Ventricle
May 29, 2003
Lunch tomorrow. She mentioned that another friend of hers might, but probably wouldn't, join us.
Which is, you have to admit, a remarkably subtle way of signalling that lunch will be on strictly-as-friends terms.
J------ said she'd get her stuff out of the basement. You could fit a car under the pile of stuff, so this plan has always seemed a little suspect to me. I came back to find that the stuff had been rearranged, but did not appear to be appreciably less in quantity. In the end, I hauled enough of her stuff out of the basement to move down what I needed to move down, and then called her to insist that she pick up the excess before leaving the country (she won't be back until August).
She only moved out a year ago; woudn't want to rush her.
May 28, 2003
I suppose I------ is out there waiting for me. I wouldn't know; he's on my block list. To be precise, he is my block list. He used to talk-request (remember talk-requests?) me at the worst times. It was as though he knew I was at one of the workstations whose screens would go haywire when this piece of console-text got dumped to them. I've grown to dread the casual misanthropy and daunting arrogance of his conversation; there came a point when enough was enough and I had to pull out the block list. I tell myself that it's kinder than ducking off every time he contacts me, and that I'm not willing to let him hold my online presence hostage. I'm not cruel, am I?
This is, after all, I------ we're talking about.
May 27, 2003
In the end, what always stings the most and the longest are all those moments when you confront those things you now know you will never do. They come without warning, you think to yourself, you know who'd get a kick out of this?, and then you remember. Oh. Never mind. Grand gestures are made of blown glass: beautiful to contemplate, but also so terribly fragile, and when they collapse in your hands, the shards cut deep. But then, looking back on all the gestures you did make, to no avail, you understand that the ones you'll never get to make are gifts you are saving for someone who may exist nowhere beyond your own overtaxed head.
Which is infinitely worse.
And again. I swear this time is the last. I fly out to the West Coast in a week, and that will be the end of it. I will wash my mind out with soap and acetone. So no matter what happens, or doesn't happen, it will be the end of this self-imposed impotent limbo. Of course, this resolution makes my choice not to just let go now all the more pointless. A week from now will be the amputation date, but asking again just means another week of pain before the surgery that could just as easily take place now.
But psychologically speaking, I can't not ask, that's the point.
May 25, 2003
When I shook hands with H------, he grabbed my elbow with his free hand.
For years, I have been using "elbow-grabbers" as a shorthand way of referring to people who strike me as profoundly insincere.
She knows power tools. First used a jigsaw at the age of eight; she's also done some spot welding and some drywalling in her day.
Say it with me: FUCK!
May 24, 2003
I'm subletting my place for the summer. I really should have been more aggressive about finding a subletter; I wound up with a guy who seems more or less trustworthy but rubs me seriously the wrong way. He's just way too aggressive. There were things about the arrangement that aren't of great importance to me but over which he used openly manipulative negotiating tactics -- pretending that we'd reached agreement on things we hadn't yet discussed, pulling out "that wasn't the deal" at the drop of a hat, that sort of thing.
Need I add that he's affiliated with the law school?
May 20, 2003
This is why I don't like collaborative student outlines. This one is longer than my notes from the class. It's formatted six different ways from Sunday. It's filled with pointless abbreviations and bad Latin.
"Prima fashie." I kid you not.
May 18, 2003
Every time I go into my bathroom now, I see a single ant. One, exactly one, never more, never less. It's always doing something very stupid and obvious, like sitting on top of the faucet in the sink. Squishing it is never a difficult task. But the next time I return, there's another single ant, perhaps this time on the floor by the tub. Squish, rinse, repeat. I'm now convinced, against all reason, that my bathroom has been invaded by a single, immortal, ant.
I've decided to name it Agrajag.
G------ claimed to read my blog, and what's more, to have gone through my archives.
The thing is, I read my server logs, and I knew she was lying even when she said it.
Then thought that I could decipher your message
There's no one here, dear, no one at all.
- Tori Amos
May 17, 2003
F------ is a piece of work. Sometime around two weeks into the year, various 1L girls compared notes and found that they'd all independently noticed him staring at their chests while talking to them. He wants to do tax law, he wants to teach, he's got his whole life plan worked out and he's happy to tell you about it and why you should be doing the things he's doing if you plan to get ahead. On the other hand, one professor stopped class to tell him never to come back unless he could stay awake, and he still doesn't know street names more than about two blocks from the law school.
Very little of this would bother me if it weren't that he's chummy with some of my friends here, so I see rather more of him than I'd like.
D------ had a party last week. It was a simul-party: through sheer coincidence, there was another law school party (co-hosted by E------) going on nearby. I was grouchy at the time, but not yet tired enough to go to sleep yet. I thought that putting in appearances at both parties would be a good idea. What a mistake. As I was leaving D------'s to go to the other, he pulled me aside and told me to tell E------ that she was "a fucking cunt." A few seconds later, he said I shouldn't tell her that she was one, by negative implication implying that he still thought she was one.
I still don't know why I needed to hear this.
C------ I consider a friend. What's more, she'll even admit to enjoying her studies at times. Goodness knows, that's rare enough around here. But even she's not immune. Yesterday, she complained that her head was full of law.
Sigh.
A------ isn't stupid, not with those degrees she has. But she sure is shallow. She asked me what the peace sign I was wearing on my lapel was for. This was while the shooting was still actively going on. She knew it was a peace sign, but couldn't get further than that. About a minute later, she managed to escape from that line of conversation by telling B------ about a girl who'd dumped a pitcher of beer down the back of some guy's pants on a dare, and been tossed out of the bar.
First things first.
