Dude Where's My Car?

Memento Mori

My grandfather is dying of lung cancer.

Eight years ago at an annual checkup, the doctor spotted a tiny lump in his right lung but ruled it as too small and inconsequential to warrant a biopsy. Now he is sick in Singapore, struggling to breathe and getting thinner by the day. He already looked aged and frail enough when I saw him last in September. It's been barely a month. What is going on here? I wish I knew what to do. I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up in 2011 (or 2008) instead of the next morning where my father will be on a plane to Indonesia where my terminal grandfather has a two month ultimatum.

I wish I could stop everything.

Reverse Psychology Sucks

When I decide not to get involved in anything physical, I get involved in something physical. When I decide not to look for a relationship, someone comes knocking on my door. Oh fuck this eloquent posting shit, time for a word diarrhea post.

- what you're JEALOUS? JEALOUS? But you're not supposed to be jealous, Gypsy Guy! SENSE: THIS MAKES NONE.

- WTF REDHEAD DUDE. WHY YOU GOTTA LIKE ME.

- I NEED SEX. SOMEONE SEX ME. I need to get a dildo.

/schizophrenic post

Details

Every time my mind flashes back to that morning, I try to remember that 5 second interval between the moment I was driving on the road and the moment (and everything afterwards) that I was in the ditch. For the most part, the scene replays in the same, unchanging sequence:

I am in first gear, urging my car to go faster across the black asphalt towards the median while my brother plays music on his phone. As my brother sings along to the chorus, my fingers shift their position on the wheel without my consciously knowing it because I have made this particular left turn too many times to count at this point. I wonder--mumbling to myself--how will I pass this French midterm today?

And then I stop wondering. The music stops playing. My brother stops singing. Everything. Just. Stops. There is only a great whoosh filling my ears, rising higher and higher and higher until

I come to again, and my eyes are watering and my nostrils are stinging from the sharp tang of gasoline inside the car. My hands fumble to get the windows down--I'm coughing and gasping--and my brother. Is my brother alright? He's fine. We're both okay. The ringing inside my head has not gone away yet and neither has the numbness in my mouth, but those things don't matter because we're alive.

I try hard to fill the gaps in my memories, but my hands inevitably start to shake as soon as I recall the more minute, sensory details of the impact: the iron grip my fingers had on the steering wheel, the great roar surrounding my car as the truck forced it out of the road, the tight clench in my chest as I held my breath.

I'm not ready to relive this. Not now. Not yet.

September 21, 1996

I had wanted a sister. Instead, I got you. She offered to let me hold you, and so I did, rocking you back and forth in my bony six year-old arms until you closed your dewy black eyes to sleep. All I noticed then was how scrunched up your face was, like a tiny prune, and I found it difficult to believe that something like you could have popped out of our mother after a scant nine months. On the car ride home, I wondered what life would be like now that I had a sibling.

Fourteen years later, I've decided that I wouldn't trade you for all the sisters in the world. You're the only one who I can still play legos with or pretend my bed is a boat in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean. Around you, there's no mask to put on, no role to play.

I almost lost you. And it would have been my fault.

You're my whole world, Indra. I wouldn't know how to exist if you had died.

And due to my own failings, no less.

Almosts

I got hit by an 18-wheeler today, and my car--Jill, blue Honda Civic and love of my life--is no more. Well, at least I know what I'll get for my birthday in November. I have a few bruises here and there, and there's a gnarly knot on the side of my head, but aside from those minor injuries, I'm fine. I never saw the truck coming. One second I was driving out onto the lane to turn left, and the next I'm in a ditch with smoke in my mouth and an airbag in my eyes.

The accident was my fault. I failed to yield the right of way, and now I have a court date in December.

I have done nothing but screw-up ever since I came home in May. Getting kicked out, rejected by even Berry College, incurring cost after cost on the still-ongoing summer storage for my friend, and now this latest development.

The truck hit the front of the car. Had I driven the tiniest bit faster, the 18-wheeler would have collided into the driver's side, and the accident would have been a true T-bone. I don't think I would have lived.

More to follow.

Elements of a Bad Day

1. discover from an aunt that there are rumors about you and your not-so-secret sexytime intrigues

2. put in $30 at the gas station, then drive off without filling up the tank

3. flunk your midterm because you didn't turn in your paper on time

4. be bombed by increasingly irate phone calls about summer storage from your soon-to-be ex-friend (God-DAMN, it still hasn't been resolved yet?)

5. have all of this occur on the same day

/recipe

What He'll Never Know

Greatest Interracial Cultural Exchange in The History of Interracial Cultural Exchanges

Date: August 2010

Location: Bath & Body Works, Perimeter Mall, Atlanta, Georgia

Players: Me & College Bestie

CB:*holding up a bamboo-scented lotion* Doesn't this remind you of home?

Me:*holding up a cotton-scented lotion* Doesn't this bring back memories for you?

/exchange

Another Day at Work

Last night I worked at the restaurant (so what else is new, I know shut up), and on Monday nights I always work with this cook (re)named Puppy Eyes. He is tall and skinny with a flop of thick, dark hair on his head. And he is very. Very. Nice. But also ridiculously flirtatious. Thus, he enjoys teasing me, and I enjoy ignoring his remarks/mock-glances full of longing until I need him to cook something. This is how my Monday nights go, without fail, week after week since I started school here (another story, another time).

Now anyone who--for some bizarre, unfathomable reason--frequents this blog knows that I am a Frustrated Virgin. And there is nothing more I would love than to lose it RIGHT NOW. AT THIS TABLE IN THE STUDENT UNION. AS I AM CURRENTLY TYPING THIS. Anyway. For months, I have kept this low-simmering tension at bay, but as the end of my teenage years approaches (November 4 WOOT WOOT), I am no longer able to effectively reign in my urges/flashes/Demonic Possession of my nether-regions--whatever. What I am trying to say after all this necessary context I have given you is that this frycook is not a bad-looking guy. In fact, he is very cute. Cute and nice all wrapped up in a demeanor that screams "CORRUPT ME AND SHOW ME THINGS."

Unfortunately, my body yearns to return this primitive call. I bitch-slap my libido and tell it to calm the fuck down. It does not. You could interpret this post as a "I'm considering making a Bad Call, Edition #498375," but it is not. Not really. You see, I have not written a word nor told a soul of what Puppy Eyes has been doing or what I wish to do to him. If I do not let someone--anyone--know, I will go crazy and indeed make The Bad Call, Edition #498375. This is me being proactive! Look at me being proactive and taking cautionary measures to prevent another Mini-Restaurant Scandal! Of course, the fact that I am the owner's offspring and he the frycook/"the help" is not the scandal-worthy tidbit.

He is married. Yeah. I did not mention that earlier >>

Passing Afternoon

I have a favorite time of day. It's between 1 and 4pm, but the weather conditions also have to be right. Sunny enough to feel the warmth on your skin but chilly enough to consider wearing a light jacket. Clouds should be fluffy and spread out, the sky dark-blue with a touch of somberness. When all these things come together, I know my day will be good--at the very least, not god-awful.

Of course today would be that day, which explains why I'm writing this. Have to scribble it down before my mind wanders off--half the reasons why I always post pictures here. It's so quiet in my house right now that if I stop typing I can hear my heartbeat. It's peaceful, and for an hour or two I can forget that I'm still at home and not in Vermont, that I don't know if I'll graduate on time, that I'm leaving my teen years in a month, and that I got kicked out of my dream school four months ago.

It's enough to make anyone cry, really.