Jul 012015
 

I used to talk to this guy Jeremiah when I was in high school, and I mean that literally and not as a euphemism for movie theater hand jobs. He was kind of Thug Lyfe-ish in that he lived in kind of a rough area and sold drugs and wound up in jail later on in life (he’s probably still in jail, and I’d Google that shit but I can’t quite remember his last name). When we would talk, I would oftentimes have to put the receiver down on my bed and go about doing my homework or painting my nails, getting a snack or finishing a mix tape, because that boy would talk and talk and talk about every last detail of his day, and it would be in this reallllly sloooooow voice.

“And then……………I sold a dime bag………..to………Aunt Meg……….” 

*Puts phone down and flips the tape to Side B*

He was busted selling cocaine to an undercover cop.

I mean, great guy though! He had my back and loved to make threats to suburban boys who were bothering me,  and even tried to help me when I decided in tenth grade that I was going to join a girl gang, except that I couldn’t figure out how to take a bus to his house in Hazelwood in order to be initiated into the gang.

I still wouldn’t know how to take a bus to his house in Hazelwood, so I’m still pretty similar to 10th grade Erin.

I’m only mentioning this because when I was writing my Waldameer post on Sunday, I paused and thought to myself, “Huh. I am essentially the Jeremiah of blogging.”

And then. And then! AND THEN!

Oh well. Maybe someday I’ll be on trial for murder and I’ll need to know exactly where I was and what I did on Saturday, June 28, 2015, and through the power of an Internet blog that can be altered and fictionalized at any given juncture, I will be able to give a courtroom a play-by-play a la Jeremiah from Hazelwood.

Your Honor, I started my Saturday by waking up. I took a shower. I do not recall shaving that day, but you should ask my life partner, Henry. He might recall. I got dressed. It was chilly at first, so I put on shorts and a long-sleeved Pierce the Veil shirt that I bought at their World Tour show in February, which is my first lie because HENRY bought that shirt for me.

I then attempted to make cream of wheat, into which I added cinnamon, dates, blueberries, lavender honey, and chia seeds. But it TASTED WEIRD. So I left it on the sink and then made a sad, pathetic English muffin. Henry had gone to the store real quick, but I don’t remember for what now. When he returned, I yelled at him to try the cream of wheat I left on the counter by the sink and he immediately said, “Your soy milk is bad, idiot.”

I pouted about this for awhile, and then I went upstairs and changed into jeans, a t-shirt, and a kimono-thing that I bought from some vintage shop’s Instagram flash sale and then that bitch acted like she shipped it but all she actually had done was create a shipping label and then after two weeks of the tracking info not being updated, I emailed her and got NO RESPONSE, but coincidentally, the tracking info was suddenly updated two days later when she FINALLY PUT IT IN THE MAIL. I’m not trying to cast aspersions here, but Frolic Vintage is a big fat unprofessional bitch and the kimono stunk when I got it. But it’s super pretty, and now it smells normal after Henry washed it.

Buyer beware.

Caveat emptor.

Don’t buy shit from Instagram, maybe.

(Are you painting your nails yet?)

Around 10:30, I drove through a dreary, Seattle-esque rainstorm to Lisa’s house in Pleasant Hills. I was slightly early, so I drove around a little bit because I was listening to PVRIS and if you listen to PVRIS, you might understand the need to stay in the car and just listen to one more song. And then one more. And fuck it, just let the album start over. I drove past the police station and my old dentist who fucked up my teeth when I was in elementary school (Dr. LeDonne, what a fucking dental douche!), and then I drove down the street that my first stalkee, Scott Dambaugh, lived on and WOW, MEMORIES.

At 11:00, I pulled in front of Lisa’s house, where she and Gigi were waiting for me at the door. Gigi had just had a bath, so Lisa had to go and get her dressed, leaving me to sit on the couch and interact with their dog, Tucker, who wanted me to play tug of war with him. Then Lisa brought Gigi back and left to get the laundry out of the dryer so I took that as my opportunity to make Gigi take selfies with me. Because I’m such a selfless person (yet full of selfies), I’m posting this one where Gigi is smiling (I told her to smile so people would think she likes me) instead of the other one I took even though I look so much better in the other one, ugh.
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Gigi is growing so fast! Her head is about the size of a cabbage now.

Then Lisa was like, “Come in the kitchen while I prepare lunch” which required her to spend 87 minutes cutting peppers because she kept getting distracted and I drank way too much coffee during this time and recounted the tragic tale of my wasted cream of wheat. Then I played Emarosa, Never Shout Never, and The Cure for Gigi, and explained to Lisa the whole Emarosa situation where they have a new singer now and how they’re even better than they were before which is really saying something because you know how obsessed I used to be with Jonny Craig….

“Who?” Lisa asked, and I thought she was kidding but she claims to honestly have never heard me mention Jonny Craig not even once in the last 7 years and I actually became disturbed by this because who doesn’t know about my (now buried) Jonny Craig obsession!?

I played her an Emarosa song and she said it reminded her of Stavesacre so she stopped cutting peppers for the 5456874th time in order to locate and then put on a Stavesacre CD and I was like, “This doesn’t remind me of Emarosa at all.”

While she had resumed chopping, I asked her if she remembered this one time back in 2002 or 2003 when we went to a coffee house to watch some guy sing.

She said no.

I said that I was pretty sure it was a friend of hers and that the coffee house was in Beaver Falls or Beaver, somewhere near the college she went to, and she was still looking at me like I was crazy.

“Yeah, and there was some guy there that you knew and it turned out that he worked at the gas station down the street from my house,” I pressed on, hoping to jog something in her decrepit memory.

“Nope,” she shrugged.

So then I texted Henry and basically asked him if he had any recollection of me going to this acoustic coffee house show with Lisa and he was like, “Sort of. I guess.”

After a good 30 minutes of this, Lisa finally remembered and then asked me why we had started talking about this in the first place.

“Because we were listening to Stavesacre in your car that night,” I replied in a “duh” tone. Why didn’t she just know this?!

She looked at me long and hard and shook her head. “Your memory is so weird.”

Lisa and I are so different in so many ways, that our friendship probably shouldn’t even work, but somehow it does. I remember every thing and she remembers nothing, so most of our conversations involve me trying to recreate our old memories with as many words and gesticulations as possible until something finally clicks, or ends with me giving up and saying, “It happened, OK? Trust me.”

Then me, Lisa, and Gigi ate lunch (eggs from Lisa’s aunt’s and uncle’s chicken, with pepper and feta) and then Gigi and I shared graham crackers and life was pretty good. After lunch, it was time for Gigi to get ready for her nap so Lisa said that she could pick out a book “and we can have storytime with Miss Erin.” I started to cheer at first but then said, “Wait…you’re reading it, right?”

“Yes,” Lisa sighed.

Gigi picked an alphabet book that featured atypical animals, like narwals and uakaris. It was OK, but I wanted more plot.

After Gigi went down for a nap, Lisa and I reminisced, and by that I mean I was one Google search away from “how to contact Mnemosyne” to come and bring back her fucking memories!

“Do you remember that one night in high school when we went to visit Jeremiah and Evan and Tony were so pissed?” I laughed.

“Who?” Lisa asked. “Jeremiah?”

I couldn’t believe that she had forgotten about Jeremiah! She used to get so annoyed every time he would page me! (Yes, I had a pager! I was trying to be in a gang, remember?!)

“We went there after Evan’s art show!” I offered, giving her more words to use as a crutch as she slowly limped down Memory Lane.

“Evan had an art show? Where was Evan’s art show?”

&^!!@#$%^%

“IT WAS AT CMU AND IT WAS ONE OF THE BEST NIGHTS OF MY HIGH SCHOOL LIFE!” I cried, and then she yelled at me for being too loud while Gigi was sleeping. UGH, EXCUSE ME!

I have video footage of that night, impromptu trip to Jeremiah’s house included, so I guess Henry will just have to get that transferred to DVD asap and then Lisa and I will have movie night, where she will have parts of her missing teen years pieced back together like a crude tapestry of band tees and Denny’s receipts courtesy of my compulsive videotaping.

Then I left and drove home without incident. I listened to Emarosa. Even some of the Jonny Craig Emarosa.

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I came home and bitched to Henry about how I couldn’t get the Bluetooth to work in my car (MY car) but then I was distracted by a package with name on it and it was a candy heart necklace I bought from Danny Brito! I put it on right away, because #everydaysentiments.

Then I think Henry and I watched Wayward Pines and So You Think You Can Dance and I cried a couple times because those dancers and their goddamn touching stories and insurmountable odds being overcome.

I took some type of pills because I had a headache and whenever I have a headache, Henry is all, “DID YOU TAKE SOMETHING FOR IT!?”

(Are you taking your own pills right now? Sleeping pills? OR IS THIS BLOG POST DOING THE TRICK FOR YOU?)

Then we decided that Chooch needed shoes to wear during the times he’s not outside with the neighbor kids playing Lord of the Flies, so the three of us when to one of the local malls that’s in the most state of despair, but it has a Journeys and Chooch wanted TOMS. First though, I almost perished on an escalator in JC Penney’s because I just never learned how to board one of those things without clenching up, but I almost died on one in Atlantic City when I was 4 but my PAPPAP SAVED ME.

We bought Chooch red TOMS, and the saleskid at Journeys shook Henry’s hand after he handed him the bag, which made me wonder if handed him something else, too.

There was a New Years Day video playing. I said something about not recognizing Ash Costello without half of her hair being red. No one cared.

GameStop was unfortunately right next door and the guy working there told us that they were having a Buy One Get One Free Skylander special that day only, and when Chooch started screaming, the sales guy was like, “YOU’RE WELCOME!” to Henry.

Chooch got two stupid Skylanders.

I went to Wet Seal because they were having a 60% entire store sale and after .0005 seconds it was clear that they’re going out of business because their clothes are ugly as fuck. I made sure to say this loudly too, because the girls working there are clearly the designers. They cared.

Then we left the mall and I pouted on the way home because Chooch got stuff and I didn’t.

Got home and went to my room and slammed the door.

Pouted.

Henry came upstairs and stood in the doorway, laughing at me.

I screamed a lot about being hungry.

Henry made me dinner but now I can’t remember what it was.

At some point, I checked my Simpsons: Tapped Out game and argued with Chooch about whose Springfield is better (obviously mine). Then I declared that it was time for pie, so after Chooch spent 15 minutes trying to pry on his right TOM (I told him he has Barney Rubble feet and then he had to google who Barney Rubble is, good lord), the three (Your Honor, that’s me,  Henry, and Chooch, for the record) of us walked down the street to Eat n Park. It didn’t take long before Henry broke away and walked ahead of us.

Way ahead of us.

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Some kid from Chooch’s grade was there with his family. Chooch was seated facing him, and he gets SO WEIRD when he sees his school friends outside of the classroom so that made for an awkward desserting experience.

I wanted cherry pie like really bad but Eat n Park doesn’t believe in damn good pie so I had to get peach instead. It was OK. Our waiter looked like Ed Sheeran. He might have been gay. That is just an observation.

I ordered my pie with ice cream, but I said, “With ice cream” and not “a la mode.” I wasn’t in a linguistically fancy mood. Not like I was 87 (give or take) paragraphs up there when I said “a la Jeremiah” like I’m some sort of brie-noshing Francophile.

Chooch got molten lava cake and Henry got grilled stickies WITH ICE CREAM and also a creamsicle milkshake, which made me do that deep-throated, “OH HO HO HO!!!” that I do when I’m emasculating his every move. Henry mumbled, “Shut up” and seemed embarrassed that I spotlighted his audacity to double-dessert, but really I just couldn’t wait to steal some slurps of his milkshake.

It was OK.

Just OK.

We had to leave soon after we finished eating because Chooch was starting to laugh so hard that he was choking and I was taking some horribly sloppy Henry Bomb photos which made the people at the booth adjacent from ours wonder if I was taking pictures of them and we kept making shifty eye contact with each other and it was just bad news all around, you know?

So Henry paid and we split.

Chooch and I made it about a quarter of a block before the sugar set in and we ran the rest of the way home, leaving Henry in the wake of our echoing giggles. Once home, we tried to hide from him behind a lilac bush that I always thought was a giant weed until someone once was like, “That’s a lilac bush. Haven’t you ever seen the lilacs on it?” and I was like, “Yes, but I just thought, ‘Wow, that large weed is growing lilacs.'”

Henry claims he knew we were there, then tried to lock us out, THEN lectured us on why screaming “CALL THE COPS!” is a bad thing to scream in our neighborhood.

I honestly have no recollection of what I did after that, but it likely didn’t involve murder, which I imagine is what I’m on imaginary-trial for. 

(Oh wait, I remember! I was making Henry and Chooch watch some guy’s homemade video from Glastonbury 1985 on YouTube while I spouted off about how wonderful music was in 1985 and how desperately I wanted to dive through the TV and land with a perfect somersault onto the grounds of Glastonbury just in time to have some goth boi help me obtain perfect Siouxsie cat eyes before The Cure’s set. Chooch was like, “All these people look weird. I’m going on the computer.” I can’t remember what Henry was doing, but it probably wasn’t googling ‘my girlfriend stabbed me in my spleen and I’m bleeding out. What should I do?’)

At some point I went to bed, probably fell asleep pouting.

(Are you still there? Hello?)

  6 Responses to “Saturday Alibi”

  1. I loved everything about this post but especially the part where you pouted because I do that sometimes without being able to help it and my husband will say ‘your mad because your kids stuff and you didn’t??’ It’s so terrible ahaha!

  2. This made me giggle. Especially the part about Henry probably not googling ‘my girlfriend stabbed me in my spleen and I’m bleeding out. What should I do?’ What kind of pie place doesn’t have cherry? Seriously. I don’t even like pie but I feel like not having cherry is an abomination. I love your candy heart necklace!

  3. Okay, here are the parts that made me laugh bad:

    “and I drank way too much coffee during this time and recounted the tragic tale of my wasted cream of wheat.

    She looked at me long and hard and shook her head. “Your memory is so weird.”

    I wasn’t in a linguistically fancy mood.

    We had to leave soon after we finished eating because Chooch was starting to laugh so hard that he was choking and I was taking some horribly sloppy Henry Bomb photos which made the people at the booth adjacent from ours wonder if I was taking pictures of them and we kept making shifty eye contact with each other and it was just bad news all around, you know?”

    I love that you have a friendship like that. Where the other person doesn’t remember and says your memory is weird, because everything is connected to you via music.

    You know, and good for you. Fuck “a la mode.” It’s WITH ICE CREAM.

    I love that you have a son who laughs that hard with you, and that you thought the lilac bush was a weed.

    Are you still there? Hello?

    Lime green and tangerine…

  4. The conversation you had with your friend is almost a word-for-word transcription of many I’ve had with my friend Jenni, She has the best memory ever and I never remember shit.

    BTW – a few months back my friend Jenni accidentally tagged you in one of her instagram photos because she follows you because she is jealous that we’re friends. LOL It’s probably because you and I have more in common than her and I do but that’s just how it goes. You don’t have to have anything in common to be good friends which is weird when I think about it but true. Anyways, when she tagged you she wanted to know if it would make you mad – she’s so weird. I was like “Why? She wouldn’t care since it was an accident” She’s a Nervous Nelly.

    • That’s funny! I remember that too and I figured it was just an accident. I wouldn’t be mad about something like that!

      I honestly have very little in common with most of my friends here in Pittsburgh, but it’s OK because you’re right — a good friendship is more than just liking the same shit!

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