weekend by numbers

60- Total dollars spent in Ironic Urban Bowling at Lucky Strike on Friday. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun. Bowling always is. However, I can enjoy non-ironic suburban bowling just as much. I do not require plasma TV screens showing scenes from A Clockwork Orange above my pins, as if to calm the delicate hipster nerves: "It's okay to bowl! See Alex de Large? He makes this ironic, and you're still cool."

24- Years old Miss Becky is today. Happy Birthday, Miss Becky!

27- Excellent "Becky as a child" stories we heard from Robin, her mother, at dinner last night. As a small child, Becky was in a dance recital where her partner had to keep kicking her to make her dance, because all she wanted to do was stand on stage in her fluffy pink tutu and sing along to the song ("Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail, in case you were wondering).

1- Number of moms who made it to last call at St. Ex last night. Robin is the wind beneath my wings. She was awesome. My mom would have had four cosmopolitans, done the White Man's Overbite in the middle of the floor and punked out by midnight. Well done, Robin. I salute you.

3- Times I was forced to rebuff "Marc" while his cute friend, who was so much more my type, lingered in the background. This is a situation I have never really mastered-- what do you do when the guy you actually want to talk to is the buddy of the guy who incessantly hits on you? Common sense says to just leave them both behind, since the guy you like is not going to step all over his buddy once he's "staked his claim" (unless it's one of those really nasty pissing-contest-type situations wherein you are not so much a person to be talked to or even a hot girl to pick up but a faceless prize in a neverending competition that has nothing to do with you). But it still sucks-- the other guy was totally my type. Tall, thinnish but not skinny, white, with cute but not overly precious glasses. I so go for that.

2- Rank of the line "So, are you a gold digga?" on my List of Top Five Lame Pickup Lines.

78- Dollars spend on as-yet-unidentified part for my car. Necessary, though, after:

1- Flat tires and spectacular wipeouts in Chinatown on Friday night. It's been a long week. I really could have done without that.

1- Number of Big Important Things I'm Not Supposed to Know I accidentally discovered on Friday. No, I'm not writing about it in more detail than that. The people involved have specifically said "don't blog about this."

2- Number of really melodramatic, slightly drunk, entirely self-pitying blog posts I wrote and somehow had the sense to keep in Draft mode.

97- Imagined percentage of the film budget for Tommy that was spent on mind-altering substances. I'm watching that movie as I type this entry, and My. God. In. Heaven. What were these people on???? It's noon on a sunny Sunday, I'm not even a touch hungover and I'm freaking out. And we haven't even gotten to the part where Tommy starts playing pinball, much less the part where Ann-Margaret starts rolling around in the baked beans that shoot out of the broken television. I think I'm going to go read some Jane Austen in Eastern Market just to chill out a little. Wait, is that Jack Nicholson? And is he singing? AM I REALLY HERE? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING??

First rule about Half-Pint is that we don't TALK about Half-Pint

I so love that Netflix's Top Recommendations to me (based on movies I've watched and that are in my queue) are:

1) Little House on the Prairie, Season Three

2) Fight Club

emily's reasons why she's having an extra glass of wine tonight

EJ: don't you just want to CUT every woman on TBS tonight
Jen: cut them deep.
EJ: i am exercising my right to be in a foul mood tonight
EJ: all day long i've wanted to kick other people
EJ: i wanted to kick this girl was walking outside union station with ugg boots under her suit
Jen: perfectly reasonable
EJ: and then i wanted to kick the girl behind her because her shoes were better than mine
Jen: it's all about shoes with you today
EJ: oh no, i've wanted to kick people for lots of reasons
EJ: i wanted to kick this woman for holding up the line at the metro escalator
EJ: and then i realized she was blind
EJ: and i wanted to kick myself for being a bitch
Jen: you're going to hell.
EJ: and i wanted to kick the girl who i followed to her car in the crowded harris teeter parking lot who then waved me off and SAT IN HER CAR ON HER CELL PHONE
EJ: and i wanted to kick [name redacted for dooce-related reasons] for being a [vile epithets and graphic name-calling, ibid.]
EJ: and i wanted to kick the cat i'm cat-sitting for because he has a freakishly prominent spinal cord and a really annoying meow
EJ: and i wanted to kick mom for not having her cell phone for the last 5 days
EJ: man, this feels really good
Jen: i'm glad for you
EJ: and i ALWAYS want to kick daisy
Jen: every day.
EJ: that cunt
EJ: oh, and i want to kick heather graham for having a sucky show that is a pg-rated wannabe sex and the city that MAKES ALL SINGLE GIRLS WHO COME HOME FROM A CRAPPY DAY AT WORK WITH THEIR GROCERY BAGS TO BE GREETED ONLY BY THEIR CATS FEEL LIKE THE MOST TRAGIC CLICHE EVER
Jen: oh, em
Jen: things are not that tragic
Jen: you have to try really hard to be "Heather Graham's reason's why not" tragic
EJ: no, i'm just having a woe-is-me day
Jen: to which you are entitled
EJ: better to bring out the big guns of crap single-girl-in-the-city TV and get it all out at once
EJ: by the way, i'm blogging this

why on this night do we finally realize life is pretty damn good after all?

I had one of those nights last night where it's made clear that God, or whatever happens to frolic in the sky and play with our silly mortal lives, is still at least a little bit on my side. That despite the baby spit-up and jogging fall that left me scraped and bruised and a work situation that makes me want to staple things to my head (or maybe someone else's head), that I'm actually really lucky. Some twentysomethings stumble through life without being part of an Urban Family. I have two. What did I do to deserve such excellent friends? Because I want to keep on doing it.

Plans for the Birthday Bar Mitzvah are coming along swimmingly. Hold February 11 for all semi-tasteless festivities. L'chaim!

like pollyanna, only with mild profanity

The Lord giveth: I have an interview I'm very excited for on Monday.

The Lord taketh away: Riding the Red Line while running work errands this afternoon, a baby spit up on me.

But I brought GYM CLOTHES today. HAH. Didn't see that one coming, did you, you all-knowing smartass? Gym clothes, as in "I get to wear a 'GW Football: Undefeated' t-shirt and pilly black running pants for the rest of the day and my boss can't say anything about it." See? I WILL find some good in this divine attempt to wreck my afternoon.

And though I will no doubt be visited by a plague of locusts or be enslaved by the Egyptians for my heresy, here's my response to God for attempting to overshadow the best news I've gotten all week: NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH.

God, you cannot barf on my parade.

a slightly delayed but entirely serious christmas wish

Dear Internet,

Please help me find a new job. Preferably one that does not involve nudity or personality cults. Thank you!

Your friend,

EJ

the obligatory year in review post, 2005 edition

January: I begin the New Year with a vicious hangover left over from the most disastrous date of my life on December 30. I vow never to drink again, a vow that lasts for six days. Having quit my job over in November, I desperately search for my replacement. I find her. I buy a ticket to Rome. I make out with a stranger who reminds me so much of my high school boyfriend that I call him "Sean" the entire time.
Song: "Twentysomething," Jamie Cullum

February: I celebrate my twenty-third birthday with friends from high school, college and real life. I go home, where my mother tries to convince me that backpacking through Europe by myself is not wise. She fails. I fly to Rome. I eat lots of pasta, drink lots of red wine and absinthe, see countless cathedrals and priceless works of art. I get really homesick while doing laundry in an old monastery in Verona. I go to Austria, where I switch to Steigl, injure my knee hiking and meet some really cool Americans who also know all the words to The Sound of Music. I see both the Vienna Opera and The Killers in an abandoned industrial slaughterhouse in a 24-hour period. I go to Prague, get a massive black eye and decide I do not care for Eastern Europe.
Song: "Indie Rock and Roll" The Killers

March: I fall in love with Munich and consider staying forever. I make myself leave Munich, go to Denmark and decide to keep traveling after all. My money runs low and I eat nothing but rolls, doner kebabs and beer for eight days. I visit the Van Gogh Museum on a space cake trip and somehow wind up modeling necklaces for a crowd of Japanese tourists at the nearby diamond museum. I do impolite things in a park with Jan the Flying Dutchman. I celebrate St. Patrick's Day in Ireland, wander around Paris with my mother and watching the sunset over the Mediterranean in Barcelona. I get repeatedly pickpocketed and robbed, and eventually decide to not let myself get too freaked out because how often does one get to backpack Europe?
Song: "Transatlanticism," Death Cab for Cutie

April: I return home to Washington with a bag full of filthy hiking socks and the kind of hangover that destroys empires. I catch up with friends and discover that not a whole lot has changed since I left, but that I am a totally different person. I temp at my roommate's firm, look for a full-time job, discover the Nats and suddenly find myself in A Relationship. I start EJ Takes Life.
Song: "I'd Rather Dance" Kings of Convenience

May: The Urban Family goes to New Orleans. We dance to great music, consume shocking amounts of Hurricanes and have no idea how lucky we are to see her as she was. I watch Tom Cruise go batshit crazy on Oprah, blog about it and get a job blogging about TV. I visit my Boston relatives, bond with the children of my cousins and realize it's not so much that my aunt hates me but that she has no idea what to do with me. I get a job. I quit the blogging on TV gig.
Song: "Feeding the Angels" Lori McKenna

June: I become a working stiff. I see a ton of concerts with the guy who is my now my boyfriend. I have a giant fight with one of my roommates that was a long time coming and decide to move out.
Song: "Fire, Fire" M.I.A

July: I move to my fabulous new place and it's for the best for everyone. It gets motherfucking hot. My boyfriend and I go to Michigan to meet my family and he dumps me a week after we get home. I get very, very angry.
Song: "Passionate Kisses" Mary Chapin Carpenter

August: I start playing kickball. I adopt Sadie. I audition for a play and they actually cast me. I get promoted. Even though I'm buzzing with activity, I feel far more lonely than when I was alone on a continent where I didn't know a soul. Hurricane Katrina hits and I actually stop thinking about myself for five minutes.
Song: "Vienna" Billy Joel

September: I start classes for my masters in history and quickly decide I don't want a masters in history, at least not from this university. I start to date the first in a series of ludicrously lame guys. I barely see all my old friends because I spend every night studying, dating lame guys or singing show tunes with strangers.
Song: "Everyone's a VIP To Someone" The Go! Team

October: I stalk movie stars in my neighborhood and by the office. No one gets my Halloween costume, but they all appreciate the cat ears. My mother and I have one of our New York weekends. We see shows, walk scores of blocks and I'm reminded just how lucky I am to have been raised by her and my father. I freak out about having a sex scene and finally get over myself.
Song: "Sun and Moon" Mae

November: The show opens. The show rocks. I have my personal second-best performance of my life the night all my college friends come. The show eats the entire month, save Thanksgiving in central Michigan with some of the more migrane-inducing individuals in our family and a Lutheran bridal shower. Out of nowhere, work suddenly gets really, really bad. I meet a whole bunch of DC bloggers, and they all rawk.
Song: "Company" Stephen Sondheim

December: I start looking for another job. I write a really mediocre paper and finally understand I'm not ready to be in school just yet. Jen visits DC and we agree that, obnoxiously enough, our mother was right when she said that a sister will get you like nobody else can. I go to our cabin for Christmas and do absolutely nothing for seven days. Our family celebrates the wedding of a dear friend (who happens to be two years younger than me) and I watch her pledge her life to someone with such silly tenderness it brings tears to my cynical eyes that have seen too much this year. I promise to myself that in the New Year I will have realistic expectations about my career, friends and men, but that I will keep my eyes open for all things extraordinary.
Song: "Come On! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance!" Sufjan Stevens

Happy New Year, friends.

smelt party

"Well," Marie says, pushing the sleeves of her red and white snowflake sweater to her elbows, "Tom and I met right after I left the convent."

The entire room cracks up. We're Up North, hosting a Boxing Day dinner party for our neighbors and their families. Ten of us are gathered around the fireplace with plates full of chicken gruyere gratin and chocolate fondue. Jen and I are by far the youngest but are practically falling off our chairs laughing as the room full of Boomers exchanges "How-We-Met stories." It doesn't hurt that the assembled group has gone through about five bottles of Toasted Head by this point.

"I hadn't gotten my dispensation from Rome yet," Marie continues, "and so I was still technically a nun! I got a grant to go to Wayne State University, and I joined the Newman Center there-- you know, the Catholic student group on campus? Well, one day one of the fellows there says to me, he says, 'Marie, we went fishing the other day and we caught all this smelt! You should come over and we'll have a smelt party!"

This is greeted with actual cackling. "A 'smelt party?'" Jenny hoots. "Don't think I've heard that line before."

"So I go to the guy's house for the smelt party," Marie continues-- apparently, smelt parties are actual events that people have attended and whose existence they have not questioned-- "and so I'm in the kitchen, and I just smell awful, like fish guts and boiling water." She waves her fondue fork in the air for added emphasis. "I mean, I just smelled hideous. And then I see this guy walk in, with this gorgeous, DISARMING redhead on his arm."

Tom rolls his eyes and smiles the kind of grimace that can only be directed at one’s partner of thirty-plus years. “I mean gorgeous!” Marie emphasizes. “And so we chatted, but I didn’t think a whole lot of it. But then I went to another party a month later and in he walks. With the same disarming redhead!”

My mother laughs so heartily she rocks back and forth on the ottoman. “Woot!” she laughs. “Love at first sight!”

“But at that party everyone was dancing!” Marie’s eyes are wide as she gets to the juicy part. “And so I found myself dancing with him. And Tom says, he says ‘how is a girl like you not married yet?”

“Well,” our neighbor Debbie interjects, “you had a hell of an excuse.”

Marie grins. She’s really getting to the fun stuff now. “Well I tell him I just haven’t met the right man yet. So he says ‘mark my words, you’ll be married in a year.’ And I swear, I didn’t say it but I thought to myself ‘And I’ll be married to YOU!’”

“So we go out for our first date, and Tom takes me to a movie and the whole time he’s trying to touch me or hug me and I’m just—“ Marie pushes an imaginary twentysomething Tom away with her hands. “He had this little red Carmen Ghia, and I would just shrink into the corner of the seat, because, well, I was still a nun! As long as I hadn’t gotten my dispensation I was still held to my vows.”

“Well, about a month later I finally got my dispensation from Rome. They released me from my vows. Of course it was all in Latin and I couldn’t read it, but I knew what it said. At the time I was living on the Wayne State campus with another girl; she was studying to be a nurse. And the day I got that letter I told her: ‘Get out.’ I told her, ‘just get on out of here tonight!” So Tom came over for dinner that night and I put the certificate on his plate—and Tom can read Latin, so he picked up the paper, looked it over, and then he came over and picked me up—“ Marie mimes scooping her arms in the air “—and kissed me!”

She looks over at Tom, who is folded into the armchair across the room. He lifts his glass ever so slightly and quietly nods. “And,” she finishes, “we were married six months later.”

We all sit for a moment, enjoying the lingering scent of the story. Then my father speaks up: “So what happened to the redhead?” My dad has a thing for redheads. A condition of my parents’ marriage is that he gets to openly lust after Ann-Margaret.

Marie mock-questioningly looks over at Tom. “Oh honey, didn’t she get drunk and throw up in your car?” For a former nun, Marie is damn sly even thirty-nine years after that particular triumph.

“Yup, honey.” Tom clearly does not relish that memory so much as Marie.

Everyone laughs the fireside laugh of congenial, wine-toasted Midwestern friends. And as I look at Tom and Marie, sitting across the room but still dancing together, I have something wonderful to aspire to.

Comfort and joy

Mom: Do you know why Santa is always so jolly?

EJ/Jen/Dad: No, why?

Mom: Because he knows where all the NAUGHTY girls live.


Merry Christmas, kids.

the past is blasting all over my inbox

If you put the hours together, I have spent more time with online friendship networks than with my biological family in the last year. Friendster is increasingly passe, and I refuse to go on MySpace (ostentiably because it's owned by Rupert Murdoch but really because I have no more space for passwords left in my head), but Facebook sucks up insane amounts of my days. My use has tapered considerably since the signup frenzy of last year, when my alma mater finally got on the network and ninety percent of the university and alumni spent months building their collections of names, but it's still something I regularly visit.

This morning my Gmail contained a surprising email from Facebook: "Brenda Carp has listed you as a friend" (pseudonym, obviously) (but not THAT far off). If it had been my middle school in Mean Girls, Brenda was Regina George. She was my best friend until seventh grade, when she suddenly decided to spread nasty rumors about me, turn all our friends against me and generally make life as a 13-year-old girl a nasty hell (cuz y'know, it's not like that already). Nothing terribly shocking-- writing things in magic marker on my face when I fell asleep at slumber parties, smashing an egg in my face at her birthday lunch, but hurtful and cruel nonetheless.

But the really fun part is that she never got over it. Even after we went to separate high schools, I stopped being quite SUCH an enormous dork and we were supposed to have grown up, she still enjoyed the occasional nasty action or comment designed to poke me in my most vulnerable spot. When I ran into her at her high school's play, she saw made sure I saw her pointing at me and giggling in a corner with her best friend before sitting in front of us during the show, constantly turning around to look at me and then whip around, still laughing. I later found out that she had just hooked up with a boy I went out with freshman year who dumped me because I wouldn't give him a blow job. This girl could have taught Donald Rumsfeld a LOT about psychological warfare.

Over the years, I haven't really thought about her-- that is, until this morning, when I got that Facebook message. I clicked to her profile. She sounds happy. She has a lot of friends. She's still pretty. I want to think "good for her."

Nope, can't make myself think that just yet. Apparently old habits die hard.

I'm deleting the email and her request. I may not actively wish her ill, but what's the point of opening up that door again? Almost all women I know have someone like that in their lives, who no matter how far you travel and how much you grow up, can still get under your skin. A lot of the men do too, though they're far less likely to talk about it. Sometimes it's an ex, sometimes a parent, sometimes a colleague. For me, all these years later, it's Brenda.

This email triggered an idea, though. Something I've been kicking around for a while, and I think I'm going to try to organize it. Stay tuned, because I'll need your help and participation. For now, let's just say that I have an idea for a way we can look back and smile at the things we once wrung our hands over.

and it's all because of the interweb

I so adore how out of everything I've done in the last six months, my boss singled out my ability to quickly find the phone number for the Talbots in Georgetown for special praise.

Really, I'm touched.

Oh and also, I handed in my final paper. Let's just say this this marks the third time I have now included Paris Hilton in a paper during my nascent academic career. But really, when one is writing on the irrelevance of quality categorization in contemporary popular culture, there really couldn't be a better example to cite.

Oh Lordy, I am so ready for Christmas.

silent night?

This is the problem with not blogging for a long time: there is too damn much going on to be organized into a coherent post. Writing feels like when I go to bed at 2 AM on a Tuesday without first taking a Tylenol PM; a million unconnected thoughts running through my head. Errands I need to run, people I need to see, tasks to check off my list at work, did I double-book happy hour with Old Urban Family and New Urban Family, how long has it been since I've called my mother, wait, how long has it been since she's called me?

And so I present to you the last week, sans-panda, insomnia-style:

"Buy Gruyere, cheap reds, rotissere chickens and panko for holiday party. Find out what the hell panko is. VACUUM. BLEACH BATHROOM. Starting to smell like cat has died in toilet. Come to think of it, where is cat? Find catsitter for Christmas. Buy Christmas presents for parents, Grandfather and His Wife. Write paper. First actually read articles required for paper. How many pages does 3,000 words equal? Reschedule date with Tattoo Trent-- no time for dating until paper is done. What the hell was I thinking going out with someone who has THAT tattoo THERE? Do I tell my mother I'm at least dating just to get her off my back over holiday dinner? Do I then lie about details of how MET Tattoo Trent? Must remind Jenny not to spill beans. JENNY VISITING. Pick her up at Metro at 7:30 AM. Damn Northwest blackout times. JOB INTERVIEW. Print out resumes, clip packet, job description, firm info, question list. Thank-you note to interviewer. Oh god, interviewer graduated same year as me. This is discouraging and depressing. Speaking of, gynecologist visit immediately following. What do I think of switching birth control? How do explain to boss that have yet another doctor appointment when have claimed had two already this week, when actually was viewing panda and interviewing? Oh god, eighty-three new emails in four hours. I hate the Patriot Act and everyone who has ever touched it, written about it or voiced an opinion about it regardless of what they said. Why is this week above others insane at work? WHY is god's name does this publication HAVE to go out RIGHT NOW as opposed to three hours from now? K BIRTHDAY. At least get her a card, you awful, awful friend. CHRISMUKKAH. Cannot afford actual gift of alcohol-- would be OK to bring leftover office party Robert Mondavi cab sav to a kegger? Lovely, you want to bring the new girlfriend to Chrismukkah? Whatever, I guess thanks for checking in with me first. Holiday open house. Brokeback Mountain already sold out for two days? Duh, it's only in Dupont. Fandango for Saturday. BLEACH BATHROOM. Paper-- would my prof buy the argument that MacDonald is the academic equivalent of the guy who really liked Bloc Party until everyone else started listening to them and now he's full of poser disdain? Wonder if there is an academic equivalent of MisShapes or Last Night's Party? Am pretty sure Alan Dershowitz would DJ at it. CRAP, must again cancel on HH with Rem and S. Third time someone has-- look for new date in 2006. Gahh, 2006-- what's going on New Years? Are we still doing dinner and champagne somewhere? CRAP, rescheduled date with Tattoo Trent on night of Kisha's show. Must either blow him off AGAIN or blow off Kisha like accidentally did in New York. Wait, did Jenny get back home OK?"

Christmas break may be coming up, but exactly how can I get a vacation from my thoughts?

Panda-Monium!

We finally got to the National Zoo, and it was cold. Oh Lordy, it was cold. Thigh-chilling, nose-freezing, toe-numbing cold. This panda had better be DAMN cute.

We present our tickets, wait in the first of three lines and start to get excited. For six twentysomething professional women, we are regressing back to childhood really quickly. Something about playing hooky from work to go to the zoo will do that to you. We start comparing our favorite Disney movies. We start singing songs from them. I freak Libby out with my impersonation of Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty.

We finally get inside. We are literally skipping by this point. "We're gonna see the panda!" we sing. "Butterstick, Butterstick, Butterstick!"

So imagine our disappointment when the zookeeper tells us Butterstick just went down for a nap. Literally entered his enclosure as soon as we skipped in. We look over to the monitor and sure enough, there's his snoozing, fuzzy butt curled up in the corner. And so we pout.


Sarah and EJ are very sad that Butterstick won't come out to play.


Kim is also sad. Sarah is still sad. I'm not sure what's going on with Libby here, but I'm pretty sure she's also sad deep down.








We try to console ourselves with learning all about Butterstick and his family. Somebody brings up the even more sad fact that in two years, we will have to send this little guy back to China. "How exactly do you ship a panda?" Laila wonders out loud. "Yeah," Libby chimes in. "Is it boat? Plane? Can you FedEx a panda?"

"As long as it's not USPS," Kim adds.



As it turns out, it IS FedEx.











We met Zookeeper Mo, who told us the Zoo Secret-- that despite the hype, it's really quite easy to get tickets to see the pandas, especially when it's cold. Just show up at 11:00 and claim the no-show tickets. We thank him profusely, and I'd like to think our politeness inspired what happened next. A zookeeper decided that since we were such a nice, polite crowd, she would pick up the snoozing Butterstick and parade him across the enclosure for us!


EJ takes bad pictures, but in her defense, she was a little excited. Oh yeah, and she blames her camera, too.









I'm pretty willing to bet that if we had been pushy yuppy bitches they never would have taken him out, but apparently taking pictures with frowny faces did the trick. So the moral of the story is, pout and you'll get your way.

After The Stick's curtain call and subsequent curling up in a rock pit for yet another nap-- being that cute is CRIPPLINGLY exhausting-- Mama Mei Xiang was nice enough to stroll into the enclosure to check on her barking cub and knaw on some bamboo. Of course, she completely ignored us.



Mei Xiang cannot be bothered to entertain you. There is bamboo to be eaten. Take her photo if you must.




And so, pandas seen and lunch hour successfully frittered away, we skipped out of PandaWorld and went merrily on our way, panda-monium achieved!








The mood is markedly different. Butterstick is nature's upper for Kim, Sarah, Laila and EJ!

forest for the trees

Quoth the New York Times editorial board:

The price tag for protection against a Category 5 hurricane, which would involve not just stronger and higher levees but also new drainage canals and environmental restoration, would very likely run to well over $32 billion. That is a lot of money. But that starting point represents just 1.2 percent of this year's estimated $2.6 trillion in federal spending, which actually overstates the case, since the cost would be spread over many years. And it is barely one-third the cost of the $95 billion in tax cuts passed just last week by the House of Representatives.

Total allocations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror have topped $300 billion. All that money has been appropriated as the cost of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks. But what was the worst possible case we fought to prevent?

Losing a major American city.

If Democrats do not use this properly in the coming elections cycles, I'm FedExing my stuffed donkey back to DNC headquarters. Say what you will about the duties of nation-building, the morality of abortion and the stickiness of charter schools. It really pales in comparison to letting a major American city rot while slashing taxes in large part to benefit the wealthiest one percent of Americans.*

*And before you get all persnickety, I know that most of the first three tax cuts passed were a) approved by Republicans AND Democrats and b) not the flagrantly elitist kind that usually gets my knickers in a twist (for example, the largest was to slow the expansion of the alternative income tax, a move that is merely SOMEWHAT flagrantly elitist). However, the cuts debated today are for $56 billion worth of cuts on dividends and capital gains which ARE flagrantly elitist and almost exclusively benefit the kind of people who did not need to rescued from their waterlogged homes by helicopter.

run! i see a FLAKE!

One of the (few) benefits of a northern Michigan upbringing is weather cred. I can't be all badass like the kids who actually grew up east of 8 Mile, but I DO get to make fun of Washingtonians who go apeshit at the first sign of snow. Quoth the NBC4 website:

"Storm Center4 meteorologist Tom Kierein said the storm is approaching from the west and could hit D.C. as early as 9 p.m. Thursday.

Some areas south of Washington will see a mix of snow and rain, Kierein said. But the area around the District could get anywhere from 2-4 inches of snow, mixed with rain. And Kierein said areas north of the city will see all snow and should expect anywhere from 3-6 inches.

A winter storm warning means severe winter weather conditions are expected. Significant amounts of snow are forecast that will make travel dangerous.

Officials say motorists should keep an extra flashlight, food and water inside vehicles in case of an emergency.

Thursday night's low will be about 25 degrees."

Twenty-five degrees?? THREE TO SIX INCHES IN THE NORTHERN SUBURBS?? Oh, THE HUMANITY.

Yeah, you could stock your car with food, a flare gun and a tire iron for beating away all the zombies emerging from the sewers as Hell freezes over. Or, y'know, you could just pilfer packets of hot cocoa from the office break room and put on a sweatshirt when you get home tonight.

After all, here in Washington we try our best to be levelheaded and not overreact to anything.

daisy wouldn't take life, either

Dear TBS,

No one wants to see Daisy Does America. The promotions for it are so unfunny that they actually make people squirm. Please inform Daisy and the Cox Arquettes that no one has made a "who let the dogs out" joke since spring 2001 and they weren't funny then. Is Daisy herself actually that bad, that millennium-era VH1-quality humor is the best she can muster, or is Courteney Cox Arquette actually that poor a producer?

Also, please stop running ads for this show during my PG-13 reruns of Sex and the City. It is NOT the perfect show to follow Sex and the City, and I resent your insinuations that Daisy's painful shtick is in any way comparable to the considerable talents of Sarah Jessica Parker. Based on what I've seen of Daisy, even Kristin Davis could eat that girl for breakfast with a side of quiche.

Moreover, I already watch this television program on HBO, where it is called Da Ali G Show and it is actually funny.

Oh, and please find some new films for rainy Sunday afternoons. We've all seen Stepmom approximately eleventy grillion times now.

Your friend,

EJ

no place like home for the holidays

i laughed, i cried, it was better than "cats"

It's a well-established fact that I'm a huge theater nerd. Not the "As I child I saw Phantom of the Opera with my parents and did a play in high school" kind of nerd. Oh nonononono, friends, I mean NERD. Specific to Rent, my nerdiness includes the receiving of a poster signed by the original cast for my fourteenth Christmas, countless hours of singing along with the cast album in the shower, car and various dorm rooms and finally, being SO EXCITED to see the touring company in Detroit that I completely forgot to buy anything for my mother's birthday because it was on the same day as the matinee we were attending and therefore my attention was entirely elsewhere.

You want more? OK, when I made my "Philosophical Self-Portrait" for senior year philosophy class, no less than three pages of the twenty-page work contained references to Rent, including an entire page with just the lyrics of "La Vie Boheme". Of course, in this class I also accompanied myself on the electric keyboard while singing Tori Amos' "Silent All These Years." That incident is one of the many reasons I will never attend a high school reunion.

So we saw the movie version of Rent last night, and I'm still trying to work out exactly how I feel about it. It was not the enormous disaster it could have been, that's for damn sure. There were some pleasant surprises (Rosario Dawson can sing!) and even some things that translated better on the screen than on stage(Jesse L. Martin's big cuddly grin!).

You know what it reminded me of? Paging through my high school yearbook. I did this over Thanksgiving, and even though high school isn't in the distant past just yet, it feels like light years ago. Browsing through glitter-pen decorated pages, I laughed (what was I thinking with that red hair?), I cried (was my stomach really once that flat?) and I winced a LOT (a girl on yearbook staff who didn't like me captioned a picture of me in The Music Man with "EJ conveys a look of superiority." Ouch).

Rent was the same way. I didn't want to get my expectations up, which was good. No matter how much I loved it on stage, it was bound to get a little muddied in translation to film. Changing song lyrics into dialogue, no matter how much the actors ignored the cadences they once sang, just sucks. Talk about cringing.

That flaw aside, it was still worth it. They used most of the original cast, who miraculously can still pass for 20somethings. There was no attempt to update it to the present, which, seeing how the Lower East Side is now littered with Starbucks and Alphabet City is as much a tourist stop at Lincoln Center, is a relief. The transitions between songs were awkward, but once they started singing it felt great. I'll even admit to crying during Angel's funeral, though I was really embarrassed about it and glad I'd worn my glasses as to better conceal any evidence.

What really freaked me out was watching the film and realizing what a yuppie I've become. Rent-free loft in New York? Do you KNOW what people would do for that? Shut up and film your damn friends after you shoot your "sell-out footage," you whiny kid. It's called A Day Job. Even Jonathan Larson waited tables and THEN went home to bitch about art and life. And ROGER-- CAN WE PLEASE DISCUSS HOW EXACTLY IT TAKES A YEAR TO WRITE THAT SONG? I know you're heartbroken and going through withdrawal and everything, but John Mayer could have pulled that song out of his ass in five minutes. I expected better, you sexy, sexy man. Finding myself sympathizing with Benny, the guy who's just trying to collect the rent from his old friends who are refusing to pay up, was a totally unexpected and unwelcome phenomenon.

But then, when I loved this show as a teenager, I didn't pay rent myself. Nor did I pay my phone bill, taxes, budget for Meow Mix and worry about balancing my career with a social life and if I should ever go back to school and should I pay off my Amex bill in entirety even if it means I have no cash for the rest of December? I was a misfit kid who loved a show about a bunch of misfit kids who found each other and held on tight, even as they made crap choices and didn't want to own the consequences. They didn't do anything well except love one another, and that part translated loud and clear onto the screen.

So it wasn't perfect. It's so strongly identified with a place and time, both as an extant show and in the minds of people who see it. You can't go home again, and I can no longer view a show about dilettantes without rolling my eyes a little and thinking "Get a job."

But I laughed, and I cried. And it was hella better than Cats.

on bloggers rocking

Blog Happy Hour last night was great! Thank you to the lovely hostesses for putting on such a great event, and especially to I-66 and KOB-- I-66 was the first DC blogger to ever comment here and KOB is the Godfather of this little sphere, so I have a special place in my cold stone heart for both of them. Good luck to Laura, who is running a fantastic charity that everyone should give money to, and who when I started ticking off her 2L classmates I know, shouted "Oh my God, you know every Jew at GW Law!" Yes Laura, that's probably true.

See, only other bloggers know what it's like to be a ho to your sitemeter, to willingly open up your personal life for public scrutiny and only a fellow blogger would understand why I had a twenty-minute conversation with the charming Heather B. about meeting Stephanie Klein. Other bloggers are the friendly extroverts who don't hesitate to introduce themselves with "Hi, I write Sharkbait!" them giggle a bit at the oddness yet clear practicality of introducing oneself by one's blog name. Furthermore, general consensus among Washington bloggers is that Jessica Cutler is a skank who serves absolutely no purpose and is generally the Ugg boot of women, thus illustrating the wit and wisdom of the DC blogger world.

D was good enough to come with me as a buffer guest at the beginning of the night, to help ease my nerves until the cocktails set in. Chatting with her and another girl whose sitename I sadly lost in a gimlet haze, she asked us why we blog. It was funny; for all the navel-gazing that goes on here I'd never really thought about it. "Well," I answered, "it's because I have to write. I just need to. Whether it's venting or documenting, I just need to write."

"So why don't you just keep a journal?" D asked.

The other girl and I looked at each other for a second and I looked back at D. "Narcissism. Honestly! People reading your writing feels great."

Well, it turns out that meeting those people was even greater. Thanks for a really fun night, all.

only GS-11s and above get the contaminated ecstasy tablets

B: working for the government is so strange...someone just brought me 2 glow sticks, 6 antimicrobial wipes, antibiotic ointment p ackets, and two handwarmers so that I could toss out the expired ones in my emergency kit....I'm just unsure if we are preparing for a terrorist attack or a night at velvet nation

EJ: HAHAHAHAHAHA

B: seriously

B: did I tell you one of the things in the emergency pack--along side the gas mask--is a maxi pad (yeah like the kind my grandma wore)

EJ: oh that is priceless

B: your tax dollars...taking care of any off-cycle days

EJ: and ironically, it would also come in handy for a night at velvet nation

hours of happiness

Blogger Happy Hour tonight!

Why am I nervous about this? I feel like I'm crashing another high school's prom. D articulated it at lunch today-- it's just so strange, the idea of meeting people whose lives you read about but who, let's face it, you don't know. Not bad, just strange. Uncharted waters, if you'll forgive the cliche.

Well, here's to smooth sailing. And cocktails. Here's to those, too.

all work and no play makes ej more than a little tense

Oh, the tingling nerve of it. The empty screen practically taunting me. "C'mon EJ!" it whispers. "No one will know! Vent! Let it all out! Your boss would never find it! No one else in your office would care! You go ahead and spew all the crap stored up inside you."

Oh Blogger, you foul temptress.

I will not blog about work. I will not blog about work. I will not blog about work. I will not blog about work. I will not blog about work.



Instead, I will say that standing in the Teet at 10:30 last night, after work, class and exhaling for the first time since I hit my snooze button that morning, I contemplated which pint of Ben and Jerry's would be my downfall. Two years, kids. That's how long it's been since I've induldged in that particular sin. More specifically, not since the week my thesis was due. There have been other ice creams, surely, but none with the caloric or emotional significance that comes with a pint of B&J.

It was a tough call between Fossil Fuel and Dublin Mudslide, but in the end I went with the former. The idea of something fueling was quite appealing, plus I was afraid that anything with a drop of alcohol would set me off on a whole other kind of binge.

I ate three-quarters of the pint curled up on my couch with Sadie kneading my stomach as if to say "Oooh goodie, more to play with," wondering when, exactly, it starts to get easier. Just when the things we work for finally fall into place after years of towing the line and working hard and playing by the rules.

My Dad said last night when I called for advice "At least you have the comfort of knowing you're doing everything right." That's lovely, but I'd prefer not to need that comfort at all.

disavowing all knowledge

What's that you say? There are two entries missing? Two entries that describe certain individuals in accurate-but-less-than-flattering terms?

There. Are you happy? I'm not. I don't particularly appreciate being censored, especially when the odds of said individuals stumbling across this site are comparable to odds of said individual's spouse leaving all money to Hillary for President 2008. Well, it wouldn't be the holiday season without carefully reasoned guilt that makes me feel like a petulant child.


And remember, DAD, I know when you're reading. It's called a "sitemeter." You are well advised not to return.

what i will do with all of my free time now that the show is done

* Really miss everyone from Company. You guys are so fantastic, and I had the best time working with you.

* See people again. I know, right? Such a novel concept.

* Actually do the reading for class before the day OF class.

* Write a 3000-word paper entitled "In Defense of the Middlebrow." Remind me again why I'm not doing this full-time?

* Host my office holiday party.

* Spend an overlarge amount of time scouring www.epicurious.com for ambitious recipes for said office holiday party.

* End up beating head into wall after two hours of buttering ramekins for individual chocolate molten cakes while simultaneously vacuuming stray cat hairs, wondering why ever agreed to host said office holiday party.

* Go back to Michigan to eat turkey, banter with extended family members, throw a bridal shower and see Garrison Keillor.

* See Rent, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Walk the Line, The Family Stone, Brokeback Mountain, Memoirs of a Geisha, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck and Pride and Prejudice.

* Figure how the hell my new TiVo hooks up.

* Read Are Men Necessary? and bitch about Maureen Dowd to all my girlfriends while being secretly afraid that she may be right.

* Renegotiate my salary.

* Make full use of my gym membership.

* Sleep.

* Audition for another show? I know, right?

directions

We're standing outside the classroom, waiting for the Italian 001 students to finish their vocab drills. I am fervently grateful not to be among their ranks; Italian killed my GPA. Without Italian I would have graduated summa, and it's not like learning to say "the pasta is very good" helped me when I was lost in Verona and desperately needed to get a cab to the train station before the 9:34 AM train to Innsbruck.

The other students are chatting about what classes they're taking next semester. M, the thoroughly nice guy who asked me out earlier this year but I turned down because my main college relationship taught me never to date a man who wears jeans with embroidered decals, asks me what I'm taking.

"Nothing as of now," I croak. Despite a paycheck's worth of Halls, the Death hasn't really left me yet. "I'm not technically a grad student."

Two other people look over at us. "I mean," I add, "I'm just taking this class because my job gives me great tuition benefits. I'm not a masters candidate."

"Really," he says. "Why not?"

I hesitate. It's complicated. "I just... now isn't really... I'm just not sure yet."

M shakes his head and goes on talking with the other people. I refill my water bottle, and it's a good thing I did. When we finally get to go in the classroom and the discussion starts, I play a big part in it. I do most weeks. I'm really not bragging here, at least not intentionally; I would be incapable of of graduate-level (or undergrad-level) work in a lot of disciplines. I'm good in this class because I studied these topics really intensely in college and the format of the class is very open-ended and free, a style that really suits me.

I get a lot out of it, too. Even though I bitch about the reading and often don't give it the attention it deserves, I always leave class with a million different thoughts bouncing around my brain, running in all directions. I often also leave wondering why I'm not doing this full-time. I have the means to do it if I want to, though it would leave me with less financial freedom down the road. A masters would make me a more valuable employee, would give me more power in salary negotiations and help me find a better-paying job. More importantly, it would be hugely stimulating and rewarding. Beginning to become an expert in a field, to be slutty with academia and learning, would be a delicious experience. I know I'd be good at it, I don't have any doubt about that.

So why am I not doing it? Why am I not pursuing this? My current professor, who I studied with as an undergrad, almost refused to sign me up for this class. "EJ," he said, "why the hell do you want to stay here? Go to Yale, go to Harvard. Is there a good reason you're not getting a PhD?"

The reason, though I didn't tell him, is that I don't know if I'm capable of that level of scholarship. Right now, I'm not even capable of doing a practice GRE. It's easier to stay in this comfortable limbo, full of relatively secure finances and a crazy fun social life. For the first time, I'm in a job I enjoy and can support myself with. I'm the head of my household, and giving up work to be a full-time student, no matter how intellectually rewarding, would be a huge lifestyle change. I hate to think that my shallowness is the reason I'm not a grad student. I'd hate to think that it was kickball and happy hours and community theater and dating crazy French guys and crappy television that is keeping me from pursuring this.

Yet another part of me wonders if these are really such shallow things. These are all earned, this lifestyle maintained solely by my work. Despite all noble notions of higher education, that one goes to college to become an educated member of one's community, we also go to college so that we can begin careers that can support a lifestyle to which we become accustomed. This isn't shameful; it's a practical reality, and one that is a hell of a lot more satisfying than women fifty years ago were faced with. There's freedom in it, independence and control over one's future. I'm very big on all of those.

Plus, it's damn fun. Who knows what's in the future? Now is the time where we can spend disposable income on building our networks and our lives, where we just begin to reap the fruits of all our labors in college.

All this is on my mind throughout the class, which is excellent as usual. When we're done two hours later, M and I walk out chatting about possible topics for our final papers. I say goodbye to him at the bike rack and start walking towards the Metro when he calls out after me "Hey-- you did really well today."

Maybe he just said it because he still wants to get in my pants. Maybe he really meant it. I happen to think the latter. I go home from class, as usual, with a million things on my mind, spinning off into a million directions.

thank you much

Best. Show. Ever.

Thank you so much to my dear, dear friends. Seeing your faces after the show felt fantastic, and the flowers are oh so pretty.

Thank you to the enormous swell of people who came, forcing us to add extra chairs and hold the curtain while the ushers made sure we weren't violating fire code.

Thank you to whoever started applauding after my first scene. That's never happened before, and I had to bite my lip walking offstage to keep from grinning because it felt so damn good.

Thank you to tonight's entire fantastic audience, who totally made up for last night's far more tame group by laughing at everything that came out of our mouths. It's incredible the difference a strong, engaged audience makes.

Thank you to A for providing the classic A line "EJ, you've set the bar too high. I won't come and see you in any shit plays now." Having your support is great; being able to impress you is even better.

Thank you to the makers of Dayquil and Hall's Cough Drops for sponsoring my surprisingly resilient voice after four days of panicking and yodeling to keep my throat limber.

Thank you to the random woman in the parking lot who stopped me to say "You play dumb so well!"

Thank you, thank you a million times over. Tonight felt really good.

ripping jolly good time

I would like it noted for the record that I called Matthew Macfayden's stardom back in the fall of 2003, when I started watching reruns of MI-5 on BBC America during my thesis-induced insomnia phase. Yummmmm. Even with the silly Darcy wig they gave him for the new Pride and Prejudice, yummmm. How did this show never catch on the US? It's Alias meets 24 with accents, people!

I've been watching a lot more BBC America lately, in large part because I don't get home until 11:30 every night and there is only so much Family Guy a gal can watch in a week. Besides, Footballers Wives is FAR superior to Desperate Housewives and The OC. Old episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus inspire actual laughter, whereas I watch The Colbert Report and find myself thinking "This is funny. I should be laughing at this. Why I am I not yet laughing. This is funny, right?" And do not even get me started on BBC News versus all of American cable "news."

I've always been a bit of an Anglophile, but with this new habit of turning on BBC America, I'm taking it to a whole new level. What once was WASPishness could soon be replaced by lapsing into accents, a condition that has already been known to happen upon the consumption of multiple glasses of wine and group viewings of Sense and Sensibility. Yet beneath the references to places that end in "-shire" or "-heath," the basic premise for this new hobby easily translates into American English.

I used to make fun of my lovely old roommate for her devotion to General Hospital, but now I find myself PASSIONATELY worrying if Tanya actually did kill Jason and what the hell is going on with Chardonnay's hermaphrodite baby and OH SWEET MOSES I CANNOT BELIEVE HAZEL KEEPS HER HAIR THAT COLOR DOES SHE REALLY THINK SHE'S FOOLING ANYONE BECAUSE THAT COLOR IS NOT FOUND IN NATURE. And I realize that, despite the accents (which are often impenetrable as organic chemistry), I have become just another girl addicted to her soaps. It's only a matter of time before I start swatting my mewling cat out of my lap, yelling "I'll feed you after my stories!" Despite all attempts at self-delusion, the accents really don't make it highbrow, any more than a gigantic sequin-encrusted blazer and the strongest Botox in Manhattan make Susan Lucci look a day under seventy-three.

I still wish someone else I knew watched this stuff though, because I would really like to engage in a dialogue about the implications of the Muslim suicide bomber episode and whether by naming one's child "Chardonnay" you predestine her to a future career as a topless model. These are the issues that shape our world, people. Erasing international borders one fictional hermaphrodite baby at a time.

why i love my parents (technology)

From: Dadman

To: Offspring

Subject: another fine mess...

Once again, following in the footsteps of my kids, (who remain an inspiration to me) I have been cast to do a student film at U Michigan. From now on you can refer to me as Mr. Freidman - loving husand of Mrs. Freidman, who is suffering from some dread disease and he is dedicated to taking care of her - although (and this is the dramatic part !!!) it weighs heavily on him and he secretly feels over burdened by the situation.


And since my mother recently learned how to text message, I get at least two texts a day (three if she's at a conference and it's not yet happy hour). Highlights include:

"home bored paying bills wish was still at work"

"gross pt sooooo boring... waiting lalalala"

"u got camera ticket- 32 in 25 zone but dad paid it bc we dec. was horseshit"

backstage notes

One weekend down, two to go!

It went really well. A few tiny bobbles, of course-- dropped lines here, delayed sound cues there, a kiss so violent I nearly busted my upper lip open-- but overall, it went remarkably well. Great houses full of friends and family, and one really entertaining gay couple who sat in the front row of today's matinee and literally barked and hooted their enthusiastic laughter. My entire office and a bunch of friends showed up opening night, which was wonderful. I am so lucky to be so supported by these great people.

It's been a really long time since I felt the jangly nerves of opening night. I've blamed many of my flaws-- procrastinating, overreacting in relationships, analyzing meaningless comments and looks-- on being an actress, but when I'm actually performing I get a focus from nerves that I can't duplicate from anything else. It's an itchy energy, where it feels like ants are crawling on my veins and if I scratch with great diligence and attention they'll stop. When us girlfriends are backstage waiting for our cue in the opening number, doing our hushed disco-slam dancing to keep energy high, it's practically like a blood transfusion. The show seeps into me.

And when we storm out on the stage, the lack of sleep, the fact that I haven't seen my friends in a month and there's a layer of dust so thick on my bathroom floor that Sadie sneezes when she uses her litterbox and I have purchased and not cooked with an estimated $37 in vegetables that have since gone bad-- it is oh so very worth it.

Lessons from Final Tech Rehearsal

When your role in large part consists of making out with a fellow actor, it is probably not wise to consume an entire head of roasted garlic smeared on a baguette for lunch.

Just a thought.

putting my money where my pill is

Damnit. I didn't mind giving up Wal-Mart because I never shopped there anyways, but this one hurts.

AmericaBlog has a story on how a Missouri Target pharmacist refused to refill a birth control prescription for a 26-year-old woman. When contacted by Planned Parenthood, Target confirmed that it indeed permits individual pharmacists to refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception should it violate their personal religious beliefs.

I can't in good conscience give my business to a company that allows employees to discriminate and put women in harm's way on arbitrary whims. So, though it bums me out, no more Mossimo shrugs, Isaac Mizrahi shirts or Stuff by Duff home decor. I emailed Target's corporate website and strongly urge you to do the same by clicking here. Here's what I wrote; feel free to borrow all or any of it, but please write. They need to hear from smart, educated people telling them this is not OK.

Because of the recent disclosure that Target pharmacists may freely refuse to dispense birth control and emergency contraception, I will no longer be a Target customer.

I strongly believe that it is not a corporation's place to pass judgement on any sort on its customers. Target would not tolerate a white supremacist employee who refuses to help minority customers, nor a homophobic employee who refuses to serve gay or lesbian customers. Why then, may a employee refuse to serve a Target customer on religious grounds?

If Target wants to set a corporate policy to not dispense birth control or emergency contraception, that is its prerogative. Though I personally would disagree with such a directive and continue to shop elsewhere, a clear and defined company policy would be useful to the communities that Target serves. However, to allow individual employees to assert their personal beliefs on a whim is dangerous to customers. Women (and their partners) rely on these medications to preserve their health and their way of life. It is highly unethical for a pharmacist to aid in disrupting a cycle of medicine. It is dangerous to refuse to provide medical care to women who may or may not have been victims of sexual assault. It is highly irresponsible for Target to allow an environment where prescriptions may be filled one day only to be denied the next.

I am sorry that I will no longer be able to shop at Target. Until now, I have been pleased with the products offered and the services I have received at my local store. However, I cannot support a company that permits such a byzantine, discriminatory policy.

in comes "company!"

Usually, the week a show opens is filled with stress, sleep-deprivation, scratchy voices and general grouchiness. Our director for Wait Until Dark went through five bottles of Maalox during tech week. I still have nightmares about the cue-to-cue of Bye Bye Birdie, when I was stood terrified atop of a 4x4 fourteen-foot-tall platform for an hour as the lighting designer bickered with the conducter. More often than not, much of the cast is on "vocal rest," wherein we don't speak all day (including with colleagues, friends and significant others) we we can save our voices for the show. I can just imagine the look on my boss' face if I replied to his questions about trip preparations by handing him an index card reading "For the next three days I will not be speaking, as to rest my vocal chords for a theatrical production." Riiiiight.

Company has been remarkably free of these usual travails. We've been running the whole show for two weeks now, and so far tech has just been... fun! I cannot overemphasize how rare that is for this stage in the game, but it's true. Everyone's got their shit together, knows their characters inside out and is having a great time with the material and one another. Spirits are high, we're out of rehearsal at humane hours and we've annoyed many a neighbor in the Dupont/Logan Circle area by laughing too loudly over post-run drinks. The only sad part is that we won't still be working together in a month.

Last night was my favorite night of the whole process: sitzprobe and bows. Sitzprobe, though it sounds like something a German alien does to unsuspecting earthlings, is the first time the cast sings through the show with the orchestra. After working with just a rehearsal piano for two months, it's fantastic to hear bass and drums and winds added in-- the show takes on a whole new life. A lot of the music is very 70s, and that really came out for the first time last night. And of course curtain calls are always fun to plan-- hello, we're getting applauded! That never gets old. So come see us and applaud us!

The Foundry Players Present

Company

A Musical by Stephen Sondheim

November 4-6, 10-13, & 17-20, 2005
Thursday thru Saturday evenings at 8:00 PM
Sunday afternoons at 2:30 PM

Adults: $18 Seniors/Students: $15
Reservations: (202) 332-3454, or,
www.foundryplayers.org

The Foundry Players
1500 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

improv and boners, new york-style

Mom goes to New York twice a year for various conferences, and I take the train up to meet her so we can shop, take in shows and generally abuse her various expense accounts. This weekend was no exception. I occasionally feel mildly guilty for going to New York only to completely ignore the various museums and cultural opportunities outside of Broadway. However, when we stumble from the first of several West Village boutiques laden with bags full of clothes I cannot afford to buy with my own money, or emerge from yet another fantastic show, that's all gone and done with. Besides, we have a damn good time. I feel really lucky to be able to be friends with my parents... that's a rare thing.

Sometimes we pick clunker shows, but not this trip. Light in the Piazza was stunning. The music was lush, utterly gorgeous and more operatic than one usually hears in a Brodway show. They really got the lighting right, too-- there was one scene in particular that perfectly captured Florence, a few blocks I specifically remember on the east side of the city. As the cliche goes, writing about music is about as useful as dancing about architecture, so I'll just encourage you to go see it. It's at Lincoln Center, which I'd never been to before, so that was an extra treat.

The second show we saw, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, was beyond funny. Two solid hours of laughing. Of course, it didn't help matters that I unwittingly wound up as part of the show. It's a musical about a spelling bee (duh), and I had read reviews of it that mentioned audience members being pulled up to play spelling bee contestants. We got to the theater way too late to sign up for this, not that I (or my mother) ever would have. However, it turns out there's another part an audience member plays.

One of the characters is eliminated fairly early on due to... the distraction of hormones. Again, I knew this plot twist was coming from reviews. However, I didn't realize that his inspiration would be an audience member. Another actor had already pointed to our row to indicate his "family," but then this actor pointed right at me and said "Leaf, is that girl in the tube top sweater your sister?" Next thing I know, there's a spotlight on me, this actor is calling me "Marigold" and singing a song about how I gave him an "unfortunate erection." At one point he gave me a bunch of juice boxes. Bear in mind that this was a thrust stage in a U-shaped theater, so the entire audience had a truly fantastic view of me as he performed this hysterical number. You really had to be there. Of course I totally played along with it for the rest of the show-- I kept on winking and waving little waves, and blew him a big kiss at curtain call (he was no more than two feet from me at bows-- this is how close we were sitting).

We lingered outside the theater waiting for Kisha to meet us. I exchanged conspiratorial chitchat with the audience members who'd been pulled onstage to spell and was taking a photo for a large family from Indiana when the teenage son asked me "Hey, were you that tube top sweater girl?" I said yes, and he responded "Well, there goes your boyfriend."

Sure enough, the actor was walking out the front door with a group of friends. I'm not entirely sure what possessed me to do this, but I called out after him "Hey, you said you would call!"

He turned around and took a second to distinguish me from the creepyish people who usually wait outside Broadway stage doors. I took advantage of the pause to have more fun with him. "You men are all the same!" I yelled in mock bitterness. "What am I supposed to do now?!"

He broke out into a huge grin. "HEEL!" he shouted back. "You guys have a good time tonight?"

"We did!" I replied. "Thanks for a great show. You all were hilarious."

"Good!" He waved goodbye and disappeared down the street with his friends.

Mom and I waited a few more minutes for Kisha, but she never showed. My fault-- I'd left my cell in Washington and hadn't called her to confirm. We walked out to 50th and Broadway to get dessert and drinks, still laughing about the show and my brush with greatness. As we turned the corner, I heard someone yell behind me "GOODBYE, MARIGOLD!"

We turned around to see the actor half-leaning out of a cab idling on the corner. "I'll think of you always!" I cried back.

"I love you!" he shouted.

"I love you MORE!" I yelled back. He cracked up laughing and slammed the door of the cab, speeding past us towards Times Square.


Ten years of acting classes, kids. Knew they'd pay off someday. And, though I doubt I could ever live in New York, why I love visiting her.

Now the only question is, "Can I put 'Marigold Honeybear, Original Broadway Cast, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee' on my resume?"

Bugger this for a lark, Mommy and I are off to New York.

ay carumba

Um, how did I become a member of the Mexican Young Professionals Society? I'm suddenly getting all these Evites in Spanish. V. confusing.

Caught Nicole Kidman filming yesterday when I got off the Metro at Foggy Bottom. She is indeed beautiful... beautiful like the Stepford-robot wives in her crappy remake. She's so Botoxed she's got James van der Beek Forehead going on:

See?? You could project movies on those noggins!

I have my first actual sports injury! Pulled right hamstring from slipsliding into second base during kickball finals. Is it silly that I'm crazy proud of this?

It. Needs. To. Stop. Raining. Now.

I need to not do my reading for class in Starbucks. While working on Sunday morning I couldn't figure out why this woman kept giving me dirty looks until I realized they were directed not at me, but at my beat-up copy of George Nash's The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. I agree, OK? McCarthy was bad!

Look, it's really great that M.I.A is getting exposure and shit, but come on. Is it already time for her to sell out for a Honda Civic commercial? This is exactly what happened with John Mayer in 2000. One minute he's a nice singer-songwriter whose pleasant music worked with all moods and backgrounds, and the next minute a freshman from your floor is calling you to say "Omigod, I'm waiting in line in a hotel lobby to blow John Mayer! This is the coolest thing EVER!"

Three days until New York. Ten days until opening. Four weeks until I can go out again. Five if you don't count a Midwestern Lutheran bridal shower as "out."

scenes from a weekend

It's Friday night and I'm in a formal gown in a Dupont apartment. The lights are low and strangers and friends alike are circulating around the small studio, glasses full of wine and dressed in varying states of classiness. I thought I would know only two other guests, but people from my freshman dorm keep showing up-- it's a little disconcerting, and like I do every week when I run into familiar faces, I bemoan how small this town really is. Having arrived at 7:30 and skipped dinner, glass number six is about to do me in. In the meanwhile, I'm talking with Ben, a truly hot asshole. I'm a sucker for those.

"So, Ann Arbor," he sneers. We've been talking college football, and it suddenly turned into a conversation about sex. "How old were you? Was it at one of those parties you townies all went to? Was it a hockey player or basketball player?" He's positively leering right now. Coming from everyone else, those words would make me drive my spike heel directly into his instep. However, he has really powerful eye contact and a grin that somehow makes this conversation seem less jackassish.

"Excuse me," I say. "I have to go get some more wine." My glass is three-quarters full.

"Fair enough," he smirks. "But it was a hockey player, wasn't it?"

"I won't even dignify that with an answer," I say prissily.

"Ha!" Ben cackles. "I knew it. SCORE."

I whip around to leave, and then do the time-honored half-glare over one shoulder (which works especially well with my slinky party dress). "You know," I say "you're not nearly as charming as you think you are."

Reflexes slowed by the bottle of wine he's drunk in the last hour, he's speechless for a second but then breaks out into That Grin. Urgh... why must the assholes always have great grins?

A few hours later, I'm officially drunk and it's time to go. I've abandoned hope of finding my clutch in the mess of coats and umbrellas, but our lovely hostess has promised to track it down for me and loaned me a 20 to get home. As I stumble out the door, trying to keep my heels from cutting further into my feet, I catch Ben's eye in the hallway. "Bye, Ann Arbor," he sneers, miming a slap with a hockey stick of air. I roll my eyes with as much dignity as I can muster and prance off to the elevator. As I wait for it, I see him grinning at me out of the corner of my eye. I think back to all the guys I've known who complain that women tell the nice guys they know what great friends they are and then ignore them in favor of hot jerks.

Well... yeah. I don't really have an answer for that, but now I've met Exhibit A.

************************************************************************

It's Saturday night, and I'm in my pajamas in a stranger's house on U Street. We've already hit one Halloween party, where the first keg was kicked at 10:30 and people were dressed in all manner of insane costumes. Eric and I had left it with a group of semistrangers, skipping down the flithy streets in costume holding hands and singing a tuneless version of "My Baby Takes the Morning Train." This party is themed, but far calmer-- I think it's something about the Metro. I have no idea who the hosts are or why we're here, but they have beer and I've just walked six cold blocks in my furry slippers. We're not going anywhere.

A girl in silver platform shoes and fairy wings comes up to us. "Oh my GOD!" she screeches. "You're a gay guy. I LOVE GAY GUYS!!! What's your name?" Completely ignoring me, she shoves her face into Eric's in a drunken kiss. "GAY GUYS LOVE ME!!"

Her wine glass of beer sloshes around as she yaps about all the gay men she knows. "Yeah, so I was in Guadalajara and I was like, the QUEEN of all the Mexican gay guys. Like, the social butterfly. I'd go out, and they'd be all 'Hola, chica!' Wait, what's your name again?"

Because she's completely ignored me and had asked Eric what his name was at least seven times, I'm free to mock her as much as I want. When she stumbles off, no doubt in search of another gay man to corner, I hug Eric's waist to keep from falling over laughing. "Oh man!" I cackle, "that is bleak. Please don't ever let me wind up like that."

"Oh honey," he says "not possible. You could never be that tragic!" He reaches out and slaps her ass. She turns around, stumbling on her platforms, and throws her arms around him. "I looooooooove you!" she shrieks. "What's your name again?" I snort so hard into my beer that it splashes on my forehead.

"Being loved is like being powerful," I say to Eric later. "If you have to tell people you are, then you're not."

He high fives me. "Bitch, we're dancing!" He drags me into the living room and we do the comfortingly familiar bump and grind. I loves me that kid.

An hour later, I'm done. My cat ears are giving my a headache and I can't drink anymore and still drive home. As Eric walks me to my car, we pass a familiar face walking down the street with a new friend. We exchange hugs and conspiratorial winks.


Another weekend for the history books.

i promise this is the last post about my underwear for at least a week

Exchange with Blake, our star and my bedfellow, at last night's rehearsal:

EJ: "Do you mind if I leave my skirt on tonight? Because there isn't a comforter on that bed yet and I really don't feel okay just sitting in my underwear in a church."

Blake: "So I'll be up there in my boxers and you'll be fully clothed? Is that what you're saying?"

EJ: "No! I'll just still have my skirt on and...[weakly gestures towards lovely camisole which covers all manner of sins and is actually less revealing than most of my going-out tops]... OK, fine. But can we please make the bed first? I really don't feel comfortable up there with nothing to cover my ass."

Harlene, our costume designer, interjecting: "But sweetie, it's not you up there-- it's APRIL."

EJ: "Why does that not make me feel better?"

Blake: "Because that's Jesus staring down at you from the stained glass window."

EJ: "And he's PISSED."

And later, when the bed was made and Blake and I were under the most flimsy Ikea bedspread ever made:

Blake: "Stick your feet out! Curl your toes!"

EJ: "Oh my God, are you thrusting in time to the music?!?!"




We open in two weeks.

one down, rove to go

schadenfreude \SHAHD-n-froy-duh\,
NOUN: Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.


And for the record, even though he helped spend taxpayer dollars to the tune of over $70 million for Whitewater and over $50 million for Monica Lewinsky, DeLay never got Clinton within miles of a mugshot camera or inkpad. That, dear readers, is the difference between money laundering and a blowjob.

Well, that and the gag reflex.

you LIKE me! you really LIKE me!!

Some Tuesdays really suck. Thanks to an error in Diet Coke-related judgement the night before, I was up until 3 AM alternately reading Under the Banner of Heaven and old issues of Vogue. This meant that when I finally did nod off I was subjected to disturbing dreams that Anna Wintour was going to slit my throat for not properly adhering to the gospel of Zac Posen and encouraging my friends and loved ones to wear Gap. The cat, as she is wont to do, spent the hours between 6 AM and 8 AM trying to bite off my feet, because that is her idea of playtime fun.

All this meant I didn't leap into the shower until 9:00 and failed to slog out the door until 9:30, which is late even by my office's lax standards. I got about four blocks when I realized that my iPod battery was close to dead and I'd left the charger smack in its place on the counter. Oh, and did I mention that I'm officially five pounds too chunky for the leather blazer I'm wearing?

All this was on my mind when I got my copy of the Express and rode the escalator down to the Metro. And then, whilst flipping over to Sudoku, I saw it:

Yep, that's EJ in the Metro Express. Thank you, Washington Post!

I squeaked a little bit. The woman next to me and the man next to her looked over at me with nervous expressions: "Umm... is she going to violate the Metro code of no eye-contact/conversation/touching of any sort?"

I smiled at them, something I rarely do in the Metro or before 10 AM. "Sorry," I said, "but my blog- it's..." I trailed off, since their expressions indicated they A) did not know what this blog thing was and B) wished me to stop talking right away. But even surly strangers can't take away my new-found good mood.

Tra-la, bitches.

i have to sing my tale to the panda

Is that the face of a "Tai Shan?"

I think not. That, my friends, is clearly a Butterstick.

Oh, you know all the zoologists call him that. Don't even front, yo.

friday evening quickie

Many of you have asked me how the play is coming. It's all coming along wonderfully. We're starting to get to that really fun point where people are solid with their lines and coreography and singing enough to actually tell a story. These last few days, I'll be backstage waiting for a cue or out in the house reading for class when suddenly a line will catch my ear. I'll look up and see these great people I've been working with for two months are gone, replaced by their characters. Even though I know the actors, and know what they are going to say and do next, they are capable of tugging at my heart with just a look. Of course, it doesn't hurt that we have incredible material to work with-- I doubt I would be having this much fun if we were putting on Nunsense II or similar.

Busy, busy weekend ahead. Pray for my liver, friends. Pray for her.

shame

Back when our college food court still had a Burger King (and a Chick Fil'A, and a really shady stir-fry station and sushi on demand), we regularly partook of Burger King deserts. Two in particular were especially deadly: the first, a gooey chocolate, Oreo and whipped cream concoction my friend Grant referred to as "Shame Pie:"




I know, right? It's like an orgasm in a cookie crust.








My favorites, though, were the perfectly gooey Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies in the plastic bin by the cash register. They had the ideal balance of crispy edges and slightly undercooked middles, chips a-melting and greasy crumbs making the little red and yellow cellophane wrapper nearly transluscent. Students ate so many of these things that Burger King was forever pulling new batches fresh from the oven, so you could always get a warm pair. I have spent the last twenty-three years on an Arthurian quest for the ideal chocolate-chip cookie, and the Shame Cookie is closest I've come yet.

Before heading to our deadly boring prosem junior year, Becks and I would trade off who bought the Starbucks and who bought the Shame Cookies. You didn't want to go too many days in a row, because Burger King was right off the sushi/salad bar and while you handed over your ID card to purchase 17,000 calories worth of deserts you'd be forced to look at the size 0 freshmen buy their cucumber rolls while loudly complaining how fat they felt and was there such a thing as nonfat soy sauce?

Why all the food porn today, you ask? BECAUSE I'M FUCKING STARVING.

Since getting cast in this show, I've been watching my diet, working out four times a week and trying to switch from beer to wine and/or vodka. Despite all the carrot sticks and elliptical sessions and cookies politely ignored, I've only lost six pounds in two months. Not one of those pounds, I might add, was from remotely useful place. I think my elbows might be skinner, but that's the only difference I could see and then only in really excellent lighting.

There will not be really excellent lighting in the show. Oh, it will be of good quality, but it will be in the form of a spotlight on me in various states of deshabillé. Mostly, though, I'm just really ticked off. All that time and effort for basically no payoff. I could have spent the last two months with an IV dripping brownie batter into my veins and be basically the same weight.

And if I'd done that, I wouldn't now have a craving for Shame Cookies so fierce that in about five minutes I will be joining the crack whores north of the convention center, ready to blow the next visiting businessman who will drive me to a Burger King.

'dentity crisis

Blogger, despite your best efforts and my total lack of HTML skillz... I WIN. Minor changes are still in store, but for now, this blog is looking much more like something I would be proud to advertise as my own creation.

You'll notice I'm officially EJ Takes Life now instead of Urban Fantasy, so please update your links accordingly. This change was a long time coming. One, it's my URL. Two, I'm getting really tired of having my sitemeter filled by adult entertainment enthusiasts searching for "(Insert Noun) Fantasy." And finally, the concept of Urban Fantasy is simply too universal to be my little blog. Ironically, Urban Fantasy itself is like porn: you can't necessarily describe it, but you know it when you see it. Walking home from Eastern Market last Saturday, listening to the Kings of Convenience on my iPod with a loaf of French bread sticking out of my Actor's Studio tote bag is Urban Fantasy. Telling my mother last night how the theme from All Things Considered on NPR always reminds me of early childhood-- very Urban Fantasy. I think you get the idea.


And we're not talking about the fact that I skipped Quizzo and Afterparty to mess around with my blog. That is not Urban Fantasy, but it is EJ Taking Life, one CSS tag at a time.

ch-ch-changes

Am clearly getting antsy with this blog. Am thinking I may have to ditch Blogger entirely. It may be free, but I'm beginning to think Typepad is worth the five bucks a month to have something somewhat unique.

In the meanwhile, I spent the day catching up on reading at Murky and stalking Matt Damon and Robert DeNiro. Yes kids, the crew from The Good Shepherd was filming a mere four blocks from my house all day and yours truly did some truly stellar gawking. Sadly I missed DeNiro, though Beds got herself the stank eye when she had the nerve to Blackberry in front of his trailer. Lucky wench. I also couldn't quite muster the nerve of the paparazzi on 5th Street (or my fellow gawkers with camera-phones) to actually snap a picture of Matt Damon himself, but we did indeed see him. He's just as pretty as can be. Here are some of the photos I did manage to take:




From what I gather, the film is a period history of the C.I.A. This means extras dressed in fedoras and trench coats and streets filled with fantastic vintage cars. DC police and the movie crew cleared four blocks on the Hill and filled them with these antique autos. We watched them drive around in circles for hours as we strained for a glimpse of a trenchcoat-clad Billy Crudup.




Though we never saw Billy Crudup (or Angelina Jolie), we did catch glimpses of Matt Damon running a scene on this amazing vintage bus. It took maybe three passes down the street before we realized that THAT was where they were actually filming, as opposed to the streets filled with vintage-clad extras.

Oh, and the PA had a cute butt, dontcha think?





All the cool kids hang out at craft services.


I debated trying to snatch one of the The Good Shepherd directors chairs, but figured I'd already given up enough dignity for one day by chasing after a bus containing movie stars for a good ninety minutes.








This extra was great. The PAs had to block off the first ten feet of sidewalk so nothing non-movie would get in the shot. The second this woman walked out of the scene she would start doing the Charleston or a little jig, all done up in her dainty early-sixties hat and sensible shoes.

The clothes were fantastic. We all agreed men need to start wearing hats again. I would wear pantyhose every day if I could constantly see men in fedoras.



Nicole Kidman is filming at GW on the 24th-- I promise to get even better photos of her movie. Hopefully by then, I'll have a decent website to put them on.

it's the little things

Lots of little things kept me from going to Connecticut this weekend. I was supposed to drive to visit AnnaMo, who has been kicking her own ass marketing her candidate and prying cold hard cash from the tightfisted souls of Hartford. As I woke up early Friday morning, unpacked and vaguely hungover, it became clear my trip was in danger.

It was pouring rain so hard my windshield wipers could barely keep up. My driver's license had expired the week before. I had yet to do any reading for Monday's class, and could ill-afford a repeat of last weeks excrutiating silences and the professor's fist slamming on the desk as he threatened to walk out. Work was a madhouse of dozens of tiny tasks. Tuesday starts the Hell Month of truly intense rehearsals-- every night, running through full acts and full shows, off-book. We had our biggest tech day yet on Saturday and I hadn't once stopped by to help paint, build, or even buy coffee.

So there was no one reason I couldn't go (apart from the expired license, I suppose, but I've driven from Michigan to DC with an expired license before and managed to live)(not that this is wise, nor am I in any way endorsing said endeavor, merely stating facts as they stand). Lots of little reasons got in the way, though, and this is why I am not in Connecticut watching the Yale/Dartmouth football game, drinking martinis and speaking in a nasal Westchester lockjaw. Weekend was instead spent watching Michigan humiliate herself (TWO missed field goals? against Minnesota? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?), drinking beer at the Brickskellar and speaking in a British accent with Libs as we swooned over Mr. Darcy, Part the Second. Verbs are essentially the same, but apparently geography possesses its own unique nouns.

I sit here in my ratty Scrubs scrubs from the NBC studio store, watching The Thomas Crown Affair for the eighty-fourth time and wishing that my wardrobe was entirely Celine by Michael Kors and that I was the kind of woman who could pull of wearing sunglasses indoors. Sadie is rolled over on her back next to me, paws in the air and spine contorted in the shape of a question mark. She's giving me a look that clearly says "Woman, is there a reason you're not rubbing my belly right now? Is that not what I keep you for?" Maybe I'll cook something ambitious for dinner-- maybe something with the jar of hoison sauce I bought over three months ago when I went grocery shopping after a couple of cocktails.

I still have reading to do, but not right now. Right now, I'm going to roll around in having a whole day unexpectedly free. Wrap myself up in it and marinate in it. Whole. Lotta. Nuthin.

Lalalalalalala.

there's a "hail mary" pun in here somewhere

Now THIS is Christ almighty.


They don't make a curling sculpture because God HATES Canada.

"she let him put his hoo-hoo-dilly in her cha-cha?"

TOMKAT IS SPAWNING.

Christ almighty in heaven.

Actually, "L. Ron psychotically buried in a volcano" or similar. What happened to the "no sex" clause of her contract? Joey, Joey, Joey, my heart is BREAKING HERE.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN! I LOVE HER!!!!!!!!!!

Here's a fun game! Identify which of the following quotes are George Bush talking about Harriet Miers and which are Tom Cruise talking about Katie Holmes:

1) "I could go on and on."

2) "People ask me and I’m going to be honest about it. She’s such a good person and so genuine.”

3) "I will forever with this woman be jumping on couches, dancing on tables and hanging from chandeliers.”

4) "I know her character. She's a woman of principle and deep conviction."

5) “It’s just like, 'Huh? Wow, man. Wow. I was looking at her (and thinking), ‘Man, you are so cool.’"

6) "She shares my philosophy that judges should strictly interpret the laws and the Constitution of the United States and not legislate from the bench."

7) "I want to celebrate her, she's a very special woman."

8) "A pit bull in size 6 shoes."

9) "I picked the best person I could find."

10) "I'm really, really, really happy, and I can't contain it. And I'm not going to pretend."

11) "I know her well enough that twenty years from now, she'll be the same person."






Answers: 1) Bush, 2) Cruise, 3) Cruise, 4) Bush, 5) Cruise, 6) Bush, 7) Cruise, 8) Bush, 9) Bush, 10) Cruise, 11) Bush

tired

I am very very tired.

I got nuthin' more. Just tired.

catharsis

Note: I published this, then took it down because it just felt too personal to have posted on a website. Still, since all involved read it in the time it was up, might as well keep it there anyways. Here's to brutal truths.


I rounded the corner of the stairs to head up to the bathroom, when I saw him outside. I'd stuck to my time-honored tradition of flat-out ignoring him all night, and it was just not working. It was awkward and painful and hard on all our friends. Still, the alternative-- actually talking to him-- just seemed too much to bear. He saw me hesitate at the top of the stairs and turn around.

"Em..." he called after me, "do you have something you wanted to say? What are we...?" he trailed off, not sure how to finish.

I laughed in a rueful, bitter kind of way, even though there was nothing funny about this. "I dunno," I said, staring at the wall and not at him. "I mean, do you know what it's like to want to punch someone and hug then at the same time?"

"Well," he replied, "yes, actually."

"So then you know how I feel."

**********

"I really was sorry, you know. You can't imagine how much I tortured myself afterwards, asking if I'd done the right thing and knowing I didn't do it the right way."

By this time, we'd moved to a bedroom down the hall, where we saw the steady parade to the bathroom through the half-closed door. Geoff, our host, was the only one who saw us back. He appeared in the doorway, full of the kind of emotional sincerity that only comes after the first eleven beers.

"Look," he slurred "I dunno what you guys are talking about, but I really like both of you. Like, I really love both of you. So if you could..."

Matt and I both laughed, the first genuine laugh eithout agenda or attention to audience I'd laughed all night. "Yeah, yeah, OK." we said.

**********

"Why did you end it?"

We'd been upstairs talking for over an hour. I'd told him earlier I didn't need to know why. Clearly, I was full of shit.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked. "I don't know how to say it really. I thought about writing you an email once, but I--"

"Try." I interrupted. "Please, you owe me that."

He told me. It was what I expected to hear. It was what I'd been coming to realize, mixed in with his own stuff I'd guessed at. And it hurt, and I cried, and he cried.

"I was so afraid you'd tell me you loved me," he said. "I knew I couldn't say it back, even though I wanted to so much."

"I know. I almost did say it a few times, but it wouldn't have been true." I paused to catch my breath, because I need strength to say what needed to be said. "I just was so... proud of myself. That I could be someone's partner, that I could need someone and he could need me. I had been so scared that I wasn't capable of really being with someone. And then you came along, you were there already and it felt easy and right and it didn't matter that I knew we weren't right for each other because I thought if I worked hard enough then we could be--" I broke off as he put his arms around me.

"I'm so sorry" he whispered into my hair.

"Me too."

*********

We lay on the stranger's bed in a familiar pose. I curled myself into that crook of his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around me, tracing an abstract pattern on my shoulder. Hot tears squeezed through my eyelids as I tried to commit this feeling, this moment to memory. I knew it would be the last time we would ever hold each other like this.

"Should we go downstairs?" I whispered.

"Do you want to?"

"Not especially."

"Me neither." Pause. "We were really good at this part."

And at that, I cried a little more.