Adultscape

I got a huge raise, at the expense of someone taking a paycut. I guess this is what adult-land looks like.

Femininity

It's some club I was never invited to join. The land of bows, barrettes and make-up; flaunting of pretty legs and fingernails, tight shirts beneath loose cardigans. Batting eyelashes and waxing eyebrows, leaving behind the little girl, unaware that she's supposed to be pretty.

It's occurred to me many times throughout my college years, that I need to explore how I became this person I am; how I cultivated my definition of femininity. I skirted the topic for a long time, half-afraid of it, half unsure I understood it. Afraid to understand it? Maybe. I knew it was convoluted, I knew there was no reason to think I had to be the rough one, the unkempt, au-naturale weird girl. But that's what I've always felt like.

Stuck somewhere between self-aware and fully-bloomed, I grew to distrust the members of the club. They were sinister with their stuffed bras and painted faces, and the rest of their God-given beauty. I was shaped wrong. I hadn't been given the gift so important to girls of my age--I had a lumpy stomach, a chubby face, skinny legs and flat, brown hair. I also had a premature swearing problem by age 8 (thanks, Dad).

I surrounded myself with the other awkward girls--three misfits who all had strange tastes and weird quirks. Casey, our commander, had a loud, bellowy voice and a boxy frame, and loved to ride horses. Dana was tiny, she had hair flatter and browner than mine and did nothing but practice ballet and read Little House on the Prairie books. Ashley was freckly with a major learning disability--she was put on every ADD drug ever made. She hated it, cried every night. She suffered from flat feet. I let her cheat off my tests because I couldn't bear leaving her behind a grade if she failed. She was the first person who ever told me I was smart.

We were all fucked up. Our families were poor, we lived in Baker and we couldn't afford to look cool like the rest of those cunts. My family regularly received the church food donations, and I was only enrolled in the Catholic school because my mother worked for the church and got a waiver. Ashley's parents fought all the time. And those cunts would trip us in the lunch line, and other cunty things like that. For a long time, I just thought it was supposed to be like that.

But as much as we hated them and all their accessories, we all wanted desperately to be women, and recognized as such.

One day in fourth grade, I stole some lipstick from my mom--it was this awful shade of tan/brown--and at recess, I went to the bathroom to put it on, making sure no one was in the stalls before I pulled it out. I was so afraid--not of what it would look like, but that they might think I was trying to be like them.

And of course, Kayla Berthelot walks in. Cheerleader, tall with perfect hair and clothes tailored specifically to her. The girl I imagined went home to a secret, decadent lair, to conspire with her evil mother on ever-endless ways to be more cunty.

"Hey Christie, tryin' to be pretty?"

I stopped, mid-"O", looked at her grinning in the mirror behind me, and dropped the lipstick down the drain.

"Just, ah, putting on my lipstick," I blurted out, a little too loudly.
"You don't wear lipstick," she said. The grin slid off her face like my grandma's eyeshadow slid off hers, into this stone-face fueled with disdain.
I said nothing as she floated out of the bathroom.

What could I have said? "Yes, I do?" No, because I didn't wear lipstick. She already knew that. Girls like me don't wear lipstick.

And that stuck with me for a very, very long time.

The Rise and Fall of Lies the Cat

Not many people know about Rittiner Drive’s cat problem. The reason: one of them is that everyone on Rittiner Drive seems to own a cat. The other, is that the Rittiner cat problem resides in one ancient, single, feline soul: Lies, the Cat.
Many Rittiner residents speculate on the origin of Lies, and some call him by different names: F*cker, Crack Cat, Why Does He Pee On All My Stuff, Fake Baby, The Talented Mr. Kitley, and Stank. The neighborhood, confused by his survival despite the fact that NO ONE feeds him (everyone has been surveyed), is left to dig up the dried, grass-covered nuggets of Lies’ mysterious past.
But all they’ve come up with is what they have witnessed: Lies’ survival. In the space of the last two weeks, I personally have seen Lies close to death via being attached by a dog—we all thought it was going to happen—and then, he was fine. No explanation.
Then, he got hit by a car, and again, everyone thought he was a goner. But he was, of course, fine. Again, no reason he should have survived it.
Lies has never been to a Veterinarian, he’s never gotten shots or been neutered. He's never been weighed or otherwise accounted for. He's especially never been carbon-dated.
Because I’ve never lived on Rittiner Drive, I have a unique and unbiased history of this mysterious creature. I have done the research—the answers materialized from months of wearing cat ears and peeing on stuff. Sorry, friends and family, but it was a worthy cause. I did not find the exact origin of Rittiner’s favorite feline asshole, but I know it dates back more than 144 million years.
Long ago, in the Cretaceous Period, Lies terrorized the hearts and minds of the Muttaburrasaurus and the Rhinosaurs by sneaking into their dinosaur houses and peeing on all of their stuff. When the First Great Extinction/meteor/God-bomb/alien invasion took place, Lies survived by extracting the tears of dying dinosaurs with a pure copper rod he fashioned out of pain, with help from his razor-sharp tail. He stored the tears in large clay pots underground.
He then peed in the pots, and because of that fateful act, Lies taught his lanky, stupid body to subsist entirely from pee and sadness. As a side effect of this survival tactic, Lies invented the first battery! (see Baghdad Battery.)
Was it an accident, or was it intentional? No one knows.
Because Lies’ bones were morphed into Adamantium because of the aliens, the meteor/Zeus’s lighting bolts/Cthulu’s tentacles did not affect him. As the rest of Earth’s creatures were melting and starving to death, Lies was stealing their tears and peeing on all of their stuff. That’s what Lies does; that is how he rolls.
So how did Lies end up on Rittiner Drive? No one knows for sure, but I knew several folks on the block who had things to say. Maybe they don’t talk to their neighbors enough, but it became very apparent to me after talking to only a few residents.
Lies has no home, nor does he want one. His sustenance is solely based around sadness molecules and pee atoms. There’s one quality of Lies I haven’t yet mentioned, and this quality is the reason he earned his nickname: he can look like any cat on Rittiner Drive. And there are many, many pet cats on Rittiner Drive.
Example: one former resident recalls Lies sneaking into her home on certain occasions, when many visitors were on her porch. Lies happened to be shaded and colored identically to her cat, Baby. The visitors, not knowing the subtle differences between Baby and the immortal catdroid, let Lies in. He proceeded to pee on everything she held dear, and tears were shed—which Lies later collected, though there are no witnesses to that. One can only assume, since he feeds on sadness and his own pee.
The only thing that bothers me about Lies’ current state is that he’s been diminished to it. He had some glory days, you know? Hanging out with dinosaurs? Making the first battery ever known? It must really suck to have to hang out on Rittiner Drive instead of going to the next-best thing (I think it will be the second coming of our soon-to-be alien overlords). But rest assured, dear public: when our civilization blows itself up, Lies will rise again. It’s all he knows; all he can do. He is the bridge between entire epochs of history; he is eternal.
Until then, he’s probably going to hang out on Rittiner Drive, imitating your cats and peeing on your stuff. Hey, at least he’s predictable.

Cement

Generally I saw my life in days, stretched out between two poles, end to end like a mosh pit full of privileged douche-bags, making up reasons to be pissed off enough to draw blood and make an enemy or two.

There is nothing general about it now. The days aren't days, they are hours, minutes, seconds. And in between each of them is some unidentifiable lust for all things alive; a deep need to run into every open door available to me, because this time I live in is unique. There will be no other like it. These doors don't stay open for long, and I have to try to understand what's behind each one before they fill with cement--I have to get in there to push, push, push, and then draw it out of its hole lest it remain there forever. It is not exhausting.

No, I've not taken acid recently. I think it's just spring. Don't mind me, I'll just be filling all the empty rooms with cement, because their space is no longer necessary.

Cosmic Plinko

Taking someone for granted is rooted in believing that we can ever completely know someone,
and I don't think we can. Every person is a universe unto themselves, they have different experiences that guide their decisions and reactions, and no matter how long you know someone or live with someone or date someone, you will never, ever, fully understand their way of doing things. The trouble arises when you think you do.

However, bouncing things off of another in conversation is essential to understanding the universe within yourself--your way of doing things, your reactions to the small stuff, the stuff you sweat when you know you shouldn't.

Anyone remember Plinko on The Price Is Right? You're that ball, and everyone else is those pegs. We need each other to get where we're going.

A Year

Too tired

...but never so much that I don't spend the rest of my energy wishing I were there, and not here. There's always just enough to drive me that much further west.

The more I look at my situation, the less I pity myself.