February 26th, I guess.

I'm making the same mistakes all over again, I'm sure of it. We're sitting in a bar, in Hilltop. Red retro lesbian lounge, two join from the biker bar: me, Old Friend, New Friend, and his Straight Boyfriend.

I hate Straight Boyfriend. New Friend always pays for drinks. SB talks about how NF pays for his gas, because he can't afford to fill his tank to drive to his two shifts a week at Panera Bread. Old Friend rolls her eyes. I handle the pack of cigarettes in my purse. I only smoke to have something to do with my hands, and it's probably better I play with the half-empty pack of menthols than the can of mace.

SB and OF get up and dance. New Friend leans in. Do you like sex?
I ponder. I don't know the right answer to tell him.
I mean, because I don't. I think I was raped.
I think that you can learn to have sex. For the first time, since that doesn't count if you don't want it to. And it's a good part of relationships. So I hear.
I just don't like it.
That's fine.
And he basically has a fiance.
Does she have a ring? I joke.
Well, yes. He frowns. On layaway. And she hates me. But I friended her on Facebook.

NF tells me the news OF already shared.
Yea, I mean, I don't know. He contacted me recently, so I figured he was single.
He nods. Yea. I feel bad.
Yea?
Because.... New Friend, in his chivalry, skirts around the issue. She doesn't like me.
Well, that's fine. I don't really like me.
She has a lot of problems, though.
Well, so do I.
I can clearly see the dotted line tracks in his mind, dodging around spears and knives.
Let me put it this way. He pauses. K is anorexic.
Fuck.
And you.... are, well-
No, I get it.
And I think it really messed with her.
The same way it would mess with me if the guy I had been seeing for years cheated on me with, well, her. Schwarz-Erin and Licht-Erin, or I guess-the last name can be debated. The dark and light. I'm always the light, always the fucking light one. Guess I'll continue to tell them I keep cigarettes around purely to smoke. My hands are shaking.

Straight Boyfriend and Old Friend are arguing over money. New Friend and I exchange glances from across the table, winking, grimacing. I look in my lap a lot, maybe the answers are there.

New Friend drops his glass of Lambic. Splinters, shards, shreds, scattered, landing everywhere. I drive home, peeling off my bloody tights that scratch the porcelain sink and cut clear through my hands the tighter I vainly wring.

2.20.10

Same old roads. Same old fucking roads. I’ve passed them each four, five times. Lake Flora, Lake Helena, no lakes in sight, only J. M. Dickenson Road, Glenwood Road, the same old fucking gas station and the same old fucking trailer park.
There’s no use calling anyone. I can help you if you’d like. But I can’t give them anything to do so.
I always get lost here. I always think turning right is right. I always end up spit back somewhere else. I am convinced the Key Peninsula exists solely to fuck with me, to suck me into wormholes and
A deer stares at me from the side of the road and I burst into tears. A fifth of tequila, a fifth of vodka, lay unopened at my feet. It’s been hours since I left. My arms are very tired.
Here is the information you need, messages my dad.
No. You don’t get it. I’m not going. I want to go home.
Ok. Drive safely. Love you.

Something broke. The pack of Diet Coke splits apart, rolls around in my trunk, hitting the sides with a dull metallic thunk. I’m not leaving here the same, says the man in the mask. How cliché my vision is. Feathers and blue jeans, he stands, waiting for me to get out. I drive in the other lane to pass him.
I see the car and I don’t even think. Quick jerk left. So many things I can blame this on, exhaustion, a seizure, loneliness like a tic. Get out of your car and come see me.
She just lays there. Smoke whispers out of our crushed hoods.
I get out. Hello!
Doesn’t move.
No, see, I reached out. Your turn.
I almost got in an accident here before. Maybe I only just saw someone almost get hit here. It seems to blend interchangeably. I’m not in an accident, get out, get out, your turn!

She sits up, without looking, and drives away. My car is totaled. And somehow, I’m at the gas station again.

The cat is howling. Every few cries, one gets caught in his throat. I hear it scratch along his vocal chords, grasp onto his soft palatte, until the air forces him out, choking. Fine, he says, I'm upset.

What still surprises me is when I think about this. Not when I'm sad, not when I'm lonely. Or. Maybe I am, and this is how I realize that. It just catches me. Plugging in the toaster. Checking the mail. Practicing slow, dotted rhythms for grad school. My voice cracking- "Murder on the High C's," I heard, the other day.

2.6.10

It's the same feeling I've been getting, off-and-on, mostly on now. I'm semi-fooling people, and any minute my mum's going to walk in, apologize to the room, and take me home to play with Legos and wrap Barbie dolls in tea-stained bandages, things I am capable of.

I feel so in over my head.

This is just to say:

Today I laughed so hard that I actually peed my pants a little.

I wasn't actually wearing pants, so I had to take off my panties and tights and stuff them in my boots (alao off because I felt weird wearing huge knee-high boots and no panties)

We have fun.

Last night I had the strangest dream

It really could have just been a continuation of the night. Fell asleep on their couch, four blankets, only one small piece of ground beef left on the table from our slightly illegally obtained feast.

We were in a bar. I kept on taking pictures, trying to get the bartender to match poses with the bear cutout moving across the top shelf, like a target at a fairground shooting game, stuck in a hula-la pose, arms waving to one side. Each picture I got made me laugh.

We went upstairs, to the hotel-dormitory above the bar, and started to cook a meal. I saw you, wearing a hairnet very similar to Scary Spice's 90's hair cones. Your girlfriend was stunningly gorgeous and madly sane. You ignored us, even though we had been talking loudly about you. I hoped you didn't hear.

I've lost my friends, and am with a married couple I vaguely know. He's lying on top of me. She's watching.
Now, he is going to lick up your leg, and you're going to enjoy it, she says. She does. He does. I don't, but feign interest as his tongue runs up my thigh, past my hip, beard tracing scratches in my skin.

I go downstairs, to the bar, to discover the bartender has been devoured by a bear.

Add:

Who even goes to bars alone anymore? Women, I mean. And I don't want to be bothered.
But how horrible would it be if I wasn't even bothered?