The fries I had with my sandwich at Frank & Shirley’s were the kinds that make me close my eyes and cry out in disturbing ecstasy. Deep-fried crispy shell with a buttery middle that melted on my dirty tongue, holy shit I ate those bitches like it was a fucking religious experience.

“I can’t remember the last time I had fries this good,” I moaned. I’m the kind of broad who will pick through fries on my dining companions’ plates, searching for “good ones.” Past boyfriends have written case studies on it.

“California,” Henry answered.

“Huh?” I asked, tonguing a masticated potato like I was being filmed for money.

“At that Greek restaurant, remember?”

“Um, Henry? I barely remember anything about that trip [to Coachella in ’04]; I had major rage blackouts.”

And then Henry finished the rest of his omelet with a frown, because I guess that trip meant more to him.

I found some pictures I took inside my grandparents house from 2007-2008. It’s mind-blowing to me how a house that was once so open and inviting (to family, anyway; most of my friends were afraid of it) turned into a bolted-up, secretive fortress. I haven’t been inside there since 2010, and that was for about 30 minutes before Sharon was shooing me out.

This painting was supposed to be mine. This was all I wanted, plus all the old photo albums. I don’t care about the money. I would rather continue living in pseudo-squalor than taking their handouts.

Chooch in the Clown Room, standing near a sharp-edged glass table, wooo parenting!

Master bathroom, one of my favorite rooms as a kid.

Someday I hope to have a house to cover in strange wallpaper.

Chooch in the kitchen. I just wanted to post a baby picture, that’s all.

WTF.

Someday, before the house is gone, I want to break in and take more pictures and just get one good, long look at what seemed so normal to me as a kid.

I spent some of the best days of my life at that house, watching “Golden Girls”, “Empty Nest” and “Hunter” during Saturday night sleepovers, eating grilled cheese, and playing PacMan in the game room while “She Bop” blared out of the jukebox.

It really depresses me to know how Grey Gardens it all has become.

(Susie, if you’re reading this and you have any photos of the house from when you were a kid, I would love to see them!)

My brother Corey sent me this picture yesterday when I was at work and I just lost it. It’s from Thanksgiving at my grandma’s house in 2002, when we were all still skilled at maintaining a shiny familial veneer in front of company. In fact, I think this may have been Henry’s first holiday with my family so I’m sure everyone was on their best behavior and my grandma probably only referenced me being a literary failure three times over the course of the night. (She used to lie to her friends at our tennis club and tell them I was going to Kent State for journalism because she was embarrassed that I was a lowly office manager in real life.

)

Oh geez, there goes my shoulder chip again!

Anyway, I love this photo because it captures us so well: Henry, looking exhausted, mildly frightened, and certainly sleazy. Me, looking adorable, mildly pouty, and certainly plotting.

I often find it incredibly surreal and hard to believe that we’re still a couple.

We sit closer together now, though.

Have you ever met someone who touched you so deeply even though your interactions were the equivalent to the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things?

I picked up a hitchhiker in 1998. He was thumbing it on an exit ramp in Washington, PA, and I just happened to be driving around aimlessly that night in my white Eagle Talon named Cassie Lane. I did that a lot back then – gas was cheap and driving around til the wee hours of the morning listening to painstakingly-made mix tapes was my therapy.

Yes, it was late at night.
Yes, I was alone.

But something in my gut told me to pull over for this guy.

Idling on the shoulder of the road, I asked where he was going.

“Pittsburgh, but I’ll go with you as far as you can take me,” he yelled through the open passenger window over top of passing big rigs.

“You’re not going to kill me, are you?” I asked sincerely. He seemed amused at my bluntness and promised that he had no such intentions. Probably Ted Bundy found himself in these same amusing situations too.

He got in the car and we made formal introductions. His name was Justin and he had hitched all the way here from Baltimore, having just gone through a bad breakup with his boyfriend. I told him to put his seatbelt on because I’m kind of an aggressive driver.

“YOU’RE not going to kill ME, are you?” he laughed.

It’s a short drive from Washington to Pittsburgh at that time of night on the highway, and the conversation never wavered. He told me all about his travels (this wasn’t his first time hitch hiking), the truck drivers he’d encountered, and his struggles living with AIDS. The level of comfort I felt with this complete stranger next to me was something I had never quite experienced before. There was a connection and in a short 30 minutes I found myself really caring about this guy.

When I had left my apartment earlier that night, I had no intention of driving downtown Pittsburgh, but I went with it. Clearly that was what fate had in the books for me that night. I could have dropped him off anywhere, but I took him all the way into the city. It was almost like I didn’t have a choice.

We were driving through the Fort Pitt tunnels when he was telling me that he had a friend in Pittsburgh who was going to be picking him up. Just then, my car burst through the other side of the tunnel and Justin stopped mid-sentence, just totally choked on his words.

He was staring out the window at the city skyline, all lit up and reflecting off the river.

Finally, he managed to whisper, “Wow…” For the first time in my life that night, I saw the beauty in the city in which I was born and raised.

Justin said his plan was to find a pay phone to call his friend, and even though he kept insisting that I just drop him off anywhere, I was determined to keep circling around the empty city streets until I found him a pay phone.

Finally he said, “Ok, I have to tell you the truth.”

This could have been the point in the story where he pulled a knife on me and I admit to my blog readers that I was once a boy until my penis was sliced off that night like a hunk of bratwurst from the deli. But really, he just wanted to tell me that there was no friend he was meeting, and that his only plan was to find a shelter and a job.

I couldn’t bear the thought of him sleeping in a shelter, or worse—the streets, and begged him to just come back home with me until he had a better plan, but he refused to impose. I gave him my number and, since my 35mm camera was always in my purse, asked if I could take his picture. Not like I’d ever forget him.

I went home and cried so hard.

He never did call me, and I still wonder every time I’m in that tunnel what ever became of him. In our brief encounter, that chance passing, he managed to get a 19-year-old girl to feel more compassion and humanity than she had yet to experience in her sheltered rich girl suburban life.

There a lot of things about this city I don’t like, but because of a hitch hiker, I still smile at the way the Pittsburgh skyline lights up the river and the sky. How could I ever forget him?

Chooch started nosin’ through some of my old stuff in the bedroom while I was focusing on ruining Henry’s nap, when suddenly he laughed behind me and exclaimed, “What IS this?!”

Oh god, please don’t let it be some archaic vibrator or drug paraphernalia, I thought.

But it was just an old Bobby Brown cassette single, probably purchased at my favorite record store, Waves.

“Oh shit, we have to play this!” I screamed, while Henry was trying to convince Chooch we don’t have a tape player because he didnt want to deal with it. (You know, trying to nap and all.)

So then I spent the next 15 minutes struggling to mend an old tape player while Henry begged us both to just go downstairs. Finally, I achieved success! (And also a large quotient of dust in my nostrils.)

Finally, my bedroom was pregnant with the tinny tones of Bobby Brown crooning about humpin’ around while Henry rolled his weary eyes.

“Mommy, what’s this?” Chooch asked innocently, handing me a holographic bullet-like object, which for a moment I actually did mistake for a lady toy.

“Oh, that’s just a lighter that doesnt work anymore,” I said, but as I absent-mindedly struck it, a flame squirted out. “Oh, shit, it does work!” I laughed, tossing it back at Chooch’s chest.

“Yeah, so give it back to him, that’s great,” Henry mumbled, dragging a hand down his dark eye circles, at which point Chooch chucked the lighter at his face and we died laughing. And by “we,” I of course just mean Chooch and me. Henry has to relearn that function after the accident. And by “accident,” I of course mean out relationship.

There was no point to this, but Andrea is coming to Pittsburgh this week (she arrives after midnight!) and I am hyper! And I have at least three posts to write about my beloved Big Butler Fair but can’t find the time so I’m all stressed out but then I remembered, wait—this isn’t my job and no one cares.

Speaking of my job, I’m off all week!

This will never fail to make me lose it!

Ironically, listening to Drake (the rapper formerly known as Jimmy “Got Shot” Brooks on Degrassi) has been an immense help in getting through the Law Firm Walking Challenge.

As soon as this is over, I need to have a Degrassi marathon. My brother Corey doesn’t know it yet, but he’s bringing the (Canadian) snacks. My house is a pit, but you guys can come too.

It was August of 2008 and we went to a really lame carnival. Here, let me tell you about it.

******

“When are we going? Hello? When are we going? The carnival, when can it expect us?” For three days, I hounded Henry about some wimpy-assed fucking church carnival after we saw a sign for it.

“You know this is going to be a small thing, right? Probably not very many rides, if any,” Henry kept reminding me, probably hoping to change my mind. But my mind is unchangeable without something of equal or greater awesomeness to replace the void. And no one came knocking on my door, inviting me out to play with moon boots, so I remained fixated on the Saint Sylvester church carnival.

We got there around 6:30 and I immediately became aware that what this was, right here, this carnival, was really goddamn lame, a real sad affair. The rides weren’t running yet, so we cautiously followed the signs that promised us CRAFTS and FLEA MARKET, and led us into the church basement.

The CRAFTS were sparsely strewn amongst tables forming a small horse shoe on one side of the room. Taking over the rest of the room was a fucking holy picnic of some sort, with people straddling tables and shoveling haluski and other church food into there religious maws. We awkwardly circled around the crafts, not even pretending to admire, me saying something obnoxious, before returning to the Little Church Carnival That (Possibly) Could (If Father Would Go ‘Head and Order Those Belly-Dancing Pygmies).

After two seconds of taking in my surroundings, I realized that this wasn’t a carnival so much as an asshole parade. All the moms strutted around, haughtily greeting each other, their mauve eye shadow caked on in thirteen layers and pooling in their crow’s feet. I of course did not fit in. Especially when you consider the fact that I am not a parishioner of this or any church, other than the church whose bell tolls in my head.

There were three of them that I especially hated:

• a tall corn-fed hoe with tightly-wound brassy curls that were clumped and heavy-hanging with Dippity Do, probably semen.  She really looked out of place without the plow she should have been pushing on the farm, that dumb bitch. I bet she was a Majorette in high school.
• some haggard broad in an ugly pink shirt (not the awesome hue of pink that MY shirt was) who was friends with Olga the Plow Pusher. She had the worst eye makeup of them all and stood right in front of me with her saggy-assed chinos and pleather fucking fanny pack and the two of them dove right into a nauseating display of waving. It’s a sport for those people, you know. Church people? They wave for entrance to Heaven. And it’s phony, too. Their “hellos” are so nasal, like they’re playing Operator with their toy phones, and they stand there with their fists on the waistbands of their flood jeans, fluttering their costume-ringed fingers in their pretentious little waves and you know what? Go home and bake me some pumpkin bread, you assholes.
• rounding out the iron arc of pretentiousness was some bitch that was younger than those two, and it was clear, so so so clear to me that she only fraternized with them because they made her feel like the token spunky young mom with the poorly executed tattoos and too-skinny husband who I think I might have went to school with. I was glaring at her about the time Janna arrived and I didn’t even say hi, just pounced right into a hateful tirade that started with, “There’s a bunch of cunts here that I want to kill, Janna.”

And the rides! Oh, my brothers and sisters, please don’t get me started on the rides. There were only four of them: a rickety ferris wheel whose too-fast revolutions made me clutch my heart while watching from the ground, stupid ass helicopters, a tiny carousel that appeared to be fashioned from orphaned horses, and some dumb little kid spinny thing.

EACH RIDE WAS TWO FUCKING DOLLARS. Two dollars that would be better off tucked into a g-string. But Chooch seemed to enjoy the helicopters, and Henry reminded me several times that that was really all that mattered. I guess.

We stopped and bought three fried Oreos.

They were pathetic. I ate half of one and begged Henry to take the rest. He was angry that I was complaining and reminded me that they only cost a dollar so what did I expect.

I DON’T KNOW. Perhaps for them to be drizzled with a nice ganache? Some kind of delicate rum sauce? LACED WITH COCAINE?

We walked over to the petting zoo, figuring Chooch could at least meet his animal manhandling quota for the month, but there was an extra fee for that.

“WHAT A RIP!” I yelled, purposely, hoping to be heard. “THIS CARNIVAL BLOWS.” Just then, the priest walked past me and Henry grabbed my arm, grabbed it the way a father does to an out-of-line child, the way my step-dad used to when I would spit YOU ARENT MY REAL DAD in his scruffy face.  So Henry grabbed my arm and squeezed, hissing, “This is a CHURCH CARNIVAL. It’s to raise money FOR THE CHURCH.”

WELL. For someone who was so against Chooch being baptized, Henry sure seemed intent on defending the carnival. The holy fucking ghost must have anally entered him when I was busy looking for scene kids.  Probably why he was walking like he had chronic jock itch. Meanwhile, we were going to sit at table but some undulating diseased genitalia stole it right from underneath us, an entire table just for her and her fucking hot dog.  I was tirading all over this side of Pittsburgh by this point, pushing Henry to tersely say, “OK, that’s it. We’re leaving.”

I had sinful desires to jack this truck. I have a lot of things I could use it for. And I’m not just talking about carting crates of chickens around town.

On the way home,  Henry lectured me about being hateful and that no one there gave me a reason to be so angry. IT IS HOW I AM WIRED. CANNOT, WILL NOT, CHANGE. it’s how my mama made me. And sometimes I don’t mind people. Like today, on my walk to the post office, I said hello to ONE ENTIRE PERSON and even exchanged weather-related pleasantries with a  crossing guard. Granted, I considered changing my route home so I wouldn’t have to talk  to her again, but I didn’t scowl at a single soul. And I walked, like, eight blocks or something! (Actually, I don’t really know how to count blocks when they’re not obvious.)

Janna didn’t seem to mind the carnival. I bet she went home and wrote about it in her diary.

Dear Diary,

Jeepers, I went to a carnival up at Saint Sylvester’s tonight and it sure was swell. They even had fried ice cream! Can you imagine, Diary? It was so dreamy, like really tremendous! Fried ice cream outside of a Mexican restaurant!

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Almost better than a malt in a frothy glass with a spiral straw! And pony rides! I ought to have straddled one of those ponies, Diary, if only I had the courage. Gosh, it was the craziest scene! Real life ponies! And people sporting their fanny packs, no shame whatsoever! I totally ought to have worn mine! And my best cuffed plow-pushers! My only regret is not bringing enough money to buy a macrame tissue box holder from the craft table. But overall, what a night! I mean, it was really the limit!

I guess the Westmoreland County Fair spoiled me after all.

Back when I had a corporate AmEx card that mommy paid for (my name was spelled ‘Eirin’ on it, and I had grown so accustomed to signing my name that way that, for years, I would have to consciously think about the correct spelling in all other circumstances), I used to buy CDs like they were going out of style. (Oh!) CD Baby was my all-time favorite online shop of music and I would often order CDs based entirely on the site’s recommendation without even listening to a sample. I added some exceptional albums to my collection that way. (And also some exceptionally terrible ones.)

The Flir was one of those CDs. All I needed to see was that it was categorized as trip hop and in the cart it went without a second thought. The first time I listened to it, it was a muggy summer’s night in 2003 and I was on my way back to Pittsburgh from visiting my friend Moira in Greensburg, few cars on the highway, and I was entranced. The only way I can describe this EP is steamy and aphrodisiacal, a baby-making record with subtle, bass-driven hints of Disintegration-era The Cure. (Though Henry could never hear that.) We took a ton of road trips that summer and the Flir came along every single time. (This was back when Henry didn’t abhor the music I listened to. You know, when he was younger and hipper.)

(No wait, that never happened.)

I’m drawn to this kind of music every summer, and even though it’s technically not summer yet (someone would say it if I didn’t!) I’m sharing this on here today because it’s one of those hidden gems that sometimes you never find on your own. (And also because I’m killing time, waiting for Henry to finally finish his kitten story which he has been writing for approximately TEN DAYS now.) If you like it, you can get the whole EP here for FIVE BUCKS just do it.

I was listening to the new Spill Canvas today when I felt this nagging urge to revisit one of my favorite songs by them, even though I knew it was going to make me all pathetic and wistful. (What else is new, am I right Jonny Craig doll?)

My 2007 Warped Tour experience was my least favorite of all the years I’ve gone to it, mostly because I went to the one in Cincinnati and it was kind of a clusterfuck, we missed Chiodos, and I was with people I didn’t really want to be with. (Oh, and my car’s engine blew out on the way home.) But, The Spill Canvas was there, and even though I nearly passed out during their set (it was close to a hundred degrees that day; people were passing out all up in that joint), it was one of the few highlights for me.

“The Tide” is actually my all-time favorite Spill Canvas track, but that song makes me emotionally handicapped. It’s just so fucking depressing.

Goddammit, I just listened to it.