I arrive at Bard hours early, because I am done working and want to be elsewhere with haste. All day, I have been in distrait. In Plato's The Republic, he said a just man who is thought unjust is ultimately happier than an unjust man who is thought just. The unemployment board on New York does not agree with Plato, deciding shenanigans must be afoot given that I substitute taught often prior to December 23rd and then didn't again until after January 3rd. The fact that undoubtedly occurs to you - that this is winter recess for most every school in the United States - does not occur to the bureaucrats, who have opted to believe that my industry is tantamount to deception and thus have kept my benefits for a month so far and will continue to keep my money unless I am proven innocent by their investigation. Had I done anything wrong, had I been trying to cheat or been lazy, I certainly wouldn't be happy about what was now happening but I would at least feel it was deserved by my chicanery. Instead, I know that I made every effort to be honest and hard-working and am being punished where a scheming lay-about would be receiving benefits unabated.

Though the day is well below freezing and knowing that Melanie is in class until 4, I wander to Blythewood Garden, one of the settings for my first book. I feel that this is a quest of sorts - or at the very least a partial reenactment of my first date with Melanie - which makes me less irritated that I am likely flagellating by freezing for the sin of letting a number dictate how I feel.

The garden is blocked off for the winter, but there are fresh enough footprints in the snow that I feel my trespass is minor and likely to be ignored. There are no steps going to the statue that is the subject of my fixation. I had planned to pour out my worries to this stone woman, but my ritualistic idiosyncrasies take a backseat to my numb ears and numbing face. I settle for a kiss on her gray cheek and a quick sentence beseeching divine intercession, then return to the student center, to defrost until Melanie finds me.

In an hour, I am with her, trying to keep from disappearing into my own head for uncertainty of what I am going to do should the unemployment board decide to keep my money (which I have to accept might happen). I have been trying without ceasing to find more regular employment to no success and I only have so many possessions I can sell (books so far, though Melanie suggests I put my electronic on the auction block next). But, more immediately, I don't want my financial worries to bitch up the weekend Melanie has planned. It is the second anniversary of our first date and we are going to visit Jinx at home in Massachusetts before she leaves for a semester in Germany, a fact that causes many of Melanie's sighs of late. Moreover, this qualifies as an adventure and a road trip, both of which I have been goading Melanie toward almost since we met. (Road trips are often dashed by reminders that she is not much for caves in February or that she does not care to spend the night where people were historically axe-murdered just so I have the privilege of pretending I am spooked.)

I mope as Melanie tries to soothe me with logic and love as best she can, but the former can't totally penetrate my funk. Nevertheless, she insists she will be paying for everything this weekend and that I had better not even imply otherwise. "Just assume that this is all for a reason and that things are going to work out. You will get your money back because you have done nothing wrong."

"You don't believe that, though," I say, as I tend to whenever she tries to drag shadows of predestination into her metaphors.

"No," she admits, "but it will help you to think that."

On our car ride there, Melanie verbally prods me whenever I am quiet for more than a few minutes, for fear that I am in danger of succumbing. My anxieties are present and I want to find some resolution that will mean I get to retain my humble lifestyle, but I know my priority is to her and this weekend, not my diminutive bank balance and governmental impugning.

We arrive by nine, impeded only by Melanie's uncharacteristic hankering for a chocolate McDonald's shake, the sugar of which takes the edge off my navel-gazing.

Jinx and her sister Kestrel (whose birth name really is Kestrel; Jinx was born Thalia and is so called by most everyone who does not know her through Bard) fall on us with affection. This is the first time I have met Kestrel, though I have followed her through cyberspace, and it is as though we are very old friends just reunited. I grok that there will never be distance between us. Kestrel is three years younger than Jinx, a sophomore at Bennington, but they function with the unity of identical twins (their twin language is gangsta rap--they are both musicians). Kestrel is slightly taller than her sister with a more angular face, but they wear the same chaotic wisdom in their eyes that marks them as souls sharing two bodies. In my life, instant kinship (especially extending to siblings) is vanishingly rare.

Of infinite jest

In the kitchen, as they offer us tea and food, we four talk at a frenzied pace, of nothing I can remember now owing to being both emotionally and physically frazzled (having been up since 5:30). It seems there is so much about which to catch up and so little time for it all. Delightfully, rather than decreasing the nonsense between us in deference to more important subjects, they instinctively know that the nonsense is of the utmost importance.

Nym, their father, returns home from a supporting role in a high school production of Arsenic and Old Lace at the private school where he teaches. He is dressed as a cop and rattles off a few of his lines in character, then breaks into an infectious, almost childlike, grin that belies the prior gruffness. His daughters laugh over how neat his hair looks for once. Needless to say, I instantly like him. This feeling persists during our weekend in their home. I even like all their pets, when I wasn't snifflingly allergic to them (their poodle Crispin loved me on sight and tried to rest his head in my lap whenever I sat for even a second).

Nym and Daphne, their mother, have the sort of life I want to build with Melanie, one of quaint finery and eccentricities, personal passions and united affection, books on each wall in each room, antique cases filled with ostrich eggs and mother-of-pearl curios. Things may seem a trifle desperate for me right now, as I ask my parents for loans and ponder how else I can get employed so that I can continue to survive, but this represents the sort of life I would most like to be leading a decade in the future (or sooner, if remotely possible).

That night, with Melanie's head on my chest on a pull-out sofa bed, in a room otherwise full of a piano and drums, everything feels perfect and I am nearly bereft of worry. Melanie feels like home, so much a place I am supposed to be, that I have odd faith that everything else will work out when it is supposed to, however disinclined the world is in indulging my magical thinking. As if to underscore this, I spontaneously gain a Zen-like ability to empty my mind of all thoughts, something I have sought for more than fifteen years and which allows me to fall to sleep in a wink.

The next morning, Nym expresses his pleasure that Melanie and I so integrated ourselves into the household. We sit in near silence, save for occasional crackles from the fireplace and reading the other a funny or compelling passage from our respective books (her Monstrous Regiment, me Franny and Zooey). He says it is as though we had always been here. Haven't we?

An hour later, as his daughters join us, Nym mentions how his first introduction to me was when he read something I wrote about Daniel and the restrictions of American masculine friendships. I am flattered to have been at all known by Nym prior to my entrance into his home, much more so for a bit of writing of which I am proud. He seems genuinely interested and sympathetic to Daniel, which further impresses me. We have a short discussion of the skewed and detrimental perception of masculinity, a point on which Nym would plainly agree. He seems like a self-created man, one who is what he wishes to be rather than the amalgam of what others have expected him to be. There is something in him of the guru, I feel, though I do not doubt that he would be among the first to say that he is not. Those guru-types are big on humility.

Wisdom!

After eating, Kestrel, Jinx, Melanie, and I leave to go shopping in a town about an hour away. Melanie puts of Prodigy and Infected Mushroom at Kestrel's request, Kestrel then miming a one-person rave in the backseat until Jinx joins in. While the music is slightly harsh, it makes for a wonderful way to pass the time until we reach our destination. I feel that this is precisely the sort of situation of which there is not enough in my life and want to hug them all right then, save that this would cause Melanie to swerve into oncoming traffic and kill us all.

We flitter from shop to shop, inspecting gewgaws, sneering at hipster trifles, quaffing smoothies the color and texture of swamp mud, or giggling over the contents of a sensuality shop named Oh My. The town, as promised, is excellent for people watching, from the children collecting for Haitian relief to the homeless man asking for change so he can buy a specific brand of local pizza to the androgynous couples clinging to one another under layers of Gore-Tex to chase away the cold. In a shop called Sid Vintage, Melanie grins over clothes that were in style a decade before she was born and Kestrel coerces Jinx into matching leather vests. I offer the woman at the register a wry smile and say, "My girls are something of a handful." The woman, dressed all in black with the accompany beret, smirks back and suggests in an untraceable accent that, given my black coat and a white scarf I borrowed, I try on a gray fedora a size too small. When I do, she coos over me, but that works contrary to making my head smaller.

We leave the town having spent only a few dollars on baked goods and candy that ceases its charms even before we are again in the car.

When we return to our respective places by the fire, Nym mentions the pair of origami roses Melanie had made the night prior and which now adorn the mantle. "Would you let me watch you make one?" he asks with his characteristic twinkle.

Melanie assents. I cannot tell if this flatters her, though it would make me all nerves were I in her shoes. One cannot watch me write, as I will look up and talk to the person until the person gets the hint and leaves me be, but I warrant the art forms are worlds apart. She folds and unfolds as Nym makes observations, such as the intricacies of her movements or how her ministrations turn the paper almost into smooth fabric. He studies her with the devotion most give to television. I've never watched Melanie make one of these, so I am just was surprised as she turns over the unremarkable boxy shape in her hand, twists a pair of tweezers, and a white rose blooms in her palms. When she hands it to Nym, he regards it as if it were a real rose that manifested in her palm as he watched.

That night, Nym asks us to come to the play at the school where he works. This is part of the prescribed adventure and I don't have to pay, so I am enthusiastic. Kestrel, however, demurs, preferring a quiet night at home.

On the drive, I tell Nym how I used to be the head of the drama department at the boarding school where I worked and how, for spite, I made the learning disabled students do A Midsummer Night's Dream, though with a script I had mercifully rewritten. Further, how the administration heard me admonishing the cast after a lousy dress rehearsal and chided me in turn, telling me that no one expected the kids to be any good, but how I beamed when they admitted nights later that I had managed to put on an entertaining play that awed the parents. I realize that part of my telling him this is that I want to impress him with my accomplishments because, though I have it already, his respect is important to me.

Is this a rose I see before me?

Nym's school is amazing - what the boarding school where I worked wishes it were - thanks to generous endowments from involved parents. There is an energy around the property that is undeniable, this is a place where Things Are Truly Learned. The building we enter is expansive and professional, looking more that it could be used as part of an upscale private college. My heart leaps into my throat in envy. It is rare that I crush on institutions, but I am smitten. In a better world than this one, I am English faculty in a place like this.

Nym buys us tickets, introducing Melanie to a member of the administration as "Thalia's old roommate" and me as "[his] friend". I repeat this to Melanie, making no effort to disguise my glee at how I have been described.

The play is as one would expect for a high school play, lines swallowed and sound cues seconds off, and I love them for that. It makes me miss my students, for all their lovable imperfections. I can't deny that I want to be a full-time teacher still. When I interviewed for my last job at a standardized tests publisher, they asked whether I would abandon their ship should a teaching job present itself. I replied, "I feel like teaching had its chance. It didn't want me." Then I felt a pang, because I wanted it no matter how little it wanted me. My year there coupled with my substitute teaching, more than rekindled my longing for those days when I had my own classroom and I could feel like I was bettering the lives of kids. I have witnessed too many apathetic teachers who are there for the paycheck, too many who left middle management for the summers off and never lost the attitude, and I want to be the force combating this. Only, the world of education does not seem inclined to let me. I am trying not to be bitter or cynical, as that attitude isn't about to help me toward my goals. And, of course, a teaching job means I no longer have to fret about battling the unemployment department with terse faxes and weekly letters.

After the play, Nym shows us his music classroom and boasts how it is being soundproofed so it can be used as a recording studio. He is so in his element here that it is hard not to see this room as an almost organic extension of him. Nym is the sort of teacher I have always admired, a fact I know without needing to see him in front of a class. He will be remembered, he will be an inspiration to his students long after they graduate.

Sitting on the bed the next morning, writing after a delicious omelet made by Kestrel just because she wanted to make me breakfast, listening to Jinx teach Melanie to play the squeeze box, things feel perfect and manageable. I don't know that this feeling will extend when we leave this enclave, when I will no longer be surrounded by people who make everything feel possible and yielding. If only there were a world where Melanie and I could live with Kestrel and Jinx in a properly sized home, I think I could hope without ceasing. Aside from my family and a two-week summer program, I have only ever had Emily for a roommate and think I would be disinclined to room with anyone who I didn't already love. How else can one happily wash dishes and clean toilets without love? (It does not hurt matters that Kestrel idly mentions that she occasionally scours their entire home because she gets in an industrious mood.)

When the room with the fireplace is empty, I retrieve the better part of the rind from a clementine I had eaten at the play the night prior. Holding it in my hands, I focus all my tension and concern, all the angst for my present lot, on the peel. Then, feeling enough has imperceptibly soaked in, I toss it among the embers and watch as flames spring up to claim the oils and fibers.

I then wander up to Kestrel's curiously pink room, where Melanie and Jinx are listening to music.

"I chose the color when I was little," Kestrel says with some vexation. As I scan her books, Melanie and she talk music. This soon turns to us dashing down to an empty room where a dance party breaks out, beginning with Right Said Fred, transitioning to Lady Gaga, and ending in sea shanties. Then, as quickly as it began, in awkward but confident flailing, it ends and we wander off in separate directions as though that were the natural conclusion of things.

Later, in the midst of sharing odd videos on the internet, Daphne rather casually mentions the time she had a lion bite her on the arm, saying this as though it were the sort of thing that happens to people from time to time. Melanie and I are transfixed, begging for the story that led up to their even being lions in her presence.

"Oh, at Harvard, I trained them to run on treadmills."

"Why?" Melanie asks.

"So we could measure their carbon dioxide output. The hardest part was getting them to wear the masks, but you can train a lion to do most anything." This would be the point in the story, if I were telling it, that my voice would either rise in excitement at the wonderful put-on or fall in feigned casualness. Hers does neither. "It was more insulting than anything," she went on. "I mean, here is this animal that I had been taking care of all this time and I looked down to find my arm in its mouth. I was mostly in shock, here. It's difficult to get your arm out of a lion's mouth. I thought, once it opened its mouth, I could just pull it out, but they can grip even as their mouths open. Very tricky."

"Did you have any other troubles with animals?" Melanie asks.

"Oh no... Well, yes. A ostrich was coming at me and was about to attack."

"What did you do?" Melanie asks.

"I grabbed it just under its neck, and hard. That put it off." This said, Daphne returns to her book.

Melanie is astounded that Daphne even had the presence of mind to do this. I cannot begin to express the vastness of how shocked I am. This family cannot exist in the world from which we had driven.

It feels nearly impossible to leave this place where, suddenly, things make sense. It is as though I have found the home and family I will one day have, and now have to relinquish my grip until I can earn this life properly. This weekend has stretched on forever in the best ways.

Nym and Daphne say that they welcome us to return at any time and Melanie assures them for both of us that we will be, there can be no argument or debate.

As we get in the car to drive back (and after they try to load us down with food for our journey home), Kestrel stands at the door, shouting "I love you!" and making a heart with her hands. We shout it back, because how can we do less than shout? ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100128.php 08 Feb 2010 11:13:00 EST  

This needs to get nipped in the bud before it happens. Seriously, guys, I know you are getting tired of my crazy political ramblings and at some point the three people in the Internet who still read this will go outside and look at the sun or something, but for the record: Ron Paul has lost his fucking mind. There's no gleeful smile across my face, no usual sense of sarcasm, just an odd feeling that allowing this man to continue at the helm of the Internet will only lead to the tragic end of the human race.

The medical doctor who thinks global warming is a conspiracy between volcanoes, evolution is a crock, sticking it to man by voting "no" on an increase in the minimum wage in 2007, abstaining on a vote that allowed eavesdropping without a court order, voting against a bill that would use a tax on cigarettes to fund children health care, and kicking puppies into bathtubs filled with electronic products has finally done something so insane I take it upon myself to attempt to wrap my mind around it. He makes the boys and girls in the 14th district of Texas proud and as we all know Texas is the retarded armpit of the country where rational thought goes to salute the Confederate flag before masturbating itself to death on its own ineptitude. Remember, guys, secession is a viable solution to anything the liberal media throws and, by all means, after you. Ron Paul however will never be the President, not because the system is set up against him or because the rest of us subscribe to the theory that big government needs to keep us in check. It's because he's a stupid douchebag. If one would create a bill that could end world hunger and increase the funding to the UN by one dollar, rest assured, Ron Paul would hit the asshole switch and fuck it up for everyone. He's a man of principles. Isolationist insane principles, but principles nevertheless.

Maybe I'm being a bit rash, maybe there's an argument to the outsider mentality. After the tragedy in Haiti, Congress declared America's support for the nation. It passed with the full might of the Congress. I mean, who would be insane enough to vote against this toothless symbol of support? Ron Paul would. He voted against it. This was not a law. In truth, there was no legal bindings attached to it. They were words of condolences. Words of compassion. Ron Paul took his wacko literal translation and declared it as a promise to fund the relief from our pocket. He's a bit of a tool. However, the real tragedy of this whole scenario is that he's allowed to be a tool because of people like you and, yes, I mean you.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe Ron Paul has actual supporters out there, and by supporters I do not mean border nuts, creationist, gun nuts, 9/11 conspiracy nuts, supposed Independents who always vote Republican, Internet Trolls, racists, people who are racist but are afraid to admit it to themselves, DINO, people who refer to the Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression, state right advocates who don't see segregation as a complete fuck-up when in comes to state rights, lizard people believers and college kids who have Ron Paul on some sort of bong. It is important to note some of the reactions of this guy on the Internet, for strictly humorous purposes, of course.

It's a crazy mad sandwich of just all of the insane aspects of society coming together and supporting this guy. No, if I were rational, respectful Ron Paul and I saw people like this supporting me, I would do my best to shuffle away. There's a problem, if he sends the wackos away, he becomes just like every other politician. He needs them, and that is what makes this whole thing a giant comedy dance.

Your Musical Moment Provided By David Gray
If you want it. Come and get it. Crying out loud. The love that I was giving you was never in doubt. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/justify/ronpaul2012.php 06 Feb 2010 13:26:00 EST   She really is a very good dance partner.

The nameless hipster woman tells us that it doesn't matter if Jacki and I are any good so long as we are having fun. "For all we care, you can just do this the whole time." Then she launches into a finger waggle, limb flailing mockery that manages to be coordinated and skillful. One would have no trouble putting her on a crash diet, ditching her facial jewelry, and turning her into a convincing flapper.

"If I could dance like that," I assure her, "I wouldn't need you to explain how to do the basic step again. Could you, please?"

Jacki and I focus on our footwork for the first few attempts, though we bravely dance through our awkwardness and lack of skill. Her personality and general confidence forces her to try to lead, so I repeatedly offer appropriately period threats, such as beating her with a sack of Valencia oranges until she learns her place. I can't tell her that she belongs barefoot, pregnant, and making me a sandwich, since she is too short without her heels. Dancing is tricky enough without having to compensate for her lack of height.

We laugh and gambol, finally gaining muscle memory enough that we can dance while having a conversation. I tell her that we need a montage, so I can suddenly have fancy footwork, though none is coming. She teases me about not spinning her - the only other bit of swing dancing we asked to be taught tonight - because I have trouble remember to move my feet while I do it. In response, I toss her away at the end of every song. There is something between Jacki and I that is ideal for this sort of activity, a familiarity that allows us comfort enough for her to admonish that my hand is supposed to stay on her bra strap, as described to us by the initial instructor, and for me to tell her that I think I am better when I am trying to push her over. She is goodly enough to recalibrate to suit me and to stop me and move me away from the furniture I am constantly in danger of backing into. I can imagine few other of my friend with whom I would relax enough to make sufficient mistakes to improve. And improve, I intend to. I've lived too long saying I am one day going to learn to dance.

I solicited female company for this dance, because I need to learn with someone and felt that preserving heteronormative equilibrium would be for the best. This was somewhat unnecessary; there were easily three women for every man, though most of them were plainly months (or decades) ahead on me.

Sara the Goode, whom I had not seen almost since graduation from grad school four years ago, is there and helps instruct us. She dances with Jacki and I watch their feet so I can attempt the spin with some conviction. She later squeezes me against her, chiding that I have spaghetti arms and that I have to hold my partner more tightly so I can better direct her.

As we are about to leave, a red-haired woman - a stranger of whom I have taken no prior note - approaches me and asks for a dance. In another context, I might take this for flirtation and become skittish, but not here. Jacki encourages me to stay, but it is too cold out and I need to drive her to her car. I turn to the woman and tell her this, adding, "Will you be here next week?"

"Next week and every week."

"Then I promise you will be my first dance next week." Because, of course, having tried something new and brave, I am now intent to make this a regular part of my week.

Her eyes are unconvinced, but she nods. I am pleased to have a partner in reserve next week, for however long I can delay her from finding a better partner. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100126.php 03 Feb 2010 17:33:00 EST   Writer's Block is like a shark on the head

I have been struggling to write (and the irony is not lost on me that I am writing about difficulties writing). It is not because I have Melanie for my houseguest this week, as it extends weeks prior to her presence, since I finished my final revision of We Shadows. In fact, our affection tends to begin to shake loose my inspiration, but even these divine nudges aren't enough to return my literary fluidity.

Last night, I dreamt of three of my characters, something that has never happened before. They weren't close to my favorite characters (Ash, Seth, and Dryden), nor was my dream of them helpful in fleshing out their book once I woke. But the message was plain to me: they want their book finished or they will be invading my subconsious again. And they know how close I am to abandoning them because I cannot bring myself to make them real enough.

A problem for me, though far from the only one, is that I don't like other writers to consult with them. A substitute teacher sits next to me in the teachers' lounge and uses the fact that I am reading to crowbar in that he has a book coming out and he needs to sell fifteen thousand to get any royalties. I don't care to reciprocate with my resume because other writers (at least those whom I do not otherwise like as people) arouse my reptilian brain. This is my territory, the lizard tissue yells, back off or I will be forced to express blood from my eye socket/flash my neck crest. Writers, to my way of thinking, fall into one of two categories: better than me (which generally, but far from always, means they are published on paper for money) or much worse. No one is as good as me, mostly because I am aware that I am writing for entertainment and my own need, not because I think what I do is especially artful. It is just better than most tedious sci-fi, drippy romance, or fluffy fantasy at which people throw their money. (I also know from what little this interrupter has told me that his publishing arrangement is almost certainly a scam. From the number of books he boasts he will have to sell, I even have a good idea of who will be ripping him off.) I only willingly read those who I suspect are better than I am, because I can learn best from their missteps. Reading those conspicuously worse (which includes most previous iterations of me) makes me cringe in a very physical way, as though the words each stung and reeked of bile. I have had people send me their stories and I actually like these people less for how bad their writing is.

I am only competing against myself, then. I think most critics and other writers would be hard-pressed to be more vicious about my writing than I am (Melanie excepted). I compete against my own limits to grow. Editing anyone else's writing is just a chance to demonstrate what I have learned, generally while openly wincing.

Part of my inspiration comes from acknowledgement, which I tend not to get unless I annoy someone enough with my description of the truth that they feel the need to threaten to void our friendship. This is not the sort of attention I want, however reliable it seems.

While watching Almost Famous with Melanie, she says that she wants to be a rockstar. Scientists don't tend to have screaming groupies. (Some, like Henry Cavendish, would run in the opposite direction when confronted with admirers.) Likewise, I have taken a subtler path of writing. I do not expect to be hit with a pair of panties for reciting a short story. There, too, people tend to note only what they dislike. For those critics out there, how much more fervor do you put into decrying Stephanie "Sparkly Stalker" Meyer than in applauding those you love?

It is selfish and ego-sating, but it is also the truth. If you don't acknowledge something you love, it withers. I need external validation, even if it is only one other person with a smile on his or her face asking me about something I wrote. I don't need money from my efforts, though that is a concrete display of appreciation, but I am not going to be taken seriously unless money is given. Unless Harcourt-Brace decides to publish Naked Pictures of My Family (a working title which I grant is pretentious), unless Penguin takes up my series begun by We Shadows, you can't possibly acknowledge that I write anything worthwhile since some conglomeration hasn't advertised their approval. I am just as guilty, as evidenced by my cringing at other writers. Overcoming this prejudice may be the first step to obliterating this block. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100122.php 02 Feb 2009 10:33:00 EST

You're not from around here, are you, boy? Okay, well, maybe no one has said this to me yet. Still I get the looks and, believe it or not, I respect the passion. Maybe it is the hatred I show for the word "wicked" or my ability to pronounce words correctly. I stick out like a sore thumb, a sore thumb with a grasp on the English fucking language that eludes these people like the letter "R". I was trying to be respectful of this area, I was willing to allow myself a gentle transition into my new life. It has occurred to me that there are forces working against this.

This town is all about baseball. If you happen to be unlucky enough to be born in New York, you must be a Yankee fan and that makes you the devil. It is not very rational, I know. By my temporary space, there is a small deli and, thanks for the sheer lack of entertainment, I find myself ordering a nice cup of coffee occasionally. I have been informed I speak funny, despite my ability to look freaking hot in a Red Sox hat, there's just something about me that reads "New York". So the question comes up, a kid you not, at least once a day. Are you a Yankees fan? This is usually followed, mind you, with an inquisitive stare as if the way I answer the question will forever mark me as scorned or welcomed. Are you a Yankee fan? No, I mean, I love Sam Adams and that beer is all about Boston. Are you a Yankee fan? You realize by pissing me off, you're only making it worse for yourself. I hope you're not a Yankee fan. Why don't you go and fuck yourself? No sorry, didn't mean that last one. Here's the odd part about this question, there's always a weird smile that accompanies it. The sick, sadistic bastards want conflict.

Sweet ball of suck, this is bad.

We all have that breaking moment, that moment in time where you have to stand up for something. My point apparently revolves around maternity clothing. I was wandering through one of the local malls with my sister, commenting on something my editor had written. "And what the fuck is that?" I commented, shooting my hand up in some motion saved for the Cloverfield monster. Before me stood a horrible sight, a sight which hurts my inner child to describe to you. They have Red Sox shirts for women. "Future Rex Sox Fan" reads this debauchery with a large red arrow extending to womb area. It's like setting your child up to fail. Wait, did I just think that? Smug Red Sox fans always looking me over. Who do they think they are? This was my moment.

"We need to get to a sport store," I informed my sister still locked on the maternity shirt. The Red Sox hat that I had been wearing suddenly didn't feel right. It made my head ache. It felt wrong, like I was cheering for a team that was too good for my passion. I knew no matter how hard I wanted to be a Red Sox fan, these people would not let me. Three minutes into my shopping experience, sandwiched with the confusion that comes with hat sizes, I had my new prize.

"I'm a Yankee fan, too," my salesperson informed me. I felt some kind of kinship with him. I wanted to jump the counter and whisk us both safely away. "Didn't you come in with a Red Sox hat on?"

"You people wanted this!" I screamed, jumping onto the counter and removing my pants. For the next fourteen minutes I shook and gyrated with a new energy. Okay, maybe I didn't do that last part. But I did have a wondrous smile as I took off the tags and various stickers that adorned my new prize.

"Welcome to Barnes & Noble, boo Yankees." I paused for a moment. Really? Before me stood a happy little woman--well, happy for with the exception of the look of scorn on her face. Not ten minutes ago, this woman would likely have been the sweetest thing on the planet. Cookies may have been cooked and exchanged if only I weren't crazy enough to have a Yankee hat on. The hat changed everything about her. It was the representation of everything wrong with this city. I wandered through the store for the next few minutes listening to my sister's plan to visit Fenway for their tour, but I could not for the life of me stop thinking about that woman by the door. I was convinced she would repeat the phrase she had greeted me with. Her programming was perfect, but the programming was also flawed.

"Boo Yankees," this time I was ready. I turned slowly at first before shooting my arms out to my sides.

"We should really just hug this out," I informed her closing my fingers together with each word. She didn't answer, just looked at me. I tilted my head to the side slightly. "We should just hug it out, do you want to hug it out?" She smiled that smile of fear and I went on my way into a Boston snowstorm.

It's good to be home. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/justify/massyank.php 27 Jan 2010 12:00:00 EST   Suitable nineties

It isn't that I am not enjoying their company, but that I would rather be dancing. The sole reason I am out on this frozen night, wearing little more than a black t-shirt and jeans, is that I am giving solo dancing another chance. When last I visited Cabaloosa, I was rewarded with a cougar trying to pounce on be because I had dared to let her dance in my proximity for the duration of an unromantic eighties pop song. Nineties Night with Jacki and crew had to be safer.

I couldn't know just how safe until I made my excuses and leave Jacki, John, and crew at Bacchus to finish up their second plate of dancing fuel. I pay my three dollars at the door and get my wrist band. The dance floor is empty. The smoking area, vacant. The bar features maybe eight people, drinking listlessly and not making eye contact. The DJ plays some undanceable industrial song, her disappointed eyes huge behind thick rims. As I shift my weight from one foot to the other, trying to swallow my embarrassment at having ditched my friends for this, a former student walks past to the exit and shoots me darts, mentally begging me not to acknowledge him. "Don't worry," I say mostly to myself under the thrum of the music, "this isn't exactly a treat for me."

This should be nothing but sweaty bodies as far as the eye can see

I return to Bacchus so quickly that only Jacki realizes I have been elsewhere than the bathroom and touch the bottom hem of Jacki's black vinyl top, accidentally grazing her stomach with my fingertips. "Wow, you are really soft!" I say almost without meaning.

"I know, John and I had the argument last night."

"Did he argue against your softness?" I ask, which a joking edge in my voice.

"No, I did. It's a long story," she says, in a way that suggests that whispering to one another four feet from John may not be the ideal time to tell me. I want for Jacki to be happy and know that, since Kevin dumped her last year, she has had a hard time fully realizing how beautiful and worthy of love she is. John realizes just how dear she is, for which I appreciate him so much the better. But she still has healing to do on her own, which is an admirable decision that I wish would work more quickly. Thankfully, these are not my decisions to make.

I wait next to Jacki, fidgeting less, for another forty-five minutes, until two hours have elapsed since Nineties Night had begun. Cabaloosa is still largely empty. I would be surprised if the dance floor had seen a single footstep tonight.

This is nothing I can allow to continue. I urge Jacki and John toward the dance floor, at one point going so far as to mime using rope in hopes that they will take pity on my ridiculousness and relent. I wonder how John dances, if he dances, but he isn't inclined to sate my curiosity.

Within the course of the song, if because the dance floor is technically not uninhabited or because they have had hours to get drunk enough, others at the bar follow suit and dance. The DJ gets barely more aware that it is in her best interest to get people dancing, still playing music to which one could mosh at best, but Jacki and I dance as much as is feasible.

Yeah! Wait... what?

I am aware that I am no Fred Astaire, nor am I even likely good enough for someone to say that derisively. I don't care, I love how it feels to be on the dance floor, forgetting myself and moving (even when the music is, unbeknownst to me and despite the point of the night, Lady Gaga).

I don't expect that I will ever be especially skillful at dancing, but it is despite the point. Perhaps dancing is little more than an extension of some primal mating ritual. I know that my hormones idly kick into high gear when dancing, when watching women dance. Dancing is something my body wants to do, even if I am poor at it, even if I am perhaps laughable. If one can forget oneself, they can be beautiful on the dance floor.

Melanie has said that she will dance with me once she returns, since she has decided that she does not much care how ridiculous she looks. She tried to verbally guide me on doing the most intentionally ludicrous dance she could imagine to inure me from the judgment of those watching me with a nonverbal "Hey, I know how I look like a parody. I am okay with this. Back off."

Dancing with Jacki feels like an extension of the natural, even when our dance while touching is little more than the box step with enough space between us for the Virgin Mary and half the disciples. She apologizes for the sweat on her back provoked by dancing in vinyl, but I would have it no other way, the memory realer for the wetness on my fingers. She is mine, the friend who I think knows me the best (aside from Melanie, to whom I make an effort to confess even the secrets that embarrass me terribly), and I want to pull her closer for giving me the opportunity to dance. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100118.php 26 Jan 2010 22:00:00 EST   She is just lucky she has a cute pout

"I have something that you aren't going to like," Melanie says. I hate conversations that start this way. She goes on to explain that, while the plan had always been that she would be returning to me Saturday, she has opted to prolong her stay with her parents for another four days, so her mother won't have to be alone once her father leaves on a trip.

This leaves me no reasonable response. I am disappointed to have this long weekend snatched away from me so she can spend more time in a town she has done little more than bitch about with parents to whom she had made me feel she was overfull (as any adult might be after a solid month of contact with one's parents). I cannot insist upon her presence on the day she promised without sounding like a possessive jackass, as she ran this all by her parents before discussing it with me. The demanding, older boyfriend is such a cliche, especially given that she already references her mother's potential opinion when I call or text her more than twice a day.

I express all of this as best I can and our conversation is going well until she suggests that these additional days will be good practice for when she goes to New Zealand for nine months, something which she states feels more and more likely. The three months I did without her for each of the last two years is apparently not practice enough, nor do I want this vast potential chasm thrown in my face when I am doing my best to be rational about her extending her time away from me.

This spirals into her fearing her parents' individual mortality, as her father is nearly seventy and there are only going to be so many lunches she can share with him. Having dealt with a partner playing hospice to her father a year after her mother went through a mastectomy and extensive chemotherapy, this isn't new ground for me, though it is thankfully unfounded in the case of Melanie's parents.

She says she realized that she would be spending her mornings without me while she was here and that she was certain that she would be homesick and depressed, so it was better that she not come until both her parents would be gone. I am aware that, having made this decision, she is now spinning justification for it. It is a natural reaction, but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. One needs to rationalize that one is doing this for noble reasons and not, say, because one is twenty and gets homesick. That is ground from which one could be goaded, so it is not ground she can acknowledge is the foundation of her argument (though she grants it a parapet or two).

I ask her, next winter, if she wouldn't mind carpe-ing her diem a bit earlier so she can return on time, as she has had no lack of time with her parents this month. She laughs and agrees, but says we will have the rest of our lives together and I shouldn't overly begrudge her a few more days' absence.

She says I am very nice. I disagree, half-joking that I have just elevated enlightened self-interest to an art form. If I rage against her, as she expects without a slice of evidence, she is not going to return to me a devoted and doting girlfriend. This isn't to say I am not upset and don't vocalize this point by point, despite my brain trying to dissociate from the conflict. For me, this is an emotional inconvenience. I had plans that involved her and was actively preparing for her return. To have that put off on a preemptive homesick lark is aggravating, but I do not help myself or her by becoming aggravated.

I have never gotten a concentrated month of her and am jealous. I get a few days here or there, always having to be the one who acknowledges that school has to be the priority and, now, a few more days with parents about whom she grumbles to me. I am greedy and want her kisses desperately after a month without them. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100114.php 18 Jan 2010 13:01:00 EST

Sweet Jesus, what sort of mad man would make an exhibit that shoots mace in your eyes?

This isn't helping. Christ, the water is making it worse.

Okay, if everyone has recovered, we're going to be moving on now.

Excuse me, it appears that my wife and I have gotten a bit turned around in your wonderful museum. Which way to the door, young man?

Oh no, I don't think so, Mr. Wilson. It's back to the euthanasia exhibit for the both of you.

Do you have something you want to tell the kids, Mr. Biggles?

BWHAAAAAA

Mr. Biggles?

BWHAAAAAA

It appears that Mr. Biggles has forgotten how to communicate, which means one of you has been thinking dirty thoughts again. Assume the position of revelation! ]]> http://www.xenex.org/justify/inappropriatepd14.php 18 Jan 2010 12:29:00 EST   I think we can all agree that this would not be a good look for me now.

I scour my closets for fodder for the biannual Recycling Party, where we try to pawn off those articles of clothing and appliance that we may have outgrown, but which have life in them. My mistake may be in asking Melanie for her input, as she has certain hesitations about my wardrobe.

"Oh god, the bird shirt," she immediately gasps, referring to a somewhat stiff green shirt with a white bird embroidered below the breast.

"Already in the pile."

"You're so good. And anything made of velour. The nineties are over."

"I don't think that velour was the fabric of the nineties. That might have been flannel. Anyway, I'm not really aware of fashion." I add, a touch self-deprecating, "I'm not sure if you've noticed."

I have never really had a sense of sartorial finesse. I wear what feels comfortable, both physically and emotionally. My closet encompasses several primordial identities that I've shrugged off, blazers next to bondage shirts next to hoodies.

Part of my style has been a reaction to those I was dating at the time, under the creative reasoning that I might as well match my girlfriend if I weren't going to have a set style of my own. This meant winnowing away previous articles in new relationships. Emily once accomplished this expertly and accidentally during a move, when she left a bottle of bleach in our dirty laundry hamper, destroying a quarter of both our wardrobes, several shirts for which I still find myself searching.

Melanie dresses in t-shirts or tank tops and jeans, with sneakers. Occasionally, she will throw a sweater or jacket on, as seasonally appropriate. She spent her adolescence in school uniforms, likely for the best given how little she then liked her body. This easygoing ensemble will evolve toward something else in time, though I cannot imagine what it will be beyond comfortable.

Jacki, the Recycling Party's hostess, has always had an excellent and largely sense of style, which suggests to me an inward confidence. She had a clear idea of the woman she would be since she was a tiny gothling, but also knew that safety pins needed to evolve toward elegance and professionalism. Her identify, as demonstrated by what she wears, is a clear evolution that has (like the noble shark) reach a plateau of perfection years ago and will not need to shift further.

Melissa used to be so changeable in her teen years that my mother, who quite liked her, could hardly recognize her from visit to visit. Work changed her wardrobe, guiding her toward outfits that suited her better. But when the day was done and it was up to her to pick an outfit, she resigned to the comfort.

Both Hannah and Daniel found styles they liked and, as far as I could tell, filled their dressers with a dozen exact copies (hers: blue jeans and a black t-shirt, his: slacks, vest, button up shirt, and shoes-all black-and a dark red tie). Daniel once explained that the point of this was to set a fixed, ageless image of him in people's minds. I pointed out that him make him like a cartoon. Hannah now wears a Naval uniform most of the time, Uncle Sam acting as her fashion consultant.

Nor this.

Clothes are unfortunately a big part of how the world perceives us, the costume for daily interaction. It is telling that Melanie's constant first action upon entering my apartment is to doff her clothes, even when nothing more dramatic than having dinner or talking follows (meaning that I have to warn her if I have guests so she won't tear her shirt off before the front door closes). She never needed to maintain the pretense of clothes with me, so she doesn't. Even millimeters of cloth are artifice too much, especially when she has spent the week maintaining this facade.

I have grown more accustomed to my teacher drag (pants, a button up shirt or sweater, a blazer), understanding not only the necessity, but that I actually look rather dapper in clothes that fit. I wear them only because it makes my life easier, it provides me the visual signals of authority that cause the students to unconsciously respect me. I feel like an animal camouflaged in poisonous colors. I know, too, that the clothing I wore as a teenager provided signals to the world, ones that were both beneficial to my social standing and detrimental to the esteem of anyone even a year older than me. Even now, Melanie assumes that none of my clothing will fit me, so attached was I once to overlarge clothes.

The solution is not to conform, certainly, but to be aware of the signals one is sending and own them. Does what you wear match who you are? Impossible, but it does inform people at a distance who you might be. People are lazy as a rule and won't put forth any more effort in getting to form an opinion of you than they have to.

We can't fall into the fallacy of believing that our fashion represents who we are, of course. For far too long, I was too attached to my long hair as a representation for who I was, mistaking the symbol for the fact. One day, when I got too tired of being disrespected while working, I finally deigned to have it shorn, liking immensely more how I looked with shorter hair. I do not know how many times I was not granted opportunities because I adhered more to the trappings of previous identities, though I can guess. I don't have to accede to people's prejudices, but it was foolish to pretend I was ignorant.

But head octopuses are always chic.

I daily see students who are bristling against or will soon confront the same conflict. Are they their music? Their hair? Their clothes? And yet, if you take these things away, who are they? Can they exist without these attachments? Of course, but it takes bravery to discover this for themselves and no one (certainly not me) can do this for them. Young men and women sacrifice mobility and dignity, wearing their pants literally inches from their knees, revealing their underwear to the world. They swear they do this because that is what convicts have to do. As my father works in the prison system and I have interviewed there, I know for a fact that every effort is made to be certain a prisoner's clothing fits (baggy clothing could hide weapons). They are willing to waddle and hike their jeans up every few steps to affirm their loyalty to a caste, even though thugs would be far better served by the ability to run without tripping and splitting open their chins.

Similarly, there was a moment as a teenager when an alternative song came over the bus radio and I pronounced that it sucked (and it did, it was Matchbox 20). My friend, also in the same musically segregated clique, started chewing me out for daring to offer an opinion outside what a company had declared. To his way of thinking, it was impossible to be in our caste and not like something that a record executive marketed as "alternative rock". My tastes have further drifted and it is rare, today, when I can turn on the radio and like what is on (even when they are playing the music I liked in middle school and high school). My identity hasn't changed radically, but I see no reason to subject myself to anything that isn't going to entertain me so I can keep a label adhered.

The Recycling Party is thus some part exchanging one's trapping for another's. It is releasing what one once considered critical, considered part of one, for something new.

Jacki shows me some of her old clothing to give to the absent Melanie, and I reject most of it out of hand, some with a sense of regret. The clothing is pretty and would suit Melanie well, save that she would refuse to wear it. Jacki then shows me women's suits inherited from her mother and asks if there is any chance Melanie would wear them. I can imagine neither the Melanie I know, nor any future incarnation, accepting any of these as parts of her wardrobe. A benefit to being a scientist is that people allow for a relaxed dress code.

"Is it weird that I want my girlfriend to look like my best friend?" I ask Jacki.

"A little," she says.

Only a few of my shirts find new homes, the others promised to Salvation Army. I acquire a couple of sweaters and mailing envelopes, happier to be rid of things than for what I have gained. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100111.php 16 Jan 2010 11:30:00 EST

Why are we even out here?

You will see. I was up here before with Billy and came across these things. It is hard to explain. You want to get quiet now.

Tick tick tick tick tick

Reek reek reek

What the fuck are those things?

There are four of them now?

You know when you sound surprised, it is not exactly reassuring.

Look, when I was up here before, it was just the two, which means...

They are breeding.

Tick tick tick

Reek reek reek

Try not to not to make any noise, they do not seem to like it.

The one in front keeps looking at me; it feels like it is burning a hole in my soul.

REEEKKKKK

MOVE!

Get it off of me.

Christ, I loved you. I have to go. I have to go.

They are raping my eyes. Their hook shaped penises are pushing into my brain.

Tick tick tick

Reek reek reek ]]> http://www.xenex.org/justify/inappropriatepd13.php 16 Jan 2010 10:29:00 EST

"I think I'll skip Movie Night tonight," I say.

"What? No! Why?" Melanie says.

"I'm feeling a little under the weather..."

"No, you have to go. Every time you see them, you establish yourself more as their friend!"

"So, I have to go tonight because you want to be besties with Ilana?" I ask, cutting the subtext.

There is a pause on the other end of the line. "Well, yes, but you need better friends anyway."

"I went to brunch with Tom. I think I am their friend."

"Fine, but go anyway."

Melanie feels, and I do not disagree, that I need to reinvigorate my social sphere thanks to the exodus of Stevehen and the apparent extinction of my friendship with Melissa. Others have left in the past and I have sought, too actively, to replace them (e.g., calling Jess the New Hannah when I hadn't bothered to spend more than a dozen hours with her). Thing are more casual with Tom and Ilana, just happening because there is a symmetry in our personalities and a mutual extroversion.

It isn't blameworthy to need new friends. Many relationships change or degrade as time goes on, and that is to be expected. People begin to want different things, whether they retreat into other relationships, addictions, or new lives. One must appreciate the relationships for what they were without discarding them in memory for the fact that they no longer are. And, as I have said before and will doubtless say again, there are only so many minutes in the day and only do much space in one's life. If others need to exit, actively or passively, perhaps it is only so that others may then enter.

Ilana answers the door after I knock several times and call both her cell and home phone, informing me that half the people in the apartment are intoxicated and asking if I would like to be. I demur, but laugh a little drunkenly at this greeting.

I envy Ilana, which is hardly the worst foundation on which to build a friendship. She is a prodigious artist, making money that folds and getting written up in local publications for her skill. She travels often. She has a live-in relationship with her fiance, who rightly adores her. She is the center of her universe while I feel like a comet in mine, coming into contact with massive objects and celestial bodies in hopes that one will have gravity enough to keep me in their orbit.

I have had people question some of my friendships, intimating that these people seemed understimulating, suggesting that congruence felt when I was nineteen might not translate to similarity now. As loyal as I am, I am also logical enough to see where these critics get such ideas.

Some people, one grows into. Tom has been a satellite of my social sphere since I was fifteen, as he was a friend of a few girls I dated then. I saw him at concerts and events at their school and we nodded recognition, but that was the extent of it until he invited me to a party a year and a half ago. Now that I have gotten to know him, I have vast appreciation that he has any place in my life.

We watch a French movie I have seen before, Delicatessen, so I can focus more on the company than the subtitles, and I am happy. I like being around wine and cheese, even when I do not partake. I like having friends that hold movie nights of foreign films. I like having situations in my life that I can relate proudly, instead of with a resigned shrug as the farce that is life. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20100107.php 15 Jan 2010 12:01:00 EST   She is good at this party thing

Parties are scary. Don't pretend you don't know. They tend to be held in enclosed spaces, peopled by strangers eating to fill the spaces between words they cannot hear over the music. Yes, the pretense is to gather friends and have a concentrated amount of fun to celebrate a milestone, but the actuality is phobia-inducing.

As a child, I feared parties slightly more than I enjoyed them. I recall once, at five or six, inch-worming my way out of my bedroom, covered in a gold sleeping bag to observe through a hole in the zipper my parents' friends. These were not strangers (these same friends have attended our Easter egg dyeing since time immemorial), but they were here under the auspices of a party and were therefore not to be trusted.

Things then were little better with people my age. For some reason, my brothers and I got it in our heads to unhook and hide any videogame system we had to foster a party environment. Weather willing, we then spent the whole of the party making war on our cousins, forming temporary alliances and enmities until the aunts and uncles again left with their broods.

I have thrown few successful shindigs--my friends have typically opted not to show, rather than show and drag behind them the sort of social disasters that would make for good reading--so perhaps I never had proper experience in my formative years to build up a tolerance to the concept. (It no doubt does not help that I do not drink, smoke, do drugs, or sleep around, rendering most parties pointless.)

In this strange social milieu, it makes sense that one would compensate. Melanie does by flirting intentionally inappropriately, entirely with women who might theoretically be receptive (in that they once, half-drunkenly, confessed to me some heteroflexibility). The implicit understanding is that her hitting on them is meaningless, though not indiscriminate, just to get a rise out of the object of her remarks and sufficiently break the ice that we can proceed as friends. Given that she is a cute and confident woman, it tends to be disarming enough to make an impression. These women do not hear Melanie whispering to me within five minutes of entering the party that she is overstimulated and wishes to leave as soon as possible, if not considerably sooner, requests I try to defer until they melt.

I compensate by setting rules. If I sit here for ten minutes while others talk of yokel neighbors or the vagaries of their finance job, if I contribute toward a conversation about dog breeds, I reward myself as operant conditioning. At Jess's Boxing Day party, these rewards transitioned from small cookies (until I ate all the chocolate chip ones that could be classed as "small") to single peanut M&M's to finally guiltlessly wandering away when there seemed to be a lull in the talk.

It sounds obsessive-compulsive, I know, but there is really no internal need, nor am I above breaking my unspoken rules as occasion demands. It is a means of daring myself to be social, rather than hovering around the hostess and becoming burdensome, as is what I wanted to do for comfort (I haven't seen Jess in months owing both to boyfriend and work). But the rules dictate that the inviter and hostess cannot be the designated social buffer. These games give me something to focus on beyond temporary doldrums or the awkwardness of being in a room with unfamiliar faces.

Social buffers can obviate the need, but only to the extent that I can extend my rules onto another person. Melanie, especially, can be helpful because her compensation can complement mine. If nothing else, I know triggers enough to turn her into a topic of conversation for a few minutes. She is considerably more interesting than I am.

These are what guests look like

I was without a buffer at Jess's and the guests--while charming enough--did not seem inclined toward individually replacing them for any length of time. I floated from room to room to room (for her house is rather large), but felt I was a moment too late to participate in the right conversations and was too much of a teetotaler not to care.

New Year's Eve, the following week, is largely acknowledged as the grandest party of the year. Oddly, I find these parties less intimidating simply because they are defuse. Everyone is having parties so there are fewer stigmas, one needs only pick a party and stick to it and I was promised to Jacki's party a month ago.

The problem was that many of Jacki's guests backed out at the last moment--as guests do--so she solicited me to harass my friends to join us.

Stevehen was out because, as far as I know, he spends his New Year's Eve packing for his new life. He has more important things to do than scorn people willfully different tonight. I don't know if he spends the night in reflection, though he makes some comment to the effect that he is turning in early so as to make his train to Hull, to his new life, on the only night of the year universally acknowledged to be worth insomnia. I have known Stevehen a decade, but I cannot really imagine how he would spend this final night.

Until the events of a few days ago, when I was with Keilaina and Dan, I had thought I would try to drag Melissa along. Melissa wouldn't come of course, even if she had promised she would, which is why I waited to ask. If I gave her time to panic, there would be no chance of her attendance, rather than simply an exceedingly slim one. I would get the same brush-off call I had received a dozen times before, when I tried to forcibly extend Melissa's social sphere so she would cease to perseverate. However, because I held her mental illness culpable for how she reacted to Stevehen nixing her attempt at a reunion in March (an action she had been bragging about), she called off our friendship for good for the third or fourth time this year, exclusively through text messages. I know, as before, this is really about Stevehen and her mixed feeling that won't be resolved yet. I do not know what she does instead, whether it is a quiet evening at home with take-out and bad movies or if she spends it entangled in the limbs of the drunken paramour who refuses to be anyone's boyfriend.

Melanie spends it hundreds of miles from me, with her best friends Cole and Stephanie, joking around and forgetting that they age. It is familiar to her, better than showing off her learnedness to erudite colleagues of her parents until pricey champagne renders her giggly, then indifferent, then comatose. Cole and Stephanie tease her as she breathes her love to me over the phone after midnight, shouting "mawwiage!" until we relent and shout it back. She later threatens to leave the sleepover if they don't let her sleep.

But true party success requires both a utility kilt and the banker from the Abyss

I can think of few else who are not already promised to a quiet evenings or a more raucous parties. When I try extending my invitations to associates on Facebook, the gregarious woman snipes them away to a building full of parties, so I give up.

Last year, Jacki's party featured no electricity until after the year had turned over. We melted snow on the stove for our toileting needs and my additions to the party hid in the kitchen, quietly judging. This is far from the worst party I have ever attended.

Still, there is something to be said about a party featuring a professional roadie in a utility kilt, a five foot tall lutinist, and mushroom pate. The mix of people who attend Jacki's parties is always diverse, united possibly only by the fact that she rubs shoulders with readers if she has the least bit of say in the matter. As such, one cannot help but feel there is insipient conversation just under the surface of interaction, as the kilted Hickory proves as he describes his time as crew for Circe du Solie. I leave the kitchen for a few moments and return to Daniel and an older man discussing cartoons with a sacerdotal depth. In another room, a long story is created about a guest named Nile, who once found another Nile and so was finally Niles. One of the guests, Dawn, whom I have known for nine years but never well, talks about her misadventures on the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, enjoying our momentary attention and raising her volume and pitch accordingly.

Attention, it seems is the only currency at most parties. One must prove oneself worthy to be a life of the party, if not the life. It is something I felt absent from Jess's party a week ago, because-even though I am disinclined to attract attention to myself, save in writing-I like the thought that I am capable. Unless I unfurled my anecdotal knowledge that rabies cannot be sexually transmitted or depressed everyone present while relating when my dog died, I knew I had little to contribute to a pet-related conversation. Dawn knows that we cannot comprehend Dutch-our attention to her would wane if we could-but it is almost eccentric in a land where the polyglots know Spanish or French (or, gods help them, Japanese). Dawn, devotee of colonial trappings, wouldn't be satisfied to have learned something almost commonplace (no matter how many people outside our borders are nearly born fluent).

Daniel imperceptibly bristles in the presence of those making any effort to draw attention to themselves, whether at parties or in private, rewarding their efforts by focusing elsewhere. This does not, however, mean that he was not an active participant at the party this year, aided no doubt by the fact that he could be seen thanks to the electric lights. He seems more engaged this year, either because he was not burdened by the baggage of his ex and her boyfriend (as famously as I remember Daniel and Arthur getting along) or quite simply because others can see him and direct conversation his way. As there are a few people at the party whom I know on a more than superficial level, I flitter from room to room and make a poor social buffer for one who is inclined to establishing and holding his social ground, meaning Daniel would have to find his own compensation by letting others know that he is actually eloquent, learned, and witty. As point of fact, Daniel gets on so well at the party that, when I begin drooping in my seat and brushing off suggestions that I sleepover, he remains with the few who stay (the aforementioned Hick, John, and Jacki). I could learn a few things from him.

Just after midnight, as I kiss the silver pendant whose twin is around Melanie's neck in lieu of kissing Melanie's neck, Jacki reminds me of how I spent the initial minutes of last year: huddled in her car, pizza on my lap, listening to her pour out someone else's tragedy as we made our way back to her guests. What I did not know until this point is that Kevin, her then fiance, presumed/accused that Jacki and I kissed at midnight. The nature of parties is that unlikely things can happen (often lubricated by alcohol), but I am taken aback that he would assume both that Jacki would allow this transgression or that I would infringe upon my relationship with Melanie even in this small way. She says, with a sigh and half an eye roll, that it is funny now, leaving unspoken how unfunny it was then, dealing with this insult while still playing hostess.

Perhaps we would be better off without parties. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20091231.php 13 Jan 2010 19:01:00 EST   How John Lennon got started

If everyone waited to be ready to have children, our species would die out. If you have any instinct toward reproduction, you leap first and build what wings you can on the way down. Or you simply forget to take your birth control pill or wear a condom and deal with the logical consequences.

Still, it often seems one must make the choice between spawning and living out those fantasies one accumulates through high school and college. Despite this, many can't seem to wait to begin a family. Judging from smiling pictures of Baby's First Christmas, I don't think most people regret their decision to become parents as soon as they are in a relationship that could sustain it (or sooner).

My sister-in-law Becky had her third daughter under the pretense that it was to keep from being enlisted to fight in a war (it was pregnancy or my mother would break Becky's thumbs), though really because it was just time for my brother to have a child who was his by blood and not simply love and devotion. As she already had two daughters (and she would end up giving my brother two sons in addition to my niece Alyssah), it was only a slight additional complication to have another daughter.

"I'm going to Hogwarts to learn to fight zombies!"

Visiting with Keilaina and Dan brings parenting to the forefront of my mind. Their son, Rhys, is eighteen months, all both precocious and adorable. Rhys shows a curious attachment to a broom and, when we three play Beatles Rock Band, he won't stay away from the drums. He wobbles very slightly as he toddles from place to place at top speed, one of his legs slightly shorter than the other in a way he is apparently too young to fix. It is easy to see an amalgam of his parents in his face, Kei's eyes and Dan's cheeks. Every time I see Rhys, he is transformed more into a human being and I cannot stop myself from delighting at his obvious personality.

Dan apologizes for the fact that we have to stay in for the whole of my visit, though I am more than content with video games and Chinese food leftovers. He mentions several times wanting to go to a bookstore or simply spend time elsewhere, but Kei's mother's tenant cannot be used as a babysitter. This irritates Dan, but there can be no argument.

Even within the bounds of the house, we have to limit our activities. Though Kei details a long dream that prophesies that Rhys will become a zombie killer, this doesn't mean that she and I can continue to play Left 4 Dead once Rhys rises from his nap. The violence against reanimated corpses on the screen, even when I can barely make them out against the gray mist of the background, is too much for him. Dan goes so far as to shield Rhys's eyes until we stop playing seconds later.

"I don't wanna work, I just wanna bang on my drum all day!"

In all ways, having a child changes one's life inexorably. Even for those of my students who pawn their children off on their parents as new siblings, it is impossible to fully return to a place of carefree innocence. When Keilaina is out of the room, joining Rhys is his nap, Dan mentions that he had hoped to finish college and travel a bit with his small family before adding another person to it, but one incident of unprotected sex two months ago, a week before Dan articulated this hope to Keilaina, resulted in a new pregnancy. They will manage together, as they vowed to always do, but it is other than how Dan had conceived of things. At least they will one day have enough family members to all play Left 4 Dead together and isn't that the most important thing? ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20091229.php 07 Jan 2010 12:13:00 EST

Tell us a story, Master Frog.

Yes, tell us a story of the old days.

Very well, little ones, gather around closely. Long before the pond, there was the swamp. Before the swamp, there was a wide field of grass. Before I came to the land, it stood calling to our people.

Master Frog, how can that be? We allow the swamp to exist, do we not? The teachings tell us so.

We live in harmony with the Mother Swamp. Tomorrow, if we were to begin the great journey, Mother Swamp would provide for others.

What others? There is only our clan, only our beliefs. The teachings tell us so. If we were to leave the swamp, it would die. The others that came would only arrive to a barren wasteland. We are the beginning and the end of the cycle, to teach otherwise would be to teach against the Will of the Log.

The rules written on the log serve a different time, little one.

You speak of blasphemy.

"Blasphemy" is a horrid term used by those that seek the power of the swamp for their own means.

This is the teachings of a madman.

Cleanse him with fire!

Perhaps it is time I ruled our people, old one. The swamp, it calls for a new leader. I, with a heavy heart, take charge.

Little ones, would you allow this one to speak for you?

He speaks the truth!

The king is dead, long live the king. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/justify/inappropriatepd12.php 05 Jan 2010 21:29:00 EST   This is how I look most of the time I am writing

"I'm sorry, you said you've visited Austria? What time of year?" I ask the perfumed woman on the other end of the table, talking over Tom's head. Even as I ask, I struggle to remember her name, something with a K.

"August, why?"

"Ah, no good for me. I am doing research about the Krampus, for a story. He's one of Santa's helpers in Austria, the bad cop to Santa's good cop. Only, instead of coal in the stockings, the Krampus beats women with birch switches and drags naughty children to hell. I wanted to know the cultural logic for Santa teaming up with a murderous demon." Ideally, I was hoping that someone would mention the Austrian equivalent of a Rankin-Bass special that delves into this back story, ala Santa Claus is Coming to Town or Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I am not above making up reasons--Suzie gave me a good rationalization about Santa, being a saint, having power over a demon--but would prefer to keep as much of my story canon as possible.

The woman doesn't know anything of this tradition, but my conviction and purpose is plainly such that she offers to get in touch with relatives in Austria and ask them, a conversation I wish I could overhear for its strangeness.

My writing process does not always put me in front of a keyboard. My short stories, which I am trying to get more into to build my writing resume, tend to need to germinate in my head for a few weeks as I passively-to-obsessively acquire facts and details, occasionally at brunches in crowded restaurants. Over the summer, I wrote most of a short story (Always Darkest, which may one day be another book in my series) while going on runs in a cemetery and narrating tiny bits of the story into my voice recorder. I joke that the citizens of the graveyard whisper ideas to me.

Melanie is aware I am working on this story, which I am tentatively calling Ghosts of Christmas Past, one that will be illustrated and featured by Cave Drawing Ink next December, and asks how it is going. This is a hard question to answer, since it is little more than two pages of typed notes with a few scenes that must be involved and roughly how it ends. Given that, I feel I am almost done. The easy part is in physically writing it, now, and giving flesh to some ideas that have been bumping around in my head (in one form or another) for the better part of five years.

I have a file with thirty other story ideas, some of which will cleave together and others, apart. I am never at a loss for something to write and always feel oddly fortunate that I can plunder from myself rather than others.

I have decided that my short stories will all loosely tie into my books, taking place in the same reality where fact is based on consensus belief. If nothing else, a dozen tangentially related stories will give a better foundation for my world than twenty pages of cumbersome exposition per book.

Months ago, I mentioned to a fellow writer that I have had to insert uninterrupted reading (which my main Christmas present, an eReader, helps immensely) into my writing schedule because reading gets me so angry. She thought this was because I see the sins of other writers in my genre who have made it and write to spite them. Instead, it is that I read things that are very good and grow frustrated that I cannot yet do what they do, so I must practice with what they have taught me, seeing whether I can stand to be more florid (I cannot) or if I can get away with abject cruelty to my characters (I can).

At Melanie's behest, I have read my way through Pullmans His Dark Materials series, which she tenders fondly. In almost every conversation we have, I complain about some digression, literary convention, or liberty he has taken because he had his readers and editors by the balls. Realizing how this must come off to her, I clarify that I am only being so nitpicky because I happen to like his books a great deal or I would stop reading them. It isnt easy for writers to read because we are so inclined to dissection that no story gets out of it alive. ]]> http://www.xenex.org/journal/20091228.php 04 Jan 2010 11:13:00 EST