Monthly Archive for March, 2002

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3/26/2002

Published on March 26, 2002 in bluishorange. Closed

things are different from the hostess stand.

time passes by in a strange way.  it’s not slower or faster than if you were bringing drinks and food to these people you’re now leading to their seats.  it’s just warped.  it seems like more people are there all at once, and it feels like they stay forever.  they arrive in even-numbered groups, pulling into the parking lot in black foreign cars, their windshields at just the right angle to reflect the sun through the front window and directly into your eyes.  as they walk in, you squint and block the glare with your hand so that you can see how many of them there are, and if they’re the types to sit wherever you put them or if they’re going to remain standing, look around the room, and say, “can we sit over there?  by the window?”  you put their menus down on the table.  go back to your book.  read half a page before they arrive in even-numbered groups, pulling into the parking lot in black foreign cars.

you forget all about them until they walk back by the hostess stand after their meal, taking mints and toothpicks and smiling at you on their way out.  you don’t recognize them at first, and once you do you’re surprised to see them again, but you’re also completely indifferent; it’s like running into a marginal acquaintance at a gas station in a different town.

hostessing sucks.

at any rate, it’s time to get hard-core.  it’s time to pierce every possible part of myself (especially the eyebrow, i really want the eyebrow) with multicolored rings.  it’s time for green hair.  it’s time to fill my entire back with tattoos.  it’s time for ink sleeves.

03/25/2002

Published on March 25, 2002 in the small. Closed

i’m reading shampoo planet now, on your recommendation.  we could all have a lovely discussion about Various Douglas Coupland Books We Have Read and What We Think of Them if the comments were still around.  sigh.

3/25/2002

Published on March 25, 2002 in bluishorange. Closed

if you’re at a restaurant on a saturday, eating oatmeal as your first meal of the day, but it’s one-forty-five, does it still count as breakfast?  or is it lunch?

oatmeal is disgusting, and i know it.  i’ve always known it.  but even as i heard the waitress telling me that the soup was vegetable beef, even as i thought that vegetable beef soup and an english muffin would make an excellent lunch (or is it breakfast?), i heard myself saying, “i’ll have the small oatmeal.”  i hate oatmeal.  when it arrived, along with the aforementioned english muffin and your nancy morrison omelette, i dumped all the brown sugar and all the milk onto it, hoping that would mask the non-taste of the flavorless goo in the bowl in front of me.  it didn’t work. i couldn’t have taken more than four bites before i nearly threw up.  why did i order the oatmeal?

your hash browns tasted like fuel.

at the table next to us, the saronged, baseball-capped, t-shirted, tank-topped, ethnically diverse cast of survivor 5 ate stale eggs, laughed at stale jokes.

we sat there awhile after the breakfast (or was it lunch?) plates had been cleared.  i traced the patterns in the plastic eyelet tablecloth.  you traced the curves of my fingers and knuckles.  we watched a lone bee explore the top of my empty coke can, its legs folding into the mouth of the can for balance.  the bee looked on the verge of falling into the aluminum chasm.  “fall in! fall in!” i said to the bee, but it didn’t.  its little legs stuck fast to the leftover sticky even as it creeped further into the mouth of the can.  when the bee crawled all the way into the can and underneath the top, you clapped a little plastic tub of blackberry jam over the can’s opening, trapping it inside.  i leaned in close to the can, and i could hear its wings and legs and body smacking angrily against the sides.  it sounded like carbonation.

the jam tub didn’t weigh enough to hold the bee in for long.  it escaped from the can ten minutes later, darting out from the mouth and around the restaurant patio in frustrated circles.  its tail dripped coca-cola.

03/21/2002

Published on March 21, 2002 in the small. Closed

look, there’s a new teambilly!

3/21/2002

Published on March 21, 2002 in best of, bluishorange and depression. Closed

     ”oh, alison, no,” my mom said, wrinkling her nose as i lifted my shirt to show her the navel ring i got in london.  i imagine she was reacting as much to its red puffiness as to the fact that i got it at all.
     ”oh, mom, yes,” i said, dropping my shirt and sitting back down in my chair.
     ”you used to say you’d never get a navel ring,” she said, nose still in its disdainful-wrinkle position.
     ”well, i’m sure i said that about nose rings, too, and tattoos, but i got those, didn’t i?”
     ”why did you do it, then?” she asked, taking a sip of decaf.
     ”because i wanted to,” i said.  “i like the way piercings look, and i like getting them.  i wanted to get my eyebrow done, but they wouldn’t like that at work.  maybe i’ll get it later.”
     ”eww!” she said, wrinkling again.  “don’t get your eyebrow!”
     ”oh, come on,” i said.  “you know why else i do this stuff?  you’ll understand this.  my body does so many horrible things to me without my permission or consent.  i’ve had three surgeries since i was thirteen.  i’ve got endometriosis and depression and knee problems and a whole bunch of other stuff i have to deal with every damn day, and i can’t do anything at all about it.  piercings and tattoos are things i can do to my own body.”
     ”so it’s about revenge?” my dad said, his face in its stone-disapproval position.
     ”no,” my mom said, leaning forward.  “it’s about control.”
     ”see?” i said.  “i knew you would understand.”
     ”i guess,” she said.
     ”what i really want to do is expand my tattoo, but i really can’t afford that,” i said.  “hey, if you were going to get a tattoo, what would you get?”
     ”a yin-yang,” my mom said.  i hadn’t expected her to answer so quickly.
     ”would you get it black and white or just black or other colors?” i said.
     ”oh, i’d want the black and the white, definitely,” she said.
     ”dad, what would you get?”
     ”i don’t even want to think about that,” he said, turning away.
     deciding that he’d get a giant john deere tractor on his bicep, i turned back to my mom.  “where would you want it?  what size?”
     she made a circle with her thumb and forefinger and rested it on the inside of her forearm.  “right here.”
     ”really?” i said.  “but you’d have to wear long sleeves to work all the time.”
     ”oh, no,” she said, wrinkling her nose again, “i don’t care about them.”

     sometimes looking at my mother is like staring right at my future and past at the same time.  if she ever does get that tattoo, i want to go with her.

     we are not afraid of needles.

03/20/2002

Published on March 20, 2002 in the small. Closed

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