ridiculous seersucker preppy outfits

I rarely have the courage to do things alone. As much as I love being alone in my apartment, I always get so anxious when I have to do something outside in the world by myself. I always admired people who can go to the movies by themselves (although I think this is more of a city thing) and feel completely comfortable. Not only are these people comfortable but also they really enjoy it. I mean, unless you are one of those people who talks throughout movies, then going alone is probably a great experience. I really hope to do this someday. For now, I'm going to settle with walking downtown to get dumplings and sweet and sour cold noodles.

Last night during this walk I was listening to the new Andrew Bird on my iPod, and it was one of those perfect spring-summer nights where it's cool enough to wear a jacket or just a t-shirt. And like usual, the downtown mall was full of people hanging out and eating outside. Some of the restaurants open up European-style in the warmer seasons, and everything seemed so round. I didn't get annoyed at the couple in front of me walking with their arms around each other and I even smiled when they stopped for a long, romantic kiss.

On Friday night I had been convinced to go to Foxfields by an old high school friend who was in town, but only if our other high school friend who also lives in Charlottesville went as well. Foxfields is basically a huge field party in the middle of horse races. Everyone dresses up in ridiculous seersucker preppy outfits and sundresses and gets wasted in the middle of the day. Not exactly my idea of fun, but the fact that I was hanging out with these two friends really made the difference. That always makes the difference.

I struggled to get up early on Saturday morning since we spent all Friday night drinking and catching up, explaining how much our lives had changed without really talking about it, and drinking cold, white wine. My friend's boyfriend drove us to Foxfields, with me sitting in the back, sunglasses and emergen-C on hand. I had thrown on a cotton dress and flip-flops, my make-up from the night before still sagging on my face. About an hour into the five-mile-an-hour/standstill traffic, my friend and I got out of the car and started to walk. On any other day I would have been complaining, but at this point I was invested in finding our other friend, enjoying the overcast cool breeze day, and just plain being in the company of these two people.

The road to Foxfields is full and green, right outside of Charlottesville and into the country. There are large houses that line the road, and when we finally got to the ridiculousness that is Foxfields, I was almost disappointed that the walk was over. We finally found our friend, and he was at a plot near the horse tracks. At one point we began to talk about figuring stuff out, and it made me think of how we all three used to hang out in high school, how they lingered around together after I had gone home.

I have never really understood the reason why people are drawn to certain people, they just are. Whether it’s on the wooden bleachers in a worn-down gym or in the middle of a field in central Virginia, there’s no real way of knowing why each group connects together and then, broken apart, swarms around each other.

My friend and I left early and took a cab home because she had to work, and we shared it with a couple. I felt like I lived in an actual city again. The girl sat in the back with us and her boyfriend sat in the front, drunkenly putting his hand up in the air for her to hold it. They were making plans to go get some pizza and then take a nap. In the middle of the silence of the cab ride he blurted out "love you" as if that was the one thought that made it through his foggy mind. It sounded like it came from somewhere deep in his thoughts, like he had dwelled on it and then couldn’t help but let it surface. She laughed and told him she loved him, too.

Bright Red Stick Shift Aerostar Minivan

There are things that only slightly upset me, like BMW's and Dancing with the Stars. Then, there are things that really upset me: tweed, crowded grocery stores with old women who tell you you have too many items in your basket and that you should get a cart, that psychic guy John Edward who preys on families who have lost loved ones and tells them that they are "in a better place," and hot, humid, middle-of-July type of weather. There's also a long list of things that creep me out as well.

I've decided that minivans creep me out. Not in a soccer mom entitlement kind of way, but in an intense, I just watched an actual scary movie kind of way. Today I was behind this silver minivan, New Jersey plates, a black turtle compartment on the top, visible passengers throughout the van which I had to strain to see through the tinted windows. I'm guessing it was in case they wanted to watch a DVD while on their five minute trip downtown. I know this because I drove behind them all the way from my apartment complex to the parking garage. The driver was doing the type of driving where he was either talking on his cell phone or having some sort of important can't pay attention to the fact that I'm driving kind of conversation. And something about the whole thing creeped me out.

Growing up, my family had a bright red stick shift Aerostar minivan. My brother eventually took it with him to college, and we promptly replaced it with a black stick shift Explorer. We are a stick shift only family. I eventually learned how to drive a stick shift car in the parking lot of my old elementary school with my dad yelling, "Clutch! Clutch! Now gas! Gas! Goddamnit!" It is one of my most pleasant memories of growing up. By then I was used to my dad yelling things like goddamnit, but usually it was from the backyard while he was working in his garden or from upstairs when he was installing the window air conditioners in mid-June. The best part of that whole experience was our neighbors letting us know how great it was to hear him yell goddamnit son of a bitch every Saturday afternoon when the lawnmower broke or the rabbits ate all of the lettuce. He once killed a possum with a pitchfork. We didn't hear any cussing when that happened and I didn't learn about this story until I was a teenager. At the time I was embarrassed by all of this, thinking that everyone thought my dad was hard to deal with or a disturbance, but it was something that I learned to love and appreciate about my dad. Most of the time he would trap the animals that disturbed his precious garden in a silver cage and take them out to the woods and set them free to disturb somewhere else.

Other things that creep me out: that weird guy with the round-faced body, unibrow and that weird girl he's with in the yellow dress on that e-harmony commercial. They stand together and talk about communication and how hard it is to talk about themselves to each other and how e-harmony helped them find each other. And I think to myself, that's exactly what happened you sad fucks. They are very, very creepy both alone and together. I'm actually glad they found each other because all I can think about is his round unibrow face sitting at a bar asking the bartender what time she gets off work after she's watched him unsuccessfully present himself to a variety of unattractive, lonely women all night. And when she promptly says no as well, he decides that e-harmony is his online lonely bar ticket to love.

While I was doing my year as an Americorps*VISTA working in Boston, I had a friend who lived out in Holyoke, Mass. (FYI: It's the birthplace of volleyball, right next to Springfield, the birthplace of basketball). We used to drive up to the "mountains" (after living in Boone, North Carolina for four years, nothing's ever really mountains anymore), and then over to Northampton, Mass. He had this tape of Jeff Mangum playing live at Jitter Joe's and throughout the whole thing there is a baby talking and crying in the background. And it always creeped me out because on top of his music and his voice there's this baby crying and then the sounds of clanking of plates in the restaurant. Part of me doesn’t want to listen, but part of me wishes I had been there at Jitter Joe’s.

For some reason when I was behind that minivan today I really wanted to see what it was like inside. Get a closer look at this family that who stored extra DVD's of A Night at the Museum and Shrek II in their black storage turtle. Because while I was growing up we sat in the back of that bright red Aerostar, air conditioning never really reaching us, half cracked windows that slid to the side, and gray, soggy seats. And from the outside, without tinted windows, everyone could look in and see us.

Sleeping in a Wal-Mart Parking Lot

My friend's sister once went on a diet that consisted of eating beets only. I remember this well, because we were standing in their kitchen one afternoon, my friend and I eating hamburger buns or leftover pizza from the night before, and she was standing by the sink eating bloody, red beets out of the can. And she was doing it proudly, announcing that this was the third day and she had already lost eight pounds. And that this was the beginning of the new her. That she would no longer have to worry about being overweight, that this red vegetable was the answer to all of her questions. Her diet lasted less than a week.

I woke up this morning feeling tired, like I always do after the weekend. There was again, one toothbrush next to my sink and two pairs of boxer shorts and some socks on the floor in my bedroom. I couldn't hear the red sox/yankees game playing next door in my living room, and the only warmth that came into my apartment was the beginnings of a new, hot spring day. I could feel the Charlottesville humidity rising outside my window, creeping in as the sun came up. But I kept my windows open to bring the sounds of cars and trains passing next to my ears.

We spent Sunday in bed all day planning our three week road trip across the country. We made sure we planned to stop in places like Missoula, Montana, and Madison, Wisconsin. We mapped out what cities we have friends in, where we want to stay in hotels or hostels, where we want to camp out, trying to avoid a night in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Parts of us want to just hit the open road and feel all romantic and energized and spontaneous, but parts of us know that at the end of a 12 hour day of driving, knowing that cold sheets in a two star hotel await us will feel amazing.

When I was four years old my family took a train trip across the country. There are pictures of the experience and a whole album devoted to it on a shelf in my parents house with little captions next to the pictures like, "Woah, that's a long way down" from the Empire State Building and "Snow? In the summertime? Unbelievable." One caption reads "Thank you, to the man who made this all possible." My dad traveled a lot for work while I was growing up, so we could make trips like that, so that once a year we could travel up to Vermont or Colorado to go skiing. Whenever I think about these trips, I also think of my brother, sister, mom and I sitting around eating BLT's or pizza whenever my dad was out of town on business. And how much I loved knowing that we could have BLT's whenever my dad was out of town because he was trying not to eat red meat and we could never eat anything like that when he was at home for dinner. Somehow, I always concentrated on the perks of dinnertime without him, so that I wouldn't feel like I was missing something.

The only part I can remember about the cross country train trip is the It's a Small World After All ride in Disneyland in California. I just remember being surrounded by all these dolls singing and the dirty, dyed green-blue water as we floated behind families who had traveled to have some sort of vacation, some kind of break from it all, only to be lined up in the hot sun. And when I was growing up and someone asked me if I'd ever been to a certain city or state I always had to ask my mom, "have I been to Seattle?" Yes, I've been to Seattle.

For the upcoming road trip, we made a list of things to pack making sure that a cooler and plenty of food and water was at the top. Knowing what is available at the gas stations and truck stops along the way, we wanted to make sure that we actually took care of ourselves on this three-week excursion. In my mind all I picture is the Pacific Ocean lining California One as we eat granola bars and drink five day old bottled water, no shower for days and the smell of salt spacing through the open windows. Whenever anyone asks how long we've been together, and if we have ever driven for a long time with each other we both avoid the question. "Three weeks, huh?" Part of me wants to defend us, saying we've driven from Virginia to Boston plenty, but the other part just thinks of that Pacific Ocean. And him right next to me.

Then I think about what happens whenever we put ourselves out of our own contexts. I picture the lives of all the people we will pass on the road, and how unexplainable the whole experience will be. It makes me want to think about what I can already change in my life right now, feeling sometimes like I'm living off of beets and not really tasting or experiencing anything.

MTV, You're My Hero

I've gotten into a really bad habit of watching MTV music videos in the mornings while eating heart-to-heart cereal before I go to work. It's even gotten to the point where I am late every morning because Daughtry's singing to his new audience or Gwen Stefani's pulling two Asian chicks up a building with her hair. It's really an awful way to start the day, and it's a habit that at this point I'm not willing to give up. Sometimes at 8 a.m. some dating reality show will come on and they will kick off the music videos early. This always makes me angry for some reason, like one is actually better than the other.

And sometimes the moment I get to work I close my door, separating myself from the rest of the world by a sheet of glass and some wooden panels. I always find myself thinking that there's no real reason to feel this way, that everyone has good intentions and are just trying to move through life without running into too many sharp edges. But it feels empty to me.

When I was younger my best friend and I used to love watching music videos (never at my house because it smelled and acted old). If we weren't watching TV we'd hang out in her basement playing on her small trampoline against the cold, hard concrete. But if her mom or housekeeper came to do laundry we'd have to relocate again. We were in constant search of somewhere to go without being found.

In the summer we would go out to her bay house in Chesapeake, Maryland and kill jellyfish and go out on her dad's boat. I remember her mom staying in and reading while we went outside into the sun. We'd swim in the pool next to the bay when it got too hot and smelly to go in the real water. We'd hide in the woods around her open, glass house and pretend that nothing else existed. I remember the huge, thick trees and how the bark would shed off onto our hot, salty hands. And we could never figure out how to shake it off.

Now we are on opposite sides of the country and that voice is heard from an e-mail about how the weather in L.A. is sunny or how she's gotten new furniture which means she's staying out there. And I close my office door and write her an e-mail explaining how there's noise outside and I can't concentrate on writing a good one. Then I delete it, remembering that she is in Japan enjoying the cherry blossoms with no real internet. And I remind myself that this is how it's supposed to happen. We all move away and live with real furniture in real cities. Mainly, I just miss her.

And we make choices as to who gets to stay close to us. He's coming to visit this weekend and again it's time sucked into 48 hours, coffee shops, maybe the movies, and the planning for our upcoming summer road trip together. It's my apartment, warm from his laundry and cooking, his feet under a blanket next to mine. Those same feet that I traded shoes with at a party in Boston the first night we met. The night I rushed back from Philadelphia after my uncle's funeral and rain that delayed my plane for almost 4 hours. It's feeling that independence and separation I've worked so hard to have slip away into something new. And it's discussing plans of him turning down a job in Greensboro to move here to be with me. We've decided that staying close is better than keeping that drive down route 29 across state lines between us. Because at some point all the phone calls and e-mails aren't enough.

Temporary Tattoo

I can see its little head creeping out from under my sleeve all day. It's a smeared blue and I can smell the lotion I used to put in on my forearm. It's a fruit-purple odor and each time I move my sleeve to cover up the temporary zebra tattoo I can smell it. I can even taste the fruit stripe gum whenever I see that tattoo, long after it's been removed from my sore jaw. And it's a fucking blue and orange zebra on a bike and it’s fruit stripe and elementary school all over again. It's sitting at the lunch table waiting to finish my sandwich so that I can taste the pink and white sugar-gum.

The numbness from the early morning dentist visit has worn off and I keep moving my jaw to check in and see if it's awake. I'm still getting used to the way my teeth collapse on top of each other, awkwardly adjusting to the new fillings. I keep thinking that something's stuck in my teeth, and if I clench down hard enough things will go back to normal. I've only had two cavities in my life, so three in one day seems pretty intense but I promised myself that I would relax and keep my shoulders down off my ears. Because eventually that turns into a headache. And with the wind and the train near my apartment the night before each hour seemed to wake me up and my eyes feel swollen with metal wheels clicking on a track.

The sun’s finally back out over the mountains and I can see it pouring into the hallways outside my office. And it's quiet and reaches out onto the blue carpet. I want to say that it seems sunny outside but I feel like each time I move my whole office can hear me. And it stays like that on through the afternoon.

When I get home the Henrico County news is forgetting who Nikki Giovanni is, and I half-watch while I get my stuff ready for yoga. I pack my duck towel I've had since I was four, in the past saving it for the yearly beach trip down to the outer banks with my family. And when we could no longer survive the hot six hour car ride (no bathroom breaks unless we were on empty, which was much worse for my older sister), the towel got stored away on a shelf in my closet. Now it's becoming all scratchy and worn after months of sweating and washing it out. It feels stiff under my fingers and I squeeze it tightly as it crunches into my bag. I switch between three towels. One has a picture of a monster holding a pencil with "No More Mr. Nice Guy" written on it and the other is a man, woman, and poodle surfing with a "Come On Aboard!" written in big, red letters.

When the class isn't that crowded at first I feel relief, then the heat, then the comfort of it as it begins to try to warm my body. Something feels so off about tonight and I turn my duck towel onto the white side to keep the bright colors from distracting me. But eventually my sweat bleeds through it, and I can see the ducks all crowded around a beach ball. It feels like they are just looking at me as I try to balance and breathe and concentrate. But I know after all those years of being stuck in my closet that they are resentful. Each time I bring them into the hot yoga room I know they listen for the sound of the ocean but it's not there and my sweat isn't salty enough. And there's blue streaks coming down my arm as the temporary zebra tattoo washes away. I try to let it all wash away.

From the beginning...

So from the time my cell phone-alarm clock goes off at 6:30 a.m. I know today is going to be one of those days. I can just feel it in my eyes, the back of my head, and mostly in my body which is tired from the 3 hours of yoga I did the day before. It's the hot kind, where you smash yourself in a room with dozens of bodies in 115 degree heat and even more humidity. It's the kind where you drink lots and lots of water and plan ahead all day just to do something amazing for your body. And it's only supposed to be 90 minutes, but I hear about people doing doubles, so I tried it out. But my body feels worn, not more flexible or healthy. And I can feel it as I get up to go to work.

I don't straighten my hair or do my eye make-up. I wear my glasses and throw on some clothes suitable enough for a business casual office. It all reminds me that I work at a business casual type office, and feeling that 8-5 pulling me closer, keeping me in for years and years to come because of the surviving salary and benefits. Because of the comfort. And it's the first time in my life that I can feel that choice...that definite comfort. And it picks at me.

The day goes by as any usual day, any day that rushes into decision making and the weeding out of information. My only reprieve seems to come with a few friends sarcastic e-mailing, a coffee break, The Weakerthans on my lunch break, and knowing that at some core I'm doing something right. It's a day that just begins and ends on the clock. And just when I'm getting used to Charlottesville, just when I think it's safe to believe in a place that I've struggled with for the past year and a half, I get the lights cut off on me during my every so often trip to Whole Foods.

From the emergency lights above I can't see the hippies, healthies, and old people who were just standing around me...but I can hear the employees hoping they get off work early, and then the silence, the type of silence that makes everyone uncomfortable. The girl next to me immediately gets out her cell phone and calls someone. Others get out their cell phones and start to shop by the light of it. I just stand there, waiting. I think of that hot, hot yoga room. I think of how stale things seem to get without electricity and eventually I make my way up to the front of the store.

Maybe it's the day or the dust that's brought this. Maybe it's the wind. Because it's turning into one of those nights where the clouds roll over each other and everything's a dark blue with that gray tone. Maybe it's because people don't feel very comfortable being in an uncertainty on a day where tragedy is defined by 33 and who could have done what in 2 hours. The manager has instructed people to check out using a calculator, and they are just underestimating those items that they don't know the exact price of. Just as I start to wait in line, power hums back on and you can feel the relief in the room. Everyone can hear the noise again.

And I don't begin to understand why I'm paying $2.75 for gas on the way home, or why there were hardly any cars on the usually busy route 29, or why I've decided that taking a different way home that is the same amount of time as any other way home (all short cuts and long cuts are the same in Charlottesville) feels somehow like I'm still trying to figure things out, but it does. I've switched from The Weakerthans to Wilco, because at this point it's gotten darker outside, and everything still hangs between rain and nighttime.