an image of being positive and naïve. It’s very possible my pessimism is to be blamed for my equating being positive with being naïve, but either way the woman is supposed to be the hope in the hopeless, the light in the darkness, the pimento in the olive, the little thing that makes it all better. Jiminy Cricket may help Pinocchio figure out what to do, very unsuccessfully might I add, but it’s the beautiful Blue Fairy who makes that happy ending possible. She magically glows appearing in Pinocchio’s most desperate moments, an ethereal beauty wasted on a wooden boy.
We can look at the naïve Little Red Riding Hood, gallivanting through the forest to see her geriatric grandmother. When meeting a wolf she thinks nothing of it and picks some flowers while he runs to the grandmother’s house, terror ensues. Recently, while driving around Muncie at 2 am, two guys came running up to my car while I was stopped at a stop sign. I cracked my window down and they begged me for a ride to Riverside. If I had given them a ride, would I have been overtaken on the drive, savagely murdered and cut into little pieces to be neatly deposited in black Hefty bags? Probably not, but unlike Little Red, I’m not comfortable with those odds, my friend, however miniscule.
I think the heroines of our stories now are no better. I have never pretended to be a fan of the Twilight series, because I think it’s much cooler to not like it, so why pretend to? What disturbs me is the fact that this piece of teen harlequin romance-esque “literature” is giving out terrible messages for girls. I also must admit, that I hate giving a lot of credit to the media for shaping our children. It’s the parents responsibility, but you can’t chose your kid’s friends, and if those friends have idiot parents who think Twilight and its bastard siblings are worthy of the small attention span their children have been able to cultivate, then it just might rub off on your children, despite your best efforts. But I digress, in the second book in the Twilight “Saga,” Bella, the pale, limp, personality-less main character is dumped by the equally devoid of personality, Edward, but he’s just so damn sexy who cares? After a few days they fell madly in love and when he dumped her for reasons I don’t feel the need to know, she is so distraught that she goes to any lengths to get him back. Does she say, write him a love letter expressing her feelings? Make a personal appeal, telling him how much he means to her? Or does she do what Stephanie Meyers would do, throw herself off a cliff in the hopes that Edward will swoop in to save her? Is this the new feminine ideal? The beautiful Bella, while different from our typical woman by being depressed, is still helpless and borderline pathetic while at the same time being certifiably insane. With role models like this, I’m glad to be a little androgynous personality wise. We can do better than this ladies, or am I just being too optimistic?

The Voices of Creative Nonfiction Writing

I'm under no illusions that my voice is particularly pleasant. I cringe when I hear myself on answering machines or on video, clinging to any hope there may be that my voice doesn't actually sound like that. I sound like a child when recorded. It's really just embarrassing trying to record your voice mail message for work when every time you sound like you snuck into daddy's office and started playing with the phone.
My creative nonfiction writing class is full of annoying voices. One girl, a honey blonde, accompanies her voice with nose scrunches. Her voice is low and hollow, airy and patronizing, as if she's your kindergarten teacher and you're the silly kid who always eats the paste. Overly concerned with not offending anyone, her sing song voice creeps into a small giggle at the end of her literary criticisms and she seals it by smiling in such a way that her face collapses like an accordion. Her lips contort into a rosebud smile, pushing her nose up, creating little crinkles along the bridge. For some inexplicable reason, she closes her eyes. Her eyes are not being squished closed by a big smile, she voluntarily closes them, perhaps having once seen the expression she makes in a mirror, and hoping to never catch a glimpse of it again.
My assessment of another girl may be biased. Whenever we have a workshop, collaboratively critiquing someone's essay as a class, most people try to point out things they liked, plot points that were confusing, or areas that need more clarification, only seldom adding in critiques of grammar. But not this girl. In her cynical, sarcastic drone, her only effort at class participation is to tell someone that their sentences were too long, or there were too many commas. This all changed when she was the one being critiqued. I never noticed her voice to be particularly annoying, but probably because she rarely talked. Our teacher has us read our essay aloud before it's discussed, and she, regrettably, started off with an insufferable monotone. There are few things worse than a monotone voice. One of them, is someone who talks, or reads, too slowly. We have 50 minutes to discuss two essays. She took up around 10 minutes reading two and a half single spaced pages. The slow rhythm accented a little problem with inflection. Every sentence had the slightest upward inflection. Not enough to form a question but just enough for me to want to stuff her thick black glasses down her throat.
Our final (shall we say intriguing..?) voice comes from a chubby, pale, geek who wears a dog collar. No idea why. Can you ask someone a question like that? "What's up with the dog collar?" I just don't know. His voice isn't annoying, because he sounds like Elmer Fudd, who is just a lovable guy, despite his murderous nature. But it's hard to take Dog Collar Boy seriously when he means "brutally" and it comes out "bootally." It's also really difficult to understand someone with a speech impediment reading out loud. Everything is jumbled together, there is no such thing as an "R" in the world of Dog Collar Boy. His wishy washy ways are similar to Batista, from one of my favorite shows, Dexter, which I watch with Travis. Travis constantly makes fun of Batista, and while Dog Collar Boy talks, all I can imagine is Travis impersonating him, repeating everything he says in an exaggerated way. I think my version of hell will be something similar, hearing myself on video over and over for all time.

First Kiss Word Cloud

I thought this was neat.
I used my segmented essay about 3 of my first kisses.

Ulterior Motives and the Folly of Trust

I understand that a good number of guys randomly strike up random conversations with girls because they think they're pretty and they want to go out, hang out, or just get laid. It's just annoying when a guy pretends to be cool: talks to you, seems nice, normal and not a pervert. Then he asks you to lunch and a little flag goes off. He doesn't know me enough to want to hang out because we're friends. So do I awkwardly bring up that I'm seeing someone? Do I go out to lunch and only after he makes a move, do I even more awkwardly bring it up? Or do I get over myself and not assume he wants to eventually get me naked? In my most recent run in with this situation I decided to bring it up then and there on facebook chat. I said that I wasn't sure if it mattered but that I was seeing someone so lunch wouldn't really turn into anything. And with those simple, slightly presumptuous words he stopped talking to me. I don't mean, we finished that conversation and I haven't talked to him since. I mean that those were the last words in our chat box. Period.

Normally if a guy abruptly cuts off the conversation, I don't blame it on what I said, but instead the idea that he's probably busy. If he cuts off the conversation after something like that, what am I supposed to think? Does the fact that I just said something important really change the likelihood of him suddenly becoming busy and moving away from the computer? I don't think it does, but how am I supposed to not think that influenced his disappearance at all? Is my current feeling of hate unfounded? Am I really reading into it too much?

Unfortunately, I also read things into the innocent happenings of everyday life. After class I sat on a bench to wait for the bus. I was focused on getting to the bubblegum center of my Cherry Blow Pop, but I had noticed out of the corner of my little eye that I had sat on a bench that was next to another occupied bench. A dwarfish looking guy sat there, glasses, wavy brown hair, and acne scars on his pastey skin. I sat, minding my own business, and he looked over at me.
"Is it good?" he motioned with his eyes to my Blow Pop.
"Yeah... it's Cherry" I hoped this was all he had to say.
"I always preferred Green Apple myself" he continued to ask me if I had any classes left and since I didn't, where I was headed. When I responded that I was going home, he asked where I lived, which I find to be an inappropriate question to ask a stranger at the bus stop. I continued the chit chat until we got on the bus, when I sat one person away from him. He felt the need to tell me his name was Daniel, I of course responded with my name and when he left I said it was nice talking to him, which wasn't completely untrue. He told me to enjoy my lollipop.

Maybe it's the way he started his conversation observing that I was sucking on a hard candy on a stick but at first I though "Oh crap. How is this conversation going to turn insanely bizarre very quickly? Am I going to have to maneuver through painful attempts at flirting?" As he talked more I thought he might be gay, simply because of his voice and mannerisms, but then he explained how he wouldn't be able to swing dance with a guy as his partner, so that hypothesis was shot. He was perfectly nice and friendly but I was constantly waiting for an ulterior motive. What does he want? Is he wondering if I have another lollipop? Is it shallow of me for assuming the chubby kid is only talking to me for candy?

I used to think that I felt so out of place in Indiana because I'm originally from Massachusetts, where random acts of kindness and social interactions are not met with the same attitude as they are in Middle America. When I say random act of kindness and the like, I mean from strangers; who doesn't love when someone they know does something sweet? I don't know if I can always blame my aversion for friendly strangers on my Masshole upbringing. Am I just not a trusting person? Probably. I equate being trusting with being stupid. The summer after my senior year, my dad had a little known man named Walter from Peru come live with us so he could help my dad with his photography business. It was disastrously unsuccessful, he almost burned the house down, let our dog out without his leash to run and frolic in the street, and was just offensive and an idiot. I'm going to have to explain Walter later, probably the story of how he called my mom fat and I was kicked under the table when I went off at him. If that's not a ringing endorsement to look at everyone with a suspicious eye, then no such thing exists.

Do guys randomly Facebook friend girls they don't know for no reason? Maybe, but I'm not going to just assume that's so. Does every guy who strikes up a conversation while he's bored and waiting for the bus want something? I doubt it, but the thought can still cross my mind. I don't think keeping people at a distance for a while is going to be my downfall, but bringing people in too quickly definitely can be. And a woman should always err on the side of caution with suspicious men.

Talking is Just Masturbating Without the Mess...

I may be a narcissist, because if I'm being honest, the only reason why I got a blog is because I can't fit my ramblings in my facebook statuses. Sure, I can get little snippets, but let's be honest: the people want more. If no one thought they were funny, I wouldn't have a blog. You should never feed a narcissist, especially after midnight...

My mom thinks the quote, "Talking is just masturbating without the mess." is just disgusting, but I think, when you get the sticky implications wiped clean from your mind, it's actually quite... poignant. It's from the song "Happiness and the Fish" by Our Lady Peace. You talk because the reactions you get from people, or the reactions you think you get, make you feel good. Simple, and at least for me, true.

I think the majority of things in this blog will be shallow observations, mean comments and things I hate, but I've realized that if you add humor to all these things, people don't think you're a shallow, soulless person. Someone who hates everything is a bummer, a Negative Nancy that no one wants to be around, but if you can make it relatable, you're golden.

How to Legitimize the Awful Things We Think
Step 1. Chose from the millions of mean and shallow comments and opinions you formulate throughout the day.
"Ugly girls are a waste of space"
Step 2. Focus on one aspect of that thought, one sect in that group, zero in on something.
Girls who look like men in dresses.
Step 3. Decide how that makes you feel, or the thought that pops into your head.
What. The. Fuck? They have boobs. So why do they look like men? Saying some of them look like men is insulting to men who look good in dresses. How can this be? What happened to them? Is it contagious? Am I right in avoiding these women, if we really want to label them that way? Should I spread the word? Develop Public Service Announcements to save our children from this unfortunate fate?! What can I do to stop this madness?!
Step 4. Decide if this emotion or impression is appropriate.
Eh, this part isn't important.
Step 5. Twist it all up until it sounds good, and you feel that, if you said this to a group of properly emotionally adjusted people, they wouldn't look at you funny.
"I want to figure out what exactly makes some girls look like men in dresses" This makes it seem as though I'm trying to help these women, which in a way, I would if I could. If there was some linebacker shoulder reconstructive surgery, I would recommend these girls. Sure it might be painful, but they'd look good in a dress. They wouldn't scream "I'm a virgin because men find my body intimidating or too much to handle" That thought might be a little mean, but that's an example of what not to do, and if put through the steps it has potential.

These are simply helpful tips, if you don't have the gift, I'm sorry but you will fail. Yes, I find myself funnier than anyone else does, but... There's really no "but" to that. It's sad and I need to get over it. I'm still going to try to write in this blog though, and if you read it and chuckle once or twice, or just find it interesting, or if I can add to the list of things you hate, I'll be perfectly happy.