Straight No Chaser

Xeroma, Mental

1. my ex is: bigger, faster and stronger than me. considerably, on all counts.

2. maybe i should: just turn my mind off for a few hours and try to enjoy what is, by all rights, supposed to be a great day.

3. i don't understand: how someone enrolled in college, as my roommate is, can dedicate herself wholly to the cause of not earning the degree she's here for. i really, really don't.

4. i've lost my: cher cd. last semester, it got trapped in stefan's holding compartment, against the top of the radio console. i used unrolled hangers and everything, tried for weeks to get it out, but it stayed stuck. stefan is gone now, and so is cher.

5. people would say that i'm: acting a little moody today, and they would be right, except that what i'm actually being is downright evil. i've been here almost an hour and haven't made eye contact with anyone but tracey, accidentally. i don't know why. everything is the same as it was yesterday.

6. love is: what i felt for marcus when he said he'd help me name the new car. it's not what i felt when he said he'd help me christen the back seat; that was something else entirely. though, now that i think about it, he was probably kidding, as, jointly, we've had enough of back seats to last us a lifetime at this point. although. well. who knows.

7. somewhere, someone is: cleaning out my old car and being shocked into mystic wonder at the discovery of a perfectly good cher td, trapped in the holding compartment, against the top of the radio console. possibly inserting said cd into a player, somewhere; rocking out to "half-breed." because somewhere, someone besides me geninely enjoys at least some of cher's music. i refuse to believe otherwise.

8. forever is: how long i stared at the screen before coming up with an answer to this question, because i'm thinking about something else marcus said last night, about the bible. sometimes, not very often but occasionally, i wish he'd stop talking after the first seven minutes of the conversation, particularly when it's late at night. he's always pleasantly drowsy at the beginning, very agreeable. spikes in his energy level are what send him up on his soapbox.

9. i never want to: go to bowling class, even though it's easily my least demanding commitment, this semester. i am getting to be a better bowler, and i'm kind of proud of myself for that, but then again, it's a skill i couldn't care less about, and it consumes two hours of my life, weekly. plus i have to wear sweatpants, which makes me feel hopeless, and i keep forgetting to return my bowling shoes to the community shoe cabinet. i have a stack of three pairs in the corner of my bedroom.

10. i think the current president: won the election unfairly and is one of the worst we've had since, maybe, nixon. i wouldn't go so far as to call him an idiot, here (although i often do, out loud), but i will say that my generation is going to suffer greatly in a world still recovering from his social security and education reform. i will also say that, after so much negative press on this one issue, the fact that he still can't pronounce "nuclear" raises serious questions about his fluid intelligence. also, i agree with kanye west.

11. when i woke up this morning: it was already ten o'clock and i was, therefore, already late for work. not for any good reason, like i was out all night disabling playground landmines or treating polio patients. rather, because i was up all night, scribbling dark thoughts in my journal. i'll probably set a lighter to all those scribblings. most of them need never see daylight, and nothing is private in a world wherein my roommate feels entitled to use my computer at her own unauthorized will. she's probably already found it, in fact, and is probably already taking a piss on my bed.

12. life is full of: surprises, jodi's right. good ones, sometimes, but mostly, ones that are really, really difficult to assimilate. i found out, yesterday, that one of my best friends has been lying to the rest of us for at least a year. and about something that, while not especially relevant to our friendship, has serious implications otherwise. and she's so not a liar. doesn't even believe in lies of omission, which makes her the only person i know who is completely honest and forthcoming. or so i thought. yesterday. anyway, it all just proves that life is full of surprises; you can't rightly expect or rely on anything but yourself. which is okay.

13. my past: is twenty-one years long and takes place primarily in maryland, meaning it's not memoir-ready just yet. my dad asks me, once every two or three weeks, when i'm going to write my memoirs. i have no idea why. he wouldn't read them. he'd buy a hundred copies, yes, distribute them proudly to all his friends and family members and display one on the coffee table, but i truly can't imagine him cracking the cover, and sitting through a few hundred pages of thoughts organized just as poorly as this journal. he likes things linear, and i can't think in a straight line to save my life. anyway, though, my past is mostly fine. any major drama was short-lived, and mostly my fault.

14. my dog is: still imaginary. to give you some idea of what a cushy childhood i had, one of its greater traumas was my mother's decreeing that we couldn't have a dog. we pushed for it, as kids will do, and she kept saying things like, "that just wouldn't be fair to me or to the dog. you guys would help out for the first couple of weeks, and soon i'd be taking him on all his walks, feeding him every day, and if anything happened to him i'd be the one all upset," blah blah blah blah. then, eventually, she broke down and told us the real reason. "dogs sit all over the furniture, when they don't wipe their butts after they poop." she's since admitted that that was her main aversion to the idea, the poop thing.

15. my cat: see above. or, insert poorly constructed sex joke. either way, there's not much to talk about, so instead, i will mention that i'm currently listening to franz ferdinand's "take me out," and i still don't completely understand how anyone dislikes this song. besides its being a little overexposed, i mean. but my roommate, who is musically racist (meaning she won't attempt to appreciate or even listen to any piece of music by a white artist), went on this huge annoying tirade last night about how i'm disrespecting myself by listening to "so much shit with no soul." i glared at her for a second, and then promptly switched over to some seventies-era quincy jones. she, meanwhile, turned on some david banner. which begs the question, which of us really has ignorant taste in music?

16. i get annoyed when: i look at the clock and realize it's time for class. i'm developing an early-onset strain of senioritis, i think. either that, or all the not eating nor sleeping is finally catching up with me in a horrible way. recently, i think it was yesterday, i tabulated all the time i've spent sleeping since returning to atlanta, and it was only something like twelve hours. similarly, i've only been to the cafeteria once, but have only spent two dollars and seventy cents on outside food to supplement that. which, because i don't have a personal pantry in which to store goods, basically means i haven't eaten anything since i've been back, either. which in itself is pretty annoying. it's annoying that, to find incentive to acknowledge my physical habits, i have to first endure an evening or morning of feeling completely wiped out.

17. parties are for:ever interrupting my weekends. i am not a partier, sorry, and i don't get excited by the million notices facebook sends me every day letting me know about this or that "ULTIMATE" event taking place over the coming weekend. i shrug and delete, every time, and then, a few minutes later, i think, fuck, there goes the movies on friday night. which makes me feel grumpy and resentful, which in tern makes me feel crochety. but i've never liked parties. not youthful ones, at least. i like my parents' parties. cards and food and sparkly clothes. and you can talk to people, whereas the success of a campus party is contingent on the music's being too loud to hear or think about anything but the current song, and dancing. which i don't like to do, in front of people. so, no, parties are not for me. i prefer things powwow style--everyone in a circle on the carpet, barefoot.

18. i wish: there was any chance of my getting to see marcus today. i've promised to be "understanding," but seriously, campaign season sucks, and there are three or four big things i've wanted to talk to him about this week, and they've all been put on hold for these infernal meetings. which is not his fault, i know. he wants this, he wants to win, and i want it for him. and anyway, tonight is not completely ruled out. fortune has otherwise smiled on thursdays, for me, so i'm not giving up on a miracle. also, though, i wish i were not so confused about things, right now, because i think he's about to present me with a crucial decision, and i don't trust myself to make it in my current state. with the exception of successfully getting the car towed yesterday, everything i've done independently this semester has failed pretty badly. the grades are great. everything else is a whirling disaster. even the way i got the grades is bizarre.

19. kisses are the worst when: they end too soon. in awkwardness, the premature termination of a kiss appears at the top of the sensuality scale. when marcus was at my house this past weekend, with two of his political friends in tow, we had to wait like three hours longer than expected for them to go to bed so we could hook up in the basement (which in itself was annoying, because both of his friends had complained all day about being soooooo tired, but then as soon as we got home they each had like three movies they wanted to watch, and me and marcus gave each other this look, like, this is so not happening today. it did, but it took too long), and then, of course, ten minutes in, one of the guys popped out of the guest bedroom to pee. if it had been a regular lip-to-lip kiss, we probably wouldn't have stopped, but it wasn't, so we did, and dove for covers. it wasn't embarrassing or anything, just annoying, and intensely frustrating. like so many things.

stopping here.

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