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02.11.2004 - 8:10 p.m.
Wednesday
FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER: THREE
VARIOUS PLEASANT MEMORIES TOLD THREE VARIOUS WAYS*
* Whenever I go all KRAZY4CAPSLOCK I feel like I'm ripping off
Mimi
Smartypants, but luckily (LUCKILY I SAY [which looks like
"lickily", ooh]) you will never confuse the two of
us because Mimi is like tiramisu and I am like diet fudge soda.
ANYWAY ONTO THE MEMORIES
It's exactly that time of day
in the late summer where dusk moves with an almost audible click
into nighttime. The day was beautifully long, illuminating the
park until everyone laughed and told each other how much they
would miss this time of year, and some people just gazed skyward,
smiling at the softly glowing sky.
She's walking home, her house
is only a few blocks away. She feels a tingling, a thrumming
along her body from exercise, and a silly giggling buzz from
having hit three (three!) balls quite nicely.
The night is so warm, so thick,
she feels like she's moving through bathwater. It smells sweet
and grassy, until she passes a driveway with two boys washing
a car, and she inhales a sharp tang of wet asphalt and soap.
As she walks by each house,
she hears, for a brief moment, the activity within. Everyone's
windows are open. Most doors are open, with screens. She hears
televisions, a snippet of a show. She hears a blip of a conversation.
She sees squares of light, silhouettes.
It's the most amazing sensation.
She's moving, but she feels like she's standing still. She's
alone, but she feels like the world is somehow swirling with
her, around her.
This hot night, this shutter-flash
of other peoples' lives, this perfect moment.
:::
You're, what, seventeen? Filled to the brim with all kinds of
fucking melodrama. If it's not one thing, it's another - and
you want the world to see. Oh, the agony, you wear it
like a beauty contestant's sash. You're a walking clich�:
white makeup, black everything, trembling sneer.
You're so tough.
You're in Portland, which you
think is pretty hot shit. Actually, you're kind of freaked out
because you're from a small town, but it's not like anyone is
gonna know that. No way. You are decked up in your 14 hole Doc
Martens and your nose ring and your Manic Panic hair, because
you are fearless.
Not.
You're with a group that's
hanging out in Pioneer Square. You know a couple of people, but
not everyone, and you're feeling seriously fucking intimidated.
You are occupied with trying to smoke a Camel Light without coughing
(and without dragging too fast because that makes you kind of
sick) and you're digging your toe into the cement steps and you're
mostly laughing at what other people say.
"Hey," says a guy.
He's sprawled on the steps, drinking something out of a paper
bag. He's got an enormous green mohawk, studded leather jacket,
a tattoo on his neck. "You."
You are seriously freaked out
to see he's pointing at you.
"�?", you say,
because you are just that cool.
"You have the best,"
he says, and you see that his eyes are what you might call extremely
dilated, "the best chin."
You stare.
He lifts a hand and traces
a shape between a U and a V in the air.
You're so tough.
Not.
:::
I was sitting at my desk tonight,
getting ready to leave. Workplace, as you know provides meals
(oh, or didn't you? hello, and welcome to the size of my ass),
and I had packed up dinner for myself and JB. Barbecued pork and green beans tonight,
mm-mm.
My coworker Scott poked his
head in the door and smiled at me. "A little bit of pork,"
he sang out, "equals a whole lotta love!".
last ::: next
10
comments so far.
I have moved. - 1.03.2005
Obviously, a work in progress. - 12.27.2004
Happy holidays! - 12.24.2004
Listen, I am not a complete dick, it's not like I want Joe to die alone surrounded by cats or something. - 12.23.2004
Plus I am convinced my butt is extra big when it's upside down. - 12.22.2004
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