Straight No Chaser

Thundercloud

in the dream i was making an ass of myself at tomorrow's conference. articulating weird caddyshack references. making her late for her dinner date. i woke up hating myself.

the eight o'clock nap was a generally bad idea, because i'd planned on going to bed early tonight. on beauty is splayed across my pillow, hair is pinned up, weights have been lifted, inner mouth tastes like listerine. tomorrow will be infinitely better than either today or yesterday. the best thing that happened today was showing up late to shakespeare, missing that initial ten minutes, during which she apparently droned for some time about a technical change to the syllabus. banality like that i can live without. the thing is, i'll probably flunk her class or something, now, because i won't have been there when she announced that all assignments must henceforth be printed on mint green construction paper, or whatever. not that she's the type to be that arbitrary. just saying.

the best thing about yesterday was getting forty dollars lifted from my back pocket, because it cast open the floodgates for a much needed crying jag. rain-muffled sobs on the street and such. it wasn't the money, nor was it having my rear end groped by a stranger in a skull cap. it was a whole collection of things; that was just the final and unfortunately most debilitating one. with the right attitude i could have turned around and chased him down. i probably would have caught him. he didn't seem that light on his feet. it was dark out, it was wet out; it would have been a good night to just hand over the rest of it, all three remaining dollars tucked down in the infamous "secret" pocket in front, pulled him back into an alleyway, spread my legs and said, okay, take me. i'm tired of being a half-assed victim. you've got what i was going to spend on krystle's birthday present, i can't show my face this weekend without one, you might as well just pleasure yourself and then finish me off. i was working on a degree, and i had a marketable skill or two under my proverbial belt, but you couldn't see those things, it's not your fault. you might as well.

at some point, probably high school, it occurred to me that no one can take sex from you if you give it willingly. hence the twisted appeal of prostitution, or being raped and murdered in the alleyway of my choosing, rather than on someone else's territory. i'd rather let the masked man in on the secret of my vulnerability.

same thing with marcus, kind of. not sexually. i never offer him anything i'd rather not, he never takes anything he shouldn't, et cetera. but he's completely, devastatingly aware of the extent of my devotion to him, and when he hurts me, the pain is open and frontal, nothing covert about it. i cannot understand why this bothers him, but it does, apparently. yesterday, when i asked what he wants for christmas (standard question whose answer doesn't matter in the slightest, because i've already decided what he's getting), he said, "i want to feel like we're even. i don't feel even. i want for you to feel as appreciated as i do." i muted the phone and snickered for a moment, because that would be a gift for me, wouldn't it? unmuted, said, "okay. then we'll work on that." really really really don't understand, though. we talked about it at length yesterday, about not perpetuating this pretense that he's able or willing to give as much as i am, because empirically, he is not. he is not. his long-term love is strong; his constitution when it comes to smaller things is weak and egocentric. we know this about him, both of us. we have a connection with no room for pretense otherwise. no room for power struggles. there is an inherent ridiculousness in the idea of two such people as he and i working at one-upping each other.

i've seen the joy luck club three times this month. i am auntie ying-ying, marveling at the collapsible slant of our lopsided house. he will something something, climb the stairs, expect to see me stretched out on a bed, sultry and black-clad. he'll love a virgin but want a harlot, feel the power of his dominance but yearn to share my wet defenselessness. he'll enter and see nothing at first, but i will be waiting like a tiger in the trees, ready to help him deconstruct our inequity brick by brick. the foundation, a sienna circle of music, will stand rigid and firm around us, waiting for the graceful gift of new walls. straight ones. something something. the spirit of our ancestors will resound in the something.

three times i've seen it. thrice.

it's ten o'clock. i should have started working two hours ago. i didn't, and now i'm going to start dipping into sleep time, trying to finish everything. fuck.

also, i told strange i might bring my drafts by her office this evening, then casually slept through the stated time. buffer is tomorrow morning. i won't be done then either. and i have to tutor for three hours, because i promised the pretty girl with the black coat that i'd come in to finish repairing her research paper. i don't know who decided i was qualified to do this. i do enjoy it, though. she and one other girl, a girl with a monroe piercing and a red-dyed mohawk, they've been a lot of the reason it's so rewarding this year. so i'm glad to do it. but it means the drafts will be shoddy, my palms will heat up during the conference, i'll get nervous and say something stupid, as i am wont to do when it's crucial that i not.

i speak almost exactly the way that i write. almost, with a couple of significant differences. i've got a set of words i hold in high reverence, words that make me shiver when i hear them out of other people's mouths, but that i'm not qualified to say myself. hard to say. my favorite word falls in that category, as do several related others. i can't call people by nicknames, out loud. melony is always "melony," even when everyone else is calling her "mel." reading aloud, i speak about four times faster than the speed of natural speech. professors complain. high, sort of heathered voice, flat accent into which occasionally creeps a light southern twang--nothing serious, i just take a shortcut now and again. my r's are sharp corners; i make the name "aurora herrera" sound like a perfect square. all my life i've worried i had a speech impediment. i don't. certain people profess shock at how articulate i am, because my peers have made a mockery of the atlanta dialect.

speaking of hickeys, i actually do have one, just south of my left ear. from before the fight.

and i'm sort of afraid aaron will think his present is stupid.

my dad yelled at me for no reason yesterday, and put six hundred dollars in my bank account this morning. a peace offering. i could buy two guitars with that. three seasons of a certain tv show on dvd. fifteen cds. sixty fast food dinners. or i could start making responsible financial decisions, and leave it where it is.

yeah. that one.

bad skin. bad skin. and i'm being bad, for not working right now. so, this interview is over.