When I broke up with Psycho Mike back in 1998, it was for good. Done-zo. Fini. We didn’t really maintain a friendship, but there were several occasions where we did find ourselves hanging out with each other in the three years that followed.

The last time I saw him was the summer of 2000. We had drinks at some Chinese restaurant for my 21st birthday, and shortly after that he moved to Maryland with his current girlfriend. I never sought him out after that, never even considered it. Just the fact that I was occasionally hanging out with him post-break up was playing with fire. Our relationship was extremely tumultuous, and he remains the one and only guy who ever had the pleasure of controlling me, psychologically and physically. Actually, I attribute to him my extreme dominance and desire to emasculate in every following relationship, because after two years with that guy there was no way I was letting another man tell me what to do or physically bully me. (Sorry Henry – imagine what life would have been like for you had we met prior to 1996. I mean, after you’d have served jail time for statutory rape.)

In early 2006, I started having fleeting memories of Mike (much to Henry’s delight, I’m sure). The memories weren’t of the pining variety or anything, just random flashbacks here and there, such as an instance where Henry and I were driving around and I pointed excitedly out the window at a parking lot and said, “Look, that’s one of the places where Mike kicked me out of his car and told me to have fun walking home, bitch!” And another time when Henry and I were at the grocery store and the song that was playing via the store’s stereo was the same one that played in my apartment the night he tried to kill himself with a butter knife.

You know, little snippets like those.

This went on for several days, these weird memory tuggings, until Henry called me from work and said, “Hey, you know how you’ve been thinking about Mike a lot lately? His mom just died; it was in the paper.”

***

That was five years ago. To be honest, I barely even remembered that happening until I started having dreams about Mike. The first one was about two weeks ago and left me coated in a cold sweat. The dream was subtle, but extremely effective; in it, Mike stood before me, naked from the waist up except for a sinister grin. No words were exchanged; it was just me sitting there, watching him before me, waiting for him to presumably strike.

That tiny vignette stayed with me for days.

Then I found a raunchy love letter he had written me, casually sitting on top of Chooch’s desk. It must have been in a box of VHS tapes that Henry brought down from the attic now that Chooch has inherited a TV/VCR combo. Honestly, I didn’t even think I still had that piece of amateur Penthouse trash, but of course I quickly re-read it and then made Henry read it too; we had a good laugh. But damn if it didn’t give me a little jolt to see that tattered envelope, to have my memory bitch-slapped with his handwriting, to fucking hear his voice in my head as I stumbled through this letter of misspelled words. (Apparently, I used to call his weener “Russell.” I don’t remember that.)

I didn’t go looking for this letter. It was just laying there. In my kid’s room of all places! Thank god he can’t read yet.

The other night, I had another nightmare. This one was more involved, more blatant about the fact that he really did intend to hurt me. Henry and Chooch were in the dream, we were all in my mom’s basement with Mike, but I couldn’t get them to see what was happening; I kept trying to act like I hadn’t picked up on his murderous ruse and would make up excuses to try and sneak away, saying that I was going upstairs to make popcorn, really had to have popcorn, which would only lead to me speeding down highways and trying to get strangers to let me hide in their homes. I woke up with my pulse racing and relieved that Chooch had found his way into my bed sometime during the night. It’s sad when I feel protected by a four-year-old.

Henry and I had a conversation about it later that day, and he said, “Hey, remember a few years ago when….” and the syncronicity all came flooding back. “You’re probably going to run into him,” Henry teased, because IT’S GOING TO BE SO FUNNY WHEN MIKE LODGES A BUTTER KNIFE INTO MY NECK.

“Of all the people I’ve dated, he’s the one I could totally see being a serial killer. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said to Henry in the high-pitched squeal of a woman who fears for her life. I had flashbacks of the times he strangled me and threatened to “poke out my eyes and shove them up [my] vagina.” And that’s a true motherfucking story.

***

I came home this morning around 8AM, having just deposited Chooch across the street at school. I was on the phone with Henry, probably cellularly demoralizing him, when I walked in the house. I noticed it right away.

“Henry. The piggy bank,” I said in a hoarse whisper.

“What about it?”

“IT’S MOVED.”

Chooch has this creepy fucking piggybank, lovingly named Pignaceous, which I like to keep against the wall in the living room for all to grudgingly admire. But when I came home, he was pulled out from the wall and moved to the center of the room, facing the dining room table.

I knew exactly who did it. It was Mike. That motherfucker was in my house, probably come to reclaim his Neil Diamond boxed set.

“You need to come home. Right now.”

Henry laughed. “There’s no one in the house.”

How would he know?

“Then I’m leaving. I can’t stay here,” I shouted, pacing like a crazy lady.

Henry laughed again and asked where I was going to go. “I don’t know! I’ll sit on the front porch until Chooch is done with school!”

More laughter from Henry, then I told him to fuck off and hung up on him.

In the kitchen, I grabbed a steak knife. Together, the steak knife and I stood at the bottom of the steps, where I whispered, “Is anyone up there?” to no response.

The steak knife and I then watched “Vampire Diaries” before taking a shower, making sure to lock the door behind us. I was fully prepared to pull a reverse-Psycho.

Eventually, I forgot about obsessing over a home intrusion and resumed my normal–yet completely glamorous–Chooch-free morning routine.

It wasn’t until Chooch had been home from school for nearly an hour when I remembered the piggybank, which I had nervously nudged back into its rightful spot with my foot.

“Hey, Chooch?” I asked tentatively. “Did you move Pignaceous this morning?”

“Yeah,” he said, very matter-of-factly, popping a Cheez-It into his mouth.

“Show me where you moved it to,” I prodded, wanting to test him.

He sighed in annoyance and stood into the exact spot where I had found Pignaceous that morning.

Relief flooded over me, and I laughed out loud. “Why did you move him?”

“Because I wanted him to say ‘oink oink’ to the cats,” he explained, shrugging.

Maybe Chooch also has a rational explanation for these Mike-centric nightmares. But if I suddenly stop posting here in my blog, know that it’s likely because I came home to find Psycho Mike standing in Pignaceous’s place.

Probably the only thing Henry enjoys more than receiving a swift punch to the guts/knee in the nuts combo when I get into bed every night is being forced to stay up for a half an hour and listen to me rattle on about my new love.

“You’ll never guess what happened tonight!” I gasped as I climbed over a blanketed mound of Henry and kicked my legs under the covers.

I paused for a second or two, waiting for enthusiastic curiosity to gush from his mouth. I prodded him in the tailbone to gain back his attention.

“I talked to my crush!” I squealed into his sleep-veiled face. He murmured unintelligible syllables which I took to mean, “Oh, what an exciting development. I am grasping my penis, like a baseball bat, in a fit of impassioned anticipation. Please recap the entire conversation, preferably on a stage and in costume!”

And so I turned over on my side and spilled forth my secrets.

“OK so I was walking out of the building because it was the end of my shift and I was leaving, right? And he was standing outside and so I was like Ohmigod should I say it? and I did! I said ‘Bye!’ in that really sweet baby voice I use on people who don’t know the real me, or maybe I said ‘See ya,’ I don’t really know now but whatever I said I’m sure it was fucking brilliant and seductive and then you know what he said back? Oh my god, he said ‘Hey, have a nice night, now’–” And here I paused briefly to shake Henry with my quivering hand so he could understand how profound this exchange truly was. “–like he was struggling to hold himself back from ravishing me right then and there and then I said ‘You too, hehe.’ Isn’t that fucking incredible?”

“Who are you talking about?” Henry moaned into his pillow.

“The security guard at work, you idiot!” I mean, I don’t expect a lot from this relationship, but at least have the decency to keep my crushes in check. “I think his name is Chris,” I cooed, reverting back to my puppy-love intonation. And Henry deemed this a good time to get up and leave for work.

Earlier that night, thanks to Tina’s primal need for gossip (I always get this visual of Tina slurping the gossip out of coworkers’ mouths, like an oyster from a shell. I hope you will now, too!), I learned that the old security guard had been fired for, in Tina’s exact words, “doing the illegal.” I took this for a good opportunity to engage Eleanore in friendly banter regarding the whole situation because she also is a carrier for the Talksalot gene.

Leaning back in my chair, I reached my arms into a stretch and asked, “Oh, so is that why there’s that new guard out there now?”

“Yeah, babe. I guess so.” Eleanore seemed more primed for discussing the aforementioned illegalities, but I forged ahead anyway, hoping that my interest in the new, drama-free guard wasn’t raising suspicions.

“What’s his name, I wonder?” I mused, making sure to sound like I didn’t care too much, though my ears perked at the slight jump in octave near the end of my question. I’m no stranger to moments of out-of-control crush-induced mania, after all.

“I don’t know, sweetie. I think his name is Chris. But don’t quote me!” I found myself breaking into a smile and slowly mouthing his name to my computer monitor. Visions of Christmas morning gyrated through my mind: his stocking emblazoned with a silver glittered “C” hanging joyfully from the fire place mantle, while I poured coffee into his C-monogrammed mug with one hand while adjusting my “I ♥ Chris” pendant with the other.

Eleanore leaned back in her chair and peeked around the divider. “Why don’t you just ask him when you see him?” she suggested.

I nodded and said I would do that, tousling my hair against my cheeks to mask the fast-spreading blush. Then it became giggle-suppressing time.

During one of our breaks outside, Tina and Eleanore were still buzzing about the security guard soap opera. Tina went on to lambaste the new guard by complaining that when she left early the night before, he wasn’t even inside the guard station.

I was furious. I couldn’t have her making such serious accusations about my new boyfriend like that. So when I noticed a slight movement in the guard station across the parking lot, I interrupted the conversation by over-zealously shouting, “He’s in there!

The new guard! I just saw him move!” Tina, Joe, and Eleanore quieted down and stared at my finger, wildly pointing across the lot. I lowered my arm and, toning down the TRL-esque shrillness in my voice, concluded by saying, “See, he’s doing his job. That’s all.”

And they resumed their boring discourse in property taxes and cost of living. Bo-hor-ing.

I can’t really tell you why I’m already penning the story of our eternal love. It’s not that his hands are clad in erotic security-strength gloves, because they aren’t (although could you imagine? Ho boy!). It’s not because he coifs his mane in the style of Robert Smith and recites idyllic sonnets about the way the sunlight vaults off my golden locks the same way my boobs bounce when I chase after the ball in a sweaty match of kickball. Because he doesn’t do that either. Christina does, though.

Look, it’s not even fueled by superficial desires to put my hands all over his security-badged chest, because to be honest, I haven’t been close enough to see how attractive he really is. My eyes are bad!

I think it’s because he’s black. I’ve been listening to a lot of Bone Thugs n Harmony lately.

[Ed.Note: Found this when doing some Tina-related digging on my old LiveJournal!]

Call me a hypocrite, but my favorite part of traveling through Europe as a kid was all the cathedrals and churches I got to poke around in along the way, from Westminster Abbey to the Cathedral of Notre Dame to the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi, where I witnessed an enraged monk flinging a thick chain against a stone wall and had nightmares about it for weeks. It’s not the religious aspect for me, but more the architecture and art. Old religious art scares the shit out of me, which only makes me want it more. It’s why I have a small (but growing!) collection of it in my bathroom. Nothing will top that $2 mosaic of the Last Supper made from aquarium rocks, though.

The Vatican of course always had the greatest impact on me. Even just waiting to get inside is scary. It’s been awhile since I’ve been there – over a decade – so I’m not sure if the rules are as stringent, but from what I remember, shorts had to be at least knee-length if you wanted any chance at all of eking past the Swiss guards. (I took a picture of them once and I thought my family was going to have a heart attack. “DO NOT TAKE THEIR PICTURE! DO NOT EVEN MAKE EYE CONTACT WITH THEM! IN FACT, JUST STOP BREATHING!”) And don’t even think about slipping inside the Vatican with exposed shoulders. I always brought a windbreaker with me on days where any sort of religious facility was going to be toured, just to be safe.

Plus, it’s as icy as Herod’s heart in those fuckers.

Once inside the Vatican, I would always cry. Always. The history alone is enough to make you catch your breath, but then you look up at the Sistine Chapel and it’s the most realest Shut the Fuck Up moment you might ever experience in your life. Just knowing that one man accomplished that expansive work of art, it’s just, I can’t even. And to stand below it, to see it with your own eyes? Even if art isn’t your thing, I can’t imagine anyone looking at that and not feeling something. Even if that something is just a slight sense a vertigo.

My most vivid memory though has nothing to do with St. Peter’s Basilica or Bernini’s baldacchino (I will have someone make me my own baldacchino before I die, count on that), but of an Asian tourist kneeling down on the ground to take a photo and promptly being converged upon by guards and escorted out without so much as a warning. Let that be a lesson to all you Asians and kneeling aficionados!

I am not a spoiled little rich girl anymore, and God only knows (haha, see what I did there?) when or if I’ll ever make it back over there. So when I heard that Vatican Splendors was rolling into the Heinz History Center, I sent out a frantic tweet to find someone who would be down for ogling priceless religical relics; Kara immediately replied. (Kara is my go-to-girl for looking at things and eating weird food.) This was in September.

Two weeks ago, I was in the car with Henry and Chooch when I saw that the billboard for Vatican Splendors now had a warning of FINAL DAYS! slapped across it. Slight panic set in. “Oh shit,” I said to no one who cared. “I forgot that for a split second I was interested in that!” Kara and I quickly solidified plans after that; great marketing plan – the sense of threat always makes me less ambivalent when it comes to plan-making.

It was packed when we lined up for the tour last Friday. Groups are sent through every 30 minutes, and the groups themselves didn’t seem too overwhelming, but that wasn’t accounting for all the die hards in earlier groups who would pause for eternity in front of an ancient mold of a man’s head and ask their companion, “Now how do they know this was a man’s head?” at which point their pretentiously-scarved scholar friend will swan dive into a dissertation causing the rest of the groups to pile up and shuffle impatiently in place behind them because we too want to see this half-destroyed chunk of cranium-shaped stone and hey bitch, just go home and GOOGLE THAT SHIT.

Inside the exhibition, it was quite literally a Red Sea of fanny-packs, velour track suits on liver-spotted bodies, dentured smiles framed with coral lipstick. This one old broad kept running into me, so I started “accidentally” elbowing her, smashing my purse against her broad backside, purposely planting my feet a few seconds longer in front of a particular reliquary that has her craning her Aqua-Netted coif over my shoulder and shaking her blood pressure pills, that’s how badly she can’t wait for it to be her turn.

I quickly remembered that I don’t get along well with other people who want to look at Jesus art.

“There are so many people here I hate,” I whispered to Kara, and she gave me a knowing nod. She carried her billion-pound slumbering baby through the whole exhibit, so I think she was probably more focused on hating her own life at that point.

While the demographic was mostly in the 65 – Holy Ghost range, there were a few kids there as well. One guy behind me was quietly observing a painting with his son, who was probably five or six, and asked him, “What do you think is going on in this picture?” at which point they had a quiet, intellectual dialogue. It gave me pause. I tried to imagine Chooch there with me, but all I could hear ricocheting around my head was: MOMMY I CAN SEE THAT ANGEL BROAD’S BOOBS! WHO’S THAT DEAD BASTARD? WHY IS DEAD JESUS LOOKING AT HIS MOM’S BOOBS??? DOES JESUS HAVE A WEENER? AW, CHRIST.

This is why I leave my child at home with his uncultured father.

At one point, a pernicious tickle cropped up in my throat. I knew this tickle well, we go way back. He likes to present himself anytime I’m in a situation where I’m in a crowd of people, looking at things, and trying to be respectful. He was at my child’s Baptism. He was at the Salem Witch Museum during a presentation where everyone was asked to STFU, and there I was, trying to smother myself in Henry’s side to silence my uncontrollable coughing.

“Do you think I’ll get yelled at if I sneak a sip of my water?” I whispered to Kara, who probably couldn’t have cared less about my tickling throat situation, considering her arms were about to atrophy under the weight of her slumbering baby. There were History Center employees ducked into shadowy doorways and corners all throughout the place, but I chanced it. I was fine after that, but unfortunately I didn’t put the cap on all the way so water slowly spilled out onto the contents of my purse the whole time I pretended to read the plaques next to things like Very Important Deeds Behind Glass. I wouldn’t discover this until I was on my way home, of course. Good thing I didn’t have my Mogwai smuggled in there, am I right?

Of course, there was no photography of any kind allowed, which is a shame, because I was mostly interested in taking photos of all the people I couldn’t stand.

Like an old lady and her even older mom, who I think was handicapped, actually I think they both were. They were behind me for awhile, and the daughter had some gilded nugget of information to add to every artifact. Like the Pieta.

“They say the replica is so similar to the real one, that it’s hard to tell the difference!” she cooed to her mom, who muttered an “mmm” in response. Then they dipped out of line and flitted off yonder. “But I was learning so much from them!” I whined to Kara, whose baby-cradling biceps had inflated to the size of dwarves by that point and it’s a good thing they weren’t that big on the way in because she probably would have been charged admission for them. You know how the Church is.

There were definitely a few moments where I got all choked up, not because I was having some crazy religious awakening, but just being face-to-face with so many pieces of history. Even looking at one of Michaelangelo’s tools encased in glass, I got a little awe-struck. I don’t necessarily believe in God and all that, but I do believe in art, and the existence of Michaelangelo, Bernini, Botticelli, Guercino. (His Christ with Crown of Thorns was there and I seriously almost lost it; that painting is so goddamn scary to me, I can’t even. My favorite part was when two teenage girls pushed their way through the crowd and one of them yelled, “Hey! That’s that really famous painting!” They looked at it for .005 seconds from about 10 feet away, then took off.)

So, you know, don’t think it’s so weird that I bumped elbows with Vatican fuckers for an afternoon.

Remember when color bars were all the rage? Me neither. But apparently they once were, at least on LiveJournal. I found one that I made when Henry was sick.

Sick Henry is Yuck

I started doing that work-at-home data entry bullshit that I was doing briefly last winter, after receiving an email out of the blue asking if I’m available for more work. I said yes because we’re going to the beach next summer so I thought maybe I could make some extra cash to help fund that, or at the very least pay for the quotation marks I’m getting tattooed on my fingers this month.

Five minutes after I logged in, I remembered just how boring 10-key is and started looking at things on the Internet.

Like color bars.

And now you’re caught up with my life.

For a self-proclaimed harbinger of social anxiety and awkwardness, I’ve really been enjoying reuniting with old high school friends lately. A few weeks ago, I met my friend Kim at Mad Mex, after having not seen her since 7th grade (she tried to argue that it was 6th but she forgot that she came back to visit in 7th grade after moving to Indiana & we ran into each other at a football game – notably the only football game I have ever attended. Hail hockey!). It was awesome seeing her, and I am still kicking myself for forgetting my camera as it was way too dark in there for an impromptu iPhone photoshoot.

I will always associate Kim with telling me my first dirty joke in elementary school, and I am completely let down that she doesn’t remember listening to the Lolliwinks record in Mrs. Metzger’s music class.

Then last Sunday, after a month of rescheduling, I wrangled my old high school friend Stacey into going out to dinner. I figured, I’m on a roll with these reunions, catching up with Stacey via Facebook has been awesome (I even snagged hockey tickets off her last year & got to see a Sidney Crosby hat trick, holla!), and I’m finding that surrounding myself with people lately has been very prudent for my sanity not taking too many sudden dips.

I arrived at La Hacienda a little early, and hid inside the cold vestibule. Seeing Stacey approaching from the parking lot, I ran outside to meet her and admitted that I was afraid to go inside by myself. I was like this in high school too, so I figured she might be charmed to know that I hadn’t much changed.

She laughed and asked why, but she would soon find out when we both attempted to tell the Spanish-speaking host how many people were in our party and his inability to understand us was projected as utter disgust for stupid white women and I was scared.

It was my fault really. I confused him when I explained that there were two of us right now, but soon we would be three. He probably thought I was trying to fuck with him, like, “Yeah right, honky. What, I need to splash water on you and then your ignorant Americana flesh will sizzle and bear more stupid white women?” He had to call for back-up and some broad finally sat us in a booth, laughed when Stacey tried to order alcohol, and then promptly forgot about us for 35 minutes. That’s OK – we were too busy getting drunk off gossip.

Then Lisa arrived and got to wow Stacey with her complete lack of rememberance for 90% of what went on within our class all throughout high school.

Conversation went like this:

Us: “You know who she is!”

Lisa: “Did she have red hair?”

Us:  “No, blond.”

Lisa: “Oh, was she the one who had the brother who ate gerbils and then got killed by that bearded transient?”

Us: “WHAT HIGH SCHOOL DID YOU GO TO.”

My favorite part was when Stacey asked Lisa why she moved back to Pittsburgh from Colorado and before Lisa could even hug her lips around the first syllable of an answer, I blurted out, “Because she missed me!” and then rested my head on Lisa’s shoulder in the same breath. It was fun watching Lisa try to deny this.

“Remember that video we made in English—-” Stacey started.

“LONGFELLOW!” I finished for her. That video clearly made a lasting impression on me. I told her the other day that I still have a copy on video so she better stay super sweet to me because there’s this thing now called the Internet and I bet our Longfellow video would feel right at home in a cute little sublet on YouTube Boulevard.

Stacey made a comment about how annoying it is when you just get married and people immediately ask, “So when are you going to have a baby?” For some reason, I emphatically said, “Oh my god, I know!” Like I am married and as though anyone in their right mind ever tried to hint around that I should have a baby. Ever.

Then we all had dessert. Stacey had a sopapilla, which that Mexican host probably rubbed on his genitals first. Lisa and I both had flan, which looked nothing like the over-pixelated photo on the dessert menu and had frozen blackberries in lieu of the FRESH assortment of fruits we were promised. However, it was definitely stewing erotically in its own sweet sauce, just as the description warned. I feel bad that Lisa had to get saddled with the “sweet sauce” as well when she had no parts of offending Jorge up there at the host podium.

Overall, it was great food, great company, great gossip, capped off with some sleazily delicious dessert. I hope that Stacey will hang out again!

Some things about this picture:

• It’s from 2003
• I am wearing  my mom’s Jackie Sorensen shirt that she got when she attended some gigantic aerobics orgy back in the early 80s at the Civic Arena. (“They put down Astroturf over top of the ice and it was so neat!”) I stole this from her dresser many years ago and have cherished it ever since. Ask Henry – it is so ratty and stained that even a gutterpup would shy away from it. Jackie’s aerobics video is my favorite thing ever. It was made in the leotard-era, has a soundtrack featuring Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time” and  some Streisand joint that makes for some excellent stretching motivation, and features a back-up exerciser who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tim Curry’s Frank-n-Furter.
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  I used to get drunk and bust out Jackie-approved moves, such as the taffy pull, in the basement of my old house while my friends watched in horror. The Internet just showed me that there is old school Jackie apparel available for purchase. OH, SANTA I haven’t been very good but I will dole out some oral pleasures for a purple Dancing Queen sweatshirt.

• I REALLY need my blond hair back.
• I have no idea what I’m eating, but my hand sure makes a deep bowl.
• Henry took down my Cure wall-hanging when he was painting last year and never hung it back up.
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  I don’t think that was by accident, either.

Some things about this picture:

• We were en route to Lancaster in 2003, lol.
• I was eating pretzels.
• I have an affinity for showing Henry the masticated contents of my mouth, unprovoked, and he acts like he doesn’t care but we all know that’s secretly the reason why he has stayed with me for ten years now.
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• Henry has the same pair of glasses only now they are so crooked that he has to slide them all the way down the bridge of his nose just to be able to see. He blames this on me and Chooch for being too rough with him, but everyone knows Chooch and I are delicate little flowers in a garden of patience.

The last words I said to Chooch and Henry before leaving last Sunday afternoon was, “I won’t be gone long. We’re just having lunch.” Sure, I hadn’t seen Lindsay and Lauren since senior year of high school so I was sure we’d have a lot to talk about, but never expected that our lunch would creep into dinner and my tab would be over $70 – 95% of which was for the FOUR BOTTLES OF WINE that Lindsay and I chugged between the two of us alone.

I typically avoid people from high school, but Lauren was my first friend in elementary school. We built giant rabbit nests together during recess one day by gathering armfuls of cut grass. You didn’t know rabbits need nests? Then I guess Lauren and I were just ecological geniuses.

I have tons of pictures of her throughout elementary school, from birthday parties, school Halloween parties, bullshit Girl Scouts outings. I was tempted to scan them and post them here, but then Henry reminded me shit like that is why I have no friends.

And Lindsay! She moved to my street in eighth grade from the CITY. I felt like since maybe sometimes my mom gave her rides to school, that maybe some of her urban flava would rub off on me, so my Cross Colours wardrobe would maybe look less ridiculous on my lily white suburban body, but Lindsay would consistently remind me that I was a dork, so I guess osmosis is a fucking joke!

Lindsay and Lauren have been best friends since high school, so I was a little intimidated walking into The Library that day. Plus, they were cooler than me in high school.

But then Lindsay yelled, “YOU LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME!” and I thought, “OK, if she’s going to keep saying shit like that, this will be fine.” And within minutes I had my first of 7854952 glasses of riesling, which quickly had me opening up about my stint as a faux-lesbian and the great lengths I went to stalk Scott Dambaugh in 8th grade (and possibly a great many grades beyond).

Lindsay dropped a bombshell on me by mentioning that one of our friends lost her virginity to him back in high school.

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I slurred-yelled all dramatically, lurching forward.

“You didn’t know?!” Lindsay laughed.

Obviously not!

I told them about how a certain motherfucker who to this day I still want to fight in an alleyway even if she outweighs me by 300 pounds and is oft mistaken for a man tried to spread rumors in high school about me being a whore.

“I don’t remember you being a whore!” Lauren said, laughing. “I remember you bringing your tree frog to school in your purse!”

And are tree frog smugglers whore? I didn’t think so!

Every time the bartender came over to replenish our wine glasses and bring Lauren a new beer, he would ask, “Ready to order any food yet?” By the third hour, we finally acquiesced and split two orders of appetizers three-ways. Obviously, it wasn’t nearly enough to balance out the gallons of alcohol Lindsay and I were pumping into our system, and by the fourth hour, she was drunk-dialing Henry after I readily shared his phone number, despite Lauren shaking her head and urging me not to give it to her.

Lauren probably felt like a goddamn babysitter. Next time, it’s her turn to get trashed! We owe her.

At one point, I looked out the window and was shocked to see that it was dark. This was about the time the wine and severe lack of carbs started to get to both Lindsay and me. I had an incident after peeing where I felt hot-flashy and was sure I was going to puke, but I somehow breathed my way through it. Also, realizing that Lindsay was worse off than myself helped sober me up a little bit. Especially after she went outside and, how can I phrase this delicately, decorated the sidewalk of East Carson Street like it was a Christmas tree and her stomach contents was all the pretty, if not ecru, tinsel. People walking by didn’t pay much attention though, because sidewalk pukers are standard fixtures on the Southside, even on Sunday afternoons. Maybe.

Lauren and I signaled for the bartender and had him bring her a glass of water and a warm, soft pretzel which she refused to eat so Lauren and I picked at it and it came with this really great cheese sauce but I didn’t say that in front of Lindsay.

A sobering moment for me was when we got the check, which was $166 – nearly $140 of that was made up of wine. As Lauren sent the bartender away to split the wine between Lindsay and me, and the food in thirds, I laughed nervously and said, “Good thing I work in a law firm!” and then immediately texted Henry and said, “OMG I AM SO SORRY.”

But it was worth it. They both had so much juicy gossip to divulge, it was everything I had hoped it would be, plus a few extra chapters for my upcoming blackmail novel. I can’t wait to do it again! Only next time, I hope the night doesn’t end with my bedroom spinning while Henry is stuffing my lifeless body into pajamas.

Henry and I stayed up late the night before Thanksgiving, drinking and listening to the new My Chemical Romance, when we started talking about our recent trip to Lancaster and how it’s changed so  much since the time he and I went there in 2003.

“I remember taking pictures of people’s laundry, and that’s about it,” I said.

“No – I don’t think that was Lancaster…” Henry said, thinking about it. So I decided we better pull up the photos from that trip so I could prove that once again, Henry is a clueless dillsack.

“Wow,” Henry said as we looked at all EIGHT photos from that trip. “You sure were a picture-takin’ fool.”

And aside from the one of the laundry line, the rest were basically photos of random people I decided to hate for no reason. Except for the guy in front of us on the train ride in Stausburg. I had good reason to hate that motherfucker.

So we started looking through the other pictures from back then and sat here in front of the computer cracking up. I bet 75% of pre-Chooch pictures are of people I’m stalking. Just utter asshole-y randomness.

“Why did I take a picture of that car?” I asked.

“Who knows, but with you, there was probably something about it you hated.”

Then we came across the picture I took of Henry honest-to-god leading a blind man down the sidewalk in Norfolk, Virginia; I lost it. I was laughing so hard, I’m not sure how I didn’t poop my pants.  Henry frowned. “I don’t understand why helping a BLIND PERSON is so funny,” he said, but I could tell he wanted to laugh really hard too. I’m a super good influence.

There was a picture of the muffin Henry chucked at my head.

Copious shots of the cable guy that Robbie, Blake and I pretended Henry had a crush on. (“Pretended.”)

The fake Italian guy my old friend Cinn brought over to my house one year for my birthday, making me think he didn’t speak English; naturally,  I pantomimed and shouted things to him.

He was not Italian.

But my favorite was unearthing a picture of Henry worshiping at my altar. I think it was for some LiveJournal meme where people got to tell me what sorts of photos they wanted to see, and some wise-ass felt that was a pretty great way to emasculate Henry further.

(There’s also one of him in his underwear, gagged and on all fours, with me on his back.

Second fave.)

Various pictures of bands at Mr. Small’s inspired us to talk about all the shows we’ve been to (he swears we’ve seen TV on the Radio and I feel like I should remember that but I don’t?).

“Who’s that?” Henry asked when we came across a picture of a girl singing.

“Emily Haines. That was the night we went to see The Stills and Metric in 2004 and I found out we are political opposites. Then came home and made a fake LiveJournal for you.

Also, I was wearing white pants at that show and kept thinking I was about to get my period.”

Henry nodded as it all came flooding back.

I know this is a day late, and it’s not that I needed Wednesday night to make me realize this, but god fucking damn I’m thankful for Henry. I can’t believe we’ve been together since 2001, how did that even happen??

And I’ll tell you right now, don’t let him fool you – he still worships me, altar or not.

Today, this man is reminding me of the girl I used to be, the girl who would never let a bitch treat her poorly. And I know he would not approve of those who have been doing just that.

So today, I’m closing a door that I honestly thought would be open for a long time. And of that, I know he would approve.

It gets easier and easier.

It hit me today that I’ve officially been living in my current house for eleven years – one year more than I spent in my childhood home [pictured below].

I moved into this place around the time Nine Inch Nail’s The Fragile was released, which I’ve been listening to a lot the last few days.

Not sure if it’s a coincidence or a subconscious choice, but it’s crazy how visceral, tangible the transport back to October 1999 feels. It’s like I’m sitting in the middle of an unfurnished dining room all over again, “We’re In This Together” on repeat, wishing it reminded me of my boyfriend at the time, but knowing that the only thing we were in together was a shitty, incompatible relationship based on distrust and disgust.

My landlord has been trying to sell all of his rental property for the last year. We have a broken For Sale sign in our yard and a ditzy real estate agent brings the occasional potential buyer through our house.

I never thought I’d still be living here after all this time, but it’s looking like it won’t be my home for much longer.

I think my mom should just give me her house.

Even though I was a yo-girl in high school with a predilection for gangsta rap, I always had a soft spot underneath my Cross Colors hoodie and marijuana pendant for soft rock. I attribute this mostly to my grandparent’s house; they always had Lite FM on in their kitchen, and some of my best memories are sitting on a stool at their kitchen counter, eating a grilled cheese while Phil Collins and Gino Vanelli filled the room.

In the mid-nineties, before my Pappap died, I started seeing infomercials for a new Time Life music compilation called Body Talk. It was chock full of all my favorite Days Of Our Lives power couple power ballads, like Steve and Kayla’s Kenny G and that Joe Cocker song that always played when Doug and Julie had romantic flashbacks. (I recently had a mild argument with a co-worker about this and of course I was right; bitch, I BETTER be right, I kept a goddamn Days of Our Lives scrapbook in elementary school.) And what CD collection would be complete without Hope and Bo’s sex jam “Tonight I Celebrate My Love.”  I begged my Pappap to order it for me, and he did. Because I’m the best.

Every month, I’d get a new double CD in the mail and run up to my room to listen. Richard Marx, Gregory Abbott, DAN FOGELBURG, MOTHERFUCKERS. You want a Crystal Gayle and Eddie Rabbitt duet? Body Talk’s got you covered. It was all there. All my favorite “70-year-old in a 16-year-old’s body” classics. I’d slip in some England Dan and John Ford Coley in between Scarface and Foxxy Brown tracks on my signature mix tapes that none of my friends ever wanted me to play in the car. These tapes could seamlessly soundtrack a drive-by shooting and a quiet evening with knitting needles and a cup of Earl Grey. That’s just how I do.

The fourth collection arrived one day and I can remember listening to it my room and pausing when I got to a song on the second disc that I had never heard before. It was Billy Preston and Syreeta’s “With You I’m Born Again” and it became my new favorite song that I had to listen to over and over and over and over again. And then I made my friends listen to it over and over and over and over again. Of course, none of them liked it. They were teenagers. Teenagers don’t want to listen to some lame love song that their parents probably fucked to in the 80s.

But I just really loved this song. It would make me cry so hard and get all swoony. So it went on one of my mix tapes.

I was at Lisa’s house one day and she had begrudgingly allowed me  to put on one of my tapes in her room while she got ready for us to go out. All of my friends back then typically let me have my way because they knew I was still on the same emotional plane as a five-year-old with Downs. I’m sure the tape was bursting with all of Lisa’s faves, like Bone Thugs n Harmony and 2Pac. (Lisa was into alternative back then and hated rap, but tolerated it in my presence. I guess she never learned that good friends don’t let friends listen to rap.)

Somewhere in the midst of all of this, my love jam came on and I got all somber and melancholy. With me in the background plotting my suicide, Lisa had accidentally knocked her calculator off her bed (do kids in school still use calculators?) and it broke. She picked it up tenderly, cradled it in her arms, and began singing along with Billy Preston and Syreeta in hopes of serenading her calculator back to life.

From that day on, it became known as The Calculator Song.

***

In last night’s episode of “Glee,” the club was doing some duet contest; Rachel and Finn wanted to purposely blow it so Rachel devised a plan where they would sing a really bad song, because that would be the only way they could lose.

They fucking sang the Calculator Song and I almost died. It was after midnight when I was watching it, and I didn’t want to call Lisa that late. So instead, I ran upstairs and woke up Henry, excitedly telling him all about it.

“OK,” he murmured before falling back asleep.

IT WAS A BIG DEAL FOR ME.

I went back downstairs and stewed in my urgent need to share this amazing moment. It was Hell, keeping it to myself.

I haven’t heard that song, ever, outside of that damn Body Talk CD. Up until last night, I couldn’t be convinced that it wasn’t recorded specifically for Time Life.

Finally, I managed to fall asleep around 1:00AM, after some of my buzz wore off.

Once I took Chooch to school this morning, I called Lisa. It was a little after 8:00AM and I figured that was late enough.

I excitedly ran through the story, pausing occasionally to choke on obnoxious giggles.

“And guess what song they sang!” I yelled.

“I don’t know,” Lisa mumbled, clearly not fully awake.

“THE CALCULATOR SONG!” I squealed, laughing all over again.

“Ha,” Lisa said with little conviction. “I’m going back to bed now. I’ll call you later.”

OK FINE. I’ll just be sitting here, listening to my precious slow jam all morning long. Maybe later I might slip some Peabo Bryson into the mix.

***

My Body Talk collection was never completed. After my Pappap died, a few more still came in the mail, but then my grandma was like, “Yeah, I’m not paying for this shit.”

My old friend Cinn was notorious for meeting a plethora of men online. (Sometimes she would even give them my phone number and address, which I can’t tell you how much I appreciated. In fact, she’s one of the reasons I signed up for Caller ID. For the other, please see: Lesbian Blind Date.)

In the fall of ’98, she called me up one day and said that she met a man named Shadoe on AOL. After IMing for a minute, Shadoe naturally invited her over for dinner. Things move rapidly in Cinn’s world of Internet dating. She asked me to tag along, because everyone knows that my 5’4″ frame is made specifically for overpowering Internet predators. And because my judgment is (still) exceptionally jarred, I said yes and even applied glitter on my eyelids to announce my excitement.

Shadoe’s real name was Shawn, and he lived in a trendy little section of Pittsburgh populated by college students and toed the line of a particularly seedy part of town. His apartment was small—my knees would rub against his tub every time I sat down on the toilet to pee—and his kitchen boasted a variation of the Last Supper portrait, the table seating various serial killers in lieu of disciples and Jesus. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it and I knew unequivocally that Shadoe and I were going to get along just fine.

It was there, over a pasta spread at his kitchen table, that I learned he worked at my favorite record store in Pittsburgh, Eide’s Entertainment.

“Why don’t you guys accept American Express?

” I asked with a slight brattiness to my tone, clumsily twirling a hive of pasta around my fork tines.

“Erin!” Cinn exclaimed, accusing me of being rude. I didn’t think I was being rude. All I was trying to do was save a sinking ship.

Because Cinn, upon coming face to face with Shadow’s large stature, was immediately chagrined. She was a bitch the whole night, slashing him with sarcasm and attempting to put me down, which is what she always did when someone had the nerve to care about what I had to say (see also: Giacomo 1999). But Shadoe spent most of the night laughing at my unfiltered outbursts and was grateful I think for my presence, especially after Cinn downed a bottle of Irish Rose and put her drunken stupor on display in the aisles of the Blockbuster we walked to after eating the dinner that Shadoe had graciously prepared.

I’ve never been what you would consider “goth” on the outside, but I’ve always had a propensity for the music. Of course The Cure is my favorite, but I also liked a lot more from the oeuvre: Lycia, Switchblade Symphony, Front Line Assembly, Corpus Delicti; everything from dark wave to synthpop, EBM to industrial. And Shadoe had an impressive collection of all that. He seemed surprised that I knew so much in his collection, because on the outside, I was a Lip Smackers girl with beach waves and fuzzy sweaters from Contempo Casuals.

I’m all Goth on the inside, baby.

While Cinn sat on the couch simmering in her bitch-stew, I rummaged through his records and CDs. I laughed when I came across Johnny Hates Jazz.

“When I was a kid, I always thought it was ‘Shadow Dreams,’ not ‘Shattered,'” I laughed, which made Shadoe blush a little. Now I think of him every time I hear that damn song. (Which, for some reason, is often. Liking 80s music is not a crime, OK!?)

Meanwhile, Cinn (who didn’t even like the guy) couldn’t stand the fact that she had nothing to contribute to the conversation and that, God forbid, she wasn’t the center of attention. She was used to guys lavishing her with come-ons and sleazy innuendos, neither of which Shadoe was doing.

So she did what any drunk, attention-starved Alpha female would do: while I was sprawled out on my stomach across the floor, looking at CDs, Cinn staggered over and straddled my back. And then she tried to dry-hump me. “What the fuck, get off!” I yelled, flipping her off my spine. I suppose the point was to impress Shadoe. “Look at me! Wine over-consumption turns me into a pseudo-lesbo! Watch in awe as I pretend to be hot for my friend while staying far away from her vagina!”

It was just pathetic. Not to mention embarrassing.

Cinn strung him along for a few weeks, even though she clearly wasn’t into him, until I couldn’t take it any longer. Cinn was married and I didn’t want Shadoe to get hurt.

So I told him. I don’t care about whatever unspoken Ho Code there might be for something like that.

She was being a douche and I couldn’t get behind that.

They never spoke again, but I remained friends with Shadoe and it fucking drove Cinn nuts. How dare I, right?

Because of where he worked, he always hooked himself up with the latest horror release and called me up for some cheesy pizza and a cheesier movie. Whatever pizza place he ordered from, it was the most delicious pizza. Maybe that’s just my sweet memories enchanting my taste buds to believe that eleven years later.

We watched a bootleg copy of The Blair Witch Project before any information was really known about it, so we totally thought it was a true story, that clearly they all died and some hiker found the tapes completely unmarred in the woods. Another time, we watched Pecker and liked it so much that we immediately dove into an encore presentation. I watched it once again a few years ago and can’t imagine why we liked that much. It must have been the pot.

Eventually, Shadoe met a woman who was able to lay stake in a spot of his heart that Cinn had vacated, and he subsequently moved to Virginia to be with her. We kept in touch for awhile, but I had moved around the same time, and life just got in the way. The last I heard, one of the guys at Eide’s told me that Shadoe had taken that woman onto that court show “Judge Joe Brown” because they had split up and were fighting over property.

Even though our friendship lasted through all four seasons, I always think of him the most right now, in the fall. Especially on chilly, rainy days when nothing seems as perfect as curling up on a friend’s couch with good pizza and a horror movie. I miss that son of a bitch.

This is also the time of year I start pining for my old friend Cinn, so thank you, memory of Shadoe, for bitch-slapping me right out of that delusional fantasy.

I was over my grandma’s house one night when I was a twenty-year-old, foraging through her pantry for cans of soup. (This was pre-Henry, when I did all my food shopping at grandma’s house and the gas station.

)

My grandma opened one of the cabinets in the room off to side of the kitchen and said, “You can have these if you want them.”

It was an entire set of these beautiful blue goblets, probably purchased in the 60s. I imagine they probably made appearances at many a dinner party back in the day, in the hands of Florence Henderson-coiffed mod-broads all a-swaddled in A-line mini skirts.

I never pull them out during my parties. I have slo-mo visions of someone busting one over my head during a particularly rousing round of Catchphrase, Faygo cascading down my face.

But once Chooch is in bed, I like to fill one up with wine and pretend that I’m still rich.

As Corey and I were leaving the funeral home last month after paying respects to our Grandpa Kelly, the idea of having a family dinner with our dad and Grandma Kelly was tossed around. She has never met Chooch and expressed an interest in doing so. It seemed like it would be a nice idea, since she had just lost her husband of 60+ years. Sometimes kids can do wonders for the grieving process.

And I’ll be honest, seeing her that day made me realize that I had missed her, and that I was kind of an asshole for not trying harder to stay in contact with someone who lives in the same neighborhood as me.

Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with me.

I made sure Corey kept reminding our dad to set something up, and finally the date of September 26th was set. I was under the impression it would be me and Chooch, Corey, our dad and our Grandma Kelly. But yesterday afternoon, Corey sent a text informing me that our Uncle Bruce and his awkward wife had been added to the guest list, along with our other brother Ryan. I was “eh” about Bruce and Judy, but happy that Ryan would be able to attend. I barely get to see him and we used to be pretty close when we were younger.

Chooch and I arrived at the Galleria promptly at 5:15 and I immediately cursed myself for being punctual to something my dad, who suffers from chronic tardiness, was attending. We sat on a bench waiting for my dad to arrive.

A minivan parked nearby and I casually watched the backdoor open and a young guy emerge. Then a tall, model-skinny girl. Then it dawned on me that this was my dad’s younger brother Kevin’s family.

“Motherfucker,” I mumbled as I watched my Uncle Kevin, Aunt Joyce, cousins Brian (14 maybe?) and Kristen (21), and Kristen’s boyfriend Joey approach.

“Katie’s on her way!” Kevin announced to me after I introduced Chooch to everyone, who was so overwhelmed he was practically trying to re-enter my uterus.

I barely know my cousins, but Kevin and Joyce were around a lot when I was younger, so I’m not too uncomfortable around them. Still, it would have been nice to know the whole brood was coming. Apparently this was such a Big Deal that Katie came home from college to attend.

My Grandma Kelly, Bruce and Judy were already inside Mitchell’s Fish Market, so I reluctantly followed Kevin and his herd into the restaurant.. We had a private room with one long table in the middle, and I was faced with the torturous task of finding the least awkward chair to claim. I settled for one next to my Aunt Joyce, who has always struck me as the most laid back of the Kellys. Thankfully Corey arrived soon after with my dad and Ryan, who sat across from me. I was happy to have familiar faces to look at.

Under the table, I read a text from Corey that asked, “What the fuck, is this like a family reunion??”

Poor Chooch was practically eaten alive by Grandma Kelly and Bruce’s wife Judy. He was gifted with a large Tonka truck and some Halloween witch thing that is super obnoxious and kitschy, which has always been Grandma Kelly’s m.o. When I was a kid, there was a store near her house called Labamba’s Variety or something, but we all called it the junk store. She would take Ryan and I there and we would go crazy, loading up our baskets with pure, unadulterated crap. I had quite the snow globe collection thanks to the junk store.

Now it’s some shitty car detailing shop.

Chooch got his own private booth to play in, and I was sort of surprised when Kristen joined him. Her boyfriend Joey also really took to Chooch, and I was glad that people were paying attention to him so I could enjoy a meal in peace.

Grandma Kelly brought some old pictures with her to pass around, including what appeared to be a page out of a scrapbook full of old photos of Ryan and me.

“Sorry Corey, you’re not in any of these,” I said snidely as I passed it over to him. This prompted him to vocalize his ages-old concern that he was adopted.

Apparently, there was a little article about my Grandpa Kelly in one of the papers after he died; Kevin had the foresight to make copies for everyone.

I wasn’t very close to the guy, but the fact that someone took the time to write this for the paper makes me realize he must have been pretty cool.

Meanwhile, Chooch had quickly found himself on a first name basis with our waitress, barking demands for chocolate milk and haughtily asking, “Do they at least have chicken?” Everyone at the table kept laughing at his charm, but I was praying that he wouldn’t start swearing. Especially after my dad was encouraging him to say, “Where the hell is my chocolate milk?”

He did talk candidly about zombies and Michael Myers, though. That was awesome.

I can’t remember what Corey was saying here,  but it wasn’t anything that called for as much intensity as he’s providing here.  I feel like we were just talking about some kind of cheese?

Always good to see Ryan. Corey calls him “The Other.” Ryan was my horror movie buddy growing up. I can’t watch “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” without thinking of him.

Yeah, it was a little awkward at first, and I was overwhelmed that every single person in the family showed up, but overall it was a really nice evening and it kind of felt good to feel like I was a part of a family, since my mom’s side clearly could give or take me. And they all freaking loved Chooch, so that negated some of my black sheepness.

Sucks that it took someone dying to get us all together.