The Problem with Introductions: Saying My Name

After all these years I still feel awkward when telling someone my name. In fact, it doesn't have to be an actual person. I feel just as uncomfortable telling a machine my name, like when the teleporter asks me to state my name and business before teleporting me. Weird, huh?

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's based in the ancient beliefs that a person's name has power. I bet that's it. I bet some primitive part of my brain hears the question, "What's your name," and responds with the urge to cast a hex on the person who's asking. The golem in me hisses and recoils, lashing out with clawed fingers, whispering magical spells of destruction, laughing manaically, prompting me to NOT tell them my name.

The normal part of my brain laughs, though I notice a choked feeling in my throat as I lean forward and whisper the syllables. That never goes over well, of course, because they can't hear me and then I have to say it again. So I've learned (at least I've done that) that it's better to say it confidently and loudly. For the entire room to hear. Usually this approach earns me suspicious glances. But at least I don't have to repeat my name several times over.

Oh, but I do. The cafe where I spend my lunches has a surprisingly high turnover. Over the past few years I'm sure I've shared my name with enough people to rival only my years in college. As we all know, the most common questions heard around a university are "What's your major?" and "What's your name?" The former never felt so awkward to answer. A major is merely a shirt you put on every day, while your name is as good as your underclothes. Sharing it, you might as well be handing over the last bit of your dignity.

"Oh, you want to know my name? Here, why don't I also tell you about the time in elementary school when my so-called friends de-pantsed me on the playground. While I'm at it, let me describe the horror of having my love poem about Mark Smith read to the entire fourth grade class*."  

I know, I know, telling someone my name isn't as bad as getting pantsed at school. It shouldn't be anyway. I'm simply using it as a metaphor to express the vulnerable feeling that comes over me any time I'm asked to share it.

I'm thinking about hiring someone to follow me around, an entourage if you will, who can chime in any time someone asks me to tell them my name. They will speak for me when necessary.    
"What's your name again?"
I nod over my shoulder, cueing my entourage.  
A chorus of voices, "Nicole. Her name is Nicole." They could even say it kind of sing-songy if they want, like the choruses of the ancient Greek tragedies.
I smile confidently** and wink. The person who's just been bludgeoned with a chorus singing my name blinks repeatedly, dumbfounded at the large entourage of robed actors behind me (notice how my entourage continues to swell and transform more and more into a Greek chorus. Soon they'll be wearing strange makeup and sharing secrets to help the audience understand the drama and inner workings of my soul.)   

It would be so fantastic, you know, to never ever have to introduce myself again. I know the obvious answers to my problem are to never meet anyone I'm not already familiar with or to begin wearing a name-tag. Another solution would be to become extremely ridiculously famous OR infamous, whatever comes first.  

But I'd rather have a Greek chorus following me around.  I might even discover some newfound confidence about how awesome my name is due to hearing it sung as I stand in the midst of a large mass of chanters.

The chorus would come in handy in so many settings, like when I'm trying to order food in a noisy restaurant. That way I also wouldn't make embarrassing mistakes like accidentally ordering the shrimp when I hate shrimp. This happened--I must have been thinking really hard about what I didn't want. As in, I hate shrimp. Why would anyone order shrimp. It's horrible. Never. Never EVER will I EVER order shrimp. "And for you?" the server asks. "Um, I'll have the shrimp."

If I had a chorus with me, I'd merely have to nod at them when the server arrives to take my order. They'd know all my desires, being privy to my thoughts, and most likely they wouldn't accidentally order the shrimp (thought they COULD since sometimes I think of fanciful things I don't really want, like an entire cheesecake).  

A chorus would also be really perfect in a conflict. I imagine they'd chip in when it began to look like I was losing, and then I'd win.  

The possibilities are limitless. And this is what comes from struggling to share my name with people: I end up with a Greek chorus trailing me. Beautiful.

*This never happened.  Mark Smith is a generic name I made up.  
**Confident because I didn't have to say my name, which always weakens me a little.....            

The Voice of the Web: Real Loud and Real Obnoxious

Everything feels the same.

Is it just me or is this true?

The problem is the Internet, the Web, this mechanical interface with everything. And it has bled over into things in the real world, like with the way I relate to people.

Or perhaps it began happening with the advent of television. The first real mechanical separation of humans with the reality of interpersonal relationships.

I'm tired of clever. I'm tired of witty retorts, sarcasm, the brutality of cold humor, the detachment of knowing causes have effects. What I mean by that—the detachment of cause and effect—is the understanding that if I do or say A, B will happen. Like, for a totally generic example, if at home with my parents, I say some witty, clever, sarcastic remark such as, "Well, if you hadn't gotten pregnant at 17, perhaps you'd have a Corvette by now," there will be specific ramifications*. It won't be a funny sitcom. There won't be a laugh track where the audience responds by chuckling in unison and I am heralded as a comedienne extraodinaire. In fact, people in my immediate life will begin to see me as an ass.

This is perhaps a poor example, because the problem is much more advanced. Occasionally when I'm around certain people, I get the feeling everything is about the big joke. The perfect timing. The script in their head where everything happening is the set up for the punch-line. It could be that I've somehow, miraculously gotten MORE sensitive as I've advanced in age, though that seems unlikely. The longer I'm alive, the more rooted I feel to this world. (At first I mistakenly wrote out rotted. Freudian slip?) And the less things surprise me.

So it surprises me when I grow weary of the brutal nature of the Web. Who's with me? I'd really appreciate an acknowledgement here if anyone, ANYONE AT ALL, senses what I sense.

It isn't as though I spend an unholy amount of time surfing the Web. I do a lot of research. Read a lot of Wikipedia articles, about.com articles, amazon.com reviews, and just recently, have subscribed to a few sites through Google Reader. The sites are rather generic tech/gadget reviews, science fiction and fantasy commentaries, and for the most part, I find them interesting.

But there is a tone to all that's out there. I'm having a difficult time pinpointing what it is. I could be full of crap, but I could just as well be identifying a cultural malaise. Some might describe it as an advancement—I can see that. Finally! they would say, we've arrived at the future. We're here, all is open, all is possible, we're speeding toward this singularity where we'll become infinite and immortal through science.

Maybe the Miscrosoft Bing commercials aren't that off. From time to time I feel like my mind is fractured and I'm trying to sort through the hundreds of strands of thought, attempting to make sense of them, to grasp something solid. I don't think it's to be found in my head—everything is abstract there.

What I need is to step away from the mechanical, electronic interfaces with the world and engage in something real. I need to work in the garden. Take a walk by the river. Go for a hike. The Web, or Internet, whatever the crap it's called, becomes a voice in the head that won't be silenced, that influences behavior and perhaps in a negative way.  

I tire of its plethora of voices—voices that don't always help me see reason or sort through the mess of the human condition. All things tend to converge, and I don't necessarily see them converging into a whole that I can treasure the way I treasure a favorite book (Jane Eyre, Angle of Repose, We). It usually happens that we veer toward the most common denominator, and I don't have much faith that this number will be the one I want.  




*There would be no REAL reason to say this, as it isn't true in my family. But I could see this kind of thing happening in a sitcom, can't you?

My Visit to Rowan Oak, OR How to Magically Ruin a Pair of Expensive Jeans

Memorial Day weekend was great, until we got to Memphis. Then everything went to hell real quick. 

But first.....

Rowan Oak.  

Mississippi is humid, just like all swamps in the south. The strange thing about humidity is that when you add air conditioning to the picture, it can get cold. So naturally I wore a pair of jeans while we we drove from Tupelo to Oxford to not catch a chill in air conditioned rental car—an Impala. Oh yeah, we went all out for this road trip.  

These jeans really are quite awesome. I purchased them recently and I happen to look like a million bucks when I wear them. It's been a while since I felt or looked like a million bucks, so this causes me to strut around with a confidence no one has seen on me in years.  

And if I don't, in fact, look like a pile of glittering diamonds in the jeans, the important thing is that I feel like one. As I proved long ago, if you feel it, it must be true.  

We arrived at Rowan Oak in Oxford and Stoker drove down a gravel driveway and parked beside a trailhead. We didn't know where we were, exactly. The area is quite forested and you can't just see where you should go (especially if you drive down the little gravel road and don't simply park on the street).  

So we didn't talk to anyone after we got out of the car. Stoker looked at the little sign at the trailhead which read, "Bailey's Woods" or something and informed us that the trail was a quarter mile and it ended in the museum parking lot. Faulkner, the sign read, used to enjoy taking walks in this forest to think about his work. 

If Faulkner did it, we had to do it.

"Let's take this trail.  It ends in the parking lot," Stoker said. Obviously we assumed the museum parking lot meant the parking lot of Rowan Oak. Since we hadn't been up to the house (we didn't know where it was, in fact), we figured museum meant Faulkner's house. Duh. Of course. It's open to the public and is no longer a house, therefore is really a museum. Makes sense. 

Still wearing my jeans and a pair of very comfortable Born wedge heel sandals (I never wear wedge heels, but this pair of jeans requires them), we headed down the trail. At that point, it was quite cool for Mississippi at the end of May. So I thought it'd be fine to wear jeans for a hike (there was a pair of shorts in the car).

What most people don't know about these parts of the South, at least I didn't until I lived here, is that there are many forests. Oh sure, you knew that, right, because you've watched lots of reenactments of the Civil War. You've seen stuff about the deep south. You know that there are towering evergreens all over and crazy vines taking over the whole place and you realize these things because you pay attention and read many books and watch countless hours of television.  

Ok well, I'm constantly in awe, even as a resident of four years. I keep forgetting that the South isn't all about magnolias. These forests are thick and kind of scary and when I'm in them, I begin to understand the fear the Puritans had of them and their darknesses. I also begin to see the influence the landscape had on Faulkner and his writing. Anyway, that thing you learned as a kid, about the moss growing on the north side of the tree trunk?  That's true here. Because you can't get your orientation in the forest by the sun or the mountains. So bring a compass.

The trail in the Rowan Oak forest was nice. At first. It was shady and we were there early enough that the temperature was kind of cool. We plodded along, laughing, joking, swatting at mosquitoes and leaping away from enormous spiders. Spots of sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves and we'd stare up at the towering trees with their sculpted trunks, mouths agape. I think Stoker got tired of me pointing and saying, "Holy crap, look at the tree!"  

A few minutes into the forest and I began to hear disembodied laughter, like someone nearby was having a pool party . . . or something. . . . The trail split—we took the one with fresh footprints (were those hoof-prints?). We began to feel lost. My footwear was horrible so I tripped several times.  

Soon the air grew stifling and swampy. Or more swampy, anyway. Stoker laughed at my stride. Never one to be deterred at creepy laughter in the woods, he continued to take pictures and reassure me that the trail hadn't already gone a quarter of a mile.  

"This is WAY longer than a quarter of a mile. I think we've gone two miles already," I said.

"No way. Our block in the city is a half-mile. We haven't gone that far yet," he said, laughing.

"Not a chance. We've gone way further than a quarter mile and we're not even to the end yet."

"Why are you walking like that? Walk normal," he said, snapping a picture of me on a bridge over a huge grotto filled with trolls.

"What's wrong with the way I'm walking?" I asked, paying the toll. The trolls demanded a fruit roll-up.  Luckily I had one.  

"You're waddling," Stoker answered, glaring at the toll-taking troll for taking the last fruit roll-up. Stoker loves gummy candy and fruit snacks like that.  

"It's hot.  I'm sweating.  My jeans are shrinking." The troll loped away and joined his clan beneath the bridge, and I wiped the stream of sweat from my forehead. I'd turned into a fountain.  

To prove his point, Stoker showed me a picture of myself mid-stride. I looked like I'd just ridden a hundred miles on horseback.  

My jeans WERE shrinking. It was so humid and hot, it was like living inside a washing machine and a dryer at the same time.  

We continued on. The disembodied laughter kept getting louder. There were red toadstools with white spots on the edge of the trail. It was hard to breathe. The floor of the forest was littered with creepy fern-like plants out of the jurassic era (or at least the movie Jurassic Park). I began to threaten the makers of the trail with lawsuits about false advertising and bad trail management. They could have at least put signs out for the proper route, AND a warning about the trolls* would have been really helpful. 

Finally we came to the end of the trail. I could barely walk. My jeans had shrunk four sizes and I only managed to move by thrusting my legs backwards and lurching forward in a wind-up motion (see? using the material's natural restrictive tendency to propel myself.  Clever, eh?). I was certain the leather sandals had carved blisters into my pinky toes. But the end was in sight and hopefully an air conditioned house/museum.

HOWEVER, the end of the trail was followed by a short walk through an ugly meadow to the campus of the University of Mississippi. The Museum was a real museum. Betty's museum, or someone like that. 

Rage filled me, I heard a loud tearing noise and the skin of my legs was suddenly visible through the fabric of my jeans. Luckily, the campus was a ghost-town, being Sunday on Memorial Day weekend, so no one but Stoker saw my transformation into the Incredible Hulk.  

Rowan Oak, Faulkner's home, was on the other side of the forest and the trail. We turned around.

*By the way, there were no trolls. I put that in to wake you up. If there had been trolls, I think we'd have gotten a much different body of work from Faulkner.  

Calvin Grotepas

He went to West High in Salt Lake City, Utah. I'm not sure of his graduation date right at the moment, but he did graduate. He went to the University of Utah and majored in art—I don't think he ever finished his degree, but I'm pretty sure he was only a few credits shy of getting it.

He loved to work with his hands. When I was a kid, he made jewelry from polished wood—earrings, mainly. He taught me to whittle, though I sucked at it, and he made me begin with a bar of ivory soap. I didn't see the point. I wanted to start on my first masterpiece immediately. I wanted to be like Henry Moore, whose work he loved.

While he was still enrolled in college, he worked for the Deseret Press, the printing and publishing arm of the LDS church, and that's where he met my mom, who was working as a typesetter (to me, working in the publishing world, this love story is beautiful). She saw him first, so the story goes, and it was love at first sight. Later on, when they were married, he worked for a few other companies running their presses. He loved being a pressman.

They bought a house in Farmington, Utah, and he finished the basement—my mom and him, working as a team. After that, he worked long hours to sculpt the tiered yard into a beautiful landscape with flowering plums, spruces, Ponderosa pines, peach trees and cherry trees, yuccas, red buds, oaks, and the crowning piece, an almond tree (it died rather soon). The yard was a work of art—the railroad ties that delineated the grassy areas from the plants and trees were axe-cut by him (he cut his head open this way, once).

Years later following his divorce from my mom and after digging into pottery—mainly wheel-work—he found his niche. At least, it felt to me like it was the stuff he had always wanted to do. Hand-built pottery and bronze-casting. Some of the most organic-looking pots came out of this period of his work. Great, curving vases glazed in dark oranges and deep reds, but so finely done that they weigh much less than they apparently should. In a way, they remind me of something from another world, something from a science fiction novel. It's a fitting marriage of two distinct disciplines because he loved science fiction, space, and Carl Sagan.

Sometimes we realize that the only way to understand the interior of a person is through their creations—the way they organize the unorganized, apply order to disorder, filter beauty from the mundane. Sorting through the remnants of a life, we find that we didn't understand a person at all and we see that we measured them by the wrong instruments. When we were looking at the disorder of everyday matters, or the things on which society focuses, we should have been looking at the language they spoke best.

When I looked for my father on Google, I found two links: one from a news article from forty years ago when he was rescued in a skiing accident by helicopter and just a few other links regarding court cases against him. The cases were all reasonable, I'm sure, and I don't blame the people who were charging him because he suffered from severe mental illness and could be very difficult to get along with. That was the other part of his life. The messy part.

Bu I want him to have another legacy on the Internet. I want him to also be remembered for the good things. I didn't understand him completely, but I know from his art that he was beautiful.

Barbara and Barry: Pure Bliss

Is it really such a crime to love Babs? And in particular, her duets with Barry Gibb? And to be more to the point, the song "Guilty"?

I feel like I've written about this a million times already, but it turns out, I've only actually written about Babs once, in this post, and it was just to mention how great "Evergreen" is. Because it is. And "Guilty" is amazing. "Out on the street anybody you meet got a heartache of their own . . . " That's true. They do. Thanks, Babs, for pointing that out.

And then thank you, even more, for the entire song and how you make any little duet seem epic and romantic and perfect and you do it without auto-tune or any digital engineering, just your emotion and your crystal clear tones.

"Pulses racin', darlin', how grand we are, little by little we meet in the middle . . . make it a crime to be out in the cold . . . " Barry. My word, Barry, you make such an amazing, profound point. And you know, when you sing with Babs, with your brothers in the background, you slay even the casual listener. You make my life feel like the romantic comedy it was always meant to be. You make me think I could do anything, move a mountain, walk on water, fly away in a hot air balloon with my lover, glasses of sparkling champagne bubbling away, fluted stems held so delicately between our fingers, and stars in our eyes, nuzzling noses like two shy deer.

And then there's the part in the song, the chorus where Babs and Barry sing together, and Babs does that signature move where she, kind of off the cuff, goes all lazy in keeping time with Barry's singing, "And we got nothing to be guilty of, our love will climb any mountain, near or far, we are, and we never let it end, we are devotion . . . ."

And they are. I mean, have you heard the song? That sort of singing and dueting (is that a word?) is PURE devotion. And it makes me feel devoted. It makes me fall in love with everything. This computer (which I already loved, but now I love it more). This table. This coffee shop. The people in the room with me. All of them. I now love them simply because "Guilty" is making me feel it, feel the love.

It's a love potion. It's BETTER than a love potion. It's the key to world peace. Babs and Barry. The perfect union of man and woman in song. The only other magical combination I can think of right now is Babs and Neil. But for now, I'm feeling it with "Guilty."

"You gotta be mine, we take it away, it's gotta be night and day, just a matter of time." Just a matter of time before Babs takes over the world with her voice. I can't believe she hasn't yet. Pure unadulterated, un-auto-tuned, gorgeousness in a voice.

Had a Dream Last Night that Both My Arms Were Broken

An Experiment in Brevity

Two haikus:

Everyone is asleep
There is nothing to come between
the moon and me.

—Seifu-jo


The willow
stands anywhere
and stays calm

—Chiyo-ni

Paranoia. Part III.

If you're just joining me, I strongly suggest reading Paranoia and Paranoia. Part II. before reading part three.

Who knew I could stretch such a stupid story out so long? Stoker knows. My family knows. But they're not here right now so it's just hearsay. I really only planned on telling you a small anecdote about my strange bouts of paranoia, but it's warped into this monster because the paranoia didn't exist until Ted existed. Before that I was a clean slate, so to speak. Naive. Gullible. Trusting.

I had said get lost, essentially, to Ted. Then I began bidding on the magical script on eBay that would change everything. When my ship was nearing port, the one that was about to come in, some jerk began bidding against me. Email relationship ensued (and I have a weakness for the written word, really, and it extends to emails*) and the mysterious bidder told me all sorts of enchanting details about his life in San Diego.

Caught up?

Ok, so Ted denied being Rob. But only after I had tricked Rob into telling me what he looked like.

Now, I know you know where this is going because of foreshadowing and other reasons. Why include this stupid eBay story if it had nothing to do with Ted? You are clever enough to see that Ted will turn out to be Rob. You even know WHY Ted was doing what he was doing.

Recall that he only wanted what he couldn't have. Would he give up? NOOOO. What a brilliant idea. Track the prey down on the internet, lure your prey into a comfortable relationship with your assumed identity, be witty and charming and perfect, get into the mind of your prey, make your prey love you, and then wham! Reveal the truth to your prey. There will be no choice but a confession of love.

Did that paragraph even work? I was going for clever but I've failed miserably. The point is, Ted couldn't describe a physical appearance too far from the truth, otherwise I'd fall in love with a tall dark, handsome guy and then when he revealed himself to be Ted and not Rob, I'd be too disappointed. Better to make sure that Rob and Ted sort of overlap in my head. Right?

Oh man. This is why I'll have sudden bouts of paranoia.

Ok, ok. So, I hated to be paranoid and accuse Rob of being Ted. So I didn't do that until I felt pretty sure. In an email conversation I confronted "Rob."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Come on, Ted. I know it's you."

"Ted? Who the hell** is Ted? I can't believe you're accusing me of being someone named Ted. I'm Rob. Rob in San Diego."

"Like Rob in High Fidelity? And Rob's girlfriend Laura in High Fidelity? You didn't even get an original plot for your assumed identity."

"What's High Fidelity? Is that a movie? A book?"

"Oh please. You've clearly done your research. Watching all the movies I love suddenly."

"You're freaking me out. This Ted character has obviously worked you over."

Ok, so you get the point. The above conversation may or may not have taken place verbatim. Rob denied being Ted. But I knew I was right.

So, I can also concoct schemes and trickery, though I hate it and in truth I was rather sick the entire time feeling like I was living in a sort of nightmare***. It was my birthday at the time, so I guess this must have been happening in March and not December like I originally thought—although, the Christmas before my birthday, I received an acoustic guitar and a couple books (Spreading Misandry and Poetry Speaks) from a mysterious benefactor (another plot from another movie). Who could it have been? Ted hated it that I was turning into a feminist because of the English department. Though I wasn't a feminist.

March 27th. I email "Rob" and tell him how depressed I am because it's my birthday and I'm SO lonely (you will hate me for being scheming, but I didn't like being stalked. Weird, I know). I tell him how much I need the comfort of a male companion, but there is no one. "Well," I say, "there's my ex-boyfriend who is still my friend," . . . Dave, we'll call him. He was way older than me, had just barely broken up with me, but we were still friends. So I tell "Rob" that Dave will come over and I'm just going to sleep with him for the hell of it. It will ease the loneliness.

I had no intention of being so stupid. But "Rob" would think me just that stupid and impulsive. So I have Dave come over and he leaves his vehicle out in front of my house all night. Ted, by the way, had enrolled in some master's courses back at the university, despite the fact that he lived an hour and a half away. So he was commuting back and forth.

Just by chance, I woke up at five in the morning and glanced out my bedroom window. The sky was pink, I remember because that was the reason I looked outside. At that very moment, Ted drove by and slowed when he saw Dave's car. He almost swerved into it, I think.

Ah sweet retribution.

See, he had work that morning in the city. My brother-in-law worked with him at the time. That was part of the scheme, which was probably my brother-in-laws plan, actually, now that I think of it. Jason (brother-in-law) went by Ted's cubicle to say hey. Ted looked like he'd been awake all night.

"You all right, Ted?" Jason asked.

"Not really."

"What's wrong, man?"

"I wish I could tell you," Ted said, with a wistful look. He did want to tell on me, I'm certain. He was the tattletale sort. He probably wanted to drive straight to my mom's house on his way to work that morning, break down her door, grab her by the shoulders and say, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOUR DAUGHTER DID LAST NIGHT?"

"I know what's going on, Ted. You need to stop," Jason said.

Guilt flashed across Ted's face, quickly replaced by feigned confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do. Seriously, it's out of hand. Leave her alone."

"Fine." I'm sure his shoulders slumped and a cloudy look filled his eyes. I know that look very well, still.

Jason was quite nice about it. He liked Ted just fine, while being very aware of his stalkerly impulses. So he wasn't rude. And I wasn't either.

There's clearly a reflection upon my poor judgment in this whole story, that I would be such a jerk to share it with you, that I would date Ted's brother, that I would make him think I'd slept with Dave just to find out the truth.

Who is the bigger jerk? you ask. Me or Ted? Ted would say me. And I would say Ted, while adding the caveat that I made a bunch of mistakes and bad decisions, like all the times I let him back into my life thinking he'd finally gotten over everything and could let me be the one who got away (the girl he only wanted when he couldn't have her). Like when he got married and sent an invitation to my mom and invited me, through my mother, to email him a congratulations or something. Big mistake.

And then when I stupidly let him have the address to my blog when I was just beginning to date Stoker—he'd asked to get in contact with me through my mom or sister (again). I said all right, thinking once more that he could NOT be a weirdo. All the anonymous comments he left were evidence that he couldn't.

Oh the madness.

And oh the strange fears that crop up when someone says something or does something that reminds me of him. Sometimes when I meet a new person and establish a light email rapport with them, because I can't see them, if they say or write anything remotely like Ted, I feel myself wondering if this is another one of Ted's ploys to infiltrate my life again, and this time he's even gone so far as to hire an actor to portray a 3-dimensional manifestation of his assumed identity. Crazy, I know. And inevitably I feel the question burning in my head, the curiosity, the urge to jokingly ask, "You're not, by any chance, a forty-one year old man of Scandinavian descent with blond hair and blue eyes, with a background in electrical engineering now practicing patent law . . . are you?"

Shit.

That's the paranoia.



*In fact, this is how Stoker won me over.
**Ted never swore, so this was incontrovertible proof that Rob was not TED.
***Recurring nightmare beginning when I was eight: a baseball scout claims he wants me on his team because he's seen how amazing my arm is when I'm throwing dirt clods at things with my friends. I don't want to be on his team. But he won't give up. Even after I've reduced him to being a wheelchair with my dirt clods (a creepy wooden wheelchair, no less). Nothing will stop this major league baseball scout. I wake up after his face is a bloody mess. Hmmmm. I must have seen some kind of horrible movie at my cousin's or something—they were always watching age-inappropriate movies. Some movie with a wooden wheelchair in it....

Magic Numbers

Real quick, I just want to celebrate a momentous achievement. THREE-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-SEVEN POSTS. Thank you, thank you.

I know that by my age, most people have already written somewhere near two-thousand-six-hundred-fifty-two posts* or thereabouts, but I didn't even know what a blog was until January of 2005, and as you can see, I acted quickly upon discovering this noble art (thank you Communication Arts magazine—those of you elitists who wanted to keep it a secret club [all you Live Journal snobs heh heh heh], feel free to go burn an effigy at their headquarters for spoiling everything what with their vast readership and all . . . and yes, I totally know how you feel. It's how I feel about the vinyl cool-kids club, from which I've retired . . . ).

Anyway, yes, 327 is the most magical number in our numeral system. So I wanted to celebrate. Thanks for coming to my party.


*Assuming you started blogging at fifteen and wrote three posts a week every year for seventeen years. NOT impossible. I know there are people with this goal . . . somewhere.

Paranoia. Part II.

In this story, I am not the hero (but like I had to tell you THAT...). I don't mind being honest about the fact that when I was young, I may have been a self-centered jerk. Most likely, I will realize at forty-two that I was egocentric at thirty-two. In fact, I hope for that. I hope I keep growing and evolving.

If you didn't read Paranoia, read it first. I mean, if you want to. If you don't care about me or my blog, then fine. Skip it and just read this. Fine. That's fine. Go right ahead. You're missing out. But do what you want. Who am I to advise you? I'm sure the back-story is completely unnecessary and I'm sure you can find several individuals who will pitch in during a gripe-session about my needless wordiness. I'll give you their email addresses. You guys can meet up for coffee.

To pick up where I left off, Ted asked me to marry him after three or four years of wishy-washy behavior towards me and the relationship. I said no, and goodbye forever.

The following school year, the Scorpio who'd taught me that men can be passionate and vibrant (rather than dead inside like withered autumn leaves, like Ted) moved to the Midwest to take care of his grandfather. We fell out of contact and I began dating a beautiful bead-maker with Native American roots. He made me bracelets and necklaces when he couldn't sleep because of a rare condition involving asthma, and taught me how playing the banjo can be sexy and not just silly.

I romanticize this because I can—it's in the past now. You know how it is.

I'm telling you this next part so you can see how I was somewhat cruel.

The next summer, the bead-maker wanted me to stay in our college town, but I insisted on moving back home to work. It crushed him and I thought he was just being ridiculous. While I was in the city, we had some kind of misunderstanding (I could detail it, but for brevity's sake, I don't) and he vanished. I was lonely and broken-hearted.

So what did I do? The only wise thing a moron can do. I called Ted.

In my defense, I didn't have any friends in the city. People got married and moved away. I had spent three or four years chasing Ted and never had time to nurture friendships.

I only wanted to go sky-diving. Something really crazy. Because the bead-maker had left me cold and lonely and I thought in all my theatrics that I had nothing to live for.

Ted and I went sky-diving. Then after that, he wanted to date again. I relented to just "hanging out." Cruel. I know, because I was really set on never getting into another exclusive relationship with him. I mean, honestly and stupidly, I thought that if I spent time with him and he'd changed and treated me better, then I could see us getting back together. So I wasn't a complete monster. You know?

But my how the tables had turned....

When fall came and it was time to go back to college, I let Ted help me move. And like a mean jerk, when he left to go back to the city that night, I said good riddance. It's kind of hazy. Maybe we spent a few weekends together wherein I tried to see if he had suddenly become chivalrous and cool and sweet and not small-hearted and etc. And maybe not. My memory fails me.

I began dating someone else. I told Ted that it was really over. Good luck. He accused me of being a jerk and I said, I know, you're right, it was unfair of me to ask you to go sky-diving with me. But we'll always have Paris, kid. He didn't think that was funny.

I thought he was REALLY gone this time.

Sometime that winter, I learned about eBay. I began bidding on things. I really really wanted this stupid script to the movie "Grosse Point Blank" because I fancied that if I had it, I could definitely write a blockbuster romantic comedy. Like a fool I used my unique last name as my screen name on eBay. Two of the auctions I'd participated in on other items (LP's of "Astral Weeks") got snaked from me at the last second. I was feeling pretty bitter about losing.

But there I was, winning the ridiculous script because NO ONE WAS BIDDING ON IT. My day had come at last. Victory never looked so scrumptious. Suddenly, out of nowhere, some jerk bid against me. One person. Being very competitive, I fumed. The bid war began. I had to win.

I felt strongly that if ONLY I HAD THIS SCRIPT, all my problems would be solved. The script I was working on in my spare time would magically become the golden script, the script to rewrite history, the script to turn the Sahara into verdant fields of corn, putting an end to hunger. I needed that script so bad. I needed to KNOW THE KEY to making my script* enchanting and the key was in the "Grosse Point Blank" script.

Naturally, I emailed the competing bidder. Or maybe mysterious-bidder emailed me first. In any case, I pled my case. We quickly struck up an email relationship because I have a tragic weakness for emailing. Want to disarm me? Send me a compelling email and expect a response in return, THEN write me back and charm me completely with your wit, your clever insights, and your sparkling intellect. I'll be putty in your hands.

It's disgusting. But also, isn't it awesome?

Mysterious bidder was named Rob. He lived in San Diego. He had a girlfriend named Laura. Laura was great, but she was mad at Rob and they were on the brink of breaking up because Laura wanted to live with Rob, but somehow Rob had strong core values and thought that was wrong and he didn't think it right to take advantage of her. So Laura was dating other guys to make Rob jealous—turns out, what she really wanted was Rob to marry her**.

There were signs. I'm not a moron (though all clues say otherwise). When Ted and I were dating, we communicated by email A LOT. People have tics in the way they speak that show up in their writing. I started to feel like I was emailing Ted. I tricked Rob into describing himself. How could he lie?

Rob looked a lot like Ted.

But Ted denied it.

*A compelling tale about a college age girl who writes a letter to John Cusack, which he answers, and then of course he falls in love with her, and the college girl's dreams come true, etc. Contact me if you'd like to buy the rights to this potentially surprise hit.

**This is sort of the plot to the film/book "High Fidelity." Notice a pattern? No, not a pattern with my former love for John Cusack, but the other pattern.