bathing in tiger balm

i hate when i am physically unable to think about things other than work. i can usually daydream my way out of noise but lately the sound of a wheatgrass blade dropping will cause migraines and an overdue idle time period still seems unrealistic. my body will still shock itself into an alert drive at five in the morning, just in case i dreamt through the alarm. there is no need to set the alarm tonight, and that almost makes me nervous. i feel like i am forgetting everything and there is no time to relax. what am i going to organize when i get back, how am i going to improve such and such, how can i get creative with this, what will the kids be like when i am gone. like as if i leave for a day i've abandoned my young and left them out to dry as boxcar children or latchkey kids. i really want a beer.

all the boys have lost their charm. like all of the sudden, one by one they became real people again and there are no dreamboats left sailing. i miss being impressed solely by flirty smiles and six-word conversations. after that everything quickly becomes stale. i don't care if that makes me unrealistic and incapable of getting close to people, i don't mind staying safe with little things.


tomorrow i am going to experiment with converting frozen food items into fancy homemade dishes and i'll talk to people because i want to, not just because i'm on the clock. sweater weather makes everything better.

you win again, dorothy gale

I try to remember what exactly it was that made life so exciting when I was nineteen but it never quite comes to me. There are a lot of stories, you know. There would be nights that were nothing but wet feet dragging through murky soil and conversations that puddled much quicker than they blossomed. One incident would always happen, though. One wrong word turned into the night's scandal that everyone was talking about the next day, as though if only you had been there you too could have experienced such excitement. It was a lot of couch time. A lot of drinking, snorting, pill-popping, and all that goes along with the first years of coping as a college rockstar living on your own.

Except I wasn't living on my own, nor was I enrolled in college. What I remember most was being holed up in my room, writing for hours and hours and days at a time. I go through these phases every now and then where I have to remember everything. This is how it begins, but immediately is turned into completely different stories with new settings and the narrator is no longer me but instead an unimaginative character with bland traits that nobody notices. I hate eccentric characters, or at least my own. There is no need to make every single heroine the handsome wallflower that dresses in quirky outfits and makes pottery and poetry and sings songs and has parents with a criminal background. Or whatever. It reminds me too much of the Babysitter's Club or any girl's first attempt at writing, both of which have no chance in being exempt from the most boring literature in the world category. So I would practice.

When I was twelve I went through this rageful fit of not being good enough and completely demolished everything I had ever written, including these long, drawn-out novels that always made me ill to look back on. I wish I had them now. I would read them and say look at me, look how cute I was, look at what an impressive and smart and edgy middle schooler I turned out to be. Look how obvious it was that I was reading Mary Higgins Clark and watching Lifetime and had yet to be pulled into a world of pretentious libraries and namedropping Kurt Vonnegut every five conversations.

I refused to write much after seventh grade. Even at twelve, I hated being thought of as the writer in the family or a girl who thought she was a writer or just the idea that anyone could consider themselves a writer. Like it should be capitalized, like it's some godly idea that had never been thought of before. What do you do? Oh, I'm a Writer. So when I actually decided to try again, just to see if I could do it, if I had any inkling of smarts left in me, it was top secret.

My social life seemed so overheated. Every night was a new party with a new expectation to arrive, to be witty and obnoxious and just as lively as the night before. Maybe it wasn't even really all that pressuring, maybe I just made it all up in my head and no one cared whether I spoke or not. It felt that way, though.

It sounds dramatic, I know. A teenager with nothing better to do than invent social anxiety issues and make the biggest something over the smallest nothing. I knew those girls too, the ones that would broadcast their deepest darkest secrets of why they really do bite their nails, how it had to do with their fathers and the story goes on for hours. I just didn't feel like explaining myself to anyone.

Time begins to melt and sleeping patterns are now just an idea because a few short stories later it's dawn but you can't be quite sure as to which dawn it is exactly. Didn't you have somewhere to be? your mother will ask. Oh, I thought it was Tuesday. It's Friday but you were actually talking about three Tuesdays ago. People who aren't real replace those leaving all the unchecked voicemails as the images being created are no longer from sheer collections of human observation the way they used to be, but instead have come from somewhere far beyond that. And as totally gay as it sounds, all you want to do is continue exploring it.

Where have you been? What have you been doing? Do you have a new secret society of friends? These questions will bolt at you, or sometimes only seep inward with syrupy movements, but they come and they repeat and the lack of answers happens over and over again because half the time you can't be bothered to get up and go to the bathroom let alone put the phone back on its proper hook. Your mother will insist on buying you a cellphone and you are convinced it's the end of your soul.

Maybe what made nineteen so exciting was how the rocking and the rolling began to spread out, when it was no longer a series of chain events that blurred in their motionless jaunt. Once working past the abundance of voices wanting to know of whereabouts and ongoings and future appearances, it had become its own sort of comfort.

I don't think moving back home will be like it was when I was nineteen, but the comfort that I found there was something I was never able to bring with me anywhere else. You win again, Dorothy Gale.

let's get retarded in here (ya!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinderella_(band)

does anyone else think its weird that i live next door to the lead singer..

last night we were drinking forties on our stoop and he was like drunk on a miller 30 pack asking crystal if she still took the 11 bus, THEN proceeded to whip out his album and a crappy old cd player with headphones that didn't work to play for us, but we kept trying to get him away and ignored him for the most part. who is jealous.

tv actors always gotta look the same

I remember what that's like, that electricity that shifts and meddles through the air. There is a single glance that causes a hundred smiles at once, the ones that multiply in your teeth and stretch your cheeks to a different side of the universe you always knew about but never dared to explore. There's an ache when they're gone and a grasp at the last few moments when they're around and a constant replay of words exchanged because when the words are still brand new, they're all you've got to feed from. Somehow, it always ends up being just enough to get by.

People talk so much. Like all the time. Just to hear themselves. I think I blend in well with this persuasion because I am constantly trying to sound like I am not saying anything at all, and not in this way that I'm sincerely trying or putting forth effort of any kind, but it's become second nature to layer warmth with color and disguise any evidence of truth that may linger. I think we all do that. We're constantly hiding from each other, but in a way that makes us shout and practically beg on our hands and knees for attention. When we were younger my sister would tell me I wouldn't have to put on such a show for the people who loved me, and she was right for the most part, though it is still human nature whether it be my second or not. I don't see much wrong in feeding people what they want, even just sometimes.

we want to run through the air with no barriers or obstacles

Jackie Joan walks into my room sometime in the middle of the day on Thursday. This is how it all started. I was still hanging halfway off my bed with the covers weaved around only some limbs while she spoke in one of her chattier tones, the one where all the syllables chop and blend, turning her sentences into a blurred streak of color and light that you’re constantly trying to keep up with. It was one of those happier days. There were short shrugs and quirked mouths and eyebrows that didn’t even realize they had wandered off their resident foreheads. It was a lot of sentences that started off with “Are you sure?” including are you sure you wanna go and are you sure you want me to go and repetitive pacing around the always unforgiving clock. I don’t get paid until Friday so we decide to meet up the following afternoon. I am still not dressed by the time she leaves for New York and I’m pretty sure the only time I actually change is when I can finally get online (earlier my mother laughs at me for not knowing how to do anything without a computer) to see that there is a total of $3.22 in my bank account, which means it’s just enough money to buy a quarter pounder from McDonald’s ten minutes before they close. It was also raining.

The next day the rain continues and I complain about this to my mother all morning on the phone while watching it from my window, in that very city way that people do things when they watch rain pour from their very city apartment windows. At least on TV, I mean. And I wait for this rain to stop because I spent my last eight dollars two nights ago to give to Bobby and Marky Mark, who live on my stoop, in exchange for a McDonald’s delivery. Bobby was what the kids in South Philly would refer to as so whacked and gave me a belt in a bag and asked me to hold it for him until he came back. Needless to say, Mark came back on his own with a torn bag of the McDonald’s I ordered, saying he needed to run off and find Bobby who was currently being a “drunk asshole” and took off in a heated march. Bobby forgot his belt, but later on finds it and takes the one he has on already, switches them out and asks if he can leave the other belt here. One day I am going to write a children’s story entitled Bobby and His Magical Belts which will most likely get me banned from every elementary school in the city. Or like, that’s just one of my dreams. So in conclusion, I have no money for the subway and am drawn to the conclusion that the only way to pick up my paycheck, my only key to New York, is to ride Jackie’s bike down to the shop and get it.

The rain never stops. In fact, droplets become pellets and damp air becomes bitch-slapping winds, a delightful time to hop onto a bicycle I’ve never ridden before (not to mention at a time when I haven’t ridden a bicycle since age eleven before the internet came into my life) and pedal off with a whistle and toot. Granted, the shop isn’t that far, which is my only justification for figuring it couldn’t be that bad. I was disappointed. I did not become Elliott and the bicycle did not fly over the moon, nor did I run into a mischievous gang of third graders who wanted to rumble drag race style. Instead, I got sleet. Merciless sleet and reckless drivers and muscles that became stone inside my legs.

Somehow, after a hundred mousy shrieks over gears that didn’t shift correctly and death grips onto a set of breaks that really should have been called brokeds, I made it inside. The girl who was supposed to come in for me that day failed to call and say she wouldn’t be showing up, which brings us to a screeching Annette who is delicately basted in eight shades of burgundy. After taking about twenty minutes to fully catch my breath, I grab my paycheck and offer to get her food. She declined the food, but did hand me multiple bank deposits to take with me because I clearly was in the mood to wait an extra forty minutes for the receipts she could have gotten at any other time. Later she asks me to do various tasks that not only take up my time but also involve walking in and out of freezers while handling dozens of heavy ice cream tins when all I’m trying to do is warm up.

The wind outside is worse than I remember now, doors swinging all the way open and babies flying into billboards; it was all very traumatizing in the apocalyptic way. Tiffany, the girl in the bank who has the pleasure of dealing with my grumpy face each day with a smile, laughs at me and says “girl, I saw you struggling to come in here!” which leads me to the very cliché and Kevin Smith copyrighted line of “I’m not even supposed to be here today!” because Kevin Smith is very much the Paris Hilton of independent culture. Similarly, Chuck Palahniuk is the Kevin Smith of authors, which I guess says a lot about why this generation is so deluded.

By the time I make it to Wendy’s and back, I’m exhausted and my blood vessels are now a thousand miles from my skin. Annette has gotten angrier by this point, having to serve a whopping five customers for the day so far all by her lonesome and my presence off the clock makes her teeth clench in this way that causes her anger to graduate to a full blown rage. The heat in the room elevates but I don’t notice because there is a triple cheeseburger staring me in the face and so far is the only reward I have gotten out of this incredibly shitty morning. Annette complains she is hungry.

Deciding against riding the bike back down the now very snowy grounds of Philadelphia, I begin to search online for cab companies to call. Annette is annoyed I’m in her throne. Annette is annoyed she has to make cakes. Annette is annoyed she has to wait on a customer. Annette is annoyed black people exist (“What do you expect, they’re black!”). Annette is annoyed when she is considered racist. Annette is annoyed when I say Goddamn!. Annette is annoyed when she is at work. Annette is annoyed when she is at home. Annette is annoyed around her kids. Annette is annoyed when her kids aren’t around. Annette is annoyed the 900 hours a week I spend with her. I’m not even supposed to be here today.

The clock doesn’t wait for me any longer and the cab companies either don’t pick up or have no service due to the now severe snow storm outside. Weather reports pop up with talk about travel being impossible but I ignore them because I want to get the fuck out of here and am willing to die by the sleight of Abominable Snowman’s hands to do it. After a few phone calls with Jackie Joan and a few possible ride offers that fell through (strictly based on the fact that there are no gentlemen in Northern America) I conclude it is time to suck it up and take a little bad weather. The buses don’t go all the way to Broad St. and the wind feels like a thousand of Bobby’s Magical Belts lashing onto your face and I can’t remember if I have my house key or not. Two painful, agonizing, nailed-to-the-cross hours later I’m back in my room.

Throwing a handful of clothes into my favorite red bowling bag and a copy of the Bridge to Terebithia, as well as a tabloid with Kevin’s Side of the Story on the cover and a notebook to jot down any on goings that you or I might find particularly interesting, I do not pass go, I do not collect $200. I make it to the Greyhound station ten minutes after the bus leaves and the girl at the counter didn’t even ask me what my e-ticket password was, which was deeply saddening as I was pretty psyched to proudly shout “bananas!” to anyone who was willing to listen. She did, however, ask me if I was in her Sociology class at Temple, to which I wanted to reply something along the lines of: why no, good patron, I do not attend any type of educational facility and this university hoodie I am regretfully sporting is only for an extra layer of warmth, not to mention a light shield from the death sleet outside. Instead I said, nope! and was informed my bus would leave at 6.

After about an hour of standing in line next to this rather adorable chubby little girl with two braids and coke bottle glasses, covered in pink from head to toe while she whined in Spanish to her mother for a sip of her drink, the bus arrives and we board accordingly. Greyhound rides are probably the most dreaded stream of hours you will experience each time you consider traveling, because not only will you always end up behind the man who needs to recline his seat so far back that you could perform dental work on him, but you’ll be surrounded by a slew of people chatting about on their cell phones and crying children and homicidal maniacs and demons telling you to abort onto oncoming traffic throughout the entire journey. For those of you who have not gotten your iPod stolen, it might not be so bad. Unfortunately, if you are like me and lose everything the second you set it down, you’ll find yourself shifting uncomfortably in your seat without any leg room or music to drown in or pen to write in that now excruciatingly heavy notebook you brought along for the ride. Now all you have is a copy of Bridge to Terebithia which you try to read until finding yourself nauseated by motion sickness after page five. The bus will end up being a local instead of express, so if you thought this would only be a two hour ride as scheduled, you thought wrong. After four hours of staring at the occasional passing dead trees, I arrive at Port Authority at 10:15pm to the exhaustedly bored Jackie Joan and Mei Ling.

Mei Ling had been at work all day being the fancy first year architect that she is while Jackie had caroused the puddling streets of New York, having to buy new kicks after her boots got soaking wet and nodding off in the Met’s media arts center to some pretentious film made by some pretentious New Yorker that probably wasn’t even a New Yorker but just some New York film student, but we’ll get to all that a little later. By the time we had circled Union Square twice, deciding everywhere to eat was too pricy for our liking, we trudged back to the subway in snow that spit more than it fell. Every muscle felt like it was preparing to set flame and I saw this girl on the way there with hair blonder than the snow she danced in, and she did dance. She wasn’t from New York, but more than likely was an NYU student. She was too commercial happy to be a New Yorker. When people from New York look happy, it’s in that way that people who know they are about to commit suicide look happy. All I could think about was how badly my bones ached and then there is this girl with this big black umbrella, laughing with a group of her friends, all of whom looked like they stepped out of a J. Crewe catalogue. They are no older than eighteen and the wind carries their laugh in this way that swirls around your head and makes you forget where you are. That’s exactly what I did.

Walking beside these girls down the subway stairs and eavesdropping on their conversation about how much money they have left on their Metro cards, I see Jackie for the slightest second wave frantically for me to move faster while a train comes to a halt behind her. I pay close attention to my feet as I’m wearing these enormous boots that I am not used to on these steps that bleed puddles, and I begin to freak out when the doors come to a close. The lady operating it sticks her head out and tells me she hasn’t closed the doors further down yet and that I still had time. I told her thank you and then wondered if you’re supposed to say thank you in New York while running onto a crowded train. I don’t realize Jackie and Mei Ling aren’t even on it until three stops later at Bedford Avenue.

Just after midnight I make it up the steps to a windstorm of sorts, angry sleet and angrier homeless men to keep it company. One bar is left on my phone and after standing outside waiting for a call to direct me elsewhere, I wind up in this tiny falafel shop with the most delicious falafels I have ever tasted. Now, maybe they were delicious because I hadn’t eaten since the wrath of Annette and was now too cold and exhausted to think straight, but I’m pretty certain that the Brooklyn subway train took me to heaven at that moment. Even the bathroom was clean! I couldn’t charge my phone but did get a call from Jackie Joan saying they had already ended up at Mei Ling’s apartment and that all I had to do was take a train back to 6^th Ave then a PATH train to Journal Square then a train to Pavonia then walk two blocks past an electronics store of some sort and I’d be all set. Sounds easy enough, right? Except the train going back to 6^th Avenue stops at 3^rd and then 14^th Street which also says Union Square underneath it and didn’t Jackie say something about a Square of some sort? This leads me to get off a stop too soon which leads me to wait twenty minutes to go one stop further which leads me to the directions of the PATH trains which somehow lead me to the F and V trains, but thankfully I am too tired to make another mistake and pace around the subway for twenty minutes looking for other signs that say PATH until I find myself at an exit, which scares me only because if it’s the wrong choice I will be doomed another two dollars I may or may not have on my metro card that I’ve already overused. The blue pill or the white pill the blue pill or the white pill, this is the choice I make pretty much every day. I opt for an oh whatever, I’ll be dead before the night is over anyway, and exit on to an entirely new section of pedestrians waiting to depart this crazy city. It isn’t until after I get on another wrong train that goes in the entirely opposite direction that I overhear a guy talking about how every now and then they run this one, which means even in the rarest occasions I take the opportunity to get completely lost. Somehow I end up back on the right track but I wait until I am above ground somewhere in Jersey City to burst into tears for a consecutive two minutes and forty-five seconds.

The next day was delightfully pleasant. Mei Ling made pancakes while wearing a very sophisticated maroon apron and printed out a coupon for five dollars off at the Museum of Sex for us to use on top of our student discounts, inevitably making our grand total to be $9.20 each - a pretty sweet deal considering we got to squeak a furry penis. It was surprisingly entertaining. The beginning had a lot of hot pink jelly fonts all over the walls with short descriptions of each fetish, complete with looped videos and various objects to touch for examples. The media section was what kept us there, though. Celebrity porn since 1988 on a loop combined with sexual education books and videos from the past nine decades locked us in for an embarrassingly long period of time. We laughed obnoxiously at things some people take so seriously it’s disturbing and incessantly flashed pictures like annoying tourists. Incidentally, it was the day of the St. Patrick’s Day parade so we were actually the least ridiculous of the bunch. Drunken frat boys and girls with matching hats and boots oohed and aahed and ahahahed at everything while Jackie Joan, Mei Ling and I sat in silence watching Jeff Stryker give hunky dreamboat kisses to one of Zack Morris’ old stand-ins. In actuality, we were just thankful to be sitting and easily entertained, but to anyone passing it appeared we were deeply enthralled in this mouthwatering motion picture of sorts. Well okay, maybe I was. It’s not my fault gay porn from the 80’s is captivating and romantic.

The day was filled with delicious pizza from this really great place on the corner of 27^th and Broadway as well as a small flea market that featured books like Satan’s Children and Gray’s Anatomy. There was an antique shop with tons of different gallery displays inside, including one with mannequin heads that looked strikingly similar to Paris and Nicky Hilton, but I didn’t take a picture because it was a bad angle and I already felt weird enough for gawking. Mei Ling bought a few buttons, including one that was a doll head which we are still awaiting to find out what lucky piece of fabric gets to have it sewn into. There were these amazing vintage board games, mostly sewing kits in boxes with proud exclamations like “For the little miss!” strapped across the cover. We also ventured into the Good Will, which was really just a bunch of petite clothes from last season. I really wanted to get this wedding dress to wear to our next hot wings party, or even to wear on the greyhound back home, but decided to look out for a cheaper, uglier one on eBay in the near future. If any of you happen to find an oversized wedding dress, preferably spotted in mystery stains, getting it for me would be highly encouraged. I found the old Barbie trailer home I used to have, except this one was disguised with a spa that folded out instead of like a bed and some chairs. It even had an exact replica of the futon sitting in our living room! It was pretty sweet. A girl standing next to us started talking about some of the titles in the book aisle that Jackie, Mei Ling and I were standing in, but seeing as how I don’t know how to interact with humans on most days nor do I ever read real books pretty much ever, I just said right on! and handed over her choice selections to Jackie with a shrug. Mei Ling purchased a very pimped out hat that Justin Timberlake would wear and the guy at the counter kept trying his best not to laugh as Jackie went on and on about how excited she was about her new books. It was a pretty good day.

Later we met up with Mei Ling’s friend Jen at this righteous barbecue place on 6^th except we did not wait for her arrival to begin chowing down. Our waiter was this really cute flamboyant stick with black framed glasses and an impressively shiny smile. Jackie and I spyed on this super adorable couple that sat next to us holding hands and sharing a menu to read, and we talked about them rather loudly as we ate. The food was traumazing. I got half-pastrami half-pulled chicken sandwich with every sauce they had and a Blue Moon on tap. Did I finish every last bite? Yes. Did I enthusiastically suggest we get a desert of deep fried oreos? You know I did. Aside from an awkward twenty minute wait for our twenty dollars in change, it was a fantastic meal well spent! Our next planned adventure to New York will be drinking in the park while wearing fancy dresses, hopefully I’ll be in a wedding dress, and this time I hope more of you will come along for the journey. This is of course if we still have enough money to buy ramen by the time spring actually does roll around. Until then, there’s a rumor that Pabst Blue Ribbon is sold in forties somewhere in Center City, which will make Friday night drinking in the park a la Philadelphia style that much more enjoyable. Until next time, folks.

i didn't really leave you. you thought i did because these fingers crumble under pressure and sometimes i'm not as strong as i'd like you to believe. i am not the clawing or the growling or the ferocious strength it takes to break cities apart and move oceans into tiny sections all with equal proportions just how the old texts would put it. i wanted to run from here, but only because i had lost the legs to stand up straight and i wanted to so badly, i did. these are excuses, i know. these are responses to words you never asked but i always knew were on your mind and i'm sorry i never offered anything sooner. i pressed whispers into your ear that i knew you wouldn't make out all the way because maybe if it wasn't solid then it wouldn't ever have to be broken. cowardly, i know. i wanted to write them on parchment and fold them into your hand but they crumbled between nimble fingers and never made it all the way through. we'll get over this hump, we always do. we'll have shinier moments and you won't have to be so scared.

i want to talk about nice things but i can't. there is too much boiling and brewing and nothing ever gets solved, merely pushed to the back and stored for a rainier day. light showers become dangerous thunderstorms and everyone cries because there was no warning. that's all you ever want, right? warnings. we don't pay attention to warnings. we don't listen to that which has created everything we depend on because we've learned to depend on a false sense of stability that never was really ours. i can't build mountains for you and i'm not going to try. i'm not going to pat your back when the knife wound is still fresh because i'm not going to risk your blood staining my flesh. you want to believe otherwise? try me. i dare you. but don't ever say i gave no warning.

there's a brighter side to this and no i won't say what it is because jinxing is for sports teams that always lose and i for one am a team unto myself when it comes to this. i'd like things to be cleaner and simpler than the mess i always tangle myself into and i'd like for you to never notice when good becomes bad and bad becomes worse, but you will and i like you better for that. i don't deserve you and not just in the way i don't deserve quite a lot of things but in a way that makes diamonds shatter below careless fingers and unseen oils deforming vintage gowns. i need you to wait for me to be better than what i am today and if you do i'll make promises that aren't even empty. i'll be good for you and you'll be proud of me and these days of dramatics will be put behind us. for the most part. right now we're children spoiled in confusion and who's to say tomorrow we won't still be the same?

forget for a second that i'm the girliest girl you know

i'm trying to be a good boy, i am. i'm trying to spawn webs of air and space from these already bruised hands because back when i was a good boy that's just what the good men did. they drove bat shaped cars to rescue the weak and their flesh turned green when anger struck their bones and you aren't going to believe me now, but one of them even raced light because when you are built to be untouchable there's no time to waste on fear. i would sympathize with the villians because i know i've the capacity to be one as we are not born with angels on both shoulders and no man can hold an empty heart. but i really, really wanted to believe i'd turn out okay. and i still try to be one of the good guys and fight the good fight but i don't think it's supposed to feel this painful because i'm pretty sure men made from steel definitely would have given up long ago. the dirt i keep kicking into your mouth isn't supposed to come this naturally and i don't know where i learned a filthy habit like so, but i promise it doesn't mean i've stopped trying. it's hard to remember who you're at war with when placing the ocean between us instead of around but i've been attempting these acts of a soldier for so long it's become routine to keep love at a safe distance. this is not a love letter because i am just as guilty as the next criminal. i'm still stupid enough to believe that wings can be won by battle and i've yet to figure out that i'm just losing to all the angels. i really, really want to believe.