Plain Layne

2002-08-24T00:19:00.000-05:00

Is evil something you are? Or something you do?

So I reread American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis' most challenging work. My initial experience with the novel was a disaster. Nothing, and I mean nothing, prepared me for the rhythm of his writing, oscillating from sublime to banal to horrific (although in his defense, most of the violence is implied rather than described). I was also terrified by the almost incomprehensible misogyny -- real misogyny, not the feminist complaint -- of Ellis' protagonist, 26 year old uberyuppie Patrick Bateman, who tortures and murders so many women in the novel that I eventually lost count. As the pace of his killing increases, I freaked out and skipped ahead to the final chapter, seeking some sort of neat denouement, only to be denied even that. From the first line of the book -- "ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE" -- to the last -- "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT" -- Ellis jails you in a 399 page nightmare. There is no waking up.

A despicable read, I decided. And lost all respect for his work.

That was years ago, when I was playing rugby and most of my friends were campus feminists and I was drifting my way to a degree in women's history. I remember being deeply impressed by Naomi Wolf's indictment of the novel -- porn for rapists and murderers, basically -- and feeling smug in my borrowed dismissiveness. My lemming phase, I guess.

Now the first thing that strikes me is the title -- American Psycho. Ellis is reclaiming the psycho as a defining American archetype, inverting the cult of our beloved uniqueness, and simultaneously implying this dystopia could twist any citizen into a psycho. The book cover -- a stock yuppie headshot -- is a disingenuous copout. It should've been shiny foil reflecting you back to yourself.

Turn the pages and you plunge into a horrific satire propelled by Ellis' bottomless disgust with the social troposphere and capitalism's "greed is good" mantra. Life is a superficial pastiche of new restaurants and trendy clubs, hyphenated firms, pop music, amorality, celebrities, semen. Women are first names, hair color, big tits or not. Men are last names and little else. Clothing is fetishized until people are nothing but what they wear -- "four-button double-breasted linen suit by Redaelli, a cotton broadcloth shirt by Ascot Chang, a patterned silk tie by Eugenio Venanzi, loafers by Brooks Brothers..." Conversations do not occur. Everybody just talks past everybody else.

In this context Bateman is a work of creative genius, the perfect combination of hyperbole, plot device and narrative perspective. Ellis gives no biography, explaining him only as the mundane product of extraordinary privilege -- trust funds, prep schools and the Ivy League, sinecures at elite firms on Wall Street. In having everything -- and handed to him, no less -- you can only infer that he has nothing, no moral center, no sense of self, no capability to feel. Killing is his only means of proving to himself that he's actually alive, but you have to infer that too. He only observes, never explicates.

The intersection of Bateman and his rarified cosmos is a terrible place, but that's the whole point. Your horror deepens as you realize they're really one and the same evil, personalized in the character of Bateman, depersonalized in the sociocultural tableau. Superimposition becomes conflation. Bateman notes that his conscience and pity and hopes have disappeared ("probably at Harvard" Ellis adds gleefully) as if he'd become a personification of Reaganomic markets. He tries to cook and eat a girl and fails, because he's never prepared a meal in his life before. He kills indiscriminately and nobody notices, confesses his crimes and nobody cares. When you finally reach the end of the novel, you know how to answer the moral crux -- "Is evil something you are? Or something you do?" -- and you hear Bateman/America speaking:

"Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliche, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in."

2002-08-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

I feel like leaving northern Minnesota all over again

Leave it to Kev to link something as inadvertently comedic as this article about Minnesota marriage demographics.

A sampling of the tourism-brochure testimonials about northern Minnesota, including my hometown of Koochiching County, with commentary by me (because I just couldn't resist):

"I suppose the lack of economic stability up here, with feast and famine, would be a factor in putting a lot of stress in a relationship."

To translate, feast means hitting the jackpot at the tribal casino. Famine is everything else.

"Too much togetherness over a long cold -- not just winter -- but a cold spring. That seems to be an issue."

What a crock. Everybody knows it's not the cold springs that ruin a relationship, it's the cold summers.

"There's not a lot to do. We're so isolated. Our winters are so long."

Reasons 1, 2 and 3 why you should move to northern Minnesota.

"Nights get real long and cold and people say there's not a lot to do, and they drink."

Don't ask me why it's so hard to flip on the TV. It just is.

"a lot of times hard work is associated with drinking."

Well, duh. Drinking is hard work!

"The computer -- I have seen any number of people lately where he has gotten into porno and that has broken up the relationship. Up here, in our neck of the woods, even poor people have computers."

In small towns where everybody knows everybody else, internet porn will always be more popular than strip clubs. Especially if you can't afford a lap dance.

"We have a lot of the males in the northeast part of Minnesota who are perhaps a lot more traditional in how they view things."

Not just more traditional, people. A lot more traditional.

And I have relatives who wonder why I ever left...

2002-08-23T13:54:00.000-05:00

Skirting the chasm called me

I had an interesting conversation with Nat this morning. She was in the kitchen, babysitting toast in the broiler since our toaster died. I was in the bathroom fixing my unfixable hair.

"Guess how many hours I worked yesterday?" I heard her ask.

"Too many?"

"20."

I nodded at the girl in the mirror. "Too many."

"Yeah. Like, the whole week."

"I know. But you told me the audit is almost -- "

"They did? Really? Boy or girl?"

That's when I realized she was actually on the phone to somebody else. Suddenly my words were meaningless, out the morning's pores and gone, and I felt a pang of betrayal.

On good days I can laugh at my abandonment issues. This isn't a good day. Too much happening too fast. The words of a presumed friend turn edgewise and slash me like razors. Tensions with my adoptive family boil over. I'll never find who made me. Rejection already looms in the first kiss with a boy.

I called in sick to waitress work. But that's the only concession I'm making.

2002-08-22T22:48:00.000-05:00

Sexless and the Cities

Tonight my life was an episode of Sex and the City. Only without the sex.

It never used to be this way. Trisha and Erica are usually diaphragm-deep in sex. And I even dragged Natasha along. You'd think a Southern belle with flashing eyes and fake funbags would be sloughing boys like dermis.

We all have our excuses. Bri-dog is away on business, leaving Trish with a rock on her finger to keep her company. Erica is divorcing. Nat is immolating herself on the pyre of Corporate America. Me, I blame Camp Snoopy.

After we talked Erica's one night stand to death, the conversation turned to masturbation. The safest sex. One of us (I won't say who) just bought a new vibrator and adores it, so we chatted about battery-operated love. I even told my vibe-in-the-freezer story to Nat, who'd never heard it before. She laughed. Knowingly, maybe.

Three awesome chicks who have two marriages and four engagements between them, and their most enduring relationships are with sex toys. Mine too, if you don't count the dysfunctional shit with Mark.

I could've spared myself a lot of heartbreak and never did.

2002-08-21T21:39:00.000-05:00

Never stop

My insomnia was dining on the small hours of the morning. I got the leftovers. Stark flashes of lightning, then thundercracks. The streetlight occluded by tamarack boughs. A head like a torrent.

I was predictably industrious with the time. I finished rereading American Psycho, unpacked some of Nat's boxes for her, reorganized the spice rack, snarled at the mosquitos sheltering on the screens.

I also wrote my former project manager an email. The process was excruciating. I had to work and rework and re-rework my nervous words into a confident invite to the State Fair this weekend. Then I took a deep breath and closed my eyes and clicked the send button.

I finally slept like a dead girl.

Checking my email this morning, I discovered he'd replied during insomnia of his own. The timestamp gave me a chill, as if our lives were already aligning into resonance. But that was nothing compared to reading that yeah, he wanted to see me again. Today.

My heart stopped, then started off again, faster. Then I felt nauseous. Today? But I got no beauty sleep at all! I'd need to give myself a facial just to freshen up, and wash an outfit from laundry stacked in piles so high that Nat is naming them after mountains, and and and...

I'm never at my best unless I'm stressed. Diamonds aren't formed without pressure. Neither are fossils, I suppose.

His email mentioned a tee time and the need for a contingency plan, which I was supposed to suggest. It was a gloomy day with low scowling clouds that kept leaking rain, so I assumed we wouldn't be golfing at his club again. I went to shower and think about it.

Another email was waiting for me when I returned to the computer. How about if we met halfway at the Mall of America? I blinked in dismay. I was going to suggest something more haut monde, like a stroll through the Walker and a late lunch at Origami, where I could indulge my sushi addiction and show off my chopsticks flair. Did he extrapolate from my State Fair invite and figure me for the childishly shallow type or something?

Much worrying ensued.

We rendevouzed in front of Snoopy's water bowl at Camp Snoopy. Oooh the romance. But he looked adorable in a black Jack Daniel's baseball cap and madras shirt and baggy chinos, stubble shadowing his jawline and mouth. I'm not sure how adorable I looked, but I wore lowrider jeans and a tank top with tropical flowers and strappy wedge sandals.

I never doubted that we'd have fun, but I worried that an experience worthy of bragging about to his guy pals might be difficult to achieve. In fact, it turned out to be the best date of my life, and hopefully his too. We tore through Camp Snoopy like kids, radiant and wild. We built a Lego version of the company's org chart in arabesque 3D. We flirted amidst the racks and display cases of Victoria's Secret while I shopped for unmentionables. And we ate a very silly lunch at Hooter's, since neither of us had ever been there before.

By the time he walked me to my Bug, my voice was hoarse from laughing so much. I'd also become adept at invading his personal space. Him, not so much. Making me chase to see if I would. But suddenly he was close behind, spinning me around and pulling me into his embrace, a gesture so smooth it almost knocked the wind out of me. His lips were soft and warm and gentle, then not so gentle, then I felt like I was setting off for a place I'd only heard about, my heart going madly, and I wanted it to never stop.

2002-08-19T21:18:00.000-05:00

9.25 ANUs

Annoyance should be measured in Anna Nicole units. By that metric, I just had a 9.25 ANUs conversation with my mom. Imagine nine and a quarter Anna Nicoles grating on your last nerve. Or better yet, don't.

I know a girl who has two families, and tonight she isn't particularly fond of either of them.

2002-08-19T20:17:00.000-05:00

I plot

I will be bronzed flotsam on the Yucatan coast, sipping pulpy grapefruit juice from a glass bottle, the wind flirting with my hair, strolling deserted dusty streets to an office where plaster cracks adorn the walls, coming home to an empty house that creaks in the shimmering heat, playing reggae but only quietly, a humble kitchen where I make tomato sandwiches, open windows shaded by palms, the bed draped with mosquito netting, haunting the ramshackle pueblo hovering on the white lip of the Gulf, my accent a dull memory, a small purse to hold my hopes.

2002-08-19T12:17:00.000-05:00

News from the blogosphere

Hey everybody, it's Kev's birthday today! Stop by and give back some love, you hear? He already gave us the greatest gift of all -- losing that mullet.

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. Tim dispensed with the default Radio template. And changed his handle to mixed case, as in McGyver5. What next, for the love of god? Custom graphics?!?

His brother Matt was also sucked into the blogging vortex. I wanted to challenge him to a game of pickup hoops -- until I learned that he's a foot taller than me. Maybe we can play horse instead.

Any remaining non-bloggers in the McGuire family, please report for duty!

Rexxxie, nee Rex followed a link and discovered he had the Big Media job of his dreams. Should we expect his blogging to become rife with advertorial? Stay tuned...

I was introduced to Arrancia by Jim. She's the other bartender in Salt Lake City (isn't that one too many?) and a brassy gal, to pay her a Natasha compliment. And I see her comments are working, yaayyy!

2002-08-18T22:45:00.000-05:00

If I could steal eyeballs, I would

Melancholy librettos drift on the night breeze. Knowing Spanish may be the next best thing to knowing Italian, but I can't catch enough words to identify the opera. Especially not when Nat is watching The Anna Nicole Show. Hell will be listening to Anna Nicole's inane nasally whining in surround sound. Forever. I'd ask Nat to turn it down, but she's still mad at me for the toad trick.

There's a prolix post to be written about the aural clash of high and low cultures in our neighborhood, but after a double shift at waitress work my brain is about as sharp as a baguette. Besides, I actually watched a movie tonight.

I was the last girl in America to see Amelie. But you know me. I hate to waste precious time on cinema -- or novels, or even music -- that aren't works of art. So I wait for the verdict of history.

Amelie is a frothy delight, poignant and whimsical and happy-ended. I found myself identifying with the titular character, an introspective pixie who's loathe to risk her heart. We're both waitresses, after all. But her love interest didn't work for me. If only he worshipped classic bass plugs or tightly-coded device drivers, instead of collecting discarded photo booth picture strips.

I was also struck by the seeming resemblance between Paris and Mexico City. Chapultepec could've been a set for the movie. And god do I miss the metro.

Anna Nicole was banished on the hour, but so was the opera. The night breeze is an orchestra of crickets now. It's a caress on my bare skin. If I close my eyes...

2002-08-18T10:15:00.000-05:00

I wish I was too poor to afford pain receptors

Last night was an unexpected sneaky chaos of new acquaintances, laughing, fashion snarkiness, and climbing in and out of the backseat of a minivan that had no business in Uptown. I was too tired for fun -- for anything except sleeping, really -- but Trish can be very insistent when she needs to party. Unfortunately the rock on her finger scared off all the cute boys, but I suppose that's the whole idea.

I woke up with fireworks in my head. Brunch with Erica will be an ordeal. So was getting out of bed, but I survived that.

This morning was breezy and sun-splashed and relaxing, the kind of morning I wish I could bottle and save for February. Nat and I weeded the jungle on the patio and discovered flower pots underneath. And decided that global warming may be a product of her home entertainment system. Lights in the neighborhood dim when she plays a DVD on the outsized TV and turns on surround sound. And she just added a Tivo.

I also found a toad on the side of the condo. He seemed hopelessly lost in the hostile landscaping of multicolored rock and shaved lawns. I swooped with my palms open and caught it gently and cupped it in my hands, the motions a muscle memory from my years growing up at the resort. Then I brought it over to show Nat. She screamed when I opened my hands a little and it jumped out at her. I'm still not tired of that trick.

2002-08-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

EVOL-ution

I'm listening to Sonic Youth's EVOL and loving every discordant risky moment of it. And to think I mostly knew them as trip hop samples and remixes I'd heard in the clubs of LA and Tijuana. What an amazing band. But the further back I follow their timeline, the more I wonder -- did they evolve, or just devolve? Because none of their newer stuff grips me the way EVOL does.

I wonder the same thing about my blog, or more generally my personal website. I've always tried to create quality content, a subjective term that revolves around my needs and experiences at any given moment. You have to understand -- these posts and stories and poems are my only opportunity to be creative, to make some art of my life. And I desperately want to feel like there's some art to my life.

But I'm not delusional, either. All self-expression is a search for affirmation, for the resonance of words and souls. The cosmos is a little smaller and a little warmer when there's an unexpected email waiting in your inbox, or comments from your friends. I can tell myself I'm making art, and every once in a while you might agree, but mostly I'm seeking connection. It can be lonely to be me.

It can be lonely to be me.

And I just typed that line a third time, which makes it...a trope? But I deleted that last third, so call it mere personality blog angst instead.

I'm feeling performance pressure for the first time in my blogging career. Some wickedly cool ex-coworkers are donating web hosting and arranging for me to get an unused domain. Soon I'll be coming at you in the internet equivalent of Technicolor again. No banner ads, no bandwidth metering, no slow-ass loading. All because they think I'm worth reading without distractions. Yikes.

I don't have time to mess around with custom commenting scripts, so I finally tried out Haloscan's free commenting system (thanks Erik!). Zippy and clean so far, although that may change as more Enetation refugees flood in.

And omigod, you'll laugh out loud when you see the domain I'm getting...

2002-08-17T14:20:00.000-05:00

Fore!

I guess it's finally safe to admit I have a crush on my project manager -- oops, former project manager. It's hard to think in past tense, especially when my inbox fills up with forwards from the same old aliases. If I blinder my gaze to this monitor, it's like I never left.

I probably crushed on him from the very beginning. He's got something for every mooning girl. Uberboss by profession, LL Bean model by wardrobe, politician by temperament. Cute in a mass-produced Gen X action figure kind of way. But mostly, holding together his team and making project milestones despite kilotons of stress. After confidence, I've always thought grace under pressure is the sexiest trait.

He gave me special attention from the very beginning, starting with the decision to pick up my contract. Sure, he needed a DBA, and sure, I knew the company and wasn't afraid of its dire straits. But I always felt like there was more to it, like I connected with him somehow. I would catch him looking at me intently...but he seemed to be intent about everything, so maybe it didn't mean anything.

I floated around in a happy little daze sustained by his attentions -- chatty emails, a compliment during a team meeting, the occasional offsite lunch alone with him. He never made any moves on me, but our working relationship seethed with romantic tension, or so I imagined.

The fantasy fell apart when I blabbed about it to my podmate during an all-nighter. We were taking a foosball break on the abandoned third floor, a pool of fluorescent light in the darkness. He jumped back from the table like I'd poked him with a cattle prod. "Dude, time out!" he exclaimed, making his tattooed hands into a T. "You know he's got a girlfriend, right?"

My face felt oddly stiff. "It's just a crush," I managed to say. The words died in the stagnant air over the foosball table.

Weeks later I was summoned to his office for an update on the status of my contract. I let my gaze wander around the depressingly impersonal space. His girlfriend wasn't smiling at him from a frame on the desk or the bookshelves. The only picture was a goofy shot, him and some golfing buddies hamming for the camera while standing waist-deep in a water trap.

He noticed me noticing the picture. "You golf?"

"Not really."

"You'd like it." Again I thought I caught a hint of something in his voice, as if he was about to invite me golfing sometime, but he didn't -- until yesterday, the annual guest tournament at his country club.

I hung up the phone in a panic. Omigod, what would I wear? I tore through my closet, finding plenty of mall and club outfits, but nothing that belonged on the links of a private country club. Natasha finally tired of my hysterics and made me call Trisha. "I have the perfect outfit for you! It'll make you look like Rene Russo in Tin Cup," Trish promised. Except I barely know who Rene Russo is and I've never seen Tin Cup. Oh well.

That left me needing a set of clubs (renting a bag at his club would've been so gauche!). Nat has clubs, but in addition to the bigger bustline she's also got more altitude on me, so they were too long. Instead I called Erica, a certifiable golfing freak who I can look in the eye, and arranged to borrow hers. Turns out we're also the same shoe size, so I could even borrow her super-cool Nike golf shoes.

Outfit, check. Clubs, check. Super-cool Nike golf shoes, check. Breezy self-confidence and playful sensuality, um...

His country club is located on the west side of the Twin Cities in a suburb that's halfway to South Dakota. The Mapquest directions were two pages long. I left about a year early, never realizing that might not be enough. My fast progress on I-494 lulled me into a false sense of confidence...until the Bloomington Strip, a parking lot stretching to the horizon. A long dragging eternity later, I finally reached the reprieve of the Highway 5 exit. Thank god! I finished descending the exit ramp and floored it -- NOT. Even more traffic, so bad that stoplights were overwhelmed and state troopers were directing traffic manually. I noticed tour buses with "U.S. Open" on their marquees. Duh, the PGA Championship was happening at nearby Hazeltine. I should've left two years early.

Eventually I reached the country club, where a broad curving turn-off carried me past a deceptively modest clubhouse and into a big parking lot crowded with midlife crisis cars and luxury SUVs. I'd barely gotten out of the car before an eager high school kid bounded up. "Ms. Johnson?" he panted. "I'll get your bag and show you in!" I glanced around the parking lot suspiciously. Nobody else seemed to be getting this kind of treatment.

I followed the kid around the side of the clubhouse building to a staging area where golf bags and carts and members intersect. He was emerging from the pro shop and broke into a face-splitting smile. "You made it," he said, slipping the kid a twenty. Apparently he'd told him to wait in front of the clubhouse and watch for my black Bug.

The other half of our foursome was comprised of Larry the director of club membership, a jovial scrawny guy whose most notable feature was a salt-and-pepper pencil mustache, and his buddy John, a shambling overweight wreck of a man who buys and sells companies like collectibles on Ebay.

We started on the 14th hole, a long par four that threaded through majestic oaks and tall rough and sand traps as wide as Pacific beaches. It was a beautiful vista from the elevated tee. And the round was all downhill from there, even though I managed to make a par for the first time ever (go me!). I also hit an incredible flop wedge right over a towering oak that must've been five stories tall and dropped it within inches of the pin, my best shot of the day. But my final score still ballooned past 100.

Afterward there was a late lunch in the clubhouse, an airy space with glass walls on two sides and comfortably expensive decor and berber carpeting in a cool mosaic pattern. An island bar divided the room into smoking and non-smoking sections. Most people had chosen to sit in the smoking section, which was already becoming hazy with bluish curls of cigar smoke. I noticed I was one of only two, maybe three women who were guests. The other girls were waitresses. Everybody except the bartenders and waitstaff was way older than us.

Lunch was a vegetarian's nightmare -- meat plate appetizers of exquisite cold cuts, stunningly thick pork chops, honey-baked ham. We drank beer and laughed and listened to other members and their guests tell un-PC jokes about Jews and blondes and illegal immigrants. Everybody at the table shifted uncomfortably when I talked about living next to the border fence in Tijuana, and how only the brave and ambitious try an illegal crossing to pursue their dreams in America, and why we need to make life easier for the extended families that straddle the border. Then they told jokes about blacks instead.

The sun was stretching our shadows into loose-limbed aliens when he walked me back to my Bug, Erica's bag slung over his shoulder. He finally asked the question I'd hopefully imagined for so long. "You want to do something later tonight? Or maybe tomorrow night?"

But I didn't give him the answer I always envisioned. Instead I said, "You have a girlfriend, hey?"

"We're taking some time off from each other."

"What does that mean?"

He blanched with anguish, the kind I knew with Mark. The kind I knew from the inside out. "Hell if I know."

I stalled by saying I had to work all weekend, which was mostly true. He seemed disappointed and relieved at the same time. We made vague promises to do something next weekend, then said a long Minnesota goodbye that kept devolving into shoptalk about the job market ("tighter than an ass fuck" he called it).

It was the first time I'd glimpsed him as an ordinary person, rather than some omniscient uberboss. The first time he'd let me. I was no longer his contractor, another resource to be managed. He could finally be himself with me, and his honesty -- about impending unemployment, and struggling to pay the mortgage (and country club membership), and the uncertain state of his relationship -- was painfully touching. I wanted to kiss him very badly. Instead we hugged.

I wasted the entire drive home debating whether it was smart to put him off or not. Maybe that's my best chance with him, to enter his life when he needs a sympathetic girl who can give him the time and attention he deserves. So why does it feel like I'd be exploiting his vulnerability and his girlfriend's inattention? Or maybe any involvement with him is a recipe for emotional harm, and I need to let him work through his issues the way I've been working through mine.

You could talk yourself out of anything, my therapist would say. If I could still afford my therapist.

The sky was half-lit when I stopped at Erica's place to drop off her clubs this morning. A strange car was parked in the driveway. Flaming red Audi with a vanity plate. She answered the door in her silk robe, glowing the way you glow after a night avec sex, sans sleep. It's been a long time since I saw that look in the mirror, but I still remember it. Enviously.

"Damn, girl. You're not even divorced yet!" I teased, handing over the bag.

She tried to feign embarrassment and gave up, beaming instead. "Buy me coffee later and I'll tell you all about it," she giggled.

I wonder why I always want to live according to beginnings and endings, when life is just a messy process of processes, some never really beginning, most never really ending.

2002-08-15T19:02:00.000-05:00

Another Vignette from Waitress Work

The woman standing in the hallway to the restrooms was crying. I'd seen a more confident version of her at the bar, smoking, plain white blouse unbuttoned far enough to glimpse black lace underneath. Now she looked small and fragile, her mascara running. "I'm trying to understand," she said in a trembling voice to the man crowding her.

He was swarthy and reeked of Polo and reached for her with a tentative hand. A gaudy gold bracelet glinted on his wrist. The hand dropped.

"You say one thing and do another. There's just so much I can take," she sobbed, too upset to care if I heard as I walked past.

He mumbled something, I couldn't hear what, but a man explaining himself to a woman has a certain tone.

"But it's different for a woman!" she cried. Then the door swung shut behind me and their conversation was lost in the strident hum of ventilation fans.

2002-08-14T23:36:00.000-05:00

There is No Such Thing as a Lonely Cineaste

People say that going to the movies is like returning to the womb. But that's not right. Your eyes are one pair in a galaxy of eyes, all gazing with a kind of rapture at bright things flickering across a screen. You watch the same movement, have the same current running through your hearts. You're not alone at all.

2002-08-14T06:47:00.000-05:00

The Girl Who Didn't Know Her XML Parsers

Yesterday's highlight, if you can call it that, was an ultraregimented phone interview built around a loooong list of specific technical questions. Some were softballs I crushed out of the park, most I managed to answer without sounding stupid, but a few I totally flubbed. Unfortunately, the flubbage included a question about Oracle-specific commands, the whole reason I was being interviewed in the first place. I was also asked whether I considered myself an "Oracle expert". Note to self -- lie next time. And I couldn't explain the difference between DOM and SAX XML parsers, surprise surprise.

But at least I'm starting to get interviews. A contract will follow. It's just a matter of time. I'm a tireless force acting on the local geek market, wearing it down until someone finally offers me a gig.

2002-08-13T06:09:00.000-05:00

Anticlimactic

Tingly sleeplessness, and I'm urgently waiting on the passage of time. The hours will drain away. I know this. I've been here before. I just wish it was an outcome blamable on the marinara sauce I botched, because that marinara sauce is certainly deserving of blame. And then I would know what not to do for once in my life. Don't overdo the capers. Happiness should be such simple restraint.

I had a talk with my mom last night. Apparently, she and Drew were wondering how different our lives would be now. I admit to a moment of rapt enthusiasm for all the revelations I hoped to uncover, but there were none, not really. Nothing much changes. My life sits within a slightly different housing today, the lines and curves subtly altered, but the false dawn still teases and my name hasn't changed. My therapist was right when he predicted that I would be disappointed. I think they were somewhat disappointed too. The denouement of years should not be so anticlimactic.

Today the future balances on the invisible pivot between getting through and getting on.

2002-08-12T22:04:00.000-05:00

I Will Never Write About This Again

I parked in front of the decrepit house and watched the swampy sky lighten, the sun a dull orb climbing over thick pines. "Just show up in the morning and ring his doorbell" I'd been advised, so I took a deep breath and walked up the single-car driveway and stabbed at the buzzer until the door opened.

He hung in the doorway, a trembling hand on the jamb, his bloodshot eyes hammering at me like chisels. The moment seemed to drag into hours and maybe it did, maybe the day turned to night turned to day again before he finally said, "I know who you are." Then he said it again, but there was no triumph of recognition in his raspy smoker's voice. Just sadness. "You could be the ghost of your mother. Only prettier."

I thought he looked like a bowling ball in bedroom slippers. His hair was dyed an acrid shade of black and he wore it back in a scalp-ripping ponytail that showed his silvery roots. He suddenly lunged forward and embraced me, a painfully awkward moment. The overwhelming stench of cigarette smoke and stale sweat and cheap liquor almost made me vomit. He was wearing a gold chain, lost in the wattles of his double chin.

He grabbed my elbow and dragged me inside. My Nikes stumbled across a floor warped by age, or just leaks in the roof, as I followed him to a mildewed living room. I sat down on a patterned couch littered with doilies. He hovered nervously, not what you'd expect from a man with such fiercesome tattoos. Eventually he brought me instant coffee in a John Deere mug, the brim dirty with use. I thanked him and let the mug swelter in my hands.

Morning crept across the buckling floor while we talked in fragments. I'd start a painful question, then run out of words. He'd start a painful answer, then run out of...words, maybe. Or maybe something else.

Eventually a phone rang within the depths of the house, interrupting our introspective conversation/not-conversation, and he shuffled off to get it. I took one last glance around the living room -- at the pictures of him, and him with a family that included my mother -- and slipped out the door before he came back.

I could be her ghost, he said. Only prettier.

2002-08-11T14:48:00.000-05:00

Natasha and I

Last night I watched Jamie Oliver's new show on the Food Network, Oliver's Twist. If you think he looks familiar, that's because he's better known as the Naked Chef, which unlike the title of this blog is not truth in advertising.

Anyway, he was cooking for an ABBA revival band (those weren't wigs! yikes!) and at one point said "now add in 110 grams of butter". Nat was listening while reading her Entertainment Weekly and said "I wouldn't know 110 grams of butter if it walked up to me and grabbed my ass." After I stopped giggling, I pointed out that he uses a digital scale. Then she really made me laugh. "I never had to weigh anything in the kitchen before." Girl, that's because you never cooked anything in the kitchen before!

We're such a mismatched pair, the amazonian Southern belle and the waify North Woods chick. It's hilarious, especially when we're being chatty. If she's been talking to her friends back in Arkansas, or I've been talking to my family up north, our accents thicken into something almost unintelligible to each other. And then there's our regional dialects, my "uff da" and "hot dish" and "smorgasbord", her "bus-left" and "vittles" and "y'all". I joke that I need a Nat-to-English dictionary, she tells me life would be so much easier if I spoke American.

We look nothing alike, and talk nothing alike, and dress nothing alike. Her fashion cosmos is ruled by the trashy test. If it's trashy, she won't wear it. The list is so long that I barely bother to categorize it anymore -- Shoes That Look Trashy, Jewelry That Looks Trashy, Hair Binders That Look Trashy -- but our most heated arguments are about thong underwear. She's convinced thongs are an unspeakably trashy evil that must only be endured while wearing skimpy workout attire or seducing a man. To me they're the greatest thing since ribbed condoms. Otherwise my fashion sensibilities are dictated more by price than taste. I never saw an article of clothing that didn't look better on sale.

But she's not as discriminating when it comes to trashy media, which she consumes in terrifying abundance. She's the embodiment of the target demographic for all things chick, I swear to god. She reads Jane and watches E! compulsively and develops intense connections to characters (I hate to call them "people") on reality TV shows. She made me sit through a viewing of The Wedding Planner, which left me on the brink of homicide, but she was smiling through tears as if the movie had spoken to her soul. I tried for payback with Mulholland Drive, but she quit watching about halfway through.

Maybe her intake of trashy media and all those impossibly perfect female bodies is why she's so obsessed with remaking her appearance. The boob job is only the most obvious front in her war against the mirror (I tease her that her center of gravity is a couple inches in front of her solar plexus, heheh). She has half a sinktop of bronzing products, dyes and kinks her hair, lives for manicures and pedicures. I don't even tweeze my eyebrows, hey? Or get my teeth fixed, for that matter.

That's also the only reason she has a gym membership. She's never played a sport in her life before and she's not about to start now. Gyms are for making your body look beautiful. And sure, that's part of the appeal for me too, but I'm mostly there to challenge my physical limits and sweat enough to gross the guys out, and I love all the sports I've ever played (a short list, sadly).

She doesn't even have a computer. I'm not sure I could live without one.

But these differences are superficial, if amusing. You don't become fast friends with someone unless there's a lot of resonance, and Nat and I are eerily similar in formative ways. Like, we're both from conservative God-fearing families that raised us right. Literally. Drinking and smoking were almost as sinful as voting Democrat ("voting for an ass" as my dad likes to say). A woman's place wasn't necessarily in the home -- our families were more progressive than that -- but she should still be subordinate to her husband, father, brothers, or just whatever male happened to be in range. We grew up around guns (although she never learned how to shoot) and they don't bother us. We learned how to cook and sew, although nowadays Nat doesn't do the former and I don't do the latter. Dating was prohibited until we were waaaaaay old, and sex education came in the form of pamphlets and books with clinical diagrams, left somewhere in our bedrooms for us to find.

We seem like small-town girls because we are (well, I'm not even from a town, but anyway). She's fond of saying "Arkansas is a small town" and I think I know what she means, because I feel like I know everybody north of Bemidji. I don't, of course, but the feeling is what's important. I took it for granted until I moved to the big city and bright lights of the Twin Cities, when I was stunned to discover that people could live next to each other without even bothering to introduce themselves. That still seems so...I don't know, so wrong.

Our temperaments resonate too, particularly our love of wide open spaces and solitude and the quieter social pursuits, like lingering in java joints or half-deserted bars. "I want to muffle everything in cotton" she complained, standing on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, hands held over her ears to block out the noise of life in the city. We share an antipathy toward the club scene, unfortunately de rigeur for our generation, and we prefer to let girls like Trish do all the chasing while we wait for boys to approach us.

But most of all, we're recovering from relationships that left us holding all the pieces of our hearts in our hands. She left Arkansas because of her ex-fiance, a boy who poisoned the landscape with sad memories and stole a promotion at work meant for her. I've only seen one picture of him, a framed portrait of their engagement picture. They're captured forever in a moment of nervous happiness, faces shining with love and a patina of sweat, but the picture only makes her ashamed now. I tried to console her by saying at least he loved her enough to surprise her with a ring -- something I always wanted, if only as a pointless gesture -- but that probably just made it hurt even more.

2002-08-10T19:33:00.000-05:00

The Tip That Wasn't

Nothing says "Hey, I'm a big fucking dork!" like leaving your business card for a tip. That's happened three times now and I totally don't get it. What are these dudes thinking? It's not like I brandish a squeeze bottle of ketchup and tell everybody at the table to give me their names or else, so I can't put a face to the card. And belated apologies if they told me and I forgot, because remembering names is not part of my job description.

I'm not the kind of girl who's impressed by a title, if that's supposed to be the allure. Group marketing manager? What does that even mean? I need it translated into language I can understand, like "capitalist running dog" or "paper-mongerer at large" or just "HR asshole". And so what if you work for 3M or Target Corp or Northworst. Doesn't everybody in this burb?

Don't they even realize it makes them look like a cheap-ass? Business cards don't cost them a thing, but digging out a five from their wallet does. And they better not be expensing the meal or they're really screwing me! Why not a business card AND a tip? Maybe that seems like a blatant solicitation, there's more where this came from and blah blah blah, but I won't be offended. I'll just pocket the tip and toss the card.

Sometimes they scribble something meaningless on the back of the card, like the guy today who wrote "pga cap gray polo shirt call me i love your smile". Not only did he mention the two words least likely to incite me to fashion passion -- polo shirt -- but he also used a purple pen, and I've only known women to like purple pens. That pen originated with a wife, girlfriend or daughter. No matter which, I'm not interested.

Predictably I spent the rest of my shift daydreaming about substitution tips that would melt me. Like a cute emo boy leaving a copy of his Ph.D. dissertation with a note that said something like, "Read this and pretend you care". Of course, cute emo boys would never be caught dead in a suburb, let alone a Corporate Casual Eatery Destination, but that's why they call it daydreaming.

2002-08-09T19:08:00.000-05:00

Goodbye to Geek Work

My heart is so heavy it drags on the ground. Today was the end of geek work -- and without a replacement contract, maybe the end of this presumed career, my detour into databases memorialized by a few lines on a resume and whatever I write in this blog.

No contractor should expect equal treatment or hope for the same fate as employees. And I didn't. But that never stopped me from doing my best to belong, a contractor reprising her role as an adoptee. I could never truly belong to the team, the same way I can never truly belong to my family, but I try anyway.

This morning was wasted in hand-off discussions with an employee who could care less what happens to my database in the next three weeks. His all-consuming goal is finding a new job, surprise surprise. He went through the motions with me, nodding through a blank stare.

My project manager arranged a pizza and beer delivery at 1 PM, when the team gathered in the abandoned cubicle that houses our top secret Counterstrike server. It was a wake, basically, and he asked everybody to share their favorite memories of me. I'm infamous for proposing that we name our servers after the von Trapp kids in The Sound of Music, the common thread of reminiscence, although several teammates fondly recalled the time I shot the veep of sales in the balls with a Nerf bazooka.

Afterward there were awkward goodbyes and parting gifts. I received many handshakes, some air hugs, a few cards, and a pair of Spock ears. Nobody wanted to make eye contact with me, maybe because I was on the verge of tears. The mood was funereal, but not because they were losing me. I was just a metaphor for the company's demise, and their jobs and paychecks with it.

I glanced back briefly at the elevator, my cardboard box of belongings a dead weight in my arms. That was my last glimpse of the second-story office, all cube farms and whiteboards and fluorescent glare, the remaining faces turned my way in wan contemplation, a few hands raised in goodbye. Then the elevator doors slid shut, and that part of my life was gone.

2002-08-08T17:32:00.000-05:00

Happier Endings

Tomorrow is my last day at geek work. My project manager billed me out for the rest of the month, but the company won't honor his budget. Today I was called into an excruciating meeting with an HR asshole, and this email was waiting for me when I got back to my workstation:

Layne

To reiterate what we discussed this morning, tomorrow Friday Aug 9th is the final day of your contract. This is nine days more than the company's original commitment to fund your contract through the end of July, 2002.

I also want to be very clear that management never said that past July 31, 2002 we would proceed "pay check by pay check." Management will, however, compensate you for the work done through the end of business tomorrow. Past that date, you can continue to use your company email address for your own personal use until the end of the month.

Layne, I am really sorry that despite all our efforts, we have ended up at this point in the road. I do hope though that someday soon we can identify an opportunity to leverage all that has been done together and in so doing create a happier ending for us all.

(HR asshole)

2002-08-04T22:21:00.000-05:00

Waitressing

Woodbury's Premier Corporate Casual Eatery Destination (TM) is not the kind of place you will find the boy you want by the happy accident of delivering appetizers and entrees -- maybe even dessert -- to his table, making small talk and exchanging glances that jolt with desire, then scribbling your phone number on the bill for him to find, or just waiting for him to return again someday in a second alignment of stars. Those are fantasies I weave in my mind, bored while I work.

The managers are freshly-scrubbed martinets frantic with corporate dedication. Warnings are given about posture and the failure to project sufficient friendliness. We are supposed to bubble like champagne, infusing the restaurant with our enthusiasm and delighting -- yes, delighting -- our patrons. All this in episodes of 30 seconds or less, the maximum allotted time for any visit to a table, a limit that can only be exceeded if customer service requires it. We dread the open-ended "What's good on the menu?" and "What do you think we should drink?" and other forms of indecision that require more than half a minute to resolve. But even if it's totally dead, only a table or two per waitron, the no-lingering policy is still enforced. There is setup to be done, serving stations to organize and reorganize and re-reorganize, or one of us is sent home.

None of this bothers me. I find it vaguely amusing, as if I'm spectating in someone else's body, a real life reality show. Or I imagine myself as a glass-chewing efficiency consultant, formulating policy intended to wring the most from a waitstaff whose average age is 20, and I'm always surprised to discover that the operations manual I write in my head isn't much different than the one management uses.

I take my breaks outside on the loading dock with the cooks and smokers. Even in the darkness of a late evening, when brown faces and dark eyes are almost invisible, I can still see their smiles welcoming me, a flare of white teeth. At first they were unnerved that I speak Spanish, a gringa interloper eavesdropping on their world, and their conversations would suddenly drop into an awkward silence that left us listening to the roar of the highway. But now I'm party to talk about sending money home to Mexico and Guatemala and even Columbia, and how it only takes half a year to catch a fake Social Security number instead of the whole year it used to take, and what to do if the INS -- La Migra -- comes looking for you. I also listen to endless arguments about baseball and the Catholic Church pedophilia scandal.

A seasonal turnover is looming on the calendar. September means school, and most of the waitstaff will be returning to college and cutting way back on their hours or quitting outright. I should be going with them. Going anywhere, it doesn't really matter.

2002-08-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

The Tent is Leaking

the tent is leaking
damn it
Mark come fix the leak
come fix it

Mark
you ripped a hole in our
tent
and now the water won't go away
I can see the cloudbursts
when I look up
I get a faceful of rain

I have to finish editing your stupid paper
I have to write a letter to Drew
I have to hike into Zamora tomorrow
I don't want to do any of that
I want to stay in here
but the tent is leaking
damn it
Mark come fix the leak
the water is pouring on my head

I would sleep all day if I could

2002-08-03T20:06:00.000-05:00

The Girl Who Looked Like Nefertiti

Ned's statement was more confession than comparison, and he was annoyed when Kate rolled her mocha-colored eyes and laughed her dusky laugh. How could she argue? Yes, she had seen the bust, but Kate couldn't remember it clearly. Abandoning dinner for the moment, they hunted through her art history books -- most of them used, with prices in francs on big yellow stickers -- until they located a picture of the famous bust of Nefertiti. The nose was all wrong and the eyebrows weren't angular enough, but otherwise the resemblance to Kate was striking, even eerie, transcending the physical to extend to an overall impression of cool, indifferent beauty. Kate brought the book into the bathroom and carefully compared her reflection in the mirror to Nefertiti's bust, but had to admit that Ned was right. Of course, she had a better way to describe cool, indifferent beauty -- "a bitch on ice" she said of Nefertiti, and consequently herself.

2002-08-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Once and For All, the Superiority of vi (and Other Brilliances)

My Weekend with Leusckhe.org IV: AKMA h4X0R3d is the latest installment in Alex's brilliant and laugh-out-loud story arc. I cannot pimp this dude enough.

2002-08-02T10:37:00.000-05:00

Last Night

I loved last night. It was beautiful and perfect and calming, the long winding down of a day that ended on Brian's patio, with a view of the Minneapolis skyline and torches burning to keep the mosquitos away. We swam in the pool and admired Trisha's ring and laughed a lot. We also squeezed Nat's boobs.

Well, Brian didn't. "It's okay," Trish laughed, a happy pixie in the crook of his arm. "I don't mind. Really." But he claimed he already knows what implants feel like, and squeezing Nat's would just be gratuitous. I liked that answer.

Anyway, they don't feel like foam rubber. But they don't feel like real breasts either (although more like the real thing than I expected). I find it hard to describe. There's just a certain resiliency to them, which I'll probably envy in a few years.

He provided huge fluffy towels for after, when we sat around the patio table and gushed over photos from their two momentous weeks in the UK. You can't take a bad picture in England. The entire country is a conspiracy to imbue the mundane with rare beauty. And the historic landmarks -- way more than I knew existed, innumerable even, as if London is carpeted with them -- are so spectacular they take my breath away, just looking at the pictures. Imagine the awe of centuries ago!

They told stories of pub crawls (the pubs in London close at 11 PM? that's even worse than Minnesota!) and bargeing on the Thames and careening around on the wrong side of the road. In the midst of such happy madness, Brian's proposal, on bent knee in a meadow like a Monet. That day was spent in bed. Cue Nat and I sighing dreamily.

But their side trip to Stonehenge was undone by the tube strike. Apparently the roads were so choked with traffic that progress was measured in meters, not kilometers. They had no hope of reaching Stonehenge by their allotted window of time. The tour company was forced to turn the bus around, a process so slow that Trish and Brian and several others just got off and started walking back, not even waiting for their refunds.

Their wedding plans are still vague and talked about mostly as nots -- not the blowout bash thing, not a cast-of-hundreds, not in a church. If I had to guess, I will be the only bridesmaid and the ceremony will be informal, a close circle of friends and family gathered in a backyard flower garden. But I'm a notoriously bad guesser, so don't listen to me.

2002-08-01T08:37:00.000-05:00

Blogging and Bandwidth

This morning I was already experiencing the only downside to living with Natasha. You couldn't know it, but I was online via dial-up connection at the blistering speed of 28.8 kbps. Webpages were loading in minutes instead of moments. And forget file sharing. How long would it take to grab a single mp3? Days? It's just so 1997.

As I visited my usual links, it immediately struck me that the value of blogging is directly proportional to your bandwidth. I've always loved the linky goodness of Steven and Rex, but suddenly they just tease me with descriptions of websites I don't have time to load. Ditto for MeFi, where I found myself adrift without context.

I don't know whether this problem existed in 1997 (or whenever s-l-o-w analog modems were the only way you could access the net). Maybe people just made more time to surf the net back then, or maybe there weren't as many websites deserving as many links. But my time is kinda pinched between two jobs and the gym and pretenses of a social life, so I've come to rely on broadband to help me do the most surfing in the least time. Without it...

But maybe that's a good thing. Last night I was unpacking my books and aligning them on the bar, my impromptu bookshelf, and I remembered my life before broadband, when I fed my curiosity more than HTML and jpegs and Flash. I spent a week in the classroom of Arrancame La Vida, Angeles Mastretta's eloquent feminist reminiscence about the Mexican Revolution's legacy. Paul Theroux's Fresh Air Fiend -- half-travel writing, half-literary criticism, totally brilliant -- inspired me to be more observant in my own travels and write more diligently about them. I was oddly intrigued by Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho, even thought it brilliant in places, and now I look at junior executives with different eyes.

I don't read many books anymore. I see even fewer movies. I watch no TV except the occasional Frontline, or maybe a classic Iron Chef episode on tape. And why would I? The net can replace all of those media, if only imperfectly -- but not at these excruciating speeds. Maybe this is the perfect excuse for me to belatedly seek some balance.

(And omigod, PC Anywhere at 28.8 is worse than watching my leg hair grow! Changing directories? Editing files? Hello?)

2002-08-01T05:50:00.000-05:00

Waking Up in a Strange Place

This morning I awoke in utter darkness, feeling only the slippery embrace of my expedition bag, and panic reached through me like tendrils. Where the hell was I? On the Pacific Crest Trail at altitude, with a packful of food at my feet and a black bear pawing at the tent flap? Somewhere in Baja with a boyfriend next to me? Portaging on a canoe trip through the Boundary Waters? But then moonlight filtered through the blinds and I saw the shadowy confines of Natasha's spare bedroom, and the panic ebbed away.

It was so hard to say goodbye to Drew and her family, especially Casey. She was a tearful lock on my leg when I was moving out. Her reaction tore my heart to shreds, and we hugged desperately in the driveway while Brent rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. "You're only moving half a mile!" he teased. Which is true, but I was already missing my year when the sun rose and set with them. That was experiencing family -- experiencing love -- in a way I will never forget.

So I live with Nat now. We took a night off from the gym and got our workout by hefting boxes instead. Hers, not mine. She still hasn't finished unpacking after the relocation from Arkansas, so the spare bedroom was serving as a storage room. It was stacked to the ceiling with stuff, including a massive heirloom bar that we weren't strong enough to move by ourselves and a wicker rocker I wanted for myself. We made countless trips to the garage, where we piled boxes in front of the cars.

My move-in process consisted of showing up on her doorstep with my powder blue Samsonite hardshell, along with a backpack of books and my gym bag. I packed in 15 minutes before I left for geek work yesterday morning, and it took maybe half that long to unpack. After four moves and two countries in three years, I travel light. That means I'm crashing on the floor for a few days, until I can borrow a pickup and haul my futon over here (my Bug and her Miata are sexy rides, but I've owned jeans with more cargo space).

Incidentally, I have a new nickname for her -- Nataline, rhymes with Madeline. She's mad for Madeline dolls and books, enough to fill a large cardboard box as I discovered when I tipped it over. Growing up she always identified with Madeline, an impish redhead just like her. She even claims a Madeline tattoo is part of her future.

Um...

Sorry if this grosses you out, but I'm getting distracted by all this dripping. It's amazing how much you can sweat in a Minnesota summer -- even when you run at 5 AM! There's just no escaping this heat and humidity, not even with all the rain we've had. I feel like the sixth Great Lake!

Anyway, time to get ready for geek work and go see if I still have a job, or if I'm the first victim of the 30 day shutdown. Wish me luck.

2002-07-31T09:06:00.000-05:00

Secrets of the Teletubbies

If you have small children, or just live with them, you're probably familiar with the Teletubbies. Maybe too familiar. Maybe even horribly retchingly gouge-out-your-eyeballs-to-make-it-stop familiar. Regardless, you will love this page.

Where else can you find a pic of Tinky-Winky with no head? Or learn the secret location of the Tubbydome?

2002-07-30T21:44:00.000-05:00

Meeting Mark's Parents

I remember Vienna, Virginia as a sprawling mess of short glassy office towers and strip malls and ersatz colonial subdivisions and empty afterthought sidewalks just outside the dreaded "Beltway" of American politics, as I-495 circling Washington DC is called. Mark's mother, a formidable chain-smoking woman who wore Polo like a birthright, assured me that I wasn't seeing the real Vienna, or at least not all of it. Her Vienna sounded like a utopia designed by Stepford Wives, complete with a lovely downtown preservation district and famous country club and a wolf farm or something like that and I forget what else.

I kinda quit listening to her, distracted by all the namesigns and corporate logos and matching them up with items I read in The New York Times I bought at the airport before she picked me up. It seemed like Vienna's business sector was comprised of high tech companies laying off every employee in sight, industry trade groups sucking at the tit of corporate welfare, law firms that do more lobbying than lawyering.

She took me to brunch at an impossibly posh restaurant. Sprays of fresh flowers were the centerpiece of every table. The silverware was really silver. People at another table were sipping champagne. I knew enough Spanish to interpret the menu, which was in French. I craved a plate of huevos rancheros, but it was eggs Benedict for me. And coffee, as much coffee as I could swallow, to stave off the exhaustion of taking four flights to get there. She ordered lemon crepes and a bloody mary.

Predictably, the topic of conversation was Mark, the only possible connection between two women like us. She fretted endlessly about his slow haste in grad school, and whether he was safe in Mexico -- "it's not like he's doing his fieldwork in Cancun" I remember her saying -- and if his chosen career would ever result in wealth, or even a job. There was also a conversational undertow about grandkids, and I looked up from my plate to find her scrutinizing me. She was chewing like she had stones in her mouth, and my heart fell as I realized she wasn't impressed.

She dropped me off in front of an office tower that wasn't very towering at all. I rode the elevator halfway up and found a spacious corner office with a smoked glass view of the I-66/I-495 interchange. The office was lined with display cases almost bursting with African figurines, pottery and weapons. Mark's father was waiting for me, a florid man with a bald pate and wattled chin and scrunched-up face, as if he was perpetually on the brink of losing patience with the world. He was one of those "at large" types, semi-retired, consulting to the IMF and small sovereign debtors -- "preferably Caribbean islands" he joked.

He was a Pennsylvania farm boy who'd never been on a plane until he finished his MBA and flew to Africa in the late 1950s, serving a variety of colonial and independence governments until seeking new challenges back home. He grew nostalgic while explaining that no American executive could expect to advance up the career ladder without overseas experience, not in that era. "It's just what you did. International experience was so important we took it for granted. Not like now." His voice trailed off for a moment. "Now you can make CEO without setting foot outside this country." His tone sharpened. "You can become the President."

I mentioned some of the stories Mark had told me about him. Like, he knew the last British colonial administrator in Africa who was allowed to travel in a sedan chair. This was back in 1962. "Those colonial Brits," he laughed. "You've never met such arrogant pricks."

He told me a story about a tribal conflict which was raging in newly-independent Tanzania. That sedan chair-riding British administrator was serving in the twilight of adjoining Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and received a call from one of his border guards, who was worried that the violence might spill over the border -- just a simple guardpost -- and into a nearby village. The administrator told him to move the border marker and guardpost a couple miles deeper into Tanzania to make sure that didn't happen.

He was impressed by our travels across Mexico, and some of the emergency trips I'd had to make alone. "Aren't you scared?" he asked, more intrigued than concerned. "I hear it's no place for a woman to travel alone."

"Sometimes I get scared," I admitted, and my gaze fell to the glass-topped coffee table separating us, distorting my view of his pointy-toed Italian dress shoes. "But it always turns out okay."

He told me that Africa didn't used to be dangerous. "In the Fifties and Sixties we traveled all over the place. We'd throw Mark and his sisters in the car and go drive around the countryside for a couple weeks. We felt as safe as we do here. The only thing we ever worried about was a flat tire." He said it with a hint of disbelief, as if doubting that such an Africa could've existed. His eyes wandered past me, coming to rest on the display cases, and he related his one and only return visit. "Bandits on the roads. Pickpockets everywhere. It didn't even feel safe to leave the hotel. I'll never go back again. Too goddamn depressing."

Minutes dragged off the wall clock above his antique rolltop desk while he discoursed about the legacy of colonialism, and the post-independence brain drain, and the destruction of infrastructure in civil wars, and the problematic integration of Africa into the global economy, and blah blah blah. He would still be talking if Mark hadn't called. He was pulling into the parking lot eight stories below us. Time to drive up to Philadelphia so he could give a presentation at some conference -- and after Philly it was New York City, and then we'd finally return home to Tijuana by way of San Diego. I needed more coffee just thinking about it.

His father hefted his bulk off the leather couch, a twin of the one I was sitting on. He said thankful things while he escorted me to the elevator, where he shook my hand with odd ceremony. Probably because he knew he wouldn't see me again, but I didn't realize that until just tonight, when I was at waitress work and served a man who reminded me of him. This memoir was mostly written in my head while I triangulated between kitchen, serving station and my row of tables. I still wish they had liked me more.

2002-07-30T13:41:00.000-05:00

The Bug That Ate My Morning

And my lunch hour, and even some of my afternoon. Sigh.

In Oracle, a null is a null is a null. But SQL Server saves nulls as empty spaces. If an application leverages that idiosyncrasy as a FEATURE, then you've got a conversion issue bigger than Nat's boobies if you change the persistence layer from SQL Server to Oracle.

So I wasted all this time proving it's not my database's fault. But at least I don't have to waste the rest of the afternoon -- or week, or whatever -- fixing the stupid code.

2002-07-29T22:06:00.000-05:00

Love at the YMCA

The boy always wears wire-rimmed glasses, making him seem like an intellectual amidst the vaguely simian free-weight crowd at the Y. His tanktops suggest a fascinating life trajectory -- Brown, Pepperdine, Property of Sun Microsystems. And no wedding band. No jewelry of any kind, actually. Not even a Rolex, or just one of those irritatingly advert watches like a Timex Triathlon. Appealing to a minimalist girl like me.

"Hey," he says, nodding at me and pushing back his long blonde hair with a meaty hand.

First contact.

"Hey," I say back, trying to control my diction while cranking on the stairmaster.

He exhales deeply and stretches. Muscles twist like snakes under his tight skin. "I see you here a lot."

"Almost...every...weekday...night," I pant.

"Yeah." More stretching. His thighs tremble with lactic acid build-up.

"Yeah," I manage to say.

"So..."

I watch his handsome profile, waiting for the pickup line. Am I training for the Twin Cities Marathon? Who's my favorite French author? Do I have a boyfriend?

"...is that your friend over there?"

The romance film in my head jars to a halt. I twist around and see Natasha, a gigantic pair of boobies attached to a lithe body. Her discongruity is showcased in a velvety maroon unitard.

"Because I always see you guys together. I was hoping you could tell me her name. And..." Noticing my intent stare, he blushes a little and looks away. "...like, if she's available. You know?"

"The one with the big tits?"

Now he's the one staring at me.

I hold my hands a couple feet in front of my chest. "The booby one. Right?"

Blanching beneath his tan, the boy can't retreat fast enough. He almost stumbles over a weight rack, eliciting some warning "dude!"'s from other lifters.

2002-07-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

Mission Dentition

I have the dentition of a Deliverance stereotype, or maybe just a Brit. Unfortunately those teeth are in my mouth instead. Smile for the camera? No. Or if you want it in three words -- no no no!

My teeth weren't much harm to my self-esteem during adolescence, probably because I was homeschooled in the social isolation of the resort. Then high school happened. The boys didn't stare at my boobs while they talked to me, they stared at my mouth. In fact everybody did. And whenever the topic was braces or retainers, I could feel the weight of surreptitious glances. I didn't want to smile, didn't want to laugh, didn't even want to talk.

My family was struggling to keep the resort going, shuttering several cabins while I was in high school, so expensive dentistry was never even discussed. I had to change my behavior instead. I stood in front of my bedroom mirror for hours, teaching myself how to talk without opening my mouth very wide, and practicing what became my trademark half-smile, where I let the curve of my lips do most of the smiling for me. It was better than not talking and not smiling, anyway.

I always knew my social confidence suffered because of my teeth -- I'm wary of laughter, public speaking, chatting up strange boys, blah blah blah -- but it wasn't until I began therapy that I understood the connection with my self-esteem issues. I've never gotten my teeth fixed because I don't feel like I'm worth it (an insight so obvious I should've grokked it years ago). But my teeth are also "proof" that I deserve low self-esteem, that I'm justified in feeling negative about myself when I struggle with self-image.

My therapist is a pragmatist. He sees therapy as the primary component of self-esteem work, but if there's a contributing physical issue -- even if it's something arguably bogus, like the "need" for bigger boobs or Rogaine for a balding head -- he thinks the patient should explore solutions to that physical issue. If nothing else, it helps us confront our real or imagined shortcomings and how we feel about them.

So he's been nagging me to consult a dentist, and today I finally did. I opened my mouth and his face lit up like he'd just found a dog to kick. Gaps were measured. Xrays were taken. The potential need for dental prosthetics and orthodontic surgery was discussed so casually that I wanted to scream.

Afterward we strategized about payment options. I have enough money saved up to begin the process, but I'd rather not spend it now, or at least spend it on more pressing needs, like rent and stuff. He suggested waiting until I get insurance, since that will pay for some of it.

Anyway, a first for this site -- a picture of my teeth. Courtesy of Drew of course, since only she can catch me smiling like this, or maybe Mom and Dad. It's kinda lo-rez (and makes me look fat, ugh) but that's enough mortification for now. Click on the thumbnail for a grainy larger version if you dare.

And now you know what I'm hiding behind that smile.

2002-07-29T05:26:00.000-05:00

Answers to Four Truths and a Lie

1) I once backed over a cow with a pickup, killing it. Eventually.

True. Omigod this is a cringe-inducing memory. I was learning how to drive a stick on my Uncle Robert's farm, using his pickup to make tentative little maneuvers while I practiced my footwork on the pedals. I thought I'd already mastered the stickshift itself, but apparently I hadn't because suddenly I found myself in reverse. Nothing to panic about, since I was barely going faster than a roll. But I was 15 so I panicked anyway. I got the pedals all confused and wound up stomping on the gas, lurching backward over the electric fence into the cow pasture. A milker just happened to be standing there, watching my back bumper hurtle at it with bovine detachment. There was a sickening thud, a cliche better read than experienced, and this unholy bawl of a cow in pain. Uncle Robert came rushing out of the barn and discovered his pickup in the cow pasture, a broken-legged Holstein raising the dead with its screaming, and a niece wailing even louder than that in horror at what she'd done. Fortunately he only put one of us down when he came back with his rifle.

2) I broke a knuckle in my right hand punching a girl in the face.

LIE! I've never punched anything in my life. I don't even kick. Push rarely. But I do tackle.

3) I used to keep a vibrator in my freezer.

True. Next!

4) The biggest fish I ever caught was a 15 pound northern pike.

True. The super-cool thing? I caught it in heavy lilypads using a floating bass plug, a strategy totally dissed by our Indian guides who just laughed at me. Their jaws sagged after I rowed back in, heheh. Dad had it mounted and now we get to enjoy its glassy stare every time we sit down to eat in the kitchen. Go me!

5) Mexican drug cops once mistook me for a narcotrafficker's girlfriend and arrested me at gunpoint.

True. I was driving on a highway in Baja and noticed one of those nightmare-black Suburbans with a tinted windshield following me. That kinda creeped me out, but the panic started when it drew closer...and closer...and closer. This being Mexico, land of who-the-fuck-knows?, I floored it. The Suburban gave chase, looming in my rearview mirror. And that's when I finally noticed it had a tiny flashing lightbar on top. Plainly stupid Layne, that's me.

I pulled over to the shoulder and got out of the car, already rehearsing apologetic Spanish in my head. Two federal drug cops in paramilitary gear leaped out of the Suburban. One of them was carrying an M-16 and pointed it right at me, yelling fast, his face a mask of anger. I couldn't understand what he was saying, but I raised my hands. His partner rushed up to me and slammed me facedown onto the trunk of the car -- I remember the hot metal scorching my cheek -- while he cuffed and then frisked me.

Then they made me stand in the ditch, staring up at the scowling M-16 dude and his terrifying gun barrel, while the other federale tore through all my belongings. He even got underneath the car and checked out the chassis. Meanwhile I desperately tried to explain that I was just coming back from a hiking trip, and at first I thought they were highway bandits or something, and how the hell can anybody see such a teeny lightbar anyway, and and and...

The denouement is they'd received a tip that a narcotrafficker was trying to move a shipment of something into Tijuana using his American girlfriend. Apparently they were stopping every gringa traveling alone, and I just happened to flee, if only for a moment. When they realized they'd made a mistake, they uncuffed me and piled back in the Suburban and roared off. Thank god.

Congrats Jim, you're the lucky guesser!

2002-07-28T19:03:00.000-05:00

More Chicago Bloglust

I don't know what it is with me and Chicago bloggers, but I've fallen madly in bloglust with yet another one -- the inimitable Golublog. I blame it on discovering his post My Weekend with Leuschke.org III: You Mean The Dark Goat of the Woods With A Thousand Young?

2002-07-28T14:27:00.000-05:00

Cockeyed Absurdist

In the currency of grief, it was a switch that cost 10 griefs, maybe more -- and that's after the grief discount generously provided by his personal helpdesk, including Kev. But all those griefs were worth it, because in the end Jon finally got his own domain and switched to Moveable Type. Now if he could just get me a MeFi account...

2002-07-28T14:02:00.000-05:00

MeFi Hates Me

"I'm sorry, but in the time you've accessed the form twenty people have already signed on. This is a rare event, and you'll have to try again tomorrow."

Today was the only day I could arrange to be free at noon PST, when the 20 new member accounts per day become available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Oh well. Somebody has to lurk...

2002-07-28T08:21:00.000-05:00

Four Truths and a Lie

Inspired by the federale-fleeing Jay, here's my "guess which one is a lie" game:

I once backed over a cow with a pickup, killing it. Eventually.

I broke a knuckle in my right hand punching a girl in the face.

I used to keep a vibrator in my freezer.

The biggest fish I ever caught was a 15 pound northern pike.

Mexican drug cops once mistook me for a narcotrafficker's girlfriend and arrested me at gunpoint.

Post your guesses using the newly-restored comments. ~~First correct response wins a special care package of wuv to be delivered via snail mail~~. (I belatedly realized this was a crappy way to do it. Consequently everybody who wants a special care package of wuv can just let me know, and I'll send it. Because I'm a goddess like that.) I'll reveal all tomorrow.

2002-07-28T08:18:00.000-05:00

Where are you, name twin?

I'm getting a "user unknown" bounceback from your university's server when I try to send you mail...

2002-07-27T22:27:00.000-05:00

The Farm in the Middle of the Twin Cities

Today was the University of Minnesota's Agriculture Open House, an annual event that transforms the placid St. Paul campus from an ag research station into a show-and-tell spectacle. Test plots and demonstration gardens are groomed for visitors. Farm machinery is washed and polished and put on display. Buildings that would never rate a second glance -- Soil Testing, Forestry -- are suddenly stars. The animal barns smell better (or maybe just less worse) than they have since the last open house.

But what impresses me the most is that everybody in the entire ag college participates. The dean was tottering around, shaking hands and patting kids' heads. Faculty members were giving demonstrations. Grad students were directing traffic and giving tours. Undergrads were manning booths and games. And everybody seems to know each other's names, from the dean on down. There's a sense of community in the ag program that I first noticed when I was a sophomore and my then-roommate Amy, a vet student, dragged me to my first ag open house. I was glad to see that sense of community is still thriving.

The forecast was for pain -- heat and humidity, forever and ever amen -- so I showed up early with Casey and Garth in tow, a pair of eager faces. The first canopy we encountered on Gartner Avenue sheltered the insect zoo, comprised of several display boxes from the Etymology Department's collection. In a fit of marketing inspiration, they only selected the most eye-popping specimens the insect world can offer. Aptly-named goliath beetles bigger than a child's hand. Giant creepy walking sticks. Water beetles that looked more like sea monsters. You'd never know their staple is corn borer and other ag pests. The petting part of the insect zoo was comprised of a scorpion, giant millipede and tarantula ("Spiders aren't insects!" Casey exclaimed in dismay, and the etymologist gave a pleased laugh). I was proud of Garth for letting the giant millipede climb all over his pudgy little forearm.

Next we were outfitted with crayons and a treasure hunt checklist comprised of things like pigs and tractors. Apparently this exercise was intended to encourage adults to cover the entire campus while giving kids something to do. Casey practiced making checkmarks on her list and Garth colored on his a little, but otherwise they had zilch interest. So the crayons and treasure hunt lists went into Aunt Layne's...argh, I forgot my backpack! Thankfully I was wearing shorts instead of a miniskirt, so at least I had pockets. They were quickly stuffed to bursting with the crayon boxes and treasure hunt checklists, along with the kid-readable maps of the campus. I tried not to think about how it was making my hips and ass look.

The kids posed for photos with U mascot Goldy Gopher (for some reason they kept calling him a beaver, like "Can we see the beaver again?", which totally cracked me up) and received those tiny micro-Polaroid pics -- which also went into my pockets after the kids finished watching them develop. I felt bad for the undergrad in the Goldy Gopher costume, a fur-bound hell in hot and humid weather. "Not the best day to be you," I said, as he was exchanging goodbye waves with the kids. "I'll probably die," he predicted cheerfully.

We finally reached the last of the welcoming canopies. More swag for the kids. The battery-powered flashing "Agriculture and Food Sciences Academy" buttons went onto my Nike laces, since my pockets were about to explode. And we got a sample of salted soybean nuts from the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association booth. Casey and I made icky faces after trying them, but Garth devoured the whole package and wanted more.

Small tractors -- green for John Deere, blue for Ford -- were pulling observation trailers of people to various destinations in the ag campus. There was a numbering system for the different routes that corresponded to the kid-readable maps, but of course I couldn't figure it out. So we climbed aboard a tour tractor that was parked in front of sign that said "#3 - Greenhouse Tour". It took us to the dairy milking facility, naturally.

In order to prevent the transmission of foot-and-mouth disease (and cowpie accidents), we had to don clear plastic booties that went over our shoes and came up to our knees. The kids thought it was the penultimate in footwear fashion. The milking parlor wasn't much different than the one I hosed out with a steam cleaner up north after the disastrous flooding. All the equipment was De Laval from 30 years ago. The kids loved petting the cows, tightly tethered in their feeding stalls. When the grad student chaperoning our group asked "How much water does a cow drink every day?" Casey shocked him by answering "100 gallons!" Just a guess, but uncannily accurate.

The tour included the bulk tank room, where raw milk is collected prior to pasteurization and homogenization. One of the people on the tour asked if raw milk tastes better than processed milk. The grad student admitted he'd never drunk raw milk before (he's from Canada where it's illegal to drink raw milk, even if you live on a dairy farm). But I have, so I answered that raw milk tastes richer -- sinfully rich, mmmmm -- because it has a higher butterfat content, like 5% or 6% depending on the animal. This is not 2% or even whole milk, people. And omigod, the homemade ice cream that you can make from raw milk is to die for! Which you probably will, if you consume that much fat regularly.

The dairy facility exit dumped us into a hay-strewn alley of sorts. Across the alley was the sheep barn. The kids wanted to mob some sheep, but the layout of the barn was too functional for petting zoo purposes. The animals were behind two layers of fencing, one of them solid wood and navel-high on me. The kids didn't even have a vantage point except peeking through some gates, so they spent more time playing with a remarkably tame kitty who lives in the barn and keeps the mice population in check. I've never spent much time watching sheep before, so I was kinda surprised to notice that the males of this particular breed have disproportionately huge testicles that hang really, really low. Anyway.

The sun was an inferno at the top of the sky when we finally straggled back to the Bug. I had to carry Garth in one arm (kids are so heavy!) and drag Casey with the other. I was afraid both of them were on the verge of a meltdown, but then she asked "Will you take us someplace special next weekend too?" and of course I said yes. I might not be living with them next weekend -- or next month, or whatever -- but I'll always make time for them, my big loving cuties.

2002-07-26T16:41:00.000-05:00

The Year of Living Dangerou-- Year? Already?

I've been staring at this screen. Forever, seems like. I'm trying to think of the adjective that best describes my life under this roof. Wonderful? Revelatory? Indescribable? Or maybe I can cheat and string several together, like superlovelycool.

I'm closer to Drew than I ever was, and Brent has shown me that a man can be almost all things to a woman (including blessedly tolerant of that woman's sister), and being so involved with Casey and Garth has given me confidence that I'll be a kickass mom someday, or at least unlikely to cause any fatalities. There's no way to summarize this kind of experience, and if I tried to say enough heartfelt "thanks!" I'd recite that word until the heavens fell. I can only love them back as much as they've loved me.

More practically, I've tried to pitch in however I can. I'm always up before the buttcrack of dawn, so breakfast by Layne is almost a daily tradition (including Brent's work buddies Bruce and Marty who eat like absolute pigs, so I have to double my recipes on weekdays). I take out the trash and recycling on Wednesday nights, and sometimes mow the lawn if Brent is too busy with his business. I throw my clothes in the kids' hamper and do laundry for the three of us. I'm the on-call babysitter. And I love it, I really do. This is what family is all about. Helping one another.

But it's time to move out.

I've already stayed here longer than I thought I would. Like, waaaaaaay longer. Imagine if your best friend asked if she could crash at your place...FOR A YEAR. Gah.

But it's also a crutch, as my therapist kept reminding me this week. My way of hiding out from the world. For example, living here insulates me from career decisions. I can just waitress -- and it's truly just waitressing -- because I don't need to pay rent or buy groceries. If I had those expenses, I'd need to get real and find another tech contract, or maybe switch fields entirely.

Living here also protects me from the risk of relationships, and thus rejection. I can't exactly take a boy home, hey? Not that it's raining boys who demand to be taken home. Admitting you live with your sister and her family is the second-best form of birth control after abstinence, I swear. No girl in her right mind would just spill about it, especially not when flirting, but this is me we're talking about. I crave pretexts for scaring the boys away, or just excuses to keep my distance. A Billion and One Avoidance Behaviors.

But mostly it's about living my own life again. As long as I'm here, I'm not taking responsibility for my life, or big chunks of it anyway. I'm sheltering. And there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you need to shelter. But it should be a phase, not a lifestyle.

I've never had my very own place before and I don't plan to start now, not with these finances. I'll become somebody's roomie. Natasha is already lobbying me to move in with her, since she'd love to cut her mortgage payment in half for a while. Her condo is plenty big for both of us and she even has a two-car garage. Living with her would be huge fun, god knows -- and maybe she'd teach me how to speak in an adorable Southern drawl!

But part of me would love to live in the city again. Either one, I'm not picky. Now more than ever I see the suburbs as the worst of both worlds, none of the diverse thriving community of the city and none of the empty beauty of the country. There's something to be said for strip malls and lawns that require a riding mower, but you won't hear it coming out of my mouth.

2002-07-25T16:22:00.000-05:00

Ready to Remember

Most of today was wasted in meetings about the disposition of the company, which will blink out of existence on August 30. The application our team supports is being sold, so we spent hours and hours planning how to wrap it up and ship it out. Depressing.

I'm just a contractor and didn't have much to contribute, so I passed the time by jotting down profiles of my teammates (my new teammates as I think of them, since I've only been on this project a short time). I want to remember the people who've made my geek work so fascinating and fun, especially if rumor is true and all contractors will be laid off on August 1.

Anyway, here's my personal work product for today...

Project Manager: Or LL Bean model? Cute "cat herder" with fashion flair. Very funny and self-deprecating. Loved by his geeks for knowing their shit, loved by management for beating dealines under budget. Always willing to give you his time, even if he doesn't have any. Lately hides out in his office with the door closed.

Architect: Visionary forgetful mop-headed genius. Rarely seen because he's also assigned to other projects. Keeps a clean shirt and pants in his cube's filing cabinet. Thinks nothing of changing in front of the whole floor (these are half-height cubes, people!). Hasn't said two words to me since I joined the team. But I don't take it personally. He rarely says two words to anybody.

Lead Developer: Low-key brainiac with ponytail and potbelly. Walks around in a fog of weary exhaustion indicative of new fatherhood. Cube is decorated with those little Star Wars action figures and protected from Trekkie assault by an ominously huge Nerf gun. One of two rock stars on the team.

Senior Developer: I don't know how he can be senior if he's only 24. Supercilious alpha male. Has no people skills whatsoever and is convinced his way is the only way. Infamous for judgemental histrionics -- "WRONG WRONG WRONG!!!" Fortunately he's completely at a loss around girls, so he never bitches at me. Or asks me out.

Junior Developer #1: Happy-go-lucky nerd poured into an XXXL t-shirt and sweatpants. Always sweating no matter how well the AC is working. Cube is a hopeless mess where things keep getting lost. Smokes a pipe because it's cheaper than cigarettes. Star Wars is the organizing principle of his life, to the point where he even defends Jar-Jar Binks. Last saw female genitalia when born.

Junior Developer #2: The other rock star of the team, a college dropout with multiple tattoos and piercings and a shock of orange hair. Rides a skateboard in the building. Lazybutt by day, stunning coder by night. Like, all night. I've found him amusing himself on the phone intercom system at dawn. Typical criticism: "This sucks ass." Typical praise: "This doesn't suck ass." Also my podmate. We kick the divider between us to get each other's attention.

Tester/Tech Writer: Refreshingly zen dude with a real life. His cube is decorated with polaroids of his family and friends. Agnostic when it comes to Star Wars v. Star Trek. Knows many, many dumb jokes. Always manages to say the right thing at the right time, often defusing huge fights over UI or just trivia. Recently found a girlfriend and put a stop to those gay rumors.

Human Factors Engineer: Cadaverous geek of indeterminate middle age, but probably older than 40. Surprisingly intuitive about people and their technology usage despite robotic appearance and lack of people skills. A die-hard Trekkie. Usually wears Spock ears (I wish I was making this up).

Build Script Geek (never learned his title): Even older than the HFE, like almost retirement age. Has several sons "in the business". Probably remembers when COBOL was the next big thing. Prefers to communicate via email, ignoring IMs or even shouting over the cubicles at him. Cold as freezer burn despite grandfatherly appearance.

Database Administrator: Bull moose of a man with a crewcut and brusque manners. Looks like a soldier, which is exactly what he does in the National Guard. Stretched to the breaking point by assignment to multiple projects. Cell is constantly ringing, making normal conversation with him almost impossible. Not impressed with my abilities, but "good enough for government work" as he says. Seems pleased that I don't bug him much.

And then there's me.

2002-07-24T23:20:00.000-05:00

A Ph.D. and a Gun

The answer to the question, what does it take to get a tenure-track job in the humanities...

I was the girlfriend and Gal Friday of an anthro grad for several years and two institutions, University of Minnesota and UCLA. The brutal odds of his future were a fixture in our life together. I had to support him (mostly) while he finished his degree and wrote articles for publication. I also had to endure the long separations required by his field research, or suddenly drop everything to deliver a replacement CD-RW drive to him in bumfuck nowhere Mexico. But all the sacrifices I made, I made to improve his career prospects from none to slim (he's a white male, if you want to segue into the reverse discrimination tarpit).

Reading this article in the Washington Post brought those memories flooding back. I only experienced that world through Mark and his colleagues, never lived it for myself, but I still vividly recall the desperation associated with being a Ph.D. in the fluffy sciences. Our apartment parties were thronged with academics looking for an excuse to take the balcony railing instead of the stairs. Hundreds of Ph.D.s competed for a handful of jobs. TAships were scarce. Blah blah blah.

I'm concerned for the friends of mine who inhabit that world. Even though I'm envious of their intellectual stimulation -- who doesn't want to be paid to argue the agricultural growth rate of Meiji Japan? -- I worry about their futures (and their student loan payments, if that's how it goes). I'd love to get an MA in something like Latin American Lit, or maybe Border Studies, but as far as the job market is concerned that's a leftist debauch. So I debate the merits of MBA v. JD in my head, and I hope my friends know an exit strategy when they see one.

2002-07-24T06:08:00.000-05:00

Joy Delivery

My cell rings. I stir from a sleep like warm black tar, my hand scrabbling on the nightstand until it closes around the familiar shape. "Mmmumf?"

"Layne! Wake up girl!"

"Whyucallinsoearly."

"You'll never believe what just happened!"

The warm black tar is sucking me back in. "Dreamed I was with you guys -- "

"Guess what I'm wearing on my finger!"

" -- pubs, black cabs, bobbies -- "

"GUESS. WHAT. I'M. WEARING. ON. MY. FINGER."

I sit bolt upright. "For real?"

"For real. Will you be my maid of honor?"

"NO WAY!!!" Suddenly aware that I probably woke the house, I bury my face in the pillow and scream it several more times.

"Well? Are you gonna say yes?"

"Duh! Where did he propose? Was it all super-romantic and stuff? Omigod I'm so happy for you, my heart is like, like, bursting! And the ring, you gotta tell me -- "

Brian's voice. "Sorry for waking you up. I couldn't make her wait."

I can hear Trish in the background, trying to wrestle the phone back, laughing. Finally she succeeds. "Wish you were here. Not!"

That was a couple hours ago, maybe. I tried falling back asleep, a useless exercise. My mind was a blur of happy speculation, imagining their moment in the London I know from books and pictures, wondering what the ring looks like, already obsessing about the wedding -- a Kennedy-sized bash next summer with months of buildup, or just a small and simple ceremony after they get back? Because I'm the maid of honor, you know. I need to worry about these things. It makes me happy.

And you want to know the really weird thing? I knew something was up when I shuttled them to the airport last week. I just got this vibe from Brian. I want to describe it as a physicality -- the way he carried himself, the spring in his step, whatever -- but it was actually something I sensed. I don't know what goes on in a man's brain and probably never will, but going after things, especially big things...I think a girl can sense that. Trish didn't think the trip was anything special (or even more special, anyway). A fun compatibility test, she called it. But maybe she sensed it too and just didn't want to say anything, because you never know until it happens.

2002-07-22T23:24:00.000-05:00

What a Week

Last week, I mean. The longest week of my life. The week everything changed.

I've never been in therapy before, so I have zilch prior experience with personal breakthroughs. All I know is that something momentous happened last week. Maybe what they say is true. Maybe a breakthrough changes everything, starting -- or just ending -- with you.

I see my therapist biweekly, and our first session last week was the culmination of several sessions about my relationships. You may recall that I had 31 dates during the Love Offensive, only two qualifying as second dates, whereas Trisha met Brian and now they're vacationing together in London and blah blah blah. Anyway, I wondered what the hell was so wrong with me that I couldn't find my Mr. Right, or at least get as many second -- and third, and fourth -- dates as I wanted.

My therapist set up a role-playing exercise in which he played me and I played a boy who was dating me. The juxtaposition totally cracked me up at first. It just seemed so silly, hey? But then I started getting into it and suddenly, finally, it was so goddamn obvious -- I'm loathe to risk emotional attachment. I reject before I can be rejected. It doesn't matter whether the boy is going to reject me or not. I'm convinced he will, sooner or later, so I act first.

That session left me dazed and angry, obsessing about the implications of my therapist's final question -- "Why do you presume you'll be rejected?" Because the only answer is a tautology. I presume I'll be rejected because I presume I'm rejectable. Unworthy. An outcast from the bond of familial love.

Two nights later, the other half of my personal breakthrough occurred. My therapist began our session by tossing a sheet of paper onto the desk between us -- my life goals worksheet from several weeks ago, ranked in order of importance to me:

1) a lifelong love relationship
2) a challenging and rewarding career
3) accepting the girl in the mirror

We reviewed it at excruciating pace, comparing my future goals with present behaviors. He was trying to make me understand that my self-esteem issues are crippling me. Not risking emotional attachment is just 1/3 of it. I'm also into menial jobs that go nowhere, like high-tech temping and waitressing. And I don't get my teeth fixed, or upgrade my wardrobe to project a more confident and sophisticated image, or do anything else that would help the girl in the mirror gain acceptance from me. All because I don't think I'm worth better.

I sagged in my chair, head hanging so low that my hair almost touched his desk. Sobs began to wrack my frame, the first time I'd ever let him see me cry.

The causality of me, a mystery for so long, was suddenly clear and terrible. The cognitive dissonance between the person I feel like I am and the person I want to be is unbearable, and to resolve it I'm choosing to be less instead of more. In my heart of hearts I'm not worth it to myself, because I wasn't worth it to the mother and father who brought me into this world, wherever they are.

And that's when the session ended. I stumbled into the evening and went to my waitress work, stricken and adrift. I wanted to call in sick and pour out my soul to Trisha, my bestest friend for years and years, or maybe Natasha, who's already becoming a remarkable friend even though I haven't known her that long. But they both went on vacation last week (I even took them to the airport, stupid me ;-) and I was stuck with nobody. And work was better than nobody.

Then Mom called. I spoke with her after closing, something like 2 AM, with the moon floating in the night sky like an ethereal blimp. 25 years of Scandinavian-American stoicism shouldn't be obliterated in a single phone call, especially not at that ungodly hour. The only thing written in the stars at that hour is doom.

She's always been supportive of my decisions, whatever they might be, but I hadn't decided whether to search for my birth parents when we spoke. I think she would've been okay with it if I'd made a decision one way or the other, but something about my uncertainty -- maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't -- totally ruined the conversation. Somehow it became this horrible wretched protracted bout of Minnesota nice, which is pure unadulterated hell in situations which demand emotional communication.

We hung up in tears.

By Thursday I'd decided that I wanted to find my birth parents, or at least my birth mother. Even though I'm sure she had her reasons for giving me up, and it wasn't because I was inherently unworthy of her love, I'd still feel...I don't know, better somehow, if I met her. More complete.

That decision prompted an awful "I'm coming up to see you this weekend" conversation with Mom (and Dad on the toolshed phone). I hung up feeling like shit, until Drew told me she'd go up to the resort with me. "I'm part of the family too," she said. "This is about us, all of us." And I fell into her embrace, humbled by gratitude.

My adoption is something that Drew and I don't talk about either, not since she used to tease me about how she'd send me back to the orphanage if I didn't follow her orders (we can laugh about it now, but when you're seven it's pretty traumatic). We acknowledge that I'm adopted -- you can't see us together and not know it -- but how it's shaped our family and our relationships with each other, that never gets discussed. But that's all we talked about on the long, long drive up to the resort.

This weekend wasn't easy or gratifying for any of us, but it was inevitable. I belong to them and vice versa, but imperfectly. I originated somewhere else, in a relationship that mattered for a moment in time, but that moment -- that relationship, that mother -- couldn't sustain me. It doesn't mean I'm unloveable, far from it. The family I'm fortunate enough to have loves me dearly, and god knows I'd do anything for them in return.

As a final coda, I desperately invoked Mark this past week because I was acting out the need to talk with somebody who knew me and my issues, somebody who wasn't family. To his credit, he emailed and later called, probably paying a fortune in long distance from Spain, and tonight we had a three-way conference call with my therapist that ameliorated many of my issues.

I never wanted to be a drama queen, yet another psycho blogging on the net. And I hope that's not the way you see me. I just need to become more functional by dealing with some of these lingering self-esteem issues. The future is waiting, and I'm trying to be open to it. Thanks for all your time and attention.