In case there was any debate...

...the three greatest key changes of all time occur in:

3. Man in the Mirror, by Michael Jackson;

2. I Will Always Love You, by Whitney Houston; and

1. One Sweet Day, by Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men.

I swear to God. It happened.

"Do you have the time?" said a young man standing on the sidewalk by my car as I got out and locked the door.

"7:30," I replied. I'd never seen him before.

"Thanks." He paused. "Do you smell that?"

I breathed in. "No ... what?"

He grinned. "Destiny."

Tile

I was looking at the jewelry box full of necklaces and dangly earrings and he'd come up behind me and whispered my name, so softly I could barely hear him over the rain on the roof above our heads. He must have been looking at me, at the back of my neck or at my hair or my cheek, but I stared ahead into the jewelry and shivered. His hand was on my back, both of his hands on my back now and his face in my hair, his breath in my hair; then one hand sweeping my hair to the side of my neck: two or three fingertips on the back of my neck and then lips where the fingertips had been.

I thought maybe I should close my eyes or something, maybe close my eyes and then lift my lids slowly as I turned around and leaned up into him. I don’t know. Was that right? Look up with emotion and abandon, kiss him softly and then harder and then even harder as we collapsed onto the bed? I don’t know. My lips felt dry and my lip balm was in my coat pocket. My bra didn’t match my underwear. And the bedroom door was open. I wanted to see if there was a lock on it but I’d have to turn my head a little to the right. I tried to look out of the far corner of my eye so he wouldn’t notice while he kissed the back of my neck.

He turned me around all of a sudden and kissed me. I wanted to throw up. My breath caught but I couldn’t exhale because he was there, and I felt my stomach turn and fold and cramp. We were kissing for maybe half a second before I felt a gag coming up and I pulled away and left the room without looking at him. I wasn’t really going to vomit, I was pretty sure, but I went into the bathroom anyway and sat by the toilet. I leaned over it for a minute just in case but it wasn’t happening. I set the lid down and scooted across the tile to lean against the wall. The tile was clean and cold. When I was thirteen or fourteen or so I used to get awful painful cramps and the only thing I could do was strip down to my underwear and lie on cold bathroom floors while I sweated and screamed out. I'd pass out on the tile and wake up feeling like the cold floor had healed me.

Bellylicious

Today started early, for a Sunday: I rose a little after 7 a.m. to accommodate maintenance delays on the DC metro and be sure to make my 9:05 train, which turns out was a 9:25 train. Damn my memory. (I never write down flight, train or bus service departure times. Or arrival times. Or reservation numbers. Or station/airport names, come to think of it. I generally just show up at transit-type centers with an ID and assume things will work out.)

Anyway, I took the train back up to New York, made a two-hour pit stop chez Krissa (see also: holding facility for half my luggage while I was in DC), took a car to JFK, flew home, treated my ride to In N Out, agreed to and then backed out of a Gigli viewing (for "research" purposes), and came back to my apartment, which I haven't seen in eleven days or something, at midnight - three a.m. eastern.

So it was a long day, and I say that not to get sympathy because I'm tired - no - but to justify the fact that I've had about eight meals since I woke up this morning.

Ho ho, I wish I were kidding.

'Cause see, I got a bagel breakfast sandwich at DC's Union Station, AND a pancake brunch at Krissa's (since the day had so much more recently started for all those kids), AND a pizza dinner in the JetBlue terminal, AND snacks on the plane, AND a cheeseburger, animal-style, fries and a Diet Coke. And several cups of coffee scattered throughout the day. Some of them with Bailey's.

OKAY I'LL ADMIT IT, I ALSO BOUGHT A DONUT.

All of this on a day of which there were very few minutes my weight was not rested squarely on my ass, from the DC metro to the Amtrak train to the NYC subway to Krissa's dining room chair to the cab to the departure gate to the airplane to the car to the couch to the other car to my desk chair and soon to my bed. Seriously, I should be standing while I write this, because I've been sitting almost uninterruptedly for ... twenty freaking hours.

I'm totally not though. Of course I'm not. My delicate ankles can't support this much WEIGHT.

I don't know if you understand how much food I ate. Rather, I don't know if you understand how big I am right now. I'm about seven feet from a mirror that covers one wall of my room, and my side reflection at the moment takes up pretty much the whole thing. I look like I'm due to give birth next month. I'm thinking of going shopping for maternity wear. I saw a real cute maternity dress in the New York Times Magazine today, and I'm absolutely certain I could pull it off.

I'm actually in pretty good shape for a pregnant woman. My cotton top clings to my bulging belly in a way that emphasizes the large curve, not hiding it: a strip of skin around the waistline is exposed, showing that I'm proud of the way my pregnant body looks. When I'm not typing, it's comfortable to fold my hands across the OCEAN of soft skin, as though cradling the life inside.

I guess the donut was a bit much. It was a jelly donut, too. That was an accident; I just wanted plain glazed. I was not ready, for that jelly. And you are undoubtedly not ready for mine.

DC

I've never been to Washington, DC before. Till now it's just been that place whose existence makes specifying my birthplace one word more difficult - Washington State. But now it's an actual city. Where I am. Looking for Josh Lyman around every corner.

Mind dump

So here's the thing. I always said too much too soon, always gave too much for too little, and slip-up after slip-up didn't teach me a lesson until what I slipped into was the most crippling pain I'd ever felt. And now I'm in this phase where I don't say much at all, maybe don't even give much at all, never expect anything and think I can handle everything, because I don't really cry and I don't really put myself out there and I don't think about things like "love" and "hope" that I can't squeeze into a paragraph and tuck away behind denial and doubt.

I'm not even sure what this means, but I find myself writing this story that in simple terms is about a girl who never seems to feel, and when I get to the part where something happens to make her feel something, I don't know what to write. Pages and pages of attraction and then he touches her shoulder and she walks away and sits on the cold tile of the bathroom floor. I can't tell if it's a waste of paper, if it's therapy rather than writing.

Anyway. Blah blah blah inadequacy issues blah blah blah.

Cinderella goes to Trash & Vaudeville

I need a pair of stiletto pumps made of clear pink plastic, right?

Right?

I think I can hear you whispering "yes" over the internet.

Dear blog,

Even though I have very little time for you right now, I still love you. Have fun while I'm in NYC and DC. Maybe I'll check in, maybe we can chat during the week sometime. If not, I'll see you in ten or eleven days. Remember, you are my first true blog.

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, Y'ALL. I'M OUT!

Ancient history

Okay, to clarify.

Yesterday was a year to the day after I started this blog. But it wasn't my first. As Greg* likes to point out snarkily, I had a LiveJournal before this. But the reason I had one was that I'd been on Blogger for a couple years and had gotten tired of it, and wanted something different. Actually, I signed up for Blogger in the spring of 2001; that was the first blog (1), and hardly one at that. I started web-journaling on a semi-consistent basis that summer in a different place (2), something I made myself and kept on my own space. In fall 2001 I started a new Blogger site (3), and wrote in that while also keeping up some webpage I barely remember with a fair amount of devotion. When that blog turned out not to resemble my vision for it, I started another one (4) with the intention of keeping both, plus the webpage. Yeah right. I dropped (3) that autumn, autumn 2001. The webpage stuck around, with intermittent updates until September of 2002. I kept the weblog for something like a year and a half, continuing to write in it after I started a livejournal (5) on the last day of 2002. The livejournal lasted for all of a month and a half before I went back to Blogger in February 2003 and started fauxhemia (6). I finally called it quits on (4) when I realized I actually liked this one and didn't feel like splitting my energies anymore - that was sometime in the spring of 2003, I guess. Aside from a one-week stint at Mark's** place over the summer, I've been writing on this site exclusively since then. And of course, I moved house a few months back when pea***, in a kind gesture that truly stunned me and I still think of with awe, offered me lunanina hosting.

I'm a one-blog girl now, I swear.

Anyway, I wouldn't have brought it up, but there was the snark in the comments. And it wasn't the first time. Greg.

* snark geese aplenty
** londonmark
*** lunanina: musings

Why the hat?

One year ago, I wrote the first post for this blog. It said pretty much nothing, and I feel I've done well keeping up the tradition.

Coffee at midnight

Lately I've seen a lot of coffeepots at night. Sipping coffee at midnight has become this sad consistency in my life, this thing I do a few times a week as I plunge into nights that are never long enough. I can't sleep; unwritten pages keep me glued to the computer and though I'd like to miss dawn itself for once, invariably the words get more and more sluggish as the hours drag on, and soon the window is bright and I realize with resignation that I'm ill-equipped for yet another day.

10:00 pm becomes midnight all too quickly. Then the doors to the other bedrooms in my house begin closing and the lights turn out. Not too long after that, the Londoners get to work and Karen scolds me for being awake. I wish my excuse were more romantic or interesting, like last August when what dictated my bizarre hours was jet lag mixed with a stubborn half-conscious resolve not to adjust away from London time and an unwillingness to tear myself from the flurry of email conversations between me and Mark.

I'm afraid I'm not a hard worker. Whatever keeps me working through the night just feels like self-preservation. All the evidence suggests I'm actually lazy: I don't work in the office as long or late as I did in the fall, and I'm not as fantastically or frantically committed as some people, and I don't spend my time on much apart from paying work, school work and friends - and yet my output is pathetic.

But if I didn't stay up all night, I might not have anything to show at all. So I keep sipping.

No wings here

Today was the first time I'd tried that drink Red Bull. I didn't really mean to, but I was dead tired and a friend had some and said it would wake me up, so I said ok.

It had been described to me before as "ginger ale with a kick." That seems about right, if the thing doing the kicking is a dog who just stepped in its own shit.

No offense if you like it.

I asked for it

Is it that sometimes the pain inside has to come to the surface and when you see evidence of the pain inside you finally know you're really here?
- E. Edward Grey

I used to do this thing with my boyfriend. It was really annoying. I'd be crying and he'd be sitting there stonily and I'd say, "Do you even care?" He would get so mad at that question. He'd say, "Kate, if I didn't care, why the fuck would I be here?" Every time he said that I felt small. I would have all this reasoning lined up like ammunition, ready for that particular attack, but it all disappeared like smoke when he spoke. Each time it was like I'd never thought of it before. Why was he here if he didn't care?

The more we fought, the warier I became of asking him if he cared about how upset I was. That just meant I had to find cagier ways of finding out. Of course, by finding out I just mean tricking him into saying something affectionate at all, which was really the point in the first place. I spent every fight hoping he'd surprise me by sighing and saying, "Don't cry, Kate, I love you," even though I knew from years of experience that he'd actually say, "Why the fuck are you crying? Stop it."

I always wondered if he cared because it seemed to me that it took no effort for him to lean his head against the wall and look expressionless while I spat out all my anger and desperation and hurt at him. I didn't think there was any possible way he could simultaneously ache inside at the ruins of our relationship and look as though he just wanted to get home before rush hour.

Once in a conversation I said "uh" before a sentence and he thought it was condescension and said "uh, fuck you" and that's when we started yelling during fights. When we first started dating we didn't talk much about the things that were going wrong but the tension would build up and eventually we'd have marathon talks that weren't really fights per se but Frustrated Conversations. But I really lost it when he said "uh, fuck you." We'd never been the kind of couple that screamed and said shit like that, and while I like swearing and obscenity on occasion I couldn't believe he'd thrown that most deliberate, dismissive and hateful barb at me. I went on some tirade about how he better as fuck never say that to me again so long as he cared whether I walked out for good. He wouldn't apologize but he said okay.

It didn't last long of course, and I didn't hold out strong either. He'd say "fuck you" and I'd say "do you remember what I told you about that?" like a frustrated mother. It really hurt when he said it. It stung so badly, like other things that came from his lips but this one more potent, but apparently he couldn't see that, and that made it hurt even more. I thought, if he hit me across the face or pushed me down the stairs, at least I could wear it all on the outside and I wouldn't have to explain to him or anyone else why I was in tears, or a bad mood, or whatever.

It was weird, he always said it was the most awful thing for him to see me cry, even though the worst things he ever did to me, he did when I'd already been crying, like when I told him about that awful guy in high school and he said "Well you were drunk, so how is it not your fault?" or when I asked if he was in love with someone else and he lied "no" or when he said "fuck you" that last time. It was the last fight we had before I went away, the last fight we had at all, actually, and his face was even more emotionless than usual, even though I was crying a lot. It was gross how much I cried in that relationship. I think I cried so much with him because of him telling me it affected him so strongly - maybe he'd see the tears and reach over and wipe them away and pull me close. He wasn't doing that. We were fighting about something I'd done after we broke up but before we'd become a de facto couple again. He was grilling me, "Well how was it?" I was yelling and he started going downstairs to the door and we argued down the first set of steps and I caught him at the bottom with the question he hated, "Why won't you say something that makes me realize you care?" and he slammed his fist into my wall and screamed, screamed "WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO SAY?" and wept.

There were so many times I'd forgive him when he cried or got sad, because if I could be the caretaker, the one who held him and made him feel better then he couldn't be angry at me anymore. Every time I felt like I was selling off a piece of my own integrity but I didn't care because the immediate return was worth it. But I couldn't forgive him after he hit the wall that time. The thing is, I don't know if I'd reached a point where I could stand up for myself, or if I'd gotten to the end of my rope with him, or if it was anything that in any way reflected well upon me. Because it might've been because I was shocked that he'd finally lashed out physically, and what he hit wasn't me but my house. All these words flooded out of me torrentially, I was saying that if he was going to hit something at least let it be me because I wouldn't have to cough up cash I didn't have in order to do the repairs. He was crying now and his face didn't look stiff and cold, it looked crumpled and sad. I can't believe you just put a crater in my wall, I said. At least hit ME, I'll get better. He looked up at me like for a split second he thought he'd been hitting me that whole time.

Have any Democrat in you?

(Psst, hey Stan, I'm stealing your brilliance.)

A friend of mine, Stan, and a friend of his have been thinking up pick-up lines for the Democratic National Convention. Nominees include:

• My pants may be pro-bush, but I'm a Democrat all the way.
• Hey ladies, I'm all about ending women's suffrage.
• Let's put the "us" back in "caucus".

and the one that gets my endorsement for the candidacy,

• Excuse me, miss, are you interested in something longer than John Kerry's face?

Pneumonia

I've never wanted so badly to hug someone.

Oh god, it's too late to be a good granddaughter.

Damn it, damn it, fucking hell.

Nashville is so far away.