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goosing the leader

My new thing is white wine and What Not to Wear. Every Friday, I buy a seven-dollar bottle of chardonnay from the store next door, perch in front of my TV with Chinese food at nine o'clock and eat and sip as I watch, laughing out loud at all the funny parts. If I have plans afterward, I go out at ten, already buzzed from the chardonnay. If I'm staying in, I watch the encore presentation at eleven. This is the person I am, this is what makes me happy.

I can see, very clearly, how addictions develop. How people slide down that slippery slope from encountering a new thing (me, last September, with alcohol) to growing very excited about that new thing (me, every month since, fucking Justin and grateful for alcohol and the flexibility it grants me) to becoming totally, pathetically dependent on that new thing (me, a year or so from now, if I decide to turn my Friday-night routine into a more frequent thing, which I won't, because I have never gotten jazzed over the prospect of alcoholism, yuck).

Today, I was talking to Aaron about my sore muscles, about how, in my quest to lose five pounds by Saturday, I totally overdid it at the gym, and I felt like a total asshole, afterward, realizing how I sounded. Like one of those people who log calories and brag about the time they put in at the gym, who spend the beginning of the day thinking about working out, who spend the end of the day jawing to everyone who will listen about how long and hard they worked out. But that's what you feel, in the moment, when the burn sets in. You feel superlatively healthy and powerful. You feel like, I can't wait to tell everyone how sore I am. I stayed on the exercise bike six minutes longer, today, than I could previously. I felt like shit through those last six minutes, I currently feel like I've been hit by a bulldozer, and I am not five pounds thinner, but I feel superior. Just because I did something to excess and lived to tell the tale and plan on repeating same tomorrow.

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For this, "The Round-Up " , I won some money in two local fiction contests. I also had to do two live readings before an audience. (Not ideal for this piece, which you'll know if you peek at it.) I emailed it to Justin beforehand and invited him to come listen, but he was less than enthusiastic about it. Fiction isn't his thing.

You may sort of recognize it. In its original incarnation, it was "gone, fishing" , a bunch of little mindscraps all stuck together to imitate a Follow the Leader entry in the March round. It wasn't a real thing then, I didn't even intend it as one then, but around this time two months ago, it started rolling around in my brain again.

What it was missing, it turned out, I found in Justin, in things he'd said over the months. The thing about marriage; the thing about looking at TV. I literally transplanted lines from our various conversations and planted them throughout.

Now that I think about it, I wonder whether that's why he didn't really want to come to the thing. Maybe he saw himself in it, rather overtly at that, and was offended by the context. I hadn't thought of that before. It didn't matter that he didn't come; it was really embarrassing, anyway. I used the money I won to buy groceries to make him dinner.

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Postscript. There is also a shot of Aaron in there, something I lifted, sans permission, from his journal. Sorry, Aaron.

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Post-postscript. Aaron, I caught the glaring mistake at the end, the accidental lapse into present tense. That was one of the most confusing parts of it.

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I had a dream, last night, that in some imaginary round, every participant titled her entry "____ing the Leader." Goosing the Leader, Slapping the Leader, Fucking the Leader, et cetera. I woke up with an enormous hangover from a very small amount of fun, which I realize very much undermines my earlier defense about not drinking except on Fridays. What can I say, law school sucks.