OrganicRaw

 I was invited to a cafe the other night. A bar cafe. A drinking music space. A sort of dancing to DJs type…thing. When I walked in, the person I was intending to meet wasn’t there so I went straight to the bar to order something to drink- to keep me occupied. There were two tall glass vases standing on either side of the bar and they were filled with money. The music was a kind of aimless groovy loop with a techno beat pulsing underneath. Behind the bar two guys were walking around like they were hosting a party in their basement- casual, maybe helpful, not exactly employed. There was a woman too, she was smiling and chatting with someone near the end of the bar and her waist was about the same circumference as my wrist. She looked like sturdy jump rope. She made me want to eat brownies and peanut butter. I decided to have a drink instead. 

I looked for the bottles behind the bar and there were large silver bowls- the kinds I use to stir the makings of Nestle Toll House cookies – filled with long sticks of celery, carrots, ginger… I looked again at the vases of money. A guy with a train driver’s hat, a kind of bartender? also thin, came over and I ordered water. “Sure,” he told me easily.
I wondered where I was. Why it was so late. Where my friend was. Why I was wearing a bright yellow sweater.

The room was filled with earth tones. The people were of the earth earthy. Dread locks. Tan linen pants. Chokers made of shells. They sat on little cubes made of cork and low chairs that looked a little like kid’s chairs in the dentist office. I looked like an advertisement for the Gap, like I was choking in a buttoned up button down, like I was busy putting the penny in my penny loafers. I turned back to the bar and a girl came and stood along side me. “You waiting for a drink?” she asked me. There was something flirtatious about it- the way she leaned into me like she was asking me to light her cigarette. “No,” I told her. She had long dark hair and one of those floppy hats with the little half visor… I know these floppy hats because all the cute girls with the little faces wore them in Japan and I would always go over in some store and try them on and I would always end up looking like a clown wearing a sand bag on my head.
But this girl…
Of course she was fabulous looking with her little tiny nose and her big eyelashes and smooth light brown skin and her smack smack mouth and her subtle cream and brown clothes that did all the right things in all the right places. She was the kind of girl that could be a punk rocker, a high fashion model, a CEO or a prostitute and she would still ALWAYS look good. She just had to choose which one she wanted. You would have to steamroll her to create any real problems and even then folks would frame her and hang her over the mantle. Or maybe screen print her and use her as bed sheets.
“Can I order a drink here?” I asked her.
“No. Actually. I’m just getting a refill for my tea. They don’t have a liquor license yet. But they have great raw juice. And they have one carrot and chocolate combo- they use organic chocolate and it is amazing.”
“Yeah! I bet!” I told her with a disgusting lack of sincerity that I’m sure she read immediately. I got it into my head then, like a girl in junior high (like ME in junior high) that I needed to go into the bathroom and REMOVE my big bright canary-singing, legal-pad-yellow sweater and break out the boring but black v-neck tshirt I was sporting underneath. I put my water down and headed to the bathroom.

As I headed across the room the dreamy groove of the music turned to a kind of scraping sound and I had a fork-on-my-brain sensation.
In the quiet of the bathroom, however, I was able to get ahold of myself and assess my situation. I tucked my bangs, tried some lipgloss, squeezed my cheeks a little and then found that no matter what I did, no matter how I tried to convince myself otherwise,  I just couldn’t control a little voice in my head that was just looking and looking and saying, “I LOVE THIS SWEATER! IT’S JUST SO BRIGHT AND YELLOW!” So.
So I washed my hands and left.

Dumb Girl

Last night I danced with someone nice looking and it kept me from dancing all that well. He asked me for a second song and when it came on it was nice and lovely and slow. But somewhere around thirty seconds into it, the tempo picked up and got really weird. “Oh screw that,” he said and lead me at his own tempo. At some point he tried to be adventuresome and attempt one fast swing out with me with his arm shortened to make the most of our energy but by three and four he had already said, “Oh forget it. I’m too old. I don’t do that anymore.” To which I laughed and said, “Yeah. Me neither.” Except instead of saying NEEther I said NYEther. I never say that. When have I ever said that. And I’m so not too old to dance fast. And neither is he.

Late Lunch

My boss gave me a bunch of little things to do right around the time I was going to take my lunch today so I didn’t get out until 2:15 and I was starvin. I went to Chipotle for a veggie burrito the size and weight of an infant’s head. The man in front of me watched them wrap it up in foil and then looked over his shoulder at me. He checked me out from head to belt, turned to me and said, “Lookatchu. You’re not gonna eat all that!” And he laughed in a knowing but chummy way. 
“Yeah I know really, right?” I said back to him, shaking my head, “Heh heh. Yeah. I’ll have to wrap it up! Heh heh!” And inside I was thinking:
I’m gonna eat that friggin burrito right down to the last goddamn bean cause it is GOOD and I am HUNGRY. Yee-Haw!

Swayze In Love

I was very popular in elementary school. I mean, sure, there was Amy Lambert with her curly hair and her gymnastics. But we managed to share the playground. I played kickball with the boys and did hopscotch and reenactments of The Wizard of Oz with the girls. I had birthday parties at McDonalds and Pizza Hut (where you could design your own pizza and make a smiley face with pepperonis) and sometimes I had sleepovers. My hair was long and brown and at Halloween I often dressed like Princess Leia. Things were good for me.

So when I graduated from sixth grade, I wasn’t expecting things to change all that much. In the summer before junior high, there were adjustments, sure. Like the time my mom took my sister and I shopping at the mall and I gravitated toward a shirt with different colored bandanas hanging off of it and my sister grabbed me like I was about to get hit by a car, “No Vanessa! You’re in junior high now! You can’t wear that stuff any more!” I was disappointed, but I tried to find the subtle beauty of striped button downs and mock turtlenecks.

I admit that I slipped, occasionally, in my new fashion regiment and would sometimes go for the less universally-appealing popularity-generating threads that filled the locker room with new shirt smell every morning. My favorite outfit, which I usually reserved for class photos and trips to Providence for dinner on Saturday nights with my parents, was a ruffled short black skirt with suspenders and a purple shirt with “Last Exit” written across it. I’m pretty sure I was wearing this when, in the seventh grade, I approached Alison Carroll in the locker room and told her that either she had lost my invitation to her birthday party or she had simply forgotten to hand it to me. Alison was cool and likeable, like me, so when I saw that Jen had her invite poking out of the top of her jean purse, I knew there had just been a mistake somehow. Mistakes happen.

When I told Alison about her lost invitation, I asked when and where the party was and should I bring my sleeping bag. I know there was a moment during which Alison just looked at me and I imagined she was thinking, “Where did I put that invitation? Where did I put it?” I eventually got the details and was able to show up at her sweet split ranch approximately one hour early for the party. Her cousin was early too and we stood around for some time. I didn’t know her cousin because she went to another school but I got the feeling from the way she hung around the kitchen looking at me sideways, that she was better friends with Alison’s mom than she was with Alison.

Eventually, all the other guests arrived. I don’t know if we ate cake or had dinner or played games. At my parties we had always played the game where you had to put on a pair of my dad’s work gloves and get timed opening a piece of gum. The person with the shortest time got a prize- maybe Sea Monkeys or a plastic hat. What I do remember about Alison’s party is that we watched “Dirty Dancing” on video. I had already seen it in the movies and when Patrick Swayze was about to come on the screen I yelled and talked about how gorgeous was. The first time Patrick Swayze appears in the film he’s in a white t-shirt and black mirror sunglasses. He has a black leather jacket that he’s holding over his shoulder with his pointer finger. He swaggers and his pants are tight. I talked and talked about how hot he was and when a good part was about to happen- I let everyone know that they should get ready for a good part. The other party goers were surprisingly quiet and I realized that the slumber party feeling was just not with us. It gave me an uneasy feeling and my voice seemed to still be in the room without my talking. But I forgot all about it when one of my favorite songs from the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack came on and I couldn’t help singing along.

The next morning we probaby had breakfast. I don’t remember. But I know that I stayed for a while after the other guests had left because I remember looking over at Alison’s kinda sad cousin drooping in the corner of the kitchen. Alison’s mother looked from me to the cousin and from Alison to me. She had her hand on her hip and she seemed concerned, looking at her daughter. Alison ran her hand along the back of wooden chair. She didn’t invite me to stay for dinner or suggest that we go see a movie. The cousin told everyone what time her mom was coming and I suddenly knew I had to call and tell my mother to come right away. I just knew in that sort of “I smell smoke” kind of way. So I called her and thanked Alison and her mom for the fun night. And when my mom finally came to get me I threw my stuff in the back and sat heavily in the front seat. “How was it?” she asked.
And I reported only, “It was ok.”

New Phone

My phone was broken at work so they brought me a new one. There was a lot of cord wrangling and button replacing and at the end of it all I picked up the receiver and could smell the new plastic. Like the face of a doll at Christmas.