Girlfriends

Last week I had lunch here on campus and I overheard a conversation between three undergrad girls. One of them was complaining about her boyfriend. This is definitely not the whole conversation, and not all of them are direct quotes, and I’m not entirely sure why I’m recording them here. But this is what I remember.

Girl 1- So last night he came home and we went to bed and it was like, he didn’t ask me anything about anything. Like, he didn’t notice that my hair was a different color, he didn’t ask me what my day was like, he didn’t know that I had a really big talk with my mom on the phone last night. And I’m like, we’re dating. You should know this stuff about me.

 Girl 2- I mean, he didn’t notice your hair was a different color. That’s big.

Girl 1- I know! Seriously. I just want some intimacy you know?

Girl 2- Well, do you cuddle?

Girl 1- Yeah. I mean, we totally do. He’s really gentle and stuff. But he doesn’t like to talk. One time, I felt really bad cause we went to his mom’s house and his mom is Jewish. I mean, she’s a real Jewish mom. And he told her he liked the food at school and she was like, ‘Yeah. I could have guessed that. You’ve put on a few.’ And he didn’t say anything and I felt so bad… I mean, I don’t want to think about marriage right now. But I at least want it to be good now. You know?

Girl 2- Mhm.

Girl 1- But he’s a soccer player, you know.

Girl 2- He is?!

Girl 1- Oh yeah. He’s really hot.

Girl 3- Soccer players are so hot.

Ants and Spiders

There are ants in this office and they’re everywhere. They like this job more than I do. They crawl on my desk but I don’t mind them. When I see them I give quick swipe and try not to imagine what that might feel like for them, spinning around… My coworker comes in and squishes them between her fingers without ceremony while she talks. Like a gesture- wiping her hair from her face, squeezing a little life. It gives me something like a tiny electric shock every time and I twitch at it in the form of a tight cough-like laugh.

I left a graham cracker covered in chocolate in my desk. I sealed it with tape but they’ll probably find it. Like I said, I don’t mind. They’re the little kind. You can’t even make out the shape of their body so much. Like chocolate jimmies with legs. They hum along my mouse pad and sometimes I just watch them.

I remember the time I was coming out of my parent’s garage. There was a fat spider shambling out, trying to carry around its thick body on it’s spindly legs. Awkward. And I felt bad- seeing it was gonna get trapped in the garage and maybe under the automatic door. So… I wasn’t thinking I ‘spose. That happens when it’s really bright out or you’re carrying a lot of things… I tapped it real light with my foot. You know. Get it out of there. Suggest. And SPOOF! hundreds of thousands of little tiny tiny spiders came streaming out of the thing. It’s like, if you could get down on the ground you would have just HAD to have heard the hubbub of all those little spiders runnin around with their hands in the air. And the mom! Can you imagine?! I felt terrible. They just spread all over the place then. In the garage, out of the garage, some of them stopping suddenly, others running for all they had- probably screaming.

I told my sister that story and she stood up out of her chair and just yelled as loud as she could. It’s horrible- what happened with the spider. But my sister’s reaction was a perfect thing. 

Fur

(Wednesday, April 25, 2007)

FUR My black umbrella turned inside out in the rain today and I carried it around with cold fingertips like the carcass of a crow. I could feel the bottom of my pants sticking to my ankles from the wet. My little RAV was hiding in the impossible parallel parking space I had managed the night before- like a forklift had lifted it up and placed it perfectly between the two enormous SUVs on either side of it. My RAV looked like a jockey standing between two football players. The SUVs had their hands on their hips, squinting at the sun and squeezing gasoline in thier faces. When I tapped them on the way out they barely shuddered. I had to hang my down jacket on the head of the seat next to me to dry and I could smell the goose feathers. I looked at the hood and I remembered Johnny taking out his Swiss Army knife and cutting out the tag, both of us embarrassed that I had unwittingly purchased a jacket with real fox fur around the hood. I felt perfectly guilty knowing that I could have looked at the tag when I bought it but didn’t think of it in time- like a person who never reads the paper but complains about the government and never does anything about anything. That’s me too, I think.  The fur was wet from the rain and I couldn’t help putting my hand on it while I drove- even in the traffic. It was so black and I wondered if it had been dyed that way. I realized that the fur would maybe take less time to dry if it was on an actual fox because it would be breathing and warm. But here it was in my car with the heat on, in the city, in traffic.