Straight No Chaser

X-Ray

lunch with marcus's parents tomorrow. the in-laws. marcus, it seems, won't be present, which he called to warn me about, thinking i'd be uncomfortable. i'm not. he's the one who is deathly afraid of his friends' parents, not me. i can think of nothing more pleasant than for us to have a couple of hours to ourselves without his awkwarding everything up, trying to make it feel like less of a double date.

i freaked out a little on thursday, when we found out they were coming in a little earlier than expected. "no big deal," he said, not handing me my shirt. "you know how they are, they think we're sleeping together anyway." maybe, but i'm not comfortable with that idea, not when i slept under their roof for a week, not when thomas is paying for my lunch tomorrow. parental approval, in my experience, is contingent on chastity. or whatever. i've done well with them, so far; they see me as intelligent and well-spoken and they smile at me a lot, and they are always trying to harp on parallels between our situation and theirs, thirty years ago. i am powerfully tempted, at every juncture, to strike up a heart-to-heart with his mother, who knows what he is inside, sees what he's doing to me. not that it would help, which is why i don't. but i want to. lunch, tomorrow, will be interesting.

i'm hoping to see him tonight, after i get out of that god-forsaken salsa club, because we have some talking to do. and i don't want to go to a salsa club anyway, i'd rather just do that, but, you know, duty calls. sean and treesje will be there. it will suck. i can't be around them anymore, not knowing the way he acts when she's not there, and not with the complex she's developed, the way she looks at me out of the corner of her eyes when she is. i will say, she's smarter than everybody thinks, because she really takes it to heart, the whole thing of keeping her enemies close.

i feel like crying all the time now. i should have gone home this weekend, the way i told my mom i might, except that if i had, i'd be on a plane right now, feeling just as anxious and out of control as i do anyway, but without any recourse for at least the next three days. i could have skipped class on monday, could have put all academic and social responsibilities to the wayside till i got back, but what would that i have helped? i probably won't even go home for spring break, just on account of how powerless i feel when i'm six hundred miles away from here, even when everyone else is scattered to the corners of the nation. this is where things happen; it's where i make some of the worst possible decisions on a daily basis; it's where i have more extracurricular responsibilities than i've really earned; it's where i make a couple dozen dollars a day for essentially doing nothing; it's where my future husband (or whatever) slides in and out of accountability for ruining my life every day. i'm glad i didn't go home, and yet, i'm completely dreading having to sleep in this bed tonight.

my roommate sleeps topless. says one breast is considerably bigger than the other, and that she buys her bras to fit the smaller of the two, figuring they'll fit better once she "loses weight." not that she's making any actual attempt to lose weight. she eats peanut butter from a jar. but so, at night, because it's usually pretty hot in our room (by her account; i'm always freezing, though), she peels off her top, unclasps her bra, and sacks out like she's in a tanning booth, loudly lamenting the underwire cuts at the top of her rib cage. she's doing it now. i'm not listening.

she's going to flunk out again. if you'd asked me yesterday, i'd have estimated that she hasn't been to class in a week. krystle asked her, though, and evidently it's been more like three weeks, which i guess i hadn't noticed because i'd been too busy going to class. she's purchased, in that period of time, something like four new pairs of heels, each of which she categorizes as "stripper shoes," and which, she says, are somehow worth the knowledge that she's missed three important tests, each worth close to a quarter of her grades in their respective courses. she's going to flunk everything, duh. she keeps making the excuse that she's taking these days to get in contact with her doctor, whom she wants to write her a note of pardon for missing so much class, but it's obviously not going to do any good. she's missed enough class that the thought of returning to class is intimidating; and plus, she's not taking her medication anyway. she has no real explanation for that, except that she claims it limits her alertness, but assuming you don't have to be but so alert to skip class and go shoe-shopping every day, i sort of doubt any doctor or professor is going to go for that.

none of which is any of my business. i just hate to see people flagging when it seems like they don't have to. that's my tutor side.

my anti-tutor doesn't want to take the job working with this eleventh grader, even though i've already agreed to start on sunday. it's not that i don't need or want the money, it's not that i think she'll be any more difficult than the college students i work with every day, and it's not the prospect of driving twenty miles to her home every week that has me hesitating. it's more that i caught the note in her mom's voice, over the phone, and i can tell she's really serious about this; her daughter's sentence structure is weak and she wants that problem fixed so she can COMPETE (her word and inflection), be eligible for SCHOLARSHIPS AND OTHER FABULOUS PRIZES, and whatever else; knock down the obstacles in the way of the limitless opportunities she'll unlock by learning to construct a grammatically sound paragraph. i really don't know if i have the patience, at this point, to deal with a woman like that and her surly daughter for the rest of the semester. but i've already taken the job.

i have spiteful thoughts now, which never used to happen.

sean says if he got a woman pregnant at this point in his life, he'd punch her in the stomach/push her down the stairs as a surefire tactic for escaping responsibility. horrible thing to say, but seriously, where's the downside? sex with a really sexy guy, a brief stint as a conduit of life and then it's over? no more class? no more feeling like shit? okay! except that, no, there's still this yo-yo aspect to things, this bizarre understanding that things will be great by sunday, even if they suck now, and so, before i make a fatal commitment like that one, i should probably wait it out at least long enough to trick myself into thinking life is great again. because i will, come the next upswing. i'll glide home from a fun evening or a rewarding tutoring session or a great orgasm or strange's class and i'll think, life is great.

they're really serious about this salsa club thing. it is damn near midnight, and they want to leave, now, and go to a salsa club, which will be fun for everyone but me, because i'm in a bad mood and i hate clubs anyway. treesje loves clubs and krystle has her out-of-town friend here, so they're both guaranteed a great time tonight, no matter what, and none of my friends understand what's going on with marcus right now and they're impossible to talk to about certain things, and i just want to stay in and be bitchy and anti, listen to my ipod and await a call from marcus. that is what i want. i don't want to wear flats and a cute skirt, i don't want to put my contacts in, i don't want to be the one who complains till everyone else finally agrees to leave, or the one who stands shyly in the corner and gets hit on by guys with grillz. i just don't.