the habit of being

Two tall girl-things - the older one one perfectly lanky and chic, the other pegged a romantic on sight - sit on a bench together in a bookstore, after having exhausted the fun of trying to appear as lesbian lovers while surveying the women’s issues department. Arms linked, hips tilted toward one another - we have to stand like this, the slim one said. The long haired one would have liked to stand so close in any department and was a bit disturbed by the joke, but these chance intimacies cannot be passed up….. I imagine these young birds would look grand parading down the streets of Paris together, best friends, partners in their sensibility and silliness, whispering of hidden love affairs with the dark passersby. They’d dress simply and carry a fine umbrella. Some of the magazines piled in their laps now are French, so it makes perfect sense….. They flip through foreign fashion glossies much too quickly to pretend they could read them. They study the women in the pictures. The angular models, delicate features, roll through their heads, and yes, they feel quite ugly. Perhaps later, trying not to sleep, they’ll assure one another that they are pretty. ( Your eyes! Your legs! Your cheekbones! )….. Extremely revealing pictures are subjects of much amazement to the younger girl, she is not accustomed to Paris Vogue. The elder is not startled, being well-aware that people are simply more naked in Europe, and also having been through these magazines before. (The rumor is now she won’t touch a thing short of the New Yorker or Atlantic Monthly.)…… They are there together for some time, taking advantage of the hospitality given them by the multimillion dollar corporation singularly responsible for putting out of business thousands of charming independent bookshops of a type they themselves were born to appreciate…. Then suddenly, where to go? Oh! The CD department! All is great fun for the teenaged dramatists, all is fine, all is fair in heartbreak and disillusionment. (Our one life is Japanese pop music these days.)

. . .

talkaboutmyday:
I was worried about my mother’s being angry with me last night so I cleaned up my room. I clean when I am guilty. Stepped on a grape in the process. Then apologized for being awful by way of instant messenger, proposed a Scrabble game, was rejected. J. came online and we talked and I cried. Don’t know what to do in the face of her doubts. She went to sleep, I tried to read S&S with little luck. Turned out the lights at 5 in the morning, but was unable to sleep. Quite literally tossed and turned, couldn’t decide if I were hot or cold, thought about sleeping. Then thought about thinking about sleeping when trying to sleep. Had usual dirtytramp fantasies. Heard Ray’s coffee brewing. Somehow finally got to sleep. Was notified of its being 11:30 at some point. Got out of bed and took a shower at 12 something. Shaved again, am resolved to shave constantly as a replacement for being able to not eat. In shower for close to an hour. Forgot to turn on red light. Put on jeans and clean underwear from yesterdays laundry exploits, also GHP art minor t-shirt. Checked email, stats, guestbook. Went to work with wet hair as always. Resisted Lisa’s offers to get me food from Chick-fil-A. Developed six x-rays. Put patients in rooms. Weighed myself. 134. Ate random pieces of candy. Chewed 2 pieces of gum. Read about the queen mother, autism, and the g4 cube in Newsweek. Was annoyed by Sam and Sharon wanting to read something of mine. Got paid. Came home. Read a few chapters of S&S. Got online. Ate unhealthy supper, grapes, unhealthy dessert from Dairy Queen. Read about James and judo on AIM. Read Jenniferwriting. Took another shower. Started writing this. Ongoing saga, really, wouldn’t you say?

. . .

prelude to The Rape Scene (from part 3):

It happened late or early, one of those times in between. The mother was off touring the country in a van with the scene of Christ’s crucifixion painted on one side and an enormous pink octopus painted on the other. There was a connection somewhere, passed down the long line of philosophers and mystics who’d ridden in the pitted black interior over miles and miles of the great American countryside.

The driver called himself a pilgrim, and his voice was so clear some believed him. He could lecture about Plato, the politics of sex, and why eggplants were purple and it all seemed to make perfect sense. He was getting older and bonier every day, but none the less intense. Was he brilliant or mad or simply smoking the green dandelions from the south side of the field? No one knew or cared - he had cool wheels and fantastic ideas and no objections so making all the decisions. He was clearly no longer of this world.

“They say penguins know things about love,” the pilgrim told them one sultry afternoon.

(They being our beloved dharma queen, at this time in her thirties, the town prostitute, who’d once worked as a contortionist for a small circus in California, a man with a wooden leg who’d walked all the way from the Northwest Territory to the Gulf of Mexico is his younger years, and an average Joe who called himself Average Joe. )

“The males have to prove to the females that they will be taken care of during pregnancy before they’ll mate. The guys get all dressed up in those tuxes of theirs and bring fresh fishes and wild roses and such to their Sweet Sues. Or maybe the deal is that the male has to build the nest. But anyway, they’ve got it all figured out.”

Now no one knew if any of this was true or not, and judging from his history, the pilgrim didn’t know many things about love himself. The man had been married five times, in four different states. He’d even been divorced once too. It was bloody. That’s what got him started on his travels. All those courtrooms and lawyers had made him downright cynical and he’d wanted to get out and rediscover the land, to see the stars again, to meet interesting people and hear their stories.

Or maybe it was because he was wanted in three states for polygamy and his last wife had won everything he owned but that old van. (At the time it hadn’t been such a work of art.) Anyway, he’d gotten there, to that little Island off the coast of Georgia, and he’d rounded up all the free-spirits, gypsies, and outcasts and got them all psyched up for a roadtrip and the hope of a great epiphany.

The daughter, now fourteen, had been left in charge of the seashell shop. One morning was making the trip down the beach collecting shells - like her mother, in a beautiful white lace gown. Her hair was splashed about her shoulders like a Jackson Pollock painting in reds, oranges, and yellows. Her face was freckled by the sun, but in the darkness, she seemed seemed nothing but a pale pale ghost, or a princess from the moon.

Butterfly shells were her favorites. She’d always secretly wished she had an identical twin out there somewhere - someone who’d be the perfect friend for her, someone who’d understand everything. It was a particularly exquisite butterfly shell, as blue as the sky in July, she’d stooped over to claim when it happened.

. . .

I’m in horrible want of something surreal right now. I feel like trashing all former thought and restarting my Perspective, and it leaves me to wonder what the great trauma was, as I usually only feel this way after I’ve been through one layer of emotional hell or another. I want a white slate like hers, not so much narcissism, not so much decadent praise for silliness. Idealism gets dull at some point. I’m at that point. Someone should have told me fairy tales were stupid a long time ago. “Guess what, Katharine?! Vienna isn’t about ignorant little girls with typical dreams and nothing real to communicate, you sickening artificial lying self-absorbed vain phony shallow hideous child!” Ugh. Ugh, ugh, ugh. My life was never good enough to satisfy my ego