Despertar

december 3, 2009

At midnight, we were watching Jeopardy on the couch with his roommates and I was keeping my score on an envelope. He was teasing me about the fact that I was keeping score, and I was teasing him back because obviously he was just upset about losing. One of the roommates had brought home a girl, this big, noisy blonde with a Southern accent and a string of pearls around her neck. They got into a discussion about Tiger Woods, and the blonde kept overtalking everyone with empty feminist cliches about men and fidelity. I didn't like her, and for some reason I felt threatened by her presence. The roommates see less of her than they see of me, so they were treating her as a novelty, treating everything she said as really profound and interesting--undeserved, I thought. The things she was saying were neither profound nor interesting, I thought. But I figured I was just feeling jealous, for some reason, so I kept quiet, didn't participate in the Tiger Woods discussion and continued to follow the DVRed Jeopardy episode with rapt attention.

After Jeopardy went off, he wanted to watch the last half of A Time to Kill, so we did. He had seen it before and had memorized all the most poignant quotes. I hadn't seen it before and had had a glass of wine, so I had an absurdly difficult time following the plot; it only registered as a series of tenuously connected scenes with overdrawn punchlines. I snuggled up against him on the couch and listened to him pre-quoting lines from the movie, making note of how the way he'd remembered them differed from how they actually went. He has a tendency to insert adjectives for emphasis, I noticed.

Before Matthew McConaughey stood up to deliver his final speech at trial, we migrated to the bedroom and watched the last ten minutes all wrapped up around each other. He had already told me the closing argument was his favorite part of the movie, so I knew I should wait till the movie ended, but I didn't. I hope he doesn't think I was intentionally trying to get him to choose me over the movie. I wasn't. It's just that we were lying there, and I was enjoying his breathing and the way his chest felt under his muscle shirt. He has very smooth skin.

The second the movie ended, we had sex, a much-anticipated event we'd had to postpone for several days because of Thanksgiving, my period and this cold I can't shake. I almost came but didn't, and didn't fake it either, but told him afterward--truthfully--that I couldn't remember anything better than that. He turned on ESPN and gave me a shoulder rub till I started to fall asleep.

After my rent check clears for December, I'll have thirty-two dollars in my checking account, so I had a nightmare about having my card declined by some faceless cashier at my hair salon. I woke up in at four in the morning, anxious and sweating, and remembered I had a hair appointment scheduled for five hours later. I wrote a note to myself that I would have to call and cancel it as soon as the shop opened.

I noticed my paramour/masseuse wasn't in bed and panicked, slightly, thinking I may have snored him awake because of my nasal congestion. I got up to go to the bathroom and found him perched on his living room sofa, playing Call of Duty on his Wii and wearing the headset that lets him talk to teenagers in Russia. I went and sat next to him for a few minutes, then put my head on his lap. He rested the Wii controller on my shoulder and kept playing. We traded a few trivia questions. When I realized I was falling asleep again, I got up and went back to his bed.

I woke up a few minutes later and he was lying behind me, touching my hip. I couldn't tell if he was awake and intentionally initiating more sex or just expressing affection in his sleep, so I inched backward a little and wiggled against him to find out. It turned out to be the first one. We had sex again and finished just as the first subway train of the day was passing through the station by his house. I fell asleep again and had an even worse dream in which I had planned a party but realized too late I didn't have an apartment in which to host it.

At eight-thirty, I woke up and stepped out of the room to call and cancel my hair appointment. I made up some excuse about having to be at school the whole day and said I would call and reschedule. I don't know why I felt such intense shame about having to cancel. I'm sure they've lost half their clientele since the recession hit, but my stylist is having her first baby in January, and I feel personally responsible for offering up steady business and giving her huge tips.

I slept a little more. At nine-thirty, I woke up, changed out of his shorts and into my own ridiculously impractical patterned tights, miniskirt and four-inch-heeled boots, nudged him awake to kiss him goodbye and went home to shower and change clothes.

During my first class of the day, someone in the row in front of me fell asleep and farted loudly. Everyone on my row heard it, but no one else did, so the six of us sounded like lunatics, laughing for apparently no reason.

Halfway through that class, I got a return phone call from a customer service representative from the IRS. I stepped out of class to take the call--a big deal, an error on my 2008 tax returns that I couldn't figure out how to fix till my dad got home from his three-month trip to Ethiopia--and three-wayed my dad into it. The representative we spoke to introduced herself as "Raychelle." My dad asked her to repeat her name, and she did. Regardless, he proceeded to call her Rayshawn at least a dozen times over the course of the conversation. I think he was trying to be particularly amiable (a new thing of his ever since he got back from Africa; the trip really knocked some things into perspective for him, and also he lost fifty pounds), so he addressed her by (the wrong) name WAY more times than anyone would in natural conversation. I didn't have much to contribute to the conversation, but I jumped in a few times just to pointedly call her Raychelle, hoping my dad would catch on and correct himself. Or even apologize. It did not happen.

Before we hung up, Dad asked her for a little more information about her department, including the address, so he could send a cover letter along with the check he was planning to send on my behalf. He also asked her to spell her full name. She spelled it--R-A-Y-C-H-E-L-L-E--and he said, and I kid you not, "Thanks, Rayshawn."

He's been in a fantastic mood since his trip ended, and no one wants to end it by calling him on the small annoyances. So I managed not to say anything about how he had butchered her name with almost comical repetition, and thanked him profusely for helping me with my tax problem.

By the time we were off the phone, class was over, so I went to the library and did some outlining. I checked the status of my FAFSA, which for some reason never got processed over the summer, which is why I'm completely destitute and rationing out my yogurts these days. I had to resubmit it this week and fight Student Accounts tooth and nail to put a rush on it so I don't get evicted. The FAFSA hadn't been processed yet.

I had another class. All the sleep I hadn't gotten the night before was starting to catch up with me, so I paid about forty percent attention and dedicated the rest of my brainspace to obsessing over the fact that I haven't gotten an HIV test in an irresponsibly long time and that maybe the reason I've had so many disgusting colds this season is because my immune system is compromised. I researched Planned Parenthood branch locations and resolved to walk in for a cheek swab this weekend. (I forgot about that until just now. I hope I remember to do it tomorrow.)

My friend Hugh sent me a text message inviting me to a Ted Leo concert. I know he genuinely enjoys my company and mostly invites me to stuff because he thinks it'll be fun to go together, but sometimes, like with stuff like this, I think the real reason he's inviting me is because I have a car and he needs a ride. He knows I don't really like Ted Leo and would never go out of my way to purchase tickets to a Ted Leo concert. I spent about half an hour drafting and deleting text messages that would get me out of the invitation without hurting his feelings. I finally settled on texting him as follows: "Thanks for the invite! I don't like Ted enough to justify the expense before I get my loan refund though."

Which I guess wasn't clear enough, because he texted back: "It's free, pumpkin." Which, fuck, I hadn't considered that he might want to go badly enough to spring for my ticket. So I texted back: "How is it free?"--hoping that by looking the gift horse in the mouth, I'd undermine his generosity and be free of the obligation.

He texted back: "Magic. Be at my place at seven-thirty for drinks beforehand."

I called my friend Eric, whose girlfriend Allison loves Ted Leo, and asked if they wanted to come along with us. Figuring that, at the very least, while Hugh and Allison were rocking out to awful arrhythmic live music, Eric and I could sequester ourselves in a corner somewhere and catch up. Eric, as it turns out, hates Ted Leo enough that he wasn't willing to do that even to make Hugh, Allison AND me happy, and suggested we find a way to make Hugh and Allison go together instead. We ended up making ourselves feel guilty enough at our lack of enthusiasm for the concert that ultimately I ended up just deciding to capitulate and go alone, but by that time, Hugh was experiencing an Ambien coma and didn't feel like it anymore. So I got to make microwave s'mores and watch The Office in my pajamas instead.

Then I watched four episodes of the first season of Lost on DVD while I did some reading for class. Boone died; I found myself unexpectedly in tears. I decided I hate Evangeline Lilly, did some light Googling to substantiate my position and decided I like her okay, instead.

At eleven-thirty, I drafted an emotional email to Tina. At three minutes to midnight, I sent it. I was asleep by midnight.