After you do chuck that stuff, then lug what's left from cheap apartment A to cheap apartment B, then FINALLY settle down to a glass of wine on the front porch and realize B is in the epicenter of a construction zone AND shares a wall with seemingly unemployed boys who love smoking, yelling AND pro-wrestling...well...
you rip your hair out.
But before pulling enough to really detach the roots, you realize that those kids sound really happy and those construction workers are gettin er done and YOU'RE the one sitting naked on the floor thinking about how lucky you are to know the code to the car wash down the street and how you're just not as into raisins as you used to be. So here is my attempt to get up, put some pjs on and actually lie on the couch or bed and DO SOMETHING:
See, last weekend I was in Chicago (for a field hockey tournament) and five minutes into the L ride from the airport we (my teammates and me) were joined by a mentally ill old dude. Think: small guy with white cornrows and super small space boots and half-frozen bottles of water. All of which was cursory to his token article, headphones and an MP3 player, which he listened to in mentally ill old dude fashion.. He serenaded the cabin. He conferred with men close to him on the quality of songs. He made sure we all knew the TRUTH: rock is where it's at, rap is garbage.
This dude kind of straddled the line between being totally out of it and kind of in it, which didn't seem too far off from regular funny people except for the space boots and yelling bit. Of course, crazy overshadows funny more acutely in the tight confines of a train. So there was a lot of him calling out people that refused to look at him.
Unfortunately I suffer from the personal problem of not being able to keep my eyes down when somebody screams, "YOU DON'T KNOW ALICE COOPER? WHAT ARE YOU A NERD OR SOMETHIN?" from two feet away, which totally egged this guy on. (I can't help it! It's just too much fun to make eye contact with cross-eyed people. Which eye do I look at? Exactly what part of my face is he looking at right now? etc.) I was actually not the alleged "NERD OR SOMETHIN"--Spencer was the receptor of the all caps memo, (I was one of the "gorgeous girls", THANK YOU VERY MUCH) and the response is yes. Spencer is a nerd. Apart from sports clothes the only outfit I've seen him wear in the last two years is a polo-khaki combo with five-fingered barefoot shoes. He dressed up as Captain America to see the Avengers. He spends days off playing piano at coffee shops. AT 26, HE IS AN ACCOMPLISHED ACCORDION PLAYER.
He is a nerd, but he is a LOVELY nerd and we would not change a THING about him. He also has a super hot girlfriend, so he's doing fine.
Homeboy seemed to inherently know that Spencer was great, which made the whole exchange kind of sweet instead of awkward and sad. Until he started screaming about how much he loves slasher movies, then the line was crossed and everything was awkward. But I still gave him a little wave on the way out. I liked him overall.
And then last night I was reading this book my cousin gave me, this girl's memoir about one-night stands, A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, and it was BORING. Just nothing turning the pages there. Which made me think about writing...
And then TODAY I was eating some frozen trail mix I found in the freezer (belonging to Ben, my new roommate) and was perusing the internet instead of calling that person back and trying to fix that thing that's jacked on my car when I saw that boring book, and...
I wrote what you just read (i.e. conclusion). More to come, though probably not all about bums on the train.
(Also, hopefully there's no you-just-moved-in-why-are-you-already-eating-my-trail-mix tension between me and Ben after he reads this.)
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