waiting
On Friday I discovered that Brandon was gay. I went out with Brandon for a month in seventh grade. I had traded my glasses for contacts and styled my hair differently than my mother's the month before school started, and I was so happy when he told me I was pretty. Because it had never happened before. Jacob had a crush on my best friend. The year before Chad had liked me. He often talked about architecture and furnaces, and when our class watched movies in the dark, the glow from the television reflected off of his glasses and I noticed he was looking at me (and it was spooky). Chad also wanted to marry and impregnate me. I wrote Danny a note once, telling him I liked him. Sometimes when I see him at school he recites the note back to me and laughs. But Brandon. Brandon was cute (until he bleached his hair) and kind. But not much else. He spelled like someone who didn't know English, and word on the street is that his father still abuses him. He sat next to me at lunch even though there was no room for him, and he rubbed my thigh under the table while I ate. It made me uncomfortable to have a boy's hand so close to my cha-cha. When I walked down the halls he frequently snuck up behind me and wrapped his lanky arms around my shoulders. Anyone who has experienced this? They know that doing that is a bad idea, because your upper body is being pulled backwards as your feet continue to move forward, which I'm sure is written down somewhere as the equation for death. But. My friends didn't like Brandon, and I was asked daily if I was going out with Brandon. I always said yes, and most people were tickled and said that Brandon was as gay as a picnic basket. I was sorry that I had to dump him. Whenever Brandon did something annoying, my friends complained to me, and I didn't like Brandon enough to want that to continue for over a month. I still don't understand why my friends assumed that I had any control over what Brandon did or said or even wanted to hear that they hated my boyfriend. Three years later, people still cast me an amused glance every time the subject of Brandon arises, like it should be something regrettable. I don't like it. And when I heard that Brandon was gay? That wasn't funny to me. And it hurt to see people doubled over laughing. When I found out, it was like all of the compliments he paid me and my happiness and excitement became hollow. I don't know how else to explain it.
It was beautiful outside today - fifty-six degrees, according the radio. I should've danced around a sprinkler in a swimsuit, or something, considering it was fifteen degrees earlier this week. Businesses had their doors propped open, and Pat and I stopped by Jamba Juice and vacuumed his car afterwards, because my muffin crumbled everywhere. When I came home I discovered that all of the melting snow had flooded the basement, so my mom and I used squeegees and mops to push the water towards the drain. Then we bought some iced coffees and dined on a frozen pizza while watching reruns of Golden Girls.
During lunch I read the school newspaper. Actually, students pretend it's a newspaper, because it's - not. It's actually two pages stapled together with three or four articles per issue, and anyone can submit an article. Because there's only one editor and his participation in a vast array of extracurricular activities robs him of any free time, these said articles are littered with spelling errors and grainy black-and-white photos. But I digress. Today there was an article about the "signs" that women give and how misleading they are. For instance. If a woman winks and licks her lips at a man and the man approaches her, the woman becomes annoyed and wonders why the man is sapping the life out of her with his watery pick-up lines. This reminded me of TV shows and movies that depict lonely men who stare at attractive women and imagine that they're crawling onto their laps and smothering them with kisses, and realize it's a fantasy only after clutching the air and passionately kissing a phantom. Men claim that women are "confusing," but then they refuse to cry or explain how they're feeling in an attempt to retain their masculinity.
Pat gets off work at midnight, so I decided I'd wait up for him. My thoughts become less and less complicated the longer I stay up. Earlier, I noted that the lip gloss Pat gave me smells like nostalgia. Since then my thoughts have deteriorated to things like, This cat is heavy. Now that midnight is fifteen minutes away, words have become pictures.
According to a Hotmail banner, you can "help stop spam" by purchasing junk mail filters. In other words, you can pay MSN not to sell your e-mail address to third parties.
?!
What I'm saying is, this sounds like bribery wearing a hat.
Once I had a dream that one of Pat's friends scribbled "I like hats" on Pat's car. At the time it seemed self-evident that "I like hats" was analogous to "I'm gay."
When I was in Japan I visited Himeji Castle, and signs littered the castle grounds. They requested that you refrain from eating and drinking on the premises. Underneath that was "No Scribbles." There was even an illustration.
And now, Scott (Pat's aforementioned friend who I dreamt vandalized Pat's car) is gracing me with tales of his visit to a hookah lounge, and I get to see photos of him and his vacant-eyed yuppies cradling their hookahs and exhaling clouds of smoke. Any excitement expressed in the above sentence was purely accidental, because I'd rather cut designs into my skin with a penknife than take part in drug usage.
Anyway, Pat was supposed to be here an hour ago, so. I'm pissed. Because I wanted to go to bed four hours ago, but I decided to wait up.
But I'm done waiting now.