Three Teenage Girls Walk Into A Coffee Shop. . .

I only have 21 minutes left of free wi-fi here at Starbucks. It seems that most of my posts are written from the beaten-up chair tucked into the far back corner on the right. The braiding is coming off the right arm, peeking out white cord beneath blue velvet. The back cushion is smashed out of shape, pressed down by countless people here for business meetings, meetings with friends, or as an escape from meetings.

The baristas are all loud, telling stories about co-workers not on this shift. The one other guy in here has the courtesy to walk outside to talk on his cell. I've been here since about 4.30. I did my Biology homework. I applied for a job. I drank a grande soy vanilla latte. I'm trying to figure out the best way to get home, while avoiding the traffic that loves this part of town. I would start going to the other Starbucks, but it is in a newer building. The coffee smell hasn't had the chance to permeate the walls there.

The coffee smell is home.

I get some of my best ideas sitting here, smelling the smell, listening to whatever mix cd was approved by all. Of course, even my best ideas aren't worth that much. Someday I'll get better at writing them all down. I suppose that's why I write here. At least I'm writing something, getting into the habit of it all.

Someday, my best ideas will be good ideas, and something will come of them other than outlines and plot sketches.

Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road

Well, all that worrying was for naught. It seems the decision was made for me, by way of job termination.

Of course, it helps to write it all down. Once I'd written about the tingles and warm fuzzies and dropping of heart bottoms, it was so much easier to shove away. I know that I say I want to live my life by the precept Love as thou wilt but it is so much easier to ignore it. After all, he is loving as he would, and I shouldn't stand in the way of that.

Love isn't like the fairytales. It doesn't happen overnight. I know that. I fought long and hard for my last relationship. Where did it end? In a ditch somewhere, unknown by others, much like Hitler. This is horrible. I'm making Hitler references.

My life is not the Holocaust. My life could be a lot worse. I could be dead. But sometimes? I think that would all be easier. Because then I wouldn't have to deal with the uncertainty. I'd just be dead.

Moral of the story, I don't want to fight fruitlessly for something that is never going to happen. And I'm glad that this will be less time I am forced to be around him. Because let's face it: I love the pseudo-snuggling on the couch and the wrestling over food. But I hate the reminders of girlfriends and chicks he thinks are hot.

Falsehoods and Flashbulbs

This is the most horrible thing that has happened to my heart in over two years. I can't be falling in love with him. I can't be putting myself through this yet again. I know what happens when a person falls in love: trembling moments of utter joy, decimated by harsh reality.

He won't love me back. He might not even realize I love him. We will float side by side for a predetermined amount of time and then we will never speak again.

That's how the world works. No one stays. No one means forever when they say it. It's all just words and motions and pretty lies on pretty lips in pretty moments. None of it can last for any longer than the instant it happens.

My stomach flutters. The bottom of my heart drops out. I think about him at the most inconvenient times. If it were just a crush, it'd pass. It would have when he went back to her yet again. I am logical and reasonable to a fault. I can talk my way out of any decision, any feeling, any rationale. I compartmentalize better than any one I know. I can exist as a perfect entity, empty of any emotion or bias.

But I can't make myself ignore his phone calls, texts, facebook chats. I can't turn down his offers to hang out. We sit too close together on the couch and steal each other's food. He teaches me football. I teach him parents of high school girls. When he's drunk beyond all belief, and I know he won't remember it in the morning, I let him curl up in my lap and sleep. I warm my hands on the back of his neck, and rest my head on his shoulder. I pretend.

I can't believe I'm letting myself do this. I would that I were a stronger person, to ignore the raging hormones and fluttering and fireworks when we hug. I should be able to stop this.

I can't fall in love with him.

Indecisive

Which way is which?

Which way do I go?

Which way don't I go?

He's a big man now that he drinks at Starbucks

The barista's laugh is loud, grating. The two small boys at the next table stare, watching me flip through a thick chemistry text.

I'm not sure who I am any more. Gone is the sweet girl who swore to save herself for marriage, clinging to the dreams and myths of the 50s. In her place is an over-cynical quasi-optimist who doesn't really care about what she will feel tomorrow, only wanting justification and adoration in the here and now.

Weasley was perfect for the sweet girl I once was. He reminded me of a time when I wanted a thousand small children running between the legs of my many Great Danes.

He turned out to be truly idiotic. Forbidding me from large words in his presence, calling me every pet name but my own. Refused to step foot in my haven, because he hates coffee. Wanted sex-telly-sex-telly like a stereotypical guy.

So I went for it. I went for the brash Southern burr with the blonde hair and the defined abs. Turns out, those kinds of guys aren't any good for me either. He just wanted a quick and easy lay, not even holding my hand while leading me to the hill he wanted to couple on.

I kept thinking, If I coax him, he'll get sweeter, softer. He didn't. So we didn't. Did we? I'm not sure.

Perhaps my plans for the future are too big, too broad, too overwhelming.

The only reason I'm pursuing a degree is because the Peace Corps requires volunteers to have a bachelor's in something. In order to travel the world helping people, I have to learn how to help myself. But the purpose of traveling was supposed to be to find myself. Can I help myself before I know who me really is? The irony is astounding.

I'll write a book about it someday.

Dating A Weasley

He's red-haired, brown-eyed, covered in freckles. He plays ice hockey and is shocked when I show true interest in the game. He majored in business - maths and numbers are his thing. He will tell pointless stories until he's blue in the face, and follow it up with a kiss on the nose. He's a smart ass, an asshole, and he tries to dish it out. I dish it better.

He made me want to flip my claddagh ring, crown pointing out. We held hands and cuddled. I remembered all those things I thought I had forgot. He makes me feel like my short hair is sexy, rather than just chic. He told me how gorgeous I was, and how long he had waited to kiss me.

He isn't the asshole I was falling for. And I wonder at my ability to transfer affections. Or rather, to ignore my other feelings without a thought. Because when I think of The Asshole, my stomach flutters a bit.

But I'm dating a Weasley. And that thought puts a smile on my face, a slow, warm smile with soft eyes and a momentary pause as I think about his laugh.

O Fortuna

Living in the South as I do now has challenged the role I think faith should play in our daily lives.

I listened to a story told at the racetrack, trying to demonstrate the power of Satan in everyday lives: A mother and father were cooking breakfast when they received a call from the hospital saying their daughter was in a horrible car accident. They rushed out of the house, arriving at the hospital to find her bruised but well. When they arrived home, their house had burnt down. The burning of the house was an act of Satan. The people at the track nodded and clapped and amened. They understood that the family hadn't protected themselves from Satan.

I don't understand. All I could think was that someone had forgotten to turn of the stove, or left a dishtowel too close to the flames. The family hadn't been careful, true, but it wasn't because of Satan.

I believe in fate. If something big is going to happen, all the preparation in the world won't stop it. No amount of prayer or holy water or Eucharist is going to change a damned thing. Maybe other people call this God. I don't.

Lip Gloss

Writing isn't necessarily epic. I always forget this.

It can be the flash of a camera, rather than the steady lights of a stage. It doesn't need to be six novels long, trying to record how a frown became a smile. It can simply be the quirk of the corner of a pair of lips. A focus on the blossom of a secret grin. Ignore the surroundings, the hands, the feet, the other people. Just the one set of lips, shining with petal pink lip gloss, off-white teeth peeking from behind. The slight dimple forming on one cheek. Perhaps, perhaps, the crinkle of an eye, sparkling and warm.

I don't need to write that the lips are smiling because of X and Y and Z, in that order or maybe not. I don't need to write that the hands are clasped to a locketbookflowerforkwaterbottle of indefinite shape. It needn't take 672 pages to tell the whys-whos-wheres-whats-whens.

It takes as much skill to tell all that in 15 pages.

Nice guys finish last. Assholes get the girl. The girl gets left behind.

Because he wants to cuddlecuddlecuddle and wind his hands through her hair. He is a teddy bear, the kind you take home to protect, but are willing to gift upon the right person. The girl is a bitch with a sharp tongue she doesn't know how to handle, dealing cutting remarks without meaning for them to be so deep. He wants to gently tease but can't find the right moments.

Because the girl is still a bitch, and needs an asshole who can call her such, be called a douche in return, and still smile softly and kiss her forehead when she giggles. The sex would be angry sometimes, it needs to be, but still fulfilling. Other times it will be fuzzy and warm and loving, exactly what it should be when two people love each other. And when she stands next to him, his arm fits perfectly above her shoulder, like she was made to fit close to his side.

Because the asshole already has a girl he wants to fight for, even though she lies and cheats and makes him so angry in an awful way. She is too young to realize the damage from her games and the bitch talks him down when his face is red and his eyes are flat and his hands itch to get his baseball bat. When he wanders into work from the gym, reeking in a wonderful way, the bitch stands as close as she can without sideways looks. He invades her personal space, not realizing she backs away so she doesn't get closer.

Because nice guys need nice girls and bad girls need bad boys and sometimes good-bad works out. More often than not, the nice guys get heartbroken over girls with bubblegum lips and chainsaw tongues, and bad boys want to hold on to the sweet innocence carefully concealing a calculating slut.

On Being

Daydreams of guitars, primed canvas, chords, acrylics. I want to create, but don't trust myself to produce something worth creating. Another sign of my endless self-doubt and lack of self-value, I suppose. 

Reality of impatient customers, sticky dishes, bottomless glasses, subservience. I run from table to table, trying to keep them all happy, but failing miserably. Is this what being an adult is? Never happy with where you are in life? Always wishing for something more? If it is, I want to run away from it all, escape to some far off place where I can pick apples in orchards or help bring in the day's catch in return for a place to sleep and a carafe of wine.