No For An Answer

I got a new cell phone today. I didn't really intend to--my parents and I were at the mall and decided to check out the cost of a new phone versus the cost of a battery for the creaky old model I had--which had to be plugged into the wall to talk, so it was basically a mobile texting device. The guy at the Verizon kiosk told us that it'd probably be a better idea to get a new phone, and I was due for one anyway, so I picked one. And then it started. The pitch.

You should get this phone because: Blah blah top of the line. Camera? Blah blah here's a picture of my girlfriend of six hours. We just made it official last night. You need texting? Awww, here's a text from Tina, isn't that sweet? There's nothing girls like more than a brand new relationship! I'm going to call my friend at your more local store to get this faster! Look how connected I am! So why are you in Cleveland if you have a Toledo number? You go to school here? Physics? Wow. I'm going to give you a discount because I like you! Flirt flirt flirt flirt flirt!

My parents were not more than four feet away for all of this. My dad signed what he needed to sign, and ran away to the car. That's when the big guns came out:

Hey I'm having a Christmas party. You know, renting a club for the night, open bar, limo--where do you live? Little Italy, that's cool. You should come by. And bring your boyfriend, too! I'm going to give you my card and my number and my email and everything, so get ahold of me. Yeah me and Tina are doing it right, not sure when it is but you should definitely stop by--get ahold of me and we'll set stuff up.

He finished by entering his number and email into my phone (because I obviously don't know how to do that for myself) and made me promise to call him. He called his phone from my new one so he had my number.

On the bright side, I got a pretty sweet deal.

This is Why I Hate Checking My Email

Case, traditionally, throws pumpkins off a building on campus and calls it an experiment around this time of year. The physics department usually sponsors this, but this year decided it was too much of a logistical nightmare, and canceled it. The Physics and Astronomy Club un-canceled it. About two or three weeks into planning, I got an email from a graduate student who wanted in on the action, and offered us $250 from the Graduate Student Senate to sweeten the deal. Who could refuse?

Somewhere along the line, I got declared/assumed incompetent, and due to some passive-aggressive committee politics on the part of the graduate students, we may not have the funds we need. We may also, in fact, have three people MCing the event, and a double batch of pies. For the drop which will not happen if we can't pay plant services their exorbitant fee for setting up the drop mechanism. (They say it takes seven hours, start to finish, to set up and tear down. I simply don't see it and the dance I get from their secretary makes me even more suspicious.)

My inbox is also flooded with emails from the Committee for the Selection of Common Reading, because the head of this committee is a stupid woman who likes overly complicated acronyms. There has been nothing of substance come out of this committee yet, but somewhere around thirty or forty emails have been generated. What do they contain? Pontification about "literary merit." Speculation on which bullet point ought to go first I sent an email suggesting that hey, why don't we think about structuring the request for common reading suggestions so that it's likely we'll get books that the incoming freshmen might like to read, since the university buys those books and most of them never get cracked.

I was, of course, advocating "fluff" and "easy reading" that "wouldn't challenge" the students. Silly me, wanting to put Case's limited funds to practical use. I forgot that the selection of common reading is really just an ego wank on the part of the committee. It of course has nothing to do with the students who are supposed to be reading this book.

And the committee went back to debating the bullet points.

I think I just hate committees. This whole experience is going to end with me being a dictator of an island that is small but all my own.

Bring Me That Horizon

My trip to Virginia left me with one more insight to add to my list of Things I've Learned in Life. It's a short list:

Don't be stupid.

Things that suck and are hard are not superior to things which do not suck and are not hard. You don't get bonus happiness points later for being miserable now.

corollary: Things/people which/who regularly grind your self-esteem and sanity to wallpaper paste are things/people you should not continue to do.

The thing I learned over fall break was this: You are from the country, and will always be from the country.

This sounds simpleminded to the point of being incredibly dumb. But I used to entertain notions that I could somehow turn out differently from the way I used to be. I used to think that perhaps I could be a stuffy intellectual type, or wear that really expensive plaid and not have it feel like a costume. I even used to think I could be a hippie, until I realized that I was always going to laugh when people started talking about crystals and energy fields and things like that.

But I am from the country. I will never like mountains. Sure, they're pretty, but what can you do with a mountain? You can look at it and say it's pretty. You can walk on it. You can tear it apart to get to the useful stuff inside. You can't plow it and plant shit on it. You can't put a football or baseball stadium on it. You can't build houses on most of them. Mountains are merely decorative.

(Counterpoint: They are fucking stupid beautiful, though.)

I will always have a near-total inability to enjoy sports that involve crowds behaving decorously. (tennis, golf) If there are not drunken idiots bellowing around me, it's not a sporting event. In addition, I will always have a predisposition to being on my feet yelling at the referee/opposing team/our team at some point during the game, and after that point I will likely continue standing/jumping/screaming. The Buckeye fans flipped cars and set them on fire to celebrate. I expect my teams and their fans to uphold this standard, and let's be honest: when was the last time you celebrated Wimbledon by getting shitfaced and rioting?

(Counterpoint: I don't understand or enjoy NASCAR.)

I like pickup trucks and the people who drive them. I can think of four people off the top of my head who drive trucks in Cleveland, and they all make me extremely happy. When it comes to cars, as long as it a) gets me places without smoking or smelling worrisome and b) has a CD player/radio and working windows, I'm pretty happy. Anything else is nice, but extraneous.

(Counterpoint: I guess I like cars too?)

So that's three things I've learned from life now. I think I'm doing pretty well.

I Don't Know Where She Come From

I don't believe in fate. It'd be nice to, sometimes, to feel like things are even just a little bit out of my control. But mostly, I think it's bunk, I think it's what people say when they want to do things they know aren't the best for them. You're usually "fated" to end up with the one who breaks your heart time and time again. You're very rarely "fated" to marry the good guy.

If I believed in fate, though, and that's a big IF, there'd be something to the fact that next year at this time I will most probably be living in the city where Mark lived with Lily (the lesbian) while I died of a broken heart and was reborn a harder and more cyncial person.

There are words that I thought I could live my life never hearing again and be perfectly happy. One of them was (and still is) camp. Mark went back to his old summer camp, a crazy hippie summer camp, to work for a summer and fell in love with Lily because she was there and I wasn't and she was his sixth grade sweetheart. He wrote me letters telling me he couldn't wait to come back to Cleveland, that the purpose of his life was loving me, and then he put his pen down and went off with her.

I dumped him and he stayed in Virginia--another word I never wanted to hear again. Virginia, as far as I was concerned, was full of long-haired blondes with sensible shoes who only wanted to steal my boyfriend. And I realize I'm being incredibly uncharitable to Lily. That she's probably a lovely person and I'd probably really love her, if I'd ever known her in another context than "the girl who stole the love of my life and then broke his heart by deciding she was a lesbian intermittently over a six month period while they lived together."

I'm not a Southern type person. I don't particularly like mountains--they're pretty and all, but I grew up in the plains and I'm happy with the horizon. But the University of Virginia is the most beautiful campus in this country and perhaps the world. They have a fantastic program that will plant me in a career where I could end up positively impacting the world and making an asston of money in the process. If I don't go there, I will probably stay at Case.

Mark came back from Virginia a harder and more cynical person. I see him about once a week, and it's strange to think how much he and I have changed, and yet how much we seem the same to each other. I feel like a completely different person, and yet he can still read my mind, and we can still have conversations using an absolute minimum of words.

I wonder what will happen if/when I go to Virginia. I have a feeling this story isn't over yet. That it is a love story, but not one with a satisfactory resolution. That I should really stop seeing him for the sake of our collective mental health. If I believed in fate, I'd say it was our destiny to be involved somehow. But I don't. So it isn't. So what is it?

Seriously. Sing It, Darryl.

It's been well documented that I have terrible taste in music. Lately I've been regressing to a phase I thought I was through with. This is a story with many beginnings and only one end, so I'll start three or four times and end up later.

Mark--my ex, one of the two great loves of my life--(and who, incidentally, had the best parents out of anyone I've ever dated; his mom was a yoga teacher, among other things, and his stepdad taught science at an alternative school) --Mark's stepfather was once a musician. A musician who played with a folk singer/singer/songwriter named Darryl Purpose. This is beginning number one.

Mark ended up at a school that was completely wrong for him with a girl who was completely wrong for him and still managed to make us all believe that everything was perfect. Mark made the girl (me) listen to all sorts of music, because Mark wanted to be a musician too. From Mark, I have in my library Philip Glass, Loreena McKennitt, (who I still don't listen to because it makes my stomach feel funny) Placebo, and the best making love playlist ever. Somewhere in there, some Darryl Purpose crept in. (#2)

Now, Darryl was not really my thing. There's a bright morning freshness about his music that struck me as phony, to borrow a Holdenism, for a man of his years, and seriously, weren't hippies out of style anyway? Mark used to want to be a hippie, too. So when he went away to camp, I put the Darryl on and listened to it every day, because it was his music. Doing something I didn't like felt like it brought me closer to him. And gradually, it wormed its way into my head. I found myself, and Mark, and everything I wanted us to be in the music.

Well, the relationship ended, badly, as I've stated more than a few times. But love doesn't end so easily, and before I knew it he was back in Cleveland, still with the other woman, but back--in my life, in my room, playing my piano while my heart expanded with the greatest love I'd known. And that's where this story really begins.

Mark and Phil came over one night, guitar in tow, to play for a while. We all used to mess around down in the practice rooms, piano and violin and guitar and flute and voice. It was fun, but I really suck at improvising. I used to sing sonnets, e.e., or Milton, when I got too fed up with the flute. One night I'd finally put the flute away in frustration (which is another story for another day) and was just sitting listening when he started playing this song. It was a little silly. It had Shakespeare and Biblical allusions. I was hooked. Phil sang harmony and the practice room rang like there was room for no more sound and I was in love, in love.

That song was Red, by Dave Carter, and I bugged Mark for about a year until he gave me the recording of Darryl singing while (I think) his stepfather plays in the background. I've listened to it about once every fifteen minutes lately.

I still listen to Darryl, every once in a while. It's nice to be reminded that the shortest path between two points is still a crooked line.

Sing it, Darryl

I just jumped out of my chair, tore my shirt off, and walked six feet towards the bathroom intending to jump in the shower and change my hairstyle from straight to curly. Why? I got a fucking haircut tonight, and as usual, when I make a drastic change to my appearance, I'm sick about it.

What if it's too short? It's short, it's cute, it'll be easy and quicker to take care of, but what if it's too short? What if the color's too dark? I kind of hate the color. Maybe washing it will make me like it better. Maybe it will look better curly. I can't fit it all up into a ponytail anymore. Shit. I now have no options for the mornings when I don't feel like showering and claim I'll do it after I work out. This is a lot more commitment than I wanted. Shit.

I don't have clothing to go with this haircut. It's too classy. I'm more girl-next-door. I don't wear enough makeup to make this haircut work. Fuck! I wanted to grow my hair out just two days ago. What was I thinking?? I want long hair that I can curl just so. All the models have long hair. Guys always say they like long hair better.

My boobs are too big for this haircut. Not that that's a surprise. My boobs are too big for everything this season--clothes right now are for those without chests. It infuriates me. Also, I'm too short. If I were tall and flat, maybe this hair would work.

Does it make me look too young? I can never hit it right with hair; too short makes me look like a brunette (and incredibly buxom) Dakota Fanning, too long and I look like a junior high student, albeit one with a butt. (there is no haircut that I know of that makes me look older.)

Now I can't put it up for R's brother's wedding like I planned to. Then the dress I bought after a ton of stressing and second-guessing will look bad, and his parents will hate me, and we're going to break up, and I'll never get a chance to steal his little sister's white coat.

What I intended to write about was the fact that although I've heard it pour several times today, whenever I've been outside it's been putting out the gentlest kind of mist, like Cleveland is a delicate orchid. If Cleveland were an orchid, it'd be made out of steel. (note to self: become sculptor. make this.) And now my hair is possibly too short and too dark and I can't seem to make myself remember that my hair bleeds color like a freaking pile of emo kids on the top of my head, and also that it grows pretty fast. So I can't write pretty things about Cleveland, and I can't write the three short stories that popped into my head while I was at work. Not right now.

Waiting for Someone to Love

I'm adopted. It's not a subject that comes up a whole lot--how often does a person get asked about the circumstances of their birth, anyway?--but it's not a subject I really try to avoid. It stops conversation, that's for sure.

(Something else that stops conversation off-campus? My field of study. Try saying the word "biophysics" in a bar--it's fun!)

People don't know what to say when I tell them the reason my dad's 6'4", my mom's somewhere around 5'8", and my brother's six five and still growing and I'm five foot two is that I'm not their child. They get the look, the "ooh, you must have issues so I'll just sit back and let you talk" look, or the "your family is so messed up I don't know what to say" look.

It's always fun to hear people who don't know try to rationalize. My hair is wavy/curly, I must take after my dad. People who only know Dad say I look like Mom, and vice versa. I stand on one foot in front of the stove or the counter when I cook, just like Mom.

The thing is, my family isn't messed up. Granted, I went through the junior high and high school years with the usual teenage angst--but it wasn't because I was adopted. It was because I didn't know how to handle my intelligence, and I was an obnoxious, insecure, arrogant little brat.

People always want to know: how did it happen? My parents had some fertility problems and began looking into alternative family planning. My mother (not my mom) was 21 and in college at the time. My father (not my dad) split when she was about four months pregnant. I was delivered 5 August in a county hospital about twenty minutes from my house. Two days later, I was at home with my parents. I have two letters from my mother, written to me while she was pregnant. I have read them about three or four times. Her handwriting is tiny and regular, just like mine. As of the delivery, she hadn't told her parents she was pregnant. Her initials are DNA, which I think is hilarious--her first name is Diane. I also have a list of attributes, physical and otherwise, provided by my mother to the social worker who mediated the adoption.

I'm small and pale, like her. I have my father's eyes--she, like everyone else, had blue eyes. My biceps and stupid muscular legs that don't fit into pants are from him. I have no idea where the boobs came from. They were both from "large, close" Catholic families, but how close can you be if your parents don't know or notice you're pregnant?

There's one other thing on this list that has always intrigued me. Like me, my mother liked to be involved and was musical. But she listed as one of her personality attributes "obedient." Obedient? What does it mean when a person describes themselves as obedient?

Was she secretly submissive? Maybe a submissive? (Scandal!) Did she just lack initiative; like being told what to do? Was her family too strong-willed for her to really develop her personality by 21? Did going against authority make her too uncomfortable? Obedient? She's a freaking American! We base our identity on questioning EVERYONE--we're a country because we revolted and ran away like an unruly teenager, but we never came back home. I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand because I really haven't grown out of being obnoxious and arrogant, (and growing out of insecurity has only made me more obnoxious and arrogant) and it's very difficult for me to understand that my way is not always the best way. That not everyone goes through life treating everyone like an intellectual equal, merited or not.
But seriously? Obedient? It's such a random, random adjective to fixate on, to choose to describe yourself to your child and the people who will be raising her. How true could it possibly be? As far as I know, she never told her parents she was pregnant, which means I probably have two sets of grandparents out there who don't know they have a (another?) grandchild. She's probably married. Her husband may not know. Her children, her brothers, her sisters (if she had any) probably don't know. And my father? Who knows.

I gave a lot of thought to this situation when I turned eighteen. My mother said she'd always leave her end of the files open, if I ever wanted to find her. But at eighteen, I didn't need to. I decided to put it off, maybe until I'm married and expecting a child of my own. Now, I don't know. In light of the "probably no one knows" situation, I'm inclined to say I'll probably never see her.

(I don't give a shit about my father. He split. If it'd been his body, I have a sneaking suspicion I wouldn't be here.)

But what if. What if the things she wrote weren't the product of emotional female pregnancy hormones, that she thinks of me, maybe she's wondering why I never contacted her. Maybe she's all too aware of the years that have passed. Maybe she thinks I hate her. I don't.

As much as I don't want to ruin her life, I don't want her to ruin mine. I have a mother. She's one of my best friends. I don't need another one. I don't need more complications in my life, and I can't see a situation in which inviting the woman who gave birth to me into my family doesn't complicate things. My birth certificate has my parents on it. My brother is my brother. My cousins are my cousins, and they say their baby pictures look like me. We all forget.

I am so grateful that my mother cared enough about me not to flush me. That she cared enough about me to ensure that I got the best life possible. It was a really great move on her part. But it doesn't entitle her to follow me through my life, and it doesn't obligate me to include her. I owe her life, and nothing more. Not my life. Just life.

Possibly, Probably, Maybe, Perhaps.

It's always the same: a look, a phrase
a cadence, a lilt when you say my name

an unreasoning interest, a senseless urge
the giggles, the clutches, the banter, the gossip

the hair, the blink, the side-mouthed smile
the eye-crinkles come, the first tender kiss

the pounce, the spread, the pin, the maul,
the tongues and lips, the fingertips

the sweat, the spoon, the what are we now
holding hands, the walking, the dinners, the dates

the wondering, the dreaming, the possibly, the joy
the grin during phone calls, the snuggles at night

the first fight, make-up sex, the you should have called
the sighs, the rolled eyes, straight to voice mail

"I'm not sure I--" want to, I'm not sure I don't,
the lies, the crying, the cheating, the fears

your friends hate me anyway, the yelling, the hate
the mounting resentment, the anger, the truth

the sharing of feelings, the talks, the deals
the blowup, the stomp out, he'll probably follow

he doesn't. the fury, the pain, the tears,
the bashing the friends, the jerk around calls

I know, I still love you too, do you think, I don't know
I just miss you, that's all, do you maybe want to

I'm free to dislike action movies again,
the posture, the make-up, new clothes, new shoes

a one-night stand with your oldest best friend,
the ego, the smile, the flirting, the fun

I still miss you you know I miss you a lot too
some blather about someday, later, when

an old friend, some kindness, a too-long hug
a blue look, a perhaps, an incomplete

It's always the same: a look, a phrase
a cadence, a lilt when you say my name

Premeds

I sat on a bench, having gotten out of work early, to eat my soup and bagel. I pulled out my study guide to look at some structures for the test that was in about 45 minutes, since I do very poorly with things that just have to be memorized. (see: geological time scale, most of elementary biology) I'd just finished my soup when another harried ochem lab student hustled in, tension evident in her shoulders and walk, and plopped down on the bench next to mine. I started in on my bagel, trying to draw structures in the air with my mind, since I have a strict rule: no studying in the 20-30 minutes immediately preceding an exam. I have an uncanny ability not to get stressed out about tests, and it pretty much all stems from this rule. If I relax, breathe, and tell myself that all the knowledge I need is in my head and all I have to do is go get it, then I usually sail right though.

"Are you waiting for the test?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said, with a face of indeterminate expression that I use when I really don't want to be bothered.

She didn't get it. "There's just one thing I didn't get," and this is the damn phrase that leads into me explaining things to people who just want to memorize the right answer and be done with it. Example: "What quality does a compound have to have to undergo gas chromatography?"

"It has to go into the gas phase and be stable enough to stay there for a few seconds while its components separate out."

"Oh! So it's not like a number thing?"

No, it's not like a number thing. IThe quality that a compound has is a qualitative thing. Unlike a, say, quantitative thing--a number thing.

It is now approximately 40 minutes to the exam. I need to get my papers put away and my Zen face on, but my bench buddy is having none of it: "Do you think it will be hard? I heard it's hard!" I don't even know this person!

"I don't know. From the study guide it seems like she's asking for some pretty comprehensive knowledge" of the labs we've done. Like, how do you use this piece of equipment type stuff. I mention that I hate memorizing structures, that that's the only part that makes me nervous. I instantly regret giving a conversational opening.

"So, like, why do we have to know these equations? We didn't use them in lab!" Yeah, but they're interesting. It's interesting to know the sources of error in a device that is designed to separate an oil into its various aromatic components. (and I do mean aromatic. I came home two weeks in a row reeking of spearmint oil)

It's also possible that I am a complete and total nerd.

We talk about sources of error in a gas chromatograph. They are, if you are interested, the multipath effect (compound molecules careening off the packing material,) the diffusion effect (inversely porportional to velocity, molecules moving into the packing material,) and the resistance to mass transfer (inertia.) This is the kind of shit I love. I love that someone sat down and thought about how every single molecule would move through this three meters of teeny copper tubing. (I might be bluffing. It might not be copper. It just seems like it would be.)

It is now half an hour till test time and I can feel my serenity slipping away. I don't want to be quizzed to plump someone's ego or feed someone's fear before the exam. That's what the exam is for, except I hate score whores. She senses my weakness and pounces.

"One last thing and then I think I'm okay. n is unitless, right?" I do a quick mental calculation, then kick myself as I remember that n is a NUMBER. Of course it doesn't have dimensions--or units.

"Yeah, n is 'unitless,' because the measurements cancel."

"And then so is HETP?"

"No, HETP has units, you just have to put them in, and be careful about your factors of ten, if you use centimeters to measure time then you have to get the column length in centimeters too." (seriously, time in centimeters.)

"Not decimeters?"

"As long as it's consistent, you can use whatever you want to. I'm going to head in now and claim my seat" --desparation kicks in-- "I'll see you in there, good luck!"

She distractedly chimes "good luck" back at me, but I'm already on my way. My Zen is completely lost. I feel like a freaking premed, convinced I'll never get into medical school if I don't get an A on this exam. I sit and write down the previous story to try to get my game face on, but nothing's coming. All I can think about is what if I didn't memorize those structures properly? I HATE structures. It's probably going to be all structures. Or all devious multiple choice. What are the TAs blathering about?

The TAs wanted some of us to move to another room so we could sit every other chair, cheating in ochem exams being as rampant as it is. We moved, thankfully, to my summer ochem classroom. That room is chock full of good karma for me. I received good grades in that class while doing virtually no work, plus the chairs are really comfortable. My proximity-induced stress melted away, and I finished the test in half the time alotted.

Procrastination

I have an ochem lab exam tomorrow. I don't want to study. I want to blast Christmas music and dance around my apartment and bake gingerbread spiked with red pepper, for that is the kind of gingerbread most attractive to this palate.

Three guesses what I'm doing right now.

I'm also the victim of still another causeless random allergy. (nose-itching allergy: raw bacon. seriously.) I have itchy hives all over my face from my cheekbones down to my jaw. I have hives on my lips, for crying out loud. They're not really visible, I just feel like my skin has curdled, which is very attractive.

I'm pretty sure it's R's fault. I had a similar condition during that really hot period this summer, whenever I spent the night at his place. Something about getting overheated over there makes my face get all puffy. I can't write this without sounding dirty. Bah.

The thing is, since I am the bedmember most likely to wake the other up in the night complaining of cold, R wraps me up in a blanket before snuggling up to me under another blanket. For some reason last week, my body temperature got set to "sizzle" and I woke up multiple times sweating. That would have been fine had I put myself to bed, but I'd crashed while watching Smallville, the Tivo remote still clutched in my hand, so R tucked me in. Tightly. And then went to sleep on the blanket so I couldn't get out.

Hence, hives. fun.

Cowboy Boots

There are times that I think my best stories come from the Algebra Tea House. I have a friend who works there, Phil, who lives with my ex, Mark. Phil and Mark are my only two friends from freshman year with whom I really keep in touch. I'm pretty sure there's a reason for this, and I'm also sure I have no idea what it is.

Phil is friends with a group of Byzantine monks. Not only that, but he's been informally nudged around to see if he'd like to do some construction on their new monastery. "Watch out," I tell Phil when I hear this, "you're going to end up a monk before you know it."

"I know," he jokes back. "I need to find a woman." This is the very first time Phil has ever said anything remotely sexual in my presence, and I have known him for three full years.

Phil could have his pick of women, if he played his cards right. He's all-right looking, if you go by sheer physical appearances, but his best asset is his stories. I've heard lots of Phil stories. Every single one of them has made me laugh, cry, or gasp with alarm.

The all-time best Phil story was the Story of How Phil Almost Died Multiple Times While Hiking Across Europe Alone. All of this story takes place within his first 48 hours in Europe. There were other near-death experiences, but most of them happened in this period. This story involves a snowstorm, dehydration, breaking into an abandoned cottage, mass quantities of beer, and speaking absolutely no German whatsoever.

The reason I'm not actually telling the story is a) I'm not Phil, and I'll never be able to do it justice and b) this story, when properly told, has incredible aphrodesiac powers. I heard Phil tell it in a suite of five or six girls. By the end of it, every single one of us wanted to sleep with him. He has the perfect combination of incredible experience and natural modesty that shoots straight to a girl's heart.

Maybe that's why I fell in love with Mark in the first place. Mark could also tell a story like a flippin' bard. Mark's stories tended to be at least half fictional (and which half was always hard to tell) but they were damn good stories.

I guess that's the secret to my heart. Tell me stories. I have an extremely easy-to-please heart.

Magazines are the Gospel of a new generation

it's okay to break up with someone perfectly wonderful just because you're not feeling it.