15 September 2002 - 8:28 p.m.

Let's just pick up where we left off.

Monday:

I do get my period, whilst eating at Wildflour. Thankfully, I have a ride to CVS, and I am able to get through viewing 2 of The Black Cat with a completely white dress.

I also attend an art opening, and run into J-Lar of Potatoelf fame. "We only met once, briefly," she says to me, "but I've been following all your adventures."

Great. Why must I be the girl who always has adventures? Why couldn't I have come to grad school as prepared and self-possessed as everyone else? Why can't I be as efficient as RHWD says I look, sitting with my spine so straight all the time? I have good posture for a reason, and the reason is that I'm faking it. All the time.

Not that it wasn't nice to meet J-Lar, briefly, for the second time.

And inside, a man touches my arm and tells me I look like an apparition on my un-bloodstained white dress, like death meandering through the gallery.

"Um, I'm sorry," I say.

"No, it's fabulous," he insists. "And I'm sorry I touched your arm, but I just had to see if you were real."

I still can't tell if he was hitting on me, or putting me down.

Tuesday:

I use my $5 Salvation Army manual typewriter to type up criticism of my peers stories. One and a half of them are of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Oy.

Wednesday:

More class, and lots of it. I learn the origin of the word "syphillis" and get a perfect on my film quiz. Dinner is free. Workshop is long. I practically crawl into Don Ho's, only to have Professor Pygmy reach down the back of my dress to make sure it's from the 1950s. But the jukebox is a lovely invention, is it not.

Thursday:

I shop and cook. Ms. Virginia and Jess and I are in charge of catering fun readings, and we do, in fact, cater a fun reading. There is wine, and damned if I don't partake. In a moment of weakness, I admit to someone I would not have ordinarily confided in that a certain member of the faculty is, in fact, my Top-Secret Favorite (Living) Poet, only no one knows because I don't want to seem sycophantic. In a moment of even greater, more literal weakness, I am unable to open the bottle of water that will sober me up, and TSFP steps up and does it for me. I am so mortified that I block this from my memory immediately. I go home and call Gus.

Friday:

The thrift stores are hit. Purchases are made, yet next to no money is spent. I am pleased.

We see One-Hour Photo, which I suppose is to be applauded for its Vertigo-esque instance of casting against type. We venture into IHOP. I cannot manage the ketchup bottle. I thank the person who does, and thank her again for unscrewing my water bottle the night before. Jess corrects me. "That wasn't her, that was [name of Top Secret Favorite (Living) Poet]. I saw him hand it to you."

I protest, she insists, I feel like a loser all over again. Why am I always the girl who has to be rescued?

Saturday:

Another party. More food. More wine. The grad students are there, and they are honest with one another. They are lonely. We are all lonely. We are all on an adventure. We are all here to rescue one another.

Sunday:

I have been dating Gus for two years exactly. We have been engaged for almost two months. On a day like this, when we are so far apart, it's hard for me to say that life is good. Then again, if we wanted to be apart, if we could be continually and consistently okay with it, we wouldn't be getting married. And so we are not unlucky, in the long run.

My fiction is full of food this week: one story is about chicken, the other, beef. It's a lot like a response card for a wedding reception, in that I have to choose which rubbery piece to try to chew up and digest.

Monday is a twelve hour long day, in some ways, the bane of my existence, but it's also the future. We'll see how it goes.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: