Thursday, April 28, 2005
wackos who think I date my brother, or why people should introduce me more often
Last night I went rollerblading with the bro, and on the way home we stopped at the coffee shop so he could get a cookie.
In his usual fashion, he failed to introduce me to his boss or coworkers. There was an awkward silence. It seems they were under the impression that I was his girlfriend, because after several awkward moments, his boss said, "so...who's the lovely young lady here with you?" followed by some not-so-subtle winking and nudging. Ugh.
The bro was like...."uh, this is my sister."
We laughed about this for the rest of the evening. This kind of mix-up has never happened to us before, mainly because my brother has always looked all of his four years younger than me. But now that he's 6'2" and I still look like a teenager....uh...awkward!!
It was a classic W.W.F.D. moment (What Would Freud Do?).
My life seems to have reverted to three possibilities. The first is awesome sex, the second is sleep, and the third is spending the night with the Boy. Sadly, I only ever seem to get two out of three. The Boy has always been a snorer, and not even a quiet one, but a locomotive pulling out of the train station kind of snorer. It used to be fairly easy to make him shut up, because when rolled onto his side he was quiet again. I also used to be able to poke him and he would stop temporarily, sometimes long enough for me to get back to sleep. But now, nothing stops him. I've even tried drugging him. I've also tried banishing him to the living room couch, but then I lose valuable possibility #3 and I'm cold all night because he takes the covers and his warm body with him and the sheet never keeps me warm enough on its own. Plus that really kills the closeness factor.
I suppose I could just jump him in the middle of the afternoon and then we could go home and sleep in our respective abodes. But that means I have to sleep alone, and I'm going to be doing a lot of that for the next four months, so I'd rather not get a head start on it.
Oh yeah, he is leaving in a week and will be gone until September. May 7 or thereabouts he leaves town to work in a coal mine up North, earning a ridiculously high salary, while I sit down here and drive myself to distraction. This has happened every single fucking year for the last five years or so. I should be used to it by now. But I'm not. At some point during the summers I can usually get the time and money together to go visit him in his insanely hot little mountain town in the interior. We hang out in the cool, cool basement, and he gets up for work at 5:00 and comes home late and goes to sleep a few hours later. We do have some fun times on these visits. There are advantages to semi-rural isolation when you haven't seen each other in months and are completely desperate to be alone together. But it seems somehow highly unfair to only see him for a week and then have to leave again.
Phone contact is highly unsatisfying. It makes him feel close enough to reach out and touch him, but he's always much too far away for that. I miss him and I cry and I get angry, particularly because he always seems so bloody calm and accepting of the whole thing. I want him to be sad and tell me he misses me and wishes he could be with me, but he's far too practical a chap to be sad when it doesn't help the situation. How on earth do you explain to someone that emotions were never supposed to be utilitarian in nature? That one ought to feel regardless of whether it makes things objetively better. Crying when someone dies never brings them back, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
It will be harder this year. My friends are all leaving too. G. and M. leave for China at the end of the month to teach English. I'd go with them but I'm not really ready to leave the country again. Even P.R. will probably go to China, and I haven't even successfully resumed friendly contact with him yet. I still think that deep-down, he probably still resents me. Cait has already left to go tree-planting for several months. Berdie leaves on her great European / Middle Eastern odyssey at the end of May. I have already been on that odyssey, and don't have the money to go again anyway.
Everyone's response to this dillema has been: "make new friends!" Ugh. How?? My only real prospect is the girl from my film class, and I can't very well inform her that she has to be my only friend for the next few months at least. I barely even know her. People also tend to back away slowly when faced with desperation.
Blech. Anyway...
I have to give the Little Punk a reading lesson of sorts today. After much mulling over what I could get him to read (his mother (!) suggested sports magazines and Maxim, neither of which I plan to use!), I settled on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. It may be a literary classic, but Holden Caulfield is the original little badass, and I figured he might appreciate that. We'll see.
I'm supposed to have a Chinese/Korean dinner tonight with Soph and her actress friend who I met at her birthday dinner a few months ago. I really like her friend. She's quite witty and clever.
I'm feeling a considerable amount of angst at the moment. It may be because my New Yorker calendar's cartoons have been most unfunny as of late. The latest one is a giant fork on the telephone saying "use your fingers." That barely warranted a half-chuckle. It may be because I've been listening to Coldplay, and Chris Martin always pisses me off cause he's so damn settled. I guess I would be too if I was married to Gwyneth Paltrow and had the balls to name my daughter Apple. He makes my life sound decidedly uncreative and wildly passionless. It may be because I am poor and am not looking forward to job-hunting at all. It may be because despite the pretty respectable statement of grades that I just got back, I been feeling ridiculously self-deprecating lately.
Or it may be for no good reason at all.
It would be cool if people would continue to comment on my 100 list.
Sorry for the lack of inspiration here.
I'll feel better after a shower and some caffeine. That always seems to work.
Cya.
-N
