TWENTY TWENTY HINDSIGHT

The following is part of the “Love, Me” project, the brainbaby of this blogger, who asked a bunch of nerds to write love letters to ourselves. I’m generally pretty good at the stamped-sent-I-love-you-I-miss-you thing (see, for example, July 2007, when I sent a birthday candle and a match tied together with piece of ribbon in an envelope filled with dried flower petals across this gray nation, which was totes heart-melty even though I tried this again about six months later with less success), but if I saw myself in a bar I definitely would not hit on me because I don’t hit on dudes in wife-beaters, so this shit was not easy.

———-

Dear, Katie

When I was asked to write this letter, I immediately thought of all the 14-carat things I could say about you, like, for instance:

Despite your resemblance to opalescent 80′s icon Molly Ringwald, your ass is black, which I know because my one black friend said that your junk trunk is filled with sweet meat, which I’m pretty sure is his way of expressing that your butt has some complimentary cognitive dissonance with the rest of your casper self.

I was also going to mention something about the arch of your foot, which really compliments your gams when you wear Lucite heels before realizing that I was thinking about Phoebe Price and that you actually have ciabatta feet and cankles. At this point, I ran out of positivities to gift besides the fact that you have managed to avoid the consequences of your bad behavior for most of your 26 years, but then I remembered that you have no job, no girlfriend, and your mom pays your cell phone bill, so even if you’ve never gotten arrested, you’re still sort of a loser.

Upon realizing that this love letter was going to have the emotional heft of a Facebook poke, I decided to consult someone who knows you better than you know yourself: your twin sister, B—. The following is a transcript of that conversation….

K: sup boo?
B: get a job. leave me alone.
K: chill, my brother, just help me for a sec.
B: two minutes. that’s all.
K: ok. ima ask you some questions. just answer. don’t question.
B: two minutes.
K: what is katie good at?
B: huh? what’s this third person shit?
K: just go with me here.
B: fine. but i’m prolly not the best person to ask. bitch owes me $30.
K: $30? why?
B: i sold her running tights.
K: so she runs?
B: no, she walks around town in her tights so people think she runs.
K: that’s very clever.
B: yeah, she’s clever at being lazy. she paid me to do her job for her for four
months.
K: look at that entrepreneurial spirit!
B: but when i quit she stopped turning shit in and returning their calls.
K: yeah, that sucked. you should at least have given her two weeks notice. or
found a replacement. now she doesn’t have any references.
B: i see wal-mart greeter in her future.
K: and you call yourself family. i’m telling mom.

At this point, B— gets distracted and I am left waiting from 12:13 to 12:25, a period of time I spend designing an emoticon to represent “Bish, plz. That ain’t my baby.”

K: what has katie done that impresses you?
B: hmm. didn’t she seduce a professor once?
K: no.
B: oh, right. it was her boss. and she got fired.
K: laid off.
B: whatever.
K: so basically, you’re saying that she’s good with ladies.
B: ask the mime.
K: let’s not talk about that.
B: actually, let’s do talk about that. what’s worse, that she was a mime or that she
was 18?
K: dude. she was cute.
B: she had a locker.
K: right. so katie is sort of a mentor.
B: yr an asshole.
K: moving on. what do you like about katie?
B: she has pretty eyes. they look just like mine

So there you have it. Big ass and blue eyes. Granted, both of your good qualities are more gene-meshing leftovers than skills you’ve actually had to cultivate, but I see great things in your future. You may have surpassed the age cap for child stars, but you still get carded for your Pall Malls. Keep wearing those running tights and it’s only a matter of time until a dad-ready fag sees you on the street and thinks, “Now, that’s the kind of girl I want gestating my babies.” Surrogate city, my friend. Surrogate city.

Love, Me

———-
The other lovers:

Cherry Bomb
This is Where I Write
Ms. Bea’s Helpful Hints Blog
Rollertrain
Fluid Pusher

My creative outlet (time waster) a few winters ago was writing fake Craigslist ads in an effort to make the Best of Craigslist. I not only failed in this endeavor, I also failed to save all but one post.  The following, however, was archived by a fellow blogger who sent it to me this morning.  This particular ad garnded A LOT of responses, almost all of which went along the lines of “Your a stoopid fuck n i hope u di u mean bich.”

ISO: Myspace “girlfriend”
Reply to: pers-552316192@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-26, 12:01PM

Here’s the scenario:

After my ex and I split up a year ago, I changed my Myspace account to private because she went all crazy/nasty on me and started messaging my friends things like, “Hey, did you fuck my girlfriend? I think you fucked my girlfriend,” and I wanted to remove her access to those people whom I may or may not have had extra gay-martial relations with.

But now I’m ready to open back up to the world. Here’s the thing–even though I want my ex to think I’m completely over her and don’t regret breaking up with her and don’t want her back at all and don’t think about her right before I fall asleep at night and immediately upon waking, I sort of do. Miss her, that is. Like, a lot. And, being human, I want her to want me. I mean, I know we’re never going to get back together and might never even speak to each other again, but I still want her to think I’m not just managing without her, I’m thriving.

And that’s where you come in.

I’m looking for Myspace girlfriend.

There are a few components to this, the most vital being photos. Ideally, you should live close enough so that we can swing by the mall one day for photobooth shots (my treat, of course, and I’ll even throw in Cinnabon), then borrow someone’s dog for a family shot, and later arrange some goofy/adorable photos of us doing the things we love to do together (cooking in matching aprons, painting furniture outlandish colors, taking “our” dog to the dog park, etc.) If, however, you don’t live close, don’t be discouraged. I happen to be a whiz at Photoshop and I’m perfectly willing to create a montage of our trip to Machu Picchu. Not to be completely superficial, but this aspect of the project requires you to be at least as attractive as my ex, which is, unfortunately, no easy feat. I think it’s best if you don’t resemble her so that she can’t convince herself that my new “girlfriend” is a mere replacement. She was pretty dark, so it’s best if you have a fair complexion. Height is a plus as well, as are tight abdominal muscles for our beach photos.

My preference is that your Myspace page is private so that she’s left to wonder about you. Are you a college dropout or a Harvard post-doc? Food stamps or tenure-track? Not knowing will really fuck with her. I realize, of course, that as your fake girlfriend, I’m not really in a position to demand that you privatize your account, but it is important that you look successful, regardless of the truth. That said, lies are accepted. Don’t have your dream job? She doesn’t need to know that. Just look good on paper.

There’s one other small aspect to this: Myspace comments. I want it all– glitter graphics, LOLCatz, YouTube clips, and lots and lots of one-sided conversations (small, ambiguous statements will do, like, “Me too, baby. Me too.”) Also, we’ll need pet names.
And what will you get out of this? Ideally, you are in need of a Myspace “girlfriend” as well and it’ll be an even trade. I’m plenty photogenic and I can definitely come up with some inside jokes to leave on your page. And if you aren’t trying to make anyone jealous, just think of it as pro bono work.

Because my inner Jew refuses to ignore that dime on the sidewalk and the health insurance I pay for each month sure isn’t getting used on inhalers or abortions, I get my currency’s worth via therapy, where I essentially do the same thing I do all of my other waking hours—talk about myself.  My relationships with therapists parallel my relationships with most women: I see them one time, never call back, and settle down when I find one who says what I want to hear, but it’s good to have someone in my life whose wisdom doesn’t come from 30 days sobriety or art school or ashtanga yoga.

However, despite the many things therapy has helped me realize about myself—like, for instance, I harvest the type of OCD that keeps my house really clean but also prevents me from sitting on all upholstered future except bar stools—I’ve discovered an even better way to understand why you bought that Picasso even though what you really wanted was a Thomas Kinkade (Taurus), why you want your boyfriend to stick his toe in your armpit (Capricorn), but won’t ask him because you’re afraid of what your mom would think (Cancer): astrology.

I can tell from your expression that you’re skeptical.  I get that. There are valid reasons for your distrustism.  We all know that the Gregorian calendar is about as exact as that time five minutes ago when I told my parole officer that I couldn’t do the piss cup due to an asparagus-laced UTI.  I read somewhere that George Washington changed the calendar for his wife Betsy Ross’s 32 birthday because life expectancy in the 16th century was only 33 and she wasn’t done sewing yet.  And sometimes horoscpopic shit just doesn’t make noodles of out nuts.  As a young lad who shares DNA but not much else with the twin who popped out a mere eight minutes after me—Twin B. runs marathons and thinks it’s weird to set up dates with your pals solely for the purpose of staging  Facebook photos—it has been especially difficult for me to trust the whole star alignment thing.

And yet, my newly accquanted literary friend, The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need
(TOABYEN), has changed my understanding of myself more than therapy possibly could.  First, some background noise….

I am a Gemini, although, oddly, my twin sister is a Taurus.  I’ll anticipate your next question: No, we didn’t breathe our inaugural lungfuls straddling May 21st.  But we were born fairly close to the handover hour, and I, unlike B—, display very few of the typical Tauron characteristics, so I’ve chosen a sign that more matches my skin tone.  I am not, for instance, driven by the Tauron desire for material goods and would be happy to share my toothbrush with an orphan and live in a tent on the co-op lawn as long they water the grass around me and the singer/songwriters stay out of my personal space. Actually, maybe not.  I’m very particular about feng shui.

But Gemini is a pup I can run with.  Geminis are the lyrical Lil Waynes of the astrological calendar. From TOABYEN:

Born with the gift of persuasion, you could sell ice in Greenland. Your quick mind can explain any action, defend any position, justify any course.

Let me interpret.  You, Gemini, would lie to a case of girl scout cookies for a free bus pass but everyone is too bedazzled by the speed at which you tongue run to notice that when you say you have a PhD in East Asian Studies what you mean is that you have a thing for Jenny Shimizu.

Others will think that Gemini are fun to be with, but your ability to change with the changing winds can also lead others to see Gemini as shallow.

Shallow?  No shit, kiddie pool.  Let’s talk about that time you ditched that perfectly fun and smart and trustfunded girl who left blueberry muffins on your pillow and stole toilet paper from the public library for you. Why did you tell her that you were spending the summer at an artist retreat in a Fayette County trailer park?  Two words: toe ring.

A Gemini motto might be “A rolling stone gathers no moss.” You are the eternally youthful child, no matter your chronological age.

Eternally youthful child, AKA On The Family Plan.  How old did you say you are, Gemini?  Thirty?  I know thirty is the new training bra, but every time you make a call, your mom’s name shows up on caller i.d.

The air of Gemini is always changing direction. First the winds blow one way, then another. It’s a metaphor for how our mind solves a puzzle, first thinking one way and then trying a different approach. This is a restless and searching wind.

This is the polite way of saying that you will never hold a job for more than three months.  And have fun with all those alimony payments, Gemini. You’ve got a lot of divorce court to look forward to.

I thought I was going to have to get a job with insurance after I get kicked out of school so I can continue to analyze my inner black hole and stockpile SSRIs, but this starry night shit fixes everything.  Even though I’ll miss my hour on the couch, who you are is tattooed in the sky. So I’m going to rip up that insurance card, unload the Xanax, and wake up every morning to dial Miss Cleo and listen to my future.

I’m working on some new face-pounding rhetoricisms for your hand-ticking pleasure, but time’s been short this summer of adolescence. It has been one aquatic summer, I’ll tell you that. So until I get all wordsy up in your brain space, the following pretty much sums my life ….

Photo cred goes to brother Erin Matthews, who also gets credit for folding my laundry last night. We’re both looking for patrons/benefactors/sugar mamas if you know anyone.

My ten-year high school reunion is next summer and I’m preparing a little toast for the occasion.  I wonder if there’s a time limit….

———-

As most of you know, I was a prodigiously well-behaved student.  There were a few exceptions, like the time in Mrs. LaTorre’s fifth grade class when I led you, my classmates, in a spirited chorus of Kill LaWhore! Kill LaWhore! from my post atop the jungle gym.  You followed my command as if I weren’t just your classmate but a sixth grader or even a hall monitor.  I was subsequently forced to get a Behavior Book, wherein Mrs. LaTorre marked my behavior each afternoon with a smiley face on a good day, a middle finger on a bad one.  I then had to take this book to Mazog and Pazog, both of whom agreed that LaWhore was an appropriate term and that the bitch should stop stifling my creative expression. The disgrace of the Behavior Book was exacerbated every afternoon when Mrs. LaTorre announced, Will Katie please come to my desk with her Behavior Book, which burned my eyes like that time Scott Williams jumped me from the slide and threw his jock strap over my head. (Heard about those child pornography charges, Scott.  God damn, that makes me feel like I can predict the future.)

But, still, I was a pretty good kid.  I got kicked off of a few athletic teams (Hey there, Coach Barnes!  I can see that gin blossom from here!) and was suspended for selling hemp necklaces to those of you who  spent your Taco Bell wages on tickets to Phish shows because Principal O’Neal (RIP) didn’t believe me when I said, Look, my brother.  You’d have to smoke a doobie the size of a telephone pole to get babycakes off this shit. You dig? Oh, and there was the ninth grade talent show when my band Broken Hearts, Broken Hymens, a project influenced by Billy Joel and psychotropics, was booed off stage after the opening lines of our single, Ain’t no Moses/ Ain’t no God/ Wasting time on a saintly fraud, to the tune of “Jesus Loves Me.”  Remember that?  Throwing hymnals through my drum set?  I forgive you.  But I never got pregnant by the resource officer (I’m talking to you, Brandy Simon! Hey, girl!) so I consider myself somewhat of a behavioral blue ribbon.  I also learned a lot, like the definition of “frigid.”  But mostly, I learned about myself.

As most of you know, I wasn’t exactly prom king at Smoky Mountain High School, but you generally knew who I was—it was to hard to miss a girl with three dreadlocks tied in knots on the top of her head, wasn’t it?  And even though I frequently ate my sandwich while dodging the tater tots landing atop my head (Hey, Dan Stevens!  How’s the wife?  She left you?  Oops.  My mistake.), I like to think of Smoky Mountain High as a place of backwoods enlightenment.  We didn’t have a gay/straight alliance or a PFLAG chapter, but we did have a show choir, which is basically the same thing.  There were a few less progressive school traditions, like Christian Heritage Week—five days around that big Jesus holiday in April when the student president of Christians for a United National Theocracy (CUNT) read a prayer or fun fact about Christianity (i.e. Jesus said brown people like their chains!) during morning announcements, which, much to the regret of my inner cheerleader, quickly ceased after my parents called the ACLU.  (So sorry, Annie Tops.  I know you loved speaking into that mic.)

But the really incredible thing about Smoky Mountain High was that you, my classmates, knew me before I knew myself.  Whether I was shooting free throws or auditioning for the sophomore musical with an acapella version of the Indigo Girls “Power of Two”, you guys were always trying to break down that closet door for me.  Unlike you, I had no idea that I was lesbanese until college, when I had the light bulb realization that I was junk-struck for Catherine Keener while watching Being John Malkcovich with my first and only boyfriend, who later changed his name to Christy and bought a wonderful set of mammaries.  This first love also indicated that I’m into power suits and somewhat of a bottom, but it took a few more years for that memo to penetrate the gray matter.

There I was, happily living as a high school nobody with my posse of weed-smoking, softball-playing, ani-loving friends, wondering why none of the guys in Students Teaching AIDS Research (STAR) ever asked us out.  It was a total mystery—not just that the Vice President of STAR who waxed his eyebrows never called me back (Congrats on the Asian babies, Donnie Nickels! And those abs!), but all of it….  Why did you call me a dyke, Jamie Taylor, when I held my best friend’s hand on the way to Algebra II?  We were best friends.  It’s not like we played footsie under the cafeteria table that often.

But now—inevitably and undeniably gayelle at twenty-eight physical and nineteen emotional years old—I want to publicly thank Joe Hart, Kyle Ross, Thomas Blakley Jr., and everyone else who saw beneath my boy-loving facade.  You knew that the only thing keeping romantic fulfillment beyond my unmanicured fingertips was a lack of self-awareness.  It was you, Megan Overton, and you, Anne Nelson, and you, Bitsy Matthews—with your homophobic slurs and your poofy bangs and short shorts—who forced me to see the truth.  You made me look into my heart and my erogenous zones to see the truth, the truthiest truth, that I am not like you, Jenny McDonald.  I didn’t actually want to go the prom with you, Dylan Hendrix.  I didn’t want to make-out the in the back your parent’s Corrolla, Alex Knight, and was relieved to find that stick-shift really gets in the way of heaving petting.  No, what I wanted was Catherine Keener.  Catherine Keener and blanket space at Lilith Fair and the knowledge that I, a woman-loving-woman, could return to my alma mater one day.  Return to you, with your dead marriages and the children that you don’t really love, hand-in-hand with my beautiful partner whose name happens to also be Katie, and thank you, Smoky Mountain High Class of 2000, for making all of this possible.