Despertar

res ipsa loquitor

I really need a new header for this journal.

If only, if only, if ONLY I knew someone who made gorgeous journal headers.

*

Today started badly. Cold shower, originally put my contacts in the wrong eyes and couldn't figure out why everything looked blurry or why I could literally feel the ill-fitted rims touching my pupils, forgot deodorant and had to go all the way back to my room after I had already staked out a seat in my new class. I don't like how this looks for the rest of the semester, this Tuesday-as-hell-day thing. My Tuesdays have been safe since the days of Tuesday night piano lessons; I don't like the idea of surrendering them back to Satan now. Too bad I don't get a choice.

My Property professor reminds me in all ways of Courage the Cowardly Dog. She is obviously very, very afraid of us.

My Criminal Justice professor, I haven't had him yet today, but the syllabus says he doesn't allow laptops in his class. My feelings on this are mixed. On the one hand, given what I know of Generation Y law students and how they almost can't function without dividing their attention among a lecture and about a dozen internet windows, I think I'd outlaw laptops in my class, too, both on principle and because it would just hurt my feelings to know no one was really listening to me. On the other hand, though, by this point in my mental decline and my growing dependency on stimuli, two hours is really too long to ask me to be away from my computer.

After that comes LRW, which I already hate from last semester. No surprises there.

After that is a cocktail party reception thing for this law firm I'm hoping to work for this summer. The job search for law students is wayyyyy more cutthroat than I would have ever expected, and it involves constant, obligatory appearances at things like this reception, to which what the hell am I going to wear, and also, when am I going to change for it, given that the aforementioned LRW class doesn't end till twenty minutes before the reception starts, and being absent from any given minute of either is not an option today, and also, when does the nap happen?

Fucking Tuesdays.

*

I missed three calls from Marcus over the weekend. To catch you up: I graduated, months ago, from the phase where I had to ignore some of his calls because talking to him was too painful and always left me in tears. These, then, were calls I genuinely missed, and because I no longer have any investment in anything he has to say, I wasn't in a huge hurry to call him back, either.

When I finally did, he was (a little pissed at how long it took me, but also) bursting to tell me this story about how he ran into this girl, I think named Denise, whom I had completely forgotten existed until he said her name, and who stayed at Krystle's apartment for about two months during the post-Katrina evacuation. I had totally forgotten about this, but Denise was like a fly on the wall, literally eavesdropping from her air mattress by Krystle's fireplace, through the whole cataclysmic junior year drama, everything that happened with Sean and everything that happened with Krystle and OD and Chris, the huge fallings-out and the climactic election, and, most especially, the evolution of my relationship with Marcus from mildly dissatisfying to all-consuming in its shitness.

In other words, Denise probably has more insight into the construction of my post-adolescent psyche than anyone else on the planet, myself included. I could bring her along for backup if I ever decided to try therapy.

So, Marcus and I are debriefing his conversation with Denise, and as we're talking, I notice something weird: we're laughing about it. We're tossing out phrases like "fake relationship" and "awful to women," "Homecoming 2006" and "Evan" as though they're just words, and funny ones. I've never been able to talk about Homecoming 2006 with anything approaching casualness. Marcus and Denise recapped the whole thing from start to finish, and then Marcus and I recapped the recap, and I didn't die, I didn't want to crawl through the phone lines and kill him. I didn't even really want to hang up.

I no longer believe the world would be a better place if he weren't in it. That seems tremendous to me.

*

That's one thing that's really different about them. From the beginning, I always liked being around Justin. I always thought it would make other people happy to know him.

I don't get my nineteen-year-old self. She's an idiot.

*

Five hours of real time have elapsed. The laptop-free class was not so bad, and, in fact, was more bearable than the one I'm sitting in now. With laptop.