This Shit Is Bananas

I needed the vacation. Ohio is so relaxing. I arrived to a home cooked meal on Friday night, which was probably my first in two or so months. My mom called me while I was still at the airport in New York to ask what I wanted for dinner and I replied with much desperation, "It doesn't matter. Anything with mashed potatoes!" My flight was overbooked, but for once something went right and I was able to muscle my way onboard. In retrospect I should have taken the free ticket and gone later, but the weekend was going to be short anyway and I didn't really want to waste my day in the US Air terminal at LaGuardia.

I went out to a pub on Friday night and came home to fall asleep pretty early. When I woke up on Saturday I ate about a half a pound of dark chocolate peanut butter cups and then got a piano lesson from my sister (two instruments are better than one I figure, and I hate looking at a piano like it is a piece of the space station). I spent most of Saturday working in the yard, which was wonderful beyond words. You really have to go to Ohio in the spring to appreciate how great the air smells, how the wind feels, how the trees sound. It was late afternoon in May but the sun warmed me like it was July. We have this enormous plum tree in my front yard, and it was the only thing I worked on all day, pruning its branches and trying to go as slow as I possibly could. It was the nicest afternoon I have had in a long time. The evening was . . . bananas.

I was no where near ready to go when our predetermined designated driver for the night showed up in the driveway. I sincerely wanted to just throw on some clothes and go, but for some reason the shirt I had balled up in my suitcase was all wrinkly, and the pants were . . . bananas. So I threw open my bedroom window, naked, and yelled out to my mom in the yard.

"MOM! Can you run around front and tell Meredith I will be ready in ONE MINUTE?"

A half hour later we were on our way. We got lost and passed it twice, and when we finally arrived at the restaurant that was hosting our five-year (and in what could have been a hilarious episode in cross-generational awkwardness, someone else's 50-year) reunion we were a bit surprised at how few people showed up. I wasn't expecting much, in fact I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting from a high school reunion in the first place, but this was definitely not it. But, booze in hand, I chatted up a storm. And it was good fun. Not what I expected, but good fun. And all night long the DJ was telling me that this shit was bananas, reminding me how to spell it on several occasions. In case you were wondering: b-a-n-a-n-a-s.

For most of the night, the show I found the most wildly entertaining was the one going on in my head. It's a rude awakening when you run across people you went to high school with: here is a collection of childish assholes who are totally out of their element. We are all 23 now, most of us with college degrees, many of us with some very adult sounding things on our resumes. So what do two childish assholes say to each other when it's no longer socially acceptable to be childish or, when not wearing a suit, an asshole? I ran several experiments.

"JJ! It's so good to see you!"

And I'm thinking, "It is? In what way? I don't remember ever talking to you in my life. What could possibly be good about seeing someone you didn't know existed till you read my name tag? Are you aware that I forgot your name too, and that these name tags were a damn good idea?"

But all that came out as, "You too! You look great!"

Bananas.

Ohiomg

Have you ever been led across a continent because you were curious and bored? I'm back home in beautiful Ohio (the air smells so good) for the weekend because I have a five year high school reunion to go to. I shot this down months back with a flat out no, but over brunch a while ago my friends and I were talking and we all developed this morbid curiosity about the whole thing. Did I mention this brunch had unlimited champagne? People keep asking me if I realize this is a pretty pointless social gathering; I am aware. I'm going almost in spite of myself, because if this wasn't me I'd be laughing at what a stupid trip it is. It's definitely not going to be the night of my life, but there is a bar so it might be the night of my week. I can't wait to tell people that I am a vagrant. I think it will catch them off guard. I was going to make up a crazy story like I am a porn director, but one of our classmates is actually a porn star so she would probably rat me out.

We Have Normality

I got told by a temp agency earlier this week that I didn't have enough experience. That's right; I do not have enough experience to temp. This place wanted two years of corporate office work. I thought they were joking, and for a minute I appreciated the wry sense of humor involved in creating such an inexplicable rule. I really would love to see the clientele that frequents this agency. Burnished and brandied by several years of high quality work in a stable office, I can see how these over-experienced junior analysts can't wait to break free from the chains of health benefits and paid vacations and start earning an hourly wage, dammit.

Needless to say, I was pretty offended. Mostly because during the course of earning a Bachelor's degree at a fine Research University, I was never taught how to alphabetize manila folders or put a call through to Judy in Marketing. I'd go back and demand a refund, but due to my apparent lack of minimal business skills, I would probably get lost in the bursar's office and end up wandering aimlessly between the cubicles, knocking over plants and saying all the wrong things at the water cooler.

I've been pursuing what I would call my dream job, at least at this age, with questionable luck for the last few weeks. I decided it was time to take the sword to the Gordian and just show up in their office to speak with someone in Human Resources. Pretty safe strategy is what everyone told me. So I got myself all good looking and headed up to the office. When I got there I noticed that the normal receptionist was not there, and instead was a temp, who, before I rounded the corner, I had assumed must be working on his doctorate since he managed to land such a lucrative position for an entire afternoon. But like I said, I had not yet rounded the corner. When I did, my mind was blown.

This man did not belong in this office anymore than this composition belongs in the Library of Congress. He was clad in enormous basketball shoes, jeans that were at least a foot longer than his legs and ridden with holes - and not the semi-acceptable "fashion holes" that Abercrombie will ruin your pants with for an extra $50 ... these were of the "I performed the yearly maintenance on my riding lawnmower this morning before heading off to work" persuasion - and a size XXXXXXXL black T shirt with neon pink and yellow designs all over the front, whose sleeves met with the festival of very professional tattoos on his forearms. Around his neck was a gold chain thick enough to pull a trailer, and from that hung what I can only assume was a solid gold dinner plate.

I shit you not friends, this was a vortex of what-the-fuck unlike any the Universe has ever known. Here was a guy who looked like he had just finished filming a music video, and he was seated at a pristine wooden desk surrounded by glass doors and comfortable office chairs. A lady in a pant suit was sorting papers at the fax machine. On the wall behind his head hung an engraved plaque with the company logo on it. It was almost as if he had wandered in from outside, lost, and decided to sit down for a minute before asking for directions. It was like a dog on a toilet.

To my great surprise, this guy didn't know how to work the phones, and said he couldn't just go back and drag someone out to the front without an appointment, nor did he know how to schedule an appointment. Instead he suggested I go home and call Human Resources, or if I really wanted to I could come back later and axe someone.

Now, I really do want this job, but I thought his suggestion that I hack up one of the staff members and take their place was a bit extreme, so I decided to call it a day. I did learn an important lesson though. If you want to temp in New York City, you don't dress like you want to work for them, you dress like you will fucking kill them.

Zolpidem Tartrate

I hope I haven't given anyone the impression I am interesting. I wouldn't want to mislead you. I got to chat with an old friend last week for the first time in over a year. We were doing the usual explanations of what had been going on during our unfortunately long interim and we both started fidgeting because we were avoiding the horrifying obvious: we are totally boring. Mara was always way cooler than me though, so I figured she was just being nice. We continued...

"Sometimes I look at myself and I'm like, Mara, I'm so embarrassed for you, what are you doing?"

And I realized, score! I'm not the only one! Perhaps I got carried away in my excitement, I'm not sure. I like to read a lot, and half the TV I watch is CNN, and I like to go to bars that are not loud so I can talk to people, and sometimes friends need shots of morphine to sit through my conversations, and I don't like pop music. I was pouring all this out, and it was coming in torrents and I was fermenting in my awesomeness, and then it all came crashing down again.

"I mean, I read a lot, and it's really interesting to me, but I can see how from a third-person perspective it could be boring -"

"Wait. Wait. Who's the second person? The book?"

"..."

"See, I was with you until you started personifying inanimate objects. You need to get out more."

How Long Is Yours?

This was graduation week at NYU, and if my calculations are correct that means I have been a graduate for an entire year. In some ways this week was more gratifying than my own graduation. Maybe that's because I was so busy at the end of last year that I didn't have much time to do anything in the way of celebrating. So I seized the opportunity this time around and spend the last four (or was it five?) nights very solidly drunk. I'd like to say I planned all this in a fantastic effort to reclaim some of my lost college drinking days, but the truth is I had no idea I was at a graduation party on Thursday until I was three drinks into the affair.

I didn't feel out of place there, maybe because I haven't really noticed the passage of time. In fact, the last several years of my life are a bit of a blur. I feel like I don't really belong; like I am lost in a foreign city, or even another planet. Something is out of place. I am a part of something huge, I know that much. But what it is, I am not sure, and where it is, is light years beyond my sight. I have these rushes of energy, these thoughts I can't quite grasp, and they seem alien to me, because I am not able to set them a place here on the cold, boring earth. Then again, this all might be because I am 23 and I am not supposed to have a clue what the fuck is going on.

But it still weighs on me for reasons I can't really understand. I find it a bit unhealthy to have such a generally unhappy aura, especially when the reason it is so is generally undefined. I was talking with a friend about this a few days ago, and I kept wondering out loud when things would settle down. Surely there has to be a point when these seas won't be so rough, and I can reclaim the bliss I lived in for so much time before now?

This conversation is one I seem to have pretty regularly, almost to the point where if I wasn't me, I would stop hanging out with myself. But anyway, we talked and nothing changed, because that's what happens when you talk about this, and he eventually asked me how long I had been feeling this way. I was hurt by the thought, but it didn't take me long to realize it's been most of the last three years. He only said a few words in return:

"That's pretty standard."

The Shattering of the Stars

When I was younger I used to read ghost stories. I think the reasons I did this are complex enough to merit several pages of self-reflection. I am totally serious. But that's not the point. The point is, I can find no scientific reason why my house is not haunted. In fact, were I still into the genre as much as I once was, I would be concerned. The lack of supernatural harassment in my present world would have puzzled nine-year-old me, so much so that I would have feared for my humanity.

I remember reading once about a study, such as there can be, on poltergeists. They are not like normal ghosts, which were apparently human in their day. Instead, poltergeists are believed to be a projection of pure emotional energy, so alive with power that they take on their own form. They are said to be an actual excretion of neglected anger, or frustration, or love, or whatever, and because they were never dealt with, and never took shape in the place where they were born, they just sort of wander around and smash dishes and pout. So basically there are certain people that are so wired with metaphysical energy that they just start pooping out ethereal teenagers.

But that's not the point either. The point is that I am drunk and I don't know what I am saying. But I do know that I need a place for my ghosts. I have a habit of letting those vapor trails fade out of existence without making an effort to shatter a window or two in their names, and for my own peace of mind, I would like it to stop. So here they will go.