the habit of being

The mosquitoes are in my apartment. They bite me while I sleep. I have to cover up with something to help keep them off me, but all I have is a comforter, which is way too hot. There’s no AC, so we keep the fan on all the time. Mark calls me at home and always asks where I am. He says, over the phone, the fan makes it sound like I’m standing outside, next to a freeway. It does sound kindof like that. Believe me, I know what that sounds like.

I also sleep with a big white stuffed dog. I got it at the Pottery Barn outlet in Leesburg, VA. It was originally $99, but I got it for $30. He looks just like my landlord’s neurotic Havanese, Pete, except bigger. I changed his name from Dreyfus (on the tag), to Big Pete. I give him to Jennifer sometimes, when she’s sad.

I still have a lot of stuffed animals. I brought Amanda the Panda back from Mark’s apartment today, where she got olive oil on her feet, red wine on her nose, and tears on her back. I put one of my bangles from Alison and Vince’s wedding around her neck. We got her at the Smithsonian National Zoo gift shop in April.

Uma the Emu has a fuzzy yellow slap-bracelet for a scarf. She’s falling off of James’ coffee table onto his brown beanbag, both of which he left here when he moved out last May. The coffee table is strewn with New Yorkers, fashion magazines, old cups of coffee I didn’t have time to finish before going to work, travel journals I’ve been meaning to type up, CDs out of their cases that I’ve been putting on my iPod.

I’ve had my iPod for less than a month and I cannot imagine life without it. It’s one of the little pink ones. It has songs by Electrelane, Cowboy Junkies, Dar Williams, The Clean, Stereolab, Johnny Cash, PJ Harvey, The Aislers Set, Belle & Sebastian, Marti Jones, Patti Smith, Yo La Tengo, Aimee Mann, Eminem, Bonnie Raitt, Garbage, Janis Joplin, Nick Cave, Tool, Rocketship, Sisters of Mercy, Tom Petty, Bjork, Tori Amos, Eric Clapton, The Smiths, Rickie Lee Jones, and others. It also has “The Dance,” by Garth Brooks, which is about my mother and her first husband. Really.

Last night I took four valium before I went over to Mark’s place, to keep from being a bitch and a nervous wreck, because I hadn’t seen him in a week and wasn’t happy about it. I prompty fell asleep the wrong way around on the bed, because I’d been up until 3 am the night before editing a story. In the morning, he said I sure had been tired, that I’d been talking really slowly. At first, he’d almost thought I was on drugs, but, then, where would I get them?

I cried all morning, and told him things I’d never told him before, things I started writing here after I deleted his account in February. I told him I was scared he’d be alone forever because of Tonya, even though he still has so much life left, even though he is so good. He told me to stop. I apologized for all my expectations, but he just wiped my eyes and corrected me: they’re not expectations, they’re desires.

He took me to Chevy Chase to get good Belgian beer to take to Siobhan’s house-warming party tonight, and to Sirius Coffee Company to get the good Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. And then he brought me back here, to my hot freeway of an apartment, with a new batch of CD’s to download.