Morningtimes.

  The collective clientele at Morning Times in downtown Raleigh is simply stunning. The atmosphere makes them visually arresting and mysterious and, subsequently, worlds cooler than me.

Let’s start with the specimen behind the counter. The first time I saw her, I only made it halfway through the door before I had to walk back outside. She was so pretty, I felt like I’d been punched in the sternum. I’m not generally  attracted to girls (with a couple of very specific exceptions) but this girl transcended sexuality in a manner normally reserved for hand carved arabesque medicine cabinets or the perfect pair of shoes.

The perfect pair of shoes.

My dad asked me what my problem was and when I told him, he marched right on in there and told this chick she was the prettiest girl his daughter had ever seen. By the time he emerged, I was halfway down the block.

I’m sitting here now, almost a year later, in Morning Times, and I can see her gigantic, disheveled mop of brown curls bobbing about behind the register, framed by the chalkboard announcing poetry readings and art openings. Her asian-inspired face looks like in was carved in goddamn alabaster and she is wearing precisely no makeup. She is built like a tiny bird/ten-year-old boy/Natalie Portman and she has the sort of shoulders I covet for myself even more than a set of dimples. I want to know how it feels, what it means to exist in this world with looks like that. I don’t necessarily think she has it easier than me, or more difficult. I just want to know what it’s like to wake up, look in the mirror, and say, “Well, that’s what we’re working with, huh? No shit!” and traipse out the door.

But everyone here, they are all so exotic. Here is what I see:

1. A well-dressed man waving a banana around and dancing in expensive wooden clogs. He just called himself a faggot. His hair is impeccable.

2. A girl in skinny jeans and a ridiculous hat and zippered poncho and leather bag the color of baby shit. She has no upper lip, barely, and I want her to sit at my table and trade scarves with me for the time it takes for us to drink our coffee, because mine is a lovely smart paisley which used to belong to an old rich lady and hers is a bedraggled mustard yellow affair full of holes and I want it. It isn’t until she leaves the cafe that I notice her baby shit bag has a robot and an interrobang embroidered on it, so I mentally decide to trade her scarf back to her in exchange for the bag. She unhooks a beagle-dachshund hybrid from the frozen tree outside but the dog will not go. I can see that she is asking the dog to come with her in the firm, tolerant voice reserved for uncooperative young adults. The dog is unresponsive because dogs, like infants, will never realize when they are being treated with respect. You’re only talking to your dog/baby like that to show other humans that you don’t disrespect ANY forms of life, when in reality, you’re doubling the disrespect with your condescension.

3. A mid fifties dude in a puffy Columbia (“Trying Stuff Since 1932!”) vest and wire framed glasses, the sleeves of his gauzy white buttondown rolled up. He just picked up a few spoons, slammed them down, and knocked over a thing of sugar and yelled, “AND I WANT IT NOW!” The place fell silent and I stopped what I was doing and the owner grabbed his milk steaming pitcher and looked the guy in the face and then burst into laughter. They all laughed, the dude, the owner, my girlfriend with the no makeup.

4. A fat, aging businesswoman with fabulous chunky jewelry, a professional haircut, and a method for applying eyeshadow that could have only come from Glamour magazine or her fifteen year old gay son.

5. A salty, unwashed sea captain man with grey sweatpants, a misbuttoned camouflage jacket, long, stringy hair the color of dirty rice, and a beard for days. He’s hiking his sweatpants up and delicately adding Sugar In The Raw to his medium extra hot chai. He’s adding the sugar one granule at a time. He isn’t insane; I can tell somehow.

6. A poor man’s Christian Slater in a three piece suit just approached me while spit-smoothing his cowlick and gesturing with an iPhone4 and asked me if I was Marianne. I am not, and no one is ever looking for me.

I know it is entirely possible someone is sitting across the room being jealous of my new ShapeUps and the charming way I can’t hold a latte mug properly, but it is more probable that they are not.

But really, do you wonder what people think when they see you? What percentage of people think anything at all? If I know I am inherently lame, then is it that true for all the people I think are so cool? Do they think to themselves, “I am aware that last night I watched On Golden Pond and ate a whole thing of Spam straight out the can but by golly, SOMEONE thinks I’m cool, I’m sure of it! Maybe that red headed jerk in the ShapeUps!”

Who knows? Maybe I’ll start hanging out at Morning Times more often. I could use some pointers. I might even find out where to buy an interrobang appliqué. Maybe I’ll meet Marianne. Maybe I’ll someday even be able to order my coffee from the Porcelain MopTop without feeling my internal organs dissolve like they’re in love potion acid.

Maybe one day I’ll dupe someone into thinking I’m exotic and mysterious, like these people are doing to me right now.

Who knows?

Pizza Hut or Bust(ed face)

“Real Love is a Sphere,” my boyfriend texts to me, haiku-style, today.  “The center is everywhere/Circumference, nowhere.”   I’m inclined to agree with him, since this is a man who fashioned a bed out of three air mattresses duct-taped on top of one another and thinks a viable meal consists of heated Ragu straight out the pot, consumed while huddled over the stove armed with no better utensil than a plastic ladle.  While some girlfriends would insist on a bed frame and some actual dishes, I find him unflaggingly endearing and rife with illimitable charm.

We had been planning a trip to the Pizza Hut buffet for several weeks, and decided that yesterday, Tuesday, would be perfect.  We discussed the impending meal at length, both of us harvesting memories of several trips to Pizza Hut Buffet with our respective fathers, and we were very excited about it.  There was much planning involved.  We were to get up early on Tuesday, and he was to go give my little bar a thorough cleaning while I was tying up loose ends at my day job, then we would converge at noon sharp, giving us one precious hour to turboload at the Buffet before running several other errands.  Since the Buffet ends at 2, everything would have to work out perfectly, time-wise.  So at 1pm, we met at our house and piled into my car and we were off.   It was raining so hard I could barely see ten feet ahead of the car.   We had to pass by the bar on our way to Pizza Hut, and when we did, I noticed the door looked to be slightly ajar, so I stopped in the middle of the street while he jumped out to slam it shut.  Since I was about to be holding up traffic, he ran full speed back to my car and promptly opened the door into his forehead and split that shit but good, an almost 2-inch gash immediately forming above his right eye.

Even before the blood started, I really began to panic, and he found an old, dusty roll of paper towels in my car and used some to stop the bleeding while I drove erratically, hyperventilating with fear and concern.  He clearly needed stitches.  Never in my life have I been so sick with worry and panic over someone else’s injury, and this new feeling almost propelled me into a tree and several other cars in the vicious storm.

“We HAVE to go home you are BLEEDING,” I gasped.

“NO!! TO PIZZA HUBUFFAY,” he insisted, pressing the paper towel that was quickly becoming saturated with his blood and what I imagined to be bits of his brilliant brain matter.

“NO.  WE ARE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL!”

“NOOOO I AM FINE I’M APPLYING PRESSURE!”

“FINE THEN!  FUCK PIZZA HUT, WE ARE GOING TO THE GROCERY STORE and you will BUY SOME THINGS TO CLEAN YOURSELF,” I said, knowing there to be a store around the corner from where we were.  My mistake was in forgetting that the Pizza Hut was very close to this grocery store, and though I tried to slip past it very quickly, hoping the rain would shield it from my now-half-blind boyfriend, he saw it anyway.

“THAT IS TH’ PIZZAHUBUFFAY GO THERE IT IS 1:17,” he yelled.

“We are NOT GOING we are going to the FIRST AID AISLE of the ROSE’S,” yet while I was admonishing him for neglecting to put his stitches before his precious Buffet, I was simultaneously turning into the Pizza Hut parking lot anyway because, when it comes down to it, I really just want him to have what he wants at all times.

I wasn’t even finished taking the key out of the ignition before he starts bounding up to the door of the Pizza Hut, already soaking wet and holding this ridiculous paper towel to his head to keep his brains in.  I thought I was going to cry.  I followed him into the restaurant and was put face-to-face with the coldest, emptiest, most pizza-devoid stainless steel buffet I had ever seen.

“Where, we. . .um. . .we need the Lunch Buffet?” He said, confused and on the verge of crestfallen.

“Oh we don’t do no buffet no more,” the woman nonchalantly explained over her shoulder as she lumbered over to the lone, beleaguered table of patrons in the corner of the grimy, burnt-orange dining room.  Jedd Evan looked at me, defeated, but I didn’t know what to say, so we left.

All that for nothing but disappointment.  I put him back in the car and we headed to the adjacent mall containing a Rose’s which, for those of you not blessed with a Rose’s in your town, is sort of like a poor-man’s discount K-Mart, if the K-Mart was built in a shanty, super-trashy, constantly going out of business, staffed with a combination of middle-aged, divorced, obese women with teased hair and dubiously-behaving socially-retarded teenagers, and sold plus-size underwears out of a giant bin for one dollar, tax included.  I love Rose’s and knew they had a small first aid aisle, and what’s more, there was a Chic-Fil-A in that mall, too.  Score.

I left Jedd Evan in the first aid aisle and went off to the clothing area in search of a hoodie.  It took me about ten minutes but I located a gray one for six dollars and headed back to the grocery section.  I found Jedd Evan calmly surveying the shampoo situation while he continued to fold his bloody paper towel into eighths and sixteenths and thirtyseconds.  He was manning a basket full of canned soup, Band-Aids, Peroxide, A-1 Sauce, tiny superglue, more canned soup, a sweater, a pack of t-shirts and other unrelated items.  This was not supposed to be a shopping trip.  This was supposed to be a ghetto hospital replacement. 

We finally made it to the check-out, and of course the cashier knew something was wrong with Jedd Evan’s face and immediately offered the Rose’s fitting rooms as a substitute triage.  He agreed to fix himself there, so we bought all our things and he selected his tools from the pile.  Band-Aids, check.  Peroxide, check.  Superglue, check.  Wait.  WHAT?  But he was already gone.  I really took issue with the introduction of Superglue into his surgical repertoire, but I was silent as I watched him head for the fitting rooms. 

But he did not go to the fitting rooms.  No.  Instead, he plopped down in the middle of the Homewares section and used Rose’s collection of $5 full-length plastic-framed mirrors as a suitable place to patch up.  Almost immediately, the intercom sounded with a plea for security to tend to “Section E, Area 4, Code Blue,” which I could only interpret as the code for, “A Wet, Bleeding Man is Currently Repairing his Gaping Head Wound with Our Discount Adhesives in Bedroom Décor.”

With a resigned sigh I settled into an armchair in the mall and waited.  He emerged, smiling and bandaged, and we ate the shit outta some Chik-Fil-A.

Though I really did not want his wound to become infected and cause him more, very expensive trouble, I knew it was the only way I would be proven right in being so concerned and panicked.  But I, too, am wrong every once in a great while, and in this instance, I was.  It has been over 24 hours and his head looks perfectly fine, the gash reduced to a scab under an inch long.  Apparently Superglue is okay to use in lieu of actual medical attention, and he knew it.  Combined with my newfound knowledge that I am capable of going completely crazy with worry and anxiety over the well-being of another human, I consider this a successful schooling.  Real love is a sphere, he said, and he’s right.  I cannot change the way I feel even long enough to trust in his guerilla medicine, but I should have.  Instead he charms me into losing my mind over petty scratches.

Now all we have to do is find a Pizza Hut with an actual buffet.

Taxi Driver.

I am terrified of public transportation.  With three trembling fingers left over, I can count the amount of times I’ve ridden in a taxicab.  It seems as though, in the name of convenience and adulthood, I should be able to overcome my fear of chaufferism, but when I actually think about my past experiences, it doesn’t seem too strange to me that I’ve ousted it as an option.

 

Cab Ride #1:  I overslept one morning in my Freshman year of high school.  My mom took this as an opportunity to teach me a lesson about responsibility, so instead of driving me to school, she made me call a cab and pay for it myself.  I’ll spare you the details about my stuttering and inability to remember my address while I was on the phone with said cab company.  When the taxi arrived, I stumbled outside, close to tears.  I had a giant guitar with me since my music teacher wanted us to bring random instruments to fill up the space created by her failure to concoct a lesson plan, so I’m sure the cab driver was amused at the juggling act I performed all the way down the sidewalk.  I approached the front passenger door and wriggled my guitar, bookbag, purse, armload of texts, and loose papers full of shitty poems about dragons and medieval wars (a “book” I was “writing”) into the seat.  The cab driver snorted a little and asked me if I wanted to put my shit in the back.  But I did not trust this man, so I told him no.  It wasn’t until halfway down my street that I remembered a movie I saw where a whore flagged a cab and put her spangled, spandexed butt in the front seat.  The driver said, “You know what it means to be in the front seat, honey.”  And she proceeded to give him a blowjob while he drove through the rainy meat-packing district.  I spent the remainder of the ride with my face plastered against the window, my plaid skirt bunched up in my fists and dragged down to cover my knees while the cab driver attempted to hurl pleasantries at me.  Every word out of his mouth, I construed as a proposition.  I still feel bad about this.

 

Cab Ride #2:  Fast-forward twelve years.  My parents were living in New York, and at the end of one my visits, they accompanied me to the airport via taxi.  It was 4am and we hailed a cab and (thank god) piled into the backseat.  The driver was a very foreign man, and, peering at us in the rearview, said, “VAIR?”  We said, “JFK, please.”  And he looked at us again and said, “VishTirg Nu Plmbbrklq.”  Assuming he was asking us to repeat our destination, we responded in over-enunciated tandem and at a higher decibal, “J. F. K. AIR. PORT.”

 

What happened next has haunted me for years.  The man looked close to tears as he screamed at us, “YOO STOOPEED FUCKS!  I TRYING TO BE NICE MAN, ASK YOU HOW IS YOUR MORNEENK AND YOU YELL.  NO HALLO, NO GOOT MORNINK.  NO RESPECT, FUCK!”

 

My dad immediately responded to the man as though I was eight again, and he was protecting me, which I loved.  “STOP THE CAB, SIR, WE WILL NOT BE NEEDING YOUR SERVICES,” he said in the whitest way imaginable.  We exited the cab like a load of sleepy clowns, and the man sped off without asking for payment or even waiting for us to close the door.

 

The reason it haunts me is I keep getting flashes of the cab driver readying himself in the darkness of 2am, thinking of his family back at home far away and all the dollars he’s going to send them, combing his hair and straightening his collar, and practicing English in the mirror.  “How do you do?” he asks his reflection.  “Goot mornink,” with a little head bow.  And then he gets to work, and the first white family he picks up responds to his salutations by yelling the name of an airport at him.

 

While I realize that this is simultaneously an unbelievably compassionate and fantastically racist way for me to imagine the situation, I still cannot seem to shake this image, and I’m pretty sure I’ll feel bad about it forever.

 

Anyway, I feel like I can, in fact, go through the rest of my life without riding in a taxicab again.  Maybe someday I’ll tell you the story behind the reason I will never subject my future child to schoolbus rides.  It’s a really harrowing account, and it involves genitalia and substitute drivers.  I bet you can’t wait.

Party Girl.

I choose to fancy myself a successful mingler, much like I choose to remember that I’m terrific at bicycle riding.  Since I rarely perform either of those simple tasks, it is not difficult for me to convince myself I am good at them.

The last time I rode a bicycle, it was my old roommate’s, and I quickly realized with horror that the last bike I owned only had two speeds:  However Fast I Can Pedal and Stopped.  And to stop the bike, I only had to pedal backwards for a split second.  There were levers and cranks and buttons and baubles on this bicycle, and since I possessed knowledge of none of their functions, I promptly ate asphalt within 90 seconds.

Something very similar happened to me at the party I just attended.

At the risk of sounding bitter and lonely (which I’m not), I’m going to share a phenomenon I have experienced since buying the bar.  I rarely get invited to parties, and I think it’s because everyone assumes I’m already going to other parties.  Every single Monday, at least three customers (always in their early 20s) ask me “how the parties were this weekend,” and they look alarmed when I say that I didn’t go to any, that I sat at home with my precious boyfriend and tried to find the source of the eight fruit flies in my bathroom.  Why are they there?  There’s no food in there.  I don’t keep food in there.

I live on the end of a dead end street, and three days ago I realized that four of my bar regulars live two doors down from me, in one of the other five houses on the entire street, which was weird because why did we not ever notice that? Anyway, these guys are part of a collectively adorable group of young friends whose presence I always appreciate at the bar.  They are intelligent and talented.   So when they announced on Facebook that they were having a party, and I was invited, because everyone on Facebook is invited, I got very excited. Jedd Evan walked there with me, which was cool just in case I didn’t know anybody else.

A couple minutes later I found myself standing in a room full of Zog’s regulars, and I was completely off of my own turf.  Standing behind the bar of my own bar gives me a certain confidence I’m always sure will translate into real life should I ever be required to participate in a social capacity other than being the beer opener, but it never does.

I’m very good at the bar.  I’m quick and funny and I use poly-syllabic words and I treat my friends to good stories and charm dollars easily out of people I don’t know.  And when I am alone or with Jedd Evan or Billy or my parents or something, I can tell jokes and recount tales and issue advice and do creative things.  But when I’m not on my own turf I forget how to be a functional person.

I parked myself across from the fridge and started talking to two guys I knew and two guys I didn’t know.  Almost immediately, someone opened said fridge and I watched as a full gallon of milk freed itself from the top shelf and onto my flipflopped feet.  I made a couple of jokes about crying and silently congratulated myself when they all laughed politely.  All of a sudden the following sentence exited my mouth:  “Hey three of you guys have glasses and guess what my old roommate just moved out and he left three giant bottles of contact solution do any of you guys ever use contacts do you guys want them because I can just go run home and get them.”  And then suddenly, propelled by my good intentions, I was walking the fifty yards to my house in my milkfeet, wondering WHY THE FUCK I just opted to distribute bottles of contact solution like party favors at an ophthalmology mixer.

I returned with the contact solution, let the guys pick what they wanted, and gave Jedd Evan the pre-opened, rejected one, which he employed as a conversational tool by replacing random objects around the room with the contact solution.  As in, he’d slyly leave the contact solution in place of the hot sauce in front of ten people chewing things that needed hot sauce.  Everyone laughed because he is funny.  He tried to talk to one girl, Audrey, about six times before he gave up, so I directed my attention elsewhere.  Some guy came up and told me he liked all my earrings, so I immediately slapped my ear a few times in response.  Why did I do that? Then I talked a mile a minute about when you touch your own hair when someone notices you got a haircut, and I hit myself in the head a half dozen more times to illustrate my point.  No one said anything.  Or laughed.  But a few kids did rescue me by launching into a full Q&A about Zog’s, which I took part in for close to twenty minutes.  It was painful, and not because of them.  They were delightful.

It was me.

They asked legitimate questions, such as, “How does someone in their early 20s buy their own bar,” (I’m 30), “Do you feel bad kicking out drunk people,” (no), “Do you ever have to cut off your friends,” (I almost exclusively have to cut off my friends), and, “What does that ___________ tattoo mean?”  About halfway through this exchange, I realized I was being potty-mouthed and very boring and I could sort of see it on their poor faces. They had the look I get when I want to end a conversation I’m having with someone but I don’t know how.  I felt so awful for them.

Then I released them from my small-talk grip by simply shrugging and saying, “Whatever,” thereby relinquishing my monopoly on the conversation, and instead of asking them questions about themselves, which is what you DO at a party, I just sort of shut up and stood there until they floated away.  I tried to interject witty remarks into other people’s conversations.  Here are some examples of things I ACTUALLY SAID:

“Oh, Elvis is still alive?  Wait.  Costello?”

“Yes, yes, I got all the milk out of my shoe.”

“I don’t give a fuck about most drunk people.”  (This is false.)

“My parents got divorced and that’s how come there’s a treadmill in my living room.”

After a while I just stopped saying anything.  What was heartbreaking was that no one was being even slightly rude to me.  All the dumb shit I was saying and all the awkwardness I introduced to the situation—it all came from me.

It was all me.   But the sore, palpitating crux of shame came when, after being silent for a while while Jedd Evan performed beautifully with the group he was regaling on the other side of the party, I decided to step up to the girl Audrey and take her shoulder and lean in and whisper to her.  I said, “Audrey.  I don’t mean to be a downer but I never get invited to parties and I’m really nervous and I really don’t know how to talk to people.”  I don’t know why I did it.  I guess because Audrey had been to the bar before and I liked her and we had a nice rapport and I just needed to say it to someone but it’s really not the sort of thing you tell a virtual stranger at a neighborhood cookout.  It was time to go.

I went out on the porch with Jedd Evan and sat in a chair next to a headless model of the human skeleton wearing a vest, and I clutched my tepid bottle of Fat Tire and stared into the street and tried to tell Jedd Evan funny stories while I thought about all the nice, welcoming people inside the house and how I’ve not had enough practice at parties and even though (or especially because) I’m almost a decade older than most of them, I’ll probably not get any better at this point, even with practice.

I’m probably just being paranoid.  But, see, that’s the problem.  The problem is that I’m thinking about it at all.  As Jedd Evan and I trudged home, we passed Rich’s house, and Rich is a bicycle mechanic in Carrboro.  I waved to him and then glanced over at my old roommate’s forgotten bike under my carport.  Maybe I’ll bring it in to Rich for a tune-up tomorrow and see if I can’t get the hang of it again.

Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Sew.

Dear Jedd Evan,

You know I’ve never claimed to have a firm grasp of domesticity.  I own an iron but it’s only used to seal shit that I screenprint.  I am mentally incapable of stocking up on toilet paper so every couple weeks I have a panic-stricken three minutes where I almost pee myself scrambling around in search of any forgotten stack of Christmas-themed dinner disposables or piles of Wendy’s napkins.  Every time I pay a utility bill, it comes laden with a reconnect fee.  And there’s that famous oven-hole in my kitchen, and we all know that holes in the wall don’t bake shit, but at least I have somewhere to store my hundreds of dollars worth of unopened Tupperware Party trappings.

However.

I am very good at laundry.

I love doing laundry.  I love doing my laundry, I love doing other people’s laundry.  I love folding people’s clothes, I love how washing machines are basically magic.  When my dryer broke, I spiraled into a fit of debilitating depression at the thought of having to spend Laundry Time at a laundromat.  I somehow passively finagled my parents’ dryer away from them when they were divvying things up after their separation, and this is very telling because if I had been presented with some other appliance, say, their crockpot or their can opener to store in my house as a constant reminder of the demise of the only relationship I held sacred in my life, I would have rejected it with a fervor.  But a dryer?  There was no question it would be mine.

Since my epic firing from my stupid burrito shop job has left me with only a part-time position at the local ArtsCenter and my very own bar that belongs to me and only needs to be tended to at night, I have plenty of time during the day to play Boz Scaggs as loud as possible while I parade around in my underthings with a fifth of whiskey and several craft projects in progress.  I don’t usually get drunk during the day but as an adult, I’m allowed to say, “Fuck it,” and do what I want, which, last Thursday, was to get smashed and clean the five sets of filthy clothes I’d been collecting on my bedroom floor.

So imagine the thrill I got when I went to go put in the first load and I found the washing machine full of someone else’s shirts and socks.  There was a whole wardrobe in there for me to clean and dry and fold!  On closer inspection it was revealed that you were the one who had unintentionally abandoned your duds and unwittingly left them for me to handle.  This made more sense than if they had been Idaho Billy’s clothes, because Idaho Billy takes all his things to the dry cleaners, which is a mysterious and grown-up place, the inner workings of which I can’t quite fathom.

I got to work immediately, putting your clothes in the dryer, trying to decide what things I was going to fold first when they were done.  “Should I start with socks?  Or work from the biggest to smallest and tackle the hoodies and pants first,” I asked myself in my growing whiskey haze.  My plan was interrupted when I grabbed your favorite slacks, the ones with a rip that starts at the crotch and ends somewhere six inches down so that your naughty bits are constantly threatening to free themselves with every step you take.  I know by now you have no intention of repairing the pants, though you constantly want to discuss the fact that they are unraveling at an alarming rate.  Even though I know you wouldn’t give a flying fuck if the pants propelled you into the realm of indecency in the middle of the grocery store, Jack Daniels insisted that I could save the day by sewing the peep-hole shut.

I ran, RAN into the craft area and started wildly digging through my sewing drawers, holding all different shades of navy embroidery floss up to the ruin to find an appropriate color match.  I pricked myself with four different needles in my haste to find the right one.  I located my teensy, tiny thread scissors and my red plastic thimble.  I found my needle threader, which was quite a feat.  The fervor with which I was tackling this project shot some sort of adrenaline rush into my brain, where it mingled with the alcohol and together, they convinced me that this was the best idea EVER.  I was so ready.  There was only one problem.

I can’t sew worth a SHIT.

Doesn’t matter!  I brought all my treasures onto the front porch and the stray neighbor cat jumped into my lap and started playing with my thread.  Matt was across the street letting his dogs out and plodded over to the porch when he saw me.  Wonderful!  Now I had something ELSE to distract me from the delicate surgical procedure I was about to inflict upon your poor clothes.

Once Matt and I started talking and the cat started rolling around on the pants in my lap, I started sewing with abandon.  I felt good about it.  I felt so confident I even stopped watching what I was doing.  I was creating intricate patterns with the navy floss.  I was pioneering new sewing techniques, namely the one where you sew like a deranged spider weaving a web while on some serious hallucinogenics.  “Whatever!,” I told myself.  “it does not need to be beautiful!  It only has to hold Jedd’s weenis in his pants!”

After about twenty-three minutes I looked down and realized I had been connecting two flaps of fabric that were definitely already connected with a sturdy machine-made overlock in a brilliant angry orange. Okay, so I reinforced it I guess.  I pretended not to panic as I righted myself and started from a different angle.  I swigged some more whiskey and furiously attacked the pants with the jankiest, most retarded-looking whipstitch I could muster.  I sewed the rest of the rip this way, then doubled back on it “just to be sure.”  The result, when I turned the pants right-side-in, was a half-closed hole with a gaping area that would have lined up perfectly with exactly what it should not have once the pants were being worn.  I tried again.

It was during this third attempt that I was struck with a very distinct sinking realization that I had not ever bothered to ask you if you could sew.  Perhaps you preferred your pants this way.  Maybe they lent easier access at times when you only had four seconds to pee.  It was possible that you like your clothes a little beat up.  It was also possible that you are a brilliant seamster, a secret tailor, even, and that my plebeian foray into the world of crotch mending was, while well-intentioned, decidedly ill-advised.  I pushed these thoughts out of my head with another shot of whiskey, finished the job, and surveyed the damage.  The pants actually looked worse than when I started.  I folded them carefully, and discreetly hid them under the detritus of your half-unpacked bedroom.

It has been almost a week and they are still there; I check on them once or twice a day.  I can only hope that when you finally discover them, you will not notice the lack of refreshing breeze traveling past your nether regions, and if you do, please realize that everything I do in the name of domesticity, I do it with a full heart and good intentions, and if there’s a problem, I’ll be waiting in the next room, seam ripper in hand, at the beck-and-call of the pants I accidentally destroyed.

Best,

Mandolina.

Bageltopia.

Dear Jo-hay-hay,

Right now I’m the sole customer at Bageltopia, where my new roommate, Jedd Evan, works.  It’s weirdly grimy in here and the lighting is wanly inconsistent and none of the accessories or furniture or trimmings match, and the acoustic tiles on the ceiling are stricken with patches of water stains and mild rot.  The walls are painted the color of what white walls look like in a room that allows smoking.  There is an unplugged, antediluvian ATM in the corner where I am sitting, and on the wall to my right is, inexplicably, a cheaply framed, warpy print of a chef somberly whisking ingredients in a bowl, the French moonlight glinting off the left curl of his ridiculously long handlebar moustache.  The layout is questionable; the wall bisecting the restaurant flagrantly disrespects all tenets of Feng Shui, and the seemingly centrally located booth where I am sitting manages to only afford me a perfect view of the condiment area and trash can.  The tablecloths are real fabric and look as though they were plucked from a very dead grandmothers’ estate sale reject pile.  I love the tablecloths. I absolutely love it here, in general.  I don’t know why.  Well.  Maybe I do.

Jedd Evan is pacing back and forth behind the counter keeping busier than anyone ever employed by Bageltopia in its 13 years of existence, I’d be willing to bet.  Chopin is blaring from the back, but it’s fine because even if you blare classical music, it’s still peaceful.  Jedd Evan’s coworker, a tall, slouchy, slack-jawed Post Office Kid in his mid-20s, is expounding on the particularly good parts of the funeral march, and if I was still the sort of person to judge others’ intelligence by the way they dress, I’d be surprised.  But I’m not, so I’m not.  One of them is whistling every note of the Chopin arrangement perfectly.  I’m not sure which of them it is, and I decide not to look up and find out.

The Post Office Kid comes and sits by me and we talk about several different things such as mutual acquaintances, lucid nightmares, his broken windshield wipers, Mexican potlucks, billiards, Band of Horses, and the unsecured wireless network of the Karate school next door to Bageltopia.  He tells me he is a perfectionist and I believe him mainly because the word looks so ludicrous coming out of his mouth.  I like him.  He’s smart.

I’m trying my best to ignore the fact that when my roommate’s at work, he wears his hat backwards and I guess the combination of the humidity from the rainstorm in the parking lot and the heat from the bagel ovens in the kitchen makes his hair flip up on the sides, because it doesn’t really do that, normally.  I’m listening to two high school girls act their ages diagonally from where I’m sitting and it’s driving me almost insane.  They’re theater-types and they’re speaking so fast and with such deliberately impeccable enunciation that it sounds like a different language entirely.  They’re dressed ridiculously and I want to judge them really badly until I remember:

1.   I’m fucking 30, and

2.   At their age, I thought combat boots were best worn over jeans and the only t-shirt you could possibly pair with yellow fishnets, mismatched argyle socks, a gold taffeta skirt, and black lipstick was the “Satanic Army” Marilyn Manson one, or, if that one was dirty, the “got weed?” one, or, barring that, a simple black bandeau top that made me look like the absolute slut that I certainly wasn’t, and

3.   They’re 15 and adorably having a great time doing exactly what they should be doing in High School, which is embarking on a lotta bullshit that seems superly important at this moment in time but will reveal itself to be a worthless, useless, and really fun memory later.

I just realized my Bageltopia table is about a half a block from East Chapel Hill High School, which would explain the clientele thus far.  I’ve only seen one customer over the age of 15, and Jedd Evan is alarmingly patient with all of them.  He’s not completely moved all his things in yet, his toothbrush and alarm clock and laptop charger or favorite coffee cup, and I’ll tell you what a shitty roommate I already am: I set my alarm clock for 6am so Bageltopia would open on time, and when it went off, instead of trying to wake him up, I disemboweled the entire alarm clock and went back to sleep.  When I woke up staggering around the kitchen for water and a hairbrush (which I needed), he was somehow gone and my alarm clock was in angry little pieces.  It still is.

The perky theater girls are discussing their past repertoire of roles in various “important” stage productions.  I immediately remember why their infuriating voices sound so familiar.

They sound exactly like the Chip ‘n’ Dale cartoons.

It’s not like I’m sitting here, creepily watching Jedd Evan and the Post Office Kid do their jobs, but, I mean, I sort of am.  I like that at Bageltopia I can put my feet up on the vinyl booths.  I like that the owner looks like he’s totally over it, but he still tucks in his shirt.  I like that I can watch Jedd Evan make a pot of coffee and, while he waits for the drip to subside, he’s suddenly behind me reattaching a chair seat to its frame because at Bageltopia, he’s a man of many, many backwards baseball hats.

Love,

Mandey

Brownie.

Dear The Public,

It is entirely possible that I have just eaten a hash brownie unwittingly.  In my epic attempt be the most non-grocery-shoppingest adult on the planet, I have given birth to and raised the most successful and healthily understocked pantry at least on my street and in, quite possibly, America.  An inventory of my food cabinet just revealed that I am the proud owner of four different types of steak seasoning, a bottle of Mexican vanilla flavoring, a half-gone box of spaghetti noodles, and an open bag of marshmallows of questionable age.

I am supposed to readying my house for Idaho Billy, and those of you who’ve stuck with me through the years of writing him letters through this blog can attest to the fact that it is completely unreasonable that we have not made good on my promise to convert to an All-Billy, real-and-in-person lifestyle.  Well, I’ll just go ahead and announce it now–  supposedly, he’s moving here in two weeks and my whole life will change.  Fact is, I live like a 22-year-old boy in that my house is a gallimaufry of tiny living room adventures and abandoned art projects, of coffee-stained sheet music and babydoll heads, of too many books and not enough bookshelves, of dirty dishes and dirtier towels and tennis shoes that match no articles of clothing in my possession.  I like my house the way it is, but no one, not even my delightfully slobby roommate, agrees with my current lifestyle.  I can’t stop accumulating things.  They’re all important things.  I have no need for most of them now, but I know that as soon as I throw them out, I will commence a project which will require these precious objects, these twisted coat hangers and paint-crusted brushes, these cinderblock chunks and bits of fabric refuse.

So every day since last week I have woken up with the full intention of weeding out the unnecessary bullshit, of making way for Billy’s suits and polished shoes, for his weights and his computer desk where he spawns brilliance on the internets, for his razors and vitamins and the keys to his probably perfectly maintained car.  I know in my soul that it is quite possible that he never smells weird, and he laughs perfectly in person, and his posture is probably impeccable.  I also know that I have created this physical entity entirely in my mind, and the reason I know that this will work is because I will graciously accept a stinky, slouchy Billy with an embarrassing laugh just as quickly as I will accept whatever I made up in my head.

But instead of making my life and my house look like I am worth a shit, I decided to teach myself how to play Mr. Bassman on piano.  In the midst of all the unwashed plates and the unrecycled beer bottles and the detritus of bachelorhood, I managed to ignore all my responsibilities in order to revisit my childhood (which I apparently spent entirely at Showbiz Pizza ) and teach myself to play a Rock-afire Explosion song.  For you, and you only, I have made a video of my 25-YEAR-OLD record playing Mr. Bassman.  I wish I could say that I had to abandon my blog-writing and dig the record out of a box labeled “Amanda, Dorky things, 1985,” but I cannot, because, at age 30, Mr. Bassman is perpetually set up in my little Telex record player, ready to go at anytime.  I listen to it almost every day and I dance around the living room like an ass because I can’t help myself.  For serious, though, it skips twice in the video, and this is because the record is the actual one given to me by my parents at age 5 since the first time I heard the Rock-afire Explosion live and in animatronic person I almost lost my mind and I wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Fatz the keyboardplaying gorilla until I could have him at my fingertips at all times.

Isn’t it magnificent??

So, back to my original point.  I taught myself Mr. Bassman on the keyboard instead of cleaning my house, and then I worked up an appetite for a sweet thing, and I rummaged through the freezer and found a nasty, frost-bitten brownie, and I ate it with a quickness.

Then I remembered, that was no brownie.  It had sprinkles on it just like the ones in the dregs of the batch forgotten in the freezer last October.  Which means. . .

I’m. . .gonna. . .go. . .

Wish me, luck,

Mandey.