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i turned my face away and dreamed about you Fri|04.12 I saw you in your top hat. I was walking up the station steps, looking at the sky and building edges when I saw you moving by, wearing a black top hat. I stopped in the stairwell until you'd passed without seeing me. We were never really friends. Why pretend to be now? I don't understand why I like you. I don't see why you like me. What pulls us together when we see each other? We are not friends, and we're not related. So what is there to be? Our silences were good. Our fights could be hilarious. Well, looking back. Not so much at the time. You are so aggravating. And stubborn. And dare I say it, why yes I do--WRONG. Like, when you drink. Well, you say you've stopped. And I guess that's good because you were so muleheaded when you drank. Here's an example from my journal: We took a cab from the bar to his apartment and we weren't even on the meter, and he started bitching at the guy because he thought he was going to trick him out of money, and he's throwing bills at the driver, and I'm saying to the driver, "Just ignore him," the driver's trying to explain the new thing, like a computer he had, to me, and James is going off about money, real rude, and I'm telling him to shut up, and he ended up giving the driver $8 for a free ride, I don't know why. He has this thing about money, he thinks everyone wants his money and he doesn't even wait for them to ask, he throws it at them and gets pissed off. Anyway, he was acting like a real bastard, being mean, everything I said he'd turn around, the apartment was utter chaos, 2 puppies ripping everything apart, little pieces of chewed-up things scattered all over, they fighting and rolling around on the ground, barking, and he says, "Now you see why I don't call. When people say, 'Why didn't you call me when you were supposed to?'" in a female voice, and it's obvious that I'm the "people" he's referring to, and I say James, you haven't heard that from me in over a month. He knows that's right and he says, other people, too. So he decides he wants something to eat, and we walk to Lori's and he tells the waitress we're tripping, why I don't know, it pissed me off, and I wanted to write and I had his address book and I was writing in that and he got all pissed off because I was writing, he thought it was weird, and he said, "we come in here a lot after gigs, I have a reputation to hold up," and I said, "who was it who just told the waitress we were tripping? That wasn't me," and he said it was cool to do that, which it absolutely wasn't, and he wanted to leave, and we'd just gotten our root beer floats and he'd say things like, "we could leave if you'd drink your damn float," and I hadn't ordered it in the first place, and so I shoved it over to him and told him to drink it since he'd ordered it for me. I asked the waitress for the bill and we left and then he's saying shit like, "I'm still hungry," and now it's my fault that we didn't eat, he's acting like he left because of me when actually I wanted to stay, I was enjoying myself there except for him. So we walked all over the damn Tenderloin, people selling crack ("Proper 2-0"), I didn't know where the fuck I was, James was twisting and turning around the streets and finally we walked past the Y and I said, the Y! I just joined the Y! And he wasn't real impressed but I was happy to finally know where I was, and we went to Carl's Jr. and he got 4 hamburgers and we went back and the dogs were nuts and we fought some more and I said, you're supposed to be good to me, it's my first trip, I'm just going to go home, and he said that's probably not a good idea, so I stayed, and it was raining, and I laid by the window and the rain fell on me soft, and I loved it. That may be a biased account. I doubt it though. I'm quite fair. I was a sucker at 23, I probably still am, but I know that today I wouldn't let you grind up a sugar cube into a shot of whiskey and give it to me without a consultation on just what it was we were doing. Without crying foul to your, "You don't have to do it, but if you waste this I'll be pissed." Maybe I'd take it again, I'm not saying either way, but first I'd call you on your bullshit. I wonder what the top hat was for. Hmmmm. Okay, I'm going to forget about you again, for a while. Bye. Luck owwtt! Here comes the spidermaan Thurs|04.11 Table is small, wooden, round. We sit across from each other on uncomfortable wooden chairs that match the tiny table. They're all trendy or stylish or some shit. The tea is tea, green I'm having. Well, we're both having green tea. He ordered for me. Lucky for him I like the green tea. YES IT IS TEA! It's not code. His hair is piled under a tam (red-gold-green-black), and later I'll ask to see it. How long it's gotten. He won't show me the length in here, though. I know that like I know most things: I DONT know. But outside, later, my fingers may move toward his uncovered dreads. Or his cheekbone, or the spot behind his jaw, below his ear. Then again, maybe not. I'm counting the number of times he says "irie" versus the number of times he says "Babylon." We're two to four, Babylon in the lead. I can't summarize what I've been up to in the past few years since we've run into each other, I wouldn't know where to begin or what to tell him, so I smile and blush at the question, and I move my gaze up and to the right as if in thought, but really to radiate "I'm just a girl! Teehee!" vibes, hoping he'll just keep talking about himself. This never works on him. I wish I'd remembered that. Especially when he's not stoned. Still, him knowing I'm avoiding talking about myself doesn't give me words. Neither do his eyes, intent on me now, looking for what I'm hiding. What does he think I'll say, with him staring at me? The last time I saw him he was stoned, walking with a friend, trudging up Leavenworth from some demonstration at the Civic Center, and I'd been walking down Leavenworth from further up the hill. I recognized him as I stood at the crosswalk, waiting for the light to change, and as we moved toward each other he noticed me. It was too late to look away and pretend, so we stopped and talked in front of my building, me not letting on that this was where I lived, as we haltingly caught up with each other. He'd been married and divorced in the five or six years since our breakup, and had a son. He was in the process of moving. He had a show Sunday nights, and BAM! here's a flyer. Here, take a bunch, and pass them out for me? Cool. Same old James. Every so often I'd look at his friend, hoping to include him in the conversation, and his friend would close his eyes and nod and smile. They were truly stoned out of their minds. James and I exchanged phone numbers, and when I heard the usual caveats as he wrote his down ("You can leave a message for me here on Mondays and Wednesdays, and here's a number of a friend's place where I'm at Fridays and Saturdays, USUALLY, but let it ring twice and then call back so I know to pick up..."), I tucked the piece of paper into my pocket knowing that I would throw it away as soon as I got inside. He called me that night, by accident, thinking I was his hatmaker. Uhhh, no. And then years go by, and here he is in front of me. Again, we remember each other. So we go for tea. Tea is his idea. Teeaaa. secret message for the weatherman Wed|04.10 MEOW meoweowomeowowmo moewmmmmowoeowowow mewo mrow mewo mewoooooooow. Mrow? Mewoowowow. Meow. Mmmmmmmeowwwwwwwwww. Mrrrrow. Mmemememememeowowowowowowowow! M.e.e.e.e.e.o.o.o.w.w.w.w.w.w.w......... MMMmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrooooooooowww. salkj JLK;euK;sd;fajsk Iie Tues|04.09 My eyelids won't stop twitching. It was my right one, and now it's both, all day long. Oh well. Osbournes is on I like that show. It's television. You've heard of that, right? aint no exxxtra baybee im a leeEedin mayuNn Mon|04.08 Emmy topped off my glass, wrinkled her nose in thought. "To Eddie!" she offered, and I clinked to that. Eddie had been our bus driver in our formative years. He'd let us smoke cigarettes in the back two rows of seats. Miss the morning bus to high school? No problem, just catch the junior high run. Our smoking sessions could sometimes run long, depending upon how many times Emmy had to hear "In the City." Her mother left for work long before we left for school, so Mena and I would drop by Emmy's and we'd spend some time getting high and listening to music. We tried not to miss the bus too often because my father would call Emmy's house to ask if I planned on going to school that day, which really was a rhetorical question coming from him, but on the days we did miss the bus, Eddie brought us up to the high school after dropping off the younger kids. He hung out mornings in the cafeteria with the janitorial staff, so he was going there anyway. Still, pretty cool. Eddie deserved another toast, so we drank to him again. GODDAMM those two paragraphs took a long time to write, and they're not even good. FUCK. Still. Shit. Anyway, long story short, we got drunk. It was Xmas vacation, we were both home from college, and Emmy had noticed a car a few blocks from us that had a hubcap she needed. You see, SHE had a missing hubcap. And this car was the exact model as her own, and she really really would like to have a fourth hubcap. You know, to complete her set. Of hubcaps. While we drank, and I think it was Ouzo but I'm not completely sure, but I do know it was her mother's, and that we finished it, and that she wasn't exactly pleased when she found this out, anyway while we drank, Emmy eased me into the plan. First off, she let me know how fun it was to steal things. Hell, she took art supplies all the time. They were so expensive! She couldn't afford them, and so she boosted them, and was able to complete her courses. Thanks to the stealing. I was no stranger to the stealing, but hadn't done it since high school, or maybe even junior high (Mena and I had a good scam going at the K-Mart--she'd steal something, come outside, hand it to me, I'd walk back in and return it. Then: take the money, get someone to buy us alcohol, big party! Worked like a charm, until K-Mart decided you couldn't return merchandise without showing ID) and while I had nothing against Emmy completing her set of hubcaps I felt kinda bad for the neighbor who would be left with three. Hubcaps. Drinky drinky drinky. Turned out Emmy was helping her boyfriend steal car stereos, so she was hep to the how-tos of certain motor vehicles. Mostly Fords and Toyotas, apparently they were the easiest to open. She was lookout for her man as he leaned down and under to pop out the stereos, and that's what she wanted me to be. LOOKOUT! Well, why the fuck not. Besides the obvious reasons. It was snowing real light and pretty, shining in the streetlights. Lots of undisturbed freshly fallen snow, it was two or three in the morning. We drove a block away from the driveway of the hubcap, and walked the distance. The signal we'd decided on was "Feelings." As in, I'd start singing "Feelings" with an odd German accent I'd developed while we were talking about signals, and she would hightail it out of there. And I'd be the person disturbing the peace, not a new experience. It went without a hitch. We were back in the car in less than five minutes. I closed the passenger door with a sigh. It was over, and I never got to sing. I regretted that. The cold and quiet night, with its snow, with the soft black sky above. All that was missing was Feee-leenks. alll I realllly wanna doooo is baby be freiens with youuuu Sun|04.07 Happy 39th birthday to my brother. Quite honestly, that's all I can think of to write. Oh wait, there's this. Walking to the corner store earlier, a man approached me shouting, "HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!" He had the voice of a pirate. "Hello," I answered as he neared me, and he winked and saluted. aRcHiVeS | hOmE |