Sunday, 9/2/01 11:49 p.m. Chambre Nouvelle

second night here, second night bored & cranky, second night drunk & stoned.  listening to ozzfest bands on cd.  debating whether this living situation will be one i will truly enjoy, or appreciate afterward from a distance, i.e. in retrospect.  as, perhaps, concerts?  many random boys for whom i have no particular concern.  i see a hermit-esque future in my neurological crystal ball.  <-- good description, prime example of how mind-altering substances, used moderately and with proper direction, can produce (or assist in the production of) valuable trains of thought.  other evidence to be presented: 1) paranoia 2) delusions of persecution 3) dulled concentration 4) dedication to self-examination.  my tongue ring hurts.  have not brushed my teeth since "last night" (read: this morning) at bedtime.  everyone else has gone to brian's (the brian somehow affiliated with the basketball team) for whatever reason.  i am listening to the lyrics of this song with intense (efforted) effort and a new perception; pondering my present situation with regard to socialization factors.  drowning pool: bodies.  one -- nothing wrong with me, two -- nothing wrong with me, three -- nothing wrong with me, four -- nothing wrong with me,1) something's got to give, two -- something's got to give, three -- something's got to give, --NOOOOOO let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor, let the bodies hit the floor -- skin to skin, blood and bone, you're all by yourself but you're not alone, you wanted in and now you're here, but trailed by hate, consumed by fear.  a statement for cliques, gangs, greek houses perhaps?  social anxiety disorder?  clinical depression?  a life lived in secrecy, delusion, and self-doubt?  a facade for the masses?  i wish i could believe there were some believable argument to the benefits of this chemical "enhancement."  sounds like a fucking cult (christian) ceremony or something.  shows how desperately we need to think we are part of some kind of higher order: there's an organized religion at a temp of fervor (they cam in gradations, like politics or milk and chicken eggs, cigarettes) to suit most anyone.  usually conveniently placed within their lives, when they need a sense of devotion and aid the most, whether that be 15 year old girls devoting themselves to Wicca, priests burying homosexual desires, grieving parents who desperately need comforting, etc. etc. etc.

my lungs sound awful and i'm on too much antihistamine.  i guess if i'm going to abuse substances i might as well do all of them to excess.  r says this is typical: j's not drinking, i'm smoking pot and nursing my alcohol, and c isn't around...and r herself is degrading c, playing the coquette, alternately fucking and ignoring c (who has grown the "college beard"), pronouncing my insanity, and reliving her high school life (this time in the form of a video of ----------).  and i, i am dismissing their invitations to go out, and seeking the solitude and seclusion of my chamber.  i seem to grow less and less interested in their activities.  highlighted by frat parties and the boys from ------ last year.  i found myself missing r this afternoon.  i was cranky from lack of sleep and strained tendons as a result of furniture moving yesterday and today -- our furniture is remarkably coordinated.  most of it is mine and therefore available for when and if i decide i want my own place.  this seems an odd idea, possibly to take place far in the future, when i am much more developed -- or at least directed -- an individual than i am now.

as my friends, those who were not acquired through one another as we see in this house, are not inclined to get along well with one another, they do not form these little mobs in my presence.  i would like to think that my multifacetedness requires many different stimulants, but i think it's more that i am self-absorbed and antisocial.  i am too picky about who i befriend.  i dislike acquiring friends through others and avoid commitment to one group of people.  i believe it is part of convincing myself that i am self-sufficient and capable.  what about my passions, what do they indicate?  what are my passions?  i have an obsessive compulsion to overanalyze and deprecate, but i can hardly say that i am passionate about it as it is generally not a particularly beneficial pastime except in that it secures others to me and reiterates my facade [Latin] of sufficiency.  and this devotion, and acceptance of the facade [Latin] is what i really crave.  so there's my friendships/acquaintances/affiliates (alumni?) explained for the jury -- you the reader, being myself or ELSEONE, as the jury.  you are, of course, deliberating over these pages -- or their sum -- aren't you?  to pass some overall judgment of it.  did you like it?  is it realistic?  is it honest, truthfully presented, overt...a box-office seller?  see, society constantly seeks reinforcement, pretenses, preconceptions (preludes?).  we are a community-oriented, COMMUNAL (commune? communion?) species, purportedly.  we need alliances, reinforcements.  we are never enough in ourselves, and THIS is why we have ORGANIZED RELIGIONS!

i appear to be stuck in a repetitive analysis of religion, don't i?  m and s just returned.  most likely l & b are still making the rounds and slutting it up.  j's committed, and r is flamboyant and noncommital -- even if she's supposedly -- outwardly -- committed to mr. college beard.  once again, reinforcement (of adulthood, perhaps virility).  communal, indeed.  insecure, self-conscious, restless and paranoid, more like it.  here i.

it's raining men! hallelujah, it's raining men!

I've just emerged from the ladies' room.  But let me preface the story by admitting that I'm recovering from pee-shyness.  I don't know where it came from, because bodily functions were completely acceptable in my house growing up.  When I started dating, I never used the restroom at my boyfriends' houses.  I'd hold it until my kidneys ached.  My high school boyfriend, whom I dated for two years, was astonished by my capacity.  It was part of my downfall: when I finally caved and excused myself to use the restroom at his house, he made an offhand comment about never having seen me do so, and oh, the shame.  He now knew I had a bladder!

I also never used the restrooms at school, and routinely went from 6:45am to 3:00pm without peeing.  Public restrooms are gross, and cliquey girls hang out in school restrooms, and I really was just far more comfortable waiting until I got home -- well, except for the kidney aches and the strategic sitting positions.  And the whole menarche thing necessitated the occasional ladies' room visit...but by and large, I only peed at home.  Never mind the other thing, which was certainly not an option outside the privacy of my home.  Eventually, this practice led to kidney stones, and I had to give up my urination disorder on pain of white-hot knives to the ureters.

I once dated a guy for who had little sense of propriety.  We only dated for about two weeks, and as such didn't have a lot of time to grow comfortable around each other.  In fact, being around him was fairly uncomfortable in general because he always had to be touching me -- and I mean constantly in possession of my body, holding on to me -- which was why it didn't last.  We started dating because he had this sweatshirt that I totally loved.  I'm fairly certain it was the extent of my attraction to him, because he wasn't very smart or very clean and we didn't have much in common.  He certainly wasn't bothered by stage fright.  We were on the phone one night and the pauses and audible grimaces, combined with the slight echo to his side of the conversation, finally led me to ask what he was doing.  "Taking a dump," he replied, forthrightly.  Oh. My. God.  We definitely did not know each other well enough for that.  We'd never even seen each other naked.  I informed him he could call me back when he was finished with his business and promptly hung up.

Now there's this trend of cell phones in public restrooms, which annoys the living shit out of me.  I'm speaking figuratively, of course, although I am capable of moving my bowels in a public restroom when the need arises if:

1. The restroom is empty, or
2. The restroom is sufficiently noisy, or
3. I'm traveling away from home (because oftentimes convenience and necessity fail to overlap in those circumstances, creating a situation that is far more uncomfortable than an overful bladder) AND have sufficient anonymity from, or stranger-ness to, anyone else who happens to be occupying said restroom.

When folks are yapping on the phone in a public restroom, it makes me want to embarrass the hell out of them with disgusting noises -- real or staged -- and perhaps commentary.  "What am I going to do?! Oh, god, that's never going to look the same again!  Oh, NOOOOOOOOO!!!!"  Another option is singing.  Or just repeatedly hitting the flush lever, because the acoustics of a restroom make it difficult to converse over the sound of a toilet flushing, plus it removes all doubt of location for the person on the other end of the line.

Seriously, what conversation warrants continuation through a bathroom visit?  If it's so important that it really can't wait, you probably shouldn't be relieving yourself while having it.  I mean, there's a distraction aspect to consider.  And if it's just a chat, why don't you demonstrate some common courtesy to the person to whom you're speaking, and not subject him or her to the goings-on of the lavatory?  Just send a text, for Christ's sake.

Kit, I need you!

I used to drive a Ford Focus.  I hated that car.  The first night I had it, my ma and I went up the street to pick up Chinese food during an ice storm, and -- despite learning to drive in Minnesota winter weather and being pretty damn good at it by then -- slid straight through an intersection.  I should have sold it right then, but it was eleven years newer than my previous car and had new-fangled and life-saving features, such as airbags.  (As it turns out, I'd rather have ABS and all-wheel drive, and thus avoid the necessity of airbags.)

That car was a subclinical lemon -- that is, completely untrustworthy and expensive but not certifiable for replacement.  I had to replace the ignition system when it was only four years old, after the third time it stranded me.  Only once was in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming.  At nightfall.  Thank FSM for AAA.  The last time I drove it was to a friend's house to help her clean her new apartment, and I just wasn't terribly shocked, despite the lack of warning symptomology, when it failed to start.  The mechanic reported the engine had cracked.  It was five years old, had only 105K miles.  Don't ever buy the first model year.  Wait until all the wrinkles get ironed out in lawsuits funded by other people.

So I started car-shopping on craigslist.  When you're 25 and childless but fairly poor, car shopping presents some interesting options.  I was really fond of a number of classics, cars that preceded me on this earth by twenty years or more, but they seemed likely to strand me as often as that damned Focus.  I'm not much of a mechanic, and I didn't have a garage or many tools.  Additionally, my driving is conservatively described as "defensive."  I had really missed having a six-cylinder engine.

Lucy

It was my husband-to-be (though I didn't know it at the time) who found my car-to-be: a 1992 Dodge Stealth, DOHC, 222hp, manual transmission, 95K miles.  She was for sale in a fancy schmancy neighborhood in the city.  We went to take her for a spin, and appreciate her womanly hips...and the balls she displayed during acceleration.  (If that sentence strikes you as odd, you're clearly not a car person.)  The owner -- let's call him Mr. Wife Swap -- was selling her because he'd upgraded to a fancy new German car and his two kids didn't fit so well in the alleged 2+2 coupe.  (Nobody fits very well in a 2+2, by the way.)  I was fairly enthralled but terribly nervous; $5000 was a huge amount of money to me.  I told him I was interested but had some other cars to test-drive -- LIES!!! -- and would get back to him.  That night I called Mr. Wife Swap and said I'd take it, would bring him a cashier's check the next day.  I couldn't stand the thought of someone else driving off in my (aging) sports car.

When I showed up to do the transaction, he let me in the house.  It's a pretty ritzy neighborhood and I wasn't surprised by the apparent shoe-removal-at-door policy, but I was surprised by the basket of hospital booties behind the door.  I just object to the sharing of booties.  No floor needs to be so shiny that shared booties should be required.  In fact, I decline.  I will not partake of the booty-sharing.

We sat on the floor to exchange paperwork.  I think he offered me a chair but it I'm fairly comfortable on the floor and didn't mind.  I was curious, however, why the couch was apparently off-limits?  We made some small talk or something and I mentioned that I'd driven my last car out from Minnesota.  He seemed genuinely shocked that I spoke English in full sentences and wasn't morbidly obese, being from the midwest.  Without betraying any cognition that his preconceptions were at all prejudiced, he made it clear to me that he believed everyone in the midwest inbreeds, reads nothing of substance, plays no instruments, carries STDs, and generally presents a drain on society.  Umm, Mr. Wife Swap?  Have you ever been there?  I can't remember if he said he'd been through it or not?  But his experience was fleeting, anyway.  And he's not from the US, so I'm uncertain where he'd developed his well-developed opinions.  I certainly would be reluctant to opine on the regional differences of Great Britain, (just for example), seeing as I've never lived there and only visited once for a short period of time.  It'd be ignorant of me.  Especially if my opinions happened to be bigoted.

The transaction occurred uneventfully, and Mr. Wife Swap had the kindness to draw up two receipts for me, one of which documented full payment of the asking price, and the other documented the sale for the DMV, sans numbers...because the government already made sales tax off the sale of the car, the first time it was sold.  He also provided me with records of all the maintenance and repairs, which I thought was excellent of him.

The next I heard of Mr. Wife Swap, he was swapping wives on TV.  Let me state here that I don't watch the show, but I was reading an article on the internet (because I'm literate, despite my midwestern origins) about a particularly unsavory participant who had specific opinions about midwesterners and their backwardness.  Imagine my astonishment to find it was Mr. Wife Swap!  I keep meaning to watch the episode to see what an ass he made of himself, but I nearly always have better things to do than watch inflammatory reality tv, or at least I like to think so.

So just in case her "celebrity" affiliation status raises her resale value, let me conclude by vouching for the overall health and well-being of my car.  She treats this midwesterner very well, despite her first daddy's misgivings.  But it's getting to be time for me to move on, so all reasonable offers will be considered.  And you should know that she answers to the name of Lucy, just in case you ever get into trouble and need to summon her via your wristwatch.  It can totally be done -- that's also on tv.