Loving Me

This is what it would be like to be in love with me.  You would marvel at the way my calf muscles flex in three different places.  The regular bulge in the back, and then the three long lean strips of muscle you can see when I stand on my heels, then the indent where that middle strip was, when I am on my toes, or in high heels.   

            You'd think my desire to walk everywhere was annoying at first, but when your calf muscles started to flex in three places and the belly you got from drinking too much in college disappeared, you would start to like walking with me.  You'd suggest extra long walks with my dog, and your dog so when they were at home together they would be too worn out to chew on each other's faces.  We'd walk to the grocery store and carry back cloth bags filled to the brim with fresh fruits and vegetables and milk made out of almonds.  We'd walk to the coffee shop on cold winter mornings and walk back keeping our hands warm on our ceramic mugs that we brought from home.   

            You would scold me for spending extra money on recycled toilet paper, and bio degradable plastic bags to pick up dog poop.  But then you'd realize how my face lit up when I read you the labels with all their environmental savyness. 

You'd love the part of my stomach that I hate, the lower flabby part that never looks like muscles and I can't make go away.  You'd tell me it was made just for you, a place to rest your head.  But you'd also tell me it's the perfect spot for a baby to grow.  And you'd mean it, but not right now.

            You'd start eating more vegetables, but you'd know to keep them separate from mine.  You'd know not to try to eat my broccoli because for some reason it is laced with spicy red pepper and it would burn your mouth for upwards of 15 minutes.  You'd eat hummus in strange new ways.  You'd eat it on sandwiches with green tomatoes and as a salad dressing, and you'd like it, a lot.  You'd start liking chili that didn't have meat in it.  Your cholesterol level would go way down.

            You'd wake up on weekday mornings to a fresh pot of gourmet coffee.  Organic and Fair Trade, and perfectly brewed.  You would no longer go to cheap coffee shops to buy coffee, because you'd always be disappointed that it did not taste as good as the coffee I made you at home.  You'd be amazed by my ability to tell the difference between decaf and regular just by smelling them.   You'd wonder how it is that I could wake up in the morning and drink coffee with you, and then take a nap an hour later. 

You'd get annoyed when I go through your garbage, picking out the things that could be recycled, and when I did it in public places, you'd yell at me to stop.  But then you'd start to learn not to put them there, to save me the trouble.  We'd still fight when we walked past public trash receptacles.

You'd start peeling Campbell's soup labels off of the cans and saving them for me, even though it was difficult sometimes and you didn't really know why you were doing it.  You'd find a new fondness for General Mills Cereals, preferring them to other brands.  You'd start cutting off the box tops, wishing that somehow you could collect the ten cents for each one, but resigning to just give them to me instead, to some school that would be able to benefit from your love of Cheerios.

You'd start to pull the tabs off of soda and beer cans and save them in a glass jar.  When it would get full you'd give it to me, and you'd feel good about it, even though we both don't know where those go after we give them to the Boyscouts.  

You'd change your homepage to Goodsearch.com.  And you would search random words and phrases in your spare time like the difference between "laid" and "lied," and why Styrofoam is cheaper to produce than paper.  You'd raise money for the Humane Society, and PAWS Atlanta, FurKids, and the American Red Cross.

You would love to watch me scream at the basketball players on TV, pretending I could control them with my words.  You'd love to watch football in the fall and baseball in the summer, and you would scream at those tiny players too.  You'd appreciate my indifference to your sports because it meant I didn't mind getting up to get you something with one minute left in the fourth quarter.  After a while I'd start routing for your team, even when we weren't together.  I'd start hating the Yankees, the Lakers and UGA. 

            You would love to run your fingers through my hair, even if it got stuck in a knot sometimes.  You would wonder how I could possibly make it so straight one day, and so curly the next.  You'd say it looked wonderful, even in the morning, during its in-between time.  You'd always be carefully moving my hair out of my face, so you could see me better, so my hair would not be stuck between our lips.  And you'd smooth my hair off my shoulders so you could see the bones and muscles there, and all those freckles and crisscrossing tan lines that won't ever go away.

            You would love my hair when it was long, but you'd love it still when I cut off the ten inches to donate to Locks O' Love.  You'd say you love my natural color of some boring brown even though I am pretty sure you've never seen it more than an inch at my roots, and you'd hate the smell the dye left in the bathroom and in my hair the next day.  But you'd love my new color, whatever it may be.  You'd love my hair when it was blonde, and slightly reddish.  You'd say I was the hottest red head you know.  You'd love my hair when it was so dark brown it was almost black because it makes my eyes look unnaturally blue, and you'd love it when it was bleached blonde and then hot pink.  You'd love it anyway I did, because you would love me.  But you don't. 

NaNoWriMo

April 12th, 1986

A tall man in a brown suede jacked was trudging through the mud in the woods.  His tan boots now looked brown up to the ankles covered in mud.  He had abandoned the trails that most people kept to on a hunt for a special type of mushroom.  He needed it for an experiment he was going to try.  The mushroom he sought after had special magical qualities he needed for his experiment.  According to his book that had been handed down from generation to generation, further back then any family tree could go, the mushrooms could be used in the love potion that he wanted to try out on his very pretty next door neighbor (who was happily married mind you) but also in the magical mirror potion, that was used to see the future.  He hoped to find lots of these mushrooms but had taken the book with him to compare the pictures of other plants with magical characteristics.
He had his book open to page 723 where there was a very large picture of the mushroom he needed.  There were also a warning on this page about some of the mushrooms that look similar, and a nasty picture of a rash that one of those mushrooms can give you on the opposite page.  The man was staring back and forth from the book to a mushroom a few feet in front of him.  He had finally decided to pick the mushroom, after all he was wearing gloves and he started to walk in its direction.  As he bent down to pick it up, being careful not to lose the page in his book, a bare foot, and leg crossed in front of him nearly stepping on his precious mushroom.  He looked to see who the appendages belonged to, and he saw to his surprise, and splendor a beautiful women wearing nothing at all.  Her long blonde hair covered a lot of her, but it was so beautiful that he was not dismayed by this.  He stood staring at her for a long moment before he spoke.  “Who are you?”  She stared back at him a little like she didn’t understand.  “I am lily of the forest.  I am the most beautiful of women you will ever see, and that mushroom you seek can not change what is meant to be” She scampered off quickly as he absorbed what she said.

Miles

          Austin should have been out of Virginia by midnight but it's 1am and he's just now approaching the state border.  The Mason-Dixon line is still an hour north.  It isn't just time that is beginning to worry Austin though.  It's getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open and the total darkness only confuses him.  In the last thirty minutes there hasn't been another car on the same side of the road.  No one is passing him, and there are no cars for him to pass.  The headlights of the cars on the other side of the highway temporarily blind him as they pass.  They make the darkness afterwards seem even more total.  It gives Austin a chill and the hair sticks up on his arm.  The heats on in the car, but he still has goose bumps.  He can't help but think that all the cars fleeing from this place that he is headed, like some disaster is up ahead. 

            The sky has a reddish glow to the northwest, but without making it seem any less dark.  He imagines some blazing forest fire, or explosion is making the sky turn shades of crimson.  It brings back memories of his days as a camera man running towards disaster all the time, running into the buildings right before they came crumbling down.  It was moments like that, which made Austin reconsider his life.  He moved away from the city, down south for a more relaxing life with his family, but now just headed back in the same general direction, and he couldn't escape this awful feeling that was haunting him.  What was up ahead?

            "What am I thinking?" he said out loud to himself, breaking the silence that had persisted since his book on tape ended an hour earlier.  "It's just too late to be driving.  I'm too old for this."  His eyes darted as his headlights hit every blue sign, gas, food…lodging. 

            If he stops now he could get a few hours of sleep and get back on the road in the daylight, but daylight in these parts is synonymous for traffic.    As Austin debates in his head, his eyes start to close and he swerves to the right. The rumple strips jerk him awake, and as his eyes open he sees a sign for the Jameson Inn.  "No more risks" he says out loud.  "I'm going to sleep."

Why I Hate Boys

Why I Hate Boys

I hate Travis for making me believe that you had to have some serious fault to be loved. You had to be scarred emotionally to be worth loving. And Travis loved everyone else; he loved Amanda even though she had a boyfriend, just cause she had no parents. He loved Lindsay because she had suicidal tendencies, because she was needy and insecure. But he didn't love me because I was not fucked up enough. I had two parents that loved me, and I had never carved into my own skin, just to feel anything at all. I had never tried to take twenty Advil. And for ever making me think I should, I hate Travis.

I hate Jason for taking my virginity. I hate Jason for lying to me, and for sleeping with my best friend. I hate Jason for never liking me the way I was, for wanting me to change my hair color to red and wear tighter jeans. I hate Jason for ditching me on Valentine's Day to drink cough syrup with his friends. I hate Jason because when he took away my virginity he took away the romanticism of sex. He took away any meaning I might have attached to sex, that would prevent me from treating it carelessly. It took me five years to make up for what he did, and learn to not be a slut, and for that and many other reasons I hate Jason.

I hate Derick for telling me he couldn't kiss me because he was friends with Jason.  I hate him for kissing me later after time had passed and he knew it would not damage his friendship with Jason. I hate him for being such a good kisser and then going and kissing my best friend at my house, at my party right in front of me. I hate him even more because he told me he didn't really like her, and that she wasn't pretty just the day before, which could only lead me to think that I must be practically deformed.

I hate Glenn for being the first boy I truly liked and wanted to date, and I hate him for falling in love with his ex-girlfriend before that could ever happen. I hate Glenn for being, for so long the boy that got away, because there is no way to compete with an ex-girlfriend that stole his heart by taking his virginity and being the only girl he ever wanted after that. I hate Glenn for making me realize I could be so beautiful and so intelligent and still be nothing to him, so long as she was there.

I hate short Mike for having a girlfriend, for cheating on his girlfriend and for saying he loved me all at the same time. I hate slut Mike for being the first boy I ever kissed, and then kissing my friend Alexis, and my friend Kimberley, and then sleeping with my friend Faith and never realizing that this might cause problems or that it might ruin years of friendship.

I hate Justin for being such a retard that he failed out of the local state university, and I hate him for making me do stupid things like drive five hours south in a car with a windshield that had been shattered, just to see him. I hate him for being so far away that I actually believed he was perfect for me, because he was never there to prove me wrong.

I hate Sky for thinking I belonged to him just because he loved me. I hate him for thinking that simply because he loved me it was reason enough for me to put my life on hold, to commit myself to him. I hate Sky for telling me I would be an awful girlfriend just because I didn't always want to hang out with him. And I hate Sky for calling me "dirty" just because I admitted I would never love him the same way he loved me.

I hate Jeremy for being engaged. I hate him for biting my lip and pulling my hair and being perfect in every way, except not being single. I hate him for lying to me when I asked him if he was in a relationship and I hate him for letting me find out the truth. I hate him for not having a car and still saying we should race, when he really meant fuck. I hate his strawberry blonde hair, and his bright blue eyes, his raspy smoker's voice and I hate him for being so funny and clever, and liking my dog so much.

I hate Scott for telling me he was falling in love with me. Me, the person his wife hired to take care of their wonderful children. I hate him for even thinking that I would betray his wife that way, and I hate him for considering it himself. I hate him for making my life and my job horribly uncomfortable. I hate him for teaching me that even after you are done dating, and you grow up and get married, you have kids, and your husband is still a stupid prick who would give up everything just for a younger, newer piece of ass.

I hate Zach, and Andrew, I hate Jon and I hate Brett. I hate every boy who wanted nothing more than to sleep with me. Every boy that was willing to disregard any feelings I might have for one night inside my thighs. And every boy who after being there disappeared without a trace.

I hate Allen for sleeping with a married woman and proving he never respected the sanctity of marriage. I hate Brandon for getting a blow job from a stripper while he was married, and I hate him for walking out on his wife, just because things were tough. I hate Jordan for hooking up with my roommate, and two of my best friends. I hate Adam, Brandon, and Jordan, my three brothers for never proving me wrong about any of my beliefs about the opposite sex. I hate them for acting like children any time they get drunk and being just like all the other idiot boys out there, no different.

I hate Robert for being the one boy I don't actually hate. The only one that wasn't a mistake. The only one I don't regret. I hate him for watching my dog when I was out of town and sending me text messages every time they raced down the sidewalk to tell me who won. I hate him for thinking I was beautiful every morning he woke up next to me. I hate him for making me mix CDs to listen to on my long drives. I hate him for driving me around every time my car broke. I hate him for driving me to pick up my new car when I could finally afford one. I hate him for all the times he bought me dinner, or paid when we went to the movies. I hate his curly brown hair and how much I loved to run my fingers through it. I hate him for meeting my dad and my brothers, and getting along with them so well.

But mostly I hate myself, for letting him think I didn't love him anymore, for letting him slip away and far beyond my reach. I hate myself for letting him go without a fight because it didn't occur to me at the time that he was the best thing that ever happened to me, and the one guy that wasn't a mistake is my biggest regret.