Beating a Dead Horse

A bit ago, I posted a story about a jilted lover whose rage took on the task of destroying some valuable property.

A friend of mine messaged me, relating a similar situation, in which his buddy got a lovely and pricey bike sawed in half by a similarly jilted lover.

My friend, who is the best guy you could ever know, asked me "Is this a common thing you girls do?"

It is sad, when I think if it, that pretty bikes and fancy guitars get demolished when a love turns ugly. I can imagine it is like the sadness that happens when you watch old Civil War movies and the horses are being gunned down, their spindly legs grasping at the air as they fall into a puddle or something. During my seventh grade history class we watched one of these, and I whispered to my classmate Ben how sad I was for the dying horses.

Ben looked at me in slight disgust, "What about the men?"


Yes, Ben! What about the men!

Perhaps things like guitars and bicycles sometimes fall as casualties in love and war. It doesn't stop there, people get nasty divorces and then houses, money and children are suddenly spoils as neatly suited lawyers engage in paper battles.

With my experience in all things jilting, it does not surprise me when I hear of a slashed tire, broken bicycle, or splintered guitar. In fact, the naughty little drag queen inside of me claps her hands and says "You go girl."

I don't know what it is, why I feel vindicated instead of sad for the proverbial dead horse. 70 cents to the dollar? Menstrual Cycles? Childbirth?

I remember once I was absolutely enraged, heart broken, sobbing, and very drunk. I gazed on the sleeping, passed out drunk form of my perpetrator, angry at how hurt I was, angrier that he was not awake to witness my clearly devastating hurt. I couldn't sleep, and began noticing objects in his apartment. Stupid chair, stupid pillow, stupid cheese grater. Then the objects began to vibrate with potential.

Ha! I thought! I will take them! That will show him who he thinks he is.

I really didn't have much of a strategy when gathering items; candles, the book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max, a tiny, electric fan, sunglasses. I grasped the loot in my arms, feeling devious and successful. Wait till he wakes up without his tea lights!

Then I realized I was hammered, it was 4 a.m., and I was twenty minutes by car from home.

I replaced all the items, defeated. Then I decided on a new form of revenge. I threw his lighter across the room, and planning to leave as soon as I sobered up, hid his "water pipe" in what at thought at the time was the last place he'd ever look.

Morning came, and with it two gut wrenching hangovers.

"Why is my [water pipe] on top of the refrigerator?"

... Perhaps not the cleverest hiding place.

I think that when a fiery, fiesty, woman feels the pain of heartbreak, she radiates it in her body like a new form of energy. That night I felt like I could shoot my pain from my fingertips, like a crazy Spiderwoman. It is so affecting, it is so resonating, it is red like fire and beautiful like the sun. It is the reason my friend's father said, "My whole life has been about keeping the woman happy," it is why a spider can eat her mate. A woman's pain consumes her being, and she lets it, as she has accepted it as a natural heritage.

So to answer your question friend, it is perhaps more common that we girls mess up some men stuff in the wake of our splintered hearts. We'd just like you, or your guitar, to understand what it feels like to have something of yours broken.

"Nobody will ever win the Battle of the Sexes. There's just too much fraternizing with the enemy." ~Henry Kissinger

The Look on His Face

It is indicative by the contents of this blog that I love a good melodrama. Moments steeped in such ridiculous feeling that reality is briefly suspended. Those are the situations I cherish dearly and store them in my memory to revive during an Oasis song. But one melodrama sheds its mascara tears better than the rest: the goodbye.

I say goodbye everyday, Bye Mom, Bye Boss at work, Bye to my poodles as I am locking you in the guest room until you stop jumping all over the couches like mountain goats on LSD. Those goodbye are easy to brush off, like raindrops or Shirley Temples with too much grenadine. But there are other farewells that cling to you defiantly; a symbiotic relationship of comfy nostalgia and slight masochism where your only recourse is breaking out the vices.

I can remember only certain details about those kind of goodbyes. I remember watching the gray morning light make its way through the cracks in the blinds. I remember how the asphalt was still warm when I stood on it barefoot. I remember the clerk at the gas station commenting on my legs.

When my father left, he took parts of the house with him. Pans, silverware, linens. But what I can recall very clearly is coming home from school and seeing the tan leather recliner missing from its corner. My parents bought that chair when we first moved to Folsom, and friends of theirs would always remark on its quality or how comfortable it was. It had an ottoman as well, I remember my father reclining in it royally when we watched movies.

I have no memory of my father leaving, but I do remember the missing chair. It was, in many ways, like my father. Removed, handsome, wanted, and cozy like home. It was significant in its own way.

I think that is the melodrama of goodbyes: when inanimate and seemingly meaningless things suddenly become the only handholds to important memories. And I know I speak very diva-like about emotions and moments and melodrama, but the truth is it's all very simple. When you can't bear to say goodbye to the actual entity, you instead say goodbye to something disposable.

Perhaps this is why, seven years later, I can only remember the look of the light on the water, rather than the look of goodbye on his face.

Learning how to get Gold.

I am in Gold Country.

I remember looking for jobs on Craigslist in Sacramento. Sometimes Craigslist would assume I wanted to look in Gold Country and show me jobs in blue writing based out of Placerville.

It was as if my fingers could feel the gold Country vibes permeating the keyboard. I'd jump back from the screen, scowling, and rapidly find my way back to jobs in the river City.

Thanks Craigslist, but I'm not from there.

I'm from Folsom.

I just recently started interning at a magazine whose coverage encompasses areas like Folsom, Roseville, and Granite Bay. They also release a publication called Foothillstyle; this is the magazine I am working on. Foothillstyle is hitched up to El Dorado Hills, Cameron Park, Placerville, and Shingle Springs.

We are doing a "Holiday Gift Guide," which means I drive through brush-rimmed roads until I hit civilization and then ask the shop owners if they have any merchandise they'd like to feature in the spread.

This week I drove my red Toyota up to Shingle Springs to find a store named "Lee's Feed." I constantly live my life in a state of aesthetic delusion, and I always dress the part. I was wearing all black, some leather platform booties, and a vintage cashmere white hat that I thought made the whole thing quite kicky.

The parking lot of Lee's Feed was on a hill, so I pulled in tentatively, not wanted to hit all the Dodge Ram's that were being loaded up with the local livestock's fall menu. As I stepped one spiked bootie out onto the crackled asphalt, I suddenly realized my hat wasn't kicky, and that I, about to go into a store called Lee's Feed, looked like this:

Today at work, I wore cowboy boots. I realized that I'm from Folsom.

Can anybody find me, Somebody to love?

I once had Somebody tell me my blog was nothing but a stupid girl's rant.

I once had Somebody tell me I am so (excuse my language) fucked up in the brain it gives Somebody a headache.

Well Somebody, considering the nature of my aforementioned brain insides, if anyone should have a headache, it's this girl.

My friend once told me a story about a girl he knew while we were in college. I knew her too, but only slightly. She worked at a coffee shop in our small college town and was very noticeable. She was tall and slender, with astonishing eyes. They were blue, but not blue like the sky or blue like Billie Holiday. They were an icy, fiery blue. They were so blue that you kind of wanted to pee yourself when she looked at you and asked dully, "What kind of milk?"

She also had a mane of blond hair. It sprouted up from her skull defiantly and rippled down to the middle of her back in oddly perfect waves. She was striking.

This girl dated somebody equally striking sophomore year. He wasn't honest about it though. He wore pinstripe vests and girl's pants. His black hair, streaked with amber and bleach, played footsie with his eyeliner. He called himself by his first name, twice. Evan Evan.

After spring break his eyeliner decided it liked another girl. He returned to school and told coffee shop girl he wasn't interested anymore. I wonder what fierceness the blue took on when she looked back at him.

"So.. I love you and all, but I'm in love with another girl. Her named is Alexandra Alexandra Evita and we are very happy. You understand."

FIRE EYES.

A following evening, our blond heroine could not sleep. Everybody knows the insomnia that comes with anger. The last time I went to bed angry, I fell asleep drooling on my computer. On the document I had been working on, entitled "Manifesto of Obscene and Impressive Hatred and Vengeance Plan that will take place thereafter."

Fire eyes whips out of bed, throws the covers off, and goes in to full vengeance. Evan Evan had left one of his fancy, gleaming guitars at her place. It's shiny wood, oiled from Evan Evan's forehead grease and Oil of Olay make up remover, sprung an idea from her head like Athena out of Zeus.

She grabbed it's thin, strong neck, and smashed it to splinters, courtesy of her driveway and the months of frustration stored up from Evan Evan asking her if his eyeliner was even.

She then gathered the pieces and marched to Evan Evan's door. She dunked them with gasoline, and let out a banshee scream. Evan Evan arrived to the bonfire like Evita to the balcony and watched his baby burn.

Burn, baby. Burn.

I may not have the heart and guts to dramatically destroy some property, but I find it oddly comforting to tell a story so weirdly poetic. I have told the story to males of mine and they grin crookedly and say "That's awesome."

Is it awesome? It could happen to you. It might be happening to you right now.

I know it may be silly, but in committing this anecdote to Internet infamy (haha) I find myself feeling as victorious as if I had smashed a Gibson, without the possible destruction of property charge. I see this blog as more like a literal manifestation of guitar demolition than a collection of women rants.

And you know what? Somebody should be glad of that.

Saturday Night

Earth, Wind, and Fire has a song called Saturday Night. Part of the lyrics are as follows:

"Many dress to suit their taste, participate in the ego race. Tonight's the night for you to be, the biggest man in history."

I love that song; it's my favorite EWAF song, after Serpentine Fire. I find it obscenely ironic it is what came on my shuffle while during this Saturday night. Because this Saturday Night, instead of dressing to run in the race of egos and transforming to a huge man, I am making bruschetta in my mother's kitchen.

It came out all fabulous, by the way. I ate it with a 2007 Zinfandel.

There are moments in my life that I feel it would go against my core being to not reflect on. I am a capable 22 year old female, with dreams, a clean record, and high heels. I could be sitting, looking prissy on some faux white leather bar stool in downtown somewhere listening to a remix of Cooler Than Me hoping somebody in a sparkly shirt buys me another vodka soda so I can officially arrive.

But instead I choose the road less traveled. I choose the road reflective. I choose such a shiny, untraveled road that in order to deal with such the reverse of expected and normal action from other retards of my generation I must detail the defiance. Has anybody ever punted their phone? Of course you have. But for no reason other than there is no other movement in your life? My phone is somewhere in my backyard, and I feel better simply because of the motion.

I gather, from the words of my mother, her friends, and my therapist, that in your twenties you get a bad case of the Angst. And it's bratty, its transitional, it stems from insecurity and lack of knowledge about this inner being I so often speak of, but it still feels like a dense, sticky fog that remains slightly impenetrable without a nice Merlot and a bad attitude.

So, my fellow boomerang generation, let us raise our bratty, nice crystal (thanks mom) glasses of ingratitude and unmitigated ambition. Raise them high to 10 pm bruschetta's and 10 am returns to your childhood bedroom. Mom, I hope this a temporary situation. But until then, would you like a little nibble with your wine?

Baby

Yesterday I was social.

So now I am going to negate any personality points I would have received and talk about my social evening on a virtual platform.

I met up with a friend who I haven't seen before she left to study malaria in Uganda. IN UGANDA. She told me a story of how she assisted in two births, C-Section and vaginal. The medical assistant wasn't available and the doctor snapped up my friend's capable hands.

One of the babies, the family named after her.

Isn't that unspeakably beautiful?

I started to cry when she mentioned that small tidbit. She said it slightly offhand, like oh and I got an A on the test I completed blindfolded. If I had a child named after me, I would have T-Shirts made. I am probably still going to have them made and distribute them to family members so we can take a group picture to solidify an accomplishment I had absolutely no part in. Everyone grinning, in little stadium rows wearing red shirts that say "My friend has a baby named after her in Africa, and all I got was this lousy T-Shirt."

This story makes me wildly enthusiastic about things I may have not been before. My friend will forever be connected by something so intricately personal to this little girl who will one day live and grow to have hands just like those who delivered her. It is not an immediate, perhaps typical connection, but it exists, and strongly. I believe in it like I believe in coffee and the cold light of mornings. I believe in it like a realization.

Somethings are easy to believe in; sports teams, democracy, microwaves. But somethings, like those hidden in the spaces of human conscious which we choose often to not explore as they may hurt or scare us, those things are difficult to commit to. And if you can find something that inspires you to believe...Go on and let yourself be a little in love. Because somewhere in Uganda, in a village full of people, there lives a baby named Kaitlin.

Thwarting Yourself

Lately, I think I have been taking on tasks specifically because I know I will not be able to do them.

For the past half hour I have been trying to move a dresser. I want to move this dresser out of my room so I can twirl my bed around, allowing it to hug a corner of my bedroom. This dresser is immovable. It's the Iron Curtain. It's me when I see a shoe sale. It's my father's stance on extraterrestrial life (aliens exist apparently). I stare at it now, with hatred. It and it's stupid light wood, drawers askew. I try to push it and it grabs onto the carpet, stubborn as a mule and just as heavy. I lay half of my body down to its surface, the corners making sharp contact with my hipbones, and cry.

My dresser relocation is part of the Master Plan to revamp my childhood bedroom. My bedroom makes me uncomfortable. It's such a picture of a frozen transition; platform heels stacked next to seventh grade basketball trophies, pictures of me on St Patrick's Day smashed in college stare at a framed collage of me receiving First Communion. It is my stubborn girlhood refusing to give way to new, employed me. The tenets of adolescence cling to me like a spider web, and when I stumble home after a night out, hair mussed, drunk from the bar, I fight my room."I'm AN ADULT," my drunk self says.

"Ha," says my room. "In your 22 year old dreams. Why don't you cozy up to your giant stuffed bear and call it a night, eh? By the way, you've had these sheets since middle school."

Today I sat on my bed and checked my email, hoping for employer's enthusiastic responses to my scanty resume. I looked up at my desk, my suitcases still overflowing from still packed college goods, my high school diploma, volleyball plaques, a stuffed dog I named Patches one Christmas, and suddenly all the objects took on a pulse. Their motion grew; the simple notion that they could move at all mocked my existence, my resume, my attempts at dressing like an adult . I snapped, threw all my clothes out of the dresser, and heaved it away from the wall with all my adult, womanly strength.

About a foot later, here I am.

On my blog.

Talking about how Patches came to life.

I have realized that there is no way will I be able to move this dresser by myself. Or my bed frame for that matter. They are both too heavy. I am going to ask my father to come over after work and help me move the elephants in the room.

I think part of being an adult is to recognize when you need help, and instead of thinking you have the upper body strength of a young Arnold, ask for it. Perhaps if I can swallow my girlhood bravado and pride for a second, the woman in me can make a brief appearance. Well, at least long enough to move a dresser and a bed.