Monday, November 19, 2007

Comes in Flashes.....

So for the past few years, I have been researching crazy people. You know reading books on crazy people, looking up crazy people symptoms on the Internet, watching TV shows about crazy people; sometimes I even go to this one coffee shop on Pandora and Government and people-watch because it's where a lot of street people and other medicated types work and congregate.
There's one common thread: it comes in flashes. Sometimes you are crazy and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you feel happy sometimes you feel sad and sometimes you feel nothing. That is when you should start to worry.
Most people who know me would say, that I often feel both very sad and very happy. I mean I cry at soap operas and I cry at concerts and I cry at long distance commercials and you-tube videos. It's been that way for a while.
Those same people and most aquaintances would say that I often seem happy. I am quiet, sure not I also smile and laugh a lot. It's ying and yang, baby.
But lately I have been waking up feeling so empty. For a while I thought I was hungry but I soon began to realize even potatoe chips didn't satiate the feeling in the pit of my stomach. I would watch a couple of hours of TV and have no idea what I had just watched; or read a magazine cover to cover and not be able to recall what a single article was about.
I feel a bit antsy and out of sorts; like I am watching myself but not really in my body. Not exactly a call for alarm yet. But it is sure unnerving.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Do You think of Me?

Do you think of me once in a while?
When you are sad or feeling blue?
Do I remind you of things that make you smile or even laugh out loud?
Like when you step outside to get the paper and you get a bit of dew between your toes
Or when you eat cookies in bed and read girly magazines?
When you think of me once in a while?
Is it good or is it bad?
Is for just a second or maybe a bit longer?
Do you want to talk or just leave well enough alone?
When you think of me once in a while do you think of what I did wrong or what I did right?
Do you think about how I might look now or how I looked then?
When you think of me once in a while, Do you wonder about my family, my friends, my health, or my happiness?
When you walk down the street do you sometimes think you see me and then try to catch my eye?
Do you think of me?
When you hear a new song or watch a new movie do you wonder what I would think?
Do you ever think of me?

Five-Day Old Pizza and Maxi Pads.....The Long Anticipated Conclusion....

I'd seen Greg's filthy basement suite a few times before, so I'm not sure how my overly-dramatic pubescent head morphed the smell of dirty laundry and half-eaten food into the mirage of vanilla-scented candles and freshly laundered linens; but so goes the mind of a girl who for years well past her teen cursed herself for not sending a b-cup bra to Luke Perry for him to autograph instead of her real Warner's A-cup sports bra.

But even in hindsight, the suite was messier than I'd ever seen. I guess the honeymoon was officially over. There was no more hiding stuff in closets or behind the couch, this was Greg; this was Greg's filth: love it or lump it.

So I loved it. I loved it with all I had. I just closed my eyes and tried to remember the lines from every schmaltzy first-time teen love scene I could remember. Downing that half bottle of jack really helped me get into character. We weren't two rebel without a cause teens in a condemned basement tryin to fumble our way through baseball metaphors; we were Brenda and Dylan at the Bellagio on Prom Night; we were Diane Court and Lloyd Dobler in the back of the car after graduation. We were anyone we could think of to be except ourselves.

Because we were embarrassing. There was hapless clothes pulling; there was awkward shifting and accidental hair-pulling; there was outright shock and full-on staring; and most unexpectedly there was a surprise visit from my Aunt Flo that was not only unexpected but unknown until after the fact.

The look of horror on Greg's face is something that haunted me for years to come. Any delusions of his cool exterior and sexual experience fizzled into nothingness as I tried to explain that sometimes "Aunt Flo" came unexpectedly and I swore up and down and even looked up for him on the Internet that he was not going to 'catch anything' from me.

I guess the copious amounts of drugs and alcohol consumed that night did nothing to ease the tension of the awful conclusion to our soap opera rendevous. There was no closing our eyes and pretending anymore. I thought I was going to literally pass out from embarrassment. I seriously was periodically checking my pulse and putting my head out the window for some air. Greg was so red. Not just red in the face; his whole body was red with embarrassment.

Everything was way too real. There was blood: on the bed; on my clothes; on him. Then I started to notice other cracks in the facade. There was a moldy pan with what seemed to be old mac and cheese next to the night stand. there were about three empty pizza boxes at the foot of the bed. There were fruit flies buzzing around a heap of dirty laundry.

While Greg was in the shower "decontaminating himself," I was becoming more and more aware that I was not in the penthouse suite of the Bellagio or even the comfortable back seat of a car. I was in a pig sty and I was starting to feel itchy and nauseous. I suddenly started to notice three tiny pink marks on my thigh. I scratched them and they almost instantly turned into red protruding welts. I couldn't take it.

I called my dad and asked him to pick me up. When Greg got out of the shower he was a bit less disgusted with me but still none too pleased that I had somehow become "allergic" to his place.
"you've been here before, and never had anything like this happen!," he grumbled, still stumbling from the booze and the atrosity that we had both participated in." Well his place had never been this disgusting I thought. And I'd never spent more than twenty minutes at his place before. And I'd certainly never done anything like whatever we had just done at his place before.

He didn't put up much of a fight. We both wanted the night to be over. Neither of us could look the other in the eye. Greg locked up the basement and decided to spend the night on his parents' couch. He left in such a hurry but I was too relieved to see him go to care.

No hug, no kiss not even a wave goodbye; just a random nod in my direction. But I certainly wanted no bodily contact with him at that moment. I didn't think I wanted any bodily contact with anyone ever again.