Six Octobers ago marked the official start-up of my relationship with Henry. We had been whatevering clandestinely for an entire summer prior, but if you know anything about me, you’ll understand that this means I spent that whole time pushing him away, screaming obscenities at him, slamming doors in face, refusing to answer his calls (but glady accepting gifts), and cancelling plans with him. In other words, nothing really changed except that we gave the arrangement a title.

Most of my friends had already met him because we were all regulars back then at a bar named McCoys, but my mom and brother had not yet had the privilege of meeting the man who would become their own private IT guy. (“Henry, I fucked up my computer again. Can you fix it? I can’t get onto MySpace!” — sadly, my mom, not brother.) I planned to remedy this by inviting him to my mom’s Halloween party; he nervously RSVPd as a positive, already worried that the age difference would cause ripples.

A few days before the party, I had all four of my wisdom teeth surgically extracted. It was a traumatic ordeal for me, as I awoke from anesthesia and was asked how I was getting home. “My mom,” I replied. Duh, she was in the waiting room. Except that she wasn’t. The whole procedure took only fifteen minutes and she couldn’t even wait that long? The dental team could not have made their distaste any more evident. I was apparently taking up valuable space in the recovery room.

My mom finally came back, and we had a huge fight later on while I was nearing a state of unconsciousness with shocks of gauze jutting out from my just-been-through-hell lips, because she didn’t want to fill my prescription until it was time to pick up my brother from school. You know, to save her trips, because the town of Pleasant Hills is so huge. Doesn’t it sound huge? And foreboding? Like, you hear “Pleasant Hills” and your mind automatically conjures a megatropolis with tall gray blood-tipped spires for a skyline, right? Like, Gotham City but even more stormy and sprawling; fatalies unfolding on every block.

Clad in my PJs (the shirt splattered with gum-blood – yummy), I wrestled my car keys from my mom and peeled out of the driveway. I do not remember the drive home. I do not remember stopping at red lights and yielding at crosswalks and even stopping at the pharmacy. But I know I made it home and my insurance wasn’t raised, so I guess I’m either pretty good at quasi-comatose cruising or I pulled some really slick hit and runs.

I knew that I had escaped imminent danger, and so when I awoke the next day with swollen cheeks and kohl-smeared eyes, I called my dear friend Keri and asked her if she would run to the store and please please please buy me some cans of soup so I wouldn’t have to deal with any vehicular manslaughter bullshit on my permanent record.

But Keri was watching a movie. She was really sorry (no, she really wasn’t), but maybe she would do it later.

Did you know that at the time of this truly tragic tale, Keri lived a few streets over from me? That’s right, we both lived in Brookline, and we have the convenience of a CVS drugstore and a Foodland, both within a 5-mile radius of our houses. But unfortunately, it appeared that Keri was watching some anomaly of a flick that would only be available in front of her eyes one time in her life. Just this once. She can never again watch that movie. So, yes, I completely understood why Keri was unable to pause it (hello, DVD player remote) and help out an ailing friend.

Unable to wait for Henry to get off work, I threw on a duster over my sweatpants and took my puffy cheeks for a car ride. My body was pumped up on Vicodin like a turkey on hormones, and while it was doing wonders for the pain of my wisdom teeth pits, it was really wreaking havoc on my emotions and decision-making skills. In the middle of the dairy aisle, a pair of downtrodden housewives as my audience, I burst into tears — the kinds that whiny girls burst into in Japanimation — because I couldn’t decide if I wanted 2% or skim. Which would make my tomato soup the creamiest? I didn’t know! And to make matters worse, the Vicodin was telling me to fuck the milk and go for some top shelf Tequila.

Drugs, recreational and otherwise, have never had pleasant effects on me. I could never even smoke a bowl without suspecting that every male in the tri-state area was diligently drawing up blueprints that detailed the precise actions they would employ to systematically rape every opened pit of my body. People would say things like, “Wow, it’s snowing really hard out there” and I, while under the herbal influence, would construe their innocent observation as, “And then you’re going to blow me while I anally rape you with this barbed wire.”

When I first came in contact with my older half-sister a few years ago (we share the same dad), she told me that she was so mentally incapable of smoking pot that she once tried to jump out of a moving car while stoned. “Oh, you really are my sister!” I enthused.

My mom had a Halloween the weekend after my wisdom tooth extraction.There are always labels on prescription bottles, warning people not to imbibe alcohol was taking pills. But what’s a few swigs of hard cider going to hurt, I thought, as I popped a Vicodin for the road.

Henry and my mom were meeting for the first time. I’m sure this was an awkward situation, but I wouldn’t know because the Woodchuck in my gullet was making the Vicodin coursing through my body do the Lambada. I was feeling good.

Two Woodchucks later, I was publicly attacking Henry’s mouth with my tongue. I vaguely remember Keri exclaiming, “Oh my god, she’s kissing him. In public! In front of us!” My mom said, “She must really like him.” Notoriously anti-PDA, I had never made out with someone in front of my friends before.

Another Woodchuck found me behind the garage, smoking a joint with my brother’s friends, a scene that did not make Henry very proud of me.

Five minutes later, I was supine on my brothers’ large trampoline, reaching my arms to the Heavens and wailing, “When are you going to come for me, Robert Smith?” This is a memory that was supplied by Janna, who had the honor of making sure I didn’t try to get too Mary Lou Retton on the trampoline.

Henry was not pleased with me that night, not at all. While I was off slutting it up with minors, he was left to his own devices with a group of my friends he barely knew and a mother who was undoubtedly judging him for his age. Basically, it would have made for a pretty good episode of The Real World.

Henry confiscated my Vicodin after that night and has since vowed to never let me take it ever again. I’m hoping that I won’t need a root canal any time soon, or I guess I can kiss my relationship goodbye.

 Our department handed out paper Halloween treat bags for everyone to prop on their desks like emaciated orphans begging to have their bellies engorged by a delicious sugary bounty.

Us night-shifters brought our candy in tonight so that the day shift cry babies won’t throw fits when we’re not here to cap off their bags. I brought in two selections: a bag of Jolly Rancher Creepy Pops and a selection of Movie Time mini boxes (Junior Mints, et. al.).

I followed my boss Kim around because there are some day shifters whose seat locales I’m unaware of, or I flat out don’t know since they work on different projects and are not a part of our monthly meetings.

Each bright and festive bag (rumor has it that mine is the nicest) received one each of my Halloween treats until I made it back to the night shift area and realized that basic arithmatic had duped me once again: I only had enough to give my nocturnal compatriots one delicious confection.

Taking heed the fact that they would be none the wiser anyway, I smiled broadly as I doled out a lolly to Lindsay, gently tucked a box of Dots in Bob’s bag, and visciously chucked a sucker at Collin’s face while Kim looked on. I’m lucky to have such an ambivalent boss, because Lord knows my ears are no virgins to the “Keep your hands to yourself” credo; the first time (by an authority figure, anyway) was after I pushed Sean Murphy over a hill in Kindergarten.

On my way back to my desk, guilt gnawed at my stomach lining. I told Kim my dilemma. “And some of those day shift people, I barely know!” so Kim stuffed me under her wing and stole back three pieces of my candy for me to give the more deserving. Kim would point to various desks and I would say, “Oh yeah, steal it back. Fuck that stranger!”

When I revisited Collin’s area to pass out the purloined candy, he instinctively ducked. Fooling him, I instead set a box of Tootsie mini chews upon his opened palm. As I walked away, he called out, “Hey Erin, check your hoodie.” Apparently in Collin’s world, stuffing a mini Snickers in my hood instead of my treat bag is the obvious way to win the candy-distributing war. I was incredulous that something so devious had gotten past me.

“Magic,” he answered smugly, after I prodded him.

So now here we sit, coating our gullets with a cocktail of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, dextrose, sugar and all of their piquant partners in diabetic shock. I hope the sugar coma is strong enough to keep Eleanore sated; she’s in such a bitter mood tonight and keeps ranting on the phone about living in a racist society.

There is this girl that I absolutely abhor. She attempted to sabotage Henry’s relationship with his sons a few years ago, simply because she hates me. Yes, she hates me, yet she goes after Henry’s jugular.

We used to be friends many, many years ago. Even then, she was a pathetic sack of wasted flesh, constantly stirring up stews of bad feelings and lies. I cut her out of my life six years ago, yet she still rears her ugly, fat, manly head every now and then.

Like last spring, when she and Henry’s ex (her current BFF, oooh what a shocking coincidence) stalked my house, writing childish jibberish on my sidewalk and blowing car horns.

Had me shaking in my boots, I’ll tell you.

I have yet to actually have a face-to-face encounter with this sickening broad. However, today Henry’s sister, who used to be acquainted with this bitch years ago, had to get blood drawn and it just so happens that she was sent to the clinic where this broad is a phlebotomist.

Henry’s sister said that this girl immediately recognized her and left her sitting in the waiting room for a long time.

"Did Kelly cuss her out?" I asked Henry, salivating at the thought that someone finally had a chance to pull back this bitch’s hanging curtains of fat and rip her a new asshole.

"No, she said hello and then got her blood drawn. She said she didn’t want her to get pissed off and use a rusty needle. Ha-ha."

Ha-ha? No ha-ha! I was pissed! I would have been like, "Hey cunt, what the fuck is up with what you did to my brother?" I’d have fucking yelled in her fat fucking face and then taken my vein somewhere else.

But no, Kelly instead panders to this sociopath’s ego and bids her a friendly hello and then rolls up her sleeve. Crazy Asshole gets off scot-free once again! That bitch needs a heaping spoonful of ego-loss.

Does no one understand "loyalty" anymore?

In between haunted houses on Saturday night, Christina and I stopped at a gas station to get beverage and also so that Henry could give us directions via my cell phone without me careening over any cliffs. (It gets dark out on them thar country roads!) My top right molar had kind of felt a little sore, so because I’m a sadist, I bought a cup of blueberry crumble cappuccino (it was divine, too) and swished it around my kind of sore area. Of course, when the hot liquid found its way into my tooth’s tiny hole, the entire right side of my mouth sizzled in warm pain. Good pain. John Cougar Mellancamp’s “hurts so good” pain. Getting fucked with a crucifix held by John Holmes in a nun’s habit kind of pain.

Back at home that night, we watched “The Exorcist 2” and Henry made me a mug of hot chocolate. It could have been a mug of Draino for all I cared, so long as it was piping hot. I took a greedy swig and tilted my head back, allowing the scalding milk to arouse my molar. An orgasm-warm reward coursed through my jaw. My shoulders instinctively did the pain dance all the way up to my ears. I may have howled a little.

“Oh my God, would you stop that?

” Christina yelled in disgust as my hand flew to my chin to wipe away escaping milk, which found an opening after I sucked in a quivering breath of delirious agony. Sweet relief, like that feeling of complete pleasure experience after you allow your bladder to explode upon the pot after a day of holding in your urine during a brutal God-seeking pilgrimage through the Sahara.

A small area of my gums was pulsing and tingling. I was in Heaven…if Heaven was holding a Fetish Ball.

Before bed, I brushed and flossed aggressively, until it occurred to me that I had crossed the line.

My mouth was shrieking the safety word, and I had ignored it. My cheek felt swollen, my gums felt a’flare.

I woke up Sunday morning to the discovery of white and puffy gums surrounding the tortured molar. I carried around a vial of Anbesol all day, like it was a flask of bourbon (which would have been preferable).

Here at work, I’m rinsing every so often with hot tea, because evidently I’m a glutton for punishment who hasn’t learned by now the term “exacerbate.

” Right now, I have a strong desire to shove a lighter back there, or a blow torch, and then white knuckle the edge of my desk in abusive ecstacy. I have a dentist appointment next week, but something tells me I’m not going to make it. What is that something….Oh that’s right — it’s my flaming gums.

I painted this last night, inspired by the memory of that damn blue light. It’s called My Lips Bleed Your Kiss and it’s painted over top of a beeswax-coated canvas board. I’m really happy with it. Damn all this goth music!

Henry’s in the kitchen, carving pumpkins. In passing, I asked him if acting like a produce surgeon is as easy as it looks.”

It’s not so bad,” he answered thoughtfully. “Why, haven’t you ever carved one before?”

I laughed, obnoxiously. “Uh, no. I had people to do that shit for me.”

Henry rolled his eyes and mumbled something about me being pathetic. He’s like one of those talking dolls that come programmed with five cliched sayings that wear out after the tenth string-pull.

I have to go. My child is eating a piece of cheese that appears to be wearing a toupee.

Before Christina left to go back home to Cincinnati, we all went to Max and Erma’s for a very expensive lunch. (Seriously, where do they get off having such high prices when their food really isn’t very outstanding?

Although I’d pay a pretty penny for their banana cream pie, just don’t tell them that.

) I won the second bet of the day when Christina and Henry postulated about the price of the brunch buffet, agreeing that it was probably $11.

“That seems like a reasonable price,” Christina paired with a nod.

“No, I bet it’s more than that. $11 seems too low.”

Henry and Christina scoffed and said that I was a stupid idiot and anything more than $11 would be ridiculous and that college sure wasn’t honing my intelligence very much.

When the waitress, a very unpersonable young broad with teeth that overtook her face and an uncanny knack for appearing every single time I was talking shit on her, informed us that it was actually $13.99, I rejoiced.

I won the other bet earlier today when Henry’s son Blake devoted a block of about three hours to blowing up his father’s cell. After he called for the fifth time at 11:20, I proposed to Christina that we place bets on the next obsessive phone call. Christina guessed 11:50, but I wanted to believe that Blake had a little more will power than that, so I placed a very calculated and thoroughly thought-out guess of 11:55. At exactly 11:55, Henry’s cell erupted in a series of obnoxious brrrriiinnngs — I made Blake’s ring tone the most boring and standard one that came on Henry’s cell because I’m very mature like that — and I celebrated by thrusting my fists in Christina’s face. “Damn, too bad we didn’t bet for money,” I whined after the fact, so Christina said she’d pretend like we bet for a CD. Now I get a CD, hooray.

Back at lunch, Chooch flirted with the women in a booth behind him. Before thet left, they crowded around him and the older one — the mouthpiece of the two — asked for our permission to touch his head.

People are so weird when it comes to babies. Me? I’m like our waitress. When Chooch offered her his straw, she very nervously, and in a voice bogged down with faux-cheer, said, “Um, yeah, that’s nice! That’s yours, you can have that.

” I have a very similar approach to children. My head is flushed with internal dialogue.  “Shit, it’s talking to me. What do I do now?” The product that usually escapes from my mouth is something strained and forced, like, “Oh. Wow. How nice. Yay kids.”

I’m OK with my own kid, of course. We exchange discourse on a wide variety of topics, like shit and monsters and Satan and Hell and Jeffrey Dahmer. We whisper about Henry behind his back; things like “Daddy is a fag” and “Daddy sucks” and “That guy over there is probably a better dad than Daddy” even when it’s some bum sifting through a dumpster, wearing pink bunny slippers.

What I’m trying to say is that my son and I have some really great, adult-oriented convos.

When I was in high school, I bought this totally awesome blue neon frame, which I used as a “Now Playing” CD display. I would leave it on all night as I slept, much to the chagrin of any friend who happened to be sleeping over.

“Can’t you turn this off while we sleep?” they’d whine. Sure, it might not have been very conducive to restful slumber, but every night as that blue neon washed over my sleeping mound on the bed, I was getting more resilient for city-living, for one day in the near future when I’d be living in an NYC loft, bedroom bathed in the bright lights of bordellos and theaters and all-night chicken shacks, bathroom mirror reflecting fragments of the twirling reds and blues of cop lights, the TV unwatchable from the glare of my roommates cooking crack and the sounds of subway riots pealing past my crumbling plaster walls.

Instead, I wound up in Brookline.

I might not be in the center of a neon circus, but I have a hole in my bedroom wall, my stereo is capped with a bright blue light and I’m fairly certain my neighbor has a meth lab in her basement.

I’d say that’s pretty damn close to realizing a dream.

I’ve been fighting with a new neighbor over parking courtesy. I realize it’s a trivial thing to risk stroking over, but I have pent up anger and agression and the situation presented itself as the perfect way to let it all out. She and I had a very strained discussion about it last Sunday, but I sort of kept my cool, as I was holding the hand of my toddler and he sees me ranting and raving enough as it is.

The gist of it is that the landlord told her that the center space is hers, but I’ve been parking in that space for eight years. Typically, when I come home from work and wherever, she’s in that space so I have no choice but to park in  the one next to her.

This morning, when I was leaving for school, she was also in her car, about to leave. However, I gunned it and shot out of the driveway before she had a chance to blink, totally cutting her off. Dumb fucking bitch.

Then I stewed about it all during my Calculus class.

When I came home, she was still gone, so I shot down the driveway into my old space.

A few minutes ago, she came a’knocking. Henry answered the door, but she requested to speak to me personally. I joined her on the porch, after Christina gave me a sad glance, silently pleading with me to be nice.

And I was nice. Sort of. Through gritted teeth. We hashed out our differences — I told her I wasn’t happy with the way she came at me last week without even introducing herself, and she countered with the fact that when she first saw me a few weeks ago, I was slamming my front door and yelling about how I always get screwed with parking. ”

I mean, I saw that and thought ‘A-ight, she’s pissed off at someone, maybe me.’ Of course I’m not going to come up to and say ‘Hello, my name…’ at that point.

Henry and Christina were listening to the whole thing from inside, and when I came back in later, Henry said, “You DO have an attitude, you know” and Christina quickly echoed his sentiment. Then they talked about how I get so unnecessarily angry over nothing, simply because I crave tension and conflict.

I know, and then I wonder why every muscle in my being is taut enough to snap.

Anyway, the neighbor explained to me that the only reason she’s been making a big deal about wanting to park in the middle is because the landlord has been drilling it into her head.

Apparently, he keeps dumping all these rules on her without telling the rest of us (she said he also told her that none of us are allowed to park on the road, but we all do it because she’s the only one he told), and by doing so, he’s effectively pitted us all against each other. Realizing that it’s the landlord on which I should be directing my hostility (I know where I’ll be on Monday), she and I started over by going through friendly motions of introducing ourselves.

Her name is Toya, and I guess she’s not too bad. I still hate Ruth though, who hasn’t been talking to me for a few weeks now, god only knows why. Fucking fake nurse.

From now on, I’ll be parking my car on the street, to push my landlord’s buttons.

On a normal Friday evening at work, I act like a half-lit reject from a GED testing facility. But on a Friday night where my belly is made full with Thai food and my BFF is expected to be perched upon my porch by the time I return home, I’m all kinds of riled up. Every last thing has me doubled over in laughter:

Thai Place charged Joe $2.25 for a can of Pepsi.

My boss Kim told me I’m mean and she doesn’t know how people put up with me, in response to my tale of metaphorically kneeing a Canuck in the balls and still managing to keep him in love with me.

Eleanore asked me, “Erin, what’s the matter with you tonight?” which I believe is her polite way of saying, “STFU honky.”

I got Collin the New Guy to call me Your Majesty.

In order to retrieve a bag of my favorite honey wheat pretzels, I had to embark on an excavation clear across the building, to the other break room. The problem is that on Fridays, the cleaning people are off, so the guards shut off most of the lights back there. I ended up jogging the whole way back, in near dark, hands clutching my flopping boobs and chanting, “Oh my Christ, MSA rapist” over and over. (MSA is the company’s name, not some brand new Internet acronym whose memo missed your desk.) Once I returned to my desk, I was able to remove my coat, having been warmed up by my eschewal of MSA’s imaginary rapist.

It’s a good thing I can run in heels.

I really hope I have this job for awhile.

I quite like it. Well, except when Eleanore is in a bad mood and slamming down the phone and humming gutterally along to gangsta rap (west coast, whatwhat), or yelling at her daughter on the phone while gumming a handful of popcorn.

Those things I could take or leave. Or just leave; I’d prefer not to take them. The popcorn, I might.

I broke my blog. Barely had it for four days and I done went and broked it right down last night. This morning, Henry asked, “I was going to work on making your blog ‘pretty’ but I can’t log in. WTF did you do?”

The usual: clicked radio buttons next to descriptions I didn’t understand/fully read.

Papa H righted it just now which is fantastic because I have a lot I want to say. But I can’t promise it’s important.

I’m kind of experiencing curious pangs of withdrawal from LiveJournal.

I was talking to a co-worker, Bill, about it yesterday and he noted that I looked like I was coming down off heroin. I guess after six years (minus the two months I went on strike during the Great Nervous Breakdown of 2005) of diligent LJ patronage, I can’t really expect to quit cold turkey, no warning, and not experience some degree of shakes.

But now I don’t have to worry about stupid shit, like: Is this going to screw up everyone’s friends page? Am I going to annoy people if I post twice in one day? Will anyone get offended?

I just want to write. I don’t care about comments. I don’t care if it’s not funny. I don’t care if I post five times in one day. And most of all, I don’t care who doesn’t like it.

You know what’s always bothered me?

The lack of support and interest shown by most of my “real life” friends. Aside from Janna, no one who has known me from back in the day of high school or earlier reads my blogs. Keri used to (and still does I’m sure, but with motives not of a friendly nature) but I think her Blue Collar Comedy-lovin’ mind was too rednecked to grasp a lot of what she read. Brian was incredulous when I told him I decided to go back to school for English writing.

“But why?” he laughed. “You don’t write!”

Christy, a girl I’ve known since four years after birth, told me she didn’t “get” what I was writing about (she’s a lawyer) and that she didn’t understand why roasting my friends was funny. But then, she’s a fan of That Really Famous Blogger and if you say anything bad about her, she’ll get very upset.

“But she’s so prolific and she’s a Really Great Writer!”

It’s unnerving, and I think I got to the point where I let assholes like them and random Internet personas deter me and knock me down, and you know what? That wasn’t who I used to be! I used to be better than that and stronger than that, and that’s what I’m going to be again, with this fresh start.

Fuck all y’all haters.

A few weeks ago, I was seiged by some foreign and atypical desire to participate in holiday work activities, so I signed up for this year’s Secret Santa (except some half-Jewish dude got all riled up so they’re now calling it the Holiday Giftbag). I figure it will look good on my “Please let me into Heaven” resume, and also because I’m a spoiled bitch who loves getting gifts. On my info sheet, I listed all the pertinents: fifteen of my favorite music genres and my dislike of meat and things with flowers on them. For favorite candy, I put “the delicious kinds.” I hope whoever chose me knows to decipher that as, “I am holding a box of fine confections of the cacao persuasion. Now I ask myself, ‘Are these of a quality high enough for even the Queen of England herself to pop between her dry matronly lips?'” In other words, please don’t give me a bag of M&Ms.

I was hoping that I could really change the life of whomever I drew from the lot. Maybe gift them with an original Somnambulant piece of fine, museum-quality art or a trinket to store poison or cocaine. Or poisonous cocaine.

But today, I picked Letisha (after I picked myself, durr). Letisha works daylight and sits two workstations down from me. She has the distinction of being the loudest, skilled gum popper I’ve encountered this side of the high school bleachers and I have a strong hunch that she’d make a fantastic lesbian. According to her fact sheet, she does not like bats or clownes (sic), but has a love affair with r&b and all of its lusty subgenres (especially those that are “smooth’), which she might possibly listen to with her teddy bear collection while lighting melon-scented candles.

At the end, she listed three things she’d like to receive, so I know that if I bought her a “dvd by Tyler Perry” or a picture frame (hello, flea market) she would be a satisfied customer of the Erin Holiday Store. I’m not sure she would be terribly pleased with my original art or The Cure’s Greatest Hits, but I know that food containing the possibility of peanut traces would be alright, because she has no food allergies.

I’m really thankful for this list, because now I feel like I know her a lot better. She went from an aggro gum-smacking, fake-laughing weave-wearer to a Snickers-eating low-brow comedy watching aggro gum-smacking, fake-laughing weave-wearer. I was really quite judgemental of her before this.

At least I know what I won’t be getting her. Gum.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

This is a big pile of shit.

Giant shit.

Shit from a giant.

With hemmorhoids.