mmmm, power

*blogger ate my first post*

this is one of those times when i can't decide if life is incredibly beautiful or very very sad. probably both. this feeling is called wistful.

i made lists in economics. who i've kissed lists. (kissed, and other things.) those are fun. then i started doing list-related math, coming up with statistics. if i kiss you, i'm 41% likely to sleep with you - i don't kiss a lot of people. yep, i'm a geek.

i get to go to a poetry festival tomorrow, probably in the rain.

i spent FIVE AND A HALF hours in meetings yesterday. they weren't even MY meetings. aside from my own, i've been going to the rival feminists, the queers, the sexual assault prevention people, tonight probably the special needs kids, too. and i volunteered for the student security committee, because then i'll get to be on student life and student life has a LOT of power. mmmm, power.

i fly home three weeks from tomorrow.

guilty pleasures

today, as i was truckin down to bronxville to buy batteries for one of my toys (yup, you heard me, and if you don't get it look two entries down), i discovered a new sadistic pleasure: listening to first-years complain and feeling nothing but glee. i'll call them Green Curly Hair and Long Island Girl, respectively.

i started listening to this conversation because one of them said, "ugh. i hate corona. i like corona lite, though." um, excuse me? that's like liking the flavor of the flouride crap they put on your teeth at the dentist's office. no one LIKES that crap, they deal with it cause they have to.

LIG (whiny, high pitched voice): I have to go talk to Sarah Cardwell [housing director] tomorrow. I can't believe my housing. I explicitly told them I was a musician and wanted quiet housing and they put me on the biggest party hall. and i can never practice.
GCH: I know. My roommate's always coming home at 4 a.m. and talking in a normal voice. So I did it to her last night, and she got all whiny.

um, Sarah Cardwell has no idea that by "musician" you mean "ahem, classical violinist" and not, say, "mostly i play guitar, dude, but we're looking for a drummer, so i've been trying that. man, drums are hard." and before everyone shows up and starts misbehaving, there's no way to KNOW which will be the party floor. moron.

LIG: it's such a pain in the ass, going home. i have to spend like 40 minutes on the LIRR (long island railroad). thank god i don't live in the hamptons, it's so far out. i don't know how teenagers live there. without cars i mean. everything is at least a mile or two apart.

GCH: yeah, i have to take the metro north and then the subway. it sucks.

LIG: yeah, my friend wants me to go to brown for columbus day weekend. but i can't go all the way to brown just for a weekend!

i have a bit of a chip on my shoulder about people who live in the immediate vicinity (like, the tri-state area) complaining about how FAR everything is.

there is an RA named voltaire casino and basically the only rule on his floor is: "don't kill any hookers, okay?"

a beautiful song

"I Love You So Much It Hurts"

I love you so much it hurts me
Darlin', that's why I'm so blue
I'm so afraid to go to bed at night
I'm afraid of losing you.
I love so much it hurts me
And there's nothing I can do
I want to hold you, my dear, forever and ever
I love you so much it hurts me so.
I love you so much it hurts me
And there's nothing I can do
I want to hold you, my dear, forever and ever
I love you so much it hurts me so.

my favorite version of this song is by John Prine.

Dear Sarah,
i think you've dropped off the face of this earth. and i want you to come back, so very desperately. i'm sitting on a dress you would love, a dress you would understand, even if everyone else is like, why the hell did you buy that? it reminds me of the dress you wore for Much Ado, or maybe for prom junior year, maybe they were the same dress, the purple monstrosity, remember? these are the kinds of things we remember when we're in mourning. granted, mine is very temporary and i know that but it feels like forever, especially to someone as impatient as me. four months, i can do that. i'm sitting in a room you will never see, the second one in as many years. mana's the only one who's seen both ones, and my aunt. (mana's in a room i've never seen in a place i've only visited right now, too. you trump her, though, i've never been across the ocean. you win.) i can't believe you've been gone over a month by now. this is the longest we've probably gone without speaking or seeing one another since we've known each other, i think.

you won't read this, because i'm posting it on my blog and you don't read that and don't have the address because you're gone off the face of the earth. and i know you e-mailed adam awhile back and not me and it's possessive and unfair for me to be upset about that, but i am anyway. and i know i still have em and mana and jeana and a dozen other people i can call and talk to and vent at, but it's not the same. you and i, we're so alike. we're about as alike as . . . i would say me and emily, but personalitywise we might even be closer. and we share lotsa memories (allllll those jonnie parties . . . remember when we went there one morning to make sure no one was dead at the house and no one was there and ms. pena was looking for chaine?). we laugh at the same things - each other and ourselves. we remind each other that we don't have to be mature, and i feel like i have to be mature with everyone else.

i'm posting this on my blog which no one will comment on because they don't comment anyway and they especially don't on long entries which this is because i miss you but everyone says i'm a good writer, which is nice to hear but doesn't mean anything. i just didn't want to write about sex this time.

we're friends like emily and lisa, when we're upset we communicate in inside jokes to make each other happy. there aren't many people i speak secret languages with, and you're going to come home and maybe we'll have nothing to say to each other. but if we've come through everything else as friends, you can't come home and drop me, k? i was there when your boyfriend and you broke up (as was the rest of creation), and i told you about adam long after it happened and we can both hate maggie together now and we know why and david of course and angelica and you got soooo mad at me for the tim thing and we've both played with jonny and i've tried to encourage you to make choices that make you happy and i know things no one else knows. i know how scared you are, and of what.

i want to cry, there's so much pent up shit. and calling you was always a good way to get that done last year. we were both so unprepared, and so raw. it had only been 6 months when we moved, what did we know? and we'd both had quite the summer and you had quite the first year, i just played it safe like always (plus i kind of wanted a respite). but i miss you so terribly. i'll be in santa in october, and mana won't be there and you won't be there and jess won't be there and tina won't be there. the browns will be there. ugh. (at least emily, in all her glory, will be there.) but sarah, you get it. you get me. come home.
love
skipperdee
(remember how excited you were about that, me changing my name? it wasn't a soda-spitting moment, but that's just as well. i also want you to lecture me about nutrition. get your ass back across the pond.)

break out the sex toys

today i helped a friend of mine buy his first sex toy.

today i walked ALL over lower manhattan - east side, west side, bowery, village, chelsea. i was in 3 sex shops, 1 of which was toys in babeland, which makes me very happy. seriously, sex therapy is my fall back career. ask me anything, i'm knowledgeable.

the only problem is the people i was with didn't seem to enjoy it lots. one of them was intensely reminded of her ex-boyfriend, which sucks, another was there for the first time and it's very hard not to be freaked out the first time you're in a sex shoppe no matter how cool you are, and the other was the gay man who i basically forced to buy a bunch of condoms and lube samples and i kinda urged him to buy his toy. i wanted to be encouraging and supportive, but it's always hard for me to draw the line between that and pushy.

and i got the ultimate "hi, i'm your fairy godmother" dress (should i have talked down his price?) and a really awesome coach purse for 10 bucks (which i normally wouldn't mention, but coach for $10 is pretty exciting . . . coach reminds me of my grandmother. a lot of brands and department stores do. she knew how to dress, and had she been born 50 years later maybe she would have pursued her fashion talents).

i saw A Dirty Shame last night. highly recommend it. fucked up john waters sex movie.

i need to sleep with someone so badly i can't even come up with witty wordplay about it.

between adam's current food obsession, emily feeling fat, jessica being in conditioning for lacrosse, and the fact that the two people i hang out with most are stick figures, i'm feeling really food/body conscious. i don't want to go into gory details here, because i think self-loathing isn't pretty, but it sucks. i don't want to go clothes shopping anymore, especially not with people who weigh 98 pounds. and it's not their fault. (it's not my fault either, i am not morbidly obese, i'm within reasonable human weight ranges. really. not that morbidly obese people shouldn't be able to find clothing, either.) and most of the people i know are fairly skinny. especially the male people, and i barely know ANY male people right now! and i hate it and i hate hearing about how fat they feel. what am i, a beached whale?

enough of that. break out the sex toys!

"rupaul looks great for 45. she's the madonna of my people." - joe

the poem i wrote

i am posting a very short poem i wrote her before The Heartbreak. it's a rough draft, and i don't care what you think.

wanting you
like craving cheesecake
something richly divine
wanting you
like narcissus reaching for the reflection*
just out of reach
wanting you
like wanting . . . what?
something elusive

(wanting you
leaves me
incoherent
with unspeakable
desire.)

ok, i have to go faint now.

*i still haven't figured this line out. i like the last stanza better. like i said, this is a rough draft. to quote paul valery, "a poem is never finished, only abandoned."

teenagerhood

i just spent an hour with the TWIL after our class was canceled. i listened to her discuss her latest endeavors to bring political awareness to campus. she's fighting the good fight, and willing to keep fighting. she's beautiful and aware and passionate.

she has a boyfriend. most definitely.

this revelation lent itself to another one - i haven't had a crush of this magnitude since i can't remember when. i've had little ones here and there, but i've either known nothing would happen (joanna) or it's been over quickly (my recent endeavors) or things have started happening very quickly so crushes haven't developed, they've just morphed into desire (don G). i'm not sure, it could just be the way i'm upset right now, but this might be my strongest crush since You Know Who - and we all know how that turned out (actually, most of you don't, but i'm reluctant to discuss it these days).

and i know everyone's going to say this is typical and this is how crushes are and this is life. to this i say: shut the fuck up. all of you have had relationships, boyfriends, girlfriends, etc. i have not. i've *maybe* dated someone once. that's it. my crushes are all i have. my crushes are what i rely on to indicate who my next fuck buddy should be. this crush is leading me astray. i only ever feel this way about people i need to have in my life, people who will teach me things i need to learn. being this attracted to someone usually has a reason.

and this one, something could definitely happen with her. if she were unattached. if i were great enough to make her want to be unattached or attached to me. something could happen and it would be awesome. but it won't. i've been the other woman multiple times, and after the last time, i am NOT doing that again. no. even if she wanted to, i wouldn't.

she hugged me, but i was sitting and she was standing, so i kinda got mashed into her chest. not that i minded. that was the part that made me want to inhale like i inhaled YKW's scent for so long. made me want to inhale like i was smoking something good.

she fights so hard. i just want to forsake all my fighting, small compared to hers, and lay on bed and sulk like the teenager i still am and listening to sappy music and write her poems.

okay, i already wrote her a poem. but still. that was before The Heartbreak.

slay the dragons

i want to beat the ever living shit out of the kid who was mean to adam. i don't even know him and i hate him.

i swear, it's like everyone i know is experiencing a huge lack of compassion in their lives. the situation on campus is really upsetting. it's tough knowing i'm going to have to play the tour guide and try to sell my school and be positive when i'm also fighting bias incidents and potentially racist administration responses.

"hate crime" is a loaded phrase. don't use it lightly. in fact, if you're white, i'm not sure it's an appropriate phrase at all.

i want to slay the frat boys who showed up to my liberal/queer/feminist/aware/fair/political campus and made it something else. it's not just them, but they're helping. they're the most visible.

i want to slay the homophobia and gender bias and loathing of anything feminine present in the sneering at some queer boys, "hello, ladies." first of all, gay does NOT equal female. these are entirely different traits, first. second, being gay and/or being female is not inherently bad. third, being feminine is not wrong or weak or an insult, whether the person exhibiting feminine traits identifies as male or female.

i want to slay the racism inherent in some white students' continued shock that there on students of color on *their* campus.

i want to slay the administration for automatically associating a protest of white privelege with the black student union. mostly i think it's wrong to essentially censor them, to send an administrator to monitor them, when there is no evidence that they've done something wrong.

i want to slay the entire system of "democracy", including the "major" parties, the third parties, etc.

disenfranchised really doesn't begin to describe this feeling. and i'm not giving up, i'm more resolved to fight than ever. i'm just mad that it has to be like this, mad that this shitty system has been around and fucking up for so long and no one realized it or nipped it in the bud sooner.

(what do i mean, you ask? i mean the failure of welfare, racist voting practices, our attempts to police the world . . . even simple things, like providing all kids with equal schooling and making college affordable. giving the world clean drinking water. supporting the EPA instead of gutting it. these are simple things most of us can agree on - teach the kids, leave the planet in an inhabitable state for our children.)

so i fight. i don't know how, i don't feel adequately equipped. but if i don't show up and act as the ground troops and mature and take office and take over and make it better, if i don't learn now and equip myself with as much knowledge as i can while i have the time to do it and concentrate on it, who will?

surviving history

i just watched a documentary on slave narratives. in the 1930s, 300,000 slaves (out of about 4 million freed on april 9th, 1865 when the confederates surrendered) survived. as part of the goverment programs to put people to work during the Depression, workers were sent out to record the ex-slaves' narratives about slavery. there was a list of topics to bring up, but mostly they just recorded people's memories as best they could, exactly as people spoke them, in the vernacular and everything. in the documentary, actors performed slave narratives, supplemented by photos and records and re-enactments of the era.

the stories were funny and brutal and scary and sad and all very, very matter-of-fact because this is just how things were, which was in a way the hardest part.

afterwards, the professor asked if we had questions or comments. at first there was silence in the room, the kind of stunned silence that exists when a group of people have just witnessed something very upsetting and now must process it together.

"How do I make it okay? What do you tell yourself after something like that? How do you get past the anger?" - meredith, asking the questions most of us were thinking

"Personally, I try to keep the past in the past. We need to learn about slave relationships so we can recognize what free ones will be like when they happen. I appreciate the agency I have over my life much more now. When I was your age, I didn’t want to study slavery, because we were getting the master’s version. So now I appreciate that we can study the voices of slaves. When I was your age, I studied free slaves. It means I have no excuse. I would think, frederick douglas would steal books to learn to read, and I’m at princeton, falling asleep in the library? Some of these slaves, even the ones in the 30s telling their stories, told them at risk of their lives. These people lived so long to be free, and they remained hungry once they were free. they said, at least under slavery we ate. how far have we come, really? Their slave narratives are the only ones from an entire history of slavery, thousands of years throughout the world. and they risked their lives to tell the story. I think the stories are important. All over the world, wherever the empire went, millions of people were slaughtered. That’s history." - komozi, the professor

"I try to live my life as a way to honor my ancestors. You can’t erase what you’re the product of. You can’t erase the memories in your blood. But you can use your anger. You can move forward now. I try to offer up what I can do as a legacy of their strength. I try to be strong for them, as they were strong for me. i live my life as an offering to them." - jasmine

"Yes, it’s hard to live knowing you’re a product of the rape and the theft. It’s how you use your anger now, how you live this life, that can make a difference." - rocio (ro-see-oh)

that concept - being the product of rape and theft and repression - is . . . the word horrifying doesn't do it justice. accepting that as one's history is nearly impossible. I feel empty. And sad. And drained. How do you survive the brutality of history? How do you carry this knowledge inside you? How do I, as an outsider, process this part of history? What is my place in it?

Things like tonight make me think, I have to write. Now. This is what drives me and makes me think, I need to learn more, now, forever, I will never know enough. It’s the stories these people tell, how can you turn away from that? How can you face these pictures and these misdeeds and not care? Why aren’t we telling these stories? How can we make it fair? What can we do about history?

I want to ask how I’m supposed to react, but it’s too trite. But I don’t know, as a student of history, what to do about this. I don’t know how to deal with the knowledge I now have, the knowledge I am constantly working to acquire. I hold it within me but I can’t touch it. First I have to mourn it. It’s weird, but every time I learn a new genocide, I have to mourn. I wonder if it will ever get old, if the sight of a dead body will ever not make me flinch. I clutch desperately at my reactions, as proof of my humanity, searching the same old feelings for new answers. But it’s the same – basic empathy for the brutality of the facts (from Nanking to East Timor to Tennessee, two hundred years ago, ten years ago, sixty years ago), deep sadness, bewilderment. But I have yet to find a satisfactory way to channel it, this sadness and disbelief and grief. I do not know yet what my contribution should be. I have no one to offer my life to, nothing to which I can pay homage. I am a homeless child of history. What good do my tears (and I’ve shed many) do the dead?

i wonder if it will ever get easier to learn about the awful things people have done to each other. it hasn't yet, and i know a lot of awful things.

i'm a sinner, i'm a saint

i just ran up 5 flights of stairs clutching 4 of my damp bras. well, not clutching, more like twirling them on one of my fingers for all the world to see. the joys of college laundry.

i've done three immoral things lately and i'm not that sorry.

1) i bought a bra and wore it for like six hours and now i plan on trying to return it because it was expensive and i realized it's uncomfortable and doesn't make me any more seductive and i'd rather get a cheaper bra and underwear! i really want new underwear.

2) i took money for babysitting my godfather's kid, even though i happily would have done it for free, or for dinner. instead they paid me a ridiculously high amount, and gave me cab money. and i didn't take a cab, i took the subway. i'm justifying this by translating "cab money" into "lunch and subway money" in my head.

3) i know there was a third thing. making my parents buy me a plane ticket home? not doing any homework? i'll think on it. but there was definitely another one, and it wasn't my atrocious eating habits. maybe it was missing sarah in small part because i don't have any access to her, rather than appreciating the access i do have, to mana and emily and ed and everyone (and yes, i have been making yall pay more attention to me. sorry. except to mana, because A. we've barely talked to each other at all, and B. it's her job, damnit!).

i'm a creep

i did barely any work today. don't have a lot to say, but i would like to post a conversation jeana and i had about the nightly festival under my window (i live above the popular entrance to the big freshmen - ie, party - dorms, so it's a constant party on the lawn, too):

poetsego: whoa. totally offkey rendition of radiohead's creep on the lawn
fletchfightermop: weirdos. throw shit. literal shit.
poetsego: sometimes i wonder if i love this or hate it
fletchfightermop: a little bit of both. that's the sarah lawrence experience.
poetsego: complete with guitar strumming. there's a bunch of them. it's a choir
fletchfightermop: nice. it's probably the vocal minority [name of the all-male a capella group on campus. cute huh?].
poetsego: nope females
fletchfightermop: ew.
poetsego: drunk maybe
fletchfightermop: i hate girls.
poetsego: creeeeeeeeeep
fletchfightermop: i'm a loser...
poetsego: weeeeeeerrrrrdoooo. what the heeelllllllll am i doing heeeerrrreeee?
fletchfightermop: hahahahaha. sometimes i enjoy living at hill house [quiet housing. plus no lawn. and few freshmen or women].
poetsego: it stopped thank the good lord
fletchfightermop: now throw the shit.
poetsego: now just general weirdness
fletchfightermop: [are they] screaming?
poetsego: animated voices that carry well for the most part
fletchfightermop: screechers.
poetsego: now they're singing something else that's harder to sing and therefore more offkey

note: the offkey singing of obscure songs, complete with guitar strumming, by hippie girls, who are probably high given how mellow they are, continues as i write this.

the internet in my room doesn't work. le sigh.
mana and i have been incommunicado for days, which is a long time in wifetime.

i had a busy-ass week. tomorrow i will go to the city and hang out with Liam while his parents golf and i will get paid for it, or maybe they'll pay me in the form of dinner, or maybe both dinner and money, which would be cool. i am an SLC tour guide.

i have nothing to say, just checking in because i miss the internet. it's rainy. ed is en route to school. i wish i'd gotten to drive to school, with or without my dad. tonight i saw a certain kind of car and thought of one of my most recent crushes. 'cause i'm a sap like that.

. . . which brings me to the cool part of my post. the woman i love (TWIL) sat next to me in history class and kept her leg glued to mine nearly the entire time. even when i scooted away, thinking she just wanted more room. this had better mean she wants to hop into bed with me. i could use some bed-hopping right about now.

get busy child

that's the title of the song playing. i clicked it on itunes and nearly fell over with the wave of aaron-nostalgia. aaron was the potsmoking jehovah's witness who seduced me, back when i was younger and feckless and innocent (no, really, truly, honestly). this song blasting over the theater soundsystem (techies were always abusing the soundsystem) was always his work. he was actually pretty attractive, as long as you didn't know him. he was just about exactly my height. he looked like a rat. he's gone waaaayyyy downhill.

tonight was my first feminista meeting. i am cautiously hopeful. it's about pacing yourself. i can already feel the group pulling at me - it's the kind of situation where i'll do things because other people are involved and i said i would. i can picture the group pulling me along with it, people saying "how about this?" and then me just . . . making it happen. i hope so. this group has been my baby since before i even went to school here. i love it. it will survive, rivals or not.

mmmmmm memories. aaron and i had a lot of fun together, as long as i ignored the fact that he wasn't You Know Who. he did a good job of distracting me (as did josh, and tim . . . and eventually Don G, but he caused his own problems. i digress).

i went to sarah lawrence for a buzz and a hum. - michael moore

last night i had my first taste of what real depression must be like. i hated it. i never want to go back. i want to be better, now. feeling sad for no discernible reason and crying for extended periods of time are sooooo not me. but i fear they will take over if i do not take action soon.

the woman who is the subject of the post below ("the woman i love") was such a player last year. such a ladies' lady. and today she might have made a reference to "my boyfriend." i literally had the thought everyone dreads: did she just say "boyfriend"? though, granted, it's more disconcerting coming from the dykiest dyke to ever dyke her way across campus. that is QUITE a feat round these parts especially.

i spent two and a half hours in the presence of michael moore. it was nice. i like him lots, even though i feel a lot of pressure - some of which has been valid - has fallen on his head. he's not the messiah, he's just doing his thing. he's not ridiculously smarter than all of us (though he was quite noticeably smarter than most of the people questioning him). he is a gifted filmmaker. but we can do what he does. we can stir up shit. we just have to get out there and DO IT.

brigid pointed out to the crowd that michael moore is not running for something and he can't solve all our problems. this reminded me that brigid is actually quite the intelligent human being and a lot less annoying than many SLC people, because she can still speak english (even related to complicated topics!) and not academese. it also means i now have to be prepared to address what she addressed at our meeting (aw crap!) but we will probably have better turnout (woo!). and i am very glad i don't have to live with her anymore, no matter how smart and plainspoken she is.

i have such respect for the documentary film as a medium now, and it's not primarily moore that did that, it was my internship. i know i bring it up a lot, but this is actually a valid point and not me ego-stroking: how many documentaries have you watched in the past month, or year? i watched probably a dozen or so, maybe more, some of which i critiqued, over the course of three months. some were good and some were bad, all were works of love. i learned documentary filmmakers are hardworking, passionate people.

my body aches. and i can't give it time to recover until thursday. and fuck PE credit this semester, my ass is hardly eager to be dragged to the gym. i like CLASSES, damnit. i want someone directing my workout. i get bored!

the title of this post was the first thing michael moore said that prompted me to get out my notebook and write things down. he said many more quoteworthy things which i may share later. end transmission.

meditations on sunday

i have at least three mosquito bites, all acquired in the past twenty-four hours.

this afternoon while i was reading outside the pub a squirrel climbed up onto one of the outside tables to eat an apple core someone had left. i stopped reading and watched transfixed, like a child.

today there was a girl wearing only a sarong - as a tube-dress - and sandals.

i saw a girl meditating in a field (yup) and i thought, "your neck isn't properly aligned! it's throwing your spine out of whack! that's not restful and it won't help your prana." but i didn't want to disturb her or correct her form lest she be, you know, some seven-year yogi who studied in tibet.

sometimes i walk like i'm a sheriff in a western, about to smoke out the bad guys.

sometimes i approach life like i'm a warrior. but it's really the only way i know how. i only know how to attack, and, once rebuffed, attack again.

i miss my powers of seduction. i don't know where they went. i miss them greatly.

strange

tonight i got my brain picked about astrology while tasting sushi for the first time (i was unimpressed as i hate seafood, felt it overpriced, and really i just want a freaking milkshake).

tonight i could see my breath in the air for the first time this fall - if you can call it that already. granted, it was 2 a.m.

i have almost completed the dubious achievement of eating an entire bunch of grapes more or less by myself. considering how many grapes have withered and died because i demanded my mother buy them and then lost interest, this is somehow karmic re-balancing.

i don't know who zeus is. but i have my ideas.

things that make no sense to me

i have a nearly endless capacity for jealousy and rage - specifically jealous rage. i demand what i see as absolute (and in my pea brain, completely reasonable) loyalty, especially from people i'm not holding at arm's length anymore. the combination of being insecure and an aries, man, it's deadly. i'm willing to bet ariens are the great vase throwers of history. i know this trait is particularly insane, and i DO try to curb it (which means when it peeps out, you should appreciate how much hard work i'm doing - i want to be like that all the time, actually). really. i'm trying to not be quite so rabidly possessive.

if someone doesn't respond to your initial IM, why IM them over and over and over? if i don't respond it means i'm doing something else and i didn't think someone would IM me 8 times if i didn't put up a message. mrgh.

emily and sarah have this quality that i don't have. i think it has to do with them being nicer people than me. they care what utterly non-important, useless, or stupid people think of them. from evil teachers to people in the wal-mart checkout line, they don't want anyone to think badly of them. public opinion carries a lot of weight with them. i have no idea why anyone would live like that. mana has it too, but in a different way. at least mana wants people she knows to like her. obviously we all want that to some extent, but i think mana takes it one step further. but thank the good lord she doesn't care about what the public at large thinks, i have to have at least one friend who gets it. it's like the difference between artie and brenda.

me, i just don't give a fuck. you have to earn the right to weigh in on my life.

kyle i see you

i hear kyle is reading my blog. i can see you, kyle. i'm amending the rule: at least comment once (that goes for everyone), eh?

new rule, kids

new rule everyone: if you read this blog, please comment.

A) it makes me really, really happy. think of it as a way to repay me for all the enjoyment you get out of reading it, okay?
B) i said so, and i am the Mistress.

now, i have no way of enforcing this. we're on the honor system here, kids. but i'd like it.

textbook racket

i swear to god, i started out happy. i had just registered my little crew, so we're on the official roster and we count as a real club, and written a little blurb that the prospies will see (oh god, that might be in em's materials! that would be so cool!). i was feeling good. i looked around at the Hillel SuperJews fliers, and the WSLC so you wanna be a DJ? desperation fliers, and i was thinking, damn, i like being in college. we have our own government, our own everything, this is a very nice oasis we've got here.

then i went to the place where they take my fucking money. the fucking bookstore. i know this particular shitty thing is not really much in SLC's control. i'm not sure exactly how the bookstore thing works - i know it's not completely farmed out like food contracts, because they hire kids, but it's all EFollet this and EFollet that. so what's up? anyway, forgive me if i blame SLC overly-much. it's the fucking system, man.

it was kind of hilarious actually. for those of you unfamiliar with SLC geography, there's a little gate and road that are the main entrance on campus. to one side is the pub, with the ONLY ATM on campus, on the other side is maccracken, an immense building that houses the bookstore in the basement. today, i literally exited the bookstore (sans books), crossed the road to the ATM, emerged with a fistful of money, and returned to the bookstore to hand over said fistful (all of it). for two fucking spanish workbooks. used. their total came to $98.32. you know, in lots of cultures you more or less have to be bilingual. you just learn. but i wasn't raised that way, so my parents are paying for a class and i am paying for the fucking textbooks to learn something that should and could be fucking innnate. goddamnit.

this land is herland, this land is my land

brigid gave me a present, a book by Charlotte Perkins Gilman called Herland. for some reason, a lot feminists and lesbians love CPG, even though she was a bit of a racist, classist bitch who lived 150 years ago. but whatever. herland and i have a history. maureen nelson tried to get me to read this book immediately after taking me under her wing. that should have been the tipoff right there that this was a somewhat "wacky" choice of mentor by me. but i'm not that imminently brilliant or perceptive. the next time someone pushes lesbian separatist feminism onto a 16 year old they barely know, i'll be prepared.

thank god for nelson, though. i wouldn't be where i am - literally - without her. i've been reading through my high school journals. first off, this is nearly always a bad idea.

i've been searching because i have no poetry. upon our first conference, i am supposed to give my poetry teacher three pieces i am proud of. um, all my poetry is in santa fe, on a hard drive there, i realized. whatcha gonna do? i really don't want to have to write some poetry i'm proud of between now and then, which is at most two weeks. sheeeeeee-it.

sarah lawrence women

me: hey, jane. how's it going?
jane (looking me over, dryly): fine. you?
me: oh, i'm doing good. i like your shirt.
jane: thanks. i knit it myself.
me: really? wow.
jane (completely deadpan, showing no emotion): yes, after i sheared the wool from a baby yak. it was during my family's backpacking trip through nepal.
me: wow. was this over the summer?
jane (still nothing): i was seven. it was before we moved to israel to live on the kibbutz. actually, this shirt is getting a bit big on me, i may unravel it and knit a hammock for my room. my current hemp one is a bit old, as i've been sleeping in it since we lived in amsterdam.
(awkward pause as jane stares into the distance as if listening to something i can't hear and nods)
me: um, okay, i'm off to the gap! see you in women's history, bye!

sarah lawrence is a pain in my ass

this is a copy of the e-mail i just sent to my don. (i then forwarded it my father, and am now publishing it here. when i'm grouchy, i want lots of people to know it.)

Dear Persis -
first of all, yoga and pilates P.E. classes are all scheduled during my academic classes. i would really like to take them, but i'm not about to forfeit my education. this seems like poor planning, no?

second of all, mailroom packages are only handed out if one has printed the e-mail saying "you have received a package." this 1. wastes more paper than the old system, and 2. would be fine if i owned a printer, but i don't, which brings me to my third Big Problem:

third of all, the library won't print. i've already had two reading summaries due, which i had to e-mail to my professors (contrary to their wishes), because the printers in the library won't print. they won't print because SLC has switched to a system whereby one must swipe one's ID to get pages printed. this ensures that, once you exceed 250 pages for the semester, you'll have to pay to print. the system, dubious in its conception, doesn't even work. so, i'm out of two assignments (by the third day of classes, mind you), and two package receipts - and am thus being denied access to MY property, in package form, as well.

fourth of all, the daily shuttle to cross county mall has been discontinued. apparently it only existed while SLC was using some of cross county mall's parking space. now that we have our own parking lot, we have no more shuttle. this means that, on a day like today, a student already dissatisfied with her food "options" on campus who desires raisins to put in her oatmeal must either trudge to cross county in the rain or pay the approximately $4 for a cab ride each way (on a student's budget, this is something of a luxury, especially when the goal is buying some dried fruit). or she can wait until after 5:30 and go to bronxville, where there are considerably less choices and considerably higher prices.

this is especially upsetting to the student who is already considering buying a printer because of problems two and three. the message sent by SLC today seems to be, "if you don't have a printer and/or a car, good luck."

it's been one of those days.

i swear to god, if health services doesn't see me this afternoon or they can't tell me what the fuck is wrong with me, i may have to throttle someone.

the woman i love

oh my god, i love this woman. her name is . . . nevermind. she is gorgeous and fucking brilliant and SO, SO out of my league and i've worshipped her ever since we were lost in a van in manhattan together after visiting the sex toy store. i wonder if she remembers the handcuffs i liked and picked out for myself?

i have lots of crushes on lots of people. most of them (including the one mentioned above) have no clue i'm alive. that's not always a bad thing.

bring my sarah home!!

no, i'm not referring to me. i want my sarah (and if you think she belongs to someone else, you got another thing coming, except for maybe tina) to get the hell back to the states! fucking england! i hope she and mel are very happy together . . . NOT!! e-mail just doesn't have quite the same emotive potential as a phone call (and we all know i love emotive potential, by which i mean whining).

sarah can never leave me. our friendship must last forever. i've already picked out her ugly bridesmaid's dress in my head (okay, not really, but you get my point). we will raise our children together. there are few friends in this lifetime who can be counted on to listen to hours of your ranting when you really need them to. david, mana and sarah are such friends. and emily, but she's obligated. so there. but these people, they listeners of the highest degree.

speaking of mana, i don't know where my wife has got to. i mean, obviously, boston, but . . . she's not near her phone. she's probably bonding with tonya. tonya better treat her well and/or go home a lot.


**note to all music artists everywhere: unless you are a cartoon (ie, chef), DO NOT write song lyrics in the form of a recipe. especially if the recipe is how you're gonna love me, freak me, or - weirdly - how you're gonna "operate" on me. also, it's creepy when the recipe is in a song called "i am your doctor," and you're giving me a "perscription". wyclef, this means you.

a personal record?

as i dragged my ass down to brunch at the sunny hour of 1 PM (my sister called - twice - before 10 AM on a sunday. apparently she doesn't know who i am), i thought it might be wise to look over my assembled syllabi while i scarfed my delicious waffle. much to my chagrin, i discovered i was supposed to have read - in a little over 24 hours from then - an entire book for discussion in my first class. oops. i made a beeline (post-waffle) for the library, where the book was on reserve. i then devoted my day to Savage Inequalities, a text that is over a decade old and highlights - you guessed - the savage racial and social inequalities in the American educational system of 1991. realizing this book is from approximately the same era as My Posse Don't Do Homework - basis for the the film Dangerous Minds - and Schoolgirls (which is about sexual harassment and came out in conjunction with the AAUW report "Dangerous Hallways" and . . . nevermind) by Peggy Orenstein, both personal favorites of mine, gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. i'm accruing quite the body of knowledge about the American educational system, circa 1990. i was FIVE then. but anyway. today i learned that, despite my glacial reading speed, i can accomplish 200 pages of reading in ten hours and still take time out to eat a lot, play on the web a little, and attend a cabaret.

SLC is mad for cabarets. i saw approximately 16 last year, which is a lot for one school year. considering each one has a requirement of at least one skinny boy in drag, that's a lot of wigs. whatever, tonight's was no different. us SLCers, we love a freaking cabaret, old chum. soooo many of these people are so very lucky they found SLC - anywhere else this behavior would not be acceptable, it would get you labeled a social reject forever, and you'd certainly never get encouragement for acting that way. sarahlawrence students will applaud and support nearly anything, as long as it involves someone else acting COMPLETELY INSANE. we love that shit.

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i am the center of the universe

my sister has quit on me. my sister is in georgia, visiting her boyfriend. my sister cried more in three days after he left than she did in three weeks after i did.

and i'm the one who speaks her language. i'm the one who has nicknames for her, i'm the one who shares her memories, i'm the one who can reminisce. i'm the one who was there for each time daddy was in the hospital (three times). i remember her asking for cheesecake for breakfast when SHE was in the hospital - and she was two then! i remember us moving into our house in new jersey, i remember her first halloween. i've seen her at her sickest, the sound of her nebulizer was my childhood too, visits to the allergist. i remember. we moved because she would feel better.

my relationship with my sister is complicated. we both think the other gets more attention, and attention is what we both want. she's cuter, and sicker, and cuter than me. she thinks i'm smarter than her. smarter doesn't get you shit when the family is fawning over your christmas-present-wrapping abilities. my sister and i have inside jokes. only we remember our house, and eating antonino's when the kitchen was being remodeled, and visiting one of daddy's houses for humanity when it was completed - he was nervous about taking em because the dust might bother her. i remember the day samantha died - one of the first times i saw our mother cry. being on the east coast reminds me of our childhood. our grandparents' houses down the shore, the windmill, the particular way our grandmother said "ruby tuesday".

and more recently. emily probably feels like i've been shutting her out these past few years, and maybe i have. i've wanted to be alone; it's like i've been in a cocoon (cross your fingers i'll be a butterfly one of these days). i've certainly kept her as close as i've kept anyone, and it seemed like she was confiding in and talking to me, and that was important to me (even if it wasn't always a two-way street).

but now emily and i aren't in our own personal bubble, speaking our language and reminiscing. now she speaks her secret language with someone else - right in front of me, like it doesn't even matter! i feel like our intimacy has been pillaged and stolen by someone else. my sister doesn't care as much about my life because she has someone else's life to be preoccupied with. at the end of the day, it is not me she wants to come home to and talk to while heating up rice and eating it before she starts her homework. it is no longer my responsibility to wake her from naps.

my jobs - nap waker-upper, witness of rice-eating - have been usurped by someone with whom she is more intimate, in different ways. they are now speaking a language i will never speak. they are in a bubble i can't even see into, much less penetrate. and i don't matter. i could be anyone, as a bystander to their relationship. me and the gas station attendant - we both witness the same thing, a couple in love - or who thinks they are. i am so fucked up, so heartless, so unloved and unfeeling that i don't even know. i trust their relationship far less than they do.

and nothing makes me feel more vile than hating what they have. nothing is worse than being jealous of happiness, and knowing it is wrong, wrong, wrong. i'm not even justified in how i feel. i'm a spoiled princess who's grouchy because she can't get laid and isn't the center of everyone's universe anymore.

and i want to reach out for my sister, reassure her, help her navigate this relationship. but i just can't. can't see past my own anger and hurt at being kicked off the throne at her right hand (or left, as it were). can't bullshit it, because this is too much. can't forgive her for not seeing any of it, not turning around and realizing how i feel.

i have no experience in this area, though that's hardly an excuse - human emotions are the same across the board, it only gets slightly more complicated when we involve other people. therefore, by living what i have, i know enough to help at least a little. so it's no excuse to say i haven't been there. i've been there enough.

i get so frustrated with her, i just want to slap her silly little hand and tell her to stop whining and pull her shit together and scream that i was never like this, never as bleedy and needy and pour-my-heart-out-y. no one has ever loved me like he loves you. don't you see that that leaves you with nothing to complain about? don't you see that he stole you and now i am completely alone and realizing how pathetic i am and that doesn't matter to you at all? don't you get it?

but this is all unfair. it is unfair to tell her to choose, unfair to take out my loneliness on my poor, sheltered, stressed out, immature sister. so i sit, embittered.

don't get between a girl and her tools

today mana and i ran around shopping. then we went to the tool store. i immediately turned to mana and said, this is your domain. sniff out the nails!

and she did. she then used the nails to hang my tapestry, while i stood around and looked useless. she's a little problem solver, that one. we also put my lamp together, but i could have done that on my own (though it would have taken me longer to figure out the lightbulb thing without her help). my room is prettier, but now i have to face the beast: unpacking. my poor mama, i guilt-tripped her about how everyone's room was more set up than mine because they had parents helping them. which is only partway true. and it's not like i haven't been busy or exhausted; i've been both. and i'm neglecting feministas. argh. at least my damn registration is done, may i get all my classes (crosses self, realizes not catholic, crosses fingers instead).

i need to sleep with someone. preferably soon.