Hate actually really is the word, actually.

Dear America,

Yesterday while Aaron and I were at OCSC I typed this on my screen:
THINGS THAT ARE BOTHERING ME TODAY

And then I ran out of battery.  So here it is, my list of THINGS THAT (actually) BOTHER(ed) ME (yesterday):

Mommies-to-be:  Get over yourself goddammit.  Personal fertility problems aside, it is REALLY not that impressive that you managed to get knocked up.  I do not care.  I am not jealous.  Stop coming up to the register at Carrburritos and fondling your pregnancy with splayed palms for fifteen seconds before you order salsa.  Also.  I am the burrito girl.  I swear I don’t want to know how long you and your husband have been trying to conceive.  Why do you people keep me in the know about this?  Oh, oh yeah, that reminds me:

Public breastfeeding: Go.  Fuck.  Yourself.  Look.  I know your ugly little baby has to eat, but this does not give you license to whip your bloated tit out in the middle of a restaurant and declare it feeding time with no regard for discretion.  Ever heard of “a blanket?”  No?  What about “the corner of the room?”  No?  See, it’s sort of like farting in public.  It must be done sooner or later, but maybe you walk over there, away from people enjoying their quesadillas?  Yes.  I know I just likened the miracle of birth to a bad bout of flatulence, and I’m not sorry.

I know it’s legal.  I know it’s natural.  I know it’s the Patriarchal Culture of Repression and Psuedo-Porno BlahBlahBlah that causes me to be uncomfortable with a dumpy chick’s exposed boobie.  I just don’t see, in the case of last night’s specimen, why a breastfeeding mother would need to weave in between all the (occupied) tables in the tiny little restaurant, pacing back and forth while her kid ate.  She was parading around, daring people to comment.  So I did.

“Just take a seat next to the ambulatory breastfeeder, wherever she may be ” I told one customer, loudly.  We’ll bring your food out to you, since you are hungry.  Feel free to pick up your burrito and gallivant around the goddamn restaurant for digestive aid purposes.

Last week a woman brought her five-year-old in for lunch.  The little girl climbed up on a barstool and we had a conversation about the weather and her favorite music.  I was enjoying myself because I don’t usually engage in intelligent discussions with toddlers.  When I rang the woman up I noticed she only got one meal and I was surprised to see that she ate the entire thing without offering any to her daughter.  You see where this is going?

She actually looked at her daughter and said, “Time to eat, Sweetie!” and whipped her FUCKING titty out, WHIPPEDITOUT and offered it to the girl.  Look.  The kid starts sucking on the teat, right, and she has to prop the rest of her FIVE YEAR OLD body up with part of the table, her legs draped over an empty chair.  I can see this woman’s nipple.  The kid is bad at breastfeeding.  I can’t help but think she should have had enough practice by now.

This is dangerously close to molestation as far as I am concerned.  That being said, of course you can deem it feeding time for your brat while you have a tostada in front of you.  Just don’t flaunt it, okay?  As a childless spinster, I’m not open-minded enough to accept your areola into my life at this time.

Politics:

Everyone sucks.
Everyone is corrupt.
She sucked too bad at the flute to win the beauty contest.
It’s probably not her kid.
He’s friends with terrorists.
He’ll probably drop dead/go senile during his term.
He only worked X-amount of days in the Senate.
He’s a loser.
She can see Russia from her house.
FUCK
OFF

Please.  It’s the lesser of two evils, as they say.  YES, I am registered to vote.  Will I vote?  I DON’T KNOW YET, what’s Nader up to?  Why do people keep asking me who I’m voting for?  I feel like I should answer that question, “Catholic, 36C, Reverse Cowgirl, and it smells like roses, bitch.”

AKA: None of your beeswax.  I was at dinner with Rocky and his parents and their artist friends a few weeks ago and they asked me, in this nice restaurant, who I was voting for.  Since I didn’t want to get into it, I said the stupidest thing imaginable.

“I don’t think I’ll vote this go-round.”  What was I, a brit?  This go-round?  WTF was that?

There was a collective gasp.  The whole restaurant hushed and I heard someone’s fork clatter to the ground somewhere near the bar.  I saw the waitress heading over with our check.  Rocky’s mom’s friend’s husband just stared at me, his bread chunk frozen in transit to his gaping maw.

“What religion are you guys,” I asked.  No one answered.  “Pass the butter?”

I have more to say on this subject.  Just not now.  I have to go do something highly personal that I’m willing to share with a voting recruiter on my way to the post office, a place which members of Chapel Hill society can no longer enter without a gauntlet and shield.  Maybe I’ll go dig snots out of my nose!!  Maybe I’ll go masturbate in public!!  Perhaps I’ll speak in tongues at the Baptist church!!  I mean, you obviously want to be in on every aspect of my personal life.  I’m just trying to help.

Dude, I’m gonna go take a monster shit in the coffee shop bathroom RIGHT NOW, and I’m not gonna flush it.  I knew you’d wanna know, that’s why I told you.  BECAUSE IT’S YOUR BUSINESS, America.

I’m writing in Nader, btw.

Love, Mandey.

Almost 30.

Dear Adam Powers,

Tomorrow I turn “almost 30.”  I have stopped saying my age out loud, not because I am embarrassed of it, but just because it doesn’t really seem to matter anymore.

I keep getting this question, some variation of, “What are you doing on your birthday?”  How do you answer that?  It was my understanding that you don’t “do” anything for your “own” birthday, and, aside from that, “people” don’t “do” anything for you after you turn 21 or so.

I made it explicitly clear to several people that I wanted to have a party at Chuck-E-Cheese or however you spell it, but only if the animatronic Rock-A-Fire Explosion band would perform classics from my childhood such as “Roast Beef Sandwich,” “The Chuck-E-Cheese Beatles Medley,” and “Mr. Bassman.”  But I heard all they play now is Christina Aguilera covers and they go by the name “Munch’s Make-Believe Band.”

If I know only one thing, if I have gleaned only one piece of information from my almost-30 years on this planet, it is that the Chuck-E-Cheese band is decidedly not make-believe.  I have always been well aware that they were wobots, but as a child I assumed that they possessed free will and independent thought and I am not prepared to change my mind.

Alas, no one arranged a birthday party for me.  And I KNOW it’s not because I’m too old.  When my dad turned 30, we had his birthday party there.  And yes, I know he had three kids at the time, and once you reproduce you cease doing things for yourself.  You forgo the parties at bars and instead start celebrating your birthdays at rat-mastcotted entertainment bonanzas.  You trade in the beer pong for the Whack-A-Mole.  So when we showed up for his special day, displayed there up on the marquee birthday board was:

Julie is 3!!!

Christopher is 6!!!

Jimmie is. . .30!!!

AND I WANTED THAT THIS YEAR.  But it’s fine.  I’ll be at Carrburritos for my birthday this year, serving burritos to people who somehow don’t understand what I mean when I say, “What salsa would you like?”  I’ll ask them what they want to drink and they’ll say, “Oh nothing.  Just water,” and I’ll pour their water and I’ll want to say “WATER IS A FUCKING DRINK.”  But I won’t.  Because that would be rude.

I wish I was spending my birthday in France.

I did get a very nice present, though, from Lackey.  He gave me a down comforter and I named it Clarence and now I won’t leave my bed whenever I am home.  Clarence made me late for work last week.  He is seafoam green and he loves me back.

Sorry this letter is so short.  I just got off work and now I have to go to my other work.  And tomorrow morning I go my other OTHER work, and then it starts all over again.

So if you’re in Carrboro tomorrow night, stop by and get a burrito and tell me Happy Birthday.  Or, I guess, don’t.  Because who cares, anyway?  I’m not 21 anymore.  I’m almost 30.

Mandey.

Human Anomaly Support Group

Dear Billy:
Today I was walking to CD Alley and was in front of Hazmat, the head shop next door, when this black guy burst through the doors and said “HEY.”

I stopped and looked at him; he was very young, with horrible burn scars all over his face.  He ground to a halt in front of the giant “HAZMAT” sign, towering neon orange letters on the storefront window.

“Hey, girl—can you help me?  I need to know. . .is this Hazmat?”

I’m in the twilight zone.  I look at the boy’s face, I look at the huge orange lettering framing him, I look back at him.

“Um.  Yes.  You’re in front of the sign.”

“Cool.  I was supposed to meet mah fren here a while ago.”

And then. . .silence.  How am I supposed to respond to this?  I don’t care what he’s doing there.  So I say nothing.

“Where you from, girl?” he asks.

I pause a little, but long enough to watch the Lovely Rita in the distance, writing me a parking ticket.  Blast!  I resign myself with a sigh and reply, “New Orleans.”

He throws his hands in the air and cries, “OOOHHH SHIT!!!  I LOVE Florida!  I used ta stay there!  New Orleans!  Lord, I miss Florida.”

What?

I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing and I just let him keep talking.

“Yeah, girl.  I stay here now, and I love it!  UNC Hospital was so good to me, they took me on and gave me dis great job and now I’m successful and lovin it!  Jus’ because I come from a bad neighbahood don’t mean I cain’t have a great job!”

It surely doesn’t.  I ask him what he does at UNC Hospital.  I think maybe I haven’t given him the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he’s starting med school!  Maybe he’s an intern!  Maybe he works in triage!  Maybe he does something cool like drive an ambulance!  An EMT!!!

“Oh, well, you know.  I mean, right now I’m in housekeepin’ but imona study hard and work mah way to Findotimist soon!”  There is a sparkle in his eyes that denotes a general passion and dedication I lost a long time ago.

“And what, pray tell, does a ‘Findotimist’ do?” I ask him.

“Oh, you know.  Dem’s da ones that takes the blood samples!”

Oh no.  Please no.  “A Phlebotomist you mean?”

“Yeah, girl!  Yeah!  A Flembotilist!  Damn, that’s what I’m goin’ for!  You got it!”

I tell him that there are plenty of people who have surely worked their way up from “Housekeeping” to “Findotimist.”  He nods in agreement.  I wish him good luck, and, realizing the conversation is over, I call my mom to see what she’s up to.  I’m interrupted by a booming voice to my left,

“HEY HEY YOU HEY!!  HEY! GIRL!  YOU!!”

Since I generally do not respond to “hey,” “you,” or “girl,” I continue my conversation with my mom, but it doesn’t last long.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to find an elderly homeless man with one leg SOMEHOW walking with one mangy crutch.  I gesture to my phone and turn away.  He does not appreciate this.

“YOU THINK I AIN’T GOOD ENOUGH TO TALK TO?  I FOUNT DEEZ SUNGLASSES AND I WANNA GIVE UM BACK TO YOU!  GET OFF YO FUCKIN PHONE!  YOU RUDE!!”

Oh.  My.  God.  I turned to him and let loose a string of obscenities I was unaware that I knew.  Things were coming out of my mouth so loud and so fast that the dude just hobbled away with his middle finger up in the air.  In the middle of my tirade I felt another tap on my shoulder.  When I turned around, there was a man with one arm holding a pack of Marlboro Menthols in my face and gesturing wildly at me with them.

He had a stub where his right hand should have been, and he was grunting fervently and shaking these fucking smokes in my face.  Why he would choose ME, of all passersby, the crazy girl screaming cuss words at a rapidly retreating legless cuntrag, I have no idea.

“I DON’T SMOKE THOSE.”

He did not stop.  He kept waving the pack in my face and then he used his face to gesture at the matches in his front pocket.

“TAKE DIS!  PUT IN MY MOUF!  IN MY MOUF!!!  RIGHT NOW!!”

He wanted me to put a cigarette in his mouth and light it for him.  What the fuck is going on today?  I was so taken aback that I grabbed a cigarette, jammed it in his piehole and told him to use his one good hand to light it.  Then I realized I was still on the phone with my mom.  I heard her saying, “Okey-dokey then.  I’m gonna let you go hang out with your friends.”  And with a little giggle she hung up.  Gawd what a meanie face.

One burn victim with an IQ triple his shoe size, one amputee with a case of mistaken identity, and a rude-as-fuck fistless chain smoker with a speech impediment, all harrassing me over the course of four minutes.  Are there people like this in Idaho?  If not, I’m takin the A-Train to your secluded mountain cabin.  I will bring my own toofbrush.  I require very little.  One down pillow, some Dr. Pepper, a record player, mascara, and the occasional flan.  You won’t even know I am there.

See ya soon (pending your response),

Mandey

Whirling, Whip-like

Dear J Waves,

In order to fulfill my science requirements during my sophomore year in college, I attempted Chemistry 101, but my Professor was from another planet.  She’d fill the board with erroneous information and pause, and peer at us over her inch-thick glasses, realizing we’d all caught her mistakes before she did, and she would say, “Noowww claaasss. Thaaatt is nottt the waaaay tooooo woooorrrk thhe problemmmmm.” She’d pretend that she’d been showing us the “wrong” way the whole time on purpose. She was a crock of shit, and she looked like Julia Child. Two-thirds of the class had dropped by the second week, and though I felt vaguely sorry for her, I knew that if I stayed in the class, I would either fail it or start hurling notebooks at her in frustration.

So Oceanography 100 it was. This professor resembled not Julia Child but, in fact, a one hundred year old tortoise. He was precious. He talked just as slow as Julia, and he reminded me a lot of Mr. Trower, my high school Latin teacher. I developed an immediate affinity for him and all things ocean-related. I sat in front and took copious amounts of notes to supplement my new-found obsession with bodies of water.

Neap tides and blowfish, continental divides and moon swings, sedimentary rock and barnacles, we talked about it all in that class. My professor would often insert personal anecdotes into his lectures. He had traveled all around the globe searching for the perfect nautical moment much like Anthony Bourdain traveled the world for the perfect meal. He was an amateur Poseidon, reigning over cruise ships and taking forays onto alien beaches in nothing but flip flops and clamdiggers.

His wife had a passion that rivaled her husband’s, which made them the perfect match. How beautiful it was to hear of a couple so in love with each other and the Strait of Gibraltar, so in tune with their own routines and the phases of the moon. The girls in class would sigh in anticipation of the marriage they all dreamed would be theirs someday, with some random man who shared their love for eyeliner or horses, for computer programming or interpretive dance. After all, if it happened for our teacher, it could happen for us. And why not?

Every day, our professor would regale us with conquests undertaken by him and his bride, the countries they visited, how happy he was to have found someone like her.

We wondered what she was like, we asked him to bring her by; she was such a part of his lectures that we felt we already knew her. He would just chuckle and shake his head. But we wanted to see her. We wanted to touch her, to know her. We knew they had just celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary only a month ago, because he said he had collected shells for the occasion, had presented them to her with a flourish only appreciated by a fellow ocean-lover.

The end of the semester was rapidly approaching, and we were in love with this woman. We didn’t want the class to end, we didn’t want the stories to stop.  It was a quick four months, and we supposed time flies when you’re partaking vicariously in a storybook marriage. We were suckers for that romantic shit.

There are places in the sea, he told us during our last class, where toxic red dinoflagellates reside, they color the water crimson, and you cannot swim in it, and it is called the Red Tide. It was a bit uneasy to talk about, given the nature of water-borne substances to ebb and to flow into neighboring ponds, streams. As in, what if a weird dinoflagellate floats over to MY beach? THEN what? It’s poison, and we will get sick. No one really liked thinking about the Red Tide. It was ominous. Avoid it at all costs.

But our teacher told us that he and his wife traveled hundreds of miles to find the Red Tide once upon a time, to celebrate thirty years of wedded bliss. He told us that they arrived at the sea where the bloom of shit was to appear, that they held hands on the shore and they watched the dinoflagellates creep into the water, color it so bloody. He said they held hands and they watched, and it was unlike any movie, and unlike any dream, and unlike any experience, and then he broke down and cried.

Choking back a sob, he said, “She would have loved to see all you so enraptured in the lesson. She died ten years ago. I miss her.”

She died ten years ago. I miss her. He had presented the 40th anniversary shells to her grave. He had recounted memories of the dead, memories that only he held. She had drowned that day in the Red Tide, on their thirtieth anniversary, during the perfect thirtieth honeymoon.  He never told us why she ventured into the water in the first place. Overcome by the beauty of the poison? Perhaps.

Dinoflagellate. From the Greek “Dinos” meaning “whirling,” and the Latin “flagellum” meaning “whip-like.”

She had drowned.

He died two months later. He died walking a treadmill at the University’s gym.

What are we missing out on? What terrible choices have we made, to move away, to forget a friend, to gather the courage to tap a stranger on the shoulder and say. . .nothing? What would we have if we could live forever? Why do we wander into the venomous water? Why do we wander from the people who love us? Why can’t we just stay by their side? Why can’t we realize that there is nothing to find in the ocean, in the ether, that all we need is standing right next to us, waiting to be tapped? Why can’t we appreciate the people that we have?

Mandey

Emeril and the Testes

Dear Billy,

Today I accomplished an amazing feat. I managed to use the word “y’all” five times in one sentence without even trying.

“Hey y’all, if y’all wanna bring y’all tickets to the register I’ll get y’all yall’s drinks.”

No, no, please, stop applauding. I have already congratulated myself enough. I never knew I talked like a New Orleanian until I left New Orleans.

I also didn’t know I ate like one until I moved here.

I just finished reading Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone, a memoir of the conception, gestation, incubation, and coddling of her love affair with food. I love reading foodie memoirs. I like to think of myself as a foodie, but really I’m only trying to justify the money I spend in fancy restaurants. Sure, I can speak half-intelligently about food preparation and presentation, and I certainly know by now what I like and dislike. I’ll put just about any weird concoction in my mouth, from goat wontons to ramen noodle sandwiches.

But the reason for this letter  is that I wanted to tell you about the time I met Emeril Lagasse when I was fifteen. I was working in a frou-frou grocery store in New Orleans where we invited celebrity chefs to do a live in-house cooking demonstration once a month, right there next to the deli counter. And when I say “celebrity chefs,” I’m talking about “that guy who runs the hundred-year-old po-boy shop down on Canal,” or “that Joisey lady who started cooking at Brennan’s a month ago.” They were celebrities to us New Orleans folk, not to the rest of world.

So when it was announced that Emeril Lagasse was coming to prepare food for us, we were pretty excited. I was chosen as the plebian ambassador who would greet Mr. Lagasse and help him set up his table and ingredients. This was presumably due to the fact that I was immune to being star-struck; John Goodman was a regular at the store and always chose my line because I was the only employee who had not asked about Roseanne’s off-camera antics.

When Emeril arrived, I pretended not to know who he was, a difficult feat thanks to the chorus of “BAMs” being offered by the line of pubescent cashiers behind me. We set up his table and his little Bunsen Burners, and he immediately dredged a few bits of raw meat in some flour and began frying them, saying he wanted me to be his taste tester before the big show.

He plated four little meat/things, drizzled some sauce on them and presented them to me with a flourish. I popped one in my mouth and he giggled. I ignored this. The meat/things were good—tender, melty, buttery. I ate all of them, chewed thoughtfully, thanked him for the private snack.

“What was it?” I asked him.

Mr. Lagasse erupted into laughter, bent down until his face was level with mine, and said in that celebrated New England accent of his, and loud enough for even my manager upstairs to hear, “LIITLE GOIL! YOU JUST ATE BAAWWLS!!!”

Balls. I had eaten balls. Testicles. But you know, I didn’t really want to give him or any of the customers who had stopped to watch and satisfaction. So I just stared at him and shrugged. It threw him quite a bit. His placed his hand on my shoulder.

“BAWLS. You ATE dem. Jus now. BAWLZZZ.”

I didn’t flinch. This was fun. “But they tasted good, man. Who cares if they came from scrotums?”

He studied my indifferent face for a minute while his own fell in disappointment. I felt a little bad for him. I wished I could be more easily grossed out, as squeamish as a real fifteen-year-old girl. But I couldn’t.

His crestfallen expression soon transformed into a smile of mild respect, however. He liked me. He invited me to be his sous chef for the day, working alongside him and the deli case at our paper-covered table.

As we were getting everything ready to begin our cooking for the public, I whispered to him, “Are you gonna tell everybody what they’re eating before they eat it?”

And he stage-whispered back to me, “Yeah dawl. I’mona tell ‘em dey eatin’ shrimp etouffee, cause dat’s what we cookin’. We ain’t feeding dese people no bawlz!”

And as we set to work, him cooking and me handing plates of etoufee to rich fucks and trying our best to ignore each random, apropos-of-nothing “Kick it up a notch,” I found myself strangely flattered that Emeril Lagasse had cooked bawlz for me and me only. Gee.

Feel da love,

Mandey

Readying for 8/29

Dear Nathan,

I sort of have a habit of clutching that key around my neck, the one that goes to a Brooklyn P.O. Box we no longer share, and that shirt you’re so fond of, it says, “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” and you were never not wearing it.

I cannot shake the image of your backpack, the posture developed from lugging heavy equipment dangled from rappel hooks, a mess of half-curls, a trail of dark beer. You see a picture in the most mundane objects, you’re always constructing, calculating, formulating. I recognize you in other people, they are all pieces of you that have been disassembled, glued together, ripped apart, sewn up, rendered into other personalities. I can barely stand this. You send me notes that say you flew over Chapel Hill, and you waved from the jumbo jet, and it’s not enough. You would love it here.

The alleys. . .all the alleys are painted with murals of turtles and violinists, royal blue puzzle pieces and bits of graffiti splayed, huge ochre necklaces and skylines, mirror image renditions of the bell tower painted on a certain wall in town so if you stand in the pay lot behind the old Miami Subs and Grill, you can line up the painting with the actual bell tower on campus. . .you would love to see it all, I just know it. I know it.

“They shoot horses, don’t they?”

There are underground restaurants, so dimly lit, with brusque waiters and expensive cheese bowls and rooms with themes so that one night you can eat in a train car with passengers painted on the walls, and the next day you can eat in the Lautrec Room (because it’s “Too-Loose”) with its low ceilings and Irish toasts painted all over the stained wooden booths.

Outside there are trees that grow with less rain than you’re accustomed to out west. You’d sit in the shade they create on stone steps and you’d stare at the deserted picnic tables, the parking meters alongside Technicolor foliage, and wonder why you didn’t arrive sooner, why you didn’t trust me before. Out in that amphitheater you could sit, and you’d know that’s where I’ll get married one day, if I ever quit leading the trek up Spinster Mountain.

“They shoot horses, don’t they?”

Down the street within walking distance is one of America’s Top Ten Art Towns. You’d love it there. The dreadlocked peaceniks pulling their stray dogs on rope leashes, singing Bob Marley songs loudly, incoherently. The cigarettes piled innocently next to wooden benches and left there by pocket philosophers, the myriad of pubs with rows of taps gleaming in artificial light. The bars with faux-rock walls, the rooftop terrace string quartets, the indisputable nuance of jazz flutes and snare drums floating past Zen Masters who dance though there is no discernable music. The vintage clothes, the shoe stores, the ubiquitous organic produce. The recycling programs, the literature festivals, the ability to meet beautiful, wild-haired, bathing-suit-clad descendants of poets laureate, the boys who know about the best parties and the best mountain bikes, the girls whose minds are like Tiramisu, delicate and layered. I can provide this for you.

You remember everything. You make references to the time of day it was that you left me, references to sad stories that should have kept you there, you talk to me about my old neighborhood in New Orleans, and you tell me that you saw it on one of your photography trips, and it was ransacked and ruined, and you got it all on film.

You took pictures of motels completely ravaged by the rain, paint peeled and mud-streaked, sad little husks of homes. I can’t even identify pictures of my old city, and it burns me up that you were there and I was not, that I am here and you cannot be. That you got to see what was left of Rock-n-Bowl, of Camellia Grill, of Carrollton Avenue, and I’m here with Village Lanes and Mama Dip’s Country Cookin’ and Franklin Street. And then you went to Florida, where Dave and I used to hang out at the beach condo, and Dave said last time he went there after the hurricane, the interstate ramp leading to the seafood restaurant where we would always eat. . .it was broken in half, the ramp leading up and up and stopping abruptly in midair, its metal support brackets jutting into the sky, making the brackets look like cardboard tubes that held cotton candy clouds.

“They shoot horses, don’t they?”

I do not think I would recognize you if I saw you now because you’re so ethereal to me at this point. You’d smile with your entire mouth hanging open like you were in the middle of a huge laugh and you’d be all, “Listen to this heartbreaking story! Here’s a quarter for the jukebox!” and I would have to turn around and go back inside and smash my face against the wall, rattle the framed photos of millipedes and Boy George and make the Pixies poster fall down and I’d have to kick my roommate’s kid’s shoes out of the way and move his girlfriend’s Clorox disinfectant wipes off to one side and I’d be out the door, running past you and hurtling towards the kudzu meadow out back.

And the obstacles of mosquito bites and ghetto blasters and tripwires in the form of naked shrubs, they’d all move aside so I could drown in that snake-infested pit of weeds that comprises the end of my dead end street.

And behind the kudzu I’d sit, and let it choke me, while I peered from behind the twisted metal of the “No Parking” sign stuck inconspicuously in the grass, and I’d watch you walk away with a bewildered look on your face and off you’d go, back to the Big Bad West, and I’d have lost my chance to resurrect the spontaneity and clamor of what we had.

“They”

“Shoot”

“Horses”

“Don’t”

“They?”

-Me

A Day in the Life of Stupid

Dear Billy:

I recently stumbled upon this little gem, apparently written at some point between August 2006-January 2007, AKA “The Dark Time,” AKA “The time when my beloved roommate Dave and I decided to rent out our third bedroom to Colby The Homicidal Maniac.” Colby was arrested three days after he moved in for inexplicably wielding a machete at passers-by on Franklin Street, Chapel Hill’s main thoroughfare. For some unknown reason, that did not inspire us to kick him out. I like to think it was because we were somewhat fascinated with him in a sort of “What WILL he do next?” sort of way. He had a two-year-old son who lived with his mother, a beautiful twenty-year-old named Jessica. Colby and Jessica despised each other and proved it by regularly engaging in The Sex, an act which allowed them to pass chlamydia back and forth to one another ad infinitum.

Colby had a gorgeous, long-haired, irritating-as-FUCK friend named Sam, who, without Dave’s or my permission, moved into our living room one day and just sort of. . .stayed there. He thought it acceptable to replace our coffee table with his massage table, thereby blocking our path through the living room to anywhere else in the house. His massage oils permeated our home with the cloying sweetness of Eau de Nursing Home. We would often come home to find Sam fast asleep on our couch, naked save for a pair of graying tightie-whities and a Dungeon Master Guidebook covering his face. At four in the afternoon.

So I guess I was sitting there one night, minding my own business, cataloging a series of events as it unfolded before my very eyes. Here it is, and this is for you and you only because you and I are smarter than everyone else in the world, and I know you’ll really appreciate this.

2:42 am

Homicidal Colby and Sam are drunk on sake and Italian sausage. A bourgeois crowd, they are. Homicidal Colby is sitting next to me, talking about muskrats with one hand on his crotch and he’s drinking straight out of the cranberry juice bottle. Sam is holding a melting popsicle and yelling “FROLIC” at my dog. I am currently collecting every piece of paper in sight and ensconcing each one in plastic with the laminating machine my dad got from the elementary school surplus drive. My dad wants me to instate the laminator as a family heirloom. He’s so precious.

2:57 am

So I laminated a business card just now but I did it wrong. The card doubled back on itself and got stuck in the laminator. It smelled like burning. Tool is playing in the background.

Homicidal Colby was like, “What is that smell.” He said it like a statement, not a question.

I was like, “The laminator?” I said it like a question, not a statement.

Sam is all, “Fancy! I didn’t know we had a laminator.” I replied, “Who the fuck is ‘WE’? You do not live here.”

It sparked a fifteen minute discussion about all the fancy gadgets I have brought into the house, like colanders and dry erase boards and extension cords, objects which apparently qualify as “fancy” to some people. Suddenly, Sam was calling Homicidal Colby a “horse nazi.” I always miss stuff in their conversations, I get lost.

3:12 am

The boys are going to sleep now. The door shuts and Tool cuts off. My dog is licking my mattress with a fervor, and I have to slap her gently to stop because she just licked a bunch of shrubberies, ate a pile of cat shit, and puked white stuff. Twice. In a row.

3:24 am

Let me just tell you how retarded I am.  I just had a frozen beef and cheddar chimichanga. I covered it with a shit-ton of shredded cheese and ovened in my broken, 700-degree-only oven and then tried to remove it without a potholder. I dropped it cause it was burning me but, instinctively, stupidly, I caught it in midair against my thigh. So I’m standing there with a seven hundred degree cheese-covered chimichanga smashed against my skirt, burning a burrito-shaped hole in my leg, and, like, I don’t know what to do next. So I just, like, run around frantically for a minute. There’s cheese and beef flying all over the place and my dog is catching the flying bits in the air like it’s some sort of fun game. idiot.

3:36 am

I am falling asleep on my keyboard.

9:20 am

It’s tomorrow. The day is gorgeous. Sam and I are out on the porch, and he’s frolicking in the dog-shit-laden grass, shoeless. I just had my first shower in four days because I have no one to impress. Don’t laugh. You know you have the same damn thought processes.

9:59 am

Okay. I have to go.  Colby is yelling to me that the oven is aflame and the bathroom is flooded, and Sam just ran into the street and almost got hit by an unmanned grocery cart that came flying from out of nowhere, and now he is sitting in the grass, giggling and rocking back and forth and playing with twigs. I’m the House Mama, and I may have to tend to this.

Okay, so that’s it.  I know it didn’t really go anywhere, and nothing truly happened, but I figured you’d enjoy a play-by-play of stupid.

Talk to you soon,

Mandey