Dude, The 80s Called, They Said Your Outfit's HOT

This picture is not so great, but check out the totally eightiestasticness of the outfit. Break out the spin art, yo!

Close up on the leg warmers, cause I totally knitted the fuck out of those motherfuckers. Crafty goodness!

PS. I finally got my digicam set up on my laptop. Except lots of picture goodness, including a lot of pictures of me making weird faces for no discernable reason!

Falling

I can't believe he's gone forever. I can't believe I'll never talk to him, I'll never see him, I'll never touch him. Maybe it's because as it was I didn't see him that often. Maybe I'll have to go back to LA for it to be real. Maybe I'll have to go to our coffee place by myself. Maybe I'll have to see his ashes in the wind.

I am terrified by the universe's new found ability to remove the people I love without notice. I knew it could happen before, but I didn't know the way I know now. I still don't know, I still can't really believe . . . it's just too much, it's too big for my head.

Falling in love for me has always felt more like falling asleep than falling off of a cliff or falling down stairs (except for the bruises). It seems like it's always just as you're getting comfortable, just as you're all snuggly warm and comfortable, in those moments when you can feel sleep approaching, feel it coming on like a hug, that's when the blankets get ripped off and you're left cold and naked and confused. And you're always left with the sneaking suspicion that you kicked them off yourself, because no matter what they say, no matter, what their reasons, the message behind every break up is the same. It's always, "I don't love you enough for this to be worth it."

I jerk awake in blind panic, even from the soundest sleep, even with the blankets wrapped tight.

Music and Memory

Emmett wrote an entry a couple of days ago in which he asked what band people would choose if they had to choose one to listen to for the rest of their lives.

I've come to the conclusion that I couldn't do it.

When I get a cd I like, I listen to it over and over again, on repeat, until my friends or coworkers or roommates go insane and destroy it, or I find a new cd I like. Sometimes I listen to the same songs over and over again, obsessive compulsively pressing the track back button when the song ends. When it comes to music, I'm basically one of those rats pressing the pleasure button over and over again until they die.

(You guys know about the rat thing, right? There was some experiments where rats had a pleasure button that gave them a little ratty orgasm, and a pain button that gave them an electric shock, or possibly it was the same button and it switched, or maybe the rats were into electric play, but the upshot of the experiment was that the rats just kept pressing the button until they fried themselves. And judging by my total lack of anything like self control, I can't say that I wouldn't most likely do the same.)

Anyway, back to music. Because of my obsessive compulsive cd listening style, whenever I listen to a cd I used to like, I'm overwhelmed with the memories of what I was doing when I listened to it. It's memory, but it's stronger, it's like the memories that smell triggers, when suddenly for a minute you feel the way you felt back then . . . There are great cds I can't listen to because of things that happened when I was obsessed with them.

Jude is a winter term I spent with a boy who turned out to be gay, and I can't listen to it anymore.

Rufus Wainwright is driving around LA in the sunshine with Adam, smoking with the windows rolled down.

Stephen Malkmus is waking up and making breakfast the first semester of my senior year of college.

Beulah is Neal.

Mirah is a roadtrip up to NoCal with Larissa.

Ladytron is last winter, snug in my fifth floor nest with Phil.

The Murmors are sophmore year in the triple I shared with Emily and Wendy, making beaded raver bracelets on the floor.

My mix cds are time capsules.

Hot Spider on Spider Action

Thoughts on an article about mating spiders.

"A study of spiders shows female wolf spiders will eat strange-looking males that try to mate with them, but spare and even hook up with familiar-looking males."

Well, I don't really like mating with strange-looking males either. (Hmmm. Wait. Maybe I do. Are we talking strange freaky, or strange ugly? And if it's strange ugly, what if it's sexy ugly? Oh, who am I trying to kid, I've got no standards. Bring on the strange males!)

"They have an elaborate courtship ritual in which males arch their brown or black forelegs and vibrate their bodies."

Hmmm. The vibrating part sounds pretty good.

"When the females became sexually mature, she would put into their boxes a male of either color and watch what happened."

Put into their boxes. Heh heh heh.

"'They just look like somebody they might know. None saw the same male ever,' Hebets said."

Is this like when I hit on people because they remind me of my ex-boyfriend? Um, wait, nevermind, that wasn't me, that was a friend of mine. And she was drunk.

"It could be this is a way of learning your species and making sure that when you get older, you are mating with the right species."

Man, there's nothing more embarassing than when it turns out the problem is you've been mating with the wrong species all along. Back me up on this, people.

"'The percentage of post-copulatory cannibalisms were certainly nothing out of the ordinary,' she said."

I'm just going to let that quote stand on its own.

"Some incorporate cannibalism into mating. In some, the females are actually eating the male while he is inserting sperm."

That's what happens when you don't have a safe word.

You Know What Rocks?

When you check your bank balance online and it totally has way more money in it than you expected. I actually am quite flush right now, but I hadn't deposited my paycheck for this week yet, and I wanted to make sure I could withdraw money to get lunch, and then I was like, "Hey, yes I can. Whoo!"

And yes, I have heard about that wacky new "balancing your checkbook" thing the kids are into these days, but I have kind of given up on it. At least I'm over the weird thing I had where I refused to look at my balance when I withdrew money from the ATM because I considered it bad luck. (No, really. For some reason I'm partially convinced that if I look at my balance on the bottom of the reciept, it will automatically become zero no matter how much money I have in there.)

This is the part where someone stages some sort of intervention to turn me into a responsible adult.

In a related aside: I was talking to one of my friends a while ago, and they mentioned having a "sex toy budget." And I was all, "Hey, I don't have a sex toy budget! No fair!" So I pouted about not having a sex toy budget for a while, and then I realized - I don't have any kind of budget! My entire budget is my sex toy budget! And also my hookers and coke budget! And also my rent and food budget, but lets gloss over that part, shall we?

The Cut on the Roof of Your Mouth That Would Heal If You Could Just Stop Tonguing It

I somehow managed to burn the fuck out of the inside of my mouth this weekend. I actually burned it so badly that it blistered, and then the blisters popped, and then I removed a big hunk o' dead flesh from the roof of my mouth this morning.

I think one of the disturbing things about being a vegetarian is that every time I taste blood, it's my own. When I got my wisdom teeth out, my mouth tasted like raw meat for days.

This kind of pain is the most annoying to me. It's not bad enough to necessitate actual medical attention, everything tastes funny, and it's just kind of constantly there, being stingy and annoying.

And no, I cannot stop tonguing it. But then, I can never resist poking my bruises, either.

More Knitting!

I've converted Sarcasmo and Amy to my knitting army. Soon our yarn golems will take over the world! (Mwa ha ha ha!)

(Aside: My actual plan is to knit a yarn golem who will wash my dishes for me. He'll be able to wash them with his sleeves!)

Sam has also volunteered to join the knitting army.

Emmett claims to be too manly to knit, which I do not understand. Knitting is not gendered! Knitting is for everyone! Then again, I don't really understand this whole "masculine" concept either. Where I'm from "masculine" means boys who only wear dresses once every couple of months.

I've also started doing that knitting thing where you have a bunch of projects going at once. Right now I've got a hat I work on while I ride the subway, a scarf that I work on at home, and another scarf I started this weekend with Sarcasmo and Amy. This is strange, because usually my compulsive nature means I work on one thing obsessively until I'm finished and then I start another. But I think this is good, because usually I have no patience for big projects, but if I was working on little projects at the same time it might be okay, cause I would still get that satisfying "Yay, I'm done!" feeling.

So, yeah, I'll be starting a sweater any time now. Except my plan is to try to limit myself to three projects or fewer at a time.

I Never Do the Referral Log Thing, But . . .

Someone searched my website for the phrase "speling words."

So sad. So funny.

Having A Blog Means Never Having To Answer Your Email

I have 116 emails in my inbox . . . granted, probably only half of them are really "action items" so to speak, but damn, am I bad at answering email.

If I owe you one, I'll answer it soon, I swear to god. Or possibly six months from now, when my answer is no longer relevant at all.

Quote

"But we're so different, you know: she likes being good, and I like being happy."
-from The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton

My Superpower

Is totally the ability to ride a mechanical bull.

Objects In The Blog Are Less Sad Than They Appear

I think this weblog is giving everyone a very skewed vision of my current state of mind right now.

The thing is that this is where I'm putting all my sadness. Most of the time, I'm pretty happy right now. I'm busy and social and thinking about lots of things and just being a regular human being.

I'm also knitting a lot. I am a crazy knitting fool, it's kind of weird and compulsive. Yesterday I got high at Melanie's house and I started working on knitting this scarf she had on her floor that she had started two years ago and given up on. In the last week I've finished my legwarmers and made a hat, and I'm currently working on a hat and a scarf. I'll post pictures once I get my digicam set up on my laptop. (I found the software for it when I moved, just like I hoped.) I've also done a bunch of knitting/crocheting stuff I've given to people already, and I want to track it down and take pictures at some point. (Apparently knitting brings out the creepy obsessive OCD freak that lives inside me. Kind of like an inner child, only way scarier.)

Also, every night I swear to god that I'm not going out and I'm going to bed early, and then somehow I wind up getting five hours of sleep. (Oooh! Poor me! I'm so popular that people are constantly dragging me out of my apartment and forcing me to have a good time! Sometimes they force gin and tonics right down my throat!)

Here are some good things from this week: Lost In Translation, trying on really great but way too expensive boots (They gave me a bootgasm. I lust for these boots. Oh, how I lust.), Jordan Almonds, seeing Alicia, DJ, Melanie and Reed, getting to go to Target, the hat I made turning out insanely great, feeling incredibly happy and being terrified that it would just disapear and I would crash back into depression, and then just sliding back into peaceful calm.

Dear Neal,

When I think about you, I think about the quality of light in Pasadena when it's sunny, the clear bright yellow sunshine. I think about the house you lived in that you hated and I secretly loved, and the way it smelled, a plasticy new smell, like vinyl flooring and paint. It was right next to a park, and I was always hearing the sounds of children at play during the most inopportune moments.

You called me Cynthia and never Cyn, and when I asked you about it you said that you didn't want to call me the same thing everyone else did.

We slept on our sides, with your arm wrapped around my stomach, and you told me that in the middle of the night I would wiggle into you and pull your arm tighter around me.

I can't believe I'm never going to touch you again.

I miss the way you smell.

I love you,
Cynthia

Is Your Water Running? Better Go Catch It!

Hey, do you happen to have running water in your house? You know, coming out of faucets and stuff? Cause I don't!

I got back from my friend Melanie's house at about 2:30 pm today, and thought I should probably give Holden some fresh water. So I empty his bowl, turn on my kitchen faucet and . . . strange noises but no water. DJ and I were like, "Well, this explains why there are men digging up the street in front of my apartment."

So I melted ice in the microwave to give Holden water. So! Sad!

Have I mentioned that neither DJ nor I had showered at this point in time? And that we'd slept in our clothes?

We decided to go somewhere that, unlike my apartment, was capable of supporting life. I took advantage of DJ's car to go to Target, where I went on a crazy shopping spree that involved many DVDs and Hello Kitty products. DJ seemed kind of frightened, mainly because I snapped, "Unique doesn't take a modifier!" at him after he described some martini classes as "Rather unique." (Unique doesn't take a modifier! It's either true or false! I have issues with unique. I blame my father.)

Then we got coffee and dinner and went back to my apartment around 8 pm to discover that I still don't have running water. Except now there are no more men digging things up in front of my apartment, so I don't know what steps, if any, are being taken to remedy this situation.

The saddest and most pathetic thing yet: Melanie's mom gave me some flowers from her garden, because the frost was going to kill them. So I got them home and stuck them in an empty Bombay Sapphire bottle, because it was pretty and blue and on the counter, but I had no water to put in it. So now I have an empty gin bottle full of dead flowers on my dining room table.

Also, I don't exactly smell good, if you know what I mean.

No One Says Until It Shows

Elliot Smith died.

Neal,

I know I hadn't talked to you in a while. I tracked you down in June, but it took me three months to do it, because you didn't answer my email for three months, even though I emailed both of your email addresses, and I called all the numbers I had for you, but none of them worked. And then you gave me new phone numbers, and I called your parents house because I knew that they would answer the phone.

I know, you just weren't really talking to people.

Remember Christmas? I was just in town for three days, but I called you, we were going to go out for coffee, but then you fell asleep. You passed out, I think, you were on a lot of benzos, and you stood me up. I sat at home watching Antiques Roadshow with my parents, waiting for you, and you never came. And then it was Christmas, and then I had to go back to Philly, and I never got to see you. And now I never get to.

I don't even know where you were. Were you in Michigan? I think you were probably in San Pedro, I know you took last semester off.

You shot up twice while on the phone with me once. Twice. And you dropped the phone the second time, and I was there, on the other side of the line, so utterly terrified that you had O.D.ed or something, and wondering just what the hell to do, helpless and so far away from you.

It was when you told me about how you had started drawing blood when you shot up that things changed for me. You told me how you would draw blood, and inject it in little glass vials, which you labeled "Me" and the date. And when you told me that . . . It was just so fucking insane. And I just knew. I knew that there was no way I was responsible for you, and there was no way I could save you. It was almost a relief.

Maybe I gave up on you then. Maybe you had already given up on everything.

I'm not sure you could ever understand how much it hurt to watch you hurt yourself over and over. It seemed like every time I talked to you, there was some new story, you had just gotten out of another mental institution, you had almost died again, it never got better, it just kept getting worse and worse.

I stopped being in love with you a long time ago. But I never stopped loving you. You knew that.

Cynthia

Hey Kids,

I know some of you are worried about me, and so I just thought I should let you know: I'm happy.

I'm really busy right now, because it's fall break for Oberlin and all these Obie kids are in town, and I'm getting far too little sleep.

I'm happy, and it feels kind of weird and scary and wrong, but it also feels right and good.

I have lots more to say, to Neal and to you, but for the moment, that's it.

PS

I think I've hit the "anger" stage.

Ultimatum

I've decided that I am officially All Full Up on Bad Shit for this year.

Seriously, let's look at the the shit I've been through since January - getting dumped, move from hell, job stress, dead ex-boyfriend - No fucking more of this shit!

You hear that, world? Nothing else bad is allowed to happen to me this year, because I will flip the fuck out.

Pizza for One Is The Lonliest Number

I went to the grocery store today, since the contents of my fridge were pretty much pre-chopped garlic, salsa, lemon juice, and some sad looking broccoli. Since Phil's in Chicago for the weekend, this involved me buying a lot of sad, single & lazy person type food.

I bought a product called "Pizza for One."

"Pizza for One." Can you think of a more pathetic name for a food product? Why don't they just call it "Pizza for Losers." Or "Pizza for Not Only Are You Too Lazy Too Cook, But Also No One Will Ever Love You, Stupid Bitch."

I also bought some peach-cranberry juice, which I'm pretty excited about.

Yet Another Way I Am Totally A Crazy Old Lady

I'm totally the only person under 70 who likes Jordan Almonds. But man do I love those tooth destroying little fuckers.

The irony is that no one over 70 has the jaw strength to eat them. Ha ha! More for me!

Conversation On A Bus

Me: I hope I don't get an ear infection.
Ro: Because you have a cold?
Me: Kind of. Really I was just thinking about ways my life could suck more.
Ro: That's healthy.

Neal - Here Is My Guilt,

Remember when I gave you e? The first time you ever took drugs, baby, and I gave you that little pill . . . You liked it. It kind of scared me, at first, actually, to see you so out of control, because you always seemed so in control. I was so good at handling my shit on drugs, or handling the results of not handling my shit, or maybe it's just that I'm not very good at handling myself while sober, so being on drugs doesn't make a hell of a lot of a difference. But damn, that little pill fuct you up good, and it was kind of weird for me because I was a lot less fucked up than you were. But then mine kicked in, and we talked about . . . all of the things we needed to talk about. It was the time between when we broke up the first time, and when we got back together, and we'd been having sex without really talking about what exactly our relationship status was.

But then we took e, and you told me you loved me, and I told you that I thought you were my soulmate, and everything just seemed so right.

I remember feeling like that, remember thinking that you were the one and that was it, I was done, I had found the person I was going to be with for the rest of my life, and being a little freaked out about it, but mainly just happy. I remember that I thought that, but now I can't even imagine what it felt like, to be nineteen and so sure.

I've wondered a lot what things would be like if I hadn't given you that pill. I didn't know - there was so much I didn't know. I certainly didn't know how depressed you were. For christ's sake, I was only 19, and I was in love, and I was a silly little etard baby who thought, like, seriously thought, that if we could just give all world leaders some ecstacy we could bring about world peace. I thought e was the best thing, well, ever, and I just wanted to share that with you, and it just worked a little too well, I guess.

I didn't know that you were looking for some sort of answer inside yourself. I didn't know you'd think that drugs were the way to find it. What if I had given you something different, something that was less answerlike? Why couldn't I have just gotten you high or something? You used to worry so much about me and my drug use and me getting hurt. Then a year later we were having those fights where you said I was irresponsible because I just wanted to take drugs and have some fun, and I said that the way you were trying to use drugs to . . . I don't even know, learn something, solve something, find something . . . was dangerous.

Guess I won that fight.

Things I remember from the night I gave you that pill: You wearing my pink fuzzy slippers and rubbing your feet on the bed. Smoking on my porch. When Adam called and pretended to be god because he knew we were rolling. You broke the beaded pacifier I made you in my dining room, and I collected all the beads and promised to remake it for you later. Eating orange juice concentrate with a spoon, straight from the can. Sitting at the bottom of my driveway, telling you I thought you were my soulmate. Adam and his friends were really into the soulmate concept that summer, and I said, "I never really believed in soulmates before, but Adam's really into it, and I think you might be mine." You said you loved me.

I was only nineteen. I had no idea.

I love you.
Cynthia

Neal,

I've been thinking a lot about if I could have tried harder to save you, and in the end I think . . . Jesus Christ, what a horrible, limping monster we would have made if I tried.

Every single fight we had ended with you saying something like, "Fine! I hate myself more than you can ever possibly hate me!" and me spending the rest of the night frantically back pedaling, going, "No, I love you, I love you so much, please don't be sad," and wishing to god I had never even opened my mouth.

And then I was mad because I wanted to be able to be angry with you. I told you, I have the right to be upset with you sometimes, but you don't let me. And you said, I can't help it, this is how I feel.

And neither one of us really understood.

Remember when I told you I wanted to see other people, and the next day you were all, "Last night I almost crashed my car into the center divider on the freeway"?

That's why I waited until you broke up with me. I was terrified that if I dumped you, you'd kill yourself. So I just let our relationship bleed itself into nothing, and then we had the Best Break Up Ever. Remember? It went like this:

You: Hey, I've been thinking, I'm really busy lately.
Me: I'm busy too!
You: So maybe we shouldn't date anymore.
Me: Yeah, I've been thinking that too. But we'll still be friends, right?
You: Of course we'll be friends!
Me: This break up rocks!

And then afterwards it hurt, and I didn't even really understand why, but I missed you so much more than I expected to. And then you fell in "love" with Kristi (who I dated in high school), and she slept with your roommate instead of you.

The more I try to explain things, the messier everything gets . . .

I love you,
Cynthia

I'm A Grief Seeking Missile

I felt happy today, for a little bit, and it felt okay. It felt like my grief broke, like waves hitting a breakwater.

I've been doing okay with work and home. At work I do a little programming and stare into space and write letters to my dead ex-boyfriend on the internet, and no one bothers me. At home I make a mess and stare into space and write letters to my dead ex-boyfriend on the internet, and no one bothers me. It's the getting back and forth that's hard, because there are all these people I don't know out there, and they're all alive and it makes me want to scream at them.

I also kind of feel like I'm visably bleeding, like people are going to be like, "You have something on your face; I think it's grief." There's also the bother of going through normal human interaction, of having to pull myself together enough to deal with whatever.

Yesterday I spent some time knitting and watching Buffy, and that went pretty well. It kind of distracted me for a while. Although season two of Buffy probably wasn't the best thing to watch. (Hey, Buffy's got a dead ex-boyfriend too!)

Then today I had my usual Wednesday awkward time to fill, so I went to this bar and had a couple of beers and talked to a middle-aged businessman about baseball, and for some reason it just felt really good. I was like, "Hey, no one in this bar knows that Neal just died, and they don't have to, and they're not going to ask about it, and I don't have to think about it." It was like a little break from being sad. Which was good, because I'm really fucking tired of being sad.

Then I went to movie night, and we watched To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, and I just got to be normal for a little bit, and it was really great.

Thanks to everyone who's emailed and called . . . I've been hitting ignore on my cell phone a little bit, just because I'm so fucking tired of talking about it (not that you would know from the way it looks around here), but everyone I know has just been so supportive and wonderful. It really means a lot to me.

The Best Lies Are The Ones We Tell Ourselves

It seems so important to write about him, and I wrote so much about him, always, when he was alive too. I was looking through my archives the other day, looking for things I'd written about him, and the worst were the entries that were about things I'd done with him where I hadn't mentioned him at all. I know he was there, I remember it, but why didn't I write about it? Why didn't I describe it better? For the love of god, why didn't I save every detail when I had the chance?

What if I write him wrong? What if I write things that aren't the truth, what if I get it wrong, what if I make up a fake Neal for myself and that's what I remember instead of the real one? Telling stories, aloud or on paper, has always been what I do to deal with my life. I always feel like when I'm telling what happened, I'm in control of it. I don't tell lies, but I change things, I slant them, I make them funnier or sadder or more ironic, I make it so what I remember is how I described it instead of what I felt.

But what if I don't write it down, and I forget?

And why can I only write down the good stuff? I should remember the bad parts, too, it's not the truth without the bad parts. But I feel like that would be exposing him, like I should protect him now that he's gone. But he was never ashamed . . .

Without the bad I can't explain how much this hurts, how complicated it is, how much my love for him has always been intertwined with guilt and pain.

Hey Neal,

Remember that time I said I'd help you move out of your dorm room, and then instead I sat on your couch and read an old issue of Playboy and complained about everything because it was insanely hot and I had my period and I was cranky? And you were all, "Uh, thanks for the help." And then we went and got pizza at some restuarant in Old Town. God, it was so fucking hot that day, it was like 90.

I gave you cardboard boxes, because we had just moved, and you kept them forever, every time you moved into a new apartment I'd show up and there they'd be, sitting there with my mom's handwriting on them, labeled "books" or "kitchen stuff."

Love,
Cynthia

.

I feel numb. I think I've run out of feelings. It feels horrible. I guess I have one feeling left, and it's "horrible."

I feel like I'm a raw steak, all bloody and cut up and exposed, the piece of bone staring up through the saran wrap, the juice leaking out through the plastic.

My Brain Is Raw

Why can't I think about anything else? I'm so sick of thinking about this.

Dude, Neal,

You want a piece of my bagel? Oh, wait, you can't have any cause you're dead. More pesto cream cheese for me!

Man, that joke's never going to not be funny. Want to hear the new Belle and Sebastian? Oh, no, wait, dead. Picture of a kitten? Dead.

You probably wouldn't like the new Belle & Sebastian anyway. Too cheerful.

Love,
Cynthia

To the Reader

Hey, is it creepy in here, or is it just me? Oh, wait, it's both!

I kind of expect someone to bust in here at some point and be like, "Excuse me, miss, but you seem to be bleeding all over the internet. Please stop."

I realize that a lot of you probably come here for stories about my vagina, rather than letters to my dead ex-boyfriend. You don't have to read them. You don't have to not read them. I just kind of have to write them right now. I've been disabling comments on them because, well, they're not for you. They're for me, and they're for Neal. Who is dead, and thus will not be reading them, but you win some, you lose some. I couldn't win a fight with that boy when he was alive, I doubt it's going to start now that he's dead. I realize that this is probably both kind of bug fuck nuts and vastly innapropriate, but this is where I write things like this, and right now writing these things is kind of the only thing I want to do. It's what I need to do.

Neal used to read my blog. I used to check my stats every day for his IP address. It was how I checked that he was still alive. And then he stopped reading my blog - not because he didn't like it, I don't think, but because he stopped doing pretty much everything.

It's funny, because I remember thinking at one time that there must be some point at which he would stop breaking my heart. Because you only have so much heart, you know, and god, it always hurt so much watching him. I guess I was both right and wrong. He doesn't get to break my heart anymore, but jesus christ, I don't think it's ever going to stop breaking over this.

Jesus Christ, Baby,

I had a crush on you in high school. When I was 19 sometimes I thought that one day I would marry you and we would have a house and children. Sometimes I was afraid that I would drown in your despair. Once you were my soulmate.

The first time I saw you after we broke up, you were all fucked up on Xanax and you couldn't even walk, you kept kind of tripping and falling over and I wanted more than anything to help you, to stand next to you and wrap my arm around you and prop you up, but I couldn't because of everything that was and wasn't between us.

When we broke up, it wasn't even the beginning when everything was going great that I missed the most. It was the part in the middle, when everything was going a little fucked up but the end wasn't really in sight yet, when we had worn comfortable little squabbly grooves in each other.

Remember how I decided that I was the bad girlfriend, and I made up a good girlfriend for you? Her name was Stacy, and somehow the joke progressed to the point where she had no arms or legs and lived in a cardboard box in your closet, and had a water bottle like a hamster. Sometimes she'd be like, "Can I have some more woodchips, please?" and you'd be like, "No!" and she'd be like, "Okay, I love you!"

Remember when I decided our relationship would be more fun if we were trying to kill each other, and we spent all our time trying to push each other into the street and into the ocean?

How was it only six years that I knew you? You're in all the stories I've written. You loved me before I had pink hair and tattoos and piercings and you loved me afterwards and you even loved me when I had that horrible haircut with half my head shaved. You put up with some much of my shit, there was so much I did that you never even questioned me about. I was always dragging you to things, always putting you in these situations with my friends that you hated, always running back and forth between having fun with everyone else and checking on you sulking in the corner.

Oh, god, baby, all I want is one more fight with you.

Love,
Cynthia

Hey Neal,

When they say people get depressed around the holidays, they don't usually mean Columbus Day.

Also, if you want to stop being dead any time soon, you can. I won't be mad or anything, okay?

Love,
Cynthia

.

The thing about this whole "bereavement" deal is that it's kind of like when you have a crush on someone, and everything reminds you of them. Like your friend is all, "We're having peas for dinner," and you're like, "Awww! My crush likes peas!"

Except it's incredibly shitty because they're dead.

Hey Neal,

Remember how I gave you Jinglepig, that stuffed pig with a bell in it that I'd had since I was little? There was a bear, too, with a broken bell, that we called Nojinglebear, who's still in my house in LA somewhere. Then I found out that you were using "Jinglepig" as your username in all your online stuff, and you were all like, "Uh, well, it's just that it's never taken," but it made me really happy. Did you still have Jinglepig? I hope he was a good pig for you.

You know I'm going to have to go to LA sometime and dig up all of these stuffed animals, and then I'll be one of those horrible women who has a house full of stuffed animals even though she's like, thirty, and it will all be your fault. Except that the main one I want is that beaver with the Caltech ribbon around its neck, and the "stuffed beaver" jokes never get old. "My boyfriend gave me a stuffed beaver." Heh.

Hey, I think you'd like the new Beulah album. It's like the one you gave me, except more depressing. I know how you love the depressing music. Beulah's playing here on Wednesday. I don't know if I'm going to go.

You know, you gave me seven Velvet Underground cds. I don't need seven VU cds, baby. The only VU I need is Heroin, Venus in Furs, and like, five minutes of Sister Ray. Maybe All Tomorrow's Parties and that crazy spoken word shit. But no, you had to give me a bunch of music you thought I should like, instead of a bunch of music you thought I would like, and now you're dead and I have to listen to it all. I must say, the fact that it's all horribly depressing works out quit nicely in this situation. Well, except for the Tenacious D cd. I'm not going to get all emotional over Tenacious D, okay? That would just be ridiculous.

The funny thing is that if you were still alive, you'd be horrible at dealing with all of this. You never did know what the hell to do with me when I was upset. I mean, you tried and all, but it was always clear that you had no idea what to do. I'm the one who's good at comforting people. You should have thought of that.

Love,
Cynthia

Dear Neal,

I miss you. I have the sneaking suspicion that if you were here, we'd be making jokes about this. But you're dead, and I can't think of anything funny.

The word "dead" feels kind of like a joke. Like, "My friend died" or "So I was sitting in my apartment, talking to photos of my dead ex-boyfriend." Or bereaved. Bereaved is a really funny word. "The boy I lost my virginity to is dead, and I'm feeling kind of bereaved." Hey, that one was almost funny, don't you think?

I want to know just what the hell you think I'm going to do when I go back to Pedro now. You knew you were the only person I'm not related to that I could stand it that town. Who's going to go to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf with me?

Remember the time we went to the 24 hour Home Depot in the middle of the night? I was jumping up trying to grab the pullchains on all of the ceiling lamps, and you grabbed me and lifted me up so I could reach them.

Remember how we used to talk to each other in Pokemon? "Pika. Pika pi. CHU!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Remember how the Squirtle sticker on the back of my car faded so there was this weird red spot on Squirtle's mouth, and you said he looked like he ate Pikachu? You hated my car. You never let me drive anywhere. And then there was the time that you had to let me drive, because you didn't have a car, and you found that weird hole in my dashboard with the plastic plug in it.

I'm listening to that Neutral Milk Hotel cd you burned for me. You know, half my cds have your handwriting on them.

I'll talk more later, okay?

I love you,
Cynthia

Bruise

I'm wearing a black shirt and a blue sweatshirt, and I thought, "I look like a bruise today."

But I kind of feel like a bruise today, so it's okay.

Street Harassment, Gender, Fear

I got randomly street harassed not once, but twice on the way to work today. First a bearded hippie dude was all, "Smile! You should smile more!" and then, after I'd walked about ten feet, another guy was like, "Hi! Hey!", as though he was like, "Well, obviously harassing this girl is the thing to do. She clearly hasn't learned the whole smile lesson yet!"

Guys, I've got some advice for you. If you see a girl walking by herself at night, do not talk to her. She does not want to talk to you. She has some place to go, and she just wants to get there. If I'm walking alone at ten pm, you could come up and start talking to me about how much you love The Mountain Goats, and I would not want to talk about it. When I walk by myself at night, which I do a lot, what's going through my head on a pretty much constant loop is, "I hope I don't get robbed/raped/killed."

I kind of worry that the way I walk makes my whole, "Please don't rob/rape/kill me" mantra obvious to the casual observer. Because I think that attracts harassment. It's like those people who look like they would cry if you punched them - I always kind of want to punch those people, just to see what they would do. And I'm a nice person! Kind of. So I think my whole hunched over, eyes staring fixedly at the sidewalk, semi-quick walk might kind of scream out, "Harass me! It will cause me to kind of jump in an amusing way!"

At the same time, I'm definitely not going to make eye contact with people. That's just asking for trouble. I think that whenever I walk anywhere, I probably spend about sixty percent of brain concentrating on not making eye contact with anyone. But I think it might help if I developed a more pissed off and less frightened walk. Unfortunately, the chances of me intimidating anyone ever are slim to none, and slim just left town.

I also get a lot of pink hair related harassment. Sometimes I get random, "Hey, I like your hair!" stuff, which is nice and not harassy. But it also gives street harassers something to identify me by. And then they get all pissy when I don't respond to someone screaming, "Hey, Pink!" at me. Oh, and confidential to the guy who said, "Hey, it's Kelly Osborne!" to me the other day - in my world, you have your own special circle of hell.

Guys who get all pissy when you don't respond to them really, really bother me. Hi, I don't know you! I don't care if you really are just trying to be friendly