Text Messages

Someone gave me an idea today. I decided to string together all the text messages I've received since December 28th, 2005. No information on who wrote it, when, why. It sounds like a poem of all my friends. (Oh, and it's really fucking long.)

Here's my text message poem:

I’m at the Mont. Kevin Smith is here. “I’m counting down the days (4) tonight, I just wanna be a million miles away from here. I wanna travel through time.” Hey, heard y’all are at Bill’s! Have fun! Sing doo wah diddy. I hate me, too. I’m at Bison Witches. I’m stuck. I also suck. Well, see you in 4 weeks. Sorry, that was n-ah-pro-pre-at. I’m bored and ready to be back! I tried to make sure I didn’t leave much food, and I had more gin than I thought…and it’s an hour ahead here. I’ve been ready!! Are you ready? Happy hour Friday!! Happiness! When you wake up, will ya let me know if my jacket is still there? Black, blazer, velvety, blah, blah, I feel like shit! Cool. The band cancelled. We came to a new gay bar by Hi-lo. Bill’s tomorrow? I’m working on a deal with Selson Blue, well, we’re talking. Keep your fingers crossed. You’re my inspiration. What’s up? Just got back from a concert-have you been hit on yet? Why do I send drunk text messages? Shit! We’re so awesome! And why does Rockey encourage us? Season and I are at breakfast and about to do some shit around town. Do you want us to bring you anything? My phone died earlier, you are asleep, let’s get together, and watch Quantum Leap…whoa. Where are you? Oh no!! LOL! Are ya hangin’ in there? It’s Melinda! Eating with Joel. Insert random comment here. Eating with Joel. Insert random comment here. Thanks, bitch. I just got your text, what will I say next, this totally isn’t funny…sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. I’m sorry. It kinda rhymed. Only nice? What the hell came over me? Rockey gave me the DL on what I can’t remember. I thought I was so funny and apparently I was. Sorry you had to drive. Leah got lucky, lipstick lesbian kissed you, a good night. Whoo hoo! Groundhog Day is stupid. Me. You. Plot. Assassinate. Groundhog. Next year. What are you going to be for Halloween! Six or Jenna Van Oy. Whoa. I was also thinking about Lily Tomlin. Okay, Gregory Peck. I’m on Flood and Main. Hey. My phone was off, and I want dinner first. You know, I’m a girl that wants my feet swept off. Wait…I mean I want to be swept off my feet. I would take it like, I don’t know, like you were reading a poem that you wrote just for me.

The Day Jenny Turned On Me

So we're at the OU/Texas hoopla-thingey in Dallas. I don't give a shit about football, but I go to drink and hang out with my friends in the "big city."

I have this friend, Jenny, who is currently competing in the "Nicest Person On Earth" contest. (She made the top 50-cross your fingers for her.) On Saturday night after OU lost to Texas, a humongous group of us celebrate our loss by heading to Greenville and going to a bar that I can't remember the name of. Jenny leaves with a 75 dollar bartab, just so you might understand how intoxicated she is.

Surprisingly, I am one of the caretakers of the night, only able to down seven beers due to faulty driving instructions and people refusing to take taxis. Normally, I'm one of the people that gets taken care of...

I'm walking my friend Season back into our hotel (which, on OU/Texas weekend, is filled with drunk college students and obnoxious frat boys). The lobby's packed, and Season and I walk arm in arm, her babbling about something drunk people babble about, and me laughing because I'm wearing the same pants as the night before even though I know I accidentally got piss on the cuff. We spot Jenny across the lobby and walk up to her.

"Hey Jenny," I say.

Jenny is tall. I mean, really tall. She's probably like six-one without shoes, but with her heels on, she's a giant, and Season and I are wearing flats. As we approach, Jenny's expression changes to an awkward position I'm not used to...wait...is that anger?

Jenny puts one hand on her hip and points a finger in my face. "You fuckin' bitches," she starts off. I assume she's kidding. (At this point, I will tell the story the way my friend Rockey exaggerates it; it's funnier that way.)

But Jenny's letting loose a string of cuss words that even puts my vulgar mouth to shame. She starts advancing on us with purpose, and Season and I exchange a look and meekly back away, our hands up in surrender. But Jenny keeps coming, pushing us through this rioting mob of college idiots.

In the lobby of the hotel, there's a four foot wall that serves as a planter. After Jenny backs us all the way into the wall so we're cowering next to it like that one girl in that one scary movie (like that methaphor?), Jenny puts one hand on my shoulder and one on Season's.

We don't fight much. Even if we do, we seem to know it'll be fruitless. With the strength of a thousand suns, or just our sun from Mercury, Jenny pushes us off our feet on top of the planter, yelling something in monster language, flecks of spit flying out of her mouth, and fire flaring out of her nostrils. We're squirming on our backs, trying to get loose, wriggling around, but it's impossible; Jenny's the strongest motherfucker I've ever encountered. She pins us and, as we gasp for our last breath, Rockey rushes over with, like, five other guys and pulls Jenny off. He has to use his tazer (I'm not a science fiction nerd, so I don't know how to spell tazer). Jenny roars in anger, and everyone backs away. She reaches into the planter and yanks out two small trees, ripping them from the ground like they're blades of grass.

Jenny, dressed in a smart black blouse and fashionable slim-fitting capris, shakes the dirt off the bottom of the trees, threatening everyone's very existence with the wrath of God. Season and I scamper off to a safe retreat, Jenny still thrashing, morphing into a dragon right before our very eyes.

A security guard shows up. Jenny stops mid-roar, holding a plant in each hand. She hands one to Rockey and points at him. "He was pulling the plants out," she says in that sweet Jenny voice we all know so well, sticking Rockey with the blame. Then she runs away.

We ride up the elevator with about a hundred other people after the "incident." When we reach our floor, Jenny runs off and around the hall out of view. A security guard follows us around the corner, where we find Jenny facedown on the floor in the middle of the hallway.

And I stare at her and think how sweet she looks, the nicest person on earth.

Hello friends, hello me

I am falling further and further into the depths of my own little world. I caught myself talking to, uh, myself the other day. That didn't upset me as much as when I realized that I had turned down the music in order to do it. Too distracting, you know?

I haven't written in this blog in about a million and a half years and two months, which wouldn't be an exaggeration if you took off the "million and a half years" part. Not quite sure what I want to write, though. Just want to write something. How about an update?

1. The guy I obsessed over in the last blog (the famous Kevin Smith) actually did call me a couple days after I wrote that. Really made an ass of myself there, eh? Turns out he was visiting his parents for the week. Incidentally, he also dropped a package of Soft N Gentle toilet paper off on my front doorstep because I mentioned I needed toilet paper on the phone. Oh, and he gave me a tiny matchbox Ford Escort with a rollbar and the steering wheel on the British side because, "You didn't have a car, so I got you one." Syrupy sweet, isn't it?

2. I had an idea for a creative non-fiction novel in which I would include, for a portion, biographies of six women, showing how they have impacted my life as well as created their own. My first biography was over my friend. She hated it. She said something like this: "Not even close. That's not about me at all."

3. I'm involved in the most ridiculous relationship with the aforementioned in #1. I've seen him about three times, all randomly. I've left two messages on his phone that could be considered, at best, borderline rude. He doesn't seem to mind, but he has this crazy aversion to calling me. Which, I know, sounds like he doesn't like me. So I don't call him either, and then, all of a sudden he gives me a car. And after that, he waits an entire week before he text messages me, deciding that we should run away together. I agreed. Just the perfect amount of weird, I guess. Haven't actually seen his face in about 2 weeks, though. Heard his voice, 1 week. But we do have a very involved voicemail/text message relationship going on. I would still be lonely if it weren't for my cell.

4. My mom visited for a week. She brought her husband and three little dogs, all of which stayed in my one bedroom apartment. She kept washing the dishes by hand instead of using the dishwasher, and she rearranged my furniture while I was in class.

5. I got really stoned and convinced myself that Kevin Smith didn't exist. Immediately after, I sent him the following text message: "Are you a real person? Is this a real number? Did I make you up?" A full 24 hours later, he wrote back: "No, I'm sorry" and I wrote, "Why?"

6. One day on the bus, I sat across from this middle-aged man wearing a Nascar t-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans, a brown belt, and ladies mid-length heels over what appeared to be light beige nylons. He seemed a little slow, and I'm used to drag queens, so that didn't bother me. I just kept wondering, based on the rest of his wardrobe, if those were the most comfortable shoes he owned.

7. While I was writing #6, the computer guy in Gaylord Hell (I meant "Hall")kept accusing me of witholding information regarding the "printer-cord-being-ripped-out-of-the-wall" incident. I flipped him off behind his back.

8. About a week ago, I comtemplated suicide. The word, not the act. It's a pretty word.

9. I've continued to obsess over a gay broadcasting professor who always manages to slide the word "fuck" in when he's asking me about procedure.

10. I listened to the Pink Floyd song, "Wish You Were Here" three times a day for the past ten days. Not in a row, though. I still like the song. I decided that was due to the fact that we only get one verse, one chorus. Just enough not to be annoying, but to keep us wanting more. Am I right people?

11. The other day, I left a mean note to the person who was supposed to relieve me from my shift. I wrote, "I appreciate your tardiness, but I really had to go" on a pink post-it, and I initialed the corner, just to be "that asshole." I immediately felt bad when I saw the kid in the hall 20 seconds later, and he apologized to me profusely.

12. I concluded that it would be really funny if I told someone I was a writer, and they said, "What do you write?" and I said, "My name, over and over again."

13. While writing number 12, I let some kid steal the computer guy's coffee, acting like I had no idea whose it was.

14. For my non-fiction writing class, I proposed a book on the Armenian genocide. For legitimate reasons of my own, I wanted to call it, "Two Armenian Whores."

15. Two weeks ago, I got the worst description ever on how to take something called "knife hits."

16. I got in an argument with a Cingular Customer Service rep that ended with me saying, "Just fuckin' charge me then." She said, "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to stop swearing." I asked why, and she said, "Respect." And I said, "But I always talk like that, man. Like, fuck my ass, idiot bag." But seriously, why does her self-respect hinge on my diction?

So, in summation, I've had a full few weeks. Lots of time left for conversations with myself and other people's voicemail.

How I Fell In Love, or A Few of the Things That Are Wrong With Me

I think I'm the only person alive that can go through the kind of relationships I've been through, and still be naive enough to fall in love and get my heart broken in a three day time span.

I met Kevin Smith, the writer of Clerks, Mallrats, and a few other movies, when I worked with him at Joe's Crab Shack in Norman. (Okay, he didn't write those movies, and he has moppy red hair and blue eyes, and he lives in Oklahoma, but he's still Kevin Smith.) I liked him right away because was lanky and tall, and a little goofy-looking, but I liked him even more when he told me how the numbers 3, 6, and 9 have haunted him for months.

So I did what any girl does when she likes someone; I avoided him whenever possible, and when I had to talk to him, I spoke in one-word sentences. Also, I became increasingly aware of the fact that I repeated the words "bored", "boring", and "boredom" almost every time he asked me a question about my life. Yeah, hopeless: that's how I like my crushes.

I wasn't surprised when he stopped showing up at work for no reason, thereby releasing me from any sort of effort I would have to make to get his attention. Missed opportunities can't hurt you, right? Convinced I'd never see him again, I went on with my ridiculous habit of hitting up every bar that has a karaoke night, whether planned or accidentally.

It was at one of these bars where I ended up stoned out of my mind, saying goodbye to an aquaintance that I didn't feel I knew well enough to attend her farewell party, that I noticed him sitting about five feet in front of me. (This was the same day that I found the colored bouncy ball. See previous post.) I downed a pitcher of beer and got up to talk to him. Yada, yada, yada, when I left, he asked me out for Sunday night.

Or did he ask me out? He said, "What are you doing Sunday?" I'm working. "Well, we should do something when you get off?" 'Kay. Did I just get asked out? And why don't I know?

As luck would have it, I saw him the next night at a party. This time, instead of beer, I was armed with my liquid courage of choice, gin. Feeling like being forward, feeling like I shouldn't miss another opportunity because I'm scared, I kissed him. Yada, yada, yada, he left, I was sad. But the strangest thing happened. He came back to see me. He picked me up and we had a great night.

I anticipated one night stand, but there was no sex, just great conversation. I anticipated an awkward ride home, but he stayed at my house the next morning and slept with his arm around me. We woke up at two, and he sat with me and talked, stroking my hair until I absolutely had to leave for work. Kevin Smith is perfect, turns out.

Kevin Smith had no reason to stay and talk to me, to play with my bitchy dog, to plan all the things we would do together in the weeks to come, other than he liked me, right? But Kevin Smith hasn't called me since then, and Kevin Smith never returned the one phone call I made to him.

I am away from my phone right now because I know it's not ringing. Instead, I'm sitting at IHOP, pondering a few of the things that caused this promising relationship to end up the way it did. Here's some of my ideas of what Kevin Smith thought was wrong with me:

1. I think I inadvertently insulted his favorite band, The Velvet Underground, even though I like them.
2. I told him how I couldn't sleep one night because I thought I was spelling the word "douche" incorrectly. Eventually, I had to look it up, and, of course, I was right all along.
3. I'm packing up my room, and there are a few things left out that might seem a little, well, stupid. Like a Shrek 2 party mix CD that my mom put in my stocking this last Christmas because she has no idea what is going on in the real world.
4. I made a comment about how I always had my shirt off, which sounds bad, but isn't true at all.
5. I drank two cups of coffee while we were talking, and I tried to hold it, but I had to go to the bathroom. He went in right after me, of course. Now, I don't think he's shallow enough to run away because I had to take a crap, but since then, I've been considering the idea that maybe I forgot to flush, although I have no precedence that would support my theory.
6. I mentioned the fact that my childhood friends and I used to play a game called "retard devil," but we had to stop when the only person that could make the good retard face suddenly grew a conscience.
7. I only shaved my legs from the top of my knees to my ankles, and kept pointing this out while we were making out.
8. My dog tried to bite him. Then again, he only tried to bite him once, and my dog tries to bite everyone, normally many more times.
9. I currently have ants crawling all around my kitchen sink.
10. When he was leaving, I asked him, "Is this a day that mail comes?" before bothering to walk out to my mailbox.
11. I explained my obsession with Dave Grohl in full detail.
12. I have a weird mole on my back that I didn't even know about until last year.
13. I told him that, if the second number of my phone number were a 2, it would be a palindrome.

These are the details I've obsessed over for the last five days. The truth is, I'll never know why Kevin Smith didn't call me. I don't want to hear, "Maybe he's just not that into you."

Fuck all those people that say that since that god-forsaken book came out.

It hurts, so I write about it. Laugh with me at my pain.

Little Colored Bouncy Balls

This may sound odd, but throughout my life, I've randomly found little rubber super bouncy balls (you know, the ones that are all different colors), and a lot of oddly colored giant paper clips.

It started when I was 15. We were practicing on the middle school basketball court, and I picked up a giant neon pink paper clip, which I showed to my friend and clipped on the bottom of my practice shorts. A few minutes later, I found a green paper clip, slightly smaller in size. Then a yellow and blue one, then a red one, and so on until I had about 8 paper clips lined up on the hem of my gym shorts.

At this point, my friend looked over at my shorts after sinking a 3-pointer and asked, "What the fuck are you doing?"

I suppose this could be considered a freak incident, if not just a bizarre coincidence, but I found three things very odd about it:

1. I was the only girl out of 30 players that seemed to notice these giant paper clips on a smooth, wooden basketball court.
2. Someone actually had funky colored paper clips and seemed to drop all of them in the middle of an area where no one should ever have these office tools.
3. I found them in order of size, from giant to regular-sized, and that's how I lined them up on my shorts.

A few days later, I found my first rubber bouncy ball in a Mazzio's pizza parking lot. I picked it up, played with it all afternoon, and lost it that night. Ever since then, I've found these balls about once a year, in the most random places. I'm always alone when I find them, and I always lose them.

I picked one up last week in the parking lot of the apartment complex I will be moving into. At this point, I take them to mean that I'm on the right track: little rubber signs of fate for someone who doesn't believe in anything.

That's my favorite thing about my life, something telling me to play with toys, to keep going until I come across the next one.

A Curious Friend

I'm writing this because of Davie Pocket, not because I want to. If, for any reason, this post sounds forced, disingenuous, or not quite up to par, don't blame it on my lack of creative ability. Blame it on the relentless pressure coming from my one fan (or one of my friends who feels obligated to read my blog-not necessarily sure I'd go as far as calling him a "fan").

But, then again, if this post sounds real, that's because I'm not trying to entertain you. I'm just writing like I'm thinking, which has turned out to be a nice, cleansing experience. Sometimes I feel like I'm trying too hard to make someone laugh, putting to much effort into sounding like another writer, or like one of my friends who also has a blog. I think writer's block is what happens when you lose track of your own voice and start writing in another person's voice.

That being said, I owe all of my readers (AKA friends) an apology for obsessing over the quality of every detail, thereby losing a bit of myself. When you lose that human quality, that one error, that tangent, then you lose reality.

One curious friend without a name pointed that out to me.

What the hell is a curious friend?

Hmm. Well, uh,...A curious friend is inexplicable and foreign, unlike you in every way, but somehow completely in tune. Most friends are friends due to a long, boring history of "getting to know each other" and long bullshit talks like that, but there are those few, the ones that make no sense to you, the ones that never have a normal thought in they're heads by your estimation. The best part, and the part that makes them friend, is that you communicate with this person in a way you'd never communicate with anyone else. Curiously. Get it? Curious friend. See where I'm going with this one?

No, I'm not talking about LOVERS or SOULMATES. Let me give you an example.

When I was a college freshman five years ago, I took English Comp just like every other college freshman. Unlike every other freshman, I took English Comp while sitting next to the friendliest Chinese girl named Kathy. I met her when she leaned over to me, pointed to her Hello Kitty glow ring and said, "Herrrrr-ohhhhhhhhh kitty!"

I'm sure I laughed, but I didn't tell anyone the story until now, which is bizarre because normally I tell everyone I know every excruciating instance of my life if I think it will get any sort of reaction. Instead, we became the closest of friends. Well, I never once saw her outside that classroom, I didn't know her last name, and I only thought of her a couple times after that class. In fact, the only facts I knew about Chinese Kathy were: 1) she was Chinese, 2) her name was Kathy, and 3) she sat next to me in English Comp.

Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we'd have the time of our lives. We entertained ourselves by drawing pictures like little notes back and forth to each other. For example, I would draw me stabbing her with a knife and her bleeding to death, and she would draw a shield deflecting my knife. I would draw me throwing her overboard from the deck of a ferry, and she would draw herself in a little tiny lifeboat waving and smiling.

And that was our relationship, based completely on me thinking up gruesome ways to kill her, and her deflecting those attempts and living to smile at me from safety.

I'm not a violent person, and it strikes me as odd that I ever knew it would be okay to illustrate her death in the first place. Something about the way we interacted made it acceptable for me to murder her, plot her death, dream up the most horrible ways for her to die, and laugh and laugh and laugh.

I saw her on campus a couple years later, and she told me all about her new classes, her degree, yada yada yada. I didn't catch it all because I was picturing what it would look like if I stuck a metal hanger through her belly button and yanked it up toward her throat.

I really miss my curious friend.

Voice Mail Messages From my Ex-boyfriend

These messages were all left within the last 10 days.

1. "All I want to know is if you've fucked a douchebag yet since we broke up."

2. (Imitating me) "Hey, let's all get drunk at Kongo's and sing karaoke. Then, I'll get incapacitated, and some unsuspecting guy will get his dick sucked."

3. "Oh, never mind. I forgot. If you're drunk, he'll just get laid."

4. (sarcastically) "Dave Grohl is SO brilliant."

5. "He meant it when he threatened me. That's who you're fucking friend is." (This message was left after my best friend answered my phone after the fifth consecutive call and told him to stop calling me or he would kick his ass.)

6. "You know, I must have said some shitty things, but, honestly, the more I think about it the shittier and shittier you were to me, and I think you just said equally the amount of crap, if not more. So, just to let you know, it wasn't just me with the verbal abuse. You fuckin' REALLY sucked."

7. "So have you found a guy that makes you laugh and doesn't feel guilty about acting like a complete douchebag yet?"

8. "It's been like 2 months since you said you were going to give me $15, and, I mean, maybe you should just ask somebody, like [Name omitted] or somebody to give you the money so you can pay them back later so you don't have to owe me. 'Cause I know that you're obviously spending money on other things, and I'm sure that they're all not really essential so why don't you just go ahead and just pay me back, and I'll stop leaving messages."

9. "Are you enjoying yourself submerged in your yuppie box that you made for yourself yet?"

10. (In a mock-excited voice) "Hey let's get together and dream about being famous!"

11. "Your mom was right. You've got a lot of growing up to do."

12. "15 fucking dollars!"

13. (After he asked me to leave his stuff outside so he could pick it up, and I told him not to come in the house) "Like I would want to go in your fuckin' nasty house. I can't even walk past the fucking dishwasher, it's so disgusting. Not to mention your two ratty ass dogs. Oh, and calling the police is a fucking great idea. Yeah, like that would help anything."

Now, this is a 25 year old man leaving these messages on my voice mail. The few times I have actually answered the phone, he's either called me materialistic, a whore, a bitch, an alcoholic, or said my friends suck. Before I even started saving the messages, he left at least ten, all on the same day, none of which I responded to. After I deleted that first group of cutdowns, I realized, like a good writer, the entertainment value of his words. I am not trying to be vindictive, but fuck anyone that talks to me like that.

At least 10 people have listened to the messages, and, with a little help from some good friends, I can share them with the world.

After all, they're his words.

The Egg Roll Incident

During a chinese food vs. pizza order-in debate with my roommate, me an advocate for the chinese food, I remembered an experience that should have kept me off the MSG for the rest of my life.

After a long, exhausting day at some big amusement park, three friends and I stopped at the first restaurant we saw. I have no idea what it looked like, I can't remember the fucking name, but it was one of those Chinese buffet restaurants. At some point, I interrupted the wild time we were having by taking a bite of an egg roll and loudly wretching, letting the chunk of tainted egg roll drop from my mouth onto the floor.

Now, when I vomit a particular food item, it's hard if not impossible for me to consider eating that item again. Understandably. On the day in question, however, I did not vomit. But, then again, I don't remember any of the upchucked food from my past as strongly as the gigantic bite of egg roll I so trustingly shoved into my mouth over six years ago in Oklahoma City. Fate and my ex-boyfriend brought me to the Chinese restaurant. Hunger and exhaustion made me snatch the last egg roll on the buffet. Jesus, I must have been delirious.

Now, everyone's tasted milk that turned sour, bad grapes, lemon rinds, dog food whatever. Those things are disgusting, yes, but at least when I've ingested them, I have the ability to recognize that whatever I ate was...well, food. In other words, I've eaten things that are bland, disgusting, not so great, sour, but I've never eaten something that made me question whether or not it was actually edible.

But, man, this egg roll. It tasted a bit like Windex, but mostly like it would taste if you took a giant bite out of your computer. Or maybe some kind of radio, and you just chomp down on all those parts and screws. And I realized that I don't remember the egg roll because it disturbed me, but only because I know what it's like to eat something that's not food. Like a picture frame, an old blanket. A shoe. Those little plastic monkeys from the Barrel of Monkeys game.

True story. Hmm, you know? Maybe I ate a petrified egg roll. Or plastic. Or laquered, waxed, stained. Maybe I'm making all this shit up.

Maybe that egg roll changed my life.

To-Do List (Part 2)

1. Make to-do list