TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

Valentine’s Day lost it’s sparkle for me a few years ago when a girl threw up sake and sashami on my Nikes after a romantic dinner at China-A-Go-Go and then karate chopped me in the gut when I tried to get her in the shower. Besides, mandated flowers and edible panties are about as romantic as my old Sunday night routine with Small Fry: large pizzas and laxative tea. When I choose to be with a person who chooses to be with me, I don’t need a holiday to do sweet shit. I do sweet shit all the time—see, for example, Fall 2006, when I donated a kidney to a girl I had a crush on, who then lived to marry a doctor. I don’t need a construction paper heart to show a girl that I want her on my health insurance. But because I work at a bookstore and have been ringing up more Sade albums than New York Times in the past few days, I’ve got Valentine’s on the mind. Actually, it’s probably less the pink and white displays that’ve got me reflecting on love and the lack thereof and more the fact that I’m a few weeks into a break up. Not an angry break up, but still a break up. I’m looking for someone to blame for my dirty snow and litter box opinion on matters of the heart, but because it’s really no one’s fault that I currently feel like the world is a cruel blue orb and I hope it only survives for another 5,000 years before the sun explodes, I blame the advent of mobile communications.

Mobile technology has changed the entire courting process. Texting is the first step in creating a connection, meaningful or mean. When my favorite and most current ex and I started dating, we gave ourselves carpal tunnel with all the texting. I worried that if we continued with such behavior we’d never be comfortable on the phone and I’d spend the next sixty years wearing off my thumbprints when I could just call to ask if she wants to eat in or take out. I solved this problem by calling her from the living room when she was in the kitchen so we could practice.

The ability to give good text is an indication of intelligence. Highly intelligent people can give terrible text if they are too busy deconstructing deconstructionism to bother with correct punctuation, but the ability to make a person LOL in 140 characters or less is more important than holding open the door or having great taste in music. I send or receive an average of forty-seven texts a day and actually talk on the phone only when ordering sesame tofu from Jade Palace. I’ve had entire relationships that have never gone from textual to audible, which is a sure sign that something isn’t going to work out. It is also possible, however, to fool yourself into thinking that because she sends texts that you read aloud to your friends not to analyze but because they are actually funny, that because her Facebook profile is honest but not too honest, ironic but not too ironic, that because she is awesome on Gchat, the real life person is going to be as cool as her avatar. But there’s no guarantee that she’s anything but quick wit and fast thumbs. It’s a 2.0 problem in a 2.0 world, and a serious one at that.

Facebook is the place to go when you’re in the mood for a good cry. You don’t want to look at your ex’s profile but you do it anyway. You can’t see her sitting on your couch in woolly slippers and her grandmother’s sweater anymore, but you can see her on Facebook. You let your mind run to the dark every time you log in. Who are those new friends? What’s that status update mean? She’s says she stressed. Is it because of work or because she misses me and regrets saying she would never have babies with someone who uses self-tanner. She looks happy in the photo. Does that mean that she’s over me? Or maybe she’s trying to look happy so I think that she’s over me when she’s actually sitting at home watching Law & Order in her sweat pants and sleeping with my old Camp Kanuga t-shirt under her pillow? Shit. She’s definitely over me. Facebook is a living archive of your relationships, one you can’t delete without deleting the proof that you were real. Those pictures? Those comments? You did exist. There are no letters to hold when you want to feel her again, but there are emails to reread.

The Internet is also where you find the refreshment of a new crush. You’ve never actually hung out, so it’s her Facebook profile that provides your only insight into who she is and what her life’s like, if she’s a Pisces (good) or a Scorpio (bad). You scan her pictures, throwing out anyone with self-portraits taken in a bathroom mirror wearing only a towel. You judge her taste in books and music, looking for evidence of humor and depth. How much information did she share? Too much or too little? You friend her, then you message her, write on her wall and respond to her status updates. And then, in this ritual, you proceed to text messages and phone calls and, eventually, actually getting coffee or a drink or walking around the neighborhood, your footsteps beating in real, not virtual, time.

And this, when you’re finally stalking someone besides your ex—when you’ve stopped trying to understand why two people who fit together don’t fit together—is when you know you’re going to be okay. It might be Valentine’s Day, but you’ve stopped looking at your ex’s profile, checking your in-box, waiting for her to come back. The Internet is a space to despair, to find solace in other peoples’ pain, a place to feel good about feeling bad. But it is also a place to renew your interest in the world, to move on and feel better when you start to think less about her and about more about the ones you don’t yet know.

Following directions isn’t really my thing and I’m not about to share my bedroom with fifty other idiots, so, barring an uprising by the Federation for the Advancement of Gays and Gayelles (F.A.G.G.), enlisting in the military is about as likely as that time five minutes ago when Sean Penn friended me on Facebook. Regardless, I accompanied my roommate Small Fry to the recruiting office in Durham recently. It was an exercise in cheek-biting for me: it’s hard not to laugh at military recruiters when you are so fundamentally opposed to what they stand for (e.g. obedience, nationalism, khaki) and what they do (e.g. kill, depose, Skype) and know you are wasting the time they could spend coercing other young people to sign over their autonomy. They likely had just as little hope of signing us based on appearance alone. It’s not that we’re obviously dykes, which we are (despite national policy, gayism is probably recognized as a benefit in the armed forces. Would you rather be defended by Bull Dyke Barbie or Malibu Barbie?), we just don’t look like the kind of people who would join the army. We look like the kind of people who put nutritional yeast on popcorn or the kind of people who talk shit about people who put nutritional yeast on popcorn but still kind of like it. But there we were.

The recruiters’ office itself isn’t what I expected. When you walk in, there’s no one to welcome you with stars and stripes and patriotic songs, ready to salute you in the right direction. Left for Marines, right for Army, around back for Blackwater. Instead, you just wander around until you find the branch you’re looking for. There were two recruiters in the Air Force office. They didn’t try to sell us. They didn’t talk about the army of one or the benefits or the camaraderie or the honor in fighting for your country after that big September thing. They just handed us forms to fill out and left us alone. Although I might have given them my sister’s social security number and an ex’s phone number, I was mostly honest on the paperwork. Have I been arrested? Yes, but it was just a misunderstanding. I wasn’t really trying to pass myself off as a forty-two-year-old Canadian woman with a taste for Bartles & James and the charges were dismissed after I gave the judge a mani/pedi. You’re also supposed to list all the drugs you’ve done and the number of times you’ve done them. If I actually wanted to earn my pilot’s wings, I would have lied, but because I was more interested on getting out before happy hour than being fitted for a uniform, I wrote the truth. It’s not like I’ve ever traded my body for a crack pebble or anything, but I went to college. I wore Birkenstocks and rolled one-handed joints on the way to school. And, besides being the inevitable gateway to excessive napping, weed was never really a problem for me. When I stopped smoking, I didn’t even really think about it. I just stopped. And that’s what I told the military recruiter. Look, brother, there’s nothing wrong with smoking a few trees. It’s Of The Earth, my friend. A gift from our planet to our minds. He looked at me like I’m John Waters trying to get into the police academy and said he didn’t think the Air Force was an appropriate fit.

When Small Fry first told me that she was thinking about joining the military, I changed the subject (Look! Boobs!) and waited for her to put this terrible idea to bed. But she didn’t put it to bed. She talked about detonating bombs and wearing a tailored uniform and never cooking again. She made her hands into guns and shot everyone who walked by the window. This is what I need to gain discipline, she said. This will make me grow up. Her thinking is stupid, like waiting for your power to get cut off because then you’ll be forced to start paying your bills on time, and yet, I kind of get it. There is no discipline in our home. The two of us live in a tree house world. We try to take the recycling out but only manage to get the cans out of the pantry and into the living room. We create imaginary futures for ourselves. We’re going to move to San Francisco and live in bunk beds and have a bunny that hops behind us everywhere we go or maybe a fairy who hovers by our shoulders. Or maybe someone will recognize the appeal of two nearing-thirty girls who sit around wearing eye patches and gypsy masks, getting up every once in a while to practice chest-bumping before resuming our Facebook sentry. Yes, that’s what we need: someone to find us and and love us and give us a reality TV show.

I left Small Fry with the recruiters and wandered around, thinking about what do to now that this option that was never really an option isn’t ever going to be an option. Med school? Americorps? Teaching English in Korea until the economy recovers and we can get back to the lives we think we deserve: comfortable lives, exciting lives, full lives, mornings that don’t start with trying to think of a reason to get out of bed, not finding one, and closing the blinds and dreaming for a few more hours. Being in that office, walking past rooms where people were signing the papers because they want to or because they have to, some excited, some scared, all making real decisions, big decisions, decisions that will influence the course of their lives now and forever—people who are, really, just like us—made me think there might be no fairy and no benefactor and no one else to make us grow up. Are we past the age when it’s acceptable to walk around town barefoot with our pants rolled up because we feel like playing Tom and Huck? This is the point—out of school, underemployed, desperate enough to consider the military—where you realize that you’re on your own. That’s where the military comes in. Sign here and stop thinking. Do their push-ups, make their beds, polish their door-knobs, call them sir and write your girl back home. Your inability to make decisions won’t matter anymore. It will, in fact, make you a better solider. There is some solace in being a robot. I understand this, and part of me wishes I could get over my ethical reservations and my unwillingness to take orders and my past life as a stoner and my unshakable belief that things will work out, maybe not for everyone, but for me. Because what if it doesn’t? What if this is all there is, looking for ways to adulthood, wishing you were one of the thousands of people who sign up, who put their fate in the hands of others, who follow orders. Maybe we all want to to sacrifice our autonomy, not to an organization run on obedience, but to a fate we think we deserve. We are no different than anyone else in that building. We just think we are.

So long 25. What an interesting year you’ve been.

Election Night
Now that was a party. We danced, we cried, we waited in the cold to get into the bar for most of it. Months of hard work—all the witty jokes about Palin’s Eskimo pie, marching with the Obama contingent at North Carolina Pride to better peep potential life partners on the sidelines—it all paid off. There was the time we skipped work to watch Arcade Fire play for free in the Town Commons while brown-bagging Sparks and congratulating ourselves for living here, not just America, but Carrboro, a place even Canadians love. After the show we all went to the bar to drink domestic beer and congratulate ourselves again over what just happened, what we had just seen, what we had just done for Him, not for Jesus, but for Obama. Later we went to the afterparty, just a few of us, drinking more cold beer and asking Regine questions, important questions, questions no one else has probably asked her, like where did you get those boots? It was worth all the the bumper stickers that January morning when snow fleeced the East Coast and people flooded into the capital to see Aretha’s hat on the jumbo tron while blowing on their hands and wishing they had stayed in Connecticut and watched it on the couch. This was an especially important day for my family, immediate and extended. My mother may be a little disappointed that the Bash Bush Bashes she hosted for the last eight years are no more, but she’s pretty sure the renewal of civil liberties are worth it. My grandmother, an octogenarian fireball who spends her time gambling in Jersey City, signing petitions, and sending the findings of her closets to her children and grandchildren (e..g half-dead pens, rosary beads, decade-old postcards), couldn’t make it to DC, but she sent a contribution to my aunt who did attend: a box of Depends. Yes, that was one exciting snow day. We got to the bar at 11 in the morning, left when Erin M. got cut off at two in the afternoon, and went back late for a fancy dance party. On the way home, I slipped on some ice or maybe on my liver and smashed my face open and spit my front tooth on the sidewalk. I couldn’t eat, drink, or brush my teeth for a couple days, but I would sacrifice a tooth for our handsome new president anytime.

Equal Rights
The tide seems to be tiding toward gaydom. California denied the fags and faggettes the right to marry, but a bunch of other less important states realized that gay marriage will fix the economy. Who has more money than gays? Republicans, but gays still have a lot. Look at how many records Barbara Streisand has sold. The gays have waited forever to get hitched. When you’ve patienced this long, you’re not going to shotgun that shit. You want it all—the wedding planner, the tux(es), the destination, the hyphenated last name. Fuck the stimulus package. It’s all about samsie sex marriage. And while I’m theoretically glad to the whole gays-are-human thing is catching faster then Swine Flu, I’m actually a little disappointed. I like being oppressed. I like telling people that I’m a lesbian seperatist, which isn’t actually true but makes me feel like it’s okay if I forget to shave my legs every once in a while. And as much as I appreciate that my mom gets pleasure out of texting me with gay marriage updates (e.g. “gehys kn mrry n main! kl!”), it makes me feel kind of guilty when she says things like “I’ve got big plans for the garden. Maybe you can get married at home one day.” How does one say, “Mom. I’m never getting married. I’m never gestating. Any girl willing to marry me probably needs a green card. You want to talk gay marriage, I want to talk gay boobs.” I’m also afraid this is going to encourage straights to refer to their legally sanctioned husbands and wives as their “partners.” You people have everything. Do you need our oppression too?

Athletics
As dear Jenny W. used to chant over the bar, I finally became One Of Us. I caught Tar Heel flu pretty hard, although I pretty much talk through the first 43 minutes of the basketball games and pay attention only long enough to holler at the end. I did listen to the last quarter of the Villanova game on the radio, which is basically devotion to the max. But even though Tyler Hansbrough is the cutest special giant in the NCAA and I love nothing better than watching drunken co-eds set bonfires in street, I was maybe the sole resident of Orange County, NC who woke up without a hangover after the ball dropped because I stayed home to Tweet about Gossip Girl. It was a decision not based on a of lack of desire, but a fear of leaving my house due to previous Bad Decisions and Terrible Mistakes that finally caught up to me like a bad case of herpes. That shit was not good for my Fear of Missing Something Syndrome. I get weepy just thinking about it.

Romance
The best part of my 25 year was a gift from Craig’s List. I was the recipient of two Missed Connections, neither of which I responded to, but was, none the less, a little flattered and a little creeped. The second Missed Connection, said something about the Ramona Quimby tattoo on my arm, and inspired the following response from an anonymous w4w: The girl with the Ramon Quimbley tattoo is everywhere and she’s shady. Don’t bother. Now shady I get, but “Ramon Quimbley?” Seriously? Did your parents not read to you as a child? That’s just sad. Speaking of Craig’s List, no LTR this year. When I moved to Carrboro two years ago, I thought that all I would have to do is say, “Yeah, I just came from Portland,” and the girls would jump my shit like fruit flies on a nanner. Wrong. My chance of finding a boo here—or maybe anywhere–decrease every time I write this blog, but the comments are worth it.

But it’s all over now. As Kirk R. said, I am now looking down the barrel to my 30s. And even though my liver looks forward to the year my birthday involves a quiet dinner at home and maybe some mommy/mommy time instead of a lap dance and a WUI, I realized yesterday that if my friends in their 30s and 40s are any example, sometimes maturity just doesn’t take.

I just returned from a week in Cancun hanging with Joe Francis and acquiring previously unheard of STDs.  Actually, I spent Spring Break ’09 talking with my therapist about my problem with Goodwill.  What I thought was just a natural reaction to that nasty used clothing smell is apparently a symptom of serious OCD.  And though I’m perfectly happy to avoid thrift stores for the rest of my life, my therapist thinks I’m dipping my pinky toe into the small and lonely world of agoraphobia.  She assigned me the task of purchasing a shirt from Goodwill without wearing latex gloves.  This sent me into a tailspin of hand washing, so, much like my actual homework, I cheated and just waved at some poor people from my car instead.  I recognize how irrational this phobia is, not because Goodwill isn’t a den of upholstered semen and lice that should be fumigated and then condemned, but because I’ve got no problem with mass transit or much-handled legal tender and I’m sitting on a public toilet right now.  And, as several people pointed out, I put my mouth on much dirtier things all the time.

And while I didn’t actually get sunstroke or vomit Carona Light into a sand dune, I did get a four poster bed (thanks, “Clare”!), which is like sleeping in a nicely-padded tree house.  I also turned my smoky clothes room into an actual guest room, which is exciting because my friend Jil’s (apparently very attractive) friend is coming to visit, and because she’s allergic to cats and Jil has two, might stay in my brand new guest room.  As I was cleaning out said guest room while the rest of the co-eds were spraying each other down with Hawiian Punch, I kept thinking, “This is Holly’s room.  This is Holly’s room,” which is seriously fucked up for many reasons, top-ranking that I’ve never actually met Holly.   I’m sure I’ll be right embarrassed as soon as I post this.  Hopefully my new roommate Holly won’t see it.

Christmas this year began in a rather undignified manner and ended in a drunken one. The highlight: getting lifted by a huge Army guy with hearts tattooed on his forearms. The Syd’s Christmas, however, included an open bar, bloody knuckles, karaoke, fancy dress, gold hightops, and ended with my co-worker and fellow trouble-maker saying “Katie needs a ride” into the mic and me grabbing the mic from her and saying “And I’ll suck your dick.  Wait, I don’t suck dick.”  Thanks to Jessica Storm for unblocking this memory.

Photos from the evening, stolen from Jared’s Myspace:

My pal Shannon and I met for a taste at our local watering hole a few days ago–just a taste, you know, post-work style.  Five hours later, we finally managed to escape the PBR and red wine blackhole and retire to our separate abodes for nourishment, hydration, and peaceful sleep.  The next morning Shannon told me that when she got home from the bar she burnt a baguette in the oven.  She didn’t want the smoke alarm to go off and disturb her neighbors so she ran to her door and threw the baguette outside but the baguette hit her neighbor’s car and the car alarm went off.

In other news, it’s Christmas, which means I’m going to embrace my inner Jew tomorrow and eat take-out Chinese and go to the movies.

I am also, however, fixing to do something very important to my mental health: GET THE FUCK OUT OF CARRBORO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES.  And that’s only slight hyperbole–I haven’t been out of the state since moving here.  It’s a problem that needs correcting so Ima go to Colorado to fight with my sis and build sexy snowmen and make it with cowgirls.  In light of this exciting development, I need a ride.  Actually, I need two rides.  I’m leaving from RDU on Monday Jan. 5 at 11:35 and returning the following Saturday evening.  Any volunteers will be handsomely compensated with PBR (or, for the classier among you, OCSC’s finest Italian red, a case of Alcion, a water bottle of Grey Goose, or whatever your pleasure).

HAPPY BIRTH OF THE BABY JEBUS, EVERYONE.  I’m parking my ass at the bar tomorrow at 8 if any of ya’ll want to celebrate orphan Christmas together.

An Empty-Handed Elf is an Unpopular Elf
My instructions as Sole Elf of the Carrboro Elf Fair (SECEF) where basically to walk around an act elfish. Sounds easy, right? Spread a little joy here, make some babies laugh there, wiggle your pointy ears on demand. But it’s not easy. Spreading joy without an ample supply of gifts or candy or money to distribute is pretty much impossible. Kids aren’t impressed with a knock-off Elf who is obviously too tall to be a member of Santa’s sweatshop. What’s the only thing that would make them smile at such a perversion of the Christmas spirit? CANDY. But SECEF wasn’t given any candy to distribute. At first this seemed like a gross oversight, but then I realized that if I had candy canes or some other sweet shit for the kids, I’d have to approach every parent at the Elf Fair and ask permission to give their offspring high fructose corn syrup. Imagine the conversation:

SECEF: Is it okay if I give little Billy a candy cane?
Carrboro Mom in Fair Trade Crocs (CMFTC): Is it organic?
SECEF: I highly doubt it.
CMFTC: Is it sweat-shop free:
SECEF: I got them at Wal-Mart.
CMFTC: Free-range?
SECEF: It’s a candy cane.

A Drinking, Smoking Elf is an Unpopular Elf
I really planned to take this gig seriously. I support the local crafts scene and green brings out my eyes, so it seemed like a perfect way to volunteer my time. I even planned on staying home Friday night so I’d be good and ready to be the perfect elf (I drank bourbon out of a plastic bottle on the bus ride to Durham instead, but I really did think about it). But it turns out that Sole Elf of the Carrboro Elf Fair is a pretty boring job. The first kid I tried to talk to started crying and buried her face in her dad’s leg, so I gave up on trying to entertain the kids pretty quickly and started drinking beer. And then shit got fun for a little bit. Even though I didn’t make any kids smile, my friends seemed pretty amused by a beer-drinking elf. The parents and the Arts Center staff, however, were less pleased, especially when I took a cigarette break in front of the entrance.

Nobody Wants An Elf For A Girlfriend
I was half-way convinced that some local crafts lady would see me looking all impish spreading joy and think, “Now there’s someone I’d like to get to know.” But I’m pretty sure at least a couple of people didn’t realize I was volunteering and thought I just really, really like Christmas. Also, there’s nothing sexy about an adult in green velvet and tights. If my own behavior hasn’t doomed me to life as a spinster, I’m pretty sure the elf hat did.

photo “credit” J. Waters