After yesterday’s heavy entry, I wanted to lighten the mood a little, so here’s that stupid video I kept threatening to post of Corey, Janna, Blake and me on some ridiculous ride at the Westmoreland County Fair called High Roller.This is from two summers ago. I know that because last summer, Blake brought Deanna with him and was too cool (and busy playing Bingo with the elderly) to ride anything with us lowlifes!

I just want to add that I am always the first to get annoyed at people who find themselves in front of  a camera, seemingly for the first time ever, and immediately flip the bird or do something else equally as stupid and trite. It’s almost embarrassing to look at. So what do I do? Act like this is the first time I’ve been in front of a camera! “Oh, you’re recording right now? Let me stick out my tongue and make a stupid sound for you, because everyone will think, ‘Wow, that was really cool and funny – why have I not ever thought to pull a face like that?'”

I have to live with myself. Be glad you don’t.

Also, I clearly just learnededed how to do annotations on YouTube videos; oh I am so advanced!

Typical Friday night. Sitting on the couch, reading excerpts from an old journal to Henry. Really awesome tidbits about how suicidal I was (I ended one entry with: “Don’t be surprised when I check myself out someday” and another was about how I kept imagining jamming a shard of glass in my neck. LOLWTF.) & how bad I hated Henry. Things I can’t put in here or else my intricately woven façade will be tattered!

“What month is this from?” Henry asked in horror after listening to me read a particularly sordid entry filled with hate, mania and Girl, Interrupted nuances.

“July of 2005,” I answered, wiping away tears that sprung from laughing so hard.

“Um, and we conceived a child a month later?” he exclaimed. “I wish you would have read this to me first.”

Yes Chooch, you were conceived from strong uncertainty, hate sex, and my desire to slaughter your father while he slept. But don’t worry, I was in therapy while I was growing you!

In my “serious research” for The Christina Chronicles, I’ve made it to the journal containing a good portion of 2005. Jesus Christ, I was a mess! Even messier than I am now, which is really saying something and I admit that I took a moment out of my day to feel utterly sorry for 2005 Erin.

It’s interesting to look back on the state of my relationship with Henry and wonder how the hell we’ve made it to the point where we have a four-year-old son when it was apparently such a big deal if we got along that I would preface journal entries with all-capped ovations of WE DIDN’T FIGHT TODAY!!!!

Anyway, the point of this is that I wrote one night in February, Henry was thoroughly engrossed in a game of Ghost Recon (I AM SO GLAD HE DOESN’T PLAY THOSE STUPID GAMES ANYMORE!), when my cat Don approached him and cried.

Without taking his eyes from the TV, Henry replied, “Oh yeah?

And did that happen yesterday or today?”

Then he realized I was in the room and tried to deny it, because Henry big man! Henry no speak to animals!

Interestingly, I was always flat-out ignored if I had the audacity to speak to the Gaming Master.

(Ed.Note: He still makes these same faces when we’re together. I miss the days when he had no choice but to sit with me.]

[Originally posted September 2006]

Two and a half years. That’s how long it had been since I was last sick. Two and a half years. So it came as no surprise when I developed a cold the night before the baptism. Pair that with the fact that Brian waited until the eleventh hour to suggest that we just do the luncheon at his place (because he was too scared of my wrath to just come out and say that he failed at securing a room in the church), and you have yourself a Very Erin Baptism.

Figuring that most of the guests wouldn’t be willing to drive from the church to downtown, where Brian lives, I decided to just have the luncheon here, in my cluttered house. Which meant that Henry spent Saturday night and Sunday morning cleaning. He tried to use that as an excuse to bail on me, claiming that it would be more conducive if he stayed behind and cleaned some more. After inspecting the house, I realized that there was nothing left to be done, short of polishing the silverware and waxing the doorknobs, so I snapped my fingers and he reluctantly donned his I’m Playing Dress Up attire. After securing Riley into his slippery baptismal garments, we were ready to go.

Everyone arrived at the church on time, even Christy, who has tardiness ingrained in her nature. I was glad to see that she was already there, because she’s the godmother. And it’s important for the godparents to be at the church.

Once inside the church, the first thing that happened was Brian rushing up to me and giving me a huge, hearty hug as if this was common practice within our friendship. For the record, it is not. Wow, Church Brian is different than Street Brian, I mused to myself.

I was too busy willing my nose not to drip to pay much attention to the guests preceding the ceremony, which I feel bad about now. Except that I don’t feel bad for ignoring Janna, who flitted around me like a fucking fairy, telling me all about the trials and tribulations she endured when baking cookies for the luncheon. I think she might have expected a pat on the back, but I was like, “Bitch, I told you to just make chocolate chip cookies, not scour the Food Network website for the most ambitious recipe you could find.”

She repeatedly worried out loud that no one would like her cookies. “Do you think my cookies will be good enough?” she’d ask. I don’t know Janna, can my kid get dunked in water first? I delegated video camera duties to her, so that arrested her mind for awhile and gave me some peace and quiet.

In a happy turn of events, two members of my family showed up: my aunt Charmaine and Grandma Lois, on my birth dad’s side. That made me less embarrassed about the fact that my other family blew it off like it was simply a communal trip to the grocery store. Even my brother Corey let me down, but that’s OK — now I won’t have to go to his high school graduation. (Oh that’s right, I play those games.) I was happy to see that Christy’s parents were there, along with Janna, Brenna, Kara, Lisa, Carol, and Christy’s boyfriend Andrew. And of course Brian, the godfather and resident churchy person.

The cold medicine which I had coursing through my system made me oblivious to the fact that I was standing near an altar. Trying to dab my nose with discretion also helped keep me from erupting into giggles every time the priest spoke. Most importantly, I didn’t do anything stupid or childish.

I was chagrined, however, to learn that I would have to speak out loud from a baptism guide book. It was your basic “I do”s and “Amen”s, but still. That made my skin crawl a little, and it was hard to keep a straight face as I realized that Henry was intentionally not participating in his speaking role. He busied himself with the squirming Riley, so I don’t think anyone noticed that his lips were not, in fact, moving.

I spent a large portion of the ceremony flipping ahead in the booklet to see how much more speaking I’d have to partake in. I’m sure I appeared to be very grateful and pious.

At one point, Riley arched his back so extremely that I felt like if someone would have slid a set of stairs underneath him, he could have recreated the deleted scene in The Exorcist. That would have been a good time.

The priest, who was quite the card, anointed Riley’s head with some scented oil crap. He then closed his eyes and said, rather dramatically, “Oh yes, that does smell wonderful” and he encouraged Henry to take a whiff of Riley’s head, but Henry was still being a spoiled sport and ignored the suggestion. I, on the other hand, had a dire need to know what it smelled like, so I announced to the church, “Well, I want to smell!” and made a show of sniffing my kid’s head like I was a dog. I don’t know why I made such a scene of it; I could barely smell anything through all the sick in my nose.

God, I must have been so attractive, standing up there with red, sore nostrils, clutching a wilted Kleenex. When I looked in the mirror before we left for the church, I swear I looked semi-decent. Then it all unraveled in the car on the way to the church and I look like Throw Mama From the Train in every picture that was so rudely snapped of me, like the only thing that’s keeping me from looking like a true Cyclops is that I have an extra eye. I somehow managed to appear pregnant all over again. Sick or not, I’m just not photogenic and you would think that after twenty-seven years of scratching out my face with a Sharpie, I’d have come to terms with this.

But no, no I haven’t. It still makes me want to rip my face off.

After about twenty minutes, Riley was officially baptized and I hastily ran away from the altar so I could blow my nose. I don’t even think I thanked the priest. Now I kind of feel shitty about that. But no, not really. Not at all.

Back at my house, everyone lavished my kid with exorbitant attention (except for Brenna, who doesn’t like kids, and Janna, who was too busy staking out the perfect spot for her cookies) and he was in his glory. He cruised around the house in his Tot Rider, showing off for all who would cast a glance his way, until Christy’s dad decided that the only way he’d stay for the luncheon and enjoy himself without faking was if I turned on the football game.

So my son was soon forgotten and the baptismal luncheon quickly morphed into a football party, but I didn’t care. I was just happy that everyone was there and staying. Every time someone would approach me at the food table, I’d desperately cry out, “You’re not leaving, are you!?” Turns out they were coming to the food table to, you know, get food. I don’t get much company.

Lest anyone get too godly, Marcy came out of hiding and skulked around under a cloud of Satanism, seducing hands to pet her so she could suckle the blood that her claws were sure to draw. I could hear Christy in the other room, begging her dad not to touch Marcy.

“Daddy please don’t touch her! I tried to tell Ma once and she didn’t listen and that cat attacked her!” She usually punctuates her pleas by holding her hand against her chest, like a mom does when her child is about to fall off the monkey bars. Christy is the head of the Put Marcy Down Coalition. They have history, those two.

I dare say that Marcy was able to eclipse the football game, if only for a few minutes.

My Grandma Lois was happy to get an opportunity to give Riley a bottle. He started coughing at one point, and with a mouthful of cake, I feigned concern. “Oh. No. My son is choking. I hope he is OK.” I even craned my neck slightly in an effort to look like I cared. Then Henry called me out. “You don’t care about him; you just want to know if you have to stop eating or not.”

Come on, I was eating cake! I don’t know many people who are inclined to forsake a piece of cake in order to save a choking victim.

Did I mention that Janna made cookies?

I started to regret asking Janna to make the cookies in the first place.

Every time I’d see her talking to someone at the luncheon, I imagined she was filling their head with her stories of being a broken woman forced to bake cookies.

“Do you like those lemon cookies? Yeah? Did you know that it took me five billion hours to make those? Well it did. I even went to Egypt and excavated the jaw of a Pharaoh which I then used to grate the lemon rind to perfection. And the cinnamon on those Snickerdoodles you’re enjoying? It’s actually directly from a cinnamon fern in Asia, and it is very helpful with diarrhea.”

It would figure that Janna would be the last to leave, and she was still expelling sour air over her fucking baked goods. She wound up with a few leftovers to take home. I feel bad for her parents.

Riley was in a sound sleep in his crib by the time I realized that I had forgotten to take a picture of him with his newly appointed godparents, so a cute bottle of Mountain Dew served as a stand-in.

All in all, it was a good day. We laughed a lot and my kid was loved on a lot and he made me proud by being such a good sport about the whole manhandling by a priest situation. And that church was really pretty, too. I’m glad I let my aesthetic disposition prevent me from using the church across the street. Because that one is very plain. And you know, looks matter.

Ever since I got pregnant, I knew I would have the baby baptized, for the obvious reasons:

1. Babies dressed in uncomfortable garb while squirming under a deluge of water should be a spectator sport
2. The party afterward = food
3. Finally, a legitimate excuse to have Riley dunked (provided the church I choose goes that route)!

And also maybe I have some personal reasons as well, but getting into that would be bo-oooo-ring.

Henry, on the other hand, is quite opposed to this and has voiced several times that he doesn’t care what I decide to do, but not to expect him to support me. As a non-practicing Catholic, he said he’d feel like a hypocrite. Why? I don’t.

Surprisingly, this hasn’t sparked many blow-outs with us. If it were political, I’d have undoubtedly broken his glasses (again) with my right hook.

After discussing the situation with the priest across the street, he signed me up for the baptism class and recommended that I bring one of the godparents, since the class was going to be full of couples and I’d likely feel uncomfortable.

Wait, what? I had to go to a class? You mean I couldn’t just march the kid into a church and have a priest plop him into a fountain?

I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. I didn’t even want to go! Because really, church and me? Seriously? I would rather be pooped on by Henry’s gross ex-wife. But getting the baby baptized is surprisingly important to me, and I knew that by attending this class, I was proving that I was serious.

After spending two weeks moping around the house with a heavy bottom lip, I scored myself a side-kick for the class in the form of our very own Hoover. He was quick to reiterate that he was still not on board with the baptism, though.

At noon on Sunday, we slid into the second pew from the front of the baptism classroom and watched as the teacher–Cindy–began rustling through papers, making her last minute preparations. I immediately felt an urgent desire to laugh.

I’m one of those Inappropriate Laughers. I’ll erupt at a moment’s notice in the most solemn of places: churches, funeral homes, abortion clinics. I know I’m not alone in this, either. Henry gave me a toothpick to jab into my thigh to quell the giggles, although he first offered to do it himself.

The silence was stifling. I didn’t know where to lay my eyes. I kept staring at the pattern on Cindy’s dress, but she caught me a few times and I have a feeling she thought I was a lesbian and Henry was my skirt. Better than thinking, “Ew, that doofus sired her son? Poor baby.”

I wondered what the class would be like. I imagined there would be some Holy water flicking and maybe one of the couples would be a dear and come bearing homemade cookies. Simulated baby dunking, if we were lucky. But I would quickly find out that baptism class was really just a facade for Cindy to spend an hour beating into our heads just how fantastically in tune with Christianity her daughter is and how her son has a remarkably high IQ.

I picked at my cuticles for the next five minutes, and still no one else had arrived. Cindy decided to start without the others and passed over a sign-in sheet, which Henry refused to sign.

Cindy then asked her 10-year-old daughter Sophie to stand at the podium and start off the class by reading the Parent’s Prayer. Relieved that we weren’t going to be strong-armed into reading out loud with her, I got comfortable in the hard wooden pew as Sophie started reading. And stuttering. And fumbling over words. And completely rearranging the order of words. I wanted to slap her in the back of the head and yell, “SPIT IT OUT, KID!” Henry, sensing my annoyance and growing anger, hissed, “She’s only 10!” I didn’t care! I could read better than that when I was ten!

When she finally finished butchering the eight paragraphs (is that what you would call the individual clusters of Christlike adulation?), Cindy beamed and praised her for a job well done. I choked back the bile.

“I want to talk specifically for a minute about the one line of this prayer,” Cindy announced, still wearing her church-appointed fake smile. It was a line talking about teaching our children not to lie and cheat. Cindy pulled out the big guns in the form of an anecdote. Ooh, I was shivering with anticipation. “Just recently, we came back from Disney World. Now, while we were there, we could have lied and said that Sophie was only nine so she could get in at a cheaper admittance price, but we didn’t want to set an example of lying to get something we want. Right Sophie?” Sophie cocked her head and smiled tightly at us.

Oh my god, I really hated her.

Cindy went on to gush about Sophie’s work in the church.

“She’s filling in for an altar boy on vacation, so she’s really been able to see how mass works from behind the scenes, right Sophie?” Big deal. Sophie remained in the front of the classroom with her hands on her hips as her mom continued to stroke her ego.

What a smug bitch.

I wondered how much longer we’d have to sit here and watch their Happy Valley dog and pony show when a haggard-looking woman padded into the room. Henry gave me a squinted side-long glance as he noticed that she was alone.

Next, Cindy asked us why we wanted to have our children baptized. “We’ll start over here,” she decided as she looked at me.

What?! No one told me there was going to be a Q&A session.

“Uh…because I was baptized. And it’s like, the right thing to do?” I suddenly became aware that my answer would only have sounded worse if recited by Butthead himself.

I white-knuckled the edge of my seat, waiting for Cindy to shake her head sadly and say, “No, I’m sorry. Wrong answer; you fail. Now get the hell out of my class. Oh–and may the Lord be with you.” Instead, Cindy looked at me with the pity generally reserved for three-legged dogs.

“Yes, OK. So, because of tradition, right? That’s certainly not a wrong answer.” Then why was she making me feel like it was wrong? She turned her attention to Henry, who irritably mumbled, “I’m with her!” His reply was barely audible over all the hostility radiating from it. She skipped over him for all the other questions.

I rolled my eyes when she asked the single woman at the end of our row what her reason was and we had to sit through a veritable dissertation. I felt so out of place.

Soon, another single woman rolled on in. And another. And another. Henry’s scowl was deep-set and animosity was rolling in waves off his skin. Once again, I couldn’t stop laughing.

After getting the newcomers up to speed, Cindy decided to hurl another pop quiz our way. Something about what could we do as parents to instill faith into our children. She looked at me expectantly. I mumbled that I would take the kid to church.

Cindy gave me that look again and reiterated my answer in case those in the back didn’t quite hear just how lame it really was. Then she steepled her fingers and said that yes, going to church was certainly an obvious route to take. She was clearly digging for some profound spiritual example and I was unsure that she was going to find it within the motley crew gathered together that day.

I was wrong.

There was a woman sitting in the pew behind us, and when it was her turn to answer Cindy’s stupid question, she closed her eyes and said, “You know, I learn more about faith from my children than I could ever teach them myself. Every time my daughter hears a bell, she says a prayer.”

Don’t Erin. Oh god, don’t laugh.

Cindy stopped dead in her tracks and clutched the back of a pew. “That gave me goosebumps,” she announced, as though the woman had sung a hymn in the dulcet tones of an angel, rather than simply answering a question. Cindy rubbed her arms for effect.

This class was a piece of shit. I started to get restless and began to rifle through our handouts. There was a dated booklet about the religious aspects of being a parent and it featured pictures of real life families. There was a shot of one child with a bowl cut and thick-framed glasses who particularly tickled my funny bone. My body convulsed in amusement as I realized that the kid bore a striking resemblance to a young Hoover. Then I noticed the headline of that page said Raising Special Children.

Jesus, I’m a bad mom. No one wants to hear that their child resembles Henry.

Finally, the end was drawing near and Cindy’s husband Sam–who appeared to be running on the fumes of last night’s alcohol binge–ushered us into a classroom down the hall, where two rows of miniature chairs were set up in semi-circles. I was happy that I was able to successfully plant my ass on the chair without my cheeks dripping over the sides. Sam pressed ‘play’ on the VCR and we all sat back to watch Bishop Wuerl, circa 1988, walk us through a real life baptism. It was fifteen excruciating minutes of him narrating over top of scenes from a baptism, interspersed with shots of him in his Bishop-y costume, clasping his hands in front of a bookshelf which was no doubt filled with books about praying and swindling money from parishioners.

Quickly, I lost interest in that nonsense. Instead, I busied myself by taking inventory of the best educational toys from the ’70s, housed in ragged boxes held together by masking tape and stacked haphazardly on a shelf next to my seat. Maybe when I start attending church, my monetary offering will go toward upgrading the flashcards.

When I start attending church. I love saying that over and over in my head.

“…and then the priest anoints the godparents….”

The Bishop was on his ninth “and then.” I was waiting for the “…and then the end.” Would it ever come? That Christ-hugger Cindy said that it was a “short” video. To me, short is two minutes. Anything longer than that and I’m lost in a land of spittle and undulating hot dogs.

“…and then…”

Ooh, birdie outside the window!

“…and then…”

Jesus Christ, I couldn’t stop staring at Hoover’s head, which looked like the prize-winning gourd at the county fair.

“…and then comes the part of the ceremony where the priest performs an exorcism…”

Wait…what? Way to lasso my attention, Bishop Wuerl.

And so the video segued into the section about Original Sin and cleansing the soul. I was captivated as, over and over again, Bishop Wuerl said things like, “..expel the darknesssss.” This creepiness was certainly unexpected in a video about a fucking baptism.

“Darknesssss….”

The video ended and Sam presented us with a certificate praising us for completing baptism class. That almost made up for not attending high school graduation.

I ran for the door and as soon as my feet hit the pavement of the parking lot, my tongue tripped over itself as all the comments I had held back for the past hour came racing out past my teeth. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to distract Henry, who immediately began to berate me for dragging him to a class full of single women when he could have stayed at home and jacked off over his hair cut.

“Darknessssss.” Ooh, it still makes me shiver!

Later on that afternoon, while licking a soft-serve ice cream cone laden with crunchies, Henry said thoughtfully, “That lady—Cindy—was hiding something.” Like what? The fact that she didn’t really recite the Parent’s Prayer every night? Sophie’s on the pill because she can’t keep her legs closed?

Ever since the class, I’ve been dangling water bottles above Riley’s head so we can practice for the big day, but then Henry gets all, “OMG no!” on my ass and rips the bottle from my hand.

The baptism will be the first time I’ve entered a church since I was seventeen.

[Originally posted July 2006]

[Ed.Note: Apparently, in the beginning, I tried extra hard to pretend we weren’t actually calling him Chooch 24:7. This post was originally written June 2006.]

Last week, I had Riley on the front porch and I noticed that he was staring at a bird perched above us on a telephone wire. Clearly, this meant that he is obsessed with birds so Henry and I took him to the National Aviary on Saturday. Because that’s how all infants want to spend a hot and humid Saturday afternoon, right?

We get him inside and I extract him from his stroller, in spite of Hoover’s pleas to let him wake up first, and began thrusting him at all the birds. Now, he’s not even two months old yet, and the rational portion of my brain realized that he wasn’t going to give a shit about an enclosure full of birds. But the child-like section of my brain is a large expanse of Legos and spit bubbles and it always wins when pitted against rationality and reason. So there I was, holding him up and saying, “LOOK AT THE GODDAMN FLAMINGOS! WHY DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT THE GODDAMN FLAMINGOS?” When he was nary a week old, I got all fed up and deflated because he wasn’t paying attention to his toys. “Make him wake up!” I would whine to Henry. Now I’m all, “For the love of God, make him go to sleep.” But I still get frustrated when he won’t take delight in the treasure trove of toys I totally splurged on when I could have been buying CDs for me me me.

I realized that Henry wasn’t capturing these riveting aviary memories so I barked at him to start videotaping for Christ’s sake. We now have a few minutes of Riley slobbering and staring blankly at everything but the goddamn birds, and then a few seconds of Riley bursting into tears at which point Hoover hurriedly turned off the camera because God forbid people know that our baby cries.

We sat outside under the protective cover of shade for a bird show, also not cared about by Riley. I looked around at the toddlers, who were squealing and applauding with expressions of pure fascination, and I wished Riley were older. But then we went into the gift shop and one of said toddlers was running amok and throwing merchandise off shelves and it really made me appreciate my little infant Riley, sacked out in his stroller. Please don’t grow up.

Then he arose and screamed bloody murder. He is not the happiest of babies. Henry said he has my temperament. Mine? But I’m a DOLL.

Oh well, at least we didn’t have to pay for him to not care about birds. But really, not even the parrots, Riley?!

Riley, enjoying life in the quiet sanctuary of his crib before being whisked off into a rowdy and humid pen full of bird shit and bellowing children

Two days earlier, I had wanted to dip Riley into a fountain at the cemetery we were at, but that was when I realized that I might have left the stove turned on. When I relayed my foiled plans to Henry that night, he breathed a sigh of relief and began lecturing me on dirty fountain water. It looked so clean and sparkling to me, though!

While we were there, I noticed a refreshing pond-sized rectangle of water down yonder from the aviary and begged Henry to let me dunk Riley in it. Maybe this particular receptacle of water would meet Hoover’s standards.

“Do you even know how filthy that water is? I don’t think so. And what’s with you wanting to ‘dunk’ our son in water?”

I can’t help it, he just looks so dunkable! I want to be dipping him in swimming pools, ponds, puddles, vats of molasses. I just want to be dunking him!

Yesterday, Henry compromised and let me dunk Riley in his little bath tub.

Thank you for dunking me in clean and sanitary water, Mom
At least it was clean and sanitary until he let loose with an explosive shit. I screamed and made Henry clean it. Anytime he protests, I viciously remind him that I’m breastfeeding. The breastfeeding card is just as good to play as the birthing card. I love this game.

That’s me who he’s smiling at, by the way. I was so excited the day he flashed his first smile, because it was 6-6-06. But then I realized it wasn’t so exciting because that was also Henry’s birthday. However, I noticed that while he does in fact gift Henry and I with his occassional smiles (which he usually follows with a scowl or blood-curling scream as he realizes that, “Hey, I’m being happy. There goes my reputation.”), the recipient of the bulk of his beams is none other than Robert Smith. It’s true. He’ll be staring off over my shoulder and I’ll follow his gaze straight to one of my many Robert Smith portraits. Maybe those nine months of rubbing my belly, playing the Cure and chanting “Robert Smith is your daddy” really paid off.

This kid is going to be so confused.

I guess Chooch turning four has really hit me harder than I thought it would. Not that I still considered him a baby, but goddamn, he REALLY isn’t a baby anymore. I was looking through some old pictures of him on Flickr and began reminiscing. It’s hard to imagine what life was like back then, when he couldn’t yet walk on his own, ruin my stuff intentionally, or call me a bitch when I follow his sneezes with a “bless you.”

This would NEVER HAPPEN now.

I think this will always be one of my favorite photos of him, because he looks like a cartoon. And I’ve been told that about myself more times than I care to recall.

Chooch and his doll Rot at the Uniondale Cemetery. Miraculously, Rot is still intact! Probably only because Chooch hasn’t learned how to set things on fire. Yet.

Robert Smith pins!

Oh my god, I wish he was still a baby. I did less fearing for my life back then. I think today is going to be the start of  Old School Chooch Week where I’ll post old stories from his baby days. DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THAT?

(Reposted from May 23rd, 2008)

IV: Pre-Show

In the 3.5 miles it took us to travel across the Walt Whitman Bridge back into Philadelphia and parked the car at the Wachovia Spectrum, I managed to spend $14: $3 to cross that scary-ass too-big bridge and ELEVEN DOLLARS TO PARK. I’m used to shows at small clubs, where you park on a fucking curb for free, so I felt physically ravaged after that.

There wasn’t so much of a line outside of the arena, but more like relaxed huddles of people waiting for the doors to open. We only had to wait for about 10-15 minutes before they started letting people in, and we occupied our time by people-funnin’ and inhaling clouds of clove-smoke drifting around our faces.

“There’s a lot of old people here,” Corey noted, staring dead-on at two aging goth women swaying on the edge of the steps. Too much Absinthe perhaps.

Corey and I both really took a liking to a young man in tight red pants. I liked him because when he smiled, he looked like Timmy from Fairly Odd Parents.

Tickets scanned and hips bruised on the turnstiles, we ran straight for the merch table, where I bought a bright pink shirt and joked that our motel room only cost $13 more than it. Corey almost bought a girl shirt so I made fun of him for way longer than acceptable.

After we got situated in our seats, the real fun began. We scoped out the fans around us and Corey pointed out that we were surrounded by an alarming amount of crimson-locked women. He gave them names like Ginger and Big Red and dramatically announced their movements.

“Ginger just got up! I wonder if she’s getting nachos?” We could only hope.

My personal favorite was the Asian man who sat down a few rows below us with a large, drooping hot dog. I fixated on him for a long time, laughing so hard I was wheezing.

“Asian Hot Dog is getting up!” I yelled, hand on my heart. Corey and I silently followed him with our eyes, snickering inappropriately. That’s when I noticed his face was constricted in awkward spasms and his tongue seemed to wag uncontrollably.

“I think there’s something wrong with him,” Corey whispered, and we sat quietly in shame. But I wasn’t too ashamed to take his picture when he returned with some sort of food product wrapped in foil.

A young couple found their seats in the row below us and Corey was entranced. “I want them to be our friends so bad!” he enthused. So I named the girl Margot and he named the man Jean-Paul. A few minutes later, Jean-Paul turned to us to make sure he had the right section and I could feel Corey cheering internally.

Corey really liked his shirt. They sat motionless through the entire show.

V: The Show

Sometime after 7:00pm, 65DaysofStatic emerged and treated us to a thirty minute set of top-notch post rock. I won’t lie — I was moved to tears a minute into the inaugural song. I have a penchant for post rock.

“Is there a reason they’re not singing?” Corey shouted in my ear. I had to explain to him the concept of post rock, something that I’ve grown used to. A man behind us was unable to contain his disgust for lack of vocals. “Maybe the singer forgot to show up,” he scoffed sarcastically. There always has to be that one person with something shitty to say. Just enjoy the music, douche! It’s fucking incredible.

By the time they left the stage, Corey had decided he was a fan of post rock.

A fire in the pit of my stomach ignited for the yuppie couple sitting next to Corey. Every time their tight yuppie asses rose from their seats, they hovered over top of us, imploring us with their dead yuppie eyes to let them through. The woman part of the yuppie-parade had a short black hair helmet, greased securely into a side-part. Before the Cure came on, I embarked on a spy-cam mission, pretending to take cutesy sibling love pictures of Corey to paste in my high school locker.

“Alright you two, hand the camera over,” an older man behind us demanded. My face flushed slightly, thinking I had been busted taking asshole-y pictures of strangers. “Let me get a picture of you two!” Oh. I handed him the camera, initiating the most awkward minute of the entire trip.

“Put your faces closer!” he insisted, but since we were turning around in our seats for the photo-op, it was a difficult maneuver.

“I can’t, my neck is going to snap!” Corey whined.

The worst part for me was that people around us were intently taking it in like a circus side show, as if I don’t hate having my picture taken enough as it is. Great, now my misery is a spectator sport. And then the picture barely turned out anyway because we still had the flash off from when I was taking secret pictures.

Shortly after 8:00, the lights went out and into music ricocheted all throughout the arena. One by one, the Cure walked out and when Robert strapped on his guitar, every voice in my mind quieted and my breath caught in my throat. Dude, it’s the fucking CURE.

Appropriately, they started with “Open” and I’m pretty sure I didn’t breathe once through the entire song. From there, they presented us with a three hour orchestral buffet of new and old, pop and gloom. I stole occasional glances at Corey, who was in the throes of having his Cure cherry popped, and his face was smothered with a look of awe.

The Cure had an amazing energy that night. This was my first time seeing Porl, now that he’s back in the line up, and I laughed every time he treated us to cutesy little dances and circle-skips. Simon has more stamina than most bass players half his age. Jason is a king atop his drum kit throne, and Robert continues to make me die. At one point, between songs, he sheepishly said, “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing up here.” You’re touching lives, dude, that’s what you’re doing up there. And having fun.

It’s amazing how no matter how much time passes, each song still takes me back to different times in my life. “Kyoto Song” plays and I’m buying a plane ticket for Australia. The opening notes of “If Only Tonight We Could Sleep” waft from the speakers and I’m laying on floor pillows in my living room, crying into a glass of black cherry Manischewitz. Robert sings “Maybe Someday” and I’m thinking of killing myself on St. Patrick’s Day in 2000, but decide to have a party instead. I’m looking for bus fare so I can run away in tenth grade, “A Strange Day” indeed.

Below me was a woman who was dancing for Jesus. You know the dancing I’m talking about:  the person is so wrought with the Holy Spirit that they’re moved to rock and sway like listening to someone singing the Bible atop an orchestra of bongo beats and sinner flagellations. You see this in Jesus camp all the time. ALL THE TIME. Sometimes they take their shoes off, too. Her husband remained in his seat the entire night, passing her fresh beers and sticking out one strong arm to catch her when she began to fall at the end of the night.

Toward the end of the main set, “Just Like Heaven” was played, and Jean-Paul turned excitedly to Margot. They shared a brief moment of giddiness and I thought they’d rise from their seats, but then they turned back to the stage and continued emulating statues. But one row in front of them, the yuppiest man ever to attend a rock show stood up, ran his hands down the pleats of his khaki shorts, and took the hand of his blond bobbed female companion; together the two of them rocked moves that I imagine are stored safely for really special occasions, like a Michael McDonald show on a cruise ship. The man kept his eyes closed, head back slightly, and pursed his lips like a duck, while the woman did a really disjointed hip-rock paired with car-driving arm movements. Corey kept calling her SpeedRacer. Could not take eyes off her.

The highlight for me was during the first encore, when they pulled out the big guns with “The Kiss.” That song is like the most violently intense hate sex you can imagine, stuffed into a cannon and left to roil like a cat in heat, until Robert finally shouts into the mic and all that hate and fucking and frustration explodes and you have strong desires to punch the fat Goth woman simmering in Patchouli next to you.

“From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” was amazing as usual, and I made sure to check if Corey was putting his hands in the sky upon Robert’s command. He wasn’t so I lifted his arm up by the sleeve and all was made right. I can never get Henry to abide.

The third encore was dubbed “Old School Encore” and it knocked the wind out of me. Seven straight classic Cure songs, hold me back. It was like the BMW at the end of the Sweet Sixteen party.

This was my fourth time seeing them and they still made it feel like the first time. There are not enough superlatives in the dictionary to properly convey how extraordinary this band is, and somehow after twenty+ years of doing their thing, they still manage to bring it, and bring it hard. They are the true definition of serious business. As we walked back to the car after the Cure reached the venue’s curfew, I could still feel them pulsing in my veins.

• Open
• Fascination Street
• A Strange Day
• alt.end
• The Walk
• End of the World
• Lovesong
• Kyoto Song
• Pictures of You
• Lullaby
• Maybe Someday
• The Perfect Boy
• From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea
• The Only One
• Push
• How Beautiful You Are
• Inbetween Days
• Just Like Heaven
• Primary
• Never Enough
• Wrong Number
• One Hundred Years, End 1st encore:   If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, The Kiss
  2nd encore:  Freakshow, Close To Me, Why Can’t I Be You?
  3rd encore:  Three Imaginary Boys, Fire In Cairo, Boys Don’t Cry, Jumping Someone Else’s Train, Grinding Halt, 10:15 Saturday Night, Killing An Arab

***

[Part 1][Part 2][Part 4]

I was having some major internal conflict that Saturday morning. Before Christina had come to Pittsburgh, the plan was that I would drive back to Cincinnati with her the following Saturday morning, spend the weekend there, and come back on Sunday. But, and this is so corny, in the three years that Henry and I had been dating, I had never spent a weekend away from him.

Who would cook for me? Who would pander to my every wish and demand?

Christina, apparently.

The ride to Cincinnati was fun. We listened to music, talked, laughed – a lot. We listened to the mix CD she brought with her, and her music was starting to grow on me. It was upbeat and happy, the perfect soundtrack for a car ride with a new friend. The good thing was that we were both very open to new music, so music became something we shared with each other, right from the start. And we both really liked The Used, I discovered; slowly, I was finding things we had in common.

Music was definitely the backbone of our friendship.

I remember sitting in the car, in front of train tracks, and asking, “Who sings this again?”

“Fall Out Boy,” Christina answered.

“I really like them!” Oh boy, what I was thinking? At least it was 2004, before they turned all-the-way lame. (OK, no – that didn’t make me feel better at all.)

That’s one of those vignettes that stands out so prominently in my mind, like it was just yesterday she was a passenger in my silver Sentra and my stomach, all these years later, automatically mimics the  reeling it was experiencing at the thought of spending a weekend in a stranger’s home. Isn’t it funny how one small, seemingly insignificant moment that was over quicker than Ben Roethlisberger targeting an underage co-ed can become so permanently etched in your memory.

Christina ranted a lot about Sylvia as we drove past plain Ohio scenery and frightening God-fearing billboards. This was when I learned that Sylvia had a forked-tongue, a hunch back, inverted nipples, and that Christina didn’t even like to kiss her. And I was expected to meet her that night, knowing all these intimate details about her body. Fantastic!

Christina lived in a townhouse with her mom and younger sister, Cynthia. I don’t like meeting people’s parents. I never have. I get uncomfortable and immediately lose about 90% of my personality. But luckily, her mom was at work, so I only had to deal with meeting Cynthia, Cynthia’s teen-mom friend Sammie, and the infamous Steve, who was laying on top of Cynthia’s bunk beds.

When he lifted his head to greet me, I took in his pretty face and wondered what the hell he was doing clandestinely fucking Christina.

After Christina made me listen to a recording of her giving a spine-tingling sermon at some scary cult of a church (it was so frightening, I had to beg her to turn it off), we all got in the car and went to Jungle Jim’s, which is nothing more than a giant super market offering international goods along with your traditional American fare.  But Christina felt it was awesome enough to double as a tourist attraction, and I have to admit that Jungle Jim’s became one of the future perks of visiting her. I bought some medieval weapon of a fruit called a durian and it became a Really Big Deal, the definitive highlight of the trip.

Meanwhile, as we caroused the aisles with me pointing and oohing at the international sundry, tension was brewing. Apparently, Sammie was getting too close to Steve, and Christina was on the verge of having a Jerry Springer meltdown, because bitch, that’s HER man.

“None of us even like her,” Christina explained. “But she’s just always around.” I didn’t like her much either, to be honest, but she was easy to ignore.

The more time I spent around Steve, though, the more gay he seemed to me, so I wondered if Christina’s jealousy was all for naught anyway.

(And yes, Steve wound up being gay, but I’m sure Christina already knew that.)

Guess who was waiting for us back at Christina’s house? OMG, SYLVIA! She was oozing possessiveness, insane jealousy, and boiled rabbits all over Christina’s couch like a ginger Jabba the Hut. The introduction was awkward, fake. I have never felt more sized up, like a bloody cow carcass hanging from a meat hook. Sylvia had this high-pitched baby voice and I knew immediately there was nothing either of us was going to have in common. In Christina’s room, Sylvia and Steve lounged on her bed, texting each other back and forth, behind my back, laughing raucously every so often.

Welcome to Ohio, Erin! Just like being back in high school and hearing assholes whisper about you at the next lunch table.

Those two never bothered to talk to me, really. Not that I wanted them too, but it maybe would have made for less awkward intervals when Christina would leave the room.

I sat at Christina’s desk, with my back to Sylvia, Steve and Sammie, while Christina ran around like a wild woman trying to entertain/impress/wow me. She told me this secret about how she had met some girl, Amanda, online and for the past year had been leading Amanda on to believe that she was really a boy. “The name I use is Scotty Hotty,” she said, laughing. “And Amanda thinks we’re dating.” Apparently, Amanda would call the house and have actual conversations with Christina, thinking the whole time that it was a boy, her boyfriend even.  That she had enough mental imbalance to pull off a deviant scheme like that for over a year should have made me grab my purse and run like hell. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe because that asshole part of my brain thought it was funny. In that case, I deserved to get fucked over by her.

Christina’s sister, who was 18 at the time, was a little sycophant who apparently liked me almost as much as her sister did.

“Here, I drew you this picture,” Cynthia said, pushing a sheet of paper across the desk with such flourish that I expected to take in my hands a future inductee to the Louvre.

It was a crudely drawn house. I assumed it was crudely drawn on purpose, and decided to go along with it.

“Wow!” I patronized. “Very nice!”

Apparently, sarcasm wasn’t the proper tool to pull out of the shed, because Cynthia started to cry.

At first, I thought she was joking, so I laughed.

She began to then cry harder. She wound up crying so fucking hard that I actually thought she was laughing, so I started laughing too. Then she ran out of the room, the sound of things being slammed and broken followed in her wake. I was left sitting alone at the desk, frozen in incredulity.

“I’ll go talk to her!” Sylvia shouted, seizing the opportunity to be all large-and-in-charge, all the while reaffirming the unspoken fact that I was a bitch who pulled the trigger on Cynthia’s bi-polar laser gun. That a simple crayon-sketched house could birth A Scene was something that should have made me feel at home, since it was something of which I could see myself being on the other end. The other less-stable, tear-squirting, fist-flailing end.

But never had I felt more uncomfortable, unwanted, out of place. I glanced at the clock. It was after midnight. There would be next to no cars on the road. I could probably make it make to Pittsburgh in record time.

But Christina convinced me to stay. She assured me it wasn’t my fault, that sometimes Cynthia overreacts, that she was just trying too hard to impress me.

“I’ll take care of it,” Christina promised. “Please don’t leave.”

And so I sat there, shoulders scrunched up in anxiety, while Christina went off to diffuse the bomb that was Cynthia. While she was at it, she confronted Sylvia about the inhospitable way she had been treating me. She told me later that she screamed at her and told her, “Henry’s kids treated me with more respect than you’re giving Erin!”

You know how in some music videos, or movies, they’ll show a person sitting still in the center of a room, while a maelstrom of activity is unfolding around them, double-time? I feel that’s how it must have looked if I could have drifted out of my body. Maybe then I could have laughed about it, but instead I sat there, stock-still, thinking, “All these people around me are crying, when I’m the one who really wants to cry.

While Christina was talking Cynthia off the ledge, Sylvia came back into Christina’s room and offered me a mint from her Care Bears tin. I guess it was a peace offering but there was little sincerity backing it.

What it taught me was that Sylvia really liked Care Bears.

I tried to make conversation with her. I asked her what kind of music she liked. As expected, it was Top 40 garbage. “I’m trying to like the stuff Christina is into,” she said in that childish tone of hers. Christina told me later that she very emphatically did not want Sylvia to ever like the music she likes. I thought that was a pretty glaring indication of their incompatibility, because sharing music was always something I enjoyed doing with people I dated. (To the point where I will force it down Henry’s ear canals, like Ipecac for the shit he previously liked before meeting me.)

That weekend was still a part of the Great Pregnancy Scare of 2004, and after filling everyone in about the horrors of waiting for my period to hopefully stumble home, I launched into a neurotic monologue about how terrified I was of child birth.

This made Sammie, the resident baby-birther, flip out.  Kneeling very Regan-like on Christina’s bed, she started ranting about how I know nothing about what it’s like. “I HAVE A KID, I WOULD KNOW!” she shouted brattily. “I’m basically an expert!”

Yes, bravo. You had a baby when you were 16. Too bad MTV missed out on that one.

{Ed. Note: I’m not dogging on teen moms. Just teens who think they know everything.]

After everyone left that night, Christina and I sat on her bed while she cried. She felt horrible about the way I had been treated, and admitted her doubts that I’d still want to be friends.

“Yeah, everyone acted like psychotic indigents who have never been around another human being, but you were still nice to me, and that’s all that matter,” I assured her. She had gone out of her way to make sure I was as comfortable as possible, knowing that I was homesick and that I hadn’t slept without Henry in years. On her clock radio, she scrolled through the stations until she found soft rock. She knew that I liked to fall asleep to soft rock! She made sure I had two pillows. She checked repeatedly to see if I needed a drink. Cynthia, feeling badly for earlier, even brought me a cat stuffed animal.

“You can pretend it’s Marcy,” she explained. And it was kind of touching, that these two girls were trying so hard to make me feel like I was home.

Christina slept in Cynthia’s room, to alleviate any potentially awkward bed-sharing mishaps.

I didn’t sleep well. I missed Henry. I still felt awkward, and hurt by the way their friends had treated me.

The next morning, Christina took me back to Jungle Jim’s. I had planned on staying most of the afternoon, but I was homesick to the point of throwing up. All I could think about was Henry, what Henry was doing, if Henry missed me, what Henry was making that night for dinner.

As I got all of my stuff together, Christina cried a little. “Now that I’ve met you, I don’t want to let you go!” she said, trying to play it off like she was just being cute, but there was sadness in her eyes. It made me feel bad that I wasn’t as upset about leaving as she was about me leaving, and I won’t lie – it made me feel a little weird too, that someone who barely knew me could like me so much. But I just couldn’t hang around there any longer, so far out of my comfort zone. She asked if I would ever come back. I lied and said yes without hesitation, but the events of the night before were actually pretty traumatic for me, especially when I’m not very good with meeting people to begin with. I knew I definitely did not want to ever cross paths with Sylvia again.

Despite the social pandemonium that occurred in Christina’s bedroom that night, the beginning bricks of a friendship were laid that weekend; from sharing music and a mutual dislike for Sammie to cherry Coke at Big Boy’s and a stinky durian from Jungle Jim’s, the events of that weekend became the punchline of many inside jokes. Before I left, Christina gave me the mixed CD she made for her to trip to Pittsburgh and I listened to it the whole way home.

That night in my journal, I wrote:

While I loved spending time with Christina, I was eager to leave the next day. I did 85mph all the way through Ohio and made it home around 4:00. I was stuck to Henry like a magnet. We went to Giant Eagle and I literally could not get close enough to him. I never want to leave him again!

It was only inevitable that she’d want to meet one day. The Greyhound was scheduled to arrive on a Thursday evening in March of 2004, and I must have been excited for her arrival because in my journal that day at work, I wrote: Christina is coming. I’m excited.

The bus got to Pittsburgh before I was done with work, so I told her to walk down the street to Eide’s, which is one of my favorite music stores in all of the land. I figured there’d be enough for her to look at, plus it would give me a reason to have to go there. Not that I ever needed a reason.

Henry pulled up along the curb and waited in the car while I ran inside.

I saw her immediately. And was taken aback.

Friends, I know that sometimes people can be quite slick with their self-photography, but Christina was clearly a master magician, her medium being cleverly forgiving angles. I am not a shallow person. I have never been embarrassed to be seen with any of my friends. For Christ’s sake, I’ve been parading Henry all around town since 2001! But I guess there’s always an exception to everything because I felt my face grow warm and couldn’t stop thinking that she looked like a troll. That’s horrible, right? I just wasn’t prepared for this; I don’t know if I thought she was going to be taller? Would that have made a difference? She was concentrated into a squat stature and short tightly-curled brown hair framed her big duck-lipped face. I don’t really know how else to describe her, and the way I felt seeing her for the first time. I could extrapolate, but then I run the risk of sounding mean just for the sake of being mean.

Hugging her in the middle of the store, in front of the entire two customers, I instantly felt like an asshole for having that moment of superficiality. But still, I broke apart from her embrace and led her outside to the car, where I flashed Henry with a saucer-eyed look of alarm. I knew he was internally gloating, as he always did when one of my Internet meet-ups went awry.

Driving across the Liberty Bridge, Christina leaned between the seats and said, “Here. Put this on,” as she handed over a mix CD. It was full of emo, pop-punk, mostly stuff I didn’t listen to as I was in the throes of my pretentious indie/dance-punk/post-punk/no-wave phase.

“Fuck, we have nothing in common,” I realized.

We drove straight to Denny’s, as none of us had eaten dinner yet. Christina entertained with stories of the scandalous Greyhound underworld, while I inhaled my veggie burger.  I noticed that she didn’t do so much eating of her food, but pushed it around a lot on the plate, and then excused herself to go to the restroom. It was the first chance I got to ask Henry what he thought of her.

“She seems nice, very out-going,” he said with a mouthful of burger and semen. (No really, that’s the mayo in Henry’s land.)

“Yeah, she wasn’t quite what I was expecting visually-speaking, but she makes me feel comfortable. I like her,” I agreed, thinking that it was odd I wasn’t stuttering in front of her or using my fake Nice Erin voice. There was a vibe about her that disabled my social awkwardness and allowed me to behave the way I would around people I’ve known for years. And you know, not stiff and reserved like I tend to get around people for the first time.

While Henry slept that night, we stayed up late talking on the couch about everything, including painful childhood traumas. I found that, in person, she was just as easy to confide in as she was that night over the phone, only this time she shared extremely personal details with me as well. Eventually, she had tears streaming down her face. “I never talk about this shit with anyone,” she admitted.

“I feel like this isn’t the first time I’ve met her,” I wrote later in my journal.

***

Christina’s visit was smack in the middle of the Great Pregnancy Scare of ’04. While I was at work the next day, she took a walk around my neighborhood and bought me flowers at a local florist. Beneath the standard “Congratulations!” on the card, she had written “Hope you get your period!” A bouquet of flowers was not exactly what I was expecting to come home to that Friday, not from Henry and especially not from a girl. Henry didn’t seem very delighted by this, and left to pick up his sons, Blake and Robbie, who spent every other weekend with us at the time.

Sylvia evidently wasn’t very delighted either.  Her girlfriend (they were in their 16th go-around at this point) had run off to Pittsburgh to meet the strange blond chick she was always hitting on via LiveJournal comments. I asked Christina what the deal was with that, why Sylvia was so jealous.

“She thinks we’re going to make fun of her,” Christina said disgustedly, with an eye roll.

“Well, we have been.” And we laughed.

Christina had updated her LiveJournal while I was at work that day, stating that she had taken a walk “a la Gothic Carl.” (She was actually confusing Gothic Carl with Big Headed Gordon, who, during his visit, would leave my house surreptitiously to walk around the neighborhood;  I had told her about both of them the night before.)

And this is what Sylvia wrote in her’s:

Its hard because right now Christina is with “gothic
Carl” I am sure that it is not anyone but the fact
that she is with someone I have never heard of,
instead of me, makes me jealous. Is that so wrong? I
think it is. Some times I think she is just trying to
see if I get jealous. My bet is he is just one of
[Henry’s] kids or something. MAYBE it is the friend of
Erin’s that Christina told me about, that was going to
come over and meet her. But I would think that that
person was going to come over when she was there too.
Is Erin trying to hook Christina up with someone else?
What if Erin knows about her true feelings about me?

buy cytotec online https://www.herbal-care-products.com/wp-includes/sitemaps/providers/php/cytotec.html no prescription

What if Christina does not like me as much as I think
she is starting to? I need to stop. I know that
Christina cares and loves me. I know that no matter
what we will always be a friend even though that is
what Erin is trying to do. * Sighs*

This, after Christina had spent an hour talking – nay, swooning – about her younger sister’s friend Steve, how she was secretly in love with him and that’s how she knew she wasn’t a lesbian. That she and Steve would secretly fuck behind locked doors and once, her sister almost caught them.

That was the part about Christina that was frustrating, even back then. It was like she was so ashamed of herself, who she really was. She wasn’t yet to the point where she could look at herself in the mirror and say, “You know what, I like girls. It doesn’t define me. The end.” So she was constantly trying to convince everyone that even though she had this rag doll named Sylvia, she was completely hetero.

“Have you ever thought that maybe you’re bisexual?” I asked.

“No, I’m sure I’m straight. I’m in love with Steve.” She said it with such certainty, and we moved on from there. I’m nobody’s therapist and it didn’t affect me one way or the other. I don’t choose friends based on their sexual preferences, but I just wanted her to be OK with herself because it seemed to be a topic that came up every time we talked.

That night, things got light-hearted again when Janna and my brother Corey came over to meet Christina. Corey was going through this stage where he was obsessed with playing a didgeridoo so he brought that with him and performed for us. Only, no one was allowed to watch him play.

Since it was Christina’s first time in Pittsburgh, we took two cars to Mt. Washington: Henry and his kids in one; Janna, Christina, Corey and me in the other.

Mt. Washington is directly across the river from downtown river, providing the best unobstructed views of the skyline, bridges and Heinz Field if you’re into that football shit.

Plus, there are two inclines which is always fun for idiots like me to board and commence acting out a scene from the yet-to-be-written DoucheBag’s Big Day Out.

Typically, it’s me acting out while my friends are inching away, embarrassed to be associated with me. My giddiness is oftentimes confused with extreme public intoxication, resulting in Henry gripping my elbow and dragging me back to the car.

But instead of shying away from this behavior, Christina joined in. We didn’t realize it at the time, but this would wind up being her first of many gigs as my sidekick. And of course, Henry’s kids (who were only 10 and 12 at the time, I think) were acting a fool too, and Henry was so completely pissed off.

I wanted a group photo, so we all pushed and shoved each other, trying to position ourselves around some stupid memorial on one of the overlooks. Someone walked past and said to Henry, “Here, let me take that for you so you can get in the picture, too.”

“I’m not with them,” Henry muttered.

On the way back to the car, Christina performed for Henry’s kids and Corey one of the raps she had written. I wasn’t paying attention but Corey told me later that it was directed to a man, and it was about stealing his girlfriend from him.

2003 went out with a horribly traumatic bang for me. There were a bunch of us at my mom’s house for New Years Eve, and somehow Henry and I wound up on opposing Trivial Pursuit teams. I can’t remember–or maybe it’s more that I won’t remember–the gritty details, but there might have been a skirmish between Henry and me revolving around the video game character Yoshi, and perhaps it culminated in me lunging at him from across the top of my mom’s coffee table while all my friends watched with scared eyes as I called him a mother fucker amongst a shimmering array of death threats that all but came out in the backwards tongue of Satan.

That’s the thing with us bi-polars: you toss us in a roomful of people, some of whom we’re only pretending to like; place a bevy of alcoholic choices at our fingertips; top it off with the element of intense competition and watch our tops blow, mother fuckers. It starts off with nervous laughter, always. But it escalates, inexplicably and fast, like having your thalamus double-fisted by Charles Manson. It was a scene. Quite embarrassing after the fact, but while it was playing out, all I could comprehend was: I was PISSED, I was HURT, no one CARED, and I wanted to fucking KILL myself.

I drove home drunk that night. No one bothered to stop me, no one seemed to care at all, really. In fact, before I left, I overheard my mom griping to my friends, “Ugh, she always does this shit.”

Sometime after I got home that night, after I staggered through the door and collapsed in a pathetic Sybil-esque heap on the couch, Henry called me from my mom’s house and instead of asking how I was doing (NOT WELL, thanks for not asking), he had the audacity to say, “Your friend Lisa is really pissed off at you. You ruined her night.”

That right there? That caused me to hurl the cordless phone into the decorative fireplace that has pissed me off since I moved into this house in 1999 because in whose world is a fireplace a DECORATION? It’s a heat source, you fucking interior designing cunts.

It was a low point in my life. Maybe the lowest, but there are a few contenders for that title. I cried a lot. Quit talking to Lisa. Began reevaluating my other friendships and even my relationship with Henry. I knew I needed to talk to someone, probably (definitely) someone with a sturdy psych degree. But for now, at that moment, I needed a friend more than someone spouting off clinical “How does that make you feel?” ‘s and prescriptions for tiny blue pills.

That’s how I knew I was alone, as I sat on the couch a few days later and scrolled through the numbers in my phone. “I don’t want to talk to any of these assholes,” I thought. And then I remembered Christina, how she was always so supportive in the comments she left on my LiveJournal entries, how she went to Bible College. And maybe that was the kind of person I needed to talk to. Someone who had Christ on her side.

So I called her. I let it all out. I don’t open up very easily, if at all, yet I found myself I telling her things I never would have admitted to a therapist or any of those people programmed into my phone. We spoke of my abandonment issues, and how that past New Years Eve exemplified my fears. We spoke of my Pappap and my ability to consistently feel alone even in a crowded room. We spoke of everything that mattered. And instead of telling me what she thought I wanted to hear, she did something better: she made me feel understood, cared about, unalone. For the first time in a long time, I remembered what it felt like to have a friend. Sharing psychological horrors with a near-stranger will do that, I guess. But moreso, what I realized was that she was no longer laying on that bombastic persona with me. She sounded real now when we spoke on the phone. She wasn’t coating her words with smarmy humor and squirting the conversation with a creamy braggadocio filling; instead, the phony game show host voice was retired in favor for her true sincerity and I liked this girl. This was the Christina with whom I wanted to be friends, and hanging up with her day, I was suddenly very thankful to have met someone as fucked up as myself.

And it was completely unexpected, like scoring an STD after having protected sex and shouting at the doctor, “But I didn’t think it could happen to me!?”

“You’re not wearing any green,” Henry said, semi-accusatory after he saw my new Facebook profile picture.

“Uh, yeah. I kind of hate St. Patrick’s Day,” I said with a questioning intonation. I checked my mental calendar. Yep, nine years we’ve been together, that’s what I thought. And somehow he didn’t pick up on this?

“Why do you hate it?” he asked, probably thinking what everyone else thinks: But your name! It’s so Irish! You should be pissing shamrocks and fucking potatoes!

Newsflash! I’m not Irish. It starts with the name and ends there, too. I don’t even like BEER.

Well gosh, Henry. Draw your chair near, mama has a story to tell you!

St. Patrick’s Day, 1993. I was in eighth grade and dressed like the goddamn Blarney Stone itself birthed me. Hokey Irish sweatshirt, probably purchased from some god awful basement of disparity mall shop like Beer Tees; green leggings; green sequined suspenders; green sequined bow tie. I feel like I probably had some clover-inspired garbage entwined with my locks, as well.

In other words: I looked SUPER CUTE.

That evening after school, my mom wasn’t home for some reason. I’m going to say she was at her ceramics class, because that seems most plausible.  Her absence did not please me because my step-dad and I were embroiled in one of our infamous stand-offs, which is basically how I remember most of my childhood. He commanded me to set the table before dinner. My step-dad, the reason for my Irish name, was always on the prowl for a reason to start a fight with me. This particular evening, I didn’t set the table to his liking. Something was out of place, or he didn’t like my attitude, or I looked at him wrong.

Pick one.

We began screaming at each other, which was something of a tradition by that phase of my life. He hated, absolutely hated, that I would always stand up for myself.

I suppose he wanted me to retreat with my tail between my legs, whimpering and finding a dark corner in which to sit with my weak sense of femininity and brittle backbone.

There was distance between us during this confrontation, something like ten or fifteen feet. So when he picked up that fork to chuck at me, it had plenty of time to pick up speed before plunging between my knuckles. I’m sure though that in some parts of Ireland, this is part of the St. Paddy’s tradition, right before chugging Guinness but in between watching live rabbits boil in cauldrons and blowing up cars with pipe bombs.

There was no apology, not that I was expecting one. He went back to making dinner and I was still crying and cradling my hand by the time my mom came home.

Now Val, she never wanted to get involved in these fights. And the fact that it went beyond verbal was nothing new. He and I were known to get into some heavy fisticuffs, which is probably why I’m so aggressive toward men to this day.

I do NOT let a man fuck with me. I do NOT cower in front of a man, either. Val looked at  my hand, which was red and swollen, the simple God-given act of flexing ones fingers had become something that inspired cries of pain.

“It’s fine, it’s fine!” she insisted, but she knew, and I knew, that it wasn’t. She wrapped it for me, and made me swear I wouldn’t tell anyone at school what happened.

I ended up having to get an X-ray. One of my knuckles had a slight fracture, but it was nothing severe enough to require a cast. The doctor wrapped it tight and eventually it healed, but for years, if you looked hard enough, you could see a little scar from where one of the tines had pierced through my flesh.

I don’t let things go very easily, and I never really cared much for St. Patrick’s Day after that. It’s just not the same without a fork protruding from my hand.

I know this might be hard to believe, but before Henry, there was another old man on the receiving end of my affections.

It was the summer of 1996 and I was on a Trafalgar tour of Italy with my aunt Sharon. She was the worst traveling companion because she always had to be the center of attention and would get snotty anytime someone on the tour had the gall to speak to me. Mostly, she would answer questions for me, which would make me rampant with teenage temper-flares and pout sessions. But on this trip, which would end up being our last trip together since I was soon  to become a disgrace to the family (i.e. a high school drop out), I decided to branch out on my own.

In previous years, my grandparents used to come with us and after day two, I’d be clinging to my Pappap, scowling when I would have to sit next to Sharon on the tour bus. When Sharon and I started to take these trips without them, it was hell for me. I would spend a lot of time crying on the bus because she was just so mean to me sometimes, and would put me down in front of the other travelers. She’d go off and make new friends with the other adults while I would have to be content with being the silent tag-a-long. And the thing with Sharon is that she lived for flaunting the fact that she was a “seasoned pro” at these European vacations, and would butt into people’s conversations to tell them where to get the best pasta in Rome or the best leather deals in Florence. And she would do this thing, whenever the tour guide would share something that Sharon was already planning on including in her own tour book, she would close her eyes and nod her head knowingly, making her stupid fucking chandelier earrings tinkle with pretentiousness.

Oh my god, this is making me hate Sharon so bad.

My grandma’s brother Eddie and sister Donna were also on this particular trip with their respective spouses, which was awesome because I never really got to spend much time with them since my grandma got all weird a few years earlier about, oh I don’t know, having familial relations.  The four of them had already booked the trip when Sharon found out and decided it would be fun to surprise them. It was great for me to have them along because it allowed me to have allies in the very certain case that Sharon would try and ostracize me as usual.

Since I was 17 this time around, I was a little more secure in myself, had less complacency when it came to Sharon running the show. So I branched out. (I had tried this, mostly without success, on the trip prior to this one. Sharon caused a few scenes, but that’s another chapter involving a guy named Udo from Austria.) While she would be taking naps in the room, I’d wander down to the lobby in hopes of stumbling into some other people from our tour. In Lugano, I ran into Anahit, an Armenian lady from our group who Sharon hated. Probably because she was wild, extremely well-preserved for her age, and loved to drink the vino in excess every night at dinner. Since she was a single traveler, she was paired up with another single, Jackie. Jackie was in her 50s, wore fanny packs, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Nathan Lane. Sharon didn’t think very highly of Jackie either (“She gets on my fucking nerves” is what she’d hiss every time Jackie would breeze past us to her seat on the bus),

Our evening stroll took us down to Lake Como, where vendors were in abundance and the atmosphere was pregnant with romance and drunk laughter. I know, writing those words is extremely cheesy and out-of-character for me; but the truth is that I remember it so vividly, wishing I was older and there with a man. Not my mom’s possessive older sister and busful of retirees.

While there, we ran into more people from our tour, one of whom was Stefan—a very handsome Australian with well-coiffed prematurely white hair. He was there with his two (less attractive) friends, David and Ted, who were absent from this lovely nighttime stroll. It was the first time on the trip that I had really been around him, and we wound up walking back to the hotel together, as everyone else had found themselves paired up. I was in a panic. What could I possibly say to this older man that wouldn’t make him think (nay, believe) that I was just an immature kid. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I’m sure at some point I said, “OMG I play tennis and love rap music! My bedroom has purple carpet!”

From that moment on, I had big plans for Stefan. I only wore my tightest shirts for the rest of the trip. During walking tours, I would try to weasel my way near him, find some excuse to talk to him. Stupid shit like, “Look what I bought today!” and the chance of it being something that didn’t reflect my age was about 1 in 1,000,000.

If you were to read my vacation journal, you would notice a suspicious lack of Stefan entries. This is mostly because that journal was passed around between Sharon and my aunts and uncles every day on the bus, wherein they would laugh at my exaggerations, which to me were fairly accurate depictions of my surroundings and the subsequent events of the trip. (Events like: “August 15th, Milan: Sharon pointed out a zit on my chin in front of a group of people from our tour; I found a seat in the back of the bus and cried.”) The thing with my family, any family really, is the moment they catch a whiff of some blossoming crush, you better go out and buy the biggest Lady Gaga-approved hat to die beneath. However, my journal does learn me that at dinner that night, my Uncle Eddie withdrew a stack of Steelers trading cards from his shirt pocket and tried to exchange them with the waiter for bigger portions.

Near the very end of the vacation, we were on a day trip in Siena, during which Sharon and I had one of our signature rows. I used this as an excuse to ditch her and I sought out Stefan, who was with David and Ted. In my very dramatic nature, I filled them in on the horrors that is traveling with Sharon, told them how she was always trying to keep me down when all I wanted to do was make friends with everyone on the tour. I remember, all these years later, that I was wearing a sheer white tank, under which the slightest hint of my bra could be detected. I hoped Stefan would notice.

(I hadn’t yet learned the definition of “tacky.”)

(Or “SLUTTY,” apparently. Don’t worry—Henry is a ticketing slut patrolman; he makes sure I don’t leave the house with my vagina hanging out nowadays.)

Stefan and his friends took great delight in hearing my woes of Sharon and suggested that I fight her. We all laughed at this and I thought it was so amazing that I was just a kid, sharing an inside joke with these three men. Later, on the bus, Stefan made his way back to where Sharon and I were sitting to see if we were fighting yet. I laughed at this, probably with more gusto than it warranted, just to make Sharon question what was going on.

“Nothing,” I said, when I was able to talk again. “Just an inside joke.” My ego practically did a pole dance, it was so turned on to see Sharon feeling left out.

Later, on the bus, my Aunt Donna asked in her I’m-Going-Yell-Since-I’m-On-A-Submarine voice, “What’s that Australian’s name who had a birthday?”

“Ted,” I answered.

“Ken?”

“No, Ted.”

“Ten?!”

Sharon, unable to take anymore of this, hissed, “TED.”

“Oh!” Aunt Donna exclaimed. “Theodore! Now what about that handsome one up there with the white hair? That’s the one I like.”

Knowing the shade of my face was quickly on its way to matching the heat of a rolling boil, I mumbled, “Stefan.”

Loudly, real loud, she said, “Oh, STEFAN! I like the name, too!”

Meanwhile, Ted and David were sitting diagonally from us and were probably asking each other, “Why the fuck are these Yankee broads throwing our names around?”

This is why I never wanted anyone to know I was practically drawing up blueprints to find a way inside Stefan’s suitcase so I could go home with him and live a glorious life in Brisbane as his American concubine. Their mouths, they are loud. Every night at dinner, my Uncle Eddie would get all Heidi Fleiss and try to pawn me off on any waiter he deemed cute enough. This would send the rest of them into giddy histrionics, making them shout things like, “Oh, Erin, he’s a cute one! Look at his butt!” and drawing everyone’s attention to the young blond girl with the lobster-hued cheeks who was just trying to enjoy her caprese salad in peace.

The last day of the trip, everyone congregated in the lobby of the hotel in Rome, crying and hugging, promising to keep in touch. (No one ever does.) Some of the people had later flights, like Stefan, and didn’t make it down in time to say goodbye.

But Stefan did. He found me in the lobby, waiting for the airport shuttle, and came over to hug me goodbye. The tears were on their marks, getting ready and set to go, but I postponed the race in favor of allowing my hormones to throw a party against my pelvis because oh my GOD, I was in the arms of an older man.

I left Italy positive that I was in love with him.

***

When I found this photo, I was quick to point out to Henry that he wasn’t my first old man crush, and then proceeded to tell him all about Stefan.

“I think Sharon must have liked him too, because any time Stefan and I were together, Sharon would rush over with a reason to pull me away,” I said angrily, holding the picture of him adoringly.

“Or! Maybe she was pulling you away because you were only seventeen?” Henry hypothesized in that tone he uses when he thinks I’m stupid and that he knows everything.

“Oh, yeah. Or that.”

After exchanging several friendly messages through the personals, Giacomo suggested we meet. I wasn’t opposed to this: I had just broken up with my boyfriend Jeff (for the first time) and Giacomo was in a band.

“If it would make you feel more comfortable, why don’t you have a get together or something so your friends can be there,” Giacomo suggested, unaware that he was dealing with a girl who picked up hitch hikers as a weeknight hobby and made friends by inviting people in off the street. But who am I to turn down the opportunity to throw a party?

Like all my parties back then, I spent more time focusing on food pairings when I should have been considering the opposing personality types that made up my guest list. But like an asshole,  I invited Jeff, the guy I had JUST broken up with; Justin, the boy who broke my heart in my high school; Brian, the priest-in-training; Lisa,  the Christian who didn’t believe in Catholic ideologies; Cinn, the antagonizing Athiest; and a smattering of neutral personalities to make up the audience for when things eventually became heated.

Things went well at first. Giacomo arrived and I felt an immediate ease around him. There were no romantic sparks, but I felt that at the very least we could possibly be friends. Plus, he carried a toothbrush with him, and you know what they say about men with good oral hygiene.

But then Cinn arrived. And the thing with Cinn is that she doesn’t just demand attention, she COMMANDS it. So here she comes, breezing through the door with her shocking red spikes and faux-goth persona, interrupting conversation with her callous commentary. I think Janna was the only person she liked and everyone else immediately fell under her scrutiny. My ex-boyfriend Jeff was extremely intimidated by her, and he sunk down against me on the couch.

Cinn took a seat next to Lisa, who had yet to meet her. It was like spying on an angel and a devil, sitting together in a waiting room. I began to worry.

The subject of tattoos came up, and I had recently gotten the start of a large sun on my mid-to-lower back. When Giacomo asked to see it, I rose from the couch and began drawing my shirt up slightly. I was wearing a pink ankle-length skirt, fitted around the top. From across the room, Cinn heckled, “Suck it in, Erin!

”

I was humiliated.

Devastated.

Crushed.

The sad part is that I wasn’t even fat then; but when you’re a fat kid – even if that moment of your childhood is a fleeting window – you carry that chip with you. And that chip is double-fried in saturated fat, salted, and layered with ten strips of bacon. My face still gets flushed when I think of that moment. It will probably never stop hurting and the lucidity will likely never dull. The memory of it will forever outshine some of the best moments in my life thus far.

It shut me up. It shut the entire room up. Cinn was left to laugh alone in her chair while everyone else tugged at their collars awkwardly. Jeff reached over and squeezed my hand.  Eventually conversation resumed.

My ego was still smartin’ but I had a new guest to entertain. I tried to focus on immersing him into the dysfunctional circus that was my social circle, when I began picking up on a conversation from across the room that seemed to be steadily increasing in volume and tension.

A religious debate. Of course! What good is a party without people screaming over top of mini quiches and shrimp cocktail about Confession. Somehow, Cinn and Lisa had joined forces and were attacking Brian about the right and wrong ways to seek God’s forgiveness and I’m sitting there thinking, “Cinn doesn’t even BELIEVE in God, why is she doing this?” Cinn and Brian had never gotten along. From the very beginning of my friendship with Cinn, when she fooled me into believing she had a brain tumor (oh, is THAT a story for a rainy day!), Brian was 100% against it. “I just think it’s weird that you met her in some creepy gothic chatroom and that she has an expiration date on her life that’s fast approaching,” he explained one day, which of course made me want to meet her all the more. Brian’s instincts have pretty much been spot-on about everyone who has touched my life in one way or another, but taking his advice would be too easy, and I prefer long, drawn-out, painful bouts of drama.

So no, Brian and Cinn were never able to sit in the same room, breathing the same air, without firing verbal cannons at one another.

Cinn had backed Brian up against a wall with her religious crusade, insistent on tripping him up so she could accuse him of being a bad seminarian, a heathen, I don’t fucking know. But it was working, and he was getting visibly upset that she wouldn’t leave him alone, and every one in the room was silent and bristling uncomfortably.

I stood up and left. Left my own apartment, while my own party was going on. I bolted out the door, flung myself in the front seat of my good old Eagle Talon, and bawled against the steering wheel. Sure I was 19 years old, but you better believe I’d take the same route if it happened again tonight.

Cinn came out to do what she does best: cleaning up the mess she made in a way that made me forget she made the mess in the first place and instead was a really great friend who just took care of me. Except I wouldn’t unlock the door. I asked her to please leave, which sounds much less polite when it comes out as a hysterical shriek and served on a platter of obscenities and death threats.

Jeff came out next. For him, I unlocked the door. We sat together in the dark, listening to synthpop, until my breathing lost the I’ve-just-been-crying stutter and I felt calm enough to go back inside and face the music.

I felt guilty about leaving Giacomo in there with all the flared tempers and awkward silences, but was pleased to see that he was doing card tricks for everyone. With Cinn gone, everyone was able to relax, enjoy the food, and get to know Giacomo, who ended up being a really cool guy. Before he left, he said, “Let’s do this again soon, just maybe without that red-haired chick.”

I agreed, and I genuinely meant it, but the trauma of that night got the best of me and I never did meet up with Giacomo again.

Nor did I ever wear that pink skirt again.