Sometimes I stay up too late, writing. I tell myself at least it’s not Facebook and that gives me a righteous few minutes but it is late at night and my face will bear testimony to it tomorrow. And what can I tell my co-workers? “Yeah, stayed up real late. Writing and shit, you know. Real cool stuff.” No, I mean – no.
Ever stay up way too late and look like a panda the next day? I texted Elsa.
Ya. She replied. I waited a moment.
Why? What doing? I asked.
Facebook haha she replied.
“I need a man in my life,” I told Vicki, poking at the green foam in my glass with my straw. Green. Inventive. Her eyes widened. “Oh come on,” I told her, “a guy. You know?”
“You need a man?! Like,” she leaned in closer, “Like your body needs a man? Or like, marriage?”
“Oh my – ” I choked before I could finish. Maybe green was not an indicator of potability. “Is that all that men are good for? I mean, I clarified, I said a ‘guy’, and that’s what I mean – a guy. A friend.” She seemed confused. “To fall in love with slowly?”
“No, when I say a guy I mean just a friend, a dude, a bro. I’m just tired of talking to girls right now.”
“That means me too, doesn’t it?” She frowned. “Did you just drink that whole thing?”
“That’s what I’m talking about! Every time I go out with you and your friends,” I sighed, rephrased. “It just seems whenever I go out with girls I’m told how inadequate I am, we all are, and I’m sick of it because the minute I challenge any of it I’m told I just don’t understand yet, or accused of being anti-girl.”
“What?” She was completely still, watching me.
“I’m tired of hearing about diets, and surgeries, and body modifications, and what this or that article says about when you should biologically reproduce. I don’t want to make the point of my life – why did any of us go to school or do anything other than embroider if it all leads up to this? I don’t want my life to be this one huge search for a ‘wonderful man’ with the right lifestyle it’s just sickening it just . . . My life needs to mean more than a huge diamond one day.”
Vicki looked at me steadily. I was looking down at my folded hands but I could feel her eyes pass over the bridge of my nose, my glasses, the top of my head like a hot searchlight. “You can get a sapphire, you know. They’re beginning to be in style so if you wait to get married it’ll most likely be in vogue by whenever that is. Sapphires are really pretty so you shouldn’t feel badly about not wanting a diamond – ”
“Was there some poisoned well I neglected to drink out of?” I interjected, even though I knew there was no stopping her description of wedding trends.
Or reaching her.
I wish I had a baby owl. We’ve been studying owls at school, and baby owls – yes, owlets, I am aware – occupy more of my free-thinking brain space than they should.
Forget purse dogs. I want an owl in my purse.
I could live on vacation forever – I mean, if there were a way to extend this into a permanent way of life, I would excel at the occupation.
As far as I can tell all it entails is drinking far too much coffee and watching nouvelle vague films. There may be the occasional deep existential thought tornado involved, but nothing more coffee can’t fix.
But maybe everyone wants to live like that too.
The highlight of my day was eating a cheeseburger.
“Can you think of a better name for this trenchcoat?” Lizzy’s mom asked me. I don’t know if she is a good person or not, but she has a charming manner. Enough so not to feel degraded by providing words on demand. “A better word than coat?”
“No, I mean I think it’s tacky but my mom wants me to wear large florals so, well,” she belted it over her tiny waist, “here we are.” I looked at it carefully. “I honestly don’t think that it’s tacky,” I told her “I think it’s vibrant.” She smiled, widely, and looked down at herself. “It is vibrant, isn’t it?”
When I affirmed that you could crash on my couch for a night or two, it was implicitly understood on my part that you were not to turn it into a Jamaican dance hall. Also the game of what-is-in-this-cupboard? Amusing to none but yourself.
Wait, I think I smell marijuana.
Where’s Havana?
“Isolde, what the hell is that?” I pointed at the white bag on my bed. “What’s what?” She answered cheerfully, coming in to look at whatever it was. She was wearing one of my hats and pulling on a pair of my gloves. She followed my gaze. “What? Afraid I’ll stretch them?”
“I am and you will. Please take them off before it takes and remove your parcel from my bed.” She snorted. “You’re so uptight. You could buy more gloves.” Not really, I thought.
“Anyway it’s not my ‘parcel’, it’s your bag. Your present,” she said with a smile. This will either be terribly good or terribly bad. Wait, what’s the etymology on terrible again? Ran briefly through my mind. I opened the bag. “What did you fit in an iPad box, Isolde?” I secretly felt a little bitter. I don’t even go to that store – what would the point be? “An iPad . . . ” she twisted her head sideways, widened her eyes. There’s a catch, there’s some horrible catch –
There it lay, brand new and shiny. “This looks like yours,” I said at length, and she turned away slightly. “And that’s because it is yours, isn’t it? Isolde, why would you do that? Are you giving it to me, is it beyond repair, what are you doing?” She rolled her eyes, walked up to me, and flipped it over. “Read it,” she said flatly.
‘RJ, Isolde, Always’
“Oh shit,” I groaned.
Sometimes I remember your face.
God, but that was a good face.
Probably my number one advice to would-be suitors would be to not quote Oscar Wilde out of context. To me, specifically. Paraphrasing is even more, shall we say, frowned upon.
Especially – I’m looking at you, guy who has no idea this blog exists or otherwise would plagiarize it – if between the puffs of cigarette smoke you blow on my face as seduction, you happen to mention that you’ve never read Wilde outside of his quotes. Do not raise your eyebrow after such an utterance.
I’m also looking at you, guy who doesn’t read anything on the Internet except porn – wait, sorry, guy who reads nothing on the Internet – because mocking my love of Wilde by asking if he were some new hotshot hipster writer with a beard made me die, a little inside, right there in the passenger side of your sport utility vehicle.
In essence – well, in essence you should already have said something better. You should have said something you thought of yourself.
Daycare Chronicles 