The Morning After

Your underwear

Are always the first thing to go missing,

Hiding under the bed,

Or tossed into some far corner.

He usually will get up first,

To make coffee, or go to the bathroom,

That is, if you aren't ashamed enough

To have snuck out during the early dawn light

First.

You will have roughly 15 minutes

To regain some semblance of the well-pressed self-control

You had the night before,

Sans brush, and sans mirror.

His roommates will be moving noisily around,

With no clue or no care

That you might still be there.

They talk about eggs as you try to find all your rings,

Loose, like how you're feeling about your morals.

You hold your forehead,

Sneaking glances at him in Ray Bans and a Sox hat,

From in between your fingers

As he drives you home.

You wonder if he'll call again.

XOXO

Inexplicable

The heat

And sweet drinks

Have made us crazy.

You call me back,

And I return.

Infinite bliss,

But at what price?

I slap you more than 3 times,

And you decide you like it.

We've decided

To re-intangle,

See if

What used to be

Cosmic

Still is

Inexplicable.

XOXO

Come Full-Circle

The first night, you made the White Russians with too much vodka. I drank it anyway, and didn't tell you until later, when I was already too drunk to drive home. Thank god you asked me to stay.

The last night, you made me a White Russian, with knock-off Kahlua, and again, too much vodka. I drank it in a rush non-conducive to walking home all the way across town, and was glad when you called me back.

The first night, we slept naked. It was winter-time and cold-- you pressed up against me. I didn't mind too much, other than the Band-Aid-adhesive feeling of peeling my skin off of your thighs when I went to roll over, where your hairs clung to me with sweat.

The last night, we slept naked. One of the last nights of summer, far too hot to touch, I looked at your alien body as it glowed translucently in the dark beside me, all legs and dark patches of hair, and thought about how weird you looked; how weird it was to be looking at you naked, vulnerable, and with your mouth open, snoring.

It was his birthday. We were both drunk beyond judgement. And Lord knows the soft-spot a mile wide for each other is located between both of our legs. It seemed like The Right Thing To Do. A tip of the hat to a shared history and the fact that human beings are remarkably fallible and Have Needs. An old song and dance, revisited. A waltz nearly a year archaic.

The next morning, I woke up, oddly elated to realize that other than a headache that pounded from the bridge of my nose between my eyes (a bull's eye to point where thinking had NOT gone on), I didn't feel any different.

Strange when you've already cared so much that you can't possibly care any more, every last drop of feeling wrung out of you like a sponge in an emotional vice-grip. Not enough emotional range left in you to switch your settings. Oxytocin orgasms over. Spent.

XOXO

Tiny Wakes

Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock. Cattails. Dog. House on the hill. Barn. Field. Dock.

As my feet make tiny wakes in the still pond water, algae floating in random spots like the ubiquitous Snickers-bars-in-public-pools of urban city kid's youth, I find myself thinking, very hazily, that this is pretty much the life. That right now, right here, this moment in time, spinning in tight circles like a buoyant top with my wet thighs sticking to the black inner-tube, digesting a peppermint stick sundae like the same ones I've been getting since 7th grade, and the gentle splashing sounds of Nora, 10 feet away from me in the pond, rollicking like a young otter in, over, and around her tube, both of us higher than a pair of kites-- that this, this is it. I've stood in the Colosseum; I've been in Carnivale; I've watched freighters and cruise ships sail across the infinite blackness of the night's horizon from the beach as stars fell from the sky overhead. But none of this still compares to being home in Vermont. I would not pass up this feeling of bubbly joy and dizziness as I watch dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, and field flash before me for another pair of heels; not now, and not ever.

These were the moments I missed the most; the small, the mundane, and the entirely trivial. I missed morning jogs underneath trees with leaves so green and bark so dark from the rain. I missed the noisy buzz and crush of Church Street, and the humidity of packed house parties. I missed the tricky shift from first to second gear; the heavy weight of Saph's head on my chest and damp hemlines from where she breathed onto me. I missed the mountains, and the water, and the storms. My entire 4 months in Florence, we only had one thunderstorm. I missed them just as much as I missed blood-red sunsets over the lake, small psychotic cats, familiar hugs and faces, and buttermilk ranch dressing on Wings Over's honey barbecue boneless wings. Like I said, it was the little things that I wished for. In Italy, I got out of the habit of great big, grand wishes, because I knew upon returning, they would probably remain just that-- wishes, and not reality.

But here, this lounge in a pond-- this was more delicious than any wish I could have come up with, not in my most wild and romantic moment. It beat being spirited away to Bobcat. It beat being met at Logan. It even nearly beat that first American kiss back.

Those 6 things-- dock, cattails, dog, house on the hill, barn, field-- and the feeling of the water lapping at my heels in a way that seemed far too velvet and far to solid to really be water, ushered me back in to my life more surely than anything since the 18th, and I knew it then, that this was not a dream. This was the life that I had left, and the one I had returned to. The simplicity was beautiful, and staggering.

A storm rolled in at around 4:30 in the morning. I woke up to watch it, and went back to sleep with the sound of thunder still crashing in my ears. Some wishes are perfectly harmless and easily answered, after all.

XOXO

The All-American Normad's College Life, Excerpt 8:

"Unsanitary"

I find that the wall in the narrow bathroom, while not conducive to sitting forward on the toilet, makes a convenient rest for one’s drunken head while perched precariously sideways-ish on the seat, praying you don’t slip off.

I could almost brush my teeth and spit into the sink from this position, saving time, if I felt so moved to be so completely unsanitary.

Five minutes later, I am brushing my teeth while still seated on the toilet.

While sulla toletta.

Hello, Italy. I have arrived.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 7:

"Monsters"

Never speak ill of the dead.

Raised by a recovering Roman Catholic father, I have spent my life conditioned to forget the past downfalls of the deceased as he does—the caustic-tempered friend who committed suicide, his domineering mother—they become figurative angels in death.

My own forgiveness haunts me like a particularly hard-to-ignore ghost. Once upon a time, in boredom, in fascination, in extreme attraction, I got involved with a guy who introduced me to some of the more esoteric aspects of life. It was fun, for a time; we had a good run. But gradually, the longer I stayed, the more I got to see that the things I loved about him—his extreme honesty, his constant search for fun, his reliability to be there when needed—also were the things that showcased his downfalls. His alert blue eyes sunk into hollows surrounded by flesh so purple and tired-looking it appeared as if he’s been punched by someone with particularly large fists in both eyes. The leg next to mine jumped and twitched, just like his fingers. Calls would go missed, be returned later, after it wasn’t important anymore.

I started out very naive, and turned jaded quick. One day, I looked at him and realized I had no idea who he was anymore. I came back from a vacation to find him gaunt and tired and morose. I started turning away as soon as I saw the straight-edge and straw come out, not even waiting anymore for the moment when he bent over the table. I wanted to close my ears from the sound of that strange, wet snuffling.

Not one who should be pointing fingers or condemning anyone, but I hated it. I hated the subversive behavior that always kept my heart pounding a mile a minute; once the thing I loved most. I hated the red rawness that appeared around his nostrils; the gray sheen of his skin; the sweat. I hated not being able to get in touch with him, either physically or mentally. I signed myself on board thinking one man was captain, only to find out it was a completely different other. One, I loved. The other, I despised. The problem was, any given day, I didn’t know who would show up for active duty. If today was a day I could depend on someone else, or if I would be running to catch up with the show, picking up the broken pieces and trying to stick them back on before it was noticed.

To this day, say the word “coke” to me and watch closely what happens in my eyes. It’s a purely visceral reaction, one unlike most others I haven’t yet been able to master. Maybe it’s one of my truest reactions. Watch them snap wide with one blink, distrust and hatred appearing right before the lids meet, gone when they open again. Say “coke,” and I am as sure I will lose you as I lost the him I adored.

Me, who can’t remember the majority of a solid year of her life, lost to smoke, who slept amongst the empty bottles in high school, I know too well the siren call some things can have. I trace out lines between the substances—ok, understandable, uncomfortable, definitely not ok, I’m leaving right now—and wonder what sense, if any, these delineations make. My reasoning surely makes no sense—opium destroyed the entire Chinese Imperial world, and yet, because it comes from a flower grown in my own flower beds at home, I am tempted to give it an “understandable” when I should be saying “Get it the fuck away.” Chemicals I don’t trust—anything made by man therefore has our immense margin for error. I don’t panic if it’s organic, but at the same time, I’ve learned I can live without it just fine if need be. Or maybe that’s a lie. Maybe right now, clean overseas for a month, I want that back in my head and my bloodstream, the little floaters of “everything’s gonna be alright.”

In the end, I try to reconcile the good times with the not-so-good, and realize just like human error, human need is not infallible. In the end, I realize we all need a little bit of escapism and mental adventure. We all have some less-than-stellar habits. It does not define who you are, as some might think, but it does color your character and how people remember you.

For me, I still cannot speak ill of the dead, but I can speak ill of the powder-white nightmare that follows it. I still remember vividly the nightmares I would have—finding the twisted captain tucked away somewhere in my house, a monster in disguise of someone I loved and trusted, cooking things up in my own oven, chasing me into corners, forcing me to fight back. I would wake up crying, moved to tears by the images in my mind of burying my balled-up fists into that familiar and beloved form, again and again and again, listening to his yells. When I jumped ship, it took awhile, but they stopped. I found myself in the calm between storms. I took time. I mourned. I thought long and hard about where and how I can judge, or if I should even judge at all. I made peace, or so, I thought.

Two months ago, the nightmare came back again. All it took was that one word, and I woke with a start in the night, from a dream in which your dual twin appeared, gaunt, all the charm and comfort gone. Twisted, nasty, snarling at me with need I couldn’t relieve—I relived the nightmares, in a new form.

That night, I couldn’t fall back asleep, even though I could look over and see that it wasn’t true, at least for now. I lay in the partial darkness of the room, waiting for the monster to slide under the door, burrow deep in your nasal passages, take hold, and destroy again. I expected to see it raise its ugly head before my eyes, right then and there, summoned by its name like a demon. I didn’t dare try drifting off again, for fear of returning to the dream and waking you, sobbing and racking my body in my sleep. I wrestled with my demons until dawn.

You slept on. I sent a plea up to that particular angel.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 6:

"Dick"

Addicted. A-d-d-i-c-t-e-d. Note the sound that when said aloud clearly states “dick.” Because that’s what’s happening. You’re getting fucked. Hard.

I’ve pulled my jeans on, cuffed the bottoms, slid into my Uggs, fished my gloves and lighter out of my purse, and just barely wrapped my insistently questing fingers around the small cardboard box before my mind can catch up and put two-and-two together and register what’s happening. One moment, lying in bed, reading a mindlessly good escapist novel, snug and warm. The next, slammed by a want—no, a need—that has me moving faster and more surely than love, or money, or fear or any combination cocktail of the three has ever made me move before.

I sit down on the edge of the bed, hard. Two months from now, April 1st, will mark my two-year anniversary as a smoker. A year and half smoking Djarum Black cloves exclusively, and no overwhelming wants or needs. A casual smoker, as casual as a casual lover. A few times a week. I liked the process more than the end result, the inhaling and exhaling. Two months smoking these fucking, godforsaken, piece-of-shit, nasty-ass Camel Lights, and I’m reaching for the box like an expiring narc-fiend. I’m on the balcony with them every night like an illicit tryst, rain, cold, or clear skies. I’m spending 20 of them like I spend 20 dollars—quickly and with ruthless efficiency. On the way to classes. In the morning with my espresso, one bitter complimenting and cancelling the other. With a glass of wine before, after, or even during dinner. If I got for a walk, they’re in my pocket alongside my cell phone, which I would rather bear losing.

Mingling with the incessant and growing need is another emotion—disgust. Self-loathing. I, unlike some, am not too proud to admit my shortcomings as I momentarily contemplate quitting, and meet self-resistance to the thought and the realization that I can’t.

Chimney. Ashtray. Butt-stubber. Ash-flicker. Grinding filter between shoe sole and sidewalk. Leaving a trail of discarded stubs like a perverse Gretel. Filling the same lungs that fought with me for the first nine years of my life, already inherently weak. Go ahead. Hurt them more.

Like I said a mere month ago, and not in any sort of self-servingly pretentious or morbid deliciously snarky way, smoking is slowly committing suicide, one cigarette at a time.

Addict. I am a victim of myself. Dicked. Deep.

I resign myself, right now, right at this very second, that the day I hold my graduate school diploma and master’s degree in hand will be the day I enroll myself in a quitting program, flush the remainder of the pack, and invest in some Nicotine patches.

For now, though, I reach back over for the hastily discarded pack and count. Three left. Thank god I bought a new pack this afternoon.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 5:

“Constant Constellations”

I walk out onto the balcony of my brand-new Florentine apartment, glass of chardonnay in hand from buying my first bottle of wine today (€2.89, .75 liter bottle, so don’t get too excited), sit down, and look up, toward where I know the almost full moon will be. The first thing I see, instead, is the constellation Orion.

I.) I was worried I wouldn’t be able to see the stars in the city.

V.) The wine, cheap and sweet or not, is good. I, a solid beer and liquor drinker at home, have not met a glass of wine I don’t like in Italy yet.

C.) I thought, as I flew through the starless night on the plane over here, that the nearly 7,000 mile difference between the U.S and Italy would render the night skies totally different, and I would find I wasn’t even looking at the same stars as you anymore.

N.) Cassiopeia will always be my favorite constellation. But Orion has become my touchstone.

I place a wish on the three jewels on Orion’s belt. When the sun sets, I hope the night sky is clear enough that you can look up and find them.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 4:

“The Things I Left Behind”

I found you; you found me. A stumble, a class, a drink, a show, and we were “we,” like pick-up sticks or a puzzle. Autonomous, but together; some nights, some days.

Thinking hard, racking my brain for dropped clues and scattered memories, I can’t remember how I got here, speeding away at precisely 535 miles per hour, 37,000 feet above the sea. I am confused and petulant and scared. I want to still be feeling new with you, waking up in your bed, looking at Orion triumphing over the night sky through your bedroom window, breathing in the smell of you sleeping, very different than how you smell when you’re awake, more powdery with sleep-dust and dreams yet still pungent of man; a smell so specific and so arresting that once a hint of just a note of it could stop me dead in my tracks on the cobblestones of Church Street. A smell I could pick up like a bloodhound, even in a crowd, even when you’re not around. Your pheromones speak to me in an ancient tongue of attraction, and I understand it fluently.

Thank you for letting me go. I need to find a "me" before I find a "we."

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 3:

“Lessons In Italian Living, Day Two: Eat Before You Drink.”

After walking around town all day, having digested nothing but the Florentine dust blown by the high winter winds around the Duomo since my small, very European breakfast of a croissant and half a peach saturated in its own liquid, I find I have drunk my glass of chardonnay at dinner before eating a little too quickly. I am a little too warm. A little too blurry. A little too quick to divulge. A little too excited with life, and a little too charmed with the hole-in-the-wall Robin and I managed to locate after walking a few half-circles in lower Florence, my Rick Steves’ guidebook held out in front of me like the Holy Grail. Written in Hebrew, of course. Because that little hand-drawn map is just as readable to me as Cyrillic symbols.

I am, in other words, “tipsy,” or, because it describes how I feel much better without the connotations of the giggling girls tipping over in hallways and I am not quite there yet, “light-headed.” (And so you know, I do not get “drunk”—plastering myself on other people, with an uncontrollably modulating voice, easily convinced to do stupid shit; I get “tipsy”—giggling and swaying in hallways and on sofas. Modulating voice and stupid shit I am convinced into perfectly sober.)

Anyway. The waiter asks for our orders. I’m pretty sure I butcher every word after “penne.” I ingest roughly a pound of pasta in chipped meat and cream sauce. Not feeling the pressure of tipping like we do in America, I leave a Euro for our abrupt yet serviceable waiter. I am happier about this Italian custom of non-tipping more than I’d care to admit. With my mathematical skills and hypersensitive apathy, leaving a tip is always the point in a meal that I hem and haw and feel guilty—not when I’m ordering. I imagine the waiter or waitresses’ children. The car that needs to be repaired. The college loans that have just started to come monthly calling. The electricity bill. What it would be like if it were me; how much I’d want someone to pay for my work. What my friends who wait have to deal with—the rude customers, orders in the middle of nowhere, and 17-cent tips. In other words, if you wait tables, you want me as your patron. I am a helplessly conscious push-over.

After, we back-track toward the Uffizi to find a proper gelato shop—one that puts real fruit in their window displays of the creamy, decadent treat—and I smoke my second cigarettes and eat my first gelato in Italy. Tiramisu-flavored. The cone is better than in America. I decide to say, fuck my state of affairs— chardonnay, smoke, and gelato go perfectly together.

XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 2:

“Flight Of The Midnight Sun”

Somewhere around St. John Island past Labrador and before Greenland, I realize I had absolutely no idea what I am doing.

My seat-mate thinks I am a professional snowboarder for Burton due to my 2007 U.S Snowboarding Open backpack, a spectator’s souvenir which cost me $50.

“So, you’re travelling when you’re not in the Olympics?” he asks me.

I realize I could be whoever I want to be, if just for this eight-hour flight next to this total and totally inquisitive stranger. I could be an Olympic snowboarder. I could be run-away Russian royalty. I could be…

I notice his heavy platinum wedding band. I suddenly want to ask about his wife. He’s young—where did they meet? How long have they been married? Does she mind being away from him when he does his traveling? Does he mind being away from her? And most importantly, how did he know she was the one when he met her? How do you know? This is the question I want to ask everyone.

A glint catches my eye as I write this from the fourth finger on my left hand. I wonder how many people want to ask me the same question, not realizing that I am a farce; a sham; a lost pretender, no closer than they are to the answer.

I can be anyone I want to be for this trip. For this flight, I am married and have all the answers, along with an illustrious snowboarding career.


XOXO

The All-American Nomad's College Life, Excerpt 1:

“Italy Enters WWIII”

She turns to my first Consulate Official Paper-Pusher and lets loose a stream of biting Italian. I am lost in translation, but as voices raise and speed of speech progresses forward with the volatile projection of a fatal wreck, out-of-control, waiting to happen, I don’t need to parlo Italiano to know what’s up. I have single-handedly started WWIII in Boston’s Italian General Consulate, just because I wanted some clarification. I get my first taste of what it will be like to be in Italy and causing a bumbling American, non-lingual ruckus. I am appalled.

Italian Dragon Lady leaves the cubicle behind the glass. I can only assume she is going to go breathe fire onto some helpless puppies to let off her steam. My first Paper-Pusher beckons me up to the window. Being someone who, as much as she tries to, seemingly can’t stay out of mischief for any even half-way reasonable amount of time , I know where this is going. He’s wearing the same look my parents, teachers, friends, co-workers, boyfriends, sales associates, police officers, taxi drivers, pedestrians, bank tellers, and road crew workers have all worn at one point in time when dealing with me—a cross between thundercloud eyebrows and a mouth that ends in a downward twist. “I’m stressed enough without her yelling at me,” he tells me. Ah, the animosity of co-workers. “You’re getting your visa now. It’s printing. Why are you causing trouble?”

I want to tell him that if I knew the answer to that question, my life would be far simpler, though not nearly as pandemoniously exciting.

Instead, I profusely apologize. It seems like the better thing to say than “Sir, I honestly could not tell you. And, if I did have the faintest idea why life seems so intent on throwing me into the most bizarre and quizzically backward situations, including numerous moments like this when I want to look at someone and say, ‘I cannot read your mind—just fucking tell me up-front what is happening and stop bullshitting around in half-sentences,’ in the least rude way possible, I certainly would not be making my, or more importantly, YOUR life any more difficult and obviously painfully trying than it already is. Do you think I actually LIKE being That Unholy Ruckus Girl?”

So I apologize. He waves me away with an extremely disassociated and imperious Italian wave of his hand. I take my seat again, feeling verbally and emotionally spanked senseless and raw.

XOXO