What Roller Skating Means to Me

Or: Where it is determined that skating has become a thinly veiled guise for Henry to take me where that delicious snack bar pizza is made.

Originally posted January 2005

Tuesday Night Adult Skate can be broken down into segments:

Pre-Skating Car Ride

It is here where one can witness lots of arm flailing and yelling about famine. The hunger pangs also make me an unstable song changer; if I feel little interest in the current song, I will shout, “God, I hate that song!” (even if I don’t, for I am at my appetite’s will) and slam my fingers against the skip button.

Sometimes, in my peripheral, I can see Henry shudder a little. Janna is usually silent during the voyage to the rink, unless she is granted my permission to speak. This doesn’t usually happen. Then someone will “innocently” ask why I didn’t eat before we left, at which point you will find me hawkering the essense of Satan into their face.

Preliminary Skating Laps

I skate around the rink once before deeming my skates too loose. Exiting the rink, I stand near the lockers, looking lost and confused until Henry notices me and skates over to assist.

Henry unties each skate and tightens the laces real good because he is a big strong man with a bandanna. Satisfied with the results, I glide back onto the rink and cruise around a few times, while Janna is still sitting on a bench, lethargically putting on her roller blades. She drags this part out so she’ll have less rink-time.

Henry skates past me and I can see the pain in his face as he fights the urge to pirouette. Then my knees start to buckle under the weight of my voracious hunger and I have to lean against the wall. I consider collapsing into a heap of malnourishment for good measure but not enough people are paying attention. Henry watches my faux-famine unfold and decides it’s time to order the pizza before I embarrass him.

Waiting for the Pizza

The next thirty minutes are spent skating lackluster laps around the rink through blinding flashes of light brought on by starvation. Janna, after three roller blade exchanges and one wheel change, has finally entered the rink (the catchphrase of the night is always, “Where’d Janna go?”). I begin showing off in case she forgets that I’m so much better than her. Then I realize that Henry has been off the hook for a good ten minutes, so I fall into place next to him and chant, “When will the pizza be done? When will the pizza be done? I’m hungry!” until he picks up the pace and leaves me in his prima donna dust. He’s getting good at shaking me. Catching up to him, I incessantly probe, “Is it done yet? Is it done yet?” until he quite brusquely shoulders past me. I contemplate screaming, “That man hit me!” until I realize that the only other people on the rink at that moment is a man who wears spandex to afford more comfort while performing spins and kicks in the middle of the rink, and a girl wearing knee pads. I might be on my own here.

Pizza Is Ready

I ravenously devour two pieces of pizza before Henry and Janna even have a chance to sit down with their drinks. Despite Henry urging me to slow down, I cram another piece into my rabid mouth in between colossal gulps of cherry Icee. Fearing Henry might be eying the last slice of pizza, I slam the palm of my hand into the greasy cheese, claiming my territory. I would have pissed on it if it came down to it. Oh, like you’ve never done that.

After-Pizza Skating

Janna claims that she “sprained her ankle” and opts to sit on the bench so she can watch the skating prowess of us real athletes. Really, she’s moping because this guy who she thinks is so hot has called it a night. He skates just like her, too – like he’s trying to outrun a too-touchy uncle while wearing plastic Fisher Price skates. Enough about Janna. I’m able to perform a few fluid laps amidst the “Oooh”s and “Ahhh”s of my fans, but then the night quickly unravels and I find myself stumbling around the rink with my hand on my stomach, groaning and admonishing myself for eating too fast.

I burp a lot, too.

Car Ride Home

Even in the throes of major gastro-intestinal discomfort, I cannot be quieted. I spend the hour in the car reflecting upon the evening’s affairs and making fun of anyone I may have overlooked while at the rink. Henry is quiet because he is thinking about the man with the mullet that magically flows into a tailbone-grazing pony tail; he admires him from afar. Janna is replaying over and over the scene where her crush (I call him Snape because of his hair) breezed past her while singing along to Ludacris. And by breezed, I mean clobbering around the rink while clinging to the wall.

So when I say that we went skating, now you’ll know.

One of my resolutions is to plan more shit that will get me out of the house.

I was thinking about when I last felt really content, like I wasn’t wasting time, and the first thing I thought of was the winter of 2005 when Henry, Janna and I used to go roller skating. (That sounds like we played derby or something hardcore, but the reality is that we only went about four times.) So I decided I don’t care if I have to rollerskate while strapped to a gurney, I’m doing it this weekend. Time to get back to my roots, yo.

To commemorate this greasy-wheeled occasion, I decided to dig out my old roller skating entries from 2005, because they make me happy. And my belly hurts because God forbid I tried to eat a substantial dinner, so I could use a little happy-happy.

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January 2005

Lately, I’ve felt the need for speed. I lay awake in bed for countless hours, tossing and turning while remembering fun times had in the roller rinks of my youth and longing for that smooth surface to enrapture my wheels once more.

Luckily, my friend Google pointed out that there really is still a smattering of good old fashioned roller rinks in the area. I chose one that was an hour away because it was the only one that hosted an adult skate. After Henry sat me down and said, “You are aware that adult skate doesn’t mean there will be strippers, right?” and I nodded slowly in recognition, he promised that we could go. I had an entire week to wait out, though, and boy was it excruciating.

However, the wait gave me something that I hadn’t experienced since I was kid waiting for my sea monkeys to grow: Anticipation. For a week, I’d fling back the comforter of my bed each morning, declaring the number of days left before I was free to skate. I found myself absent-mindedly sketching skates during class. I was comparing everything to skating:

“You know what’s just like paying the electric bill before they shut us off? Roller skating.”
“Oh, you know what would be really good with this sandwich? Roller skating.”
“You know what’s just like that war in Iraq? Roller skating.”

I wasn’t annoying to be around at all. At all.

And finally, yesterday was the day. Janna decided to join us, and every few minutes, I excitedly inquired about their degree of excitement. My inquisitions were met with despondent mumbles of, “Sure” and “I guess.” I began to question myself why I keep such lackluster company.

No matter, because I had enough exuberance to pass around. I shook in my seat the entire length of the trip, getting myself so riled up that I had to pee. Then I would bellow animalistic, guttural battle cries through clenched teeth while pumping my fist in the air.

I was really excited.

Once we eventually arrived at the Valarena Roller Rink, my hands were clammy and it felt like someone was fisting my heart. While I took deep and calming breaths to keep from choking on squeals, Henry decided to forgo his blades and rented an old school pair of quads. As did Janna, who would prove to be our own little Goldilocks as she exchanged her rentals three times before settling on a pair of inlines.

Since I am a very responsible and capable person (I’m excellent to travel with, never mind the time I left half of my wardrobe in a hotel closet in Australia), I spent the day making sure I had everything required for my skating bonanza. I came prepared with new hot pink laces, an appetite for that delicious snack bar pizza that I kept going back to ogle on their website, moxie and what little stamina I could muster from my out of shape self.

What I hadn’t prepared for, however, was Henry morphing into Disco Delight as his wheels hit the creamy surface of the rink. He was showcasing flamboyant little twirls and twists with his hands clasped behind his back; his long brown curls billowed behind him in the wake of his self-made wind. And then there was the surreal arm choreography: he’d stretch his arms out in front of his body, spread his fingers and violently shake his hands like he was skating to ragtime. I’m hoping I don’t need shock therapy to erase those images from my mind.

Every so often, I’d catch him running his hands up and down his body and plucking his imaginary rainbow suspenders. I like to believe that in his tiny delusional mind, he envisioned that he was wearing his best polyester play suit and holding not my hand, but Kristy McNichol’s. It was like he had skated right out of an episode of After School Special, circa 1977.

I was really beginning to get pissed because he was showing me up. This doesn’t sit lightly with someone of my egocentric caliber. I finally lost my temper and shoved him, and he immediately pointed out the numerous signs and placards warning that horseplay is cause for removal and banishment.

So once the rink started bumpin’ to my Def Leppard jam, I had no choice but to bench him. We exchanged words as he implored me to reconsider, stating, “But I can’t help that I’m better than you. I’ve been skating since before you were born! Well, I have!” Oh, the pleasure that coursed through my veins each time I’d skate past him; the puppy dog eyes pleading to be allowed back on the rink. My body, even while suffering from extreme fatigue as this was probably my fifth trip around, managed to shake riotously with greedy laughter.

And then our pizza was pulled from the oven. I took a long enough break to savagely gnash my teeth into my share before barreling back onto the rink in time for S Club 7. The videos for some of the songs were projected onto the back wall. Let me tell you, nothing is more liberating than skating through flashing disco lights worthy of giving any good epileptic nightmarish seizures while Marilyn Manson’s face is slathered across the wall, rockin’ the rink with his rendition of “Tainted Love.” It truly was adult night.

Where was Janna throughout the evening of wheeled debauchery? When she wasn’t hugging the wall, her ass was glued to her post in the game room as she guarded our beverage. She seemed ok with that, and our drinks made it through the evening unmaimed.

Sadly but inevitably, 9:30 rolled around and it was time to leave our new haven. I felt an unbreakable bond with the eight other skaters, like I should have stood in front of them while beating my breast bone.

I discovered as I was replacing my skates with societally regulated non-wheeled shoes, that I had broken one of my Goodwill relics. But this is good news because now Henry gets to buy me a brand new pair with blinking wheels.

Oh, and that pizza? It was delicious, as I knew it would be.

Henry, emulating Brian Boitano’s victory lap around the rink,
while cradling an armful of make believe flowers.

This was me, New Years Eve 1999. I was all set to get all lampshade-wearin’ crazy again this year too, but a stomach bug had other ideas for me. So instead, I rang in 2010 laying on the couch under a blanket, eating Doritos (the only thing other than frozen yogurt I could fathom injesting 10 hours after my stomach cavity had been exorcised), and playing Words With Friends with Henry, who gets so mad at my 60+ point words that he yells, “You bitch!” and I know deep down it’s full of love. I was supposed to have gone to a party and was really looking forward to that, but all in all I didn’t hate my New Year’s Eve. I’ve had plenty worse. And my mantra is: If the night doesn’t end with me paddling downstream on tears, then it must have been pretty good. 

So I expected going into this post with the “Fuck 2009, bring on 2010” mindset, and then I realized that, yeah, maybe some aspects of the past year were shitty, like getting laid off and then testing positive for a drug I haven’t smoked in 10 years, but really 2009 was full of some pretty cool shit. Please excuse me while I reflect.

• THE PENGUINS WON THE STANLEY CUP, HOLLA!!
• After years of knowing him on LiveJournal, I finally got to meet Bill and his awesome lady-half Jessi.
• Discovered I’m really fucking awesome at bowling.
• Saw a lot of awesome shows
  • The “Where’s the Band?” Tour with Dustin Kensrue, Chris Conley, Matt Pryor, and Anthony Raneri
  • Cold in Cleveland, which was the first time since 2005 they toured, and it turned out to be a big waterwork sesh for me
  • Craig Owens!! in Cleveland with Alisha! I think this was tied with Cold for my favorite show of the year
  • The Used
  • Chiodos in Columbus: my big hot date with Henry
  • WARPED TOUR!!
  • The Giglife Tour with Gravemaker, Fireworks, The Swellers, Set Your Goals, and Four Year Strong
  • Brand New and Manchester Orchestra in Cleveland
  • The “Squash the Beef” tour with Of Machines, Tides of Man, Of Mice and Men, Dance Gavin Dance and Emarosa (awesome show with the exception of douchebarrel Jonny Craig from Emarosa getting blitzed and singing like shit.)
  • Thrice!!! with Polar Bear Club and the Dear Hunter!
• Got some of my Somnambulant shit in a real brick and mortar shop here in Pittsburgh
• Watched Bill and Jessi get married in Vegas via webcam
• Made it another year without managing to neglect or endanger my child
• Had some photoshoot fun
• Made it a priority to spend more time with friends
• Went to the wedding of one of my oldest friends, Lisa. And cried.
• Was served a broken toe by Henry (Wait, wrong list.)
• Reconnected with my mom, for better or worse
• Got to go to my first Penguins game since 1997!

Please allow me to be cheesy for a second, but the best part of 2009 was reuniting with Alisha. We met back in 2005, became fast friends, but then had a falling out. Mostly because I’m a bullheaded psycho (and even worse, I was a bullheaded psycho amped up on pregnancy hormones). But we’re friends again and I’m not sure how I would have dealt with some things (that seem so insignificant now anyway) if she hadn’t been around. Plus, I have big plans for her involving cherry pies, blindfolds and stilts.

I think the greatest lesson I took away from 2009 is that no matter how much the universe shits on you, you just have to get up and brush it off. Wallowing will get you nowhere. It’s a tough mindset to uphold at times, but I’m not sure where I’d be right now if I let myself stew in self-pity. It also helps to have someone like Henry around who gets all mother hen and will say shit like, “OK, that’s enough. Go call someone and go out.”

I hope you all had a great New Year’s Eve and that 2010 will be full of delux awesome! Thanks to anyone who still continues to read this shit!

I’m impressed. Chooch has had his jack in the box for nearly a week and is still playing with it. Then he gets mad when our cat Speck (see also: Nicotina, Breakfast Nook) ignores the anticipating arrival of the sock monkey. Meanwhile, I’m clutching my heart and trying to shake off the numbness in my left arm.

Remember Mr. Men? It’s good to see something from my childhood making a comeback. I noticed awhile back that Target had some Mr. Men t-shirts in the kids department so I snagged a Mr. Grumpy for Chooch. And Bill and Jessi bought him a Mr. Noisy book when they first came to visit us last year. Mr. Grumpy, Mr. Noisy – both very apropos. I remember having a bunch of Mr. Men activity books that kept me mostly quiet in the backseat of the car when I was a wee lass.

So when Chooch came across these little miniatures in Target’s toy aisle and expressed interest, I was excited. Because now we can collect them together! The pack rat in me loves a good collection. I’m currently collecting these limited edition Penguins medallions. There’s a new one available each day, and they make it sound like you HAVE TO GET IT THAT DAY or you’re fucked for life. Of course, I know this isn’t true, but I’ve bestowed this very gallant responsibility onto my mother, who has been having panic attacks because I’m so high strung about it. She brought a new load over last week and I realized that five out of six were the same player. “These are all Dupuis,” I said, as I slid them back across the table. Have you ever actually seen the color drain from someone’s face before? I have. It’s fun to watch. My mom then drove around in a snow storm trying to exchange them for the ones I still needed. Collecting shit is awesome.

Chip and Dip! OMG it’s Chip and Dip! Chooch thinks they’re his but they’re really mine and I will love them and squeeze them and hug them and kiss them. They make me really want to adopt another Pac Man frog though. (RIP Hubert and Gustav.) When I was a senior in high school, I would sometimes take Hubert to school with me in his little pink-topped terrarium. I used to carry this large black and grey plaid pouch with me, and it was easily concealed. Everyone used to call that pouch my Barney Bag. I had so many toys crammed in there, travel games, Floam, candy frogs apparently. Study halls were awesome that year. Fuck, that was a great bag.

I also had a White Dumpy tree frog named Louie. I remember bringing him to school once and having him climb up the wall during homeroom. Then the teacher, Mrs. Hanlon, came in the room, glanced at the frog, and with hilarious nonchalance said, “Erin, put your frog away.”

The only thing I didn’t like about having frogs as pets was the whole cricket-as-food thing. Stumbling across a cricket outside in the summer, it’s like, “Oh, look. A cricket. Cool.” But buying them in air-filled bags at the pet store and storing them in a coffee can, it’s like, “OMFG these things are nasty motherfuckers.” And during the night, I’d be laying in bed and hear them scratching the sides of the canister as they formed a disgusting insect pyramid, trying to reach the top.

I am so repulsed right now.

Thank God Chip and Dip only eat pellets.

(Originally posted March 20, 2007)

There I was, at a neighborhood Chinese restaurant enjoying my meal when suddenly, a man behind me started coughing with extreme force. The sheer volume and abruptness of it startled my hands into gripping the table’s edge. Once my sense of panic subsided, I started to laugh but managed to quickly stifle it. I went back to spearing tofu with my fork.

And then he coughed again, like the very essence of life was being expelled through his lungs. He coughed and coughed and coughed, hearty and resounding staccatos of sonic warfare. Feeling thankful that my back was mostly toward him, I turned even further away so that I was seemingly laughing at the wall. I’m sure it wasn’t obvious at all.

My whole body was quaking from trying to suppress the laughter, and I begged Henry to talk to me so I could pretend like I was laughing at him. He turned away and focused all of his attention on Chooch, leaving me alone, red-faced and choking on chortles.

They finally left a few minutes later and I let it all out.

“Oh my god, did you hear him?! It was so hysterical! Weren’t you afraid you were going to laugh since you were directly in the line of his coughing?” I asked Henry in between breathy laughs.

“Um, no, because he was choking. It wasn’t funny.” Then he did that thing where he closes his eyes and gives his Bo Brady-coiffed head a swift shake, and then chases it with a frustrated and exhausted exhale.

I couldn’t stop imagining what he must have looked like in the throes of his choking fit. Were his hands clasped around his neck? Was his tongue sticking out like it does to choking victims in cartoons? If I was his wife, I’d have booted him in the balls as a nice cherry on top.

“Did they see me laughing? Was his wife laughing at him, too?”

“No, because he was choking.” Henrywas choking too — on disgust.

This made it even more hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing at all. Then I was jealous because  Chooch got to stare at him through the whole thing because he’s a baby and babies get away with spying all the time.

I kept thinking about it the next day when I was driving and I had streams of mascara painting skinny banners of “Choking Is Funny!” down my cheeks.

Why do I have a feeling that I’m inevitably going to meet my demise by choking to death? I hope it’s at least on something exciting.

Like a dick. (And not Henry’s. Someone who will gain me notoriety. “She died from choking on Carrot Top’s penis!

” will be splayed all over the tabloids. And then I can only wish it will become a witty slogan for kids signing yearbooks. “Have a good summer! Don’t choke on Carrot Top’s dick and die like that one broad did!”)

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Ed.Note: OK, that was almost three years ago and not only can I close my eyes and relive this exact moment, but the thought of that guy choking still makes me laugh so hard it hurts. Please tell me someone reading this knows what that’s like.

I have this new toy at the top of my blog, kind of like a billboard for “featured posts.” So this morning, while Chooch was watching cartoons (and by that I mean playing games on the phone I never get to use), I decided to go back into the archives and find some more oldies-but-goodies (goodies to me, anyway) to add to it. Basically, this is just another life distraction. Every time I came across an old post from my data processing night shift job (I worked at that place for a year and a half and still don’t know what to say when people ask me what I did there. Stalking? Blog-writing? Candy-stealing? Co-worker-annoying?), it made me miss having a job. And not even so much of the part where I had money, but moreso the extracurricular activities I partook in, like stalking the cleaning staff and developing faux-crushes on boys in other departments just so I could annoy those around me.

This post from March 2008 made me especially inspired to find a job.

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Creepy Cleaning Guy Visual

For over a week, I had been trying fruitlessly to capture a picture of the creepy cleaning guy at work. One night last week, I tried four separate times but my asshole flash went off, blowing my cover; twice he and I locked eyes, me frozen like a deer for an excruciating moment of timelessness, before finally pivoting and running away.

I tried over-the-shoulder shots, from-the-hip shots as I (probably very conspicuously) paced in front of the cleaning office, through-the-window shots which only resulted in the flash ricocheting back and blinding my eyes.

It was hard to stalk him this week, due to my lack of vision, but my luck changed last night.

Toward the end of the shift, I heard Eleanore in the kitchen saying hello to someone. When she came back to her desk with a cup of coffee, I hoarsely whispered, “Was that him??” She laughed and nodded. I was so angry that she didn’t even try to stall him! I ran out into the hallway by the loading dock and I noticed that his big wagon of garbage bags was parked at the far end of the hall.

I ran back inside.

“Bob! Pretend like you’re getting something out of the vending machine so I can act like I’m taking your picture,” I ordered. So Bob and I went back out into the hallway and loitered in front of the vending machines, waiting for the cleaning guy to return to his wagonmobile.

“I don’t think he’s coming back. You’re going to have to just go look for him,” Bob said, tired of standing around like an asshole.

So we went back inside.

Shortly after, one of the security guards — a friendly young man named Aaron — came over to say hello. I decided it was time to recruit new reinforcement, so I told him what I was trying to accomplish.

“Oh, you mean Bill?” he asked, laughing. “You know what to do? Throw some paper on the ground. He’ll have to stop and pick it up and that’ll afford you some time to take his picture.”

Best idea ever.

I grabbed an empty package of peanuts from my desk and told Collin, Bob, and Eleanore that Aaron agreed to go on watch for me.

“What’s he going to do? Whistle when he sees him?” Collin would not take any part in mission. But I know he’s secretly sad that he’ll soon be missing out on the shenanigans. I offered to start sending him a newsletter and he was like, “Of what? All the weird things you say?” Then he tried to recall a time I said something normal, and came up short.

Ignoring him, I ran back out into the hall, looked around frantically, and tossed the trash in front of the vending machines. If there was a surveillance video of me, it’d be a ridiculous montage of me side-stepping, ducking around corners, crouching down, peering through windows with cupped hands, and fleeing with my hands up and waving.

“He’s not a rodent, you know,” Bob said, accelerating my giddiness when I came back to my desk to wait for Aaron’s signal.

Unfortunately, one of the other cleaning guys picked up the peanut bag, so I replaced it with a crumbled sheet of notebook paper.

I waited for hours (probably 20 minutes, really) and just when I was about to give up, I heard the gentle squeaking of a wheeled garbage can, followed by the swishing sound of a broom against carpet. Standing on my tiptoes, I peered over the edge of our divider wall and spied the top of Bill’s head from over top of someone’s cubicle.

“Hey Bob,” I said loudly. “Now would be the PERFECT time for me to take that picture of you.” He looked at me, confused. “You’re the only one here I don’t have a picture of!” I enunciated each word and widened my eyes, hoping Bob would catch on.

“Oh. Okay. Where do you want me to stand?” I pointed to the area right by where Bill was about to emerge and Bob said, “No, that’s a stupid place—oh, unless I’m just a decoy?” I ended up not needing Bob anyway because Bill walked right past us and started going down another corridor in between cubicles. I hurriedly snapped two pictures.

“Here I thought you actually wanted my picture,” Bob said, pretending to be hurt. But I think he really was crying A LOT on the inside.

“Oh Bob, if you only knew how many pictures I have of you that you don’t know about,” I said with a wave of my hand. He probably thought I was kidding BUT I WASN’T.

I ended up getting more pictures of Bill later as he was helping himself to a cup of coffee. I felt very satisfied by the end of the shift. Another chapter closed.

In some families, pulling out the old Christmas tree and decorating it together is like, how you say? Tradition? A Hallmark memory? An evening to pretend to give a shit about your siblings as you sip egg nog while “accidentally” breaking their baby ornaments? When I was younger, I always tried to convince myself that it was a big deal. I’d try to give my mom helpful suggestions when we’d shop for lights. You know, maybe do it all one color instead of mixing strands of skinny lights with those gigantic bulbous ones. Themes have always been important to me. I wanted an elegant tree, not the agglomeration of chipped Hallmark ornaments that adorned the tree year after year. Always the same batch.

We’d go to the holiday store and no matter whether it was 1986 or 1996, I’d try to sway her to the tinsel side of tree decorating.

“No.” She wouldn’t even look at the luxurious strand of sparkling metallic riches I’d have draped around my neck, showcasing it like Zsa Zsa modeling an ostrich-feathered boa. Suggesting the loose tinsel would inspire looks better reserved for gender reassignment announcements.

“Well, then how about these fine-looking crystal bulbs?” I’d been punished with enough QVC to know exactly how to hold them in one hand and feign molestion with the other.

“No.”
“Or what about–”
“No.”

Oh, but she’d have no compunction when it came to hanging my brother Ryan’s Elmer’s glue-covered construction paper shit-houses all over the boughs. And it was always, “Oh my god, look at what that precious boy made in art class! He’s a prodigy!” while ignoring the fact that it was leper’ding  loose fragments to the floor below.

My fondest memory of our tree was when Ryan was about a year old or so and crawling around beneath the boughs. I was six and even then I knew it was a precarious route for him to take, but he used to punch me and pull my hair. So I sat and watched as he crawled with too much moxie over top of the metal base, goo-goo’ing and ga-ga’ing that tree right the fuck into a toppling situation. Unfortunately, Ryan was saved when the tree landed against the nearby coffee table, and found himself crouched underneath a tent of artificial branches. The impact of the land busted off the top section of our tree. My mother remedied this by purchasing a miniature tree and adhering it to the top.

We used that dilapidated tree every year until I was in high school.

I think the moment when I officially gave up on the decorating and family bonding was in tenth grade when my mom banished my black angel ornament from the tree. One lousy symbol of my faux-heritage was all I asked, but the angel and I were discriminated against. I hung her up on a shelf in my bedroom, where she watched over me every night, making sure my mom didn’t try and pour bleach into my mouth while I slept. Later, I bought my own white-branched miniature tree and my black guardian angel was the lone ornamentation, a beacon reminding me to keep it real.

And then there was the pet ornament snafu. Who knew that dog ornaments made from milk bones would cause a stampede into the tree?

Maybe my mom was onto something by not letting me pick out the decorations.

Meanwhile, my grandparents’ tree looked like Martha Stewart projectile vomited her entire collection upon the branches. My aunt Sharon would always say, “No no no!” if any of us came within twenty yards of it. Before I was born, they used to hire someone from Kauffman’s to decorate it for them. (I’m sure that was more my grandma’s idea than my grandfather’s.

)

I’ve lived on my own since 1998 (fine, Henry’s been around for eight of those, but considering how he’s a professional ignorer, one could still argue that I live alone), and still never splurged on a tree. Not even a miniature. And Chooch is nearly 4 now so I began to think that maybe it’s high time to do something about this.

Of course, I’m not one for normalcy, but I’d like to give my child some sort of static tradition. Sure, the magic wasn’t there for me when I was young, but surely I can try and make it right for my kid. You know, slap on a hard core Christmas carol album. Light a fire in my decorative fireplace. Tell Jesus jokes. All the things I missed out on as a kid.

Henry and I discussed it once when I was pregnant. I told him that I didn’t want our child to grow up and go to school and then come home and say, “All these kids think I’m weird because we don’t put up a Christmas tree.”

He agreed that having a Christmas tree around again would be fun. (Maybe I fabricated that part, as I often do when it comes to Henry’s involvement in things. I know, spoiler alert!) Every year I suggest that we forgo the actual tree and instead make my fifteen-year-old vision of an alternative Christmas tree come true. That is, buy a mannequin and solder extra hands, feet, legs and arms all around its head, torso and appendages. Like branches, see. And then I would make ornaments out of Homies. Maybe craft a little crack house and glue a few Homies milling around out front, listening to NWA on their ghetto blasters while waiting for Whitney Houston.

“Oh, because that won’t make kids think our child is weird,” Henry said, wiping the sarcasm from his moustache.

But in the meantime, my mom bought us a live tree. I’ve never had a real, straight-from-the-earth tree before. It came from Home Depot, my least favorite place in the world, tied with Wal-Mart, but in my imagination we went to a hobo-run tree farm in Minnesota and, with the help of the mom from “Bobby’s World,” adopted a sprightly spruce self-adorned with gilded candlesticks and all the effervescent verve of  Cyndi Lauper visiting Big Top Pee Wee. And it bowed and introduced itself as Francois Twinkletoes of the Expensive Chocolate Tribe and began dispensing calorie-free truffles right straight in my gyrating maw, ya’ll.

You know.

For the time being, we only have a few Target-procured bulbs (which will soon have the names of my crew on them, a la Days of Our Lives, though I might do Janna’s for her so she doesn’t break it or misspell her name) and a small selection of ornaments my mom handed down to me probably because they hold no sentiment for her (LIKE MY FIRST XMAS ORNAMENT CIRCA 1979). She also came calling with no less than eight packs of tinsel.

The loose kind that I always wished for as a child. I may have had a quick flashback of Henry firmly stating, “No tinsel, you can put anything you want on this tree, but please – no tinsel” as I draped seductive clumps of that sexy shit all up on my branches.

“That looks really nice, but you need more,” my mom said, supervising from the couch.

“I thought you hated tinsel?” I asked, ripping into another box.

“I do, because that shit gets everywhere. But this is your house, so whatever.”

When Henry came home, the obnoxious shimmer of the tinsel made him pause for a second. He scowled and then walked away. “I’m not picking that shit up when it starts migrating,” he muttered. “And believe me, it WILL.”

So far, I’ve pulled it out of the car and the fridge, and accidentally decorated the booth at Donut Connection with a rogue strand. When I catch the migrators around the house, I try to eliminate the evidence as fast as I can before Henry can stumble upon it. I get all panicked about it, like the runaway tinsel is a piece of my lover’s DNA and Henry has a gun collection.

It’s a fun game.

“I just want it to look fun and festive,” I explained to Alisha when she was over yesterday. (Henry made us soup and I think it should become a standing tradition.) “Do you think it looks fun and festive?”

“Oh…um, yeah. That’s exactly what I thought when I walked in the house. How fun and….festive,” Alisha deadpanned as she watched me (WATCHED, not HELPED) fluff branches and redistribute tinsel.

This was honestly the only ornament I cared about getting. I’m not ashamed.

My friend Sarah made Chooch several eyeballs during the height of his optical mania, so I shoved a hook in one to give it a greater purpose. I like to believe it’s watching over the tinsel, but considering I just pulled a strand out of my underwear, I guess that’s naive. (Oh, please, like you don’t masturbate on Christmas trees. Just please.)

A Penguins bulb, enough tinsel to inspire the tree to belt out a Cher medley, and an eyeball – what more could Alisha need to feel fun and festive in the tree’s presence? A tree topper. We didn’t have a tree topper and it was really bothering me last night. I kept trying to watch TV, I mean, retain interest in Alisha’s drivel,  but my eyes would magnetize right back to the bare twig protruding from the pinnacle. It looked so Charlie Brownish and I knew I had to do something, and FAST.

I tried to prepare my army for crafting war, but Alisha and Henry were all, “No, we’re good right here, watching TV” and Chooch was too busy calling everyone a bitch. I didn’t need them anyway. Storming into the kitchen, I grabbed an Xacto knife on the way and in my search for foil, I found something better: an aluminum baking pan. I sketched a scribble of a star in the middle and even in my haste it was far superior to anything Alisha or Henry could have shat out. They would have gone to the store for a stencil. The next part was very hard and I wouldn’t suggest that anyone reading this try it unless they have all the courage and ability to be a hero under pressure as one Erin Rachelle Kelly. Could that be you? I didn’t think so.

Oh, it was a tough and trying time, sawing away at this curling sheath of deadly metal, deftly swinging my wrists out of the way as shrapnel exploded through the air with the aim of a skilled marksman and the blueprint for staged-suicide etched out in its head.

Anyway, once it was cut out to perfection, all I needed was packing tape and something wand-like to shove it into the tree. God shone down his celestial spotlight which landed in a pool of righteousness on top of the refridgerator, which is where I found an unopened McDonald’s straw. Now it’s all a matter of sitting back and waiting for that broad on She’s Crafty to invite me on her show.

If that’s not the poster child for all that is majestic, then I don’t want to live in this shitty, uncultured world anymore.

It’s no mannequin, but it’ll do.

And that is the story of how the Liberatree was born. Hopefully it will be even more magical next year, provided some of that tinsel doesn’t find its way into my bedroom one night to recreate a horror movie strangulation scene.

Before eating dinner on Thursday, Henry and I hung out in the living room while my brother Corey and Chooch hung ornaments on the tree. Corey took a break and acted like it had been decades since he moved out of our mom’s house (and not just barely over a year) by rifling through all the drawers and cabinets.

“I forgot I used to hide stuff in here,” Corey giggled as he pulled out two photographs from the old roll-top desk that my mom uses more as an aesthetic piece of rustic art than functional furniture. “I used to take horrible pictures of you and then hide them, haha.”

I vaguely remember being bombarded by surreptitious  camera flashes. I do not remember ever seeing this pictures*** though, but I suppose that’s the point.

The sad thing is, while I’m sure I would have hated them then, now I’m wistfully thinking, “Aw, before pregnancy morphed my body into a fleshy bag of potatoes.”

My eyebrow was pierced in the hair-dye one, so that means these are from 1998.

Baked beans?

I still enjoy a good catalogue.

Corey also unearthed my old summer health class folder, the same one you’ll not remember I used as an instructional manual on resuscitating my dead rabbit, Rudy.

The front of the folder informs the reader that “Erin <3’s Andy” though it is suspiciously penned in boyish handwriting.

There was really no point to this other than to remind myself that life is too short not to laugh at ourselves.

[*** “This pictures” –  I love how stress makes me type like English is my second language. Or maybe that’s more retardation than stress. Who cares at this point.]

My grandma fell last week. She lives with my mom’s older sister, Sharon and that in itself is a very storied history that would exhaust me to try to type out. But I will say that in the years since my pappap’s passing, Sharon has grown increasingly damaged. In a nutshell, I tend to liken the situation to Grey Gardens.

Rather than call 911, Sharon called Henry who proceeded to go to my grandmother’s house at 10:00pm, pick her up from the floor and put her back into bed. When he came home, he told me that my grandma’s legs looked very swollen, like she has no use of them. “I don’t mind going over there and helping out, but I really think Sharon should call the paramedics.”

This happened a year ago. My grandma wound up in the hospital and from there she was placed in a nursing home for two months, where she received physical therapy and had the opportunity to interact with people not named Sharon. (Sharon doesn’t let anyone come over to see her. I saw my grandma more when she was in the nursing home than when she lives at home, because Sharon can’t LOCK ME OUT of a nursing home.) She was happy, more vibrant than I had seen her in years. Then she was released and Sharon went back to her old ways of not taking her anywhere and forcing my grandma to a life that consists of shuffling back and forth between her bed and a chair in the den. My mom has barely even seen her.

Last Thursday, less then 12 hours after Henry picked her up, she fell again. Sharon called me, panicking, asking when Henry got home from work. I lost it; convinced her to call the fucking paramedics. What if she was hurting herself every time she fell? This isn’t something for Henry to detect. So Sharon called 911, the paramedics came and left, saying she was fine.

That night, my grandma started having hallucinations, and seemed convinced she was studying her English. Sharon took her to the hospital, which actually made me feel relieved rather than upset, because I know that if she’s at least in a hospital, she’s going to get proper care. (Well, best case scenario, anyway.)

I went to see her on Sunday, after hearing stories from Sharon about how my grandma had lost her mind. Sharon swore my grandma had suddenly “come down with” Alzheimer’s, but my mom and I weren’t so sure, since it seemed like the onset was essentially an overnight process. She was sitting in a chair, tray of stinky hospital food in front of her, most of it stirred into ecru puddles of ambiguous sludge.

“Mom, do you know who this is?” Sharon wheedled in the most obnoxiously condescending tone.

“Of course I know who that is, it’s Erin,” my grandma snapped.

My mom told me that the night before, Sharon kept speaking for my grandma, who eventually lashed out.

“You have to excuse my mother,” Sharon explained to the nurse. “She has a very quick temper.”

To which my grandma spat, “It’s because you piss me off!” My mom said Sharon called her crying, but really, when the only form of human contact you get each day is that from your eldest daughter who has NEVER MOVED OUT, wouldn’t you be a little temperamental too?

During the visit, my grandma kept bobbing in and out of coherency, weaving between reality and her supposed trip to Hawaii she took on Saturday. “And I never expected the meatloaf to be so good,” she enthused. “In the hospital?” Sharon asked. “No, in Hawaii!” she said.

The nurse came in while I was there and informed us that her MRI came back negative, and that the doctor deduced it was the Vicodin that Sharon had given her Thursday night after she last fell. Typically my grandmother gets half, but Sharon gave her a whole one since she was in so much pain. The nurse said that once it left her system, the weird waking dreams should subside, and then they’d move her into the rehab unit to work on her legs.

Walking down the hall with my mom and Sharon, I said, “It must run in the family. Don’t you remember when I got my wisdom teeth out and I totally went crazy?”

My mom looked at me blankly.

“Don’t you remember? I was so suicidal!”

“Yeah, but you always were suicidal,” my mom laughed. Oh yes, ha-ha, memories.

Henry and Chooch were waiting in the lobby, casually eating candy shat from a vending machine. “Don’t ever give Erin Vicodin!” my mom joked.

“I already knew that,” Henry muttered.

****************

Henry, Chooch and I met my brother Corey at the hospital on Thanksgiving. We thought it would be nice to spend some time with her before going to my mom’s for dinner. She was sitting awkwardly in a chair, slumped over slightly to the side, and seemed to be in a restless sleep; her body was twitching and she just didn’t look very swell at all.

The she woke up, saw Chooch, and promptly started to sob. I mean, she was so distraught that she covered her face and wept into her hand.

Not the reaction I was hoping for. Maybe a little more bells and whistles; praise for being such an outstanding grandchild?

Henry pulled Chooch out of the room; Corey and I, being the awkward species that we are, stood in our best awkward regalia. I kept nervously asking, “Grandma are you OK? Are you alright?” and Corey was in a speechless stupor.

A nurse came in. She had on a set of those god awful wearable studies in abstract art, presented in varying hues of Pepto Bismol and Nyquil. (If I was a nurse, I’d have to find a way to get a customized scrub set. Maybe something black, with random Cure lyrics in red.) In an abrasive, no-nonsense tone, she looked at me through lens-magnified eyes and asked, “What’s wrong?” In my head, I heard, “What the fuck did you do?”

I explained that we had just walked in as she was starting to awaken, and that’s when she began sobbing.

“Jeannie, what’s wrong? These kids came to see you.”

“I can’t. Not tonight. It’s been a really bad year,” my grandma moaned. I’m not sure if she meant to say “day” or if she was being profound. Because yes, it’s been a really bad year.

All this time, Corey had been clutching a card he made her; a Thanksgiving turkey card made the old school way – from his handprint. (“And in true Kelly household fashion, I had to use Scotch tape covered in dog hair,” he explained moments earlier in an elevator.) He slid it into her hands before we left, and she moaned, “Oh Corey, thank you,” and then cried some more.

On a positive note, she at least knew who Corey was.

On a negative note, that was the single most depressing moment of my adult life. And the worst part is that since I’ve always had a tumultuous relationship with her, all I could do was stand there with a worried expression and arms crossed protectively (and insecurely) under my chest.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever hugged my grandma. I know that she’s always loved me, I do believe that, but I also know that of anyone in the family, I’ve been the biggest disappointment to her. Chubby as a pre-teen, a yo-girl in high school instead of a billboard for equestrian couture like she’d have preferred, a high school dropout, a black sheep having a baby out of wedlock. I was just never what she wanted me to be, and she proved that by lying to her friends, telling them that instead of not finishing high school, I had graduated and gone on to study journalism at Kent State. She berated me when I got pregnant, yelling that I “wasn’t meant to have children.”

She never asked me if I was happy, though.

This blog? It’s called Oh Honestly, Erin because that’s what she’s always said to me. “Oh honestly, Erin” –  every time I let her down. “Oh honestly, Erin” – every time I did something imaginably stupid. “Oh honestly, Erin” – every time I tarnished the family name a little more.

And I’m not sure if I ever told her I loved her before last night, when I said it as we flitted from the room; but it was only because Corey had said it first and I coattailed him.

I do love her. I just don’t know how to say it. When it comes to my family, there is this fucking force field barricading the entrance of emotions, and any sign of weakness or utterance of honest endearments will be zapped dead like a mosquito poking around a bug lamp. So I just stand there stupidly and useless while my grandma is entering an existential crisis in the hospital.

It wasn’t until later  tonight, after Chooch and Henry went to sleep and I was left completely alone on the couch, that my emotions had the upperhand advantage. And it hit me, hard.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was taking my Pitt course guide over to her house, poring over it excitedly while she made me a cheese sandwich, finally feeling like she was proud of me. Now, college is just one more thing that I quit, she doesn’t even go in the kitchen anymore, and somewhere along the way I went back to feeling like a fuck up.

In this photo, she’s judging me. But I still love her.

The beginning of November always weighs heavily on me because it’s when my pappap’s birthday falls. I try not to let it bother me, but it’s like his ghost is always there, hovering. It’s not like I don’t want it to be, though, but that doesn’t make me feel any less sad. Part of me doesn’t want to “get over it”, no matter how many “friends,” family members, or therapists tell me to, because the hurt in my heart reminds me of who I am and where I came from.

I had wanted to post this photo last week on his proper birthday, but I couldn’t find it.

I tore through all of my photo albums, to the point where I started to think that I had constructed the photo in my subconscious, and started to panic because I’m afraid to start forgetting things about him, like his loud laugh, or the way he would tap his pinky ring off the church pew and say, “One day this will be yours” (for the record, it’s not mine). I don’t want to forget about the time he got pickpocketed in Rome and remained so calm, yet lost his shit when some asshole grabbed the cab we were waiting for.  How we would go on family vacations to Wildwood, NJ and he and I would sneak out for ice cream after everyone else went to bed. How he would listen to his Mike and the Mechanics tape in his truck and say, “This song reminds me of my father” every time “Living Years” came on.

And my photos of him, don’t even get me started on my photos of him. My aunt is so afraid I’m going to raid my grandma’s house of all the Lalique and jewelry when all I would actually take is every photo album I could carry in a potato sack. OK fine, and there’s the fucking fantastic sculpture of Marquis de Sade that I have always had my greedy eye on. I recently asked my aunt Sharon for the purple heart that he earned in WW2 and she got completely spastic on me.

I don’t have anything of his. I don’t want it for materialistic reasons, for greed, I just want to have something that he once held. I don’t care at this point if it’s a scrap of a shirt. My family won’t let me have anything and that’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes. I guess it’s my punishment for being the black sheep.

But I finally found the birthday photo the other night, in this big red velvet album full of my baby pictures. I’m guessing from the not-yet jaded look in my eyes that this was back in 1980. Chooch and I sat on the couch and pawed through the album and every time we turned a page to find his face perma-glued onto the yellowed backing. I would proudly say, “That’s my PAPPAP,” like a kid boasting the best toy ever during show and tell. And that’s what makes it suck even harder lately, not the fact that I don’t have that shiny toy to brag about anymore, but that Chooch never got to know him. And those two would have been crazy about each other.

My pappap was the one who made all of my birthdays amazing. He raised the bar so high that sometimes, in his death, I don’t even want to bother to celebrate my big day. And looking back, I realize that aside from a lousy birthday cake, no one ever really did anything for his birthday. If I could have one last chance, one last opportunity to light up some trick candles, I’d make sure he knew for real how much everyone loved him. I guess he did know, even in the absence of actions, but still. He deserved a party. A really fucking lavish party. With clowns and twenty bottles of Dom. Or, at the very least, a card with all these sentiments scrawled in ink.

He never expected anything from any of us: my brothers, my mom, my aunts, or my grandma. All he wanted was happiness for everyone, and it seemed like so much of the time, someone was always mad at him, always for materialistic bullshit.

This was Halloween, 1983. I found it during my search for the birthday cake photo. I can guarentee that whoever took this photo, whether it was my mom or grandma, someone was pissed that my pappap was walking past in the background. I’m certain there was an annoyed hiss of, “You ruined the picture, John!” but for me, I look at this and think, “Oh good, another picture of my pappap,” and I bet the rest of them would think the same thing.

I went to a haunted house in Donora, PA last Saturday with my friend Cinn and her boyfriend Bill. I don’t get to see Cinn very often but she’s always been the big sister I never had, so when I do get to hang out with her, it never feels like a ton of time has passed. Every October reminds me of when we met in 1998, and we reminisced about that plenty in the car Saturday night (much to Bill’s chagrin, I’m sure, as he’s heard the story a thousand times by now).

Two years ago, I wrote an essay for a writing class about the event that solidified our friendship, and I guess because it shines a big, embarrassing spotlight on my softer, more sentimental side, I never posted it here.  But I don’t know, who cares. Here it is.

————————————————-

       “Stop, you’re making me choke on Skittle juice!” Cinn screamed from behind the steering wheel. A long ribbon of highway unraveled in front of us and I grimaced when Cinn said we had at least two hours left in our journey. I tickled our ennui by flirting with the driver of every vehicle that had the misfortune of passing us, only exciting the burly and unwashed-looking men manning the gigantic semis that made compact cars like Cinn’s sway perilously.         

       Two days earlier, I was meeting Cinn in person for the first time after several encounters in a gothic chat room called DarkChat. She arrived at my apartment, her shocking red locks were closely shorn to her pate and jutted out in spikes here and there, and we went off to buy our costumes for the upcoming Type O Negative show and Dracula’s Ball in Philadelphia. I knew nothing about her but that she was twenty-eight to my nineteen and lived only a short jaunt away from me. I didn’t even know she was married until that weekend, when I arrived at her house at the designated departure time, but somehow the particulars didn’t seem to apply to this friendship – we had somehow managed to connect based on something entirely more intrinsic than a/s/l.

       Agreeing to go on this trip was just what I needed, coming off the heels of a tumultuous summer filled with break-ins, having my wallet pilfered and car stolen (and then ever-so-thoughtfully returned hours later) by people I thought were friends.  It was a summer that started off strong, full of parties and crushes and a bounty of alcohol, but by the end, it had become a twirling tailspin of depression, loneliness and the stark reality that 99% of the people with whom I shared my apartment weren’t going to be there when I needed them. I had taken to living as a near-recluse, keeping my heavy curtains perpetually drawn, even on sunny-skied days. During this self-imprisonment was when I stumbled across the chat room. At first it was nothing more than a release for my pent up aggression, a place admittedly to flame and mock the suicidal Goth kids; but then I began noticing that there was interesting conversation scrolling past the screen, people gushing about bands that I liked. Before I realized what was happening, I was being sucked in to this strange realm of pale-faced misfits. And I fit in because I was a misfit too.

                                                   ***

       Our dresses hung like black-laced shrouds from the garment hooks in the back of Cinn’s car. The plan was to check into a hotel when we arrived in Philadelphia, change into our off-the-Hot Topic-rack gowns and meet up with another DarkChat user, Your Druidess. I had never chatted with this lady before, but Cinn confidently assured me that she would be standing outside of the Trocadero with our free tickets to the Type O show. Here I was, recuperating from a summerful of broken trust, only to turn around and hand over what little left I was able to scrape up  to this strange woman who I essentially knew nothing about. However, I would be lying if I said I didn’t consider, at least once, that this woman with her Simon LeBon coif was a real vampire, luring me to a sinister abattoir for Internet chat room newbies under the guise of some gothic jamboree. Maybe I might have second guessed some of her innocent sidelong glances, seeing them instead as the shifty glance of a nervous Internet predator.  I would later learn that she was nervous – of what I was furiously scribbling in my vacation journal.

       Her real name was Allison, but she preferred to be called by her online moniker – Cinnamon Girl — and preferred to call me by my chat handle, too – Ruby. Conversation flowed easily between us, even though we had engaged in minimal chat room interaction, and I diligently noted in my journal that she kept count of every cemetery we passed, had an eye for spotting majestic trees, and churned out a myriad of cheesy one-liners, such as “Call me a bitch, but call me” and “Boobage is like mileage,” which I still don’t really understand even a decade later.

       My friends thought I was making a mistake by coming on this trip. Meeting people on the Internet is bad idea, some of them said, trying to deter me. This isn’t going to end well. You don’t even know her. Do you even like Type O Negative? Aside from a cover of “Summer Breeze,” I knew little about Type O Negative, but Cinn changed that with a nonstop Type O curriculum in the car. I’ve been a fan ever since, though it’s a wonder I didn’t wind up abhorring them.

         But that wasn’t the point. It could have been any band, it could have been Anal Cunt, and I still would have said yes. It was something that at nineteen years old, after the reality of the summer’s end had set in, I felt I really needed to do. It would be an experience, something to write about, a story to tell.  I wasn’t in college; I wasn’t living in a dorm and going to frat parties or spending semesters abroad. It may have been just a trip to Philly, but it was more than that to me.

                                                   ***

       “We’re not going to have time to find a hotel,” Cinn said, exhaling a heavy sigh of defeat. We had finally reached the city only to be met with gridlocked traffic. “Start putting your makeup on.” She tossed me my bag from the back seat and I bedaubed my eyelids with a layer of glitter thick enough to make a drag queen proud and possibly get some change tossed at me if I stood on a corner.

       “Do I have to wear these fake eyelashes?” I groaned, tumbling the plastic package over in my palm, in search of instructions. I had already managed to squirt glue in my eye before she had a chance to say anything, but in my journal I wrote that she physically forced me to adhere them to my eyelids else I’d sleep on the streets that night.

       We squeezed into our slutty Morticia dresses in the tight confines of a dingy gas station bathroom. The fluorescent white track lighting made my normal complexion look legitimately sallow and I wished I could achieve that look at the ball. Cinn made that wish her own reality by heavily coating her entire face with white powder, a measure I was unwilling to take. Cinn accidentally dropped a ten dollar bill in the commode.

                                                   ***

       Your Druidess never showed up.

       We stood dejectedly outside the Trocadero for an hour, watching hordes of Type O fans bustling into the sold out show, clutching onto hope so fleeting, it was like cocaine sifting through our fingers. I silently breathed a sign of relief though, because I wasn’t 100% on board with donning my ridiculous Goth uniform anywhere other than Dracula’s Ball. Cinn was openly weeping over this  imbroglio when a big-wheeled pick-up truck sped past, Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” blasting ironically at high volumes from the windows. I shot my fist into the air and saluted.

       Your Druidess is a stupid name, anyway.

                                              ***

       Refusing to let Your Druidess’s blunder ruin our trip (she was probably a fifty-year-old fisherman, anyway), we decided to make the best of it and seek out the Dracula’s Ball, which we had planned to attend after the show. Driving through Central City on Halloween night, past loading docks and alleys full of shadowed forms, I began to understand why the Fresh Prince’s mom made him move to Bel Air. It didn’t seem like we were in the right place and my old friend Panic began to rise again up my esophagus, like a recently ingested model’s salad. It burned.

       She’s going to stab me with her fake fangs and roll my body into the river. But before I let my paranoia get the best of me by hurling myself from the moving car, I spotted an undulating line of poorly dyed raven locks, billowing capes, and sparkling neck-bound crucifixes. We had found the Dracula’s Ball. In my head, I rejoiced with the Tabernacle Choir.

                                                   ***

       This is high school all over again, I thought as I came precariously close to being engulfed by the obnoxiously large black velvet couch on which I sat, like a shell-shocked Alice at a tenebrous tea party, while Cinn was over at the bar getting refreshments. My feet dangled inches from the floor, the chair was that ludicrously oversized. Cinn came back with a beer, which I grabbed for desperately (and I don’t even like beer), but she handed me a glass of Coke instead, mouthing off some spiel about not contributing to minors.  And here I thought we were bros.     

       We were the first people to be let in, having been hand-picked in front of everyone by Malachi, Philadelphia’s Baron of Goth. I never did find out who he was supposed to be, but I know that girls swooned when he neared them and men shook his hand with great respect shining in their eyes. A top hat nestled stately upon the carefully tousled kohl hair framing an alabaster face; a tailed tuxedo suitable for Marilyn Manson to wear to the market and a cane imprisoned within the grip of a white-gloved hand finished off his meticulous look.  He could be a vampire. He could really be a vampire. When he approached us with an extended palm, every girl gasped in envy. Murmurs of our luck resounded around us as we advanced to the doors, leaving everyone to reapply their black eyeliner in disgust.

       It smelled like a clove and anise cocktail inside the Ball, with a slight trace of sweat and smoke coalescing to provide an acrid after-scent.  Black velvet and gossamer draped from rafters, chandeliers, and limbs, like gauze on an unraveling mummy.                                                                                                                   

       Tall, emaciated boys in high-collared shirts with frilly sleeves strutted to and fro, arms akimbo, feet stuffed into thick-soled black Creepers, while girls spiraled dream-like around the dance floor, giving off the illusion that they were floating above the ground as they skipped in staccato patterns, yet managed to retain their fluidity; cupping their hands into cordate offerings, they contorted their arms in hypnotic patterns which a friend would later tell me he dubbed “Passing the Ball of Energy.” Every third girl had some variation of fairy wings clipped to her back and none returned my smiles.

       You know those stares you get when you leave the house accidentally still wearing the skin-suit you fashioned from your last murder victim? It was like that.

       I tried to tell a girl I thought she danced beautifully and she all but hissed in my face while dripping gobs of glitter much like the molten blobs of wax that plop from tilted taper candles. And here I thought I had escaped the Prom two years before; this must have been Thomas Jefferson High School’s revenge. The girls could see right through my façade, sniffing the scent of my dress’s cheap threads and knowing that it wasn’t purchased in some Elizabethan boutique, branding me a poseur. The acceptance I once felt in the Goth chat room was all but shattered when I was forced to stare this culture in the face, without the shield of a computer monitor.

       Feeling safe with my roots in the wall, my aphasia and I remained sidelined for most of the evening.                                                    

                                                   ***

       “What’s an egg cream?” I asked Cinn, scanning the menu at Silk City Diner.

It was 11:30PM and the diner was sprinkled with several other Ball escapees. Cinn said that we would see how we were feeling after we got some food in our stomachs, that we’d decide then if we were going to go back to the Ball. Under the table, I crossed my fingers for a vomitous outburst, an exploding appendix, an arm severing spontaneously.

       Minutes later, the waitress had convinced me that egg creams were quite possibly the most delicious refreshments one could ever want to flow down their gullet; I imagined Jesus ripping himself from the cross and striding purposefully into the nearest diner and ordering a tall glass of creamed eggs. “What’s the first thing you’ll do when you get down from that cross, Jesus?” “Get myself a nice cold egg cream, friend.” And how could Jesus be wrong?

       The waitress slid a tall glass of egg cream along the Formica table top. I should have known I couldn’t ever agree with Jesus. It was disgusting. A foaming cylinder of soda water and chocolate syrup, essentially. I didn’t know what eggs had to do with it, but there must have been a lot of courage infused into that vile libation, because I felt recharged and feisty, like the Erin I was before my generosity and effervesence had been wringed dry like an old ratty dish rag. Mounting the sparky-vinyl booth, I shouted, “Can I have your attention? We’re from Pittsburgh and I’d like to take your picture!”

        In a surprising twist, everyone graciously obliged. It was like an awakening for me, a reclaiming of that spark that had been robbed from me that summer, the lack of which had quickly shoved me into a shell. I felt rejuvenated from my moment of bravery and decided that I wanted to go back to the Ball.

        But first I had to wait for Cinn to emerge from under the table.

                                                   ***

       She introduced me to the man with red irises, long and slick black hair, and two sets of fangs, saying his name was Tom and that she had met him earlier in the night, during her quest for beverage which should have taken five minutes, not thirty. Suddenly oblivious to my presence, they began making out and I had a feeling this wasn’t the first time their tongues met that evening. I rolled my eyes and wandered around the building, curious what I might find on the other floors.

       The basement was a crypt for kegs and an astringent aroma of cloves and mildew which made my nasal passages feel unwelcome. The second floor seemed dandy until I entered a room that was like walking into a bathroom at Studio 54. Sickly Goths lounged languidly around tables of blow. I had a feeling that probably wasn’t the best room for me to be loitering. I’m a very addiction-prone girl.

       Not really feeling comfortable anywhere inside (except Vendor Alley, where I threw down fifty dollars on a red leather bat choker with wings so salient they bore small holes into the skin of my throat while I wore it), I relocated to a stoop outside, taking solace in my pack of Camels and scribbled furiously in my journal. I began panicking about where I was going to sleep and how I was going to get home, because I realized I had no idea of Cinn’s intentions.  I felt threatened by this man Tom. Women get weird when men enter the picture. I hoped that I wasn’t about to get ditched, although it wouldn’t be the first time.

       I returned the raucous salutations of inebriated passers-by, declined offers of rides and wild nights, and accepted a stamp pad which I promptly tossed to the side, afraid it might be laced with acid or whatever hallucinogenic was popular on the streets of Philly. A homeless man sang in my face until I silenced him with a crumpled dollar.

       As I lit my fifth cigarette with cold-shook hands, I heard a shrill voice reverberating down the sidewalk on a wave of the pulsating beat of Electric Hellfire Club.

                                                   ***

       Every October, I feel nostalgic for that music. I fill my autumns with a rotation of goth-rock bands like Sisters of Mercy and Christian Death; I remember the way those people danced and looked so free, and still wish I could fit in with them. But instead, I listen to this music alone, this time in the warmth of my house, and not from a curb outside of a club, on a cold hemorrhoid-incubating slab of city concrete. Not only am I fake Goth, but a seasonal one at that.

                                                   ***

       “Jesus Christ, I’ve been looking all over for you! I thought you had been stolen, and I was so scared. And then I kept thinking about your damn journal and all the made-up stuff you were writing about me, and what would the cops think—-” She roughly pulled me into her, hugging me tight and petting my hair. It was a scene straight out of a crowded department store at Christmastime, except that I wasn’t a crying child silently thanking Santa for helping her Mommy find her, but a nineteen year old girl with rogue specks of glitter scraping her eyes and a sleep-deprived surliness.

       Tom was still saddled protectively to her side.

                                                   ***

       “Are you sure you’re not hungry? We can stop there,” Carl said, jabbing a finger out the car window at some fast food chain. “Or there.” It was the third time he suggested this supposed good intentioned pit stop. I was seated awkwardly in the passenger seat of his truck, my dread-filled eyes staring straight ahead, glued to the back of Cinn’s car.

       Tom had invited us back to his apartment and devised a brilliant plan which put him in the driver’s seat of Cinn’s car, while I was pawned off on his friend Carl, who appeared to be an amalgamation of Ozzy Osbourne’s and Michael Bolton’s genetic markers. Translating this to mean that Tom and Cinn wanted to spend time alone, I acquiesced – but not without a loud, throat-scraping exhale, the kind that every teenager perfects, to illustrate my annoyance — and joined the lascivious Carl, who was desperate for an excuse to stall our reunion with the others.

       “No, really. I’m not hungry. I just ate two hours ago. A lot. I ate a lot. Four courses, at least.”  My gaze remained indestructible, refusing to let Cinn’s car out of my sight.  “Maybe even eight,” I mumbled in an undertone. I’m going to be so pissed off if I get raped tonight, I thought bitterly.

                                                   ***

       Tom’s apartment was what you’d expect for a man convinced he was a vampire: no matter where you placed your ass, an animal print of some sort was promised to be underneath; black pillar candles occupied every free surface area; Egyptian relics and religious tchotschkes gave the room a very underground Pier 1 ambiance.

       I was trapped on Tom’s couch for three hours, during which I suffered through a painfully awful vampire movie (Vampire Journals), and even worse, Tom’s lame attempt at humorous commentary; a photo op for Carl, in which I appeared to be shrinking back inside of myself while Carl ravenously leered over my shoulder (a photograph I treasure to this day); and Tom’s guided tour through the technological wonderments of WebTV.

       While Tom was searching for a better ankh image to embed in his email signature, I slipped out to Cinn’s car where I proceeded to collapse into frustrated tears in the passenger seat. It was 6AM and I wanted to sleep, but not in Tom’s perverse lair. Cinn came after me, and I sobbed about not knowing what Tom keeps under his floorboards and not wanting to sleep in the same room, building, state as Carl, and I complained of the searing pain I was feeling in my eyebrow. I had just had a new ring put in days before, by a husky goliath in a piercing parlor who looked like he could have just shimmied down Jack’s beanstalk. The gauge was all wrong, but he forced the purple hoop through the miniscule holes in my brow. When I awoke, I was supine and groggy on a couch, and he showed me the paper towel drenched with my blood.

        “I need to wash my face,” I wailed, hiccupping on tears. “This glitter is really making my piercing hurt.”

         Probably scared of what fabricated tale I was bound to weave inside the purple cover of my vacation journal, Cinn placed her hands on my shoulders and promised we would leave right then. She was true to her word. She drove all morning, stopping near Hershey to feed me a nutritious breakfast of raspberry Danish and strawberry muffin.

                                                   ***

        After that weekend, Cinn and I forged a sisterly relationship, which isn’t always a good thing, but I know that she would save my life if she could. We’ll go for months, sometimes years, without speaking, but underneath it all, it was like we survived a train wreck together, a Gothic train wreck of spider-webbed carnage and fish netted limbs, anise smoke and novelty fangs, and that alone bounds us together, no matter our differences or penchants for running off with mysterious strangers. I still haven’t found my place in life, an accepted membership into some snobby subculture, but I’m OK with that. I like being the girl with a cover no one can judge.

                                                   ***

              The night after I returned home found me in the emergency room, with a doctor surgically extracting my eye brow ring, barely visible amongst the swollen patch of eyelid that caused people to mistake me for a mongoloid.  “Look at all the puss that came out!” he lectured me, while two nurses vowed to never let their daughters get pierced.

                       I still have a scar.

• First October in Brookline
• Big-headed Internet boyfriend from Vancouver
• Ceramic pumpkin full of black and orange cello-wrapped peanut butter chews
• Just two cats
• Black Bible shrine; purple hand chair
• Week-long telemarketing jobs
• Middle of the night jaunts to A-Plus; procuring calling cards
• (World Famous) Grasshoppers. served in antique blue stemware

Hi. I’ve posted this on LiveJournal before, but never here on Oh Honestly, Erin.

**********

There are some standard cultural traditions that I avoid like the plague. For example, having ‘Happy Birthday’ serenaded to me.

It makes me want to unzip my skin and climb inside my body cavity. I never know what to do with myself while locked in this thirty second predicament. Where do I focus my eyes? Do I mouth the words along with everyone? Do I laugh, smile, cry, fellate a candle? Where do I put my hands!? I cannot explain this phobia, but my mom is clearly to blame for the one regarding dressing up for Halloween.

It wasn’t always a disaster. In fact, I used to enjoy it.

Exhibit A: Erin as a bunny in Kindergarten:

Notice how carefree I was. I’m undeniably thrilled that it’s Halloween and I get to dress up and be pretty. But this was back when Halloween was pure and simple—before my mom caught wind of the costume contest at my elementary school. Children from each grade can win a prize for the most creative costume? Who knew?

By the time second grade rolled around, my mom had morphed into Pageant Mother:  Halloween Edition. Choosing my own costume was no longer in the cards. While all my friends were running amok in Kmart, fingering racks of synthetic Snow White capes and vinyl witch masks and probably inhaling 567,872,536 incubating germs left behind by the hundreds of people before them who breathed inside the masks, my role was to sit idly on my ass while my mom tapped into her creative genius for the perfect costume, year after year. I wanted to contract viruses, too, goddammit. But my mom would remind me that there was real life fame and fortune on the line, and since I was only eight, I still had faith in her.

My first homemade costume wasn’t all that sufferable. I have a vague recollection of wanting to help and having my fingers slapped. (Oh my god, I totally do this to my kid now. I have become my mother.)

Though I was shy, I secretly gloated behind my crayon tophat as everyone shrieked about the coolness of my costume. Other kids paraded around the elementary’s parking lot wearing their generic Made in Taiwan costumes, but I was the real deal, yo.

That year gave me my first taste of Halloween costume greatness. I was the winner from my grade, hands down. I remember clutching my prize (a real life silver dollar!) to my heart and beaming knowingly at my mom—we were on our way to big things, I could feel it in my immobile torso. If we had been given the opportunity to recite an acceptance speech, I would have dedicated my winnings to her.

The excitement of the costume contest came to a crashing halt that evening. It was nearly time for Trick or Treating, and I realized that I didn’t have a real costume. You know, real as in ‘practical.’ Real as in ‘I will be traversing great lengths for the sake of candy and this fucking mummifying cardboard box is slightly invasive, can I get a leotard and some mother bitchin’ fairy wings?’  My mom, when I brought this to her attention, scoffed at me and said, “Yes, you do have a real costume!” Next thing I know, my arms are in the air and she’s shoving the Crayola box over my body. This is not the sort of costume that a child wants to wear while on a hunt for candy; my range of motion was limited. My step-dad rose to the occasion and pleaded with my mom that it was going to be a serious buzz kill for me. But don’t get it twisted, this isn’t the heart-warming moment of the story where the girl realizes that her step-dad loves her and decides to call him “daddy” for the first time. His concern was thinly veiled selfishness; he was attempting to save himself from the inevitable whining in which I was about to unleash like tiny verbal firecrackers. I remember hearing my mom respond with, “Yeah, but I want the neighbors to see.”

My shuffling got me down half of a block before I had to head back home, thanks due to cardboard chafing. That was the lightest load of candy any child over the age of five has ever obtained in history, with the exception of those getting hit by a car, kidnapped or only having a palm  to put it in. And it was all my mom’s fault.

By the time third grade rolled around, the Crayola catastrophe was a far off memory. Figuring the ambitions of my mother was a one time deal, I asked her to take me to the mall so I could pick out my next costume. My request was greeted by a look of horror, and she said, “I’ve already started working on your costume.” Oh. We’re doing this again, are we? Goodie.

One would think I would have a say in my own ghouly accoutrement, but all of my ideas and helpful suggestions of butterfly wings and fake blood were shot down. I was, after all, only a kid. And it was only my costume. This one would prove to be the single most over the top costume of my elementary school’s history. (I did extensive research. And by that, I mean I assumed.)

Notice how I’m gazing longingly off in the distance. I think I was devising a plan to steal He-Man’s sword and slash my way out of the sandwich board costume.

The traditional parade was a bitch, as this latest costume proved to be a proverbial thorn in my side. I had to take tiny baby steps, because walking with too much zest caused the cardboard to bounce off of my knees, running the risk of dislodging some of the game pieces. It was during this panoply that I discovered what it’s like to be chased down by the paparazzi. Not that I knew what paparazzi was back then. I had cameras being shoved in my face by a bevy of soccer moms and lunch ladies.

I won again, this time grudgingly. Another silver dollar. That novelty was being stretched thin. My strongest memory of that day was being divided: on one hand, I was elated and lapped up every last drop of attention that was tossed my way because I was no longer an only child and had to resort to destructive behavior to get even a glance in my general direction back at home; but on the other hand, I was embarrassed and wanted to go home and cry in bed.

I returned to my classroom after enduring another photo-op with the principal, and I couldn’t help but sense resentment from some of my peers. A handful of them had even retired their standard super hero costume fare for the likes of Coke cans, a skyscraper, and french fries. They were all clustered together on one side of room, sulking over their failed efforts. But then there was the other half of my classmates who were happier of my win than I was, and wouldn’t cease pawing at my costume. Here, have it. It’s all yours.

By the time I got home, I had put the horrors of Monopoly behind me. This time, my mom relented and I had a backup costume for Trick or Treating. I had to make up for the last year’s debacle, and the painful memory of it made possible my desire to cover extra territory. It was at this young age when I grasped the concept of heaping large amounts of chocolate and caramel into my system to temporarily numb depression.

Apparently I was doing too much indulging, because I became fat. Fortunately, by the next year, I was too busy worrying about weighing more than 85% of my class than stressing over my stupid grandfather clock costume. Suspiciously, there’s no picture of that year’s effort, and I think the fact that I was trumped by my classmate Mike’s grape guise may have something to do with it. To this day, my mom insists that it was about (PTA) politics.  I was relieved to have the heat taken off me. Mike’s costume was killer, yet oh-so simple. A purple sweat suit with purple balloons pinned to it. Genius. My mom still goes off about how he didn’t deserve it. “What did that take? Like, five minutes to pull off? I had worked on that fucking clock for a week!” The grandfather clock really was a crappy costume, though, and I didn’t know the meaning of constricting until that year’s sheath of cardboard was shoved over the shaft of my newly plump body. Divine would have had an easier time sausaging into her evening gowns.

Oh, how I longed for a drug store costume. Imagining how comfortable a plastic Rainbow Brite smock would be was the only thing that held my sanity in place during the ritual romp around the parking lot.

My mom, still feeling the blow of defeat from the previous year, pulled a “phoenix rising” and came back with this one:

It would turn out to be her swan song, and she was rewarded handsomely when I reclaimed my title. I won a real dollar bill that time, which I believe went right into my mom’s purse.

Of course, people who didn’t know me then always express genuine concern with the fact that I’m so into October and all of its creepy overtones yet so blase about dressing up.  Well, NOW THEY KNOW.

We spent the afternoon at Henry’s sister Kelly’s house yesterday.

It was a nice time, for sure, but when Kelly pulled out some old photo albums, it was ON. Typically, I can go hogwild making fun of a gawky teen Henry wearing bitchin’ shades, high-waisted pants, and steepling his fingers. (Seriously, he steeples his fingers more than sinister cartoon crime lords.)

But then Kelly slipped me a strip of photobooth pics taken at Kennywood in 1974.

(For those of you who are bad at math, that is FIVE YEARS before I was born.

To spell that out: HENRY IS WAY OLDER THAN ME.

)

And aside from the idiotic gaping maw pose he’s got going in the last photo (he claims this was back when an actual person was in there taking the pictures and telling you how to pose), there wasn’t much I could say other than “OMG aw” and “SWOON.”

I also want to add that I’m thankful he doesn’t still have the pervy beer-drinkin’ molester look he had going on in his twenties.

For the longest time, I didn’t have my high school listed on Facebook because I just flat out did not want to be found. The only reason I used Facebook at all was to keep in touch with recent friends, not reunite with old ones. But eventually, people started finding me and friend requests began to stockpile. I’d stare at them, hover the cursor over “Accept,” then veer it over to “Decline.” Then back again. Over and over until I would eventually just log out altogether.

It’s like a phobia, not wanting all those people to know who I am now and what I’ve been doing and have done and am planning to do.

Because of the way I bowed out back then, I had harbored some uneasy feelings about my high school years and instead of remembering the good points, I’ve mostly just dwelled on the confused decisions I’d made.

But then I saw this one girl on there, and I thought, “Aw, she and I were close at one time.” We had a story-writing club in middle school. It was pretty lame, but thinking about it made something tug at me. And so I friended her, and she seemed genuinely happy to reconnect with me. From there, people started finding me. And while I only declined one request so far (for very good reasons and I have no idea why this broad would even WANT to feign affectations toward me), it has gotten easier each time, and I’ve been reminded that I’m not as horrible as my insecurities, issues and failed friendships have fooled me into believing. It’s helped me see that maybe I didn’t finish high school, maybe I didn’t finish college, maybe I don’t have a job right now (OK, this seems much worse now that I’m typing it out), but there are still things that I am doing with my life and have some cool shit that I’ve already accomplished, so maybe I’m not too much of a failure.

Coming to terms with this is a really big deal for me!

(As I’m typing this, Chooch is standing next to me, persistently chanting, “Are you done?

Are you done?” because he wants to play puzzles on jigzone.

com and let me just tell you, I rue the day I showed him that site.)

So in honor of high school memories, I’m sharing these scanned excerpts from my (9th?) 10th grade yearbook that I found in my old LiveJournal photo folder. They make me LOL.

So, judging by these, we learn that in high school I was: loud, annoying, mean and sometimes broke out into disco dance numbers. Sadly, it appears that I haven’t changed much, except in lieu of disco, my only dance moves on the current are raising the roof and sometimes a very lazy shimmy.

I want to know what you guys were like in high school. Tell me, tell me now!