At least I got a chunk of my Christmas shopping done...

Tonight I inadvertently helped a guy in line at Urban Outfitters behave like a complete asshat to some unsuspecting girl via text message. He and his friend were debating the merits of calling her "buddy" vs. calling her "pal". Which one would piss her off more, the one asked of the other. Before I could stop myself, I said, "Pal. Pal is much dickier." The guy (he wasn't a man, they take their hats off indoors) looked back at me, smiled, and said, "you're right. See, we do put thought into these," gesturing to the small phone in his hand. To wit, I smirked and replied, "it's the thought that disturbs me."

Given how my week has gone, it only makes sense that this is how I pay it forward. The girl on the other end of that phone, for reasons passing understanding, wants that guy. It's possible that she's crazy or can't take a hint. I've seen a fair amount of both from the fairer sex. It's also possible that she's just a nice girl who has the misfortune of being attracted to an unforgivable douche. I've been on her end a couple times. I don't even want to think about how many time I've coached my guy friends in the fine art of being a complete dick to someone who probably could do better anyway because there was enough distance between me and her that I could find humor in the situation and, Jesus Christ, at least it wasn't me on the receiving end.

Then again, was my alternative (apart from just keeping my mouth shut--a skill I doubt I'll ever acquire) to tell off Fratty McBaseballcap and his rotund line buddy? No. The most I might have mustered would have been an audible scoff and exaggerated eye roll. And it is entirely possible that this girl is one of the poor unfortunates who never get it until it's just too late. I've been there too. If he doesn't like her, she should know it. Maybe not like that, he runs the risk of her finding the platonic familiarity endearing. But that's a risk I'm willing to let him take.

I genuinely want to apologize to that girl for my part in this. I did immediately regret saying anything at all. I don't know how to absolve myself of this sin against the sisterhood. Then again, I might have inadvertently done her a favor...

that message on my phone saturday morning was all I needed to finish this, thanks.

I don't usually post drafts this drafty. Literally, this is the first draft of this, written in the span of a Metro ride and culled from my moleskine. It's taken me a year (give or take a couple weeks) to get anything down on paper about all of this. Every time I would write about him it seemed too emotional still. This might still be that but it's down on paper and since I need to get more things down on paper, I will take it for the time being. I played with my form somewhat and it doesn't quite translate here. All of the lines preceded by an em dash should be indented. Please pretend that the are because I suck at coding . It also doesn't have a title yet. I've been toying with this title: Everything I Meant to Tell You Earlier, in a Series of Poorly Formed Haiku but I don't think it works here. I'll come up with something when I revise this. Let me know what you think of this:



The spaghetti’s still in the sink.
The noodles don’t give way
anymore to water or sauce—
but break when forked
from the collinder into the trash.

—not so much of a change from the night before.

“It’s undercooked,” you said not at me
but at the strands, spooled
uncomfortably around tines,
setting down the fork and carrying
everything back to the kitchen.

This is the call and response part of you and me.

—everything dries out eventually.
—it was dry all along.

Were I to write this scene—
you and me and the pasta,
half in the trash, half in the sink—
the clean lines of the room and us
would give way
to the palsied scrawl
of leaving well enough alone
and the argument we never had
because we never have.

—have we?

Were I to write you
it would be all dead letters and brown
paper-wrapped pornography.
The address isn’t right, the postman
can’t make it out and it sits in a room
with the others. Sits waiting for someone
to make out your concussive Rs and Ks—
to deliver you.

—for thine is the something and the something (I forgot the words to this part. forgive me.)

The Teutonic was always lost on you.
Too hard-edged for your hands
or the hair at the nape of your neck
that curled in on itself when you needed a haircut.
Then again, you never could get your legs that high.

—you make a terrible German. I guess it’s good I never wanted to call you Daddy.

Were I to write you it would be just this—
your back to me, scraping pasta into an empty
trash can and turning
to set the dish, unwashed, in the sink.

—leave the rest to me.


10/18/2009. meredith jones ©

Nerd-Girl Triumphs!

While I am woefully behind on the paper, I found something today that may help my case (or suggest that I have put far more effort into this than I actually have...and did not also just change my mind enough to require extensive additional work. balls.) F.O. Matthiessen wrote the definitive study of the five major writers of the American Renaissance in 1941. He shaped how we look at Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman for a great many years. Even though he was gay, he could not discuss the strong homoerotic veins running though either Herman Melville or Walt Whitman's works. When I was researching Melville, I found a passage that belied his silence:

A curious mixture resulted from Melville’s effort to formulate his thoughts, since they were still so new to him that he had as yet no vocabulary to express them that was not at second-hand” (123)

Matthiessen cannot discuss how Melville manipulates and deconstructs heterosexual language (matrimonial signifiers mostly) because there is no language of egalitarian male relationships. In the 1850s, we don't have a word for homosexual, all we have is sodomy--an act of power. So he takes from a traditional male-female bond to describe how Ishmael and Queequeg relate. Because he had as yet no [other] vocabulary to express it. Is that what Matthiessen coded into his reading? I have no idea--it's just what I read.

When opening his discussion of Whitman he says another curious thing: "Whitman's excitement carries weight because he realized that man cannot use words so unless he has experienced the facts they express, unless he has grasped them with his senses" (518). So Whitman, we can assume Matthiessen is suggesting, knew exactly how it was to receive oral sex in the woods(25). To sing no songs today but those of manly attachments (92). To "wander hand in hand" with another man (99).

No wonder a woman had to wait for him...

For future reference...

You don't read this (well, whoever you are reading this right now, you clearly do. The specific you to whom (who?) I am referring, does not), so I can say this:

When you're trying to explain how you feel about me, in admittedly stunted phrases (This seems to be the only time you're at a loss for words) don't sum it up with, "if I didn't care about you, I wouldn't be spending the money to come visit." You can just say, " I care about you." In fact, I'd prefer it. The other way isn't sweet. It's guilt-inducing.

I'm just saying, think of the leaves.