July 25, 2010
“I don’t really know what I’m doing,” I tell her, nervous, trying my best not to look at my feet while I say this. My chest clenches. It is difficult to breathe.
She just waits, and I can’t tell if she’s being patient or if she’s uninterested.
“I like you,” I say. My face is flushing. “I like you a lot, and I think you like me too. I dumped Peter, and he asked me if there was someone else, and I told him there could be, and I want there to be. I dumped him for you, and if you don’t like me, I get it, but I like you, and I want this to work.” I feel like passing out.
But she smiles, and everything is better.
In the summer, we stay in town for Canada Day, and then spend a day nursing hangovers before coming home. My mother will kill me when I come home for Independence Day on a motorcycle, but as she weaves us south, my arms clutching around her waist, it’s worth it.
July 24, 2010
In Paris, at community college, with the cast of the show Community, and a few additional characters like myself, and a rather unfriendly older black gentleman, and a woman I used to work with, who looked like a teacher of special education who was secretly evil. Every day, late for class, running into the center of the city, which is grey and rainy all the time, to get to class in one of the legs of the Eiffel Tower.
April 24, 2010
Am supposed to meet with Kathy for dinner at a restaurant, but I am walking to King of Prussia, and I end up forty minutes late. Rekha is there, by surprise, but they have eaten without me, and I am not allowed in the restaurant anyway, for I am a mess, and I missed my reservation, and the restaurant is crowded. Two old friends are outside, also not allowed in, and I talk with them a little, but feel out of place, as the conversation gets more awkward and stilted. We go to get ice cream instead, and when we come back to the restaurant it is night and Kathy and Rekha have gone. I slowly walk back. Then Kathy reappears, picking me up, offering me a ride home, and we are driving these summery backroads near Hillside, which is suddenly on a mountain within a valley. We drive up, climb up jungle gyms to get inside, and the school is an empty red castle, and we sit at the windows, looking down at the people moving like ants.
April 18, 2010
At school, in class about American history taught by old linguistics professor. I have been cutting class for weeks, all of March, because it’s mostly useless lecture stuff, but I feel weird to be going back, only to find the class I am returning to is a day of working out wizard duels, because apparently Benjamin Franklin and Harry Potter fought in history. Meredith is there, and she tells me it’s important at these things to choose who you root for beforehand, and I can think of no one in Harry Potter I care about until I realize I like Luna, so I choose Luna. Meredith is also rooting for Luna. We are watching the duels outside that first hospital in America out on Pine Street, and feeling lame. Britt is there, cheering.
I leave early, climb the smoky stairs, and outside, on a tiny Philadelphia street, surrounded by brick, I run into my father, and we start looking for places to brunch.
April 17, 2010
He is staring at me, eyes wide.
I have had a baby.
I have had a baby.
Living with my mother and my brother, but no father, nor the father of the baby. The house is like the one I grew up in on Regent Street, tan, warm, dangerous. I don’t want to raise a baby here, but I have no choice. How am I going to raise a child? Why do I have a son? A son.
My days are left mostly to myself, to take care of my baby. There is a hospital nearby, one requiring taking a trolley and walking a few more blocks, that is beige and Catholic and 1974, so similar to the hospice where my grandmother spent her last few days. At the hospital, the doctor prods his little legs, tickles him, draws blood and I shh and rub his back. My son, in pain, crying, as the doctor presses a band-aid to his arm. My son, hurt. My heart breaks in half.
April 15, 2010
With Claire, to see a film at the Anthony Wayne, but when I walk inside I can’t find her anymore, and all the faux-gold theatrical touches are dark with grime. The walls and carpet have turned black. I try to find the right screen, not even sure of what I am seeing, and run into someone I used to know, and we start smoking, watching Breathless.
When it ends, we are surrounded by other smokers, and a fire starts, but I can’t get out.
April 15, 2010
Having friends over for dinner—three who don’t know each other. In the end, one doesn’t show, and the dinner falls apart. At the ACME in Paoli, I pick up tomatoes and bread, before the long haul home, to drive along deserted pastoral roads into Amish country. The night is purple and grey and black, and the stars are shining, and everything has the air of the apocalypse. I am nervous. The sky is trembling.
