“That wasn’t so bad,” I thought, giving myself a psychic pat on the back, after we all returned to Base from the walk-through. A little creepy in the boiler room when Chris heard that erotic sigh in his ear, but overall, nothing I couldn’t handle. This ghost-hunting thing ain’t shit, and I flexed my muscles a little.

While we all stood around, warming up under the kerosene lamp, fidgeting with our cameras and parching palates on plates of steaming sauerkraut, the last two members of the night’s expedition arrived: Joel and his wife Chris, who always goes by Chris and always went by Chris as a child until some kid moved next door to her in grade school and had the nerve to be named Christopher, at which point the nickname ‘Chris’ shifted from her to him and she has clearly been harboring a metric ton of bitterness and resentment ever since and at the risk of her finding this blog and snarling at the sight of all the “Christine”s, I am going to hereby be referring to her solely as just that to differentiate between her and the male Chris.

Around this time, George had to make a run to a nearby gas station to get more gasoline for the generator. I took that opportunity to poke around outside the school with Nick and Tiny, later joined by Joel, who found deer tracks that stopped at a drain in the ground. We all stared down at the drain, wondering what happened to the deer, as there were no retreating tracks. It was like the deer just vanished. Later, Chris joined us and was quick to point out that they were rabbit tracks, and that the rabbit probably did quite literally fall down the hole. No one really said anything after that, but I think that silence was really the rest of us NON-SKEPTICS making a secret pact to always believe in vanishing deer.

I caught Tiny shining some sort of laser pointer up at the windows and after assuming my role as Hyper-Inquisitive Newbie, he explained that it was giving him a read of the surface temperature, and that sometimes there would be an inexplicable drop which could mean there was a paranormal presence of some sort skulking around.

“Like this window, here,” Tiny illustrated, marking a second-floor classroom window with a bright infrared blemish. “In one spot, it’s in the 30s, but when I move it down here slightly—” He dragged the dot a few centimeters down. “–it drops to 16.”

I involuntarily shivered. It was a cold January night and I was standing up to my galoshed shins in snow, but this shiver was not born from any natural elements.

***

Twenty minutes later, George had fed the generator and we were all gathered back in Base. I was nervously shoving barbeque chips in my mouth by the handful, unable to eat the meat-laden hot foods set out on the table. Several times I considered lifting the lid on the crock pot and letting the steam bite through the icicles my fingers had become. Everyone was socializing, warming up, checking pictures on the view finders of their cameras when suddenly, all the lights went out.

I froze, feeling a rising scream strangulating up through my voice box.

The lights came back.

“Sorry guys!” George called from the hallway. “That was my fault!”

Everyone laughed. I did too, but it was robotic and the corners of my mouth stayed in a neutral line. In the notepad draped from my neck, I scrawled: “9:ish, generator turned off (George’s fault) but I thought it was ghosts & went numb.”

I ate one of Jimmy Wenger’s donuts after that. I rarely eat donuts, that’s how you know I was stressed.

***

George wrangled everyone’s attention from their personal conversations so that we could finally get the EVP sessions started. I only knew a little about EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) so I was glad when George (and Chris, who jumped in to give the group a little more structure and leadership) took a few minutes to go over the procedure, and were given examples of what to ask the spirits during the EVP recordings.

“Remember, ghosts are people, too,” Chris joked. I went to laugh, but my teeth were chattering too hard.

George wanted us in groups of three. I wondered if anyone heard me gulp. I don’t know why, but I hadn’t considered we wouldn’t be all together as a team for the whole night.

Jimmy quickly claimed me and Kim, after I made the adamant statement declaring that I wasn’t going anywhere without her, and it was determined we would be focusing our EVP experiment in the Special Education annex. Christine, Joel and Tiny took the gym; Nick, Brittany and Lynette chose the upstairs classrooms; while Chris and George stayed back to monitor the DVRs.

“I came here with two pretty girls and end up sitting in Base Camp with George,” Chris whined, and while I couldn’t see his face at that moment, I was sure Jimmy Wenger was gloating. He’s very girl crazy! But I felt infinitely safe and assured that he was in our group. Not much seemed to faze him and I hoped that somewhere under his coat was safely tucked a Proton Pack. I had Henry’s flashlight in my hand, but then I thought better of it, desiring to free up some hand-space in case I needed to push over a book shelf onto the Devil. So I set Henry’s beloved flashlight on the desk by the door, opting to rely on my headlamp and the light Jimmy and Kim were bringing with them.

George handed me a camcorder, but as soon as I got out in the hallway, the battery died. I went back inside to alert him of this small snafu; he  snapped a newly charged battery onto it, saying, “You should be good now, this has a full-charge.”  But as soon as we descended the steps to the first floor, the battery life drained and the camcorder promptly shut off.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GHOSTS, I heard my quaking voice of reason yell at myself. I knew that other people were experiencing spontaneously draining batteries during the course of the night, but that was not something I wanted to entertain right then, as we walked up the small flight of steps to our designated spot in the school. It’s pretty amazing how much safer one feels in a group of nine as opposed to a group of three. I kept trying to stay sandwiched in between Kim and Jimmy, but they were bravely swinging open doors and exploring through the darkness, like it was nothing more than an estate sale.

On the chalkboard behind Jimmy, it says “Leave the kids ALONE!” I like to believe that some teenager hoodlum (i.e. one of Blake’s friends) wrote that to be a dick. And you know, not whoever is haunting the school.

Fucking creepy tea party in the teachers’ lounge.

No matter what camera I used, my pictures just weren’t focusing. (True Story: as I just typed that, a truck went by my house and blew its air horn, causing me to scream GHOST! and splash myself with scalding coffee. I’m a little jumpy. And home alone.) I kept telling myself that it was because it was so cold. Maybe the lenses were rebelling against the temperatures. Henry accused me of having the camera on manual focus, but I can promise you I’m not that dumb, and I even checked to make sure it didn’t get bumped from automatic focus. I eventually just gave up taking pictures, figuring there would be enough from everyone else.

With George’s recorder activated, we began our first EVP session in the lounge, asking standard first date questions, like “Why are you here? Who are you? What happened to you?” It was kind of awkward, speaking these questions into what one could only assume was empty air. It was this moment of dire seriousness for me, and suddenly Jimmy Wenger was on his cell phone, attempting to place an order with someone from the Pizza Company, after getting the number from a magnet he found slapped to the chalkboard.

Unfortunately, he didn’t have an address to supply, so no pizza for us. I didn’t even know I wanted pizza until that happened, and then it was all I could think of, a momentary distraction from the complete and utter unease I felt in that room. The whole EVP thing has me torn. There’s that large part of me that has always wanted some sort of contact with the other side. But then there’s the other part of me that remembers movies like The Gate and what a tremendous suckfest it would be to open the door to your soul to some motherfucker who wants to take up residence inside your carapace, fucking you gratuitously from the inside.

I was sort of in a hurry to get out of the Special Ed area.

While Jimmy roamed around the hallway, conducting his own EVPs,  Kim and I entered Room 112. The first thing we noticed was a copy of a story three girls had written about Snow White, casually strewn across one of the desks. Kim immediately flipped back the cover page and began skimming it.

That’s when I had my first experience that night.

It came from my left, back where a row of recessed closets lined the wall, fluorescent stickers stuck above each individual coat hook, each bearing the name of a student.

Muffled laughter. High-pitched, definitely a giggle from a child. I forced my ear drums to play it back on a loop. I was certain it’s what I thought it was.

“Did you hear that?” I whispered to Kim.

“No, what?” she answered at a regular volume.

“I swear I heard something from back there. Like a whispered laugh.”

We went back there to check it out, like we’d see the laughter in some tangible Ectoplasm’d form, chilling out next to a coat rack. What actually happened was that Kim marched back there with self-assured purpose and bravery, while I shuffled stupidly and meekly behind her.

Not finding any substantial evidence back there (but again, not really knowing what I was looking for), Kim and I went back to the desk to further examine the Snow White story. It was almost starting to edge out Kim’s obsession with asbestos. (Seriously, she didn’t give a shit about the fact that we were poking our noses around a supposedly haunted school; her main issue was asbestos, inhaling asbestos, falling into a churning vat of asbestos, accidentally clumping asbestos on her hot dog instead of sauerkraut, dying of asbestos. No matter how many times Chris told her that even if there was any asbestos in that school, we weren’t going to be there long enough to have anything happen to us. Even still, the theme of the night was Asbestos, which is a really fun word to say quickly, many times in a row.)

Photo courtesy of Jimmy Wenger.

I pretended to really give a shit about the story. I even said things like, “I really give a shit about this story.” But inside my head, all I could do was freak out about that goddamn laughter. Now, it wasn’t menacing, it wasn’t even mocking. It was just…it was quiet laughter from a kid. I tried to pretend I was in a park, the zoo, a city landfill–anywhere it would be natural to hear the laughter of a child. Not an abandoned school at 11:59PM on a Saturday night.

Finally able to extract Kim from Room 112 and the Snow White story it held, we noticed a door that we missed during the walk-through. On the other side of it was a small space located underneath the steps leading from the second floor to the gym. Kim walked in with authority but then quickly asked Jimmy if he thought there might be asbestos in there. With trepidation, I followed Kim inside, but kept thinking of The People Under the Stairs and also the “little girl” at the top of the steps that George had us say hello to during the walk through. Jimmy attempted to enter the small space after me, but I shouted “No!” And have no one guarding the other side of the door? Not going to happen on this girl’s watch. That’s all I needed, was to have the “little girl” wait for us to all step inside that fucking cob-webbed space only to slam the door and lock it.

So I squeezed past Jimmy and resumed my stance in the hallway, while he went inside to have a look around. I was standing at the base of a short flight of steps which led up the landing at the bottom of the steps from the second floor. At the top of the landing was the gym door, which had two mysterious lights shining through the glass at me. Just I was beginning to panic, the doors opened and Tiny and Joel walked out, laughing and with headlamps blazing.

“God, you guys scared me!” I hissed. Kim, Jimmy and myself walked up the steps and joined them in the gym, where Christine was sitting cross-legged on the floor, staring at a tennis ball dangling from a string at the edge of a long table.

“Trying to see if they’ll play with me,” she said with a shrug. “We got it moving a little bit awhile ago.”

I took a nervous perch on the edge of the stage. This was something I hadn’t considered we’d be doing that night – actively seeking to interact with the spirits.

“Come on, I know you wanna play duck duck goose with me,” Christine called out, in a playfully taunting tone. I wondered if she was talking to Joel, if this was some sort of childish foreplay they like to indulge in from time to time. Then I realized she was speaking to the ghosts and I felt even more uncomfortable.

“Would it be bad to take something we found in another room?” Kim asked Christine. “I mean, as long as we put it back later.”

I knew where this was going.

“What do you mean?” Christine asked. “What do you want to take?”

“We found a story on one of the desks.”

“Oh! And you want to read it to the spirits? Yeah, that would be fine. Just remember to put it back.”

I knew the only person Kim was going to be reading that story to was herself, but I  went back with her to grab it anyway. I didn’t feel too sure about it, though.

***

Back in Base, I told Tiny I had heard laughter in one of the rooms.

He didn’t even flinch, nor did he seem very impressed.

“Yeah, you’ll hear things! You’ll definitely hear things. I been here since 3:00 this afternoon and been hearing things all day,” he told me, like it was no big deal at all.

Meanwhile, as Kim read her story, Lynnette had pulled up the school’s address so Jimmy Wenger could finally order his pizza, but The Pizza Company was already closed.

After Kim made sure she had on an appropriate amount of pink clothing, we left her place in separate cars; I wanted to make sure I wasn’t depending on anyone but myself for a way home in case something horrible enough happened to make me run out of the school with a shock of white hair and yellow demon eyes.  It was 7pm when we crept up to the snow-packed road snaking down to the school. I had a rare moment of common sense and decided to park at the top, in front of someone’s house, because I was pretty sure our puny Ford Focus wouldn’t make it back up that road. And I certainly didn’t want to have to spend any more time than necessary on school property.

I trudged down the school road alone, lugging a purse weighed down with two cameras, lenses and four flashlights. I found Kim sitting in the parked car in front of a locked door, which I’d later learn was the location of the stabbing. Had I known that then, I wouldn’t have been pissing around out there so long, planted in the snow and talking to Kim while waiting for Chris to return. (I don’t know where Chris went, but if that had been me and Henry, I can’t say for certain that you’d find him anywhere on the premises of that school without me pasted on his back like static cling. Kim is far braver than I.)

Chris reappeared to collect us, and I was a little surprised that I wasn’t squeezing out pee drops as I followed him up the steps to the main door, which had been unlocked for the night by the owner of the abandoned school. (Everything was done legally–no breaking and entering, release forms were signed, it was legit. And maybe that’s why I wasn’t quite as freaked out as I imagined I would be, walking up those steps and through that door, into a run-down brick abyss where dead Susie Swanson could be waiting in the girls’ room to fist my soul like a rotted apple.

The co-founder of the group, George, had brought a generator with him, so the makeshift command center (I just kept calling it Base, like we were playing tag, a very scary round of tag with spirits) which was located right across the main entrance, was well lit with a giant kerosene heater as its focal point. There was a computer monitor set up, displaying a quadrant of night-visioned  images from around the school. A surplus of yellow flashlights stood at attention next to that.

As I put down my purse and took a nervous gulp of my contraband Riunite, I saw that Chris was eating some sort of Hostess delicacy, and I too wanted a Hostess delicacy, but every time I went to ask him where they were, I got sidetracked. (Are TastyCakes the ones with the white Charlie Brown zig-zag decorating the top? If so, that’s what Chris had that I coveted.) There was so much to take in: George running around in a last-minute effort to get everything in order; foods inappropriate for a vegetarian cooking in crock pots on a table along the far wall; the static-y blips and squeals of the Steelers game being broadcast from a small radio on a windowsill (which, in spite of my all-consuming Steelers-hate, was actually doing a large part to numb my nerves).

Being the newbie, I generally tend to fade myself into the background. But I felt that, in this case, it might be a good idea to introduce myself, stick myself in the thick of things, so that perhaps someone might notice later on if I went suddenly absent. And that’s when I introduced myself to Nick; Tiny (and you are already wagering that he’s not Tiny); and Brittany and Lynnette, two young girls from Somerset.

George passed out small notebooks, with a long loop of blue yarn attached to the spirals for us to wear around our necks.

“And everyone please take a pencil,” he added, motioning to a package of plastic Bic mechanicals. “If there’s one thing I learned, it’s that pencils always work.” I quickly swiped a purple one (probably too zealously), which I ironically had a hard time getting to work at first.

We stood around in Base for awhile, chatting and waiting for some more people to arrive. Jimmy Wenger, whom I had heard about from Kim and Chris and was excited to meet, arrived and immediately snapped eighteen photos of me, doing nothing more exciting than shivering and clutching my phone, mid-tweet. I mean, obviously I’m a ghost-hunting pinup model, but that was still a little excessive, I thought. Jimmy brought into the room with him a warming presence, like a big figurative bear hug, and I at once felt a little safer with him there.

Tiny and Chris, moments before the walk-thru.

Chris fitted me with some dorky head-lamp equipment and we all left the room together as a group, ascending the staircase to the second floor. George did some talking about the school while we were left to explore the classrooms at our leisure. Broughton Elementary isn’t very large; there were only around eight classrooms on the second floor (I probably should have counted; a real ghost-hunting journalist would have). The first room we explored–which I would later learn George and Tiny were calling the Shadowman Room, due to the fact they saw a large SHADOW dart out of it while they were observing the monitor in Base–had the name Blake grafitti’d large and in red on the wall. For a second, I considered the possibility that it was Henry’s son.

George pointed out that when he arrived earlier in the day, the minute hand was exactly on the 3. It had since slipped down a little. I tried to shake off the chill that was using my spine as monkey bars.

“Just please, after you leave a room, close the door behind you,” George said. I thought maybe he was trying to be courteous to the owner of the school. Then he added, “We’ve been noticing open doors on camera that we were sure we shut, so I want to make sure they’re all shut right now so we can be positive about it.”

STFU! Oh my god, I was so scared.

I was really upset that “Pauls” didn’t have an apostrophe, and started to not feel so sorry for this school that had perished,  but then I realized that must have been the point of the lesson. Good thing, because I would have fixated on it all night and probably would have returned with a Sharpie.

I kept looking up to find that I was the straggler of the group, which would set me off into a sort of Wile E. Coyote running-in-place maneuver before taking off to wedge myself back in the middle. I was not about to get taken.

George led us through another set of doors at the end of the hallway and, before descending the stairs, he said, “Everyone say hello to the little girl,” and in unison, everyone did. Everyone but me, whose voice box had become tragically impaired from the fist of FEAR choking it.  I hissed in Kim’s ear, “WHAT little girl?” and was suddenly very aware of my surroundings as I did a frantic little jig down the steps and into the gym.

The gym wasn’t too bad. It was a big space, clothed with litter in some places, metallic marijuana leaves painted over the school’s insignia on one wall, big windows near the ceiling. It just looked like a gym, nothing else, nothing creepy or haunted.  For the first time, my skin wasn’t blistered with goose bumps.

Saw this on a shelf in a small room attached to the locker room, and wondered if it ever played a Lolliwinks record.

Coming back up from the locker room, we had to pass through the gym again to get to the stairs that would take us to the 1st floor classrooms. I caught Tiny shining his flashlight up at one of the windows and I asked him what was going on.”Just saw something,” he mused, nonchalantly. I didn’t like how lethal the tree branches looked on the other side, back-dropped by a horrid salmon-hued winter sky. I didn’t stick around to see if I saw what he saw.

The bottom level of the school had some more classrooms and a long hall which sat a lone, sad wooden child-sized chair next to a water fountain. That was an image that I had a hard time shaking. I was telling either Tiny or Nick about it later, when we were poking around outside, and they agreed that there is something inherently creepy about casually-strewn childrens objects in abandoned places. I was careful about not moving anything for fear of pissing off the ghost of a particularly persnickety red-head kid of the REDRUM-persuasion. (I really think red-headed spirits would be the meanest.)

I found that my iPhone was helping me take better photos than my camera, which I could barely get to focus. The lens kept fogging and I’m sure it was because it was just so cold in there BUT IS THAT REALLY WHY? I had my crappy red point-and-shoot as backup and that one got me some marginally decent pictures as far as I could tell at a glance. I haven’t had a chance (nor the balls) to really sit down and look through them yet. Maybe Henry will sit with me. I mean, not that I need him to hold my hand or anything. Seriously, you guys!

Abacus in the janitor’s room, located in the special education annex

The one thing I thought was odd and noticed on the top floor was that there were certain rooms that were almost good as new. The tile on the floor was intact and clean. None of the paint in there clung to the walls in brittle curly-q’s. Some of the bathrooms were cleaner than my own, while the others were nasty, broken, caked with filth and age.

Kim asked George about this and he told us it’s one of those inexplicable things that even Don, the school’s owner, can’t explain. “Don doesn’t have anyone coming here to clean,” George told us. Yet, some of those rooms looked like they were still holding daily classes while the rest were riddled with vandalism and the tolls of neglect. The school has only been closed for eleven years, but I guess I just expected that decay and decomposition was more of an equal opportunity process.

What’s a walk-through without a tour of the boiler room, which I am here to tell you is just as terrifying as you might imagine, if say you are right now imagining tons of large, rusted furnaces and valves on which to accidentally slip and concuss yourself  before landing on a sheath of broken glass and ice and having a cavalry of demon-shadows swarm your lifeless body, while the more sadistic of the floating dead enter your every orifice and ghost-fuck you from the inside.

Yes, the boiler room was very scary.

Chris broke away from the pack and entered the small coal-chute room alone. “I heard a heavy sigh as soon as I walked in there,” he reported back. Now, Chris was probably the biggest skeptic there so I latched on to this immediately and, hoping to finally have my own experience, walked into the tiny nook of a room with Kim.

And proceeded to hear nothing.

“I didn’t hear it!” I whined later to Chris. What a fucking one-trick pony. (The sigher, not Chris.)

With the walk-through complete, we retreated to Base to wait for the last two people who had yet to arrive, and to discuss what parts we wanted to focus on for the EVP-segment of the night.

Tiny noting the time of an opening door, no biggie.

I almost kind of wished the Steeler game was still on, broadcasting a noisy little piece of the outside world into our cold, tense Base Camp.

[Sorry I’m splitting this up into sections! The amount of stuff I want to write about is overwhelming and staggering. I’m hoping to squeeze the rest into one last part, but that’s the stuff that’s the most troubling for me to put into words.]

I’ve never seen a ghost before. Never experienced any inexplicable phenomena showing up in the background of my pictures. Nothing I could ever see with my eyes. But there were times when I was a teenager walking in the woods behind my house, in broad daylight on humid summer afternoons, where a skin-prickling chilliness and uneasy being-watched sensation would creep over me and stop me in my tracks. I was always so certain that those woods were haunted. I would never go in those woods alone, without my German Shepherd Rama at the very least. My mom and aunt Sharon are always talking about ghostly shit happening at my grandma’s house, which is also flanked by the same woods on one side, but you all know those two are fucking lunatics so I try not to believe a word they tell me.

And my cemeteries. The ones I spend so much time in, alone? There have been occasions where I’ve stepped out of my car only to stand stock-still, senses heightened, hairs erect like midget wangs on my arms. It could be the most blistering of August afternoons and I will give into one violent shiver before swinging back into my car, post haste, burning asphalt on the way out. Because something just didn’t feel right. Something felt off. The atmosphere felt too heavy, too quiet, too absolutely motherfucking creepy.

But I’ve never actually had a real experience with the other side. And I do believe there is an other side. I also believe a lot of that shit is a hoax, a lot of those mediums are fucking crooks, and orbs in photographs are mostly unfocused dust particles. I believe I have a better chance of being eviscerated by America’s next sexy serial killer before ever running into the spirit of some winsome girl in your grandfather’s attic.

My last game night turned into an after hour’s ghost story-telling session and I found myself covered in goose-flesh. When Kim and Chris told me that night that they had joined a local ghost hunting group, I was intrigued, curiosity slightly piqued. And then when they talked about the upcoming ghost hunt that was scheduled for last Saturday, I decided it was time to be a big girl and do this thing.

The day before the hunt, some of my co-workers bequeathed to me mini flashlights, just in case Henry decided to be stingy with his own lighted lover. But by Saturday afternoon, I think Henry was finally beginning to believe that I was actually going to do this (I made sure I told a bunch of people that I was doing it, insurance that I wouldn’t back out), even though I was a bundle of nerves all day, driving him nuts with my sporadic outbursts of OMG I’M SO SCARED! and WHAT IF I DIE TONIGHT?! So he let me take his flashlight. It was kind of a big moment in our relationship.

“See ya at 11,” Henry laughed as I walked out the door that night, insinuating that I would never make it to 5am.

I arrived at Kim and Chris’s place, swaddled in a thermal shirt, my sacred Versus the Mirror hoodie (Kara, this hoodie is like my lucky blanket), Henry’s lame ass Faygo (100 Years!) coat, knee high socks, regular socks, legwarmers, pink skull and crossbones galoshes (couldn’t find real boots since I waited until THAT DAY to go looking), gloves, a knit hat and ear muffs. I looked like an obtuse, mismatched Sumo wrestler dressed for a snowball fight. Chris filled up two travel cups from a giant jug of Riunite, which Kim and I immediately began chugging to quell our nerves (mine at least; I’m pretty sure Kim wasn’t scared at all). We weren’t supposed to have alcohol at the site, but Chris kept the jug tucked away in his car in case our bravery depended on refills.

Broughton Elementary School is located in South Park and was only about five minute drive from Chris and Kim’s place. I knew it was abandoned, but had no idea it was supposed to be haunted. I grew up in a house a few streets above it, and should have actually gone there along with my childhood best friend Christy, but my mom lied about our address in order for me to start elementary school in the town we were building a house. I don’t remember Christy ever saying anything about books flying off shelves or Bloody Mary appearing in the lavatory mirror. According to George, the Meetup group’s co-founder, “this location has a history of death dating back to the Miners strike in the 1930s and in the Whiskey Rebellion in the 17 and 1800s.” There was supposedly a shooting there, in which several teachers and the principal were slain, and someone was stabbed in the parking lot.

Prior to the actual hunt, several of the experienced members did a trial-run of the school. George’s girlfriend Kim, the ‘K’ of G&K Paranormal Investigation, heard a piano playing. The sound eventually crescendoed to a point where she had to cover her ears. It only got worse when she was in the parking lot and began to feel a lifelike shanking all over her body, and then felt as though her body was aflame as she RELIVED the murder that had taken place there so many years ago. Kim and Chris told me this a week ago over dinner, and I just sat there with saucered eyes, unable to even comprehend ever being taken over by the supernatural in such a horrific way.

This lady, Kim? She has been on over a hundred ghost hunting expeditions, experienced passels of paranormal activity. But she refused to go back to Broughton Elementary School after that. And true to her word, she was not there when we arrived last Saturday night at 7pm.

Sometime during dinner at King’s after roller skating last week, Kim managed to twist my arm into not only joining the local ghost hunting group she and Chris belong to, but also to RSVP for the upcoming hunt which takes place tomorrow night at an abandoned elementary school. The group organizer sent out an email reminding everyone to bring their flashlight(s) and extra batteries, as there is obviously no electricity flowing through this desolate site. (And no working facilities, either, though there will be buckets. The first twinge of my bladder and I am OUT of there.)

I was whining about the flashlight thing at work today, because I know Henry isn’t going to let me borrow his. He is oddly possessive of his flashlight. My co-worker Jeannie mentioned that she had flashlights in her desk, and Barb and I were like, “Yeah right.” But Jeannie led me back to her office and sure enough, she had two little flashlights inside a desk drawer. Plus extra batteries, even! What a fucking lifesaver she is.

[Also, Jeannie had the balls to wear purple on black and gold day, as did I, so she is definitely one of my favorite co-workers of all time. (When Steelers-lovin’ co-workers gave me the stink eye, Barb kept trying to defend me by saying things like, “She’s not wearing purple! It’s eggplant! Merlot! Burgandy!” No, it’s INTENTIONAL! Ugh, I hate the Steelers.)]

When I came back to my desk, Barb was all, “Now that I think about it, I actually have a flashlight too.” What the fuck, was The Law Firm giving them away as Christmas gifts?

So now I have three miniature flashlights and extra batteries. Don’t worry, I’ll be stealing Henry’s gigantic industrial flashlight too. I’m sure he can go one night without sexing it.

In the car today, I cried to Henry about my fear of dying at the hand of  paranormal activity.

“What if I don’t make it out alive? Then we can’t go roller skating on Sunday!”

“Oh, we’ll still go roller skating,” Henry corrected, motioning between himself and Chooch, and at the sight of my appalled expression, he continued, “What? You won’t even be laid out until at least Monday. We’ll be fine to go skating.”

My other concern is being possessed by some ridiculously dark spirit while I’m there. Crab-walking and involuntary head-spins really aren’t my thing.

“It can’t be any worse than what’s already in you,” Henry wagered.

OMG I’m scared.

Chooch walked in while I was having my lips frosted and said, “You’re the biggest idiot, Mommy.”

“Did you already post those pictures?” Henry asked after saying my post-frosted face looks like a chemical burn. When I said I had, he looked all let down. Turns out he wanted me to take a picture of my stained face and tell Andrea that her My Pretty Zombie makeup tried to kill me. He’s just mad because she sent Chooch a whistle.

I had given Henry explicit instructions on what to get for the cupcakes while I was at work Thursday night. The plan was that he was going to bake them and then I would attempt to not look like an honorary member of The Dream Team while recreating what I saw in the last issue of Better Homes & Gardens (which somehow is delivered with my name on it, but Henry is always quick to whisk it from the mail slot before I throw it away).

When I came home from work, it was after 9pm and I quickly saw that Henry had not yet made the cupcakes.

“I’ll get to it,” he kept muttering.

I distracted myself by stuffing the treat bags with lame little Halloween party favors and candy. Then I panicked because I wasn’t sure if the game we had in mind was good enough, so I printed out Halloween mazes and stuffed those in the treat bags too. Goddamn children.

This took about fifteen minutes, start to finish. One could imagine how exhausted I was, having single-handedly carried this entire party on my back while Henry pranced around in his underwear.

Somewhere around 10:30pm, I found out that Henry had purchased red decorating gel instead of black. RED! I cornered him in the kitchen as he mixed the cupcake batter and laid into him for being so worthless, so stupid, so irresponsible, so UNRELIABLE.

We broke up for the second time that night, but he still put his big boy pants on and went back to the store in search of black decorating gel.

By the time he came back, I noticed that he also forgot the pretzel sticks/Frankenstein neck bolts.

“I just came back! I am not going to the store again!” Henry shouted.

I raised a knife.

We broke up again.

I know, I know: Erin, why didn’t you just go to the store yourself? And let that motherfucker win?! Never. Let me remind you that the fact I haven’t eaten meat since 1996 was born from my impenetrable stubbornness. My head, it is that of a bull. (And not just because I’m that ugly.)

“Just forget it!” I screamed. “Fuck the cupcakes! I just won’t take them!”

“Fine,” Henry mumbled, pushing past me and going to sit down on the couch.

“NO I’M JUST KIDDING WE NEED THE CUPCAKES OMG GET BACK IN THERE!” I yelled, heart rate up, left arm tingling. Ew I fucking hate parties. As Henry walked by to go back in the kitchen, I muttered, “But the cupcakes are going to look pathetic since you forgot the pretzels, good job.” I saw him tense up for a second, like he maybe was contemplating pushing me into the hot stove, but then he adjusted his Susie Homemaker ruffled apron and went back to ladling batter into the cupcake tray thing.

“Did you start cooking the spaghetti yet?” I asked. We needed a lot of spaghetti noodles for the stupid game that the other moms so thoughtfully left for me to come up with.

“Can I get through the cupcakes first?” he snipped, and we broke up again.

Around 11:30, the cupcakes were cooled off and it was time to start icing them. Henry mixed up a bowl of purple frosting while I struggled with the orange. I didn’t mix it well enough, so all the cupcakes I frosted had dark orange striations throughout them, and that’s on top of the sides I smashed in from gripping too hard.

“Look,” Henry instructed. “Turn the cupcake with your other hand so the frosting goes on easier.” But as usual, I ignored his tip and continued glooping on mounds of frosting before moving on to the frustrating task of smoothing that shit out.

I started to cry. Then I screamed, slammed down the cupcake I was working on, and marched out of the kitchen.

But not before breaking up again, followed by a death threat.

“You’re a fucking retard,” I heard Henry say as he examined the three cupcakes I managed to frost before having a full-blown temper seizure. I really believe that it takes a special kind of person to be able to work with sprinkles and frosting without winding with brain matter Pollacked across the kitchen wall.

I started to watch the Jersey Shore reunion show, mouth still molded into a scowl, until I realized that I couldn’t let Henry take all the credit for the cupcakes. And he would, too. I knew it. So I went back in the kitchen and pushed Henry out of the way. He had a plateful of large marshmallows which he had previously rolled through green glittery sprinkles. I picked one up and decided to start working on the Frankenstein heads, that maybe if I concentrated real hard on that, I could block out the fact that Henry was two feet away from me, making me hate life.

By then, it was midnight.

I did that high-pitched shriek that happens when something isn’t going my way.

“What?” Henry yelled.

“THIS BLACK GEL IS TOO THICK! THIS FRANKENSTEIN IS RUINED!” I hurled it into the garbage.

“Great,” Henry said sardonically. “Now we’re going to be short one marshmallow.” Turns out there was just enough green sprinkles for fourteen marshmallows, the exact number of kids in Chooch’s class. “If you weren’t being such a BITCH, I probably could have fixed that one,” Henry sneered and I wanted to skin him alive.

“Oh you think you’re so fucking perfect!” I spat. And we broke up so badly that I created a profile on Match.com.

Whoever lives in this house after us is going to be haunted by all the ire left clinging to the walls from our mutual belligerence. And that’s assuming we both make it out alive. Otherwise, someone might want to consider taking a wrecking ball to 3021 My Street.

Being short a marshmallow, I made the executive decision to only use half and do spiderwebs on the other cupcakes. Oh great idea, Erin Rachelle. Next time, maybe try to remember that you have an unsteady hand and SUCK at decorating.

How do you bitches make this look so easy?

I was standing over the oven, dragging a toothpick over these bastards, and GRUNTING. It was excruciating! You need precision for this shit. And precision and me? We’re not friends. We’re not even frenemies. In fact, if precision turned into a zombie, I’d push everyone out of the way so I could be the one to shoot it in the motherfucking head. Precision makes me cry, you guys. And I think I have arthritis now. I fucking hate you, too, spider webs.

I hate anything to do with baking! I hate frosting! I hate food coloring! I hate the kitchen! I hate Henry!

I do like licking the batter off that mixing contraption though.

The worst part is that I kept catching Henry trying not to laugh when my sanity was very clearly slipping through my fingers like sand through an hourglass, so are the days of our lives.

Of course, they looked nothing like Frankenstein and I had a failure-induced panic attack. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to have a variety.

“What if the kids start fighting because they all want one with a marshmallow head?” I freaked out.

“It’ll be a good lesson for them. You don’t always get what you want in life,” Henry said matter-of-factly. That’s great, but I didn’t want to be there when parts of Mr. Potato Head began flying as the kids fought each other with tinker toys and glue sticks and teachers staggered away with pencils jutting out from their femoral artery. You might be wondering what sort of impression I have in my mind of preschool classes. Obviously a very Mad Max, post-apocalyptic one.

It was nearly 1:00am by the time we finished decorating the fuckcakes. Henry and I slept in separate rooms.

FUCKERS!!!!

[Ed.Note: Henry can attest this is not an accurate account. It has been toned down. A lot.]

We didn’t have much time after eating breakfast at the Traveler’s Club International Restaurant (it doubles as a TUBA MUSEUM and was a great pick by our tour guides, Bill & Jessi) because I had this dire urge to see the world’s largest cuckoo clock in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Every time I brought it up to Henry, he tugged on his collar and looked around for diversions, chainsaw guys, ditches in which to push me.

I wouldn’t drop it, though, and continued down the list of merits I had made for the cuckoo clock.

By 2:00pm, we were on the road. We made a quick stop in Luna Pier, because seeing Lake Erie was another very pressing thing on my list. Sure, I’ve seen Lake Erie from Pennsylvania and Ohio, even took a boat tour in Cleveland (if you were me, you too could live such a thrilling life). But I really needed to see it from MICHIGAN.

That fruity red dot of menstruation up there is Henry.

This is the closest thing to a beach we’ve come to since that shitty fucktastic trip to Okracoke we took in 2006 with those asshole Civil War reenactors. Chooch and I kicked off our shoes and took off.

Henry’s feet never even touched the sand.  “It’s just Lake Erie,” he kept saying, while Chooch and I squealed and frolicked like Hansel and Gretel dining on the witch’s carcass. Spectators probably thought we had just been let out of our cage in the basement. Henry does resemble a grizzled captor. In fact, on our way to Michigan, I mouthed “help” to the girl in the toll booth. Thanks for all the help, whore.

After Luna Pier, A LOT of driving happened. I found religious programming on the radio and pretended to be holy for a good hour while Henry scowled and periodically asked, “Can we turn this now?” while Chooch read his comic books quietly in the backseat. Jesus music is calming. Or maybe it’s hypnotic. In either case, it zipped my child’s lips, so praise be to Jesus and his Lambs of Christ.

At some point in Ohio, we turned off the highway and found ourselves up to our ears in Amish. (Henry says they were Mennonites, so we argued about that for awhile.) We rounded a bend and an old Amish man was standing on the side of the road.

I screamed.

“What? He’s probably just waiting for a buggy,” Henry reasoned.

“He looked to me like he was cursing us bastard civilians,” I argued. And then, “What happens if you run over an Amish person?”

Henry averted his eyes from the road long enough to look at me in disgust. “Um, you go to JAIL. They are people,” he reminded me. “Not animals.” A minute passed and I heard him repeat my question under his breath, shaking his head in exhaustion.

I didn’t know if they utilized the same legal system as us, OK? Jesus Christ, Henry. I thought maybe they left it up to the Lord; chased you around the farm with pitchforks, Benny Hill-style.

Aside from Amish culture, other things that jack off my fascination are all things Bavarian and Swiss, hence my determination to see this fucking cuckoo clock. Some of my fondest memories  are from childhood trips to Europe, helping my grandparents pick out cuckoo clocks in the Black Forest and traversing covered bridges in Lucerne. Eating fondue and watching lederhosened men blow into those Ricola horns. That’s always been my favorite region of Europe. And since returning there is nowhere in my near future, making pilgrimages to chintzy, kitschy Swiss-American tourist traps is the best I can do to keep my heart full of Toblerone and army knives.

I regaled Henry with stories from these past vacations while he prayed the GPS on his phone wasn’t leading us to our fate of becoming shoo-fly pie filling.

“You weren’t even listening to me,” I whined as he consulted his phone.

“Yes I was, and I’ve heard all of those stories before.”

Bastard. What a fucking bastard.

Here are some of my tweets from the Great Cuckoo Clock Pursuance, to give you a real-time feel for the awesomeness of being in our car:

About the same time my phone lost service, we crossed the threshold for the town of Sugarcreek, Ohio’s Swiss Wonderland.

The bad vibes were immediate. Something made me feel uncomfortable; maybe it was the lack of people and how it caused the town to be quiet as a graveyard. I don’t even really remember many cars passing by, although we did see a cop idling in a parking lot with a book.

The downtown portion of Sugarcreek was quaint, charming. But also mostly deserted. There seemed to be some people in one of the restaurants, which has swiss steak on special. I wanted to go. Not to eat the swiss steak, but to see what the townies were like. Henry said no, of course. Why eat at a real restaurant when we can stop at a gas station and get hot dogs?! (Because that’s seriously what he did. And I got a Special K bar. Now there’s a real meal to say grace for.)

Henry’s GPS alerted him to make a left off the main road. A few feet later, I saw it.

And it was in pieces.

I didn’t tell Henry this, but a Roadside America user posted a tip saying that as of March, the cuckoo clock was out of commission for repairs. If I told him that, he definitely wouldn’t have taken the chance. But I thought maybe it might have been all bandaged up by then and ready to cuckoo. I needed to see for myself.

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Henry muttered. But we got out of the car anyway. Chooch and I went over for a closer inspection while Henry leaned against the car, texting his work boyfriend about what an awful lay his shitty girlfriend is.

Further research (which would have been helpful prior to making this ridiculous detour) informed me that pieces of the clock have been auctioned off, including the evergreens and little  Swiss people.

Shit, I thought driving through the town was creepy? Poking around this over-sized clock at dusk was even more spine-tingling. I had a distinct sensation that townies were watching us from their windows, sizing us up  for future cuckoo clock adornments. Can you picture a taxidermied-Chooch twirling out from the clock’s bowels every hour? Because I kind of can. I ushered him back into the car, ducking around Henry’s choleric glare.

“We should come back for the Swiss Festival in October,” I suggested, reading  from the town’s official website on my phone. I looked up just in time to see Henry vivisecting me with his mind.

Somewhere between more Amish arguments (which found Henry yelling, “Shoo fly pie is regional!”) and crossing the Pennsylvania border, two vultures nearly careened into (MY SIDE OF) the windshield.

Hey, what do we do around here for Mother’s Day? Nothing. What do we do for Father’s Day? Oh, spend the day at an amusement park, no biggie.

But I don’t mind too much because it’s more for me than Henry anyway. He’s all, “I’m just happy I get to spend the day with the people I love” and, after barfing in a boot, I’m like, “Who, skanky teens in bikini tops and booty shorts? Middle-aged broads spilling out of their tank tops, boasting Tasmanian Devil tattoos and stretch marks?” Because these are the types of people with whom Kennywood is predominantly filled.

It turned out to be a miserable day. It was super hot, which I didn’t really mind, but I was worried about how much money we spent to go in the first place, never mind how much we’d be spending on food and beverages once inside. Blake wasn’t feeling well so I didn’t want to drag him on too many ridiculous rides, and Chooch was just being a wishy-washy cry baby bitch.

I wanted to start out easy by going on the super lame Garfield-themed boat ride that’s right near the entrance. I thought it would be a good first ride for Chooch, as it’s proved to be in years past. But I was vetoed because what do I know anyway, I’m a high school AND college drop out. Henry decided it was best to start him out big, so we took him on his first non-baby roller coaster, the Jack Rabbit. It’s a pretty non-threatening wooded coaster, but it does have a double-dip, and that’s what I was worried about for him. I kept imagining him being sprung from his seat and thirty years from now becoming an urban legend because no one actually remembers if some four-year-old actually did plummet to his death on the Jack Rabbit back in those crazy 2010’s or if it was just a story a clave of moms made up to deter their children from ever wanting to ride a roller coaster,  ever again.

I don’t really think Chooch knew what he was in for when Blake guided him straight to the front seat. Henry and I sat directly behind them, and I watched as Chooch scrunched up against Blake’s side for the entire duration. He didn’t cry, but I could tell, just by his body language, that he probably thought my threats of him going to Hell were finally coming into fruition. He seemed fine when we got off the ride, but when I asked him if he liked it, he very sincerely and sing-songily replied, “No, not really!”

It ruined him for the rest of the day, I know it did. We would get to the front of the line for the basest of family rides, like the types rides that pregnant women could ride and feel confident that they won’t get off leaving a trail of miscarriage in their wake, only for Chooch to say, “Um, no, I’m not riding this. Let’s go, kbye.” There were times when I wanted to push him, but people were looking. So we were good parents and left the lines with him every time, while threatening him in terse tones through taut lips.

I think I told him like 67865 times that he was ruining my day, and then Henry would have to remind me that mothers shouldn’t say things like this to their children and I was like, “Bitch, don’t you know I’m not a mother when I’m at Kennywood? I’m a fucking KID who wants to RIDE some mother fucking RIDES.”

We did, however get him on the Raging Rapids, which thoroughly pissed him off.

Slightly amused after a light sprinkle

Complained a lot about his new shoes getting wet

Not actually crying, but REALLY FUCKING BENT OUT OF SHAPE

Chooch was relatively mild-mouthed for most of the ride, until getting assaulted by the waterfall, to which he exclaimed in a very angry tone, “Oh, FUCK THAT.” He sounded so dire that I didn’t even have the heart to yell at him for taking his swearing side show on the road.

At one point, I tried on a suit of graciousness (it didn’t fit me very well, but at least I tried) and suggested that Henry and Blake ride the Phantom’s Revenge together because the line looked short. And you know, it was fucking Father’s Day after all. I figured Chooch and I could go on Noah’s Ark during that time. Noah’s Ark is just this large walk-through ride that thankfully doesn’t have the religious overtones you’d think it would. It’s like, every child’s favorite ride though, because it’s dark, fun, has moving floors and fake animals to look at.

Chooch has been through it three times in the past, but apparently he doesn’t remember because once we got in line, he deemed that it was going to be “too dark in there, let’s go.” I was like, “Asshole, this ride was fucking built for children! It is NOT SCARY! You watch motherfucking Friday the 13th and don’t bat an eye lash, but you’re afraid to walk through some lame ass boat with a bunch of fake ass fucking props in it?” Oh my lord, I was so disappointed in him.

So we spent a half an hour sitting on a ledge, waiting for Henry and Blake. By the time they got off the coaster, I was in full-blown sulk mode.

“I’m ready to dip up out of here,” I said disgustedly to Henry.

“What, why?” he asked.

“BECAUSE CHOOCH WON’T RIDE ANYTHING AND THIS WAS A WASTE OF MONEY AND MY WHOLE DAY IS RUINED!” I wailed. And the camera battery died after 30 minutes! And half the rides were closed! And I didn’t have a friend to take with me! And I felt fat!

But then Blake, worlds more mature at just seventeen than I am at thirty, suggested that Henry and I go ride something like a real life couple and he’d take Chooch to get pizza.  So Henry and I rode the Music Express, which was fun because I got to add extra curricular punches and pinches on top of the standard pre-packaged pulverizing that comes included with spinny rides. And after that, I dragged him on the Cosmic Chaos, which is still relatively new and he’s never actually seen in action. Until he was stuck smack in the middle of line when the next round started. As Henry watched it do its thang, he gravely murmured, “Oh, Erin…” I think that was my favorite part of the day. Either that or when Blake and I were on the Aero 360 and I asked him if he knew the scene kid who was sitting next to me. “What, I’m supposed to know him because he’s a scene kid?” Blake asked, upset with my assumption, like it was racial profiling or something.

After that, we tried to get Chooch to ride more things but he was being a big baby, and not even a cute one, but the kind you want to punch and then leave on someone’s porch in a laundry basket, so I threw my own fit and stalked off toward the entrance, where I sat on a bench alone. Literally, I sat there with my lip all pursed and quivering, arms crossed, and a thousand murderous scenarios screeching through my broken mind like a rusty train on chalkboard tracks.  This was around the time I tweeted, “I wish I could stuff Today in a cadaver and fuck it in the ass with a blow torch.” Then I decided, I’ll show them, I’m going to leave! So I texted Blake and said, “I’m leaving!” to which he replied, “But you have all the money!” and then Henry left Blake and Chooch in Kiddieland to come calm me down.

Which he did by buying me food because, being the Erin specialist that nine bi-polar years have made him, he recognized in the situation all the signs of Erin Famine. And I was cool after that! We went back to KiddieLand and Blake was like, “You kids go on and have fun. I’ll stay here with Chooch.” Really, this was because Blake wasn’t feeling well and standing among parents watching small children oscillate slowly on hideous animal faced-carriages was more appealing to him than getting whiplash.

So Henry and I got to be a Real Life Couple and ride things together! I can’t remember this ever really happening too often at Kennywood. I know that he and I have never been there alone together, so this was sort of like a DATE. It was weird! And he was really giddy and kept trying to kiss me and I had to remind him that I hadn’t suddenly abandoned my hatred of PDA. He even grabbed my boobs right as our photo was taken on the Log Jammer and I was like, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Did Blake give you E?”

Then I had to stand around impatiently while he played that money-guzzling game Pong Pond, where you get like, seven chances to bounce a ping pong ball and hope that it lands in a plastic lily pad. I’ve yet to see him win at this game.

“This is the only game I’m good at!” he whined after I begged him to stop spending money on it. “I’ve won it, like three times!”

“Seriously? You’ve won three times in the thirty years you’ve been coming here?”

He thought about this. “Yes. So I’m about due for a win.” I had to pull him away. Unless he was going to wrap a stuffed animal around my goddamn finger and propose, I wasn’t about to stand there and cheerlead for him while he blew through all of MY MONEY.

Then the night turned sour. Blake wanted to leave because he wasn’t feeling well at all, which was understandable, but Chooch had to play fucking mind games with me the whole way back to the entrance. “I want to ride this.” We’d get in line. “No, I don’t think so.”

I was so over it! Walking past Garfield’s Nightmare, the extremely docile family boat ride Chooch pussied out on twice that day, he begged us to take him on it.

“Hell no,” I said. “I’m done playing these games with you. All you’re going to do is get in line and change your mind, so stop wasting my time.” And he threw a full blown fit, right there in front of all the other children who were like, “Yay! We’re at Kennywood! We appreciate this opportunity so much, Mommy and Daddy! We are going to ride every single ride to make sure we get our money’s worth, and you will be so proud of us! And before we go to bed tonight, we will be sure to read from our Bible!”

This was the point where I quickened my pace, and left Blake and Henry behind me to pull Chooch along, kicking and screaming. He cried and screamed the whole way home while I stared out the window and tried to remember what it was like to be single.

Happy Father’s Day, Henry! I’m leaving!

The line outside of the House of Blues was not very long and we were blessed to not be surrounded by roiling assholes. Alisha kept saying she felt old, but it seemed to be that there was a pretty good mix of ages out there. I’ve been to much younger shows so I felt like a big sister standing in this line, instead of a den mother.

Once the doors opened and our persons were checked for weaponry, we headed upstairs to the balcony. I’ve seen The Used enough times to not care too much about being close to the stage, and Alisha was still bummed about last year’s show at a shitty Pittsburgh venue where we could barely see the stage no matter where we stood. So the balcony seemed like the best bet for us.

I had a feeling I was going to dislike the opening band as soon as the curtain was drawn to reveal a set decorated with anarchy propaganda. And then Drive A bounded onto the stage and started playing stale punk anthems that knocked off old school Greenday and I was immediately in hell. I hate Greenday and therefore I hated Drive A. They had BORING stage presence too. The singer felt the need to explain what every song was about and all that accomplished was taking up more time.

After their set, two guys klutzed in front of us to claim the seats next to me. Instant entertainment. They appeared to be in their late 20s and the dorkier one was wearing slacks. The one immediately next to me spoke in a way that screamed Card Carrying Dork and seemed intent on talking loudly about all the chicks he’d fucked lately. Alisha was more annoyed than me and she wasn’t even sitting next to him. “He’s trying to impress you,” she kept saying.

When Atreyu came on, I would then learn that my new friend was a very skilled and thorough multi-air instrumentalist. He even fist-sung a few times. I was impressed for real at that point and was hoping I could be the next chick he had sex with in the back of his dad’s van.

Atreyu was boring. I swear I liked them once in my life, maybe when their first album was released? But they just weren’t holding my attention. I was freezing in that building, and was using Alisha’s coat as a blanket at that point. Rock shows should not leave a person cold.

I hated this broad. I’m not sure what it was about her: the fact that she and her boyfriend were seconds away from reproducing from the moment they sat down, her hair that I envied,  or the cattiness I detected behind her eyes. I just sincerely couldn’t stand her. I laughed when her boyfriend rubbed her back protectively when Atreyu took the stage with a sound equivalent to 800 air horns going off at once.

It was during Atreyu when I first noticed the girl screaming behind me. I don’t mind loud noises when I’m at a show. That’s what shows are meant for – screaming and acting idiotic (to a degree; I don’t condone asshole-y behavior at shows). But this girl? My god the lungs on her. It sounded like a bag of babies screeching behind my head. I have never really been in a position to say that something was blood-curdling and mean it. But my blood was curdling all the way down to West Virginia. This was not an euphoric scream meant for shows; this was better reserved for expressing just how insanely painful it is when Leatherface nips your thigh with his chainsaw as you’re stumbling through trees in the the dark woods of Texas.

I fucking hated her and the way she made my left shoulder rise up to my ear, like she had it on a fucking string.

There was an incident in the crowd below, and one of the guitarists paused before starting the next song to ask the crowd to please help out the person who I imagine must have fallen. The singer of Atreyu very disinterestedly repeated, “Yeah, give him room. Security, get out there or something. OK the next song—” only to be interrupted again by the guitarist, who was pretty much refusing to continue the show until the person in need was helped.

I was kind of disgusted at that point, because the whole situation made the singer look like an insensitive prat and somewhere around that time I had also realized that from where I sat, he looked like Dunbar from the Real World: Sydney, so I double-hated him.

“I love how you have a talent for incorporating The Real World into your daily life,” Alisha said. At first, I thought she was being sarcastic but then I noticed she was shoving her Autograph pad at me.

When The Used came on, I was immediately overcome with mixed emotions. I so badly wanted to enjoy the show, but I couldn’t fight off the nostalgia; I felt really sad and frustrated and began to wonder if it was a good idea that I came at all. When I saw them last year, my friendship with Christina had ended (God only knows what do-over number that one was) and I was at a point where I had a lot of hate for her and the situation, so seeing The Used that time was like revenge in a way. Like, “Haha, this was our favorite band but I’m going to see them with someone else, you dumb bitch.” And it felt good, like a release.

But this time was different. I don’t have hate for her anymore. That has dissipated and left me with a very raw pain and an excruciating sense of betrayal and confusion. Being there in the House of Blues, especially when they played “Blue and Yellow,” it was like having our friendship play out in front of me, while being forced to drink kerosene.

I thought I was doing a good job keeping it together though, keeping my emotions in check. Until the very end, during the encore, when this drunk Napoleon with a God complex behind me started getting to me. I could feel my skin burning as my temper rose, and it’s a feeling I know all too well.

I did not want to lose my shit there, and I kept repeating that to myself over and over until I found myself pre-rage blackout, twisting around and spitting Angry Girl ire in this fucking frat boy’s face. We exchanged heated words in a cloud of alcohol-fumes and profanity until his girlfriend (who I’m pretty sure was the murder-scream girl) begged him to shut up.

I don’t even want to get into it, really, because it doesn’t make me feel proud of myself. It doesn’t make me look “cool” or “hard.” It just makes me upset every time I replay the situation in my mind, which is something I did A LOT that night and the next morning and the next day and yesterday and right now. And it sucks. To work that hard to be a good sport, to try so hard to mind my temper, only to waste all that on some doucheknob who instigated a situation that didn’t even deserve a response from me, that wasn’t even directed solely AT me. But no, I was already so tense, so confused in my head, that I let a complete stranger get the best of me, and I’m not stupid – I know I was projected. He gave me an opportunity to unleash and I took it when I should have bit my tongue and walked away.

I wanted him to hit me. I honest to god wanted that guy to hit me.

Just so I could feel pain on the outside instead of within.

Worst of all, it created a tiff between Alisha and me. She wasn’t mad, just worried that the situation was going to escalate and she wouldn’t be able to protect me if he got physical. So I stormed ahead and acted all angsty for a few minutes before realizing how stupid I must have looked. And we were good after that, but I fucking swear to god that really killed the night for me. I’ve spent all week being totally reflective about myself and the situation and my triggers, and it’s been exhausting. Just exhausting and traumatic. Perhaps that might be the last time I see The Used.

After getting lost after the show, we found an IHOP where the plastic cover to the toilet paper rolls in the bathroom stall opened up and fell onto my lap while I peed.

(Bathroom: 3, Erin 0.)

Friday, June 1, 2007

There are two of them ascending the steps to my front door, wrapped in a shroud woven of the Holy Word and sweat beads; long wool skirts shifting left and right against their panty hosed-calves. Their presence is announced not by the gentle rapping on the door, but by inflexible clodhoppers amplifying their chaste footfalls against the concrete.

Henry, in typical older male fashion reminiscent of our fathers, is splayed out on the couch in a striking pair of boxer briefs; he hurriedly stuffs a pillow onto his lap and coaxes me to get the door.

Balancing my kid on my hip, I open the screen door and nervously greet them. I learn that they are Mormon sisters which intrigues me as I have only ever encountered the elders;  they had not intended to stop at my house but happened to notice Chooch at the door and that little asshole smiled at them, which I guess is the Mormon code for “Someone in here needs some savin’! Come on down!”

I think I’ll make my child a Tamburitzen as his future penance.

I like to humor solicitors by feigning interest. Especially the Mormons, who have always amused me so. They provide me with human contact, doses just large enough to keep my society membership card from being revoked. And sometimes it does end up being interesting! There were two Elders who swung by once on a Saturday evening, many years ago, after I spotted them walking past my house and hysterically screamed for them to come say hi. They allowed me to video tape them as they commented on the party debris covering every flat surface of my living room. “The Christmas lights are lit, there’s beverage on the table, looks like a party to me!” the one hollered, channeling his best frat boy dialect which he probably picked up from the WB, while the other Elder stood nervously to the side. Then the bolder one took the camcorder just in time to pan onto me as I stumbled drunkenly onto the sidewalk, tripping all over my halter-topped slutiness. He was my favorite Elder. Strangely, I never saw him again. And after all that flirting, even?

However, I have a really terrible tendency to laugh in their faces, only partially because I’m an asshole. From birth, I’ve been tagged as an Inappropriate Laugher. Even when I actually was religious (truth!) and cheered when I was blessed with a Sunday School teacher who deemed it necessary to give us exams, I would still rip open the insides of my cheeks with my molars in awkward attempts to stop laughing during mass.

So when one of the two sisters enters a coital-like trance and begins her spiel, I start to relive the day Henry and I attended baptism class. It’s like my bottom lip is trying to mount the top one, like humping earthworms, causing them both to contort in jackass-y smirks and lewd leers. I laugh hard and try to project it all onto  Chooch, hoping they’ll interpret my uncomfortable display of giddiness as the universal sign for a mother’s joy. Look at me! I am so happy to be the mother of this sticky kid that I just can’t stop twisting my face into sneers better reserved for serial killers! Oh-ho, will the laughter never stop?

They pause in between glory be’s to acknowledge my giggles with interjections like “Yeah! Uh huh!” as though I’m that delirious from their recount of Joseph Smith’s vision that I am losing my mind in a God-loving fervor.

And then, as I’m in the height of my seasonal lesbianism, it dawns on me just how hot this here Sister McRae really is, with the natural highlights sparkling in the sun’s heat and her cute little sweater vest enveloping her in innocence. Her words begin to perform a strip tease on her tongue, grinding to the hottest ecclesiastical club anthems, and making me want to collapse in a fit of immature giggles.

A thousand knee-slappers whir through my mind, the kinds that have made the Elders crack smiles; but as past instances have pointed out, I can’t flirt with girls. My tongue gets caught and I end up spitting out sociopathic flag-raisers like, “I have cats!” (Another truth, and possibly one of my darker moments on the playing field.)

The more marmish-looking one asks me if I know that Mormons have a living prophet.

Do I. I’ve watched Big Love.

It is clear that she is the no nonsense, get-convertin’ one of the pair, so I deep-six all eye contact from that point and focus on Sister McRae’s perfectly plucked eyebrows.

During all of this talk of Joseph Smith and light pillars (which I already know about thanks to the last time I was approached), I have been inadvertently leaning back on the front door, causing it to open wider and expose Henry and his Fruit-of-the-Loomed nut sack. He is very unnerved by this because the ugly Sister keeps staring at him (he swears she is only looking at his face, and I kind of believe him because who’d want to gawk at Henry’s package?).

The couch becomes his Iron Maiden.

My cat Marcy slips out through the crack I left in the front door and proceeds to weave in and out under the stauncher Sister’s skirt, pausing underneath to look up. Marcy has a long tail, which is erect and wagging like a large feathered quill, dusting the cobwebs. I bet that’s considered first base back on the compound. Stifling back chuckles, I give Marcy halfhearted scoldings and fight the urge to regress to a fifth grade mindset.

Fifteen minutes and lots of unintentional laughs later, the pretty Sister picks up on my dire need to retreat into the house (or else her love for Jesus isn’t strong enough to keep her standing in the ninety degree heat for more than twenty minute intervals). She asks if they can come back another time. I happily agree because I love torturing myself. She pencils me in for Monday at 1 and gifts me with a church pamphlet, which I am told to study in the meantime.

I am sad to see that the Jesus depicted on the cover is of the gentle, lamb-cradling shepherd variety, one that I just had no right picturing in sweaty, pretzel-bodied trysts. No, a date with this one would probably be jam-packed with seed scattering and roof thatching. Maybe a few blessings before dinner and then a reenactment of the apple scene by the local youth group.

Unless there’s some back scratching and strawberry shortcake involved, I’ll pass.

Henry shot off a torrent of disbelief. He asks me things like why I invited them to come back and if I’m really going to attend their mass like I said I would. I ignore him as I flip through my Mormon study guide and laugh at pictures portraying loving families and content hand-holding parishioners.

I will undoubtedly spend my weekend daydreaming about what Mormon mass is like and how quickly I get myself blacklisted. Will they at least serve  doughnuts and orange drink first? Can I wear a bonnet? I hope to make lots of friends there so I have more people to invite to future game nights. Then I’ll put them in a room with my friends who are adamant debaters of opposing religions and have them all sic each other.

At least they didn’t make me pray with them.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Henry is home from work early. On his way upstairs for a nap, he reminds me that I have a date with the Mormons.

By 12:45, my front door is barricaded, the windows pulled closed and robed by curtains, and the volume on the TV lowered. I’m on lock down. I even bite off one of my nails in a fretful fit.

1:00 comes and goes, and I feel abandoned and unloved. Am I so pathetic that even religious recruiters stand me up? I go upstairs in search of consoling from my napping partner, but he shuns me, so I return to the living room and make snarly expressions with my mouth until I’m distracted by a Ciara video.

The clock turns to 1:35 and my ears perk at the sound of Christ-like exaltations growing louder outside my door. I swear that I even hear the heavenly notes of harps helmed by cherubs, but it might just be the sound of my own angelic breathing. Suddenly, I’m consumed by an animalistic danger response and I flee to the bedroom, tripping over my flip flops on the way.

This is my mother’s fault. I grew up hiding with her in the attic as Jehovah’s Witnesses circled around our house like crows; PTA member Donna Thomas made spontaneous visits to try and get her to type programs or bake cookies or be a room mother; and my uncle’s insane girlfriend Stella would appear for impromptu cups of tea, her psychosis only thinly veiled as she choked on tears and hysterical laughter (she once hid under the bed for a week because she wanted my uncle to assume she had gone off and killed herself). I’d pretend whoever my mom had us hiding from on that particular day had shotguns and that if I lifted my head, my brain would explode like Gallagher’s watermelon and sound like a moist sponge as it splattered against the wall and dripped down into a gelatinous pile of blood and skull fragments. It was exhilarating.

As I spy between the slats of the blinds, Henry asks me through a sleep-coated slur what I’m doing and in my best hushed tones, I inform him that the Mormons hath returned and I’m hiding. I haven’t even read their literature! The only term I learned was Aaronic Priesthood, and that’s only because it topped the list. I didn’t even complete the study questions at the end! Did Jesus’s Apostles know that an apostasy would occur? I don’t know!

Henry shakes his head and rolls over, rejecting me with his back.

I cower in the dark sanctity of my bedroom corner until I’m certain they’ve left. They pull out of the driveway in what appears to be a brand new Camry in golden hues, probably meant to mimic a halo’s tint. I then briefly consider converting, until Henry informs me that the car is likely owned by the church and not two Mormon hustlers who don’t have jobs. But then I start to think of other scenarios that could afford them a car, like drug dealing. Mormonism is starting to sound scandalously tempting. I could probably get used to the itchy wool caressing my thighs if it meant reaping the rewards of Christ’s drug deals. The scratchy caresses might even be an improvement on Henry.

Do Mormons engage in self-flagellation?

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

I’m hanging out in the living room with Henry and Chooch, enjoying a block of music videos that teach my son to call girls bitches and hoes and to fuck them barebacked to see if they really are a wonder woman. To keep our wandering child in one room, we pull out our chaise and use it to block the entrance to the dining room, since it’s too wide of an area for a standard baby gate to cross. Henry is presently laying across it on his stomach in a position he hopes will make him look younger than he really is. How is he going to slip his hand down his pants with his jock pressed against the chair? I wonder.

In my peripheral, I catch two wool-skirted smudges through the open front door. The Mormon Sisters have nearly reached the front porch, but I’m not opposed to obvious dodgings. In what feels like slow-motion, I leap up from the couch and lurch into a scissor-kicked hurdle over top of Henry’s lazy form on the chair. I pause briefly once I land, impressed with the height I reached on that one, but then I sprint like I’m being chased by the muthafuckin’ popo until I’m swaddled in safety’s sweet embrace at the top of the steps.

I hear the soft rapping upon the front door. I hear the door open. I hear Henry’s gruff voice. Though I can’t hear it well, I imagine his voice all but paints a portrait of his chagrined state.

I hear silence.

And then, Henry is standing at the bottom of the steps.

He hisses for me to get my ass downstairs.

No, I hiss back, slinking further into the shadows.

This is your doing, he seethes. Tell them you’re not interested.

But I won’t, and he knows he can’t make me.

He shuffles off to do my dirty work. I wait a few moments after I hear the closing of the door before I come out of hiding.

Henry tells me smugly that they’re coming back tomorrow. I hope they come in time to spectate the simulated baby sacrifice that I perform on Chooch. He loves it so much that he laughs until he vomits.

I love the thrill of the chase, the sensation of being stalked; I love how my heart palpitates wildly and I feel my blood rushing, in a nervous race to hide from the word of the Lord. Sometimes I call myself Susie and pretend that I’m in the Witness Protection Program. Other times I pretend my house is a forest bathed in moonlight and I’m fleeing from a chainsaw-brandishing Jason Voorhees, tree branches snagging my camp shirt and jagger bushes carving thin trenches into my flesh. What really provides good cardio is envisioning that they’re rapists saddled with 12-inch barbed-wired and hot sauce-ensconced dildos, pelvises thrusted and jutting, ready to penetrate.

I can’t wait for them to come back.

Really, no one flinched when I told them I was going on a date with a lesbian.

Sure, I got several memos reminding me that I wasn’t gay, but that didn’t deter me.

Because the fact was, I just wasn’t meeting any cool guys. Not that I was looking for any, really, but more that I was addicted to the thrill of blind dates. My personal ad even said, in large font, that I was just looking for casual encounters, something to bud into a friendship. And then I would go on for a paragraph swearing that I wasn’t a whore. And I wasn’t. I never went home with any of those dates. I just honestly lived for the opportunity to meet new people.

My friend Brian, upon perusing my ad (which actually started as a joke), deadpanned, “Oh yeah, you won’t get KILLED or anything.

Have fun with that, weirdo.”

But the guys I was meeting were all vapid, bore me with football talk, and wanted to get into my pants. (Well, I was shocked!) So I decided it was time to switch things up and try my hand at a girl date.

And that’s how I found myself meeting Wendy and her friend Ron at Eat n’ Park.

Wendy was vapid, wore an offensively large Dallas Cowboys belt buckle and wanted to get into my pants.

I found myself in a silent prayer, thanking God for sending Ron with her.

During our meal (I had grilled cheese, that much I know), Wendy sat across from me and failed in her attempt to seduce me with her eyes. Instead, she just looked drowsy from psych meds. I was a bit let down that Wendy didn’t seem much involved in the conversation, or in getting to know me. At all. Unless it involved the exchanging of bra sizes and saliva. I was content chatting casually and comfortably with Ron while demolishing my grilled cheese (which he paid for and I can’t remember if I said thanks) and ignoring the salacious stares and ribald posturings belching from the Wendy Zone.

Toward the end of the meal, Wendy had been silently dragging her spoon across her sundae, presumably bored with the conversation topics which did not include:

• belt buckles and where to buy them the biggest
• ecru work shirts and the women who wear them
• the perils of dating outside of your sexual orientation

But suddenly, she looked up at  me, and with those weird drowsy eyes, drawled, “I like whipped cream…and cherries.”

And then she licked her lips. And her eyes flittered down a little and I found myself hugging my boobs protectively, trying not to pee.

That night, while retelling the details to my friends, I felt so violated. So objectified!

“Well, was she hot?” I was undoubtedly asked.

“No!” I yelled.

“If she were, would you have—?”

“Maybe! But she wasn’t. It’s OK, I gave her no inclination that we’d be seeing each other again. Plus, she lives an hour away.”  

Until the next day, when the phone calls began. Oh, the phone calls! Her primary job became calling me. In fact, I’m pretty sure she quit her actual job to make this so.

“So, I’m thinking of moving back to Pittsburgh,” was what I was presented with one day, with all the pleasure and joy of getting slapped in the face with a dead fish. “Ron said I could move in with him again.” And then, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“Ron’s cool,” I said, at a loss for how to address her proclamation, and feeling a strong urge to peek out the blinds and make sure she wasn’t squatting behind a tree.

“Hey, what’s that song you have in your email?” she asked.

“Yeah, that’s ‘Question of Lust’ by Depeche Mode,” I offered reluctantly. Why did she want to know? Was she going to give it to the DJ she already hired to play at our wedding reception, oh my God what I have done?

“I love it,” she slurred in her own warped version of sexiness. ” I play it all the time and I made my whole family listen to it.” When I said nothing, she went on to add the AWESOME admittance of, “They know all about you.”

I went on to handle Wendy the same way I handle the gas men: ignore the assholes until they go away. She called me for months. Hands down she was the toughest blind date to shake. Probably she’s forgotten about me by now, but I’m still cursed with her memory every time I hear that damn Depeche Mode song (which used to be my favorite!).

I’m not even sure Wendy was her name. I had written “Ron and the lesbian” beneath their picture in my photo album.

Now that I think about it, maybe it was Michelle.

My first internet boyfriend was wrangled back in the fall of ’98. His name was Misfit and we met in a now-defunct goth chat room called Darkchat (where my nickname “Ruby” flourished to the point where it’s now hard to shake, and no, I was never really “goth”). Misfit and I became soon embroiled in a hot-and-heavy phone relationship, even watching Sleepless In Seattle together while cradling the receivers between shoulders and ears. He asked me to come to San Diego to spend Christmas with him, and I went through great lengths to make it happen. My mom thought it was cute (she was secretly hoping that he would see to my demise, I’m sure), and promised to help me get a plane ticket. Then I called him one night and heard the giggling of a horny female from within his dorm room.

My internet lust did not die with Misfit; there were plenty more faceless nicknames scattered around the world for me to fall for, like Fade who was in his twenties and admittedly never had a girlfriend; and Darq, the adrogynous Brian Molko wannabe from England who would send me angry ICQ messages if I wasn’t home when he would call. Each time I met someone new, I’d break up with my boyfriend Jeff. He was the most lenient boyfriend I ever had. Probably because he wasn’t very threatened by some dude who lived a thousand miles away and knew I’d be back after the initial white horses and rainbows of it all fizzled.

Until October of 1999, when Narcissus from Vancouver and I realized that after a year of chatting in Darkchat and over ICQ, we were soul mates. His real name was Gordon and I charged ludicrous amounts of calling cards to my mom’s company gas card. My friends Jon and Justin, who were always with me back then,  hated Gordon because he had a knack for calling at inopportune times. Like when we would all be engaged in dead baby hypotheticals or watching my friend Jon model wigs.

But he’s my soul mate, I’d remind everyone as I kicked them out of my house so I could call Gordon.

Through all the mix tape swaps and late night phone sessions, Jeff toughed it out. He’d sit there and listen to me gush about how educated and refined Gordon was, and how someday I was going to bear his child and we would raise it on love, chatroom etiquette and The Cure.

But then a pivotal moment occurred:

Gordon was flying to Pittsburgh.

He had arranged a flight in December with the intent of shacking up with me for two weeks. It was going to be perfect — we would obviously fall even more madly in love and then I would go back to Vancouver with him and we would get married and live in a big house filled with coffins and pictures of Robert Smith and it was going to be all so very perfect.

Jeff cried.

Jon and Justin vehemently vetoed this plan and begged me not to get my hopes up, that he could arrive and all illusions could shatter. But he’s my Gordon, I argued. There ARE no illusions, just buckets and barrels of twinkling True Love.  

I was subsequently mocked every time Gordon would call in their presence. But one evening, my friend Justin could bear it no longer and reluctantly crossed over to my side. “Let me say hello to him,” he asked. After making him promise to be nice, I passed him the phone.

“Hey Gordon, how’s it going?” The air hung heavy as Jon and I waited expectantly for Justin to wrap it up. “Yeah? Well fuck you too!” Justin slammed down the phone and yelled, “Your friend’s an asshole, Erin!”

Gordon had replied to Justin’s greeting with a “Fuck all.” This was a new phrase for Jon and Justin, and no matter how hard I tried to explain what it meant, they assumed I was trying to cover for Gordon, and that clearly it was the Canadian way to say that he wanted to kill Justin’s mother and rape his sister. They took offense and set off on the war path. Plans were made to drop by while he was visiting, and parade around my house in “Fuck Canada” t-shirts while mocking the dialect. I even heard whispering about a maple leaf burning.They were going to hold this against the entire country.

I eventually got them to cease fire and they agreed that they would be civil when he arrived. I had two weeks left to prep them, reminding them of sensitive subjects and other sore spots to avoid.

“His brother died of AIDs, so don’t make any AIDs jokes,” I warned.

Jon was appalled by this. “How often do we tell AIDs jokes? I don’t even know any!” Still, I feared that he would go home and start putting together an act.

Finally, Gordon’s arrival date was upon us, and I rushed to the airport. I couldn’t wait to run my fingers through his coal black 80s retro hair, and oh how I hoped he would be wearing the military jacket that I had seen him in in one of the pictures he emailed me.

I leaned up against a wall and waited as a stream of passengers poured off his flight. I saw a young, tall guy with a long gray pea coat and wobbly red head approaching. We made eye contact, but I quickly pulled away. Weirdo, I thought. I looked past him, waiting expectantly for Gordon, when I realized Big Red was still staring at me and smiling goofily.

He was Gordon.

But where was the shiny blue-black hair that flopped so precisely over his left eye? Where were the big black stompy boots? What I saw in front of me was a walking ad for Banana Republic.

I wanted to run but my feet were frozen to the ground. I had never in my life seen a pate that enormous. Even when he came to a complete stop before me, his head was still jiggling around on his shoulders. Biggest head ever. How was it even possible for a neck to support a head that large without some sort of brace, I wondered. I tried my hardest not to stare, but my eyes kept wanting a tour of that globular cranium.

We exchanged pleasantries and Gordon moved in for a kiss. “Oh, hey now. Ha-ha! Let’s go get your luggage first!” I pulled away much too quickly, with my hands out like a shield, even; but he didn’t seem fazed.

And so I spent the next forty minutes trying to ward off any public displays of affection that he mercilessly flung my way. I finally acquiesced and allowed for one quick, impersonal hug before we got into my car. I had to try not to cry into the breast of his coat.

Jon wanted to come over to meet him that night, so I called him as soon as we arrived home and insisted that Gordon was really tired and not up for a visit, because really I was entirely too embarrassed. I could just hear all the “told you so”s. Could TASTE them, even. “No, I’m quite fine. Tell Jon to bring his jolly ass over!” He really said that. Jolly ass.

“In-person Gordon” evidently liked to speak with a faux-British accent. I would also find that he would slip over into a Scottish brogue as well, all the while never omitting the “eh”s and “aboot”s. He was an accent mutt. I could not allow Jon to witness the monstrosity on my couch. I would never hear the end of it.

Through my patented gritted, toothy smile, I hastily suggested that we order food. If he’s eating, maybe he won’t talk, I prayed. Gordon insisted on placing the order, which turned into a condescending, one-sided shouting match with the pizza place through the phone.

“Hey, we’re Americans, not deaf,” I reminded him when he hung up.

While we ate our pizza, Gordon began asking me about what I had planned for his visit. Nothing that we can do now, I thought, as I glanced at his quaking head. There was no way any of my guy friends were going to be hanging out with him. I would be teased for the rest of my life. I wasn’t sure I could risk ANY of my friends meeting him, to be frank. He was a giant, bobble-headed manifestation of my naivete and Internet love abuse.

Two weeks of this oaf hulking around my house — could I stand it? All those marathon phone calls had left us with little to say to each other. How was that possible? We were supposed to have everything in common.

Gordon needed cigarettes and suggested that I take him to my favorite gas station that I had told him about in one of our many all-night phone sessions, the gas station where hundreds of my mom’s company dollars were spent each month on groceries, toiletries, and Slushies. I began to resist until I figured that it was late at night and the only person there would be the night employee, my buddy Mitul. We had a love-hate relationship, but he wouldn’t say anything about Gordon.

As Gordon roamed the aisles in search of American goods, I stood at the counter with Mitul. Maybe I was just paranoid and reaching to find flaws in Gordon. I bet no one else will even notice his head size.

“That the Canadian you in love wit’?” Mitul asked in his thick Indian staccato. I rolled my eyes and shrugged, prompting Mitul to bust out with a laughter-coated, “Erin’s goofin’ wit’ Big Head!” For two years I endured this mockery from my supposed friend Mitul. Two years. If Mitul was able to see past the language barrier to make fun of the situation, then there was absolutely no way I could bring him around anyone else. They’d collect enough fodder for the biggest, bloodiest roast of Erin of all time.

Later that night, Gordon was leafing through my photo albums, while simultaneously bitching about how horrible American cigarettes are. I was trying to show him high school pictures of my friends and me, but he insisted that he just wanted to see Jeff and the other guys I hung out with; I watched as the flesh covering his over-sized skull grew redder and redder. Someone was jealous. To curb any impending outbursts and awkward trust conversations (because clearly I must have been fucking every friend with a penis), I grabbed a new photo album from the pile and flipped to a random page, trying to change the subject.

“Oh, and this one right here? That’s Tex. It’s a bad picture of him. Doesn’t he look like an AIDs patient?” Several decades of silence passed and I slapped my hand over my mouth. All that rehearsing and pre-damage control I practiced with my friends, and I end up being the idiot who makes light of AIDs.

“My brother died of AIDs,” Gordon said, the weight of his enormous head causing him to hang it. And he cried.

Not knowing what else to do, I gifted him with pity sex. Yeah, that’s right, Erin goofed with Big Head. I was going through a dangerous “sex is the answer” phase, OK? I was YOUNG.

(Henry wishes I was still in that phase.)

And that was awkward, I have to say. I didn’t want to touch him, but a few times I slipped and placed my hands on his head, causing me to experience internal vomiting. I took a hot shower afterward, locking the bathroom door to curb any attempts for him to join me. I was afraid that the soap suds would be unable to penetrate the smarmy pretentiousness that I was so sure had coated my flesh, so I scrubbed myself raw.

(I’m shuddering right now, at the memory.)

The next morning, I called my friend Keri and begged her to come over. She’s the one who took me to the hospital when I had a condom lost inside me, so I figured if anyone would be blase about the situation, it’d be her. “I don’t want to be left alone with him. I might say more stupid things and be forced to have more Big Head sex!” Keri agreed to be my buffer and came right over.

“Where is he?” she asked, looking around the room, as if anyone’s eyes would not immediately be drawn to the mother whompin’ head, like flies to a carcass.

“He’s engaging in a shower,” I answered with air quotes, imitating his phony accent.

We sat on the couch and I purged and ranted as long as his shower enabled me to, until he made his grand entrance down the steps.

Wearing nothing but a towel.

He nodded at Keri while he walked across the room, slapping his big feet against the floor, and spraying droplets of water in his wake. He stooped down in front of us and rummaged through his suitcase, which he had left laying open in the middle of the room. He stood up with his chosen wardrobe for the day, and nodded again at Keri and me, before retreating back to the bathroom.

Keri sat rigidly, her eyes opened wide in horror. “That’s the biggest fucking head I’ve ever seen! Does he have some sort of condition? Why is it so big?”

“I don’t know. He’s very pretentious, do you think that’s why?” But then it came down to: “Is his head big because he’s pretentious, or is he pretentious because his head’s big?” For the fifth time since he arrived in Pittsburgh, I started to cry.

The three of us went to Denny’s for lunch, where Gordon proceeded to cut Keri off every time she tried to speak. He sat there and droned on and on about how great Canada is and what a poor country we live in here in America, and my god, this restaurant was terrible. And then he talked about British comedy and how rich his grandparents were, all while I stuffed my mouth with grilled cheese and stared out the window. Keri tried her hardest to make conversation, but he didn’t even attempt to feign interest, talking right over her as though she wasn’t even there (Kind of like how I do around Janna. But that’s different!), all the while twirling and flicking his scarf in his hands.

Yes, we know your scarf is cashmere, motherfucker. This is what I longed to scream while wrapping it tighter and tighter around his thick neck until it turned a pretty azure hue.

Keri left as soon as we returned back at my house. She couldn’t be paid to stay. I don’t even think she said goodbye.

“Would you care to join me in some viewing of ‘Fawlty Towers’?” Gordon invited as he procured a tape from his suitcase. With him? No. With someone else? Gladly. I politely declined so I wouldn’t have to sit with him, and busied myself with a magazine, figuring we could at least have some quiet time.

And then the simulated British tittering began. Not wanting to stick around long enough to hear him bust out with a “Chortle, chortle, that was a  jolly fine joke,” I played the headache card and excused myself, locking the bedroom door behind me. Laying in bed and wondering how the fuck I was going to survive two entire weeks of Bobble Head, I picked up the phone and called the one person who could rescue me.

Cinn arrived a short while later. I heard her knock and waited for Gordon to open the door. There was silence, and then I heard her knock three more times with increased impatience. I ran downstairs and realized that Gordon wasn’t even there.

“Where the hell is he?” Cinn demanded, pushing her way into the house. “Tell me what’s going on.”

I explained to her how he was rude to Keri and how he was being so negative about America (and I’m not even patriotic) and that I literally had nothing to say to him, and he was clingy, oh so clingy, and I couldn’t breathe and every time I closed my eyes, I pictured the butcher knife in the kitchen.  Cinn said there was little time and began to rummage through his suitcase.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I cried, pulling back the curtains to ensure he wasn’t on his way back from whereever he had disappeared.

Tossing aside his underwear and socks, she found his return flight intinery and called the airport. When she hung up, she assured me that he could be out of here and on a plane by morning, without losing his mother’s frequent flyer miles.

All that was left was for us to wait. Maybe he won’t come back at all, I hoped. Maybe he’ll get mugged or wooed by a carnival committee, that could happen, right Cinn?

When he eventually returned to my unwelcoming arms, and explained in his haughty British accent that he had “gone for a walk around the block,” Cinn took him by the arm and led him back outside. On the front porch, she sat him down and first chastised him for leaving the house without telling me, like he was a seven-year old who took a detour to the arcade instead of coming straight home after school. Then she explained to him that Erin was a little overwhelmed by the idea of him staying for two whole weeks, and frankly, she felt very uncomfortable to the point where it would be best to cut the trip short. How short, Gordon asked. Oh, like tonight, Cinn answered.

And so, with all the flair of a menopausal woman, he burst into the house, crying, and implored me to change my mind. I tried to be compassionate and told him that I just wasn’t ready, but when I was, I would come and visit him in Vancouver. This is all just moving too fast, I said dramatically. Do you still love me, he asked me through the tears. Of course, I lied.

He ate it up, like it was just another chapter in our perfect love story.

Cinn helped him book his flight and then spent a few more hours chaperoning us, ensuring that I wouldn’t succumb to more pity sex, and, you know, have to talk to him. But eventually, she had to leave. That left me with about five hours to kill.

“You know, you should probably get to the airport early,” I recommended. He asked me how early I was thinking and I said, “Oh, you should leave now, maybe.”

He asked me if I was ready to take him and after thinking it over for, oh, half a second, I explained to him that I would be too sad to go to the airport with him, and that he should just call a cab. And so I handed him the Yellow Pages. I hardly wanted him to slobber all over me at the airport, in front of people. It was bad enough he was doing it in the privacy of my house.

The hard part was next — trying to stay awake in the middle of the night, so that he wouldn’t miss his cab and/or his flight. I sat on the couch in a very annoyed and disgusted position, as he lay with his head in my lap, serenading me with Joy Division songs.

I’m not kidding. To this day, my skin crawls when I hear “Love Will Tear Us Apart.” It’s not love tearing us apart, moron, it’s your watermelon-sized dome and accompanying ego. I couldn’t believe how much someone could differ in person. The Gordon I knew via the phone was sincere and sweet and funny. The Gordon who was snotting all over my lap was brash and arrogant and pretentious, and worst of all – rude to my friends. That’s intolerable.

Just as Gordon was humming the opening notes to track 5 of his Joy Division Sob Fest, I leapt off the couch.

“Oh my god, I didn’t even get a picture of you while you were here!” I realized. I went to grab my camera, leaving Gordon with a few seconds to wipe the tears from his eyes and blow his nose. I took his picture just as the cab pulled up the house. It’s disappointing how the true enormity of his head is camouflaged in this photo; my friends and I have lamented over this for years. But take my word for it — others saw it and cowered in its shadow.

He called me from the airport in hopes that I had changed my mind, as though the twenty minutes we had been apart would have made my heart swell with lonliness and regret. I assured him that nothing had changed. He said he still loved me. I tried not to puke.

Needless to say, we haven’t spoken since; and last I heard, he was in Ireland, so one can only imagine how incredible his accent collage is these days.

Jeff and I reunited, but there would be more boys down the line to break us up. You know, like our friend Henry.

The proposition of “Let’s go downstairs” seemed innocent enough. No, that’s a lie. I was actually quite taken aback and had visions of being knifed/blackmailed/tickled/forced to lick a shoe until I caught Alisha shaking her pack of cigarettes at me.

We were at her friend Mark’s apartment, watching the Penguins game, eating pizza and quickly drankin’ our way through three bottles of wine.

“I’ll come too,” Mark decided, since the first period had just ended. He and Alisha grabbed their wine glasses. Not wanting to seem like some wino who can’t be without a glass in her hand for five minutes, I left mine on the table.

I had never met Mark before, but he was very affable from the get-go and had good vanilla handsoap in his bathroom. And even though I usually get annoyed with girls who watch sports for the eye-candy factor, it wasn’t annoying when Mark gushingly admitted to thinking Sidney Crosby is cute.

After Alisha and only Alisha finished her cigarette because she was the only one smoking, not me, I don’t smoke, Mark swung his keys in his hand and went to unlock the front door.

“Oh, shit,” he spat. Alisha and I stood there waiting for an explanation, but all he had to do was open his hand to expose my car keys dangling from his finger.

Mark lives with his brother, who conveniently was in Ohio for the weekend. And of course, Mark’s phone was in the apartment, watching the hockey game that had resumed by that point. His landlord’s number was in his phone, along with his brother’s, which he didn’t know off by heart. Through a phone relay, Mark managed to acquire his landlord’s number, and it naturally went straight to voicemail.

And then a bunch of panicking happened. At one point, we found ourselves sitting in my car, where we at least learned that the score was 3-0 Penguins. I emitted a dialed-back, near-silent “yay….

” accompanied by a watered-down roof-raise, because I had a feeling maybe Mark was a little bit too stressed for someone to be punching the roof of a car in jubilation.

“I can always ask one of my neighbors for a ladder,” Mark postulated. Moments before, we had scoped out the back of the house. He lives on the second floor, and there’s a small roof beneath his kitchen window, which he admitted to not locking. Standing on the sidewalk in front of his neighbor’s house, Mark turned to us and asked, “Before I go and ask for a ladder, will one of you actually climb it?”

My hand shot up to the sky. “Me! I’ll do it.” I could sense Alisha looking at me in surprise. But probably it was adoration.

“Hold my glass,” Mark said, shoving it at Alisha’s hand. As he turned to walk to the neighbor’s house, I started jumping up and down in excitement.

“This is fantastic! I’m so excited!” I squealed.

But Alisha, turning somber, placed her hands on my shoulders. “I just want to say that, of all my friends, I am so glad that it’s you here tonight. You are the bravest person I know, and I feel safe in your presence. When this first happened, in fact, I thought to  myself, ‘A-Prid, you need to calm yourself right down, girlfriend. You’re going to be fine. Erin’s here, and she’s like MacGyver. She will get us through  this. And then you’ll have the rest of your life to bake her chocolate-covered rewards.'”

And then she thrust one of the empty wine glasses at me so she wouldn’t be mistaken for a drunken sidewalk-bound hobo.

Able to procure a ladder, Mark tramped around to the backyard. I followed, beginning to feel the onset of nerves manifesting as prickles in my fingertips. The ladder was sprawled out on the shadowed grass with Mark muttering, “How do you open this thing?” while I scoped out (with eyes stretched out to the size of porn-industry standardized tits) all the things I could potentially impale myself on. Like literal wooden stakes that were used to prop up flowers.

The ladder was opened to its fullest potential and propped against the back of the house. Making sure Alisha and Mark had firm grips on either side, I began my ascent. It was a wobbly ascent. The ground below seemed uneven and I can’t say I felt very secure. But I thought about some really awesome things to help me get through it and by the second rung I was already pretending I was on one of the Real World / Road Rules Challenges, about to win $10,000 for my team and a snowboard I’ll never use. And then I remembered my team was Mark and Alisha and I won’t lie – I considered throwing the challenge.

By the fourth rung, I began ruing the fact that I left my wine on the coffee table.

By the fifth rung, it occured to me that no one asked Mark why he wasn’t shimmying up to the roof to save us. I already knew why Alisha wasn’t – she’s not a team player. And also, I think she once told me she was raped by a ladder one time? Maybe I dreamt that? Oh right, I remember now what it was – she’s allergic to heroism.

I vaguely remember hearing forced and monotoned words of encouragement, in the style of “Bad Actor Reads From Cue Card.” Supportive gems such as “Oh yay. You are. Doing.  A great. Job. Yay. Woo.” and “Don’t worry if the a/c unit falls on you! I don’t care about it!” and “I see that weather vane just plunged into your thigh. Can you try to not get any blood on the walls though? Thanks.”

Finally, I was at the top. The only thing left for me to do was turn to my right and swing my body onto the roof. And for the record, I’d like to point out that from the ground, the roof looked flat. But with it half a foot in front of my face, I was able to see that it had a slight peak to it. Awesome. But I had two people below counting on me, and without even swearing once (I KNOW RIGHT), I did a gentle dive over the gutter, where I then landed with the grace of a prima ballerina. And I won’t even remark on how the ladder simultaneously started sliding to the left, except that I just did.

Crab-walking to the kitchen window, it dawned on me that I never thought about what I’d do if I couldn’t get the window open. No way was I going back down that ladder. I once sat in a treehouse for hoursbecause I was too scared to come down the ladder. Granted, I was four. But I haven’t grown up much. I was able to slide up the screen with ease, but the window was more stubborn.

Every time I would get a good grip on it with my palms, the top half of the window would jiggle, and I’ve watched enough Dario Argento movies to know that this is not a good sign. Finally, I held my breath and pushed up as hard as I could. The bottom window slid up high enough for me to drop my forearms under it and finally have something other than clammy palms to use as leverage.

And then something that had been hanging on the inside of the window fell and made a loud enough crash for Mark to scream from the ground, “Do NOT break my Fiestaware!” This was right as I was swinging a leg onto the ledge and kicked a bowl that had been placed decoratively on the sill. My arm shot out and grabbed it, which was probably enough of a talent-display to play for the STEELERS. Just as I set the bowl out of harm’s way, my other leg was en route though the gaping window and kicked another Fiesta piece. I saved that one too. I may be clumsy, but ain’t no one ever said nothin’ about bad reflexes. Safely in the kitchen, I straightened up the Fiestaware collection and noticed that the first thing that fell was actually a stained glass window hanging. A quick examination learned me it was unscathed. A good thing, as I would later learn it was the first piece of stained glass Mark made.

There was two and a half minutes left to the second period. I got to see Max Talbot attempt a penalty shot as I poured another glass of wine.

“Hey Mark, you know what’s funny?” I said once he returned from taking back the ladder. “I’ve never climbed a ladder before.” And oh, how we laughed. This was when Mark admitted to not wanting to climb it because he was wearing slippers. And really I have to agree that my ballet flats are way better for house-scaling.

It’s crazy to think about what might have happened had I not succeeded. We’d probably have had to fashion an igloo from leaves and Alisha’s cigarette butts, catch some rats to cook with her lighter. Maybe we could have eventually started a brand new colony down by the river. Oh, the homeless have already done that? Shit.

The “how” isn’t important, but I found Alisha’s diary entry from that night.

With all the roof-raising I do, it was only natural that I would wind up on a roof someday.

When tickets for Thrice went on sale over the summer, I bought them the very day. No hesitation. I believe my exact words were, “We might not have a place to live by November, but at least we’re going to see Thrice.” It’s like when people are financially-strapped, but still find ways to buy cigarettes. That’s me and concerts. I’m just lucky that all the shows I want to go to are typically $15 tickets.

The hard part was buying the tickets in August and then having to wait until November 15th for the show.

The venue was Diesel, which used to be Nick’s Fat City and at one time in my life, I spent more time there than anywhere else in the city. It was my favorite venue and I saw Cold there countless times. Now, it’s some trendy club piece of shit for mulleted Roethlisburger-jersey-wearin’ yinzers and faux-fur wearing hos to fuck in a dimly corner, Mike’s Hard Lemonades in both hands. In other words, it’s a shitty fucking place to watch a rock show.

Henry and I started out in the upstairs lounge, but it’s impossible to see anything up there now. But because Henry is An Old Guy, I let him rest his arthritic laurels on a creepy leather couch during the opening bands. And I really like the opening bands (Polar Bear Club and The Dear Hunter), so he should have been giving me a hand job AT LEAST. If he wasn’t too busy trying to figure out everyone’s sexual orientation. And just because there were bands playing, don’t think for a minute that meant anyone around us stopped talking. No, everyone just upped their indoor voice’s to ale-scented SCREAMS and went about their conversations like they were casually mingling around a punch bowl at Uncle Jimmy’s retirement-from-pedophilia party. And you KNOW all they were discoursing was that BOO HOO the Steelerslost. Oh fucking well! Jesus wept, now get the fuck on with your life.

I only had one drink there. But before we left, I had downed (read: chugged) a large glass of Chardonnay. I was feeling fucking frisky. And I was also ready to go the fuck downstairs where I could be around the people who maybe gave a bit of a shit about Thrice. I could tell Henry was 100% against this plan, but I paid for his ticket so he was at my mercy. The floor downstairs was packed, but I wasn’t too bothered by it. Thrice pulls in an older crowd, so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally grazing underage cock. (This was in Henry’s “con” column, though.)

During the longest sound check in the world, the burly man next to me kept massaging my left boob with his elbow. I kept laughing about this, and Henry would turn around and, also laughing like he was in on the joke, would ask, “What?” I’d just shake my head guiltily and laugh harder because it was EROTIC OK? I kind of LIKED IT. That guy was (one of) my type(s).

Finally, Thrice took the stage. I won’t go into too much detail because I’m sure no one gives a shit, but they were spot on and amazing as usual. It was a very testosterone-driven crowd, but there was no violence to be concerned with, just a mutual admiration for the talent before us. I spent a good bit of the show wiping tears from my eyes because Thrice is just really that good. I named my kid after their drummer, for Christ’s sake! (To clarify, it was mostly because he had an Ask Riley column in Alternative Press for awhile during  my pregnancy, so that kind of put the name on my radar. But he is a really tremendous drummer!)

My favorite part of the night was watching Henry, who was still standing statue-like in front of me, twitch in irritation through the whole show. The group of people to our left were really moving around a lot and singing, which didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I really liked the crowd around us. But Henry kept getting bumped by them and I’d see him turn stiffly and give off Pissed Off Dad radiation waves. I could NOT stop laughing. He was in so much anguish. Sometimes I’d see him swipe at his brow in defeat.

It got even better when they lit a joint and began passing it around. The clench in Henry’s ass was so fucking hardcore at this point that the military could have used it to crush al qaeda necks. I wanted so badly for one of them to offer it to Henry so I could see him unleash 1986 Panama-stationed Air Force Hank on their stoned asses.

The show was over by 10:00pm. Thrice was being rushed off the stage because, in Dustin Kensrue’s words, “discotheque 2000” was about to start.

There is one way in and out of that dump, and of course every fucking idiot began a mass exodus in the general vicinity of the exit. I was trying to hold on to the back of Henry’s shirt so I wouldn’t get swept away. The merch tables were all lined up by the exit, so people were stopping, causing everyone else to slam into each other. Some leather-jacketed scenester analdrip kept pushing me. And not just little nudges, like he was going with the momentum of the rushing crowd. No, these were hands-on-my-back shoves.

So I’m standing there, smashed inside a wall of sweaty dudes, inhaling beer breath and ripe body odor, and I’m getting angrier and angrier. Clearly, we’re all trying to achieve the same successes in life: to get out of this boiler room in one piece, before the shitty house music starts bumping. But he’s pushing me, and he’s pushing me one too many times and I lost  my temper. I turned around and screamed, “Dude, I can’t fucking GO ANYWHERE, motherfucker.”

And still, he pushed.

So I yelled again, “Dude, STOP PUSHING ME.” I dug my feet into the floor and leaned back into him.

And then, oh this is my FAVORITE part. He took his hands and RAN THEM DOWN MY BACK. And it was NOT sensual! AT ALL.

I jabbed that motherfucker in the gut so hard with my elbow.

Meanwhile, Henry’s bobbing on ahead of me, whistling Disney toons and throwing a yo-yo.

Once outside, I stomped the entire way back to the car, bitching about how murderous that prat made me, and demanding Henry to look at my hands, all a’shook with THE RAGE.

I try, I try so HARD to stay cool in situations like this. But I have a really sick temper. And it gets worse with age. I try to tell myself that you just can’t be too cautious in situations like that, that someone could have a knife or a gun. And it doesn’t matter that he was a guy and I’m a girl. That doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hauled off and cold-cocked me in the face. And we all know Henry does not, and will never have my back, because he’s always the first one to say that my inability to bite my tongue is going to get me in trouble one day.

And this may be so, but it wasn’t that way last night, and I’m glad I got to get a shot at that asshole behind me. NO ONE PUSHES ME AROUND.

FUCK.

It was a shitty end to a really great night. Well, that and the repulsive middle-aged couple we passed on our way out, who were wearing age-inappropriate spandex-mix and practically fucking up against a wall. Discotheque 2000, indeed.

(Srsly almost lost my shit when they played this.)