...to my blog, Grapes at Midnight.  I'm becoming too lazy busy to double post my entries here on MySpace, so please check out Grapes to read what I have to say about Mr. Yuk stickers, convenience stores, scary movies, and other subjects. 

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It begins with a white four cup in my friend Karen’s dorm room. We share a first name and are therefore inseparable, calling ourselves “Karen Squared.” It doesn’t make sense mathematically, but we think it’s cute. There is always creamer, usually the powdered kind that leaves shiny beige trails of dust on the bathroom counter. But tonight we’ve got a little carton of half and half, which we’re treating like liquid gold. Sugar is an order, and we both add it by the spoonful. Karen hands me an over-sized plaid mug as we gather sit on her floor to ponder the eternal question, “Why don’t we have boyfriends?” The answer doesn’t matter, it’s all in the asking. I sort of have a boyfriend anyway, but that doesn’t matter either. He is Jack, my high school boyfriend who is borderline-stalking me at the moment. Most days I can’t decide if his behavior is sweet or psychotic. Tonight, he’s left two tearful messages on my answering machine asking why I don’t love him anymore, one of which included fake gagging sounds to suggest he was throwing up, so right now, I’m leaning toward psychotic....

My first job is working in the TV department at an electronics plant. It is summer time, and I am nineteen. I'm hired to prep the picture tubes, which are sort of shaped like Erlenmeyer flasks with little metal prongs sticking out of the top. They're made of glass and seem to be filled with a thick milky substance. My main job is to take a pallet jack to the warehouse, load stacks of tubes, haul them back to my workstation, affix four little adhesive-backed foam squares onto them, then repeat. It's an overnight job -- 7pm to 7am -- and the factory is sleepy and quiet, so I take my time going back and forth from the warehouse. I'm the only woman in my department, except for an old lady who constantly disappears to smoke Salems in the break room. "Go ahead and fire me. I don't give a shit," is her standard reply when the supervisor reminds her she only gets three ten minute breaks and one half hour for lunch. The men are mostly creepy, a little too excited to have a teenage girl in their midst. They try to impress me with factory jargon, but I grew up around shoptalk, daily dinner conversations about molds and quotas, palletizers and conveyors. This factory is quiet, clean, and air-conditioned. These people know nothing about me.

My essay has been officially published online at Nerve. If you've never read Nerve, I should let you know it's an online magazine featuring essays and photography on sex, arts and culture. And as the caption suggests, my essay involves s-e-x. If you're so inclined, check their archive of personal essays (after you read mine, of course). I'm psyched to be in the company of writers like Janice Erlbaum and Steve Almond, who have contributed to Nerve in the past. And yes, there are too many links to my essay in this post. Sorry. I'm excited.

I'm still a little shocked that I've begun writing true stories about myself. I'm used to putting personal stuff in poems, but at least I can pretend they're not autobiographical if someone asks. Come to think of it, no one asks, but if they ever do, I can tell them that it's art and they need to separate the poet from the speaker and blah blah blah. But, there's nowhere to hide with memoir. I've never really been an attention seeker. I'm the girl at the party who sits on the couch and says nothing. The girl who smiles and nods along with the conversation, but remains mute. I even laugh silently - a tight lipped sort of exhalation instead of an audible giggle. Inevitably, some life-of-the-party-type asks, "Why don't you talk?" to which I reply, "I don't know." Great answer. Now everyone's watching me and just waiting for me to say something, which obvious ensures that I won't try out one of the witty comments I've been rehearsing in my head for the last hour. I'll probably go into the kitchen under the guise of getting a drink, but instead quietly slip outside. I've been an observer for so long. I guess I'm ready to start talking.

In the small town where I grew up, most stores were independent Mom & Pop style endeavors. Sure, we had a chain grocery store and gas station, and that dietary staple Pizza Hut, but we also had an interesting (read slightly odd) array of locally owned and operated outfits, some with equally interesting (read equally odd) names. There was the convenience store called Marky Finners, which, according to legend, was named such because the owner (named Mark) worked construction in his youth and once yelled out in pain when he accidentally smashed his fingers with a hammer, prompting a co-worker to tease, "Aw, poor Marky hurt his finners!" There was the local screen printing shop, where you could buy anything wearable emblazoned with your own funny or witty saying. T-shirts screamed Lordy Lordy Look Who's 40! Hats exclaimed I shot a ten point buck! People actually walked around town wearing this stuff. The screen printing shop was simply named Graphic Images, which always bothered me as a child obsessed with words and definitions. Yes, most images are graphic, aren't they?

I don't like New Year's resolutions, but I do respond well to goals. And if I make them public, I'm more likely to work on them, because at any moment someone might ask me how that Taco Bell intervention is going. So here are a few of my goals, in no particular order.
~Stop drinking diet soda.
~Do not watch American Idol. Not one minute of it. I started getting turned off after Carrie Underwood's year, but still it felt like a train wreck - I had to watch. Then season #47 last year with the two Davids really sealed the deal for me.
~Finish writing my memoir.
~Go on tour with Essential Machine. Have you seen our new website? It's groovy.
~Eat less fast food aka Taco Bell.
~Simultaneous submissions. I know lots of journals accept them, but I've always felt too unorganized to do it. It's spreadsheet time, baby (not Excel though, as I prefer my nifty little handmade spreadsheets).

Perhaps I shouldn't admit it, but here goes: I am a spy. I have scoped out a bathroom medicine cabinet or two in my day. I have perfected my ability to nonchalantly overhear conversations in public. When walking around the neighborhood, I watch for houses with open curtains and blazing lights. Just a glimpse of a stranger's living room -- some poorly framed artwork on the wall, an over-sized lampshade -- thrills me. I don't necessarily want to spy on people in action, though. I'm more into the diorama of it all. As a kid, I loved doll houses, but I didn't make the dolls do much inside. Instead, I arranged them, focused on creating scenes, tableaux, if you will. Creepy? I don't think so. But you might not let me use your bathroom now.

My mother doesn't trust exercise. In her mind, it's akin to voodoo or witchcraft. She's never lifted a weight in her life, never done anything aerobic, save for this weird leg swinging thing she used to do in her bedroom doorway when I was eight. Imagine this: your mother is standing in a doorway, both hands planted on the jamb, swinging one leg front to back like a pendulum. Rhythmically. And she believed that was all the exercise she needed. In the late eighties, my older sister got married to a guy who was really into fitness and my mother seemed visibly scared. She even warned me that jumping around would give me trouble with my female parts (her words) just in case I got any wild ideas to follow my sister's lead and slip into the world of (gasp!) exercise. I remember visiting my sister's apartment and doing a workout tape with her (it was still the eighties, so think leotards and leg lifts). I felt like such a rebel. I even memorized some of the moves and would do them in my bedroom after everyone had gone to sleep. It's funny how things stick with you. These days I work out in my apartment, and I don't ever answer the phone if my mother calls while I'm still catching my breath.