From the monthly archives: June 2007
Tracey lived down the block from me when I was a young girl. She was loud and crass and intriguing. I spent grades 1-3 repressed and shy in Catholic school and had yet to encounter someone like Tracey.
I’ll always remember our first encounter. My family had moved to a quiet court in the less-affluent side of the suburb that spawned Debbie Gibson and Amy Fisher. I explored the grid of its sunny blocks on my Powder Pink Rider, my dirt bike, in a Kids R Us dress– a purchase that included a replica fitted for a Cabbage Path Kid. Tracey approached me from her side of Eglon on her ten-speed snidely asking “Who are you?” My JCPenny-permed head sensed danger and fled. Who was she? Why was she so mean to me? Her forwardness and hostility was alien to me.
4th grade, Mrs. Rodriguez’s class, my first year in public school. Tracey rang my doorbell in the morning and asked if we could walk to school together. It baffled me. Didn’t this girl hate me? I accepted her invitation to walk the couple of blocks together. I don’t remember our conversation. It probably consisted of my answering yes or no to her questions. I was so shy. Her dress had rhinestones. She didn’t cross the street at the corner (gasp!).
Despite our many differnces, we became friends. We had to… she lived 4 houses away. My parents disliked her because they thought that she had somewhat corrupted me. I knew it was a necessary rebellion. I became comfortable with being adversarial and difficult at home… a tsker, sucking my teeth constantly. My parents had blamed Tracey and banished her from the house. My spacious closet be her plush recliner and, at the crank of the automatic garage door, the carpet of the stairs like a hosed Slip & Slide.
Elementary school gave way to a period of complete physical and social awkwardness and confusion: tween angst. She was there, too; her juvenile delinquent syndicate expansive and with resource. She continued to develop into a terror. Me, less so, but I often came along for the ride. Vandalism, petty larceny, mail theft. We rummaged through her parents’ coats and drawers for clanking loot like pirates. We gawked at her brothers scantily-clad Budweiser girls. Womenhood, we thought. We were so far from it.
It still doesn’t seem like it’s here.
he was in Iowa with us
in all the nothingness in the dark
the subtle horizon of corn fields
light like a horror show
he was in the air sandwiched between two semi’s
our headlights illuminating his name
him crawling out the grey holes
alive again
how we had knew him
the lady behind him knitting
we could still smoke inside then
he dangled one on the wet of
his lip for an entire song.
My constant and careful deliberations often
sour sweet fortuity, clamp my moving parts
Internal exertions, the push
and pull of thoughts
the psychic cardiovascular activities
bring outward motion to a halt
an imbalance that attaches me
stationary like an innocuous post-it note
You’ve grown accustom
to overlooking the chalky yellow.
I like sorting and organizing time. I have a need to translate all I experience into a communicative form. I use this past all the time. It serves a purpose in my present and my future. An all-encompassing spank-bank.
Rick believes more in the present. He is not trying to control time by slicing it into practical life lessons or efficiently juicing its pulp for refreshment as needed. He is impressed with it as a detached omnipresent entity. He makes mad faces in the pictures he takes of himself. He is a Libra like me. We think this explains things about our personality. Shared neuroses, or the perception of shared neuroses.
We both work in offices in our respective big cities, in our respective timezones. I know his movie references and learn from his music references. He has Anthony Logistic personal care items in his apartment. He loves a complicated woman from New York with big blue eyes. I tell him that complicated women from New York are worth their weight in gold.
He writes expressive emails. I’d be able to pick his out of a line-up. He crafts deliberate transmissions that do his thoughts and feelings justice and I receive these well. He uses vulgarity and exclamation points only when appropriate. He uses good olive oil and calls me by my last name.
I graduated from high school about 12 years ago. Today I was contacted by a man who student-taught in my 11th grade art class. He attached a photograph of a piece of art I had completed under his instruction. I remember the piece well (a still life completed without lifting the pencil) and him only vaguely. He told me I was the only student in the class to “nail” the assignment, that he had my work in his teaching portfolio and was currently undertaking a recording of his teaching philosophy, reflecting on the successes and failures of his lessons. The contact came through MySpace, where the ease of instant communication has created a norm of this type of contact, for better or worse.
Even still, the communication made me curious. That this man remembered me and my work after over a decade and that the passing years had not diminished the brief encounter as it had for me… what else was I doing without my knowledge, what else had my vaporous memory provoked? People interacting with each other are like unstable elements. Timing, chance and other such fickle variables forming our bonds often unknowingly, grinding our imprints to other people’s important parts, or not so important parts. We’re changing each other permanently (like chemical equations). And I don’t mean romantically, but in a very utilitarian sense. It is fascinating to me.
So what else was I doing? Who else was I helping write their teaching philosophy? I’d like to hold a meeting of my shareholders. I’d like to get a printed inventory every month. We’re all feeding each other somehow. Some for a flash and in passing, others slowly building influence over years of deduction and from distant places and others still from their inability to be sorted and filed in recesses, like acid flashbacks. This man, the student teacher, had me stored as an explanation to his teaching, preserved for his own practical purposes. We use each other like pulleys and levers. The union of our intended uses, the marriage of mutual necessity fits you where I need you. In my hands, their response to texture and temperature, infused in my touch. In my head to soothe or stir, to create. The me you like or dislike may be another person, our experiences, the pattern it left or altered.
I have never seen Top Gun but I think I have figured out the plot based on references I have heard throughout the years and its soundtrack. Tom Cruise, handsome dynamo, loved by most men (a man’s man) and women (easily, effortlessly but unfulfillingly) alike. He flys jets for the Air Force where he meets the only woman who ever resisted his boyish charms. An experienced, intelligent woman who is a bit cold and a bit bitchy, as is characteristic of women not impressed by super-stud machismo. Enter nemesis Val Kilmer- just a minuscule notch above Tom’s cockiness, a little less handsome so it is clear he’s the antagonist, kind of jerky. They compete in a series of minor conflicts meant to establish their characters way too obviously. Homoeroticness ensues. Tom bags the cold, cold heart which instantly melts after making love to our hero. A dynamic that Tom is more comfortable with. Comfortable enough to develop intimate feelings for the once cold, once intelligent woman in the safety of hers. Val Kilmer conflicts continue until Tom and Val bond together through a shared dangerous experience that requires trust and their great skills as top-of-the-class pilots. We all ride into the danger zone. Breath gets taken away. The golden brunette wins over the two resistant beings and remains ever lovable. Am I close?
Vegan Reporting By Location
