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.

I didn’t know it then, but I was about three weeks pregnant at the time of this trip. It was originally posted…ew, exactly 5 years ago. And this day will come up later in The Christina Chronicles.

***

I haven’t been to an amusement park since we attempted to run amok at Six Flags in Ohio two years ago, with disastrous results. See, I evidently became sick after two hours, leaving Henry no choice but to take me home. No, Henry’s no quitter — he tried everything in his power to get me to stay, tossing out suggestions such as: “Well, you don’t have to ride anything. I can ride by myself. Just sit on that bench over there and I’ll be back in a few hundred thousand hours” and the classic “Go in the bathroom and use your finger. Make yourself puke and then you’ll feel better.” What are you saying, Henry? Is this some sort of double entendre? Do you think I’m fat? Why do you really want me to throw up, Henry, so I can stay a few more hours and not make this a wasted trip, or so that last candy bar and plate of cheese fries don’t stick to my ass? So now what, you’re some sort of pageant mom? Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, if I turned bulimic. Then I could be an Olsen and make it easier for you to keep me locked in the closet. Oops, did I just say that? Now the world knows!

Now here’s the thing — I can’t remember if I really did get sick, or if I was just being bi-polarish and over dramatic and that’s why we left. In my mind, I can see myself roiling in pain, pressing back a torrent of vomit with shaking hands, but I have a habit of creating my own memories, in which I paint myself as a victim. I’m going to toss out an educated guess here and suggest that I probably wanted something and Henry said no and the day’s mood quickly soured from there, so I faked illness to get sympathy. On the ride home, I vaguely remember producing a slight fountain of pity waterworks while Henry white-knuckled the steering wheel and kept his eyes glued to the road. Between theatrical sniffles and staccato intakes of breath, I could hear the cash register in his head dinging as it calculated all the money we wasted that day.

However, there was a time right before that doomed trip where Henry’s kid Blake and I were the only patrons at a rickety mall parking-lot carnival. We bounded from one death trap to the next like Japanese beetles buzzing in the wind, not having to piss with any lines.

We both got really sick that day.

Now, these are the only two pieces of evidence I have to fall back on and exhibit A is pretty fucking distorted. Am I at that age where spinny rides have the ability to blast through my equilibrium and shackle my body with waves of nausea? Or were these just two very bad circumstances?

I find myself worrying about things that never occurred to me as a kid. What do I eat? Do I eat something light before I get there? Will coffee come back to bite me in the esophagus later in the day? Do I stick with familiar edibles of a doughy nature in order to absorb any future risk of gastric acid rising from centrifugal force? If I don’t eat at all, look out maelstrom! One thing is for sure — my Rolaids SoftChews will be tucked snugly into my pocket.

I worry about rides breaking and catapulting me to my grisly death. I hear nuts and bolts popping and clicking and my mind starts racing and making up premonitions that I can visualize behind closed eyes, and before I know it, the ride’s over and I didn’t even get a chance to enjoy it. These are the things that used to make me applaud as a kid, the element of fear that makes your blood buzz with exhilaration. I don’t feel that anymore. Relief–now there’s something I feel. With each and every ride I disembark without whiplash, hemorrhaging or sprained body parts, I’m flooded with relief and feel an overpowering urge to go to church. For real this time, is what I say to God in my head.

And my hair. What do I do with my hair? I want to wear one of my scarves because I’m so scene, but what if it blows off on a spinny ride? That’s a whole FOUR DOLLARS drifting off in the wind. I don’t like to wear my hair pulled back because it brings out neurotic smoothing motions every thirty seconds, much like a nervous tick. Don’t even get me started on fly-aways–I’ll produce a cold sweat. Flashbacks from days sporting more barrettes than a braided black girl as my mom attempted to keep each and every last stray tuft of my hair in place. My scalp tingles when I think of how some of those plastic barrettes held down sections of hair pulled much too taut–now that I’m an adult, I realize my mother did this on purpose. It was a form of “accidental” torture.

But if I wear my hair down? O-ho — knots ahoy!

What do I wear? This frantic compulsion stems from school picnics at our local amusement park, Kennywood. It was tradition to have a new outfit to wear so all the boys will notice you. Never mind that they didn’t notice you in a thirty-desk classroom. I remember my eighth grade apparel like it was yesterday. It came from Merrry-Go-Round and I looked like an extra in Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It” video–jean shorts with purple leather on the fronts of the legs, a black tank top with a purple mesh shirt over top. Oh, I was so fly. By the end of the night, that fucking shirt had more snags in it than the stockings on a hooker’s trunk-stuffed body.

I’ve been stressing over this all week. If I squeeze my eyes shut real tight, I can hear the cruel cadence of my step-dad’s chastising voice, reminding me that it’s not the fucking prom. Almost like holding a seashell up to my ear. Thanks, daddy.

Many moons ago, I was a young and spry youth with pigtails and Bandaid-adorned knees, skipping around Kennywood like I owned it, when a tragedy struck. A friend and I were exiting a ride equipped with swinging cars. As I stepped out, my friend took her hand away from the car, which had been holding it in place and keeping it from swinging. The car swung toward me and scraped the back of my ankle. I remember an eternity of travail, time stopping, voices sounding afar, and thinking, “This is it. I’ve lost my foot. Now I’ll have to get fitted with a club and all the kids at school will mock, ‘Hey let’s play croquet with Erin’s club foot!'” Cotton candy and funnel cake proved to be a sure-fire distraction and I eventually stopped hopping on one foot.

This is the part that stands out the most–when I went home that night, I couldn’t take off my sock. It was actually glued to my heel with blood. Each and every tiny tug and pull created a stinging sensation that traveled up to my thigh. I was so afraid to show my mom because I just knew she would take me to the hospital and the sorry doctor would shake his head and I could read his lips as they mouthed, “We need to take the foot.”

At the very least, my step-dad would want to pour peroxide over the wound which always made me feel as though I was being punished for getting hurt.

Vowing to keep my mutilation under wraps, I thrust my socked foot under warm running water in the bathtub, grimacing as it saturated my laceration, until I was finally able to slowly peel off the sock and watch rivulets of coagulated blood slide off my ankle and swirl around the drain.

I still remember the socks I was wearing that day.

As kids, we’re more resilient. What if something like this occurs on Saturday? What if the rusty steel from a thrill ride pierces and catches my skin and before anyone can save me, my flesh is being unraveled like a mummy. I’m no kid–I’m much higher off the ground now; I’m susceptible to much more damage. Chances of me breaking a bone are more likely than walking away with a sprain. I’m a walking accident! Call me on the phone and listen to how many times I murmur “Ow” as I walk from one room to another. I am fucking panicking here. I don’t want to get hurt! I don’t want the whole of King’s Island to see my blood!

If I die on Saturday, it better be from something cool, like a roller coaster jumping track and plummeting into a ravine. Not something anticlimactic, like me tripping over my feet and then getting run over by a tram.

There is an upside, however.

When Henry and I spend large amounts of time together in public, the tension grows and multiplies until eventually a thick fog of it is smothering us and testing our gag-reflexes. But this time, we won’t be alone — Christina and her sister Cynthia will be accompanying us and hopefully cutting through the bulk of that fog. Instead of fighting with Henry all day, I can mix it up between him and Christina. And of course, any innocent by-standers who cross my path.

Plus, maybe I can convince Christina to buy me a souvenir cup.

***

We left Saturday morning and drove through a consistent sheath of downpour, which led Henry to blabber on about how “if it’s raining like this when we get there, I am not wasting my money at King’s Island, I’m sorry.” And somewhere on a stretch of wet highway still within the boundaries of West Virginia, we had a shouting match about how he’s going to treat our pre-conceived baby (we love playing Hypotheticals) and I stamped my foot down hard and yelled, “Take me home!” at which point he laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes and I wanted to break his stupid glasses.

After many stops so he could drain his grizzled bladder, we finally made it to Christina’s house in Hamilton, neither of us maimed or sustaining any head trauma, amazingly (my limbs flail when I’m angry and trapped within the confines of a cramped Nissan Sentra).

I know many of you had been holding your breath all weekend long, wondering what I did with my hair and/or if I retched myself into clammy-handed oblivion on any rides at King’s Island.

1. I wore my hair down in hopes of starting a knotted and dreadlocked free-for-all. I tried to act blissfully unaware (I think maybe I did a not-so-good job) and only ran my fingers through it as a makeshift comb about forty times after each ride. And I only furtively smoothed down the mini afro of frizz atop my head all day long, but really—who’s counting? By the second hour, I purposely avoided any glimpses of myself in restroom mirrors.
2. I did not get sick; however, I brought home a lot of (free) souvenir bruises. No contusions, bless our fine Lord. What the hell — and his mommy, too.

While I would love to sit around the campfire with hot cocoa, recounting tales of all my favorite rides (Son of Beast was the most funnest you guys), all I can really remember amidst the whirlwind of clanging metal parts and side-stepping fresh gum in my path is one thing: checking for my period.

I came prepared. The arsenal of tampons was just short of being strapped to my body like dynamite—I had one waiting in each pocket of my cargo pants in addition to a surplus of “just in cases” in my purse. If I had worn boots, I would have tucked one or two in there, also…next to my switchblade. Which I don’t have yet, but someday. Someday.

“Check me! Do I have stainage?” These were my pleas to Henry, Christina and Cynthia every ten minutes while we were held hostage in one line after another. Oh, how I yearned to make fun of others in my proximity, but feared to in case Karma came back to paint a large blood target on my crotch.

I got lucky when we disembarked Flight of Fear, an indoor ride, as no one was around me. “Block me,” I whispered hoarsely to Christina as I leaned forward and spread the legs of my pants apart nice and wide, to inspect for wetness. Doing this while keeping a steady pace walking down a slanted corridor takes skills. Skills which I possess. I like to compare it to performing magic amidst a ring of fire.

But something good came out of my obsessive bathroom breaks–the highlight of my amusement park junket.

Picture it: You’ve just emerged from a stall with eyes raised to the Heavens (bathroom ceiling) above and are silently praising the Lord Almighty for no blood stains on your panties (if you’re a man, picture it anyway. It’ll help build character). As you’re washing your hands real good because this place is dirty (and if you had a more accelerated condition of OCD, you probably would be convulsing and foaming at the mouth by now), you start to panic as you wonder when your next chance will be to “check.” Everyone in your group groans as you drone on and on about your need to “check,” but you can’t shake the paranoia and obsessive need to make sure you’re not drizzling menstrual blood down your legs; the fabric of your cargo pants is thin and blood will seep right through in no time.

You slowly snake the paper towel around your wet hands, sopping up the water and looking at yourself in the mirror, wondering when you became so uptight about the small things. You contemplate telling Christina you want drugs (ask and she’ll do it) so you can relax and if you end up floating around town with curdled blood around your thighs, big deal; you’re too busy goo-goo’ing and ga-ga’ing at the giant unicorn smiling down at you from a cloud.

And then you start thinking about unicorn porn.

Wait, where were you? Bathroom, hands, drying. So, you turn to your left and casually pitch the paper towel into the large garbage can, when you happen to get a glimpse of something extraordinary. So extraordinary it snaps you back to the here and now. No more unicorn.

The bathroom stall directly in your line of vision is slightly ajar, with its occupant standing hunched over, jean shorts and white cotton underwear down around her knees. Before you even have a chance to scold yourself, your eyes slip down a few inches and that’s when you see it.

a  real life vagina.

You feel your friend Christina tugging on your arm and saying in a terse whisper, “Erin, let’s go. You’ve seen enough” but you can’t pull your eyes away from the hairy mound of flesh ten feet in front of you. Your body slightly lurches as you feel the giddiness building up and you’re ready to explode into a conniption of giggles. Christina steers you to the exit and you run and tell your friends what just happened, waving your hands like you’re approaching the climax of a jazz dance routine, and rubbing it in their astonished faces. “You don’t know what you just missed in there!” you say smugly, trying to catch your breath. You feel like you’re on a safari. Then you make them stand around, in the way of hundreds of fast-moving patrons and strollers, so you can point out the woman whose vagina you saw. They don’t really care but you make them wait anyway, and when she comes out of the restroom with her kids, you jump and point and they shrug and start walking away.

And that’s my big exciting highlight. It would have been cooler if she was being scalped or having her face painted at the same time I saw it, but what can you do.

My second favorite moment was eating at the Festhaus. I had pizza and fries, but not just any fries: Fries with a buffet of condiments. I derived great, some might even say ecstatic, amounts of pleasure by deliberating in which pool of sauce each fry would be taking a bath: would it be the succulent marriage of ketchup and mayo, the tiny basin of honey mustard, or the thick and rich vat of creamy nacho cheese? My companions had long since finished eating and sat around idly while I dined on one single fry after another. It was heaven.

Lately I’ve been really into dipping things.

We left around 10:00 that night so I could be back at Christina’s in order to bid on a spectacular piece of Cure memorabilia. In between spastic menstrual wonderment, fleeting thoughts of missing the Ebay auction would swim through my mind. I even carved a reminder on my inner wrist, imagining my pen was a box cutter and I was sacrificing my tainted blood in the name of Robert Smith.

“Why would you write it there?” Henry asked in a tone that would suggest I just pissed in the corner of a church (I would actually do that too).

“Because it’s the part of my body that I look at the most.” Sadly, I had to explain this to him because, evidently, after four years he hasn’t picked up on my morbid fascination with my veins. And my ribs. Ooh, shivers.

Most kids my age would be planning clandestine keggers while their parents were away, but me? I was ironing out the final details for my first real dinner party, and a vegetarian one at that.

It was going to be so perfect.

I was a senior in high school that September in 1996, and opted out of my family’s weekend trip to Tennessee. If you want to get technical, I think it was more that I just wasn’t invited because my step-dad and I hated each other. My mom didn’t really have a problem with me staying home, especially since her sister Sharon lived two houses up the street and we all knew that Sharon would be popping over in regular intervals of excess.

My dinner party was scheduled for that Friday night. I stayed home from school in order to get a head start on preparations, and by that I mean I was trying frantically to learn to cook.

  I had a few recipes torn out from Vegetarian Times and, aside from all the ingredients I couldn’t pronounce, it seemed like it was going to be a breeze.

Apparently, in the mid-90’s, being a vegetarian wasn’t the cool thing to do yet; I had a horribly difficult time finding nori flakes and tempeh, and truth be told, I didn’t even know what those things were. Most of my day was spent calling around to various markets, trying to not only locate these ingredients, but explain to the confused employees what it even was that I was asking for, and setting the dining room table with my mom’s good dishes. I was stressed. Harried. Frazzled. A good bit of the pumpkin puree for my soup was splayed across the backsplash like the arterial spray of a grisly gourd murder/suicide.

By the time Lisa arrived at  my house after school to take me on a wild nori flake chase, I was down-right furious with a tinge of self-pity, and on the verge of calling the whole thing off.

“It’s going to be a disaster,” I wailed to Lisa, slouched down in the passenger seat of her Jeep. “No one’s even going to eat this shit!”

But then we found the nori flakes and tempeh at some frou frou health food market in one of the yuppier parts of town, so I started to have hope again.

Lisa dropped me off and left to get ready. She was bringing a date with her to my dinner party. His name was Jon and he went to a local Catholic school. A mutual friend of ours had hooked them up and it was going to be their first date. Even more pressure for me to make a perfect dinner and tone down the crazy.

By 8:45, everyone had arrived. The guest list included: Janna, Keri and her boyfriend Dan, Sarah, Angie, Lisa and Jon.

Everyone sat around in the family room for social hour while I put the finishing touches on the pumpkin soup. I was still in panic-mode and unable to properly entertain everyone like I had wanted with trays of hors d’oeuvres, clove cigarettes and scantily-clad virgins performing parlor tricks. I felt bad that Jon, a perfect stranger, had found himself sitting in a rocking chair in some maniac girl’s house in the suburbs, waiting to eat a crap dinner made of pretentious faux-meat ingredients and inadequacy.

The entree, something called a Layered Tofu Supreme which I’m sure was actually just a glorified meatless lasagna, had finally been slid and slammed into the oven, and I was ready to start serving the soup. Everyone took their places around my family’s barely-used dining room table and stared at their small glass bowls with upturned lips and scrunched noses.

“That looks disgusting,” Keri scowled, creating persimmon peaks with her spoon.

“It’s just soup!” I yelled. “Made with pumpkin! It’s not disgusting, it’s fabulous.” I stamped around the table, firing my homemade croutons into everyone’s bowl, like angry torpedoes.

And the pumpkin soup was fabulous, much to my surprise. I honestly wasn’t expecting it to be. But it was thick and rich and full of hayride-memories and cornstalk mazes, and well, pumpkin patches. It was the perfect starter for an autumn dinner.

Dan liked it so much, he ate Keri’s too. Her palate was clearly too pedestrian to handle such an elegant waltz with flavor.

It happened during the salad course.

While everyone picked around the tempeh strips and nori flakes in the “sea-sar” salad (which I actually really happened to enjoy, thank you), the phone rang.

It was  Sharon, and in true Sharon fashion, she sounded frantic.

“Did you see that car that just pulled into your driveway?” she asked, her voice strained with concern. I had in fact noticed headlights, but saw that the car had turned around just as quickly. “So, that wasn’t someone coming to your dinner?”

“No, it was probably just someone turning around,” my reply was packed with teenaged attitude. I was trying to host a dinner party, not talk to my aunt. Plus, every time the phone rang, I had hoped it was my true (and verboten) love Justin, and my heart would soar.

I hung up and returned to the table in hopes of coaxing  my guests to give my salad a chance. I found it to be quite delightful and couldn’t imagine why they were rejecting it..

“What exactly is tempeh?” Jon asked, spearing a strip with the tines of his fork and holding it up to the chandelier.

“You want a jeweler’s loupe for that?” I asked scornfully. Really, I had no idea what tempeh was, other than it was a bitch to procure and these ungrateful fuckers were going to eat it and like it.

The stacked tofu extravaganza was still baking in the oven, so I filled the gap between courses by breaking out a bottle of 1986 Sutter Home White Zinfandel I had been hoarding since I was seven. It was a Christmas gift from my cousin/godfather Chris, who had attached a tag that read, “For the girl who has everything.” And it was true. When I tell people about this, they usually say, “What a stupid gift.” But to me, that bottle represented my future. I kept it on my desk for years, and couldn’t wait until I was old enough to open it.

That late September night of 1996 seemed like the perfect occasion. It was my first taste at being an adult, having a real dinner with my friends that wasn’t served by a waitress at Denny’s. It was a glimpse at living on my own, away from parental supervision. It felt good. I felt proud, mature and sophisticated.

But then came the ensuing fuckarow of trying to open the wine bottle, which sent my feel-good coming-of-age moment straight down to Hell in a shit-and-tempeh-coated pipe. Jon was ready to break out the samurai sword until Dan finally ripped the cork from the neck of the bottle in eighteen crumbly pieces.

We had just toasted and were about to enjoy (or pretend to enjoy, considering the unrefined palates that usually come with teenagers) the Zinfandel from my mom’s wedding glasses when the phone rang again.

“That car was on the lane again!” Sharon shouted. “I stopped them this time.” (What was she doing, sitting on the street with night goggles? Probably.) She went on to say that she asked them what they were doing and they said they were looking for me. “I told them they don’t need to be going to your house, then I think I saw one of them in a bush!” Sharon added, filling me with a dread that I desperately did not need right then.

My family lives on a private lane. A little ways past my house were two more houses, and then a dead end.  People didn’t usually just drive up and down this street, and any time this happened it was alarming because there are some big houses on that street.

My house was surrounded by woods on two sides. It didn’t take much more than a creepy car casing my house to put me on edge.

I hung up and was explaining to everyone what Sharon had said, when the phone rang again. Everyone jumped, and then laughed. A male voice was on the other end.

“Hello, Erin,” he said. I still had hopes of hearing from Justin that night, but this wasn’t Justin.

“Who is this?” I asked, calmly at first.

“A friend,” he answered in a deep monotone that implied the absolute opposite of camaraderie.

“Who the fuck is this?!” I screamed, because there is no keeping calm and carrying on with Erin R. Kelly. And then, from the living room window, I saw headlights. A car was idling at the end of my driveway.

Phone still to my ear, camcorder dutifully recording in my other hand, I ran out of the house, shouting, “Who are you? What do you want?” while everyone else was trying to get me to come back inside and STFU.

“They could be dangerous!” Angie cried, tugging me back inside. Meanwhile, it turned out to just be one of my neighbors, pausing at their mailbox before continuing on down the lane. (They were previously privy to my crazy rep, so I’m sure they thought nothing of this latest public outburst at 120 Gillcrest.)

Still, the phone calls had been enough to encourage Jon to retrieve a tire iron from his car, and Dan was pacing around the house with a knife.

We all crowded back in the dining room. In all the commotion, I hadn’t heard the oven buzzer and the tofu crap souffle had all but burnt down the house. And then a dish towel went up in flames on the stove that I forgot to turn off. It was all too much, and I ran up to my room to pout, after hurling my camcorder into a corner. I mean, I’m naturally dramatic on regular nights, but throw in some mildly threatening phone calls and a failed salad course, and the crocodile tears and butt-hurting are out of control. Dan followed me to my room and took this as an opportunity to put the moves on me, which he was always trying to do every time Keri had her back turned. Yes Dan, there’s a maniac casing my house and prank-calling me, please fuck my fears away. I won’t tell Keri.

That only angered me more.

“My entree is ruined! No one liked the salad! My vanilla rice milk tastes like shit and Justin obviously isn’t going to come tonight!” I sobbed into my pillow.

And then the phone rang again.

“It’s them again!” Keri called up the steps.  I rejoined everyone in the dining room, with the plates of wilted salad and flutes of warm wine, and snatched the phone from Keri.

“Nice little dinner you’re having there,” the voice. “Is the wine any good?”

“Whoever it is can see us!” I hissed, hand covering the receiver. Dan and Jon picked up their weapons and went into the backyard. “What do you want?” I asked again, trying to think of who I had pissed off lately at school. This guy Damien had been acting weird toward me, and he knew about my dinner. I added him to my mental shit list.

“Your dog’s not really all that tough, you know,” the voice went on. “All I had to do was feed him some of my fries and we’re best buds now.”

I ran to the front porch to find my German Shepherd, Rama, smacking his lips next to an empty bag of McDonald’s fries. Great watchdog.

While I was on the phone with him, Sharon came screeching to a halt in my driveway. “Those fuckers drove past again,” she said, marching up to the house.

I waved the phone at her and whispered, “They’re on the phone right now.”

Yanking it from me, she started screaming into the receiver some spiel about this being private property. Then she paused and asked, “Are you threatening me?” Meanwhile, Jon and Dan were walking along the perimeter of the property, like they expected to see the culprits perched on a tree bough.

“I’m calling the police. This is ridiculous,” Keri muttered after Sharon hung up. So Keri was on the phone with the 911 dispatcher while Sharon told us that whoever she was talking to was somewhere watching us, because he knew we were all standing out in the driveway, and apparently at one point, he threatened to kill my sheep. (My family had pet sheep. Don’t judge.)

I went back in the house and stood in the kitchen next to Keri, who was still on the phone with the police. My private line rang and at this point, I was ready to murder a fool. In lieu of standard telephone salutations, I yelled “WHAT?” into the receiver.

“Mrs. Kelly? This is Sergeant Hanson from Pleasant Hills,” the man on the other end said. I felt like an asshole for yelling and quickly put on my sweet little girl voice.

“This is her daughter,” I said politely.

“I just wanted to inform you that we’ve been receiving reports from other residents on your street of potential burglars in the area. Whoever it is could be armed and dangerous, so you should remain inside and keep all the doors locked.”

I was just starting to explain to the officer that we had been receiving threats when it dawned on me that he had called my personal, unlisted phone number. Why would the cops call that number and not the main house line. BECAUSE IT WASN’T THE COPS AND I WAS A FUCKING IDIOT.

Just as I started to say, “Hey—wait!” the fake cop disconnected the call.  I was less creeped out and just really fucking pissed off at this point. Because the real police were on their way thanks to Keri, I had to pour all of my wine into the sink since I wasn’t sure if they would be coming inside the house, and if they would even take note that a bunch of underage kids were imbibing alcohol.

All that wine. All those years of dreaming of the moment I’d finally get to savor this gift from my cool godfather.

All down the fucking drain.

This was the impetus; this is what set me over the edge. I grabbed a cleaver and ran into the backyard, with Angie and Lisa trying to stop me. Everyone knew that if this was a real life horror movie, I’d be the first bitch to bite it.

And while I was out there, cutting the night sky with a cleaver, screaming threats to my hidden harassers, the real cops arrived. Sharon spoke with them first, out in the driveway, while I waited impatiently for my turn to speak.

They said they would search the area, that they would report back in a few hours.

That was pretty much the ultimate party foul, so everyone left after that, except for Keri, Dan and Janna, who decided to stay the night with me so I wouldn’t have to be alone.

I cried about it for awhile that night. The fact that my tofu entree had turned into an inedible brick of charred vegetarianism. That I never had the chance to prepare my baked apples for dessert. That I hadn’t succeeded in converting anyone to the meatless side of life.

“Hey, that pumpkin soup was really good,” Dan reminded me. It was really good. Somewhere in between the harassing phone calls, flaming dish towels and threats to slaughter my sheep, I had forgotten all about that damn soup.

And what a great first impression for Jon, this poor unsuspecting guy who was just being introduced to me. Somehow, he stuck around for the next five years. Every once in awhile he liked to remind me that I still had his tire iron.

“Oh look, Halloween 6 is on,” I said. And that’s how we ended that scary, Scream-esque night. Watching a goddamn movie where people get stabbed to death by a psychopathic stalker.

Big surprise, the cops never did follow up.

***

About a week later, the truth came out. It was Janna’s boyfriend Matt and one of his friends. Matt despised me back then, certain that I was getting Janna to do drugs and have recreational sex with bait shop owners. So he did all of that to scare Janna into leaving, because god forbid she was spending a night doing something without her crazy-possessive boyfriend.

And how did that work out for you, Matt?

He did eventually apologize, and asked how he could make it up to me. But all the wine in the world could have never replaced that one special bottle.

(l to r) Janna, Dan, Lisa, Sarah, Jon, Angie and dumb old me in the front.

There was a girl with whom I had a brief friendship in 1995.  Her name was Jessy and she was taken in by the family who lived at the end of the lane. The only thing we really had in common on the surface was that we were both sixteen, but there was an easy comfort when I was with her, and a lot of the times I was sneaking out to go down to her house because I just couldn’t be around my parents anymore. I have vivid memories of dyeing Easter eggs in her kitchen and going to the mall to  buy 2Pac’s “All Eyez on Me” and a pair of purple pants from Contempo that were dangerously close to being bell bottoms.I have no idea what I was thinking.

Then one day she was gone and I never knew why. She wasn’t in school anymore, wasn’t in the house at the end of the lane anymore.

I’m not sure what made me look for her on Facebook, but I found her a few months ago. I sent a friend request with a message that started with, “You probably don’t remember me, but…” I never think anyone remembers me; that’s my inferiority complex rearing it’s gnarly head, I guess.

But she did remember me, and so we started messaging each other. Then we started texting. It took a few months and a lot of rescheduling, but we finally met up last Sunday for lunch at Panera.

She was exactly as I remembered. There is something about her, something very nurturing and maternal, that makes my walls come down. I found that I could speak freely with her, and was admitting things about myself that I would never be so quick to share. Especially with someone I hadn’t seen in fourteen years! I wasn’t even speaking with a stutter, which I often do when hanging out with someone new. But then, I associated calmness with her, because she was sort of my refuge for awhile there when things were bad at home. I’ll never forget that.

“Are you still really clumsy?” she asked. I laughed, but inside, I was really happy that she remembered that about me.

She brought a present with her. She’s been reading my blog (which is the #1 most awesome thing someone can do to prove they give a shit about me!) and picked up on my obsession with my cat Marcy. She found a cutting board that has a Marcy-esque cat on it. It’s the cutest thing!

“Henry can use it,” she laughed, knowing that I don’t cook.

Before we knew it, our Panera lunch  had crept into dinner territory.

I had hoped that this wouldn’t be one of those one-time deals, that we’d make empty promises to hang out again, only to gradually drift apart.

But then she invited me over on Saturday to swim with her and her friend Pixie. I have this phobia where I feel that my friends are embarrassed to have their other friends meet me (Alisha knows!) so right away I was like, “OMG I’m a cool kid now!”

I almost didn’t make it. I didn’t have a bathing suit, and was having the worst time finding a one-piece. The middle of July is a fantastic time to shop for swim wear. I was sending her all of these “I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF FUCK MY LIFE TODAY SUCKS” texts but she kept coming back with words of reason, plan b’s and c’s and z’s, until finally I calmed down and found something that wasn’t meant for grandmas.

Henry dropped me off at her house, happy that I had a play date that didn’t involve him. And I ended up having a great afternoon in a pool with two cool girls who didn’t make me feel lame or left out. (That is, after I walked into Jessy’s house and promptly tripped going into the living room. And I also entered the pool by basically stumbling and falling off the ladder.) And it turns out her friend Pixie likes A LOT of the same bands as me, like Pierce the Veil, Emarosa and Chiodos. I almost drowned.

When Henry came back to get me, we all stood in the yard and talked while Jessy’s husband Tommy antagonized Chooch. Chooch LOVES IT when grown-ups play with him. LOVES IT.

“You’re family now, babe,” Jessy said, hugging me before I left.

The whole way home, I talked a mile a minute to Henry, like I had just come home from summer camp with eighteen new friends.

Sunday morning, Chooch was like, “I want to go to your friend’s house again and play with her dogs.” And so Henry, Chooch and I spent most of Sunday with Jessy and Tommy at their house and it was pretty much amazing. Henry and I don’t have couple friends! And now he and Tommy are talking about going FISHING together! I can only imagine how much fodder that will give me for Henry’s fake LiveJournal!

Best of all, it was nice to see my kid have so much fun. Tommy rode him around on his quad and set off firecrackers for him. And Jessy and I only nearly let him drown in the pool twice.

Tommy and Chooch, bonding over explosives. (I didn’t bring my camera, because I’m a dummy. iPhone pics for the loss.)

Tommy and Jessy are so fun and welcoming. Apparently, there are plans to put me in a CANOE. If you know me at all, right about now you’re like, “Oh, good luck.”

P1010028, originally uploaded by appledale.

My friend Mose came over Saturday night to drink wine and be a porch-sitter with me. Somehow the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast came up in conversation and I felt inspired to go back and look at the pictures from when Henry took me there for my birthday. I think it was in 2003. So now we know that 2003 was the last good birthday I had.

Anyway, he and I were the only guests that night in July, aside from this really goofy guy named Mike who was house-sitting for the summer. I remember being beyond scared to the point of barely sleeping, and then cracking my thigh on the underside of the super-low dining room table the next morning over a breakfast of jonny cakes. Scared and bruised, that is my summation.

This is a picture of me and my big arms, sitting on Lizzie’s parent’s bed, writing a very un-ironic postcard to my death row pen pal, Greg. “Hey Greg, I’m in a house of murder. IS THIS WHAT YOUR HOUSE FEELS LIKE!?”

I would like to go back there someday.

The thing that made Henry angry about my inaugural lesbian dalliance wasn’t the fact that Christina and I, you know, DIDSTUFF (I’m still awkward as an eighth grader when it comes to this girlie shit, but if it was a dude I was writing about, I’d have no qualms telling you all about that), but that she and I literally slept together. I suppose if she was some Mexican whore that I discarded by the train tracks upon conquering, he would have felt better about it. But no, she and I had slept together in her bed and Papa Henry was a little jerked off by that. Oh, and also he maybe had a slight issue with the fact that she went and got a tattoo to commemorate our weird friendship.

So it was a little awkward and tense when she came here to Pittsburgh a few weeks later.

She arrived early on a Friday morning in April. It was still dark when I picked her up from the Greyhound station after dropping Henry off at work. He had spent the entire car ride expressing his malcontent for the upcoming weekend, but I ignored him because I’m selfish and spending time with Christina made me happy.

Later that afternoon, Henry called, bitching that I never came to pick him up from work. “I’ve been trying to call you all fucking day,” he said angrily. “But the phone has been busy!” This was back when we still had a landline, and the phone was definitely hung up all day. In fact, the later it became in the day, the more worried I became. I kept checking the phone, wondering why Henry hadn’t called yet.

Of course, in Henry’s mind, this meant that I had purposely left the phone off the hook so Christina and I could have sex all over the house, probably with 17 wigged strangers and a horse.

He didn’t believe me, probably still doesn’t, but she and I honest to god watched music videos on On Demand all day, and I even read aloud from my vacation journals while we drank coffee outside on my sidewalk. Seriously, we didn’t need to be running around with studded strap-ons to be entertained by each other. It wasn’t about that for us, though I’m sure Henry imagined it was all “Cue porn soundtrack!” every time we were alone. But no, there was definitely innocence there between us. We were just two little girls, giggling a lot, being stupid.

We always kept it platonic when she’d visit. I’d have felt weird DOINGSTUFF with her in my house, and didn’t want Henry to have to feel weird about it too. I mean, somewhere inside of me, there actually is a little tiny atom-sized pocket of respect for the man.

I can’t imagine how annoying it must have been for Henry though. She and I had a language that consisted solely of strangulated giggles, sighs, and choking motions from laughter gone wild. Everything was an inside joke, a knowing glance, a secret smirk.

In fact, he and I just spoke about this and he said, “Of course I wasn’t happy that weekend; I don’t trust you.” I suggested he should just leave that as a comment on this entry, but he mumbled, “No. I don’t want any involvement in this. I’ve already had enough of it.” That’s real talk, straight from Henry’s mouth.

***

Henry had to work that Saturday, and we arranged for me to pick him up when I was done with my English Comp class at Pitt that afternoon. Christina decided she didn’t want to wait at my house, so she hung around on campus while I was sitting through tedious discussions of Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” I had explicitly told her what time to meet back outside my classroom, but when class got out, she was nowhere to be found. I roamed around the Cathedral of Learning for nearly an hour looking for her, before giving up and sitting on a bench outside of my classroom. It turned out the idiot forgot to set her watch ahead and thought she had way more time than she actually did.

So once again, I was obscenely late picking up Henry from work and the wheels of adultery were surely spinning wildly in his head. No Henry, we weren’t having sex with mop handles in the campus supply closet, I promise.

This was probably the Universe’s way of saying, “Hey, kid. The jig is up. You can’t handle this new lifestyle, so please hand over your dual citizenship to Sexkatchewan and have yourself a nice heterosexual day.”

In spite of the tension and lack of trust on Henry’s end, it was still one of the most gut-bustingly hilarious weekends I had with her, or anyone. Everything was always funny when she was around. Everything. I miss laughing until I’m nearly puking. I miss finding meaning in a blue marble and sharing a root beer float. I miss being a part of something that must have appeared so strange and unusual to anyone attempting to figure us out; it must have been like looking through fun house mirrors.

It’s important for me to remember these brief moments in time, because I don’t want to be full of hatred for her, and sometimes as I’m writing these stories, I feel that I’m letting my anger take over, that I’m starting to be biased based on the recent falling out. There were so many beautiful memories from back then, when she was still Christina and I was still Erin and we were strong enough to not let the words and actions of other people come between us. So to keep true to the story, I’m going to end this with something I wrote after she left that weekend, and if you can, imagine me telling it to you in a voice high-pitched and sped-up with giddy delirium, because that’s pretty much the tone I always used back then when she and I were together. It’s the tone I use when I’m so happy I could die.

***

Last week, when I asked Henry if he was excited that Christina was coming to hang out, he unfalteringly shook his head and said, “No, you guys act so middle school and weird when you’re together.” I was appalled and determined to show him that Christina and I were adults who acted in a very mature manner when in each others company.

Typically, when an out of state friend comes to visit, people like to show them around the city. Have a good time, see a show, be touristy, throw down a few dead prezzes for a hooker. Not me, though.

The weekend with Christina was spent watching quality TV, such as Charles and Camilla’s wedding, music videos on On Demand (the same ones repeatedly, much to Henry’s delight), the Eternal Word Television Network, and golf. I love golf now. And not just as a joke like before. I even joined Phil Mickelson’s fan club and within five minutes of getting my member confirmation email, I was already defending his name on his message board. Some idiot had the audacity to go in there and say that he heard Phil had sired an illegitimate child with a prostitute. Can you imagine? This was unacceptable, so I knew I had to take action. My reply was “STFU.” That’s right. Christina said she was uncertain if golf fans knew what that meant, but I’m confident that they’ll figure it out.

Unfortunately, when you pair us up, Henry’s correct in that we regress into two middle school girls and our giggling drives him right into the arms of Migraine. We all went out to eat Saturday night and he actually had the brass to grab my arm and admonish me for being immature and obnoxious. I know, I know – me, obnoxious? Henry’s got the wrong girl, obviously. Then he told me to stop fake laughing. Excuse me, but fake laughing? I engaged in no such thing. I was really just that out of control.

Sunday, we took a breather from watching bad television programming because it was getting completely ridiculous. I should have deduced this Saturday morning when I almost herniated a disk because some man reporting from Windsor Castle was wearing a tie with tiny blue dots on it. That’s not funny and I had no right to laugh. Except I did and then Christina fed off it and we couldn’t stop laughing and slapping each other and I nearly swallowed my tongue.

So, it was obvious on Sunday that we needed to get out of the house, plus Christina and I wanted to take our show on the road. Henry piled us into the car and we went to the Homewood Cemetery. I love going on Sundays because there’s always a bunch of Chinese people there and they like, have bonfires and stuff (although Henry maintains that they’re just burning incense).

We arrived and I was already bolting out of the car before it even came to a complete stop. Almost immediately, I unearthed a huge tree branch and started parading around with it. Christina decided that we should pretend like we were honoring the Pope, but that we needed a flag at the end to make it complete. We begged Henry to give us his bandanna but he held his ground. He was trying to be all firm and hard core, until we walked past a man with his little daughter near the pond. The man nodded at Henry, who demurely returned his sentiments with a feminine “Hi.” I think he blushed, too. So the next three minutes was spent carrying on about Henry’s new boyfriend, until I found a pile of leaves to trample over.

I left Henry and Christina for awhile because there was a path leading up a hill that was just begging for my feet to touch it. It felt empowering being so high above them on a parallel road. Henry was OK with me straying until I threw a huge rock down the hill at them and let loose my warrior cry. Henry snapped his head up to look at me and hissed, “Be quiet!” while pointing at the Chinese people who were honoring the dead.

Hanging back a bit, I let the two of them round a bend before I made my way stealthily back down the hill, stopping halfway to crouch behind a bush. Every so often, they would stop walking and look up the hill, scratching their heads when they couldn’t find me.

Christina told me later that she had mused out loud, “I bet she’s going to try and hide from us” and Henry, without so much as a glance over his shoulder, quickly informed her that, “She’s right over there.” How does he do it?

I knew I had been spotted so I ran the rest of the way down the hill and fell into place with them. I asked Henry how he knew I was hiding.

“How are you going to try to hide in a cemetery while you’re wearing a bright orange shirt?”

Lots of gravestone heckling ensued and we kept catching Henry trying to pick up his pace. He succeeded in losing us for awhile when we became sidetracked by the cemetery office. I was running around trying to find an unlocked door, despite Henry impatiently reminding me that it’s Sunday and there’s no one there. I had to find out for myself so I started to ring the doorbell while playing with cigarette butts in the big flower planter. I could hear Henry in the distance spouting off about how I shouldn’t touch cigarette butts because they’re dirty.

No one answered so Christina came with me around the back to search for another way in where we became sidetracked by big rusty gardening tools. I was enamored with one that looked like a sickle and she was appropriately fiddling with a hoe or something. We were going to have a sword fight until I noticed that civilians were watching us from the street. We threw down the tools and ran, which was when we realized that Henry had gained a great distance on us.

We knew that he was embittered with our childish antics, so we each procured a bunch of wilted Easter flowers that had been plucked and thrown carelessly from a grave. We presented him with the flowers and he swatted our offerings away! Ingrate.

On the way back to the car, we passed a tombstone that boasted Christina’s last name. I exclaimed in horror, “Oh my god, you’re dead!”

“So are you!” she countered, as she pointed to one further over that said, “McWhiney.” Oh, ok. I see. Henry thought this was incredibly hilarious until Christina pointed out one across the road and said, “Look, you’re here, too Henry! ‘Meanor’!”

Then we came home and watched the final round of the Masters and I gave myself a sore throat from cheering with too much zeal.

And when we returned from taking Christina to the bus station, the house was filled with silence. It was sad, but I bet my neighbors are thankful.

I tried to watch our favorite From First To Last video this morning, but it just wasn’t the same. I didn’t have anyone to punch and squeal with during our favorite parts. I miss her.

A green and black striped Henley and jeans with a hole in the knee was what I wore right before I lost my girl virginity.

It was about a week after I leaked my secret to Christina, and we were sitting nervously together on her bed; she was more in the middle, I was perched on the edge. The Used was playing in the background. I let her giggle anxiously for a few minutes before I, always the predator, went in for the kill. It wasn’t as scary as I thought. Sort of soft. A stark contrast when compared to Henry’s bristly mug.

We had discussed this very scenario ad nauseum over the span of about 35,000 phone calls and emails, all of which ended with me emphatically stating that we were only going to kiss, nothing else.

But after about five minutes, my inner hussy emerged and was all, “Yeah go ahead, just do whatever.” All of my preconceptions, hang-ups (and standards, apparently) had blown out the window with one big gust from Christina’s duck lips. You know, maybe it’s crazy, but I kind of liked it. She treated me like I was some perfect being and I have never actually been able to see tangible love (or burning obsession, it’s all semantics) in someone’s eyes before, like I could in hers. It was addicting, knowing I had this crazy effect on someone.

The rest of the weekend was filled with delirious giddiness, stolen kisses, goosebumped arms, and nonsensical inside jokes. It was one of the best weekends of my life, because with Christina, I was thirteen again. I could say anything I wanted to say around her, do anything I wanted, be anyone I wanted – like, for instance, myself. She had somehow tore down every one of my walls when I wasn’t looking, and to this day Henry is the only other person who has done that.

So I found myself valuing her even more; that I was able to quite literally strip down and still find myself comfortable with her?

It was a really big deal to me.

We could spend hours just listening to music, no need for words. And when certain parts would come on, we would look at each other knowingly.

**

When I was in seventh grade, my friend Liz invited me to take acting classes with her. One of the exercises we had to do was pair up with someone and attempt to mime their motions with closed eyes. I guess the point was that you were supposed to open yourself up and feel that slight electric connection that apparently is meant to happen when two people are just about to touch.

I couldn’t feel it.

“Stop thinking about it too much,” the instructor said. “Just let yourself go.”

Liz and I were bombing the exercise so I had to cheat and peek to see where her hand was so I could follow it with my own. I was so upset that night, that I wasn’t able to connect with my partner like everyone else could. I felt there was something wrong with me. Was I that emotionally shut off that I couldn’t even sense that another human being, and not even a stranger but a friend, was standing inches away from me?

Ten years later, I finally was able to let myself go and feel that connection.  I could close my eyes and feel Christina. Sometimes I felt that I could feel her even with 300 miles between us.

**

Christina took me to a cemetery that weekend, this huge sprawling graveyard in Cincinnati where we got lost almost immediately after parking. We must have spent hours there, harassing ducks, kicking tombstones, me spitting “I hate you!“s, which is Erin code for “I might kinda love you, maybe.

” We held hands the whole time. Everything was funny. Everything was special. Everything was big and important and significant. It felt simultaneously innocent and wrong.

I remember an older couple passing us, and for a split second I wanted to let go of her hand. But then they smiled at us and it kind of made me appreciate the day even more.

Somewhere in the middle of the cemetery, we came across this small, gnarled, leafless tree. To anyone else, it would have been just that – a tree. But to us, all hyped up on lust-induced adrenaline, sleep-deprived giddiness, and the sense of sharing some big secret love-thing, it became a very big deal.

With feigned gravity, we declared that this tree needed a closer inspection. We ducked beneath the boughs, which took on the shape of a busted umbrella above our heads; we were just about to make it our new Clubhouse for Gaybos when Christina noticed that there was a dead snake half-buried under a carpet of dead leaves and pine cones. And then – oh, look! –  there was a dead bird, too, so we ran out from under the tree, screaming and waving our hands in mock-horror. This should not have been that big of a deal. But for years, that tree came up in conversation. She wrote poems about it; I had it make tiny cameo appearances in some of my stories through the years. Once, we even tried to find it again, before realizing that there were at least fifty other trees in that cemetery with the same bare, arthritic branches.

When it was time for me to leave that Sunday afternoon, we said goodbye in her kitchen and she cried. I couldn’t get her to stop, and I couldn’t stay any longer, so I just left her there, crying against her kitchen counter.

Yes, everything was great that weekend. Like a fucking Twinkie filled with stuff that movies are made of.  If anyone would have suggested to me then that in five years, my friendship with Christina would be splayed, broken-hearted and decomposing beneath the Death Tree, I would have punched them in the face.

I wish I could have put it all in a snow globe, because I know I will never get that back again.