Despertar

and then my head exploded

I need a break right now. I'll have an aneurysm if I try to read anymore of the nine thousand-page legislative history of U.S. v. Stevens. It's interesting, but I just, God damn.

1. The last time you had sex, was it in their bed or yours?
Theirs. Not so much in it, though, as on it. Or even against it, really. Anyway. My apartment is woefully messy and not fit for company this week. I'll clean on Saturday, I think.

2. Which is harder, telling someone you love them or that you don't?
The former; you've got more at stake. Anyone I'd been dating long enough to be in a position that I felt pressured to profess love for him, if I didn't love him by then, I doubt I'd be all that concerned with his feelings anyway. The day after I broke up with Chris, I felt like a weight had been lifted. Whereas almost no one can squeeze an "I love you" out of me these days.

3. Who was the last person you got into a fight with?
Justin, via gchat, because I was too stupid not to gchat him during work. This, what you're experiencing now, my inability to focus on anything of substance, is the product of my own stupidity. Someone remind me: Never gchat Justin during work.

4. Is there someone that you believe you will always be attached to?
Outside of my immediate family, there are a few. Of course, I can just as easily imagine the wedge that would drive any two of us apart. But I try hard to maintain important friendships.

5. How many windows are open on your computer?
Thirteen. Microsoft Outlook, some word documents and a bunch of Lexis research crap. Also a Google map to the nearest Thai restaurant.

6. What are you doing after this?
Returning to my incredibly wide-ranging research on the unconstitutionality of a federal statute prohibiting non-artistic depictions of animal cruelty.

7. Where did you buy the shirt you are wearing?
The shirt came from Express; the blazer, which is part of a suit, Nine West.

8. Do you like hugs?
Yes, but I hate the moment of awkwardness when you're unsure whether the person in front of you is awaiting one. Also, I don't exactly love touching people who are exposing a lot of skin.

9. Are you a loud person?
Quite the opposite.

10. Do you have any piercings?
Seven, but because I'm so bad at keeping up with tiny things, five of them have been wearing the same jewelry since New Year's, approximately. Someone find me a cute navel ring and send it.

11. How's your mood?
Pretty terrible, really. First there's the whole Justin thing, the ridiculous chronology of which I won't even begin to bore you with. Then there are two deadlines hanging over my head, each one carrying an intense pressure to perform spectacularly, and a compulsory dinner tonight with the firm partners. Tonight, the one night I thought I'd get to go home and play the Sims. In my hot, messy room where every surface is drenched with perfume and smells cloyingly delicious.

12. Does everyone deserve a second chance?
The federal appellate courts seem to think so.

13. Do you believe that everyone has a soulmate?
More to the point, I believe that there's no one whose appeal is lower than the lowest existing set of standards. I sat next to the fattest, ugliest woman imaginable on the train yesterday, wiry chest hairs poking out of her cleavage, and she was holding a toddler. Somebody fucked her. Anyone who's willing to overlook the actual quality of their mate can find someone to be with. No one really has to be alone.

14. Have you ever had your heart broken?
Repeatedly, by the same two people.

15. Do you like anyone?
I like you.

16. If someone liked you would you want them to tell you?
I can't see where it would matter much right now. Instead of telling me, I'd want them to just pile on the desperate, undeserved attention. I'd catch on eventually, but because I couldn't reciprocate, I wouldn't tell.

17. Baseball or football?
I refuse to spend the rest of my life apologizing for not being interested in sports. The men around here use about a hundred sports references a day, even though the diversity training videos remind us that such references can make women feel excluded in the workplace. I could spend all my free time wikipediaing baseball terminology, but why should I have to learn a whole new language centered on something I completely don't care about when this is a law firm and not a batting cage?

18. Will you be in a relationship in four months?
We'll see, won't we?

19. Have you ever cried in front of a friend?
It's not something I do often.

20. Was middle school a bad experience for you?
The worst. Think Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, except factor in that I was skinny, ugly, bespectacled, offputtingly smart and one of a teeny minority of black kids in my program. For the latter reason most of all, I didn't really have a place among my classmates except as an accent, a novelty. And because there definitely weren't any romantic prospects for me among the white boys, who were presently being groomed to appreciate straight blond hair, blue eyes and tiny butts, I was completely stunted when it came to any sort of psychosexual awakening, too. I could run circles around my peers intellectually, but I barely did any work in the classroom because I was constantly distracted with navigating the hallways. My parents picked the school because they wanted me educated among the children of the well-to-do, figuring high-achieving parents would lobby for the causes that would produce high-achieving kids, but then they simultaneously eschewed any behavior they thought I was picking up from my classmates and constantly pressed me to remember I was different. What was I supposed to do? Every twelve-year-old wants to be exactly like her friends; she hates standing out. Not only did I stand out in every possible way, I was also way too immature to divine a balance between imitating my white friends and avoiding the appearance of a black girl who wished she were white. But I've told this whole thing before.

21. Are you cold, warm or just right at the moment?
Office thermostats are set to accommodate two hundred-pound men. Everyone else freezes all day.

22. Do you take any medication on a daily basis?
We're on a mandatory ten-week alcoholic bender. I'd be unwise to start popping Ambien.

23. Have you ever faked sick?
Who hasn't?

24. Anything good happening tomorrow?
Well. If God smiles on me and the fight ends, I'll go see Angels and Demons with Justin, then finish off the night with a great deal of sex. If not, though (more likely), the best thing about tomorrow will be sleeping from the time I get home in the evening till my circadian clock wakes me up.

25. Has anyone ever underestimated your intelligence?
Not sure. Lying is this whole dance, you know. Whether or not I see through the lie, which I often do, social convention dictates I have to accept it anyway, because to challenge it would be rude. Worse still for boyfriends. I don't really think he was at his parents' house that time, and I'm sure he's just passive-aggressively not letting on about this weekend. But maybe I'd just rather not know.

26. List one of your fears:
The Mariana Trench. Halfway into its depth, the water pressure is high enough to crush an oxygen tube, and because no sunlight can penetrate that far, it's possible to lose your bearings and swim toward the floor instead of the surface. Can you imagine? Paddling desperately toward the promise of air, only to realize you're even deeper than where you started and the crushing weight of the water will eventually kill you if a shark doesn't first?

27. Has anyone ever drunk called/texted you?
No one more than Tina. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

28. Have you ever moved? If so, how many times?
Seven, up to and including the move that landed me in my current apartment.

29. Name two of your favorite colors?
Kendal and cornflower.

30. What hoodie did you wear last night?
I didn't. I looked hot, though. Maybe a little trashy, also. Justin called me Erin Brockovich because after a day spent around lawyers I went home and changed into a slutty dress where you could see the rim of my leopard-print bra.

31. Do you want to get married?
If I haven't within six years, even if I don't say so, to save face for instance, you can rest assured that I'm very, very unhappy about it.

32. Do you sleep on your stomach?
My mind is fast-forwarding to how miserable I'm going to be tonight, having wineglass after wineglass thrust into my hands while I struggle to make meaningful conversation with the same God damned people I've been pandering to all week.

33. Are you ticklish?
...No.

34. Are you someone who worries too often?
Sometimes I fixate so hard on something terrible that might happen that I can barely walk in a straight line. But in my defense, sometimes the thing I'm worried about actually does happen, and I find that obsessing uselessly over it first really helps.

35. Do you think someone is thinking about you right now?
Best case scenario, Justin is thinking he wishes he'd never told me he was back from California.

36. Do you know a few people that smoke weed?
Not so much anymore. Everyone I knew in college who made a habit out of it either dropped out or didn't graduate when I did. And for obvious reasons, almost no one in law school smokes weed on a regular basis. It's a lot like how you rarely see really obese people in their eighties. The people with the worst habits just get weeded out.

37. Do you know anyone who drinks a lot?
I stand corrected. People in the legal profession are something like ten times likelier to be raging alcoholics than are other professionals with terminal degrees.

38. What were you doing at midnight last night?
If memory serves, I was instructing Justin to move to the edge of the bed, where I discovered that I could sit on his lap, and he could lie with his knees outside mine, and that we could do it that way.

39. Has a boy/girl ever called you babe/baby?
No one more persistently than Marcus, who didn't mean it.

40. Do you think anyone has feelings for you?
Yes, but I also think those people can go to hell for about the next thirty-six hours?

41. Who is number one on your top right now?
The other leg is both the same.

42. Are you afraid of roller coasters?
There's nothing to be afraid of as long as I never get back on one.